SURFER GHOSTS This experience happened two years ago, when I was living in San Francisco out at Ocean Beach. Ocean Beach is at the end of Golden Gate Park and is a well known surfer spot in the Bay Area. It is also a spot known for it's treacherous currents and is not a good place for a beginner surfer to try and surf. I lived out at Ocean Beach for three years and it was not uncommon to see the Coast Guard helicopters as much as once a week or more, searching for surfers who did not come home or were reported missing. At night, the search lights from the helicopters would scan across the waves as they desperately searched. Living at the beach meant having bonfires occasionally, and though bonfires were frowned upon by the rangers, they usually looked the other way if the group was responsible and not too loud or crazy. This story took place one evening out on Ocean Beach during a bonfire. A bunch of my neighbors, including my boyfriend, and I were having fun sipping wine and beer, gazing up at the stars and enjoying the waves rolling in to the shore under a half full moon sky. We had a blazing bonfire going and we were all enjoying an unusually warm evening for San Francisco when my boyfriend asked if I wanted to walk down to the surf with him to get away for a few minutes. I was willing to get away from the bright, warm fire for a bit so I agreed and we began to walk down to the shore. The half moon that night bounced light off the medium size waves as we approached and that is when I saw the figure. To me, it appeared to be a male, dressed in a wet suit, wading through the waves coming towards the shore. I could see his arms swaying with his stride, but did not see his body from the waist down as it was submerged in water. What else caught my attention was despite the moon sparkling off the water all around the figure, there was absolutely no light reflected off this figure. I couldn't take my eyes off of it and noted that the figure was like a black hole in the water. I must have watched it for 15 - 30 seconds when it suddenly vanished. I was so astonished, I turned to my boyfriend and announced, "I just saw a ghost!". My boyfriend doesn't believe in ghosts, but he replied, "You saw that too!" He then went on to say that he thought it looked like a police cut-out figure, like the ones police use for target practice. We were so amazed, even my boyfriend couldn't stop talking about it. Now, that could have been the end of the story, but several weeks later my boyfriend went for a late night walk along the beach as he did often. He loved walking that beach at night, enjoying the solitude. I had fallen asleep by the time he returned but he woke me up in a panic. He told me that when he came up over the dunes to descend down towards the beach, he glanced at the water and to his astonishment, saw somewhere from 12 to 15 of these dark, unreflective figures bobbing in the waves. He said the hair rose all over his body and though he didn't like to admit it, the experience unnerved him quite a bit. He told me that as he descended the dune he continued to watch the figures bobbing in the surf but when he reached the level portion of the beach, he turned away from the water to head south. Nervously, he said he looked back quickly but the figures were no longer there. Since he doesn't believe in ghosts and such, he says to this day he is not sure what he saw, but I believe they were the spirits of the surfers who did not make it back, Surfer Ghosts. A FLAT FROM A NIGHTMARE I submitted a story last month that happened just a few years ago, but I have another story that is much more intense that happened back in 1984. I was living with my boyfriend in Tempe, AZ and attending ASU. We lived in a house with another couple and we wanted a place of our own so we could be alone more. My boyfriend had a good paying job that required a lot of travel and after returning from a business trip he said he had a surprise for me. We went for a drive and came to a brand new condo complex in south Tempe. My boyfriend had a key and said he wanted me to take a look at a flat in one of the buildings as a possible place for us to live. I was very excited as we went through the 3 bedroom, 2 bath, dining room, kitchen and living room flat until we came into the master bedroom. I have this quirk that whenever a place is "troubled" I have a hard time looking into a mirror in the home or room and this is exactly what happened. The master bedroom had mirrored floor to ceiling closets and when I looked into them I thought I would faint, the "feeling" was the most intense I had ever felt before or since. I told my boyfriend in no uncertain terms that I could not live in this flat. Unfortunately, my surprise was he had already signed a year's lease on it for us and so we were stuck with it. I was very uncomfortable but decided to make the best of it and so we moved in. Now I had an old stuffed scotty dog my mother had given me a long time ago. It had belonged to my grandmother who had died years before I was born and what was unusual about it was it had been made from real fur. I was never sure what kind of fur, but it was very, very old. I always put the stuffed dog on my bed where ever I lived and this flat was no exception. What did become strange was as soon as we were moved in and my boyfriend would be off traveling on business, I could not get the idea out of my head that this stuffed dog was moving around the flat and this had never, ever happened to me before regarding this stuffed