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Ghostly experiences thread

Absolutezero

I was looking at another thread in AH about creepy things and ghostly experiences people claim they have had and it got me thinking. A good number of contributors seem to have had escapes from paedophiles and the deranged but a number claim to have had poltergeist like experiences and ghostly manifestations of dead relatives etc. I just wonder what would the experience here be of the ghostly experiences stuff?

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hollster2

I had an experience myself I did not believe id heard storys people told me and brushed them off, so ill start then.

About six years ago my parents were going away and they didnt want me to stay by myself as I was 7 months pregnant all during it I felt like someone was with me id see black shadows and quickly look behind me with no one there, so I went to stay in my aunties house.

I grew up around this house as it was were my nanny lived and my dad grew up in, so I arrived at the house and my auntie brought me upstairs were i was going to be sleeping and she brought me into my nannys old room were in, I had watched her die at home to cancer i was a bit nervous staying in the room because it brought back bad memories of that day.

So that night when I was in bed I took me a while to get to sleep but I finally did.

I was woken up by what i heard someone calling my name I opened my eyes and nothing there so I closed my eyes I heard it again so this time when I opened my eyes I was frozen in the bed I couldnt move and sitting at the side of the bed was a sillohette of my nanny white like she was floating and she smiled but at that point I was terrified I think it was the shock of what ive seen but I closed my eyes and when I opened she was gone till this day I wished id have just relaxed and said hello back.

MagicMarker

hollster2 wrote: »

I had an experience myself I did not believe id heard storys people told me and brushed them off, so ill start then.

About six years ago my parents were going away and they didnt want me to stay by myself as I was 7 months pregnant all during it I felt like someone was with me id see black shadows and quickly look behind me with no one there, so I went to stay in my aunties house.

I grew up around this house as it was were my nanny lived and my dad grew up in, so I arrived at the house and my auntie brought me upstairs were i was going to be sleeping and she brought me into my nannys old room were in, I had watched her die at home to cancer i was a bit nervous staying in the room because it brought back bad memories of that day.

So that night when I was in bed I took me a while to get to sleep but I finally did.

I was woken up by what i heard someone calling my name I opened my eyes and nothing there so I closed my eyes I heard it again so this time when I opened my eyes I was frozen in the bed I couldnt move and sitting at the side of the bed was a sillohette of my nanny white like she was floating and she smiled but at that point I was terrified I think it was the shock of what ive seen but I closed my eyes and when I opened she was gone till this day I wished id have just relaxed and said hello back.

Sounds like a dream tbh.

Apparently very vivid unusual dreams are common during pregnancy, plus the fact that you went to sleep in that room etc...

hollster2

sorry well theres always gonna be sceptics i know it wasnt

hollster2

Ive just remembered a story from when I was younger around age 11-14 cant remember exactly .

At the end of my road growing up there was an abandoned house everyone used to say it was haunted but I dont think anyone believed until strange things started to happen.

One day we all decided to gather around this house each one thinking they were brave looking in the window, each day something in the house was different there was a mirror broken on the floor and tiles next day we went back they were fixed which got us all terrified so we ran for the hills.

We decided to be brave and go up again next day and to our horror they were all broken again. next thing someone said they seen the curtain moved upstairs we all looked up and each one looked terrified we all said did you see that? ( the hairs are standing on my arms telling this) we all saw a little girl pale grey she was looking out at us and then she was gone curtain back we all ran as fast as we could home, after a few years the house was fixed.

Theres been so many owners just moved after a year or two just wondering has this something to do with it? guess ill never know.

hollster2

THIRD POST
My partner was talking to his mum one day they heard a loud crash and the tool box that was against there was was on the floor now it was full so it would have needed someone to put force into doing so,

Also she says shes heard noises and even seen white figure in her room, then one day we were hearing buzzing noises during the day and we seen the battery powered car started moving itself we just thought it was faulty so we took out the batterys, then we seen this thing speeding around the sitting room still we were terrified.

I think the was terrifying was just 1 month ago his mum came home to hear screaming upstairs his brother and comotion and boxing noises she thought someone was in attacking him until she got in and he was in bed jumping around saying get them off me and could hear these boxing him and no one there, aslo to follow this student staying in the room said he heard strange noises all night like furniture moving ive always felt uncomfortable sleeping in this room just still curious hows trapped in the house.

hollster2

MagicMarker wrote: »

Sounds like a dream tbh.

