Haunted Radio

            The weirdest thing happened to me to me a few nights ago. Or rather, it happened in the wee hours of the morning a few days ago. (Oh, now. See where your imaginations just went?? Then again, I’d expect nothing less of you. :) )

            But wait—I have to set this story up a little bit, which means first I should tell you about the clock radio. I have a clock radio that’s about…oh, 25 years old. It still works, bless its circuits, but it’s big, ugly, complicated (you have to move like three different buttons to set it), and makes a sound like a boat horn when it goes off (when it’s not set to play music)—which, granted, never failed to bring me to full and immediate consciousness in the morning when I used it (it's been years since I used it as an alarm clock, though). When I moved into my new flat a few years ago, I decided to put this sucker in the kitchen, and I tucked it on the far side of the counter next to the microwave. Every now and then when I’m cooking or baking I’ll turn it on low and listen to it for a few minutes. And since I put it in the kitchen, it’s never been set to any station other than KLLC, or “Alice” as its called by everyone—97.3 FM, a local radio station that sometimes feels like All-Sarah McClachlan-all-the-time. Until they discovered Kelly Clarkson, that is, and now that's all they play. Well, OK—every now and then the play Train, or the horrifically overrated John Mayer. Overall, it’s a lot of strummy mid-tempo guitar-and-vocal stuff, and they’re playing almost EXACTLY the same songs today as they were ten years ago, which is why I can’t stand to listen to it for more than a few minutes at a time. 

(Sorry. But it wouldn’t be me if I didn’t digress, would it?)

Anyway, to turn this radio on, you have to give a switch on the top a good hard push to the right. And I haven’t listened to it in weeks.

But a few days ago, I woke up for some reason at around three in the morning. I live alone, unless you count the cat, and the cat and I share the bed. And I normally sleep with a white noise machine on, a habit I got into when I had very pleasant but thumpy upstairs neighbors, and it does a fabulous job of blocking just about every sound out.

Once I was awake, I discovered I was quite thirsty. Too thirsty to go right back to sleep, as it turned out. So I decided to get up to get a drink.

When I got to the doorway of my bedroom, out of range of my white noise machine, I heard something, and it took me a moment to realize what it was:

That clock radio was...on.

Not only on. On LOUD. Echoing through the whole flat in the dark.

I stood frozen in disbelief, as the chorus of a song rose up: “How do I LIVE withOOUUT you…” 

LeAnn Rimes. Clear as a bell.

And Alice doesn’t play LeAnn Rimes.

So….knowing what you now know about this radio, you can imagine how I felt at that moment: My old, very hard-to-turn on radio had turned itself on, turned the station, and turned itself way UP. Either that, or a burglar was in my kitchen and had decided to switch to the Easy Listening station to soothe himself while he filled sacks with my belongings.

I stood there and listened, a bit too shocked to be truly frightened, at a total loss as to what to do. It was pretty bloody eerie, truthfully. But a few moments of hard listening later, I still heard nothing but LeAnn Rimes. Then again, that radio could have been effectively drowning out robbery sounds.

I decided to take my cues from the cat. I figured he’d be a trifle freaked out if another person was in the house. Instead, he hopped down from the bed, yawned, stretched, stared at me quizzically for a moment, then jumped up onto the bathroom sink for his own morning drink (he waits for me to turn the faucet on). He wasn’t phased at all.

Just to be on the safe side, in case he wasn't a Watch Cat after all, I grabbed the phone in case I needed to call 911 or perhaps hurl it at a robber, and flipped on the hall light. The brilliant light flooding a large part of the flat was a bit of a relief. Then I ventured down the long hall toward the kitchen, the song growing louder and louder the closer I got.

Finally, quite bravely, thank you very much, I quickly and gingerly flipped on the light switch in the kitchen.

No robbers in there. No open doors or windows. Just the radio blaring away. The song ended about then, and a mattress commercial began. In the moment, somehow it was less eerie than LeAnn Rimes.

I released the breath it seemed I'd been holding.

Was there a...short, I wondered? Could an electrical short cause the radio to play?? I peered. The switch was set to “on.” Would a short flip the switch to ON?

