AND served in the Navy and lived ashore in Norfolk, Virginia in the early 1970s. It was an senior, two-story house. On the ground floor there was a kitchen, dining room and living room. On the second floor there was a master bedroom, almost half the size of the house, a smaller bedroom and a bathroom.
The other day I was in the master bedroom folding laundry. People came and went constantly (they had several roommates and friends), so the doors were rarely (if ever) closed.
I heard the front door open and close and called out that I was upstairs. I heard ponderous, rumbling footsteps coming up the stairs, stopping at the bend in the middle. It was as if anyone was really tired and all they could do was climb the stairs. From where I stood, I could clearly see the corridor leading to the top of the stairs. The footsteps continued up and down the hall towards me. There was no one there. The footsteps were quite audible. They stopped at the threshold of the bedroom door.
I stood there shaking like a leaf and then quickly left the room. Some time later I returned home and found all the lights on. The roommate sat in the living room, white as a sheet, holding a fireplace poker in front of him. I asked what happened. He said he was watching TV when the door to the outside (was the front door because the house used to face the Chesapeake Bay, but at one point it was moved across the street and turned around so our “front door” was the back door at one point, and our front rear doors) started turning on their own. He asked who was there, but received no answer. Then the door started shaking as if someone was trying to get in but couldn't. He went to the door and called again, but there was no answer. He opened the door and no one was there. The screen door was closed and attached, with no gaps in the screen for someone to reach into.
I told him about my experience earlier and he said he heard footsteps even when no one was home. He never told anyone he believed would think he was crazy.
Eventually, others also reported hearing strange things. The senior house is no longer there. It was on a headland that has since been “rebuilt” with highways, ramps, etc. -sigh-
There are several ghosts living in my apartment building in Huntington, West Virginia. Residents of two apartments across the hall (I live at the back) reported seeing an elderly woman in a white blouse and a long black dress enter, walk through, and exit their apartment. At one point this building had a landlady who owned the place from about 1911 to 1951. This may mean that he keeps an eye on his property.
(I'm the oldest resident of the building – a three-story brick apartment building built in 1906 – I moved here in July 1979, and people ask, “You've lived here a long time, have you heard about this or that event?”)
One evening in the early 1980s, my neighbor and I were playing cards. There was no radio or TV or anything on. Suddenly we heard deafening noises coming from his apartment, as if someone had ransacked it. Scott went to check and nothing was out of place. I also had the impression that someone was watching me from this apartment when no one lived there. (My kitchen windows and that form an L shape.) I named the ghost “Casper”, after the cartoon character Casper, the warm ghost, because he has no bad intentions, he's just curious. And when I feel like someone is watching me, I always wave and say hello to them. 🙂
There's a ghost in my apartment too.
It was August 2nd. Hot, muggy night. The cat I had at the time was lying on the floor facing the closed bathroom door. This was before the Internet, so I was watching TV and Muffy was in my line of sight. Suddenly she woke up, started growling softly, wagging her tail, looking at the closed door, then at me, then back at the door. I told her there was nothing there. Like a scene from a low-cost movie, I walked up to the door, put my hand on the doorknob and said, “See, there's nothing there,” and opened the door. Suddenly, a cool gust of air hit me, at least 20 degrees cooler than a moment earlier. Then Muffy calmed down again and went back to napping… For several years I felt her presence that day. I haven't done this for the last few years.
