Lovers everywhere, it seems, will find out-of-the-way places -- the places are usually called Lovers' Lanes. In West Texas it is a bit more difficult because of the flatness and treelessness of the terrain. So West Texas lovers in cars have to drive miles and miles out on country roads to be alone; but they are still, most of the time, within sight of the twinkling lights of distant towns. My boyfriend and I had our favorite "parking spot," a point with a thirty-mile radius to several towns, meaning that we could view a sixty-mile diameter and the progress of any vehicle with lights coming in our direction.

The landmark for our spot was a cluster of pump jacks. If you've ever been around these oil-field installations, you know that they are noisy but the noise is quite soothing once you get accustomed to it -- clack, swoosh, clack, swoosh, clack, swoosh. Boyfriend and I had the windows down to catch the soft night air and everything was very pleasant and normal. However, I caught out of the corner of my eye an unexpected light and I brought it to boyfriend's attention. We watched a few minutes. The light was not acting like headlights of a vehicle, rather it was a single light that bobbed up and down and it seemed to be getting closer to us.

Boyfriend eventually spoke, "It looks to be someone on foot with a strong flashlight or lantern, probably a pumper checking the christmas trees [configurations of pipes and fittings at the wellheads]."

"At eleven p.m.?" I asked incredulously.

Boyfriend shrugged and then said, just to get my goat, "Well, it could be that axe murderer everybody has been talking about." I beaned him with my shoe for that uncalled-for remark.

I didn't like anyone encroaching on our circle of solitude, so I told boyfriend I was ready to leave. He grumbled a bit, then relented and started the car. When he switched on his headlights, we saw in their train a figure -- a man -- but only for a moment. Startled and confused by the guy's appearance and then disappearance, boyfriend drove the track around the pump jacks to see if we could sight the man again, or his vehicle. Nothing. Giving up, we then exited the pump jack area onto a caliche road that lead back to the paved road to town. Just as we got on this road, there was a strange sound -- a sort of muffled kaboom -- and the roadway itself seemed to ripple in front of us. Boyfriend stepped on the gas, causing dust to churn and the tires to screech as he hit the asphalt. Only then did he slow down.

I was so astonished that all I could do was gasp, "What happened?"

Boyfriend pulled the car to the side of the road and we looked back. Against the blackness of night, we could see a faint white cloud at ground level -- perhaps it was our own dust but there sure was a lot of it. We were baffled but too unnerved to seek an explanation. We drove back to town and boyfriend delivered me home.

The next morning as I listened to...

Well, Siobhan, so far it's just you and I. As you know, I love the atmosphere of spooky, unexplained happenings -- in books and in real life. I've never been sure that I believe in ghosts, but I know there are strange things in this world that will continue to defy logic until mankind learns everything there is to know in the universe; which I doubt will be any time soon, if ever -- besides, how appallingly boring that would be!

I have a repertoire of three it-happened-to-me ghost tales, and since I've recently recounted all of them, I asked my mother if I could tell some of hers. She has some that my brothers and I always thought were doozies. If you, Siobhan, or anybody, are interested I will attempt to transcribe them since Mother no longer types.

I really hope, though, that others will chime in. I would love to hear some new tales or some good old retellings of favorite stories. I imagine that every family has its collection of weird and creepy things that have happened to some family members at some time. Didn't your grandparents have a mysterious attic or cellar? Or did something happen to your Uncle Joe when he was in China or Ireland? Does your area have creepy folktales? What about when you were a teenager; didn't you relish a spine-tingler, occasionally -- especially around Halloween? :-)

And I would love to read some more of Tim's great ghost stories!

Veronicae, that's a lovely story. Thanks for sharing it.

I had a weird great-uncle who wrote a self-published book of ghost stories, but no one believed any of them. My grandfather (his brother) thought he was weird, too.

One night, I woke up and felt as if a demon was sitting on my chest and holding me down by the shoulders, much like this. It was very frightening, not because I thought there was an actual presence in the room, but that I had lost my mind and was experiencing an hallucination. It finally ended after what was probably less than a minute but felt like a very long time. I described the experience to my doctor when I saw her next, and she informed me about sleep paralysis and night terrors.

Ah yes, veronica, your beautiful story reminds me that not everything mysterious is necessarily creepy. Mysterious and mystical come from the same root, after all. I'm afraid that I usually think of the former, though.

Mercy, cjoseph, your experience sounds truly terrifying. I know that I have had nightmares, but luckily I've never been able to remember them so vividly. Occasionally I have what I call frustration dreams -- sorcerer's apprentice-type sequences -- but those, I would think, are an entirely different kind of horror.

Siobhan and her colleague's story is eerie in yet another way. I'm sure somebody somewhere has studied and classified the different types of things that spook us. It's funny how some will terrify one person and not another. Psychological creepiness and things that just do not have rhyme or reason bother me most.

Carolyn, was your great-uncle "weird" because he wrote ghost stories? :-)

No, he was just generally weird, and then he married his first cousin and they had some pretty strange children--smart, but kooky.

Hi everybody, sorry I haven't been around much lately. I am not spending too much time online these days.