I reached over and slowly turned the radio off. And stared at it.

And in a second, I decided I mostly I was kind of delighted, rather than freaked out.

Because, you know, it would have taken a rather complicated series of events to get that radio to turn on like that, let alone for a dial to roll significantly upward to increase the volume, and a different dial to roll sideways a bit to change the station. It was kind of marvelous, in a way. Was someone, or something, trying to send me a message through LeAnn Rimes (I watch The Ghost Whisperer, after all, and ghosts seem to like to send symbolic messages all the time), and, having despaired of ever hearing an appropriately worded song on Alice, decided to change the station? But who, and what sort of message? I read the lyrics to the LeAnn Rimes song online. They aren't tremendously profound. No clues there.

Or maybe I have a ghost who was in the mood to hear something mellow? I mean, I suppose it's possible. My flat was built in the 30's or early 40's or thereabouts, and a number of people have occupied it, and the same family has owned it pretty much since it was built. And they're a very nice family, every one of them I've met, anyway, so I imagine it would be a very nice ghost. I suppose I can ask my landlord, who used to live here, whether he ever experienced anything odd.

But thanks to watching the Ghost Hunters on the Sci Fi Channel, etc., the idea of a ghost mostly doesn't trouble me. And I've witnessed a few tremendously mysterious things in my day, and none of them seemed harmful or very scary. Just difficult to explain, and ultimately kind of magical in retrospect.

A friend of mine said, "Man, I would get rid of that radio!!" But I don't think it's the radio's fault, really. And truthfully, I'm kind of curious to see if it'll happen again.

So what would you guys have done? Would you toss that radio, or unplug it, or leave it be?? Ever experience something eerie like that? Any electronics experts out there who think they know what happened with my radio?? Do you believe in ghosts?  Do you think you've ever gotten a message from the great beyond?? :)

Comments

[meardaba]

I would totally keep it, just to see whether it turned back on. Then I'd be excited, and keep it forever.

As much as I loathe scary movies, I find ghosts fascinating. I also find them in strange places, so I wouldn't be surprised if it did happen again.

But what a cool story!

[Kathy K]

I'd keep it ~ and the story to go with it as well; definitely!
I do believe in ghosts, but I don't think that I've ever received a ghostly message...and to be honest, I'm not sure what I'd do if I did; receive a ghostly message that is. I've experienced other things, but I wouldn't really classify them as ghostly...at least not the way that I think of ghosts.
I'd like to *think* that I'd be okay with it, but one never really knows until one has experienced it does one?? (Okay, did that sound as weird as I think it did / does?) Don't mind me ~ it's 8:48 here and I've been up for 3 1/2 hours already....

But if your place has been around for that long, I'd kinda be surprised if you didn't experience something ~ I honestly believe that the older a place, the more likely there is to be some ghostly occurences; some people are more attuned to that kind of thing, that's all.
That or your just a ghost magnet Julie! LOL

[Julie Anne Long]

So far the radio hasn't serenaded me again. :) Maybe it's a "watched radio won't sing" kind of thing. LOL. Part of me is worried that if I take the radio away, the ghost (that is, if it IS a ghost! LOL) will find an entirely different way to express itself, perhaps a less endearing way. LOL. Mear, you're in Germany -- do you have any places considered haunted near you?? You said you find ghosts in strange places?? The funny part is that I've often thought I've heard noises in the kitchen at night, and I've decided that it was just noises out on the street. LOL. Maybe the kitchen is a busy place at three in the morning, for all I know!!

The thing with occurrences that we can't explain is that in the moment they don't really freak us out -- or I should say, me out, really. Because there's that second of denial, where your busy little brain is trying to make sense of it. It isn't until a bit later that you're going "WHOA." For instance, I seriously once saw a pair of sunglasses fly off of a bookcase. Not drop to the floor. Slide, and whip across the room to land on the floor. LOL! I'm not kidding. They weren't bumped, or anything like that. This was when I was growing up, when I was around 12 years old or so. Weird stuff tended to happen around my mom, however. :) There were a number of odd things like that over the years. But in the moment, you're very much..."did i *really* just see that??"