toy. I felt like I was crazy as I would actually get up and have to go down to the master bedroom to make sure it was still on the bed, (it always was), but it became an obsession! I was becoming so freaked out about this and the terrible feeling I got from the mirrors that I begged my boyfriend to let a friend move in with us. He knew he was gone a lot and I was edgy so he agreed. Thus, my friend Suzy moved in with her parrot. It was great for awhile, no more obsession until Suzy met someone and was suddenly gone over at her boyfriend's all the time. In the meantime, Suzy's parrot remained alone in Suzy's room too much so I told her to take it to her boyfriends or I would give it to a good home as I thought it cruel that it should be alone so much. She took it with her but left her room intact. That is when the first real incident occurred. My boyfriend and I had been out at a friend's party until very late. When we came home, I realized our master bedroom faced the east so when the sun rose it became very bright in there. I asked if he would mind if we slept in Suzy's room to avoid the sunrise and sleep a little later. He was fine with it so we went in to crash but first he quickly wanted to call our friends to let them know we had made it home safely. He sat on the end of the Suzy's bed as I laid back to relax while he made the call. Suddenly, I could not move my body or speak, but I could hear every word my boyfriend was saying on the phone. At the same time, I began to hear the sound of a heart beat in my ears and I knew it was not my heart beat. It started softly and grew louder and louder quite quickly. At the same time something began moving under the mattress and the only way I can describe it was it felt like a giant worm or snake moving underneath and it was really, really horrible. Meanwhile the heart beat became so loud I thought my head would burst and at that moment, everything stopped and I could move and speak. I was so scared I started to babble to my boyfriend about what had happened. He calmed me by saying I was just overtired and it was nothing. I really wanted to believe that and calmed down. I managed to sleep that night without any other incident. It was a few weeks later when something happened again. My boyfriend needed a ride to the airport very early in the morning so I took him. When I got back, I was so tired and the bedroom was so bright I decided to lay down in Suzy's and sleep a little. This time, the second I hit the mattress and my eyes were open, I could not move. I was staring at the bedroom door (open) and could see across the hall into the bathroom when the sound of someone knocking on the door began as well as the giant worm under the mattress (so horrible it made me feel nauseous). The knocking sounded like it was the bedroom door but I could see the door and there was nothing going on. Just like the heart beat, when the knocking became so unbearably loud, sounding as if someone was trying to rip it off it's hinges and to where I didn't think I could stand it for one more second, everything stopped and I could move again. I was so freaked out I got up and shut Suzy's door, vowing to never set foot in there again. When my boyfriend returned from his trip I told him, lease or not, I was moving out. He could break the lease and come with me, but regardless, I was leaving, there was something so terribly wrong with this flat. He could see how distressed I was and agreed to break the lease for my peace of mind. We began looking for something immediately and found a great condo (no mirror trouble) but still had to spend a few remaining weeks packing and getting everything settled at this nightmare flat. Meanwhile, I had never mentioned my fears or anxieties to Suzy or anyone besides my boyfriend, but did so now. What I found out was I was not the only person to have "weird" experiences in this flat. Suzy said she had frequently heard what sounded like "chanting" coming from her heating vents and shrugged it off as the neighbor's voices coming through from upstairs. Then she told me her new boyfriend had complained one night when he slept over about experiencing a "giant worm" moving under the mattress and would never return. Which explains why Suzy had never been there anymore. Finally, my boyfriend's brother, who helped us moved, confessed that one night when he spend the night in Suzy's room, when he had been too tired to drive home, he had been paralyzed and had seen a "parrot" appear on the mattress and begin pecking it's way towards his hand. As soon as it was about to peck his hand, it vanished and he told me he had told his brother he would never stay with us again and was glad we were moving. Finally, the last incident happened shortly after we completely moved out. I went through every room, every drawer, every closet, every inch of that flat to make sure I did not leave so much of a bobby pin behind. I wanted that flat to be completely cleaned out of our having lived there. Once I was satisfied, (I went through more than once to be sure), we left for good. The next day, unpacking in our new condo, I got everything put out and fixed up. I had gotten to the last box when I realized it did not contain my stuffed scotty dog. I searched everywhere but never did find it. The stuffed dog I had been so sure had been moving around the flat had disappeared into thin air. I never did find it and to this day I still don't know where it disappeared to... Contact me here: liseomatic@hotmail.com Submitted From: AZ, USA