I have no problem with Siobhan reposting some of my stories from the previous thread, which seems like a hundred years ago now.

CJoseph, the experience you describe is referred to in psychiatric literature as "Sleep Paralysis Syndrome", though less formally the creature you describe is often called simply "the Hag". Large numbers of people from all over the world, have a similar experience: a filthy and unpleasant figure, usually seen as a witch-like figure, sits on the person's chest. The person thinks they are awake, and yet for some reason is unable to move or call out until the experience is over. Whether the experience is psychological or paranormal is of course, a very divisive issue. I had one of these experiences many years ago, in which I felt I was awake but could not move or call out, though some demonic-figure was pushing my bed around the room. I still remember how terrifying it was at the time.

I would prefer to assume that Friedag's reason for parking in a secluded splot with some boy, was to sneak in more reading time.

Siobhan's hotel room story reminds me of one tale which is purportedly from near where I live. A couple with a young son, aged about five, moved into a "new" house (new to them at any rate). Almost immediately, the son began to have trouble sleeping, frequently complaining that something under the bed was kicking and hitting the mattress. The parents attributed his disturbed sleep to the move, and simply found it easier to let the little guy sleep with them. Eventually this situation became tiresome, so the mother tried to convince her son that there was nothing wrong with his bed. Unable to convince him, she bargained that if she slept in the bed without incident, her little boy would have to return to sleeping in his own room, in his own bed. During the night, the mother found her sleep disturbed by the feeling that the mattress was being punched or kicked from something under the bed. For sometime, she laid there trying to figure out what could be causing these sensations. Unable to stand it anymore, she quickly lept out of bed, ripped the covers off, and looked under the bed. What she saw froze her. What she saw was another little boy hiding under the bed, though definitely not her son. Before the mother could make a sound, the little boy put his fingers to his lips and unttered "Shush...". He then vanished right before her eyes. The very next day, she and her husband took her son's bed to the dump...

Hi, Tim. It's great to see that ghost stories can still call you up!

Now, the story you just told: Would you say the creepiness of it gets to us because the situation is so ordinary until...? See, a story like that -- especially involving a child, for some reason -- is more hair-raising than all the aliens and monsters I've seen in sci-fi films and read about in books.

I'm going to try another of my true tales on you all. I know my stories aren't scary in a shivers-to-the-reader way, but I seem to be drawn to write more about the inexplicable than the menacing or spiritual. If you don't appreciate my stories, though, please let me know so I won't waste any more of your time or mine. I'm a big girl and you won't hurt my feelings. :-)

During the Great Depression, the railroad line west from Abilene, Texas terminated at my first mother\-in\-law's hometown, nestled as it was at the base of the Caprock Escarpment that marks the southernmost part of the High Plains.(see link below for a photo and map of the area) No attempt had been made to build a rail line that would climb the almost one\-thousand feet to the Llano Estacado. Thus, all goods and people were off\-loaded from the trains at the town depot. A large portion of the human cargo was of the nonpaying kind: hoboes, tramps, larking schoolboy rail\-riders, and vagabond families of women and children. These people had three options: 1) to stay in town; 2) to try to sneak again into the boxcars to head back east; or 3) to slog up the draws and canyons, on foot, hoping to hitch a lift in the back of a flatbed truck. All of these people had one thing in common: they were hungry. Many of them had to beg for anything they could get to eat. My mother\-in\-law's mother \-\- I'll call her Granny \-\- had a house on the edge of town that was the last hope for westbounders. Granny had become accustomed to importuning strangers rattling the screen door of her kitchen; but, try as she might, she was not inured to their plight. She always baked an extra pan or two of cornbread and biscuits, and she kept pots of beans and soup simmering on the stove to dish out to her slew of uninvited guests. At the time, Granny had \-\- besides her husband \-\- two bachelor sons who worked in town but who came home daily for lunch. One day at lunch time, as usual, the men were sitting at the kitchen table eating. After the mid\-morning train arrival, Granny had already fed seven or eight people that day in the backyard and was running low on bread and soup. Gazing out her kitchen window, Granny spied a man dressed in black, wearing an "Abraham Lincoln hat," wending his way between her house and that of the next\-door neighbor. She watched as he rapped the neighbor's kitchen door and as the neighbor handed the man a tin plate of food. He sat on the doorstep to eat, but after only a moment something seemed to be wrong because the man ceased...

Now that's spooky, Frieda.

Ha! Thanks, Carolyn. At least I got a rise out of somebody! :-)

Where are all you other storytellers? Has anyone besides me noticed that RP has been rather dispirited lately?

Heh! I made an unintentional pun...but I'll let it stand.

I love the stories, frieda! And everyone else's too.

Yes, I've noticed it's been quiet around here. I myself have the usual but valid excuses. Real life, not online much, unbelievably busy with work and school. All that and more.

Here's one of Tim's:

I live near a town famous for its historic buildings, many of which have been lovingly preserved and restored. Many of the houses, built in the 1830's-1850's are now expensive guest houses.