THat said, I really hope I'm not a ghost magnet, per se, Kathy. LOL. Life is colorful enough as it is!! And don't worry, I understood everything you said. LOL. Ever witness something odd you couldn't explain??

[Lois]

Yeah, it might have been a short, if the power went out very briefly or something. But ghosts. . . I choose not to believe in them because I really don't ever want to see or know one. lOL My experience has only been the usual thought I saw someone in the corner of my eye bit once in a blue moon. But luckily that's it. :) Don't want any more than that. Nope, uh-uh, no siree. :)

Lois

[CM]

Another vote for keep the radio! I can't understand how a short would flip a switch or turn a dial. And a side-vote for "not scary." I would take it as a sign of affection from the beloved departed.

The freakiest thing that ever happened to me was a dream I had shortly after I left for college. I dreamed that I was playing in the sun on grass with my big fluffy white dog. At some point, we started talking (it's a dream, right?). And then halfway through, I said, as if startled--"Wait. You're a dog. You can't talk."

And then he turned to me and said, "I just wanted to have one last chance to spend time with you. Don't worry. I'll always be here for you, even if you can't see me."

My parents were on vacation at the time; it turned out that he'd died.

I have no idea what I believe in, but I do believe that really was my dog in my dreams. And I do believe that he's still around, and he still cares.

[Julie Anne Long]

Lois -- you should check out the Sci Fi Channel's "Ghost Hunters." LOL. Or maybe not. But you really do learn a lot about various types of paranormal activity, and it seems much less spooky (because it's much more common than we might think, mostly harmless -- generally :) ), though granted, it's occasionally much MORE spooky when you see them catch some genuinely wild stuff on film. LOL. I blogged about it a while back. http://julieannelong.typepad.com/julie_anne_long/2006/10/index.html

Oh, CM, you made me tear up a little. LOL. It's true though -- dreams are one phenomenon, for instance, that we all share -- but we can never prove in any sort of material, accepted, "scientific" way (can we measure them, weigh them, photograph them?) that they exist. I mean, who has ever taken an actual *photo* of an occurring dream? When you think about it, REALLY think about it, isn't it rather bizarre that we see random moving pictures in our heads at night? LOL. Why do we do it? It's fascinating. I have pretty vivid, memorable dreams, typically, and I'm willing to bet most of us out there have had little visits from departed loved ones in dreams. You reminded me of when my cat Cecil passed away a few years ago from oral cancer. I dreamed about him quite a few times after that, and in the dreams, he was fat, happy, glossy-coated and playful, and they seemed very, very real. It was like he was saying, "Don't worry! Everything's great now!" I missed him a lot, but it was lovely to visit him in dreams every now and then. :) Then the dreams eventually stopped.

[Kathy K]

Wow CM, what a terrific story...and I say "Why not?". I believe that pets are more than *just* animals; look at the way they become part of our family?

[Lareign]

I'm not sure what I'd do about the radio, Julie. I'd probably unplug it, ha. Just to see what happens. I've never really had a ghostly experience, and I can't say I mind.

The closest I've came was dream-related. But first, like you said, dreams are by their nature so hard to grasp. Is nebulous the right word here? I think so. It's so hard for me to remember exactly how a dream went, unless I just woke up and wrote it down. I think often I fill in details I can't remember with how I feel it should go or how I wished it had gone. In reality, dreams aren't that way. They are not sensible at all.

So, just to get that out of the way. A little while before Sept. 11-say a couple nights or so-I had a dream that there were people running around and stuff falling and I think I remember this much: I felt like I was going to die. I can't get much more specific than that. So I don't know what, if anything that means. Probably mostly an eerie coincidence. I tend to have weird/scary dreams a lot. Like last night I dreamed I was about to move but was hugely pregnant and might not be able to move before I delivered. It was quite scary, since pregnancy utterly terrifies me. But I think in dream symbolism or whatever, pregnancy symbols change. I can go for that, ha.

