Quarantining With a Ghost? It's Scary (NYT)

[dalton99a]

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/14/style/haunted-house-ghost-quarantine.html

Quarantining With a Ghost? It’s Scary
For those who believe they’re locked down with spectral roommates, the pandemic has been less isolating than they bargained for.
By Molly Fitzpatrick
May 14, 2020

Adrian Gomez lives with his partner in Los Angeles, where their first few days of sheltering in place for the coronavirus pandemic proved uneventful. They worked remotely, baked, took a two-mile walk each morning and refinished their porcelain kitchen sink. But then, one night, the doorknob began to rattle “vigorously,” so loud he could hear it from across the apartment. Yet no one was there.

In mid-April, Mr. Gomez was in bed when a nearby window shade began shaking against the window frame so intensely — despite the fact that the window was closed, an adjacent window shade remained perfectly still, the cats were all accounted for, and no bug nor bird nor any other small creature had gotten stuck there — that Mr. Gomez thought it was an earthquake.

“I very seriously hid myself under the comforter, like you see in horror movies, because it really did freak me out,” he said.

Madison Hill, 24, is riding out the pandemic with her boyfriend in her apartment in Florence, Italy. Ms. Hill, a writer and teacher originally from Charlotte, N.C., had always had her suspicions about her home, particularly the bathroom. There was the sense that someone was watching her, doors slamming, towels inexplicably on the floor.



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Scary times we live in

[demigoddess]

1. I've known several ghosts in my day. None of them dangerous. Most came to

express their love.

[Duppers]

2. I've lived in a "haunted" house.

And I'm an old, hard-core, non-believing atheist too.

All my family witnessed inexplicable things in that house.
I named our "ghost" Charlie and talked to "him", which helped me abandon all my fears. There is inexplicable, weird stuff happening but it doesn't push me to believe in an afterlife, as badly as I'd like to give up my objective reasoning and do so.

[Laffy Kat]

3. This reminded me of the move, "The Others"

One of the best ghost flicks I've ever seen.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

4. I don't believe in ghosts, but I had a helluva...

... hypnopompic hallucination a few days ago.

A neighbor slammed their door (I think), and I awoke from sleeping on my recliner to see a group of totally white Native Americans staring at me from a hallway. They "evaporated" from view within about a second, but my heart was already racing by then. (They didn't vanish instantly, but faded away albeit pretty quickly.)

I was concerned about my heart, after the shock of seeing them staring at me immediately had it beating like I ran a sprint in record time. Looked like a family of Native Americans from long ago, but their skin was white as snow.

Didn't even dream about them as far as I know.

I might drop my skepticism if ancient bones are found under my apartment. There's a leaking pipe under the slab of the restroom which will be repaired later this week, and that's coincidentally where the hallucinations were standing in the hallway -- i.e., just outside the restroom door. Lol!

[Coventina]

5. I lived in a haunted church for 3 years.

All the standard stuff: footsteps, doors that would open or close on their own, weird noises, etc.

After a while you get used to it.

[betsuni]

6. One night in May my bedroom reading lamp went on by itself and woke us up in the

middle of the night. That had never happened before or since, but I didn't think anything of it. It wasn't until a few days later looking at the calendar that I realized that night was the anniversary of my father-in-law's death and his favorite haunting technique was lights.

The night of his father's funeral my husband and I were in his bedroom when the large florescent overhead light that we never use went on by itself. That happened occasionally for a few years. My mother-in-law would wake up terrified to find the light in the other room on, sometimes hear loud crashes upstairs. At first she thought somebody must have broken in, but the next morning when she had the courage to check, all the doors were locked as usual, nothing out of order. When we came to visit, things were scattered on the bedroom floor that I knew weren't there when we left last visit. At one time or another, everyone in the family saw lights go on by themselves and heard noises. Nobody was scared by it except the MIL. He was ornery in life and nobody was surprised he was the same after death.

That house became a magnet for insect and animal life after the FIL's death. Bats, mice, roaches, flies, centipedes, spiders, hornets. I called it The Haunted House and my husband got mad. The poor MIL had quite a collection of poisons. Now she's been dead for years, too. Sometimes when we stayed there on weekends there was such a heavy negative dark feeling on entering that I wanted to turn around and leave. It took years for it feel like just a house again. Now the husband's thinking about retirement, debating whether to live there in the country or stay in the city.

[wnylib]

7. This happened several decades ago

in my home town of Erie, PA when I was a child.

My parents bought the house I grew up in from a family friend who sold it when her husband died. My mother's cousin and his wife came to our house from Buffalo, NY for Thanksgiving dinner. It was a long drive without an expressway back then. Whenever they visited they stayed overnight with other Erie relatives. Cousin Wilford (we called him Willy) would not stay in our house after dark due to his strong belief in ghosts. His fear of them seemed strange because he was a tall, broad-boned, burly guy with a deep, gruff voice.

That year, Erie had a huge freak snowstorm on Thanksgiving day. By the time Willy and his wife, Jenny, realized how bad the storm was near Erie, it was too late to turn back. Dinner was set for 1:00 pm. They arrived at 2:30. Willy was anxious to eat and leave. It gets dark early in November.

But halfway through dinner, visibility was zero and there were several feet of snow on the ground. They were stuck with us. My brothers offered their room and said they would sleep on the living room floor in their sleeping bags. But Willie would not sleep on the second floor since the previous owner, Joe, had died in his bedroom.

So Willie took the lounge chair and Jenny took the couch. After the rest of us were in our beds, Willy used the bathroom and brushed his teeth. The bathroom was next to my room. My door was open so I saw my oldest brother tiptoe to the closed bathroom door. He made a shh sign with his finger over his lips.

Then I heard a low wailing sound, " Willliiieee. Willliiieee."
"Who's there?"
"It's Joe, Willy. Come to talk with my friend."

Willie ran out of the bathroom yelling. The whole house got up. "He's here!! He SPOKE to me!!" My father said, "Mind over matter. There's no such thing as ghosts."

The truth came out over breakfast while the adults were arguing about the ghost. I tried to hide behind a cereal box because I giggled every time I looked at my brother. But my father noticed and said, "I think I found your ghost, Willy."

[Buckeye_Democrat]

8. Lol! Funny prank!

[wnylib]

9. My oldest brother was such a prankster

that I'm surprised my parents didn't suspect him from the start. His oldest son and namesake was so interested in trickery as a child that he took up magic tricks, complete with black cape, tophat, and a book on how to do it. He practiced until he had it down pat. Maybe it was self defense against his father.

Anyway, my brother kept us laughing throughout childhood.