Castle of Spirits Ghost Story

HAUNTED CHICAGO

This is something that happened to my mother one night a couple of years ago. First of all, my mother does not believe in ghosts. She has told me a couple of ghost stories that she has heard over the years, but it was mainly for a laugh at the expense of the poor naive soul (bad pun--sorry) who was the source of the stories. Even though my father passed away years ago, she had not had any supernatural experiences (until that night), and neither have I for that matter. She has never been one to scare easily, her imagination does not run away with her, and she looks for the logical explanation to EVERYTHING. This is partly why the following incident scared me so much.

A little background info on my mom and me and the night this incident occurred, to maybe better set the scene:
One Saturday night, I was getting ready to go out dancing with my friend Irene. We love to go dancing on the weekends, but being an only child and coming from a VERY strict Greek background, my overprotective mother hates the idea of my being out late at night (late to her is past 9 p.m). Therefore, every time I go out in the evenings (or any time for that matter) she always warns me (endlessly) to be careful of the muggers/drunk drivers/thieves/rapists etc. that are out there. (I'm 27 years old by the way, and at the time I was 25). My response is usually silence as I try to ignore her and hurry up and get out of the house to escape her nagging.

On this particular night, I was leaving the house fairly late, and as I was grabbing my coat & keys, my mother warned me (for the 58th time that night) not to come home late. She said, and I quote, "Try to tear those dancing feet away from the floor at a decent hour, will you?" To which I replied something to the effect of "Yeah, sure".

Well, Irene and I had a great time that night. We went to our favorite Italian restaurant and then went straight to the club for some serious dancing. Later that night, I looked at my watch and it was 1:15 a.m. Irene saw me looking at my watch and asked if I wanted to get going. I said "no", and we ended up leaving at about 3:00 am. When I got home, it was about 3:30 in the morning and my mother was waiting up for me. She asked me if I had come home that night and gone out again. I told her no. She then proceeded to tell me what happened to her just a few hours before I got home.

We live in a very small apartment, and in the middle of the night, the slightest noise is very audible. As I said before, my mother is quite overprotective and she is a light sleeper and typically hears me come in at night and makes note of the time I come in so she can lecture me the next morning. Well on that night, my mother heard the back door open and heard me walk through the house, setting my keys and purse down, taking off my coat etc. She looked at the digital clock next to her bed and it was 1:15 (the same time I looked at my watch at the club). She lay back down on her side, facing the wall when she heard me come into her bedroom. Now this is strange in itself because I try to sneak in the house, trying to make as little noise as possible so that she won't hear me come in. I would certainly NOT go to her room and make my presence known. Anyway, she said I came into the room, but she did not turn on the light or turn over to look at me (or whoever it was that came into her room). She commented sarcastically that she was surprised I came home so early. And apparently the thing in her room answered her (in my voice), "Well didn't you tell me to try and tear my dancing feet away from the floor at a decent hour?" You'll notice that this is exactly what she said to me before I left that night. As if that wasn't bad enough, whatever was in the room with her leaned over and kissed her on the cheek and walked out of the room. My mother still did not think anything of this. She thought I would go to the bathroom to take of my makeup and get ready for bed. In a few minutes, however, the house was completely quiet. She did not hear any footsteps or any water running (the bathroom is right next to her room). After a while she got out of bed looking for me. I wasn't anywhere in the house. Not a trace of me. From that moment on, she sat up in bed reading, waiting for me to get home, which is how I found her when I finally did get home. When she told me this story I was afraid to go to sleep in my room -- or to stay in the house, for that matter (I admit it -- I'm a chicken -- a rather big chicken sometimes). When I finally did go to bed, it was all I could do to keep from pulling the covers over my head, so that whatever kissed my mother wouldn't try to kiss me (because I knew that if that had happened to me, I would have gone into cardiac arrest for sure). So to this day, I still wonder what that thing was that came into my mother's room, repeated in my voice part of a conversation we had had earlier that night (reminds me of the movie "The Exorcist" when the devil is speaking to the young priest in his mother's voice). And it actually KISSED my mother. What would she have seen if she had turned around? Why was it there in the first place? Was it a huge coincidence that I looked at my watch at the same time my mother looked at her clock? Was it a doppelganger? Do I really want to know????

FOLLOWED BY SPOOKS

This story was told to me by an ex-boyfriend, Mike, when we first started dating. We were still getting to know each other, so when he told me he was VERY afraid of spirits, I believed him, because it's not the type of thing you'd say if you were trying to impress a girl. I asked him why, and this is what he told me...