And oh, about your earlier tornado question. I don't know that a bathtub is the best place to go, honestly. I think under a staircase or in a center room of a lower floor is actually best. When I was little I remember hearing I should go to closets or bathrooms. And my apartment is on the second floor, so um, yeah. I figured the bathroom was my best shot, I guess.

[meardaba]

Well, I've had lots of dreams that later have some bearing on real life (a friend's fiance died in a plane crash the day after I had had a dream about giant planes crashing into schools and mountains), and I once had a ghost scare the pants off me at 3 am in a lonely house. Actually, I was less scared of the ghost and more scared of the drug-dealers next door. I thought the crashing and banging was some junkie stealing stuff to get a fix. Anyway, I'd had some experience with ghosts.

While in Germany, though, I haven't seen or heard anything. Maybe they just don't like foreigners?

[Julie Anne Long]

I'm a chicken, as it turns out. I unplugged the radio. Why?? It went off again. At a different time -- one in the morning -- while I was standing near it. It was a commercial again, for a car showroom. I confess I was a trifle less, um, sanguine this time. LOL. And I didn't sleep quite as easily. Now, if the radio had somehow been set to go off at a particular time (and no one has touched it to set it, and like I said, setting it takes some doing), wouldn't it do it at that time *every* night?? Could it just be malfunctioning? It's a freaky manlfunction, if so. Now, if it goes off while it's unplugged, I'm calling the Ghost Hunters. :) Or maybe I'll just have a little quiet conversation with whoever/whatever's causing it, to ask what's up. :) Life is an adventure, eh?? LOL!

That's funny about dreams, you guys -- I've had quite a few that have "come true." Some mundane -- like, once I dreamed that I was at work and the receptionist called me to tell me someone named "Josh" was in the lobby to see me. I hadn't seen my friend Josh in several years. And sure enough, the very next day, the exact thing happened. And I've had plane crash and other types dreams, too, some very specific, some slighlty more symbolic (like, once I I had a dream that one of the Blue Angels crashed in the Panhandle portion of Golden Gate Park here in San Francisco. Some time after that, one of the Blue Angels crashed...in the Florida Panhandle.) What's funny is...how are these dreams particularly useful?? We can't really prepare for them, if we don't know 1) if they're actually going to happen; or 2) when, precisely. INteresting, isn't it, that, like little antennas, we're picking up events to come, somehow? I actually know a lot of people who've had dreams that come true, so I'm fascinated by 'em.

I love your pregnancy dream, Lareign! It's really kind of lovely and telling. Pregnancy has to do with new beginnings, fertility, creativity, and feeling vulnerable, and you were taking yourself on this long trip to a new beginning. And clearly you had some trepidation about it. But there are you, safe and sound in ARkansas, and already getting bylines. :)

Oh, now, Mear, you have to tell us at least ONE ghost story!! If you do, I'll tell one or two other REALLY weird things that have happened to me over the years. :) And according to The Ghost Hunters, 2:am-3:a.m. is that magic hour, for some reason. They always pick up the most activity then. Atmospheric conditions might be more ideal then, or something.

[meardaba]

Well, the scariest encounter I've had with a ghost was that crash at 3 am.

It was Spring Break at my university, and I was all alone in my house as my roommates had left for the week to go home. I'm from the West Coast and was living on the East Coast, so I was stuck in our old, creaky house.

Anyway, it was a Wednesday, and to celebrate my schoolless-ness, I was up late reading a delicously good romance novel. As I was at the tip of the rising action, almost to the climax (and yes, I am talking in literary terms here people. Get your minds out of that gutter!), something in the room above me crashed to the floor so hard it shook my bed.

The first thing I thought was that there were druggies in the house stealing stuff. I called my boyfriend (who lived out west, so was still up), and messaged my best friend (also out west). They both said I should stay put and not go investigate.

But nothing else happened. No footsteps, no more bangs, no more crashes, nothing. I told them to stay on the lines, and if I don't come back in 10 minutes call the cops. I grabbed a beer bottle (it was painted gold and was a prize from my residence, I swear I wasn't drinking), and slowly crept up the stairs.

The really freaky part was that nothing was on the floor. No mirrors, no dressers had fallen over, no beds overturned, nothing was down that could have made such a huge noise and shaken the house! I knew I hadn't imagined it, and since the house was locked up tight it wasn't burglars.