Apparently very vivid unusual dreams are common during pregnancy, plus the fact that you went to sleep in that room etc...

sorry 4 reacting so quick really i didnt know that but i know i was awake i cant explain it really!

Obliq

hollster2 wrote: »

Ive just remembered a story from when I was younger around age 11-14 cant remember exactly .

At the end of my road growing up there was an abandoned house everyone used to say it was haunted but I dont think anyone believed until strange things started to happen.

One day we all decided to gather around this house each one thinking they were brave looking in the window, each day something in the house was different there was a mirror broken on the floor and tiles next day we went back they were fixed which got us all terrified so we ran for the hills.

We decided to be brave and go up again next day and to our horror they were all broken again. next thing someone said they seen the curtain moved upstairs we all looked up and each one looked terrified we all said did you see that? ( the hairs are standing on my arms telling this) we all saw a little girl pale grey she was looking out at us and then she was gone curtain back we all ran as fast as we could home, after a few years the house was fixed.

Theres been so many owners just moved after a year or two just wondering has this something to do with it? guess ill never know.

Sorry now hollster - I'm very skeptic too. How many kids? How many still say the same thing? I ask because me and my pals (10 - 14) once saw a UFO that scared the pants off us all because we all convinced each other that the red/blue lights were hovering and not moving........but not now. Now it's a plane.
I could maybe believe the mirror thing if there were at least 5 written statements from adults confirming that they still believe they saw that too. Same with seeing the "grey girl".

hollster2

yeah there were a few my sister was there she remembers it!
we couldnt believe it either i was so againt it all aswell it only came back to me writing the story about my nan i gues ill never know, had the too wit the ufos but cant explain my story other than it scared the crapp out of us and we didnt go back to the house after that

Standman

Kidchameleon wrote: »

I know exactly what you are saying Obliq. Reminds me of the time when I was a nipper, I "heard" the banshee. Completely **** myself. I could hear her wailing as clear as day, seriously! I ran down stairs to my mam, to find her doing a bit of karaoke in the kitchen! The "banshee" was my mam

Reminds me of the time I heard a banshee screaming at nighttime in the field behind my house when I was a kid. Terrifying stuff. Finally one night I plucked up the courage to go out with a torch and investigate. Turned out to be one of these:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIaFtAKnqBU

Obliq

hollster2 wrote: »

yeah there were a few my sister was there she remembers it!
we couldnt believe it either i was so againt it all aswell it only came back to me writing the story about my nan i gues ill never know, had the too wit the ufos but cant explain my story other than it scared the crapp out of us and we didnt go back to the house after that

Mmm. Not good enough proof for me to believe a word of it actually happening - which is a COMPLETELY different thing from not believing your story. I believe you believe it, but I think you (and your sister) would like to believe it.

hollster2

i understand well guess we will nevr know

Obliq

Standman wrote: »

Reminds me of the time I heard a banshee screaming at nighttime in the field behind my house when I was a kid. Terrifying stuff. Finally one night I plucked up the courage to go out with a torch and investigate. Turned out to be one of these:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIaFtAKnqBU

A bit like when I first moved to the West and there were any number of young fellas telling me ghost stories about banshees just as you were about to attempt a 2k walk home, and badgers that would break your limbs if they were fighting in the ditches and mistook you for another badger (you should grab a stick and break it, if you're ever in a tangle with a badger. The only time they'll let go is when they hear a bone break....MmmHmmm, I'm tellin you now.)

Anyhow, a few years later and I'm a single mum in a mobile home on the side of the road.....and I hear an animal screaming. I mean BEING KILLED. It was awful. Pitch black outside, young toddler inside the mobile, car running just down the quiet road.....and the screaming of a dying animal. What would you do?

Well, being me, I ran out the road and roared "the guards are coming, I'll have ya for that - f**k off NOW" - so they went. Gardai were called and calmly explained (after asking how long I'd been living here) that it was hunters rubbing polystyrene down a car window to lamp for foxes (it makes a sound like a dying rabbit). Well, there were no signs up to tell you that.

It's funny now....but no gun club members have admitted it to me to this day, although many have blushed a deep red

spookwoman

Infra sound can cause a lot of things inc people seeing or hearing whats not there. Infrasound can be caused by faulty electrical equipment. Also there is a condition associated with Migraine called Alice in Wonderland Syndrome. Migraines are not always accompanied by a headache.

nagirrac

I have had a few experiences myself that I would put in the "'very weird" category and know quite a few people who have had similar or even more weird experiences. I would imagine it is mostly our minds playing tricks on us, but who knows, there is a lot out there for us to still discover.

