On Sunday I went hiking with two of my co-teachers in the “mountains” at the edge of our city. Our discussion lilted from topic to topic, mostly bitching about certain other teachers. I’m not sure how the topic came up exactly, but I mentioned to my two friends that in one of my recent classes, a student had responded to the “Do you doubt that ghosts exist?” question with a firm “No, I don’t doubt that ghosts exist.” I was a bit surprised because every other time students have always said that they don’t believe in ghosts. So I asked why she didn’t doubt. Unfortunately due to level of English and time restrictions, the most I could get from her was the explanation that she had had some person experiences that made her not doubt.

Mentioning that event launched the three of us teachers into a conversation regarding the existence of ghosts and our reasons for our beliefs. And I got two ghost stories out of it to share with you. 🙂

I’ll start you out with the less creepy of the two. Basically my friend’s grandmother died, but continued to reside in her home. My friend said that she had always felt her grandmother’s presence, but the ghost’s existence became obvious to her after two particular events. My friend was living in her grandmother’s house alone, and invited some friends over. She went into the bathroom, and noticed a towel on the floor. She didn’t think too much of it and went back to her room to get a few things for the shower. A minute later, she returned to the bathroom to find the towel perfectly hung up. She was sure no one else had been in the bathroom and questioned her friends who had been on a different story of the house. None of them had gone into the bathroom.

Then, on a different occasion she was alone in the house. While her grandmother was alive, she had been very strict about making my friend make her bed every morning. One of those “If you don’t make your bed, the rest of your day will be sloppy!” sort of things.  Well, since my friend was the only one living the house at the moment, she didn’t think that anyone would care if she didn’t make her bed one morning, and left her bed clothes in a mess on the bed and floor. She went down stairs to get some breakfast, and returned to her room about 20 minutes later, to discover a perfectly made bed.

The second story is a bit more creepy. I’ve been assured that the person who originally related the story was a no-nonsense sort of fellow, and shocked my two friends by telling them about his experiences in Asia. This fellow lived in a house in Thailand that was haunted by a very creepy poltergeist. While problems started small, they eventually escalated to the point that he had to move out. In the beginning, it was just strange sounds at night, like a person moving around down stairs. Gradually, the poltergeist started moving things around the kitchen, and even opening and closing the cabinets. The fellow who lived in the house is of the vaguely anal / OCD variety, so when a he discovered cupboards open in the morning, he was certain he had not left them that way. Things reached their peak, when one day he felt particularly uneasy, after finding things moved around during the day. That night, he went up into his room, and closed and locked the door. He slept uneasily during the night, and awoke in the morning to find that the chair from his desk (which was in a separate area of the room) had moved during the night. It was positioned next to and facing the bed. It was exactly as though someone had been watching him as he slept. Needless to say, that was the last night the he spent in that house.