Then I saw someone or something on the landing, screamed bloody murder, went running down the stairs as fast as I could, and cried on the phone to my boyfriend. I'm a little ashamed to say that I didn't stick around long enough to figure out what it was.

Afterwards I didn't sleep until the sun came up. I went back upstairs the next day to check again, and again found nothing. The one thing I DID find was that one of my roommates had left a full-length mirror on the landing at the top of the stairs. For a long time I thought that I had just seen myself in the mirror (and felt really stupid), until I realized that I couldn't have seen myself in the mirror at the angle that I was at.

Ugh. It still gives me chills. You can be sure that I never stayed up that late ever again, and never went investigating noises unless I had someone there with me. There was no way I was going to be meeting anything in my house that I wasn't expecting ever again.

[meardaba]

Oh, and I forgot to say that one of old geezers I knew once told me that 230 am is the coldest time of the night, because the sun has been down the longest at that time. Maybe that's why there is more activity - it's the furthest time away from the sun's zenith.

[Kathy K]

Jeepers meardaba, that's one creepy story! I've got the shivers just reading about it...and Julie, that radio of yours, man!
Spooky or what...and boy, it it does go off unplugged, I think I'd go off too. LOL

And those dreams sound really cool; can't say that I've ever had any dream that could mean something like that. But I have had dreams that really stuck with me; I would remember them *very* clearly the next day, which is very unusual. Mostly my dreams are extremely fantasy-like [not *that* kind of fantasy!] and I never remember them clearly, the memories of them are more impressions. But these other ones were really different because they were just little bits out of time, but they were from my life and extremely mundane. The one that comes to mind first is one day when one of the mom's that I babysat for came to pick up her daughters and we were talking about the younger one. At the time that I had the dream I wasn't even babysitting for this family.
What is more unusual is that those very dreams, and there've been 3 or 4 over the years, have ALWAYS come to pass, but it's not until something is happening that I get that 'deja vue' sensation and then I remember the dream. Time wise they've been anywhere from 5 or 6 months to 2 or 3 years later. And the fact that I even have an idea of the amount of time that's passed is stranger yet. And I've never had another one until a previous one has come to pass. Weird, huh?

But *not* spooky like you guys! And I like it just fine, thank you very much. *grin*

[Kathy K]

Huh... I can't believe that I didn't remember the *most important dream like this!!*
Man, where is my head??

Okay, I've been married for just over 23 years and I've known my husband for a little more than 24 years (can you tell that I moved really quickly on this guy?? LOL)
Years before I met him I had a dream one night and I was looking at the most gorgeous pair of eyes knowing that *this* was the man that I would marry. That's it, only the eyes; they were a beautiful blend of green and light brown and I was thrilled to know that there was someone out there for me.
Then, one day after I had met my now-dh and had finally realized that I REALLY liked him, I noticed that his eyes were the exact same eyes from my dream...cool, huh??
I've always thought so. ^^ *G*

[Julie Anne Long]

OK, you guys are giving me goosebumps!! Mear, man, that's a great story!! I swear, after watching Ghost Hunters, I think the whole Eastern seaboard is haunted. LOL. The show is based in Warwick, Rhode Island, and their first investigations mostly involved reports from various folks on the east coast. But a lot of the things they investigated DID involve sounds like you described... footsteps, the sound of furniture sliding, crashes and thumps...that owners of homes reported hearing, but could find no earthly cause for, or evidene of. And sometimes they say these things are just sort of..."time stamped," or recorded on the pattern of time somehow. So it's not really a haunting...it's like listening to, or watching, a playback of an event that happened years ago. There might not really be an entity there -- its' just like a film or a recording, if that makes sense. For example, there have been many reports over the years at the Tower of London of sightings of Anne Boleyn with her retinue walking out near Queen's House. Just an image somehow "filmed" on time.