The interesting thing is if you believe in ghosts then you believe in an afterlife of some sort. If such entities exist, they cannot be in what we observe as our physical reality or our space time. By definition they would have to be in some parallel universe or extra dimensions of reality we do not perceive with our 5 senses nor anything we can observe with instrumentation. If such entities exist and somehow under certain conditions people sense or observe them, then the suggestion is they somehow "leak" into our reality or are capable of materializing into our reality somehow.

I think I will go with the mind playing tricks on us, the mind can be one crazy place at times.

Dr. Loon

hollster2 wrote: »

So that night when I was in bed I took me a while to get to sleep but I finally did.

I was woken up by what i heard someone calling my name I opened my eyes and nothing there so I closed my eyes I heard it again so this time when I opened my eyes I was frozen in the bed I couldnt move and sitting at the side of the bed was a sillohette of my nanny white like she was floating and she smiled but at that point I was terrified I think it was the shock of what ive seen but I closed my eyes and when I opened she was gone till this day I wished id have just relaxed and said hello back.

Same thing happened to me a few years ago. I was sleeping on an air bed, and heard someone's feet brushing past the end. I opened my eyes but other than that I couldn't move. Very scary, but a dream, and a very common one. The not being able to move thing is also known as a night terror I believe.

These night terrors happen to me often. I always can't move, and there's always something watching or coming for me. Happened again recently enough... woke up, couldn't move, could hear footsteps running up the stairs! Thought someone was coming to kill me. When they happen, I'm screaming at my wife to wake me up, but all she can hear out of me is mumbling "mmmbmbmlelel fckkkf mmmnmblhhm". When I wake up, I'm going mad, "Why didn't you wake me?" All very amusing really, and simply a dream/delusion.

Also, as a kid, I was convinced I had been touched on the shoulder by a ghost beside a graveyard. Same graveyard, I thought I had been chased out of by a ghost in chains. At the time I was convinced of both. I still don't have an explanation for either, but I can come up with any number of natural explanations before jumping to ghost. Actually, it's only now I think of it, I realise that the gate at the far end of the graveyard was chained closed at night. A decent gust of wind, would rattle the chains. The graveyard is on a coast road, where high winds would be regular enough. There's that one solved.

Ultimately, some - possibly most - people wish to believe in this stuff, and so they'll jump to the nonsense conclusion way before they'll explain it rationally. Sad but true.

How come we don't see stone age ghosts? With dodgy stone axes and loin cloths? The ghosts we see are always from around a certain period really aren't they? Bit odd isn't it? Or the ghosts of animals? Do animals not get ghosts? Realistically, there'd just be f*cking millions of ghost cows pishing us all off constantly.

fisgon

it's often happened to me that I have thought I saw someone or something, a figure, a shape moving, something strange or inexplicable that could be interpreted as something supernatural. Then when I looked closer it turned out there was nothing there.

Without fail it has happened (a) when I was staying somewhere unfamiliar and (b) when I was dead tired or sleep deprived.

The experiences, fleeting as they are, are convincing enough when they happen, but when you examine them rationally, there is always an explanation. Those who don't find the rational explanation don't want to find it.

Pace2008

hollster2 wrote: »

I had an experience myself I did not believe id heard storys people told me and brushed them off, so ill start then.

About six years ago my parents were going away and they didnt want me to stay by myself as I was 7 months pregnant all during it I felt like someone was with me id see black shadows and quickly look behind me with no one there, so I went to stay in my aunties house.

I grew up around this house as it was were my nanny lived and my dad grew up in, so I arrived at the house and my auntie brought me upstairs were i was going to be sleeping and she brought me into my nannys old room were in, I had watched her die at home to cancer i was a bit nervous staying in the room because it brought back bad memories of that day.

So that night when I was in bed I took me a while to get to sleep but I finally did.

I was woken up by what i heard someone calling my name I opened my eyes and nothing there so I closed my eyes I heard it again so this time when I opened my eyes I was frozen in the bed I couldnt move and sitting at the side of the bed was a sillohette of my nanny white like she was floating and she smiled but at that point I was terrified I think it was the shock of what ive seen but I closed my eyes and when I opened she was gone till this day I wished id have just relaxed and said hello back.