Mike's first encounter with "ghosts" was about 10 -12 years ago, when he and his family (mom, dad, little brother George and Mike) were living in a house in the Northwest side of Chicago. This particular house had an attic, which was used to store the items that came with the house when before Mike's family bought it. Nothing too unusual -- mostly furniture and such. At this time, Mike was probably 15 years old, and his brother George was probably 9 years old. They were up in the attic one afternoon, goofing around, pretending to be acrobats/wrestlers etc. Eventually they got tired and George collapsed on the floor, while Mike sat in an old recliner that came with the house. The brothers continued talking until their mother called from downstairs, announcing that dinner was ready. The boys had worked up an appetite, so they bolted out of the attic. Mike was the last one out and as soon as he shut the door behind him, he remembered that he left the light on. Knowing his mother would be mad if he didn't turn it off, Mike opened the door to the attic took one step in, and froze. The recliner that Mike had been sitting in was slowly turning towards him. Mike tried to command his body to run but he was so scared he seemed rooted to the floor. The recliner turned enough so that Mike could see the form of a knee, and it was at that point that Mike got the strength to bolt out of the room and down to the kitchen. He told his parents what he saw, and of course they didn't believe him, but Mike refused to stay in the house any longer. He was so upset that his parents made arrangements for him to sleep at his aunt & uncle's house that night. Furthermore, that was the last time Mike ever stepped foot into that house. He stayed with his aunt and uncle until his family sold the house a few months later. Of course his parents objected to his imposing on his relative's hospitality, but they were afraid to force him to come back, fearing he would! have some sort of breakdown.

The next house Mike's family moved into was still in Chicago, and not too far from where the old house was. Everything was going fine until one night when Mike's family had friends over for dinner. After dinner, the adults and Mike sat around the island in the kitchen having coffee and talking, while year old George played outside in the backyard with the guests' little boy, Sam. At one point, George opened the kitchen door and ran through the kitchen past all the adults and straight into the adjoining bathroom. No one thought anything of this until about ten minutes later, when Mike's dad questioned why George was taking so long in the bathroom. Mike's dad knocked on the bathroom door, asking George if everything was all right. No answer. Mike's dad tried to open the door, but it was locked from the inside. Everyone started getting concerned, until the kitchen door opened again and in came George and Sam. Mike's father asked George how he snuck back out of the bathroom without anyone seeing him. You see, there is no other way out of the bathroom -- if George came out, or even opened the door, he would have been seen. In order to get back outside, he would have to go through the kitchen again. George swore up and down that he had not been to the bathroom at all -- he was outside playing with Sam the whole time. Mike's father asked him to explain about the locked bathroom door, but when they checked it again, it was not locked.

There were other strange incidents that happened in the house, mostly to Mike, more than anyone else in the family. The last incident Mike told me about was something that happened to him a few months before we met, when he was about 22 years old. One night, as Mike was lying in bed, he woke up with an uneasy feeling. He was lying on his side facing the wall, and he felt as if someone was staring at him. It was the middle of the night and pitch black in the room. Mike turned over and opened his eyes and saw a black figure standing next to his bed staring down at him. Mike shut his eyes and screamed for his mother repeatedly. When she came storming in the room Mike told her what happened. It seemed as if such occurrences happened sporadically, strangely enough when Mike was getting to the point of forgetting them. Seems as if the spooks recognize this, and remind them of their presence every now and again.

I was kind of skeptical when Mike told me this story, mainly because I was just getting to know him, so I couldn't tell if he was a habitual liar or something. But the way he acted and the way he told the stories was enough to make me wonder if he was a spook magnet. We only dated a couple of months, and maybe that was for the best...

Thanks for reading,

(un) Holy Smokes!

This is an account of what happened to my friend Nora and her husband Max about one year ago in their house.

Nora lives in the house she grew up in with her husband Max, her mother and younger sister Gina. Nora's father passed away 4 years ago. There have been quite a few strange occurrences in Nora's house since her father passed away, but this one scared me the most when she told me about it.

One night, Nora was at home alone with her husband. Her mother and sister had tickets for a play downtown, and would be home quite late. Since it was about 10:00 at night, and the middle of winter, Nora and Max decided to go to their room and watch some television in bed. After being in bed for some time, there was a knock on their bedroom door. "Come in", Nora called out, thinking it was odd that her mother and sister were home so early. No one came in. Nora started thinking she imagined the knocking, but Max had heard it too. Just as she was about to dismiss the whole incident, there was another knock at the door. Nora looked over at Max, hesitated for a minute, and then repeated, "Come in" louder this time. Still no one entered. Since their bed faced the door, they both had a clear view without any furniture or other obstructions. After what seemed like hours, a cigarette rolled under the door and into the room. No one in the house smoked, except Nora's father who had passed away years ago. The house had been rid of all cigarettes by now. It was bad enough that this cigarette appeared in the first place, but it was the same brand that Nora's father smoked. Max and Nora sat frozen in bed. Eventually the two got up enough nerve to open the door and examine the hallway and the rest of the house. As they suspected, Nora's mother and sister had not been home, and indeed did not make it home until about 1:00 a.m. (Nora and Max waited up for them).

Since then other things have happened in Nora's house (stereo coming on by itself, doors opening & locking from the inside). But they all occur quite sporadically. It seems as though whatever entity is in the house doesn't want to harass them, but at the same time, doesn't want them to forget about it either.

Submitted From: Effie Tsaltas, Illinois, USA

{Back to April 1999 stories}
{Back to the Storypage}