Then AGAIN, there are other kinds of hauntings, where the entity IS aware of your presence, and IS trying to interact with you in some way, or is *capable* of interacting in some way. Man, you should get the Ghost Hunters DVDs. LOL. THey've been able to debunk a lot of things, but they have caught some of the most ASTOUNDING things on film and tape recorder. I love that we humans aren't able to explain everything we witness or experience, and might never. Keeps us humble and questing. :) I have to go back over my DVDs (when I get the nerve up - thanks to the radio I'm feeling slightly less bold. LOL), because I think they gave a more complete explanation for why that's the "witching hour." IT made sense, the way they explained it. Can't remember if it had to do with temperature.

And Kathy, your dream of your husband seriously gave me goosebumps! I love it!! I could really picture it. I once had a dream about someone who became a boyfriend, but it was slightly more graphic than yours. LOL. I'll spare everyone details. LOL. But it actually came to pass! A few months later.

And isn't it funny about the mundane dreams, too?? I'll give you another example of mine: many years ago, my band practiced in the garage of a house in San Franicsco I rented with my sister and a roommate, and we wanted to more fully soundproof the garage. You can soundproof places in part by putting cardboard egg cartons up over the walls. So I called a restaurant we went to frequently for breakfast, and asked if they would mind saving egg cartons for me. They said "sure!"

Then I had a dream that I went to pick up the egg cartons, but it turned out they weren't cardboard egg cartons...they were egg FLATS, red and blue plastic containers that I couldn't use for soundproofing.

And guess what? When I actually went to go pick them up from the restaurant a few weeks later...what they had saved for me were red and blue plastic flats!! Now, how weird is that?? And how bloody mundane!! LOL!! You have to wonder why I somehow picked up on *that* particular little eventuality, and dreamed it, and remembered it. It wasn't life or death, by any means. Pretty ordinary little situation. But there it was. And given the balance of the ordinary and quiet and the extraordinary in our lives, I thought it was pretty funny. Maybe it was the phase of the moon. :) Who knows?? But it's fascinating, because clearly it calls into question the nature of time and consciousness. :) And I think more of us have these kinds of dreams than we realize. I actually know quite a few people who do, but who were once upon a time somewhat reluctant to talk about it. I just think it's yet another very cool thing about life. :)

So far the radio has been quiet today. Man, I hope it isn't waiting for 2 in the morning. LOL!

[Haven Rich]

I've had several dreams come true, they use to freak me out, but now I just write them down and wait for it to come true. I can always tell the difference between a random dream and a "it's going to happen" dream. The true happenings are always more vivid and they don't jump around. Everything is more "real". Where as in my normal dreams I could go from walking a million stairs that are dusty to walking in a green garden.

As for ghost, yeah I think I've been in contact with a few. Some where scary, others not so much.

Sadly, I think you just have a really old broken alarm clock. Ours started doing that not too long ago. It'd come on at odd hours, jarring us awake or it wouldn't go off as it was suppose to. I've never understood why when they mess up they insist on going louder. Is this some sort of rule? Ours came on full blast. Talk about heart attack coming on.

Now if you happen to buy a new radio and it starts happening again, check your local Ghost Hunters hehe.

BTW when I lived alone and slept at night, I'd have every light in the house on...except for my room. I didn't feel safe. I often have this safety issue, which is why I more often than not sleep during the day instead of night. I know it's caused from PTD but can't get past it...I know my issue lol.

Chat with you soon!

[Julie Anne Long]

Hey Haven!! INteresting that you have those dreams, too. I really think a lot of people do, actually. And since you've had a few ghostly encounters, it's your turn to tell a ghost story!!

You might be right about the radio...then again, it did turn the station significantly, and as far as I know, a radio can only tune into whatever frequency it's actually set to. It also turned ON -- meaning the switch was actually clicked into the On position. Which is why this is tripping me out so completely. LOL. It's funny, but checking out the blog stats, I noticed that quite a few people have looked at this post via google searches on phrases like "haunted radio" "radios that turn themselves on," stuff like that. Isn't that funny?? So I checked some of the links that came up in the Google searches, and a number of people have stories rather like this...that escalated into other electronic equipment going haywire. I didn't, um, find that all that comforting. LOL. But I'll keep everyone apprised of other stuff. The other night I stepped out of the shower and the TV was on...and I swear I turned it off before I got in there, because I'm a bit of a nut about turning things off. But I can't swear it. So guess we'll see!!