You experienced a well-documented natural phenomenon known as sleep paralysis.

From what I gather, when you sleep your body is paralysed to prevent excessive movement that could result in injury. Sometimes, your mind can wake up while your body is still incapacitated. When this happens your consciousness is stuck somewhere between the waking world and dream world, and you're prone to varying degrees of hallucination. I've been getting sleep paralysis since my mid-teens and can fully appreciate how real the experience can seem. Hallucinations range from the audial, like hearing people conversing behind your bedroom door, to the visual - most often, in my case, of a figure at the end of the bed or in the corner of the room. On rare occasions I have had full outer-body experiences, apparently leaving my resting self and walking around the room -floating, in one instance - only to snap back into my bed some moments later. Sometimes the experience is non-threatening and even enjoyable in a strange sort of way, but more often it's permeated by a feeling of fear and dread. I think that any account of the paranormal that begins with the subject lying in bed can be safely dismissed without further inspection.

The experience is very real and seems far more like a memory of a physical event than the fuzzy recollection of a dream, But it's still just a trick of the mind. I've travelled to some strange, hitherto unexplored areas of my consciousnesses - I get sleep paralysis, I've tripped on mushrooms and acid, I've been down the depths of a K-hole - and having been there and back I have very little time for supernatural explanations when the reality is that our minds are complex and sometimes just plain weird. And I find the latter explanation far more interesting as well as more plausible.

kylith

I've had a couple of experiences which I struggle to explain. Maybe someone here can shed some light.

1) When I was about 8 I had an electronic keyboard that plays backing tracks for you to play along with, no tunes are recognisable and they were usually called 'Bossa Nova' or 'Swing'. There was one called 'Londonderry Air' which I was particularly fond of and used to leave playing for ages because I didn't have a radio in my room. One night I was sitting at the other side of the room with 'Londonderry Air' playing in the background when, suddenly, Danny Boy started to play over it. I thought it was weird because it'd never done that before, it's not programmed to play any recognisable songs. It wasn't until I told my mother about it that I learned that Danny Boy is The Londonderry Air, so I couldn't have imagined in the tune. The keyboard has never played it again, no matter how long I let it run for. There are 3 explanations I can come up with: 1) My brain had listened to the backing tune so much that it was able to guess what should have been playing 2) There's a musical ghost in my parents house 3) The keyboard achieved sentience and, bored of playing the same thing for hours on end, broke it's programming to play the song because it couldn't take it any more.

2) When I was about 15 I was alone in the house. I was upstairs in my room when I heard the piano make a noise as if someone had struck random keys as they walked past it, something I was in the habit of doing. I was definitely alone and no-one could have come in without me knowing it, my bedroom being directly above the front door. This was in the middle of the afternoon.

3) When I was 13 my grandmother died. She died at about lunchtime on a schoolday and I wasn't told until my brother picked me up after school. However I smelled her dying smell in my classroom at about 1pm that day (anyone whose been around someone who is dying knows the smell I mean). My father claims to have smelled it too, in the cab of his lorry a hundred miles away. It's nice to think that Nanny might have stopped off to say goodbye on her way to wherever she was going, but it's highly unlikely.

I've also heard a flute playing when I've woken up at night, which would tie in with the 'musical ghost' theory. However, I automatically dismiss any ghost claims that begin 'I'd just woken up and I saw/heard...' because they are, almost definitely, sleep artefacts.

Zombrex

Probably false memories. When you were 13 how did you know what a dead body smelt like?

kylith

Because the night before we'd been visiting her and my mother had pointed out the odour in her room and said 'that's what someone who's dying smells like'. It's well known in health care circles, apparently.

Banbh

You DO know that Danny Boy and the Derry Air are one and the same tune?

kylith

I know now, but I didn't then. In fact, I found out because of that incident!

Dr. Loon

kylith wrote: »

I've had a couple of experiences which I struggle to explain. Maybe someone here can shed some light.

I don't see what's unusual about the keyboard story?! Same song! Even if it wasn't, the more likely explanation than a musical ghost, is a fault in the keyboard. It's an electronic product. Electronics are prone to failure and other funny hiccups. Power surge, power short, whatever.... all more likely than a ghost.

If you're in doubt, then think of probabilities. Which is more probable? Electronic fault or ghost? Which is factually known to occur?

