Many years ago now, more years than I care to remember, when I was a boy on a camping trip, I saw a couple of times around the campsite a floating, disembodied hand. Not much to it, just a hand. I woke up once to see it floating next to my bunk. I'll freely admit that it could have been me just seeing a stray shadow in my semi waking state, but I saw the same thing later outside in the woods on two separate occasions. Once in daylight and once at night. Just a hand floating there about four feet off the ground. Look away and look back, and it had disappeared.
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Nine years ago I moved into my first place on my own, a wonderful apartment in the west end of St. John's. A two bedroom, above ground, basement apartment in an old farmhouse. Before I had moved in, the landlord had completely gutted the house to the framing and then put everything in new again. New gyprock, new flooring, new bathroom, everything. You enter a porch on the back of the house and walk down a hallway. At the end of the hall on the left is the bathroom and on the right is the first bedroom bedroom. In front is the kitchen. From the kitchen, if you're facing forward,is the living room and to the right is the second bedroom. It's a cozy layout.
I took the first bedroom towards the back of the house and made the second into a library/computer room. From the first night that I was there I knew something was up. Just a feeling of unease I was getting when settling down for the night. I shrugged it off as just me getting used to my own place. The feeling stayed for the first few nights, and then one night as I was almost asleep, a loud shout shocked me back to being fully awake. I thought it might have come from upstairs, but the landlord was away. I then reasoned it must have been one of the neighbours, but it had sounded awfully close.
This repeated every couple of nights for the better part of a month. Just as I'd be settling down, I'd hear a shout and bolt out of bed in surprise. It seemed confined to my bedroom because I had taken a couple of naps in the living room and all was quiet. Finally one evening, while I was watching tv, I happened to looks through the kitchen towards my room and I saw the top half of a man float out of the room and away from me into the hallway. He looked older, maybe in his sixties, he was bald and he was wearing a flannel shirt. I got off the couch to follow, but when I got to my room door he wasn't in the hallway. I checked the bathroom and I checked the porch, the outside door was locked and secure, and I hadn't heard the door close. I checked my room and nothing was out of place and the window was closed and locked, so no one had come in that way. Even then, I knew I'd only seen the top half of him, not a complete person. About waist level he got hazy and there were no legs or feet.
That night when going to bed I left the lights on. Again as I was getting settled I heard shouting. This time it wasn't just one yell but a continuous muffled shouting like you'd hear though a closed window. Treating it like background noise I finally got to sleep. This shouting match unfortunately, became a nightly occurrence. From the feeling that I was getting, along with a couple of muffled words I could pick out now and then, I got the impression that this is the original resident, if not the builder of the house and he wasn't happy that there were strangers in "his" house. Finally I'd had enough and I started talking, calmly but firmly to the empty air in my room. I explained that his time was passed and that there was a new owner and new people in the house and that he had to move on. I repeated this a number of times, hoping to get the message across. Something worked, because although I still get uneasy feelings from time to time, he's stopped shouting.
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Last one for tonight.
I work overnights in a hotel. On the night of July 30th into the 31st of this year I was working the front desk along with a gentleman named W, he's another auditor, and F, the night Porter. About 3 am I went to check on our Continental Breakfast room. W was left behind the front desk and F, as it turns out, wasn't in the building at the time.
As I exited the Breakfast room, I turned to my left and looked across the hall, through Clancy's, the restaurant in the hotel, and at the doors to the kitchen. They are solid, full length, swinging doors with windows cut into the top quarter to see through. Through the window on the right I saw the apple/orange juice machine, through the window on the left was a man staring back at me. He was about 6'2" tall with close shaved salt n' pepper hair and he was wearing eye glasses and a black chefs shirt (I could see the raised buttons on the shirt) I stared at him for 30-45 seconds and then he was just gone. he didn't turn, duck or step backwards, he was just not there in the blink of an eye. I went through the lobby towards the staff entrance to the kitchen and I asked W where F was. He wasn't in the building, he was at the airport picking up a hotel guest. In the kitchen I found no one there and nothing out of place.
The back door out of the kitchen was still closed and locked, there was no one in the cooler or freezer and no one had passed me on my way into the kitchen. The only other ways out would be through the restaurant, one exit leads to the lobby and the other leads to the hall where I was initially standing and is barred at night by a shoulder height locked gate. No one came into the lobby and anyone jumping the gate would be heard.
So there's three events that I've been witness to, and I know this has gone on longde than a typical blog post should, but there you have it, judge it as you will.
Later
Steve
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