[Haven Rich]

Hmm, you want me to tell you a ghost story...lets see.

I suppose I'll tell you two stories, then you can call me nuts!

The first one happened when I was around 13 y/o. We moved into a house that the garage was turned into a spare room. The room was always colder than the rest of the house, which could be blamed on it being a garage, but it's also said that cats and sometimes dogs will refuse to enter a room that is haunted. My typically loving cat who had never scratched anyone would claw your eyes out if you took her into that room.

Anyhow, I started having dreams of a little girl who always asked me to play with her. She was very cheerful and happy but not of my time. For the longest time I thought I was dreaming of something from Secret Garden crossed with Little House On The Prairie. So I didn't think anything of it until one night in my dream the young girl was very sad and crying. I asked her what was wrong and she said that she missed her family...her mom, dad and baby brother. I asked where they were and she said they had died in a house fire that started in the middle of the night.

I woke up very confused and upset by the dream. Well my natural curiosity got the better of me and I went to my local library and searched the archives. It seems that my dream was an actual event in 1890's, only the little girl perished in the fire as well. For a long while I started sleeping on the couch but then got brave enough to sleep in my room again. The dreams began again and I had them until we moved away from that house about a year later.

The second story is rather odd as well.

Living with an ex-b/f I began seeing a ghost in our hallway right outside our bedroom door. If the lights were on, I didn't see him. Now let me explain this "seeing" him part. When I would walk into the hallway at night, with all the lights off, I'd enter the "zone" and suddenly feel a sharp blinding pain to my left side, like someone was stabbing me. I'd close my eyes the pain was so sharp and with my eyes closed that's when I saw him. I'd open my eyes and no one was there, but the pain was. I could step out of the "zone" and the pain would go away. Plus it wouldn't happen if the lights were on.

This went on for awhile but each time I entered that "zone" the pains would get worse. I once passed out in that spot. Doing some research on ghost, I found that sometimes they warn you of health problems or rather, things you can't see. So I went to the doctor and found out that I have Crohn's disease. Now I didn't share with the doctors what caused me to visit them but I think it would have been awhile longer before I saw a doctor had it not been for my ghost. The odd thing is, once I saw the doctor, I could walk down the hallway with the lights off and nothing. No chilling down my spine, no goosebumps, no stabbing feeling. I feel I should mention that at this time they hadn't put me on meds, just told me the cause of the pain.

I never saw that ghost again. I have had pains that felt like stabbing, but that was actually caused by my Crohn's.

So now you know two of my stories.

Julie, look for an email from me in the next day or so. Chat with you soon and hope you enjoyed my stories!

[Julie Anne Long]

Wow, those are pretty remarkable stories, Haven!! Thanks for sharing them. And I've heard similar stories over the years from various people, too, and The Ghost Hunters have addressed some things like that on their show. Who knows? I'm not one to completely discount anything. Like I've said before, I like that there are still things that we humans can't yet fully explain or measure or prove. :) I figure it's good to have a few remaining frontiers and things to discover.

I'll keep my eyes peeled for your email!!

[Kathy K]

Geez Haven, that's pretty spooky! But I'm glad that you were able to find out about your Crohn's...it's a really hard disease to diagnose. Both my husband and father went through a couple of years worth of tests and pain and the rest before a couple of bright doctors actually thought...'Hmm, maybe it's Crohn's...'

The one about the little girl is sad, yet sweet; ghost stories like that make me want to make everything right...although how I'd do that is beyond me!

And Julie those mundane dreams always make me wonder why I'd see such a small bit of something that really wasn't *important*...but egg flats? That's pretty funny!

This is such a fun topic... I know that my father-in-law has a TON of ghost stories..some that made me break out in goosebumps... maybe he experienced so many 'cause it's a small town and he'd been there his whole life?
Whatever, it's all pretty neat regardless!

[Ranurgis]

I know, I'm a week too late. It seems that the computer really isn't my thing lately. I sit down, hardly look at my e-mail and before I know it, I've got 300 e-mails in my Inbox.