As for the smell, you probably just thought you smelt it. I've been around quite a few dead bodies in my time I'm sad to say, and I don't know the smell you refer to. Chemicals, incense and - horrible though it may seem -faeces, are usually the smells around dead bodies. Can you describe it? Could it have been a particular perfume or chemical the undertakers used? Could that particular perfume or chemical also have been present in the school? Was food cooking in both places? Formaldehyde? I'm not sure what they use but it's more probable. Young, emotional, and taking into account our memories really are quite terrible, I'd put it down to a false memory too - as the more probable option.

Additionally, there are some smells that are very similar to others. A particular non-alcoholic beer I drink smells like high grade marijuana upon opening the bottle. Another obvious one is cheeses and smelly feet.

Anyway, probabilities. Or delusion. Your choice.

Calibos

Posted this on one of the regional forums in a Ghost story thread but it suits here too:

After my grand parents had both passed away our family bought my fathers siblings share of the house and we moved in and renovated the house the following year. I sleep directly over the spot my grandmother was found dead. I slept soundly from Night One. After the second time I heard a weird sound within the walls 2 years later (this year) I had reasoned out what it was. The fireplaces at the back of the house were blocked off and the Chimney stacks within the walls were filled in with rubble by the builders/renovators to stabilise the gable wall. The vibration from the dart line 100 yards away was causing the looser smaller elements of the rubble used to fill the chimney stacks to cascade down the stack. Another weird sound I reasoned out to be the branches of a tree rubbing the metal corrugated roof of a building behind us when the wind is from a particular direction. The tapping I often here is when water flowing through a particular pipe causes thermal expansion in the pipe and it makes a friction tapping kind of sound where the pipe runs through a joist. The apparition of Jesus in the back yard was the reflection in the back door window of a towel hanging on the chair beside me superimposed over something hanging on the side of the shed out in the yard and my brains pattern recognition centre guessing wrong for an instant.

Whats the difference between me and all the people who see/hear ghosts???

As a sceptic, I worked from the basis that these incidents where something mundane but they were an interesting puzzle for me to stimulate my brain. No fear or jumpiness clouding my judgement. No preconceived notions of the supernatural. No running off to tell someone about what I had heard or seen before I had given it any rational thought. I heard the noises and said to myself I wonder what that could be. I thought it through and came up with hypothosis and then in the following minutes or hours and in some of the cases days and weeks, tested those hypothosis or had to wait for them to happen again and figure out what conditions were common to both instances.

My hypothosis about the noise in the wall was as I described at the beginning. It was confirmed the third time it happened. The second time I noted the sound of some locomotives being moved at the train station during the wee hours. When I heard the sound and locmotives the third time I knew I had the complete explanation.

The tapping during the night was confirmed the second time when I investigated and say that someone had left a hot water tap dripping. Enough to cause thermal expansion in the pipe going through the pipe.

The Jesus apparition stopped me in my tracks. Rather than running of screaming, Instead I stopped instantly, knew I wasn't seeing what I thought I was seeing, studied it until the illusion collapsed and realised what I was seeing. I was then able to make the apparition of The white robed Jesus appear and disappear at will, much like the candle stick illusion (One instant its two faces looking at each other, the next instant its the candlestick) The cause is the part of the brain that has evolved to play it safe when it recieves insufficient sensory input. Your eyes sees movement in the bushes beside the pliestocene camp fire. If your brain makes a guess that its a sabretooth tiger and draws such on your visual cortex, well if it actually is a sabretooth, you just jumped out of the way in time and someone else got caught and eaten. If the brain guessed wrong and it was just a bush branch blowing in the wind, well you just laughed to yourself. UG, me just thought I saw sabretooth Hurhur . ie. The result of guessing wrong about the sabretooh 9 time out of 10 is an adrenaline burst and a chuckle to ones self. The result of the brain waiting for more sensory input all the time so it can guess correctly 100% of the time that its a branch is that those 9 times the branch moves you don't get your shot of adrenaline and a chuckle but that one time when it really was a sabretooth means.....you're dead cause your brain took too long to work out what the movement in the bushes was!!