A middle-aged couple were guests at one such establishment. That night they went out to dinner and a play. It was rather a late night for them. When they returned to the house, the wife was horrified to discover that they had forgot to bring the keys their hosts had given them. They stood on the porch in the dark for awhile trying to decide what to do as they were reluctant to wake their hosts who had clearly gone to bed. The wife knocked rather timidly on the door, and to their amazement it was immediately opened by a sullen, silent teenage girl who had clearly just got out of bed. Without so much as a word the girl shuffled off back to bed. Grateful in spite of their rather strange reception, the couple went to bed. In the morning over breakfast the couple apologized for coming in late, forgetting their key, and waking their daughter or maid. The owners of the guesthouse looked at each other uncomprehendingly and said something along the lines of "there's nobody in the house at the moment but us four..."

I was a long haul trucker for years and travelled throughout the U.S. On a trip in 2003, from Atlanta, GA to Washington, DC, I was scheduled for an early Monday delivery to one of the grocery warehouses. I stopped at a motel in Winchester, VA just off I-81 and went to sleep. I was dreaming a strange dream. I was on an airplane, sitting in first class and smoking a cigarette. Everybody was dressed like extras from a 70s T.V. show. I thought that was strange and I also thought it strange that I could smoke on an airplane. I pulled the airline ticket from my pocket and saw that I was on TWA Flight 514 from Columbus, OH to Washington, DC. It was dated December 1, 1974. Well, I thought, stop the presses-what's going on around here? So I rang the call bell for a stewardess. I told her I'd like to speak to someone from the flight crew because it's 2003, TWA is out of business, and I want to know what in the hell is going on here. She just smiled and said that the crew had began the descent into the Washigton area and could not be bothered by any one right now. So now she heads toward the cockpit door and opens it. I look through the door and all of the sudden see trees that are way too close. The pilot said something like, "get some power on" as the trees got bigger and bigger. I yelled and dove into the aisle. At that moment I woke up. Geez that was creepy. By now I had to leave the motel to go to DC. It was about 2:00 A.M. I get on Highway 7 heading east out of Winchester and around Berryville and on to the intersection of Highway 7 and State route 601 near the town of Bluemont, Virginia. There was a closed gas station on the NE corner. I pulled in to check my map. As I'm sitting there, I swear, I see this guy in the parking lot walking towards me. Now its the middle of the night and as he came closer into the light of an overhead lamp I could see he is wearing what looks like an airline uniform. He walks up to my truck and asks if I could give him a lift to Dulles International Airport. I asked what he was doing out here. He just says, "please take me to the airport, I fly for TWA and have to work a flight this morning". Against my better judgement, I tell him to go around to the passenger side and that I'd take him to the next open place so he could call a cab. So he walks around the front of the truck and just disappears in the headlights. Now I'm totally freaked out and figure its time to put on my boogie shoes. When I got home I decided to research TWA and this whole area of Northern Virginia. I was totally stunned to learn that on December 1, 1974 a TWA Flight 514 crashed into Mount Weather in Virginia about a mile from the intersection where I saw the pilot. All 92 people aboard the Boeing 727 from Columbus, OH were killed when the flight crew initiated a premature descent for Dulles International Airport. The aircraft was virtually vaporized when it hit the mountain. To this day, I've never had any experience...

Mooseguy -- That's an amazing story. Sounds like you need to talk to Alison DuBois.
I have some stories to share, but don't have the time right now ... but I'm enjoying everyone else's tales.

A few years ago, my friends and I were bored (like any other 13 year old) so my friend,AJ,told us the house next to his is abandoned and he also told us he saw a teddy bear hanging from a rope by its neck the day before. Well since we were bored we wanted to check it out. My other friend and I looked in and saw nothing. He told us something weird must be going on,so I had the idea of on Saturday night we would all meet here and spend the night. I was so excited when Saturday came my mom(whom is a beleiver aswell) allowed it. I packed a flashlight,my phone,and a camcorder. Once we all had met up we all got a little uneasy i could especially tell by the look of AJ. We went in through the garage and started to smell a mix of cigarette smoke and garbage. Me(watching tons of ghost hunting shows) set up the "camp" in the garage. We all said we would stick together.(This part is a bit fuzzy in my memory) As I recall My other friend felt very cold only in one part of the garage. We first headed to the back part where the teddy bear was. It was hanging right where AJ had said. Now I started to get the creeps. I took a picture with my phone where the teddy bear was. We heard a loud crash and then glass breaking. I being the only one brave enogh to admit that we had just heard that said to go check it out. Both of them said they wouldn't go. I still wanted to check it out. I had started to make my way up the stairs (where the noise was made) and saw a figure staring at me with bright eyes. I was lucky enoguh to have recorded it. I ran back down and showed the other 2. While I was gone they said they also had seen the same figure but chickened out on following it (like me). It was about 11:00 pm and we had drank our 3rd can of Monster. (This part I remember it all the most) We were packign up everything just in case,when all of a sudden there was a loud scream. We grabbed our stuff and got the hell out of there. To this day I haven't gone near that house. I cannot explain what I saw there nor my friends. Everyone who has seen the video of the figure has also felt a sudden pang of sadness. I promise you this had all happened on Saturday of May 3rd,1999