Probably it's all the junk around me--though that's really nothing new. Nor is the fact that the PC keeps freezing on me. I also seem so awfully tired. Worst of all though, I think, Is the fact that I pulled a muscle in my back when I tried to lift a heavy drawer of stuff. I feel best when I'm lying on or in my bed with the pillow I fashioned for the curve. So I've been AWOL for quite a while. Anybody interested in coming to help me set up my stuff? Before the next basement flood ruins more? Before my sister has an opportunity to come sometime in April? Yeah, I thought not.

That's the problem when all your friends are either somewhat aged or somewhat handicapped or live too far away.

These are some remarkable stories you guys have. I know I've blogged before about some of the incidents my mother had where fore-knowledge was involved. For instance during WW II, she woke up one night and instantly knew that someone dear to her had been gravely injured or even died but she knew it wasn't my father. She noted the time and when she found out that her favorite cousin had died about that time, she asked for particulars and wasn't really too amazed to find that it was almost exactly at the time she woke up.

A close friend has had several weird experiences. For instance she saw my father who had recently passed on sitting in his usual chair, which I can see about 7' from me, and assured him that my mother was doing all right at the time.

Anyway, to get to your ghost music. I admit that it's never happened to me from the start. I know that sounds strange but what I mean is that fairly frequently when my mother and I lived in her house before she became too ill with Alzheimer's, she'd tell me, "That radio station was on again."

Again, that doesn't seem strange per se, but she rarely if ever had a radio by her bed but she had an old cassette player that my aunt had sent her from Germany probably 30 years ago. If she couldn't sleep at night, she'd put on one of the tapes by our pastor and after a while she'd fall asleep to his generally soothing voice. She even told *him* about it and he used it as a joke in one of his sermons: "Some people in the congregation use my tapes as sleeping pills. I'm really glad that they're good for something." (along that line anyway)

Now this was a cassette player only and there was no radio in her bedroom. Yet every so often, she'd get a radio signal with songs and voices, etc. on the cassette player. I heard them though only if she called me to hear her weird new "radio" receiver.

The explanation that we were given for this is that the radio waves can be strengthened by something like the Northern Lights and be carried to places that the station would not normally reach. Something in the cassette player received or picked up the signal and played the station's program.

Of course that doesn't explain the changes on the radio you have: the louder setting and the move of the station finder.

[Ranurgis]

Oh, right. The worst thing that happened was that my brother cancelled his account with execulink.com and since mine was administered with his office account, mine was cancelled, too, on March 1. It took me until 6 p.m. to get the account back on line. I was furious. However, that means that I'll really have to get going on getting a new computer set up and getting some accounts set up with the sympatico.ca because it now costs me $5/mo. to have them still accept my mail. I'd rather have that money to do other things with.

Haven knows why I was so miserable that day.

[Julie Anne Long]

Ranurgis, glad to see you among us!! I wondered how you were doing. Sounds like you've been really suffering during this Mercury Retrograde. :) (An astrological thing, and over the years I've become a BIG believer. LOL. Check out my blog about my website woes below, and that's my Mercury Retrograde story!!) Hope your issues resolve themslves soon. Sorry to hear about your back -- injuries can make you feel tired, too. A few days back I took a bad fall running in the house. Boy, did I feel like an IDIOT. I was sore everywhere for days, moving really slowly, and kept finding brand new bruises everywhere. LOL.

It's interesting how stuff -- foreknowledge -- often comes to us in our sleep. Wonder if somehow we're more receptive then? It would certainly seem so, judging from our stories here.

That's pretty wild about your mom's tape recorder. I used to rehearse with my band out in an East Bay light industrial warehouse, and once in a blue moon on a warm night we'd pick up radio signals in our amplifiers, from some guy with a Ham or Shortwave radio, something like that. I don't know enough about this kind of thing to know precisely how it works, but somehow they were operating on the same frequencies. Kind of hard to play music when your amp is TALKING. Can Northern Lights really enhance radio waves?? I should probably google all this for answers. LOL.