The brain does this all the time. I once walked out the back door and saw a big brown rat run past. Except it wasn't a rat. I happened to walk out one door looking at the ground. My mother happened to come out the other door at the same time. She happened to be wearing grey slacks that camoflaged her legs against the grey concrete. So what I was actually seeing was what looked like the disembodied brown shoes moving along the ground. The brain is subconciously thinking that shoes don't move on their own, What brown thing the size of a shoe would move across the yard like that. Why a big brown rat of course. It draws a big brown rat on my visual cortex and thats what I see/percieve.......until my gaze shifts a little, I catch the rest of my mothers body in my peripheral vision, the illusion collapses and the rat disappears and my mothers....shoes...and the rest of her appears

This happens to everyone all the time. Everyone has had those, "Jaysus, for a second there, I thought I saw a......"
The difference is that when it happens during the daylight hours one sees it for what it is. For some reason when the caveman fear of the dark creeps over us at night time, the very same people don't see that the ghost they saw/heard is the very same type of common neurological glitch that they laugh off during the day.

kylith

Dr. Loon wrote: »

I don't see what's unusual about the keyboard story?! Same song! Even if it wasn't, the more likely explanation than a musical ghost, is a fault in the keyboard. It's an electronic product. Electronics are prone to failure and other funny hiccups. Power surge, power short, whatever.... all more likely than a ghost.

If you're in doubt, then think of probabilities. Which is more probable? Electronic fault or ghost? Which is factually known to occur?

Oh, I know that it wasn't a ghost, don't worry; the keyboard developing sentience is more likely, imo. The thing is that it wasn't programmed, as far as I know, to play the song at all. The backing track would be akin to hearing just the drums for a song, the tune wouldn't be recognisable. The most probable explanations I've come up with are that either my brain eventually threw up Danny Boy as something that fit the time signature it was hearing, or that after a certain period of time the keyboard is programmed to play the song and I just haven't let it play long enough since (seriously, I used to have this thing going for hours).

Dr. Loon wrote: »

As for the smell, you probably just thought you smelt it. I've been around quite a few dead bodies in my time I'm sad to say, and I don't know the smell you refer to. Chemicals, incense and - horrible though it may seem -faeces, are usually the smells around dead bodies. Can you describe it? Could it have been a particular perfume or chemical the undertakers used? Could that particular perfume or chemical also have been present in the school? Was food cooking in both places? Formaldehyde? I'm not sure what they use but it's more probable. Young, emotional, and taking into account our memories really are quite terrible, I'd put it down to a false memory too - as the more probable option.

It wasn't the smell of embalming, chemicals, or perfume. It was the smell of a body getting ready to die and starting to shut down its organs. I can't describe it except to say I perceived it as a 'flat' smell (jesus, smells are impossible to describe). I'd know it if I smelled it again.

Dr. Loon wrote: »

Anyway, probabilities. Or delusion. Your choice.

Either or. The only reason they stick in my mind is that I haven't been able to figure out what caused those events. Like Calibos I enjoy figuring out what causes our brains to perceive things as other than they are, and my inability to explain those ones occasionally drives me nuts. They're probably false memories, but they don't feel like it, I remember how they made me feel at the time, and the thoughts I had regarding them, and I remember talking to other people about them afterward, which is a lot for my, very lazy, brain to go inventing.

Banbh

Thanks for that excellent explanation. For people who have made a commitment to reason, all phenomena are explainable. I recall when I first shed superstition in my teens how so many terrors simply faded away.

Dr. Loon

Banbh wrote: »

I recall when I first shed superstition in my teens how so many terrors simply faded away.

Indeed, the amount of irrational fears that are cast off once you commit to reason is amazing, and truly liberating.

robindch

About twenty years back, in my parents' house, I was coding around two or three in the morning during one of the good hack runs one could get into when there were no interruptions, as there never were in the days before the internet and mobiles came to the wilder and more remote parts of South Kerry. It was just my parents and I in the house and they'd gone to bed hours earlier, perhaps around ten, so there'd been dead silence since that time. I was alone in my room, leaning back in the chair, trying to figure out some bug or other when, suddenly, I felt a finger press down firmly and unambiguously on my left shoulder.

I froze, didn't turn around, and considered the options, which were that either I was hallucinating, or there was some weirdo in the room with me. Couldn't have been a weirdo, since there was no way into the room except through the bathroom window (locked open at just a few inches) or the main bedroom door or the windows which were both closed and which I could see. So I concluded it was an hallucination and that I really needed to get out more.

So I turned around and saw our cat who'd hopped in quietly through the bathroom window, and had managed to place his paw on my shoulder by quietly jumping onto the bed behind me and leaning forward to reach me, leaning backwards. It took around about twenty minutes for my heart to return to normal.

Sierra 117

Cats really would make the best assassins.