The paranormal thread

[Doc Safari]

Here's another incident of mine. People have asked me that with my experience with the demon in my childhood how I'd dare go into a known "haunted" location. I always answer that I'm not afraid of much and it seemed like an interesting adventure at the time.

Back in 2013 when I first started dating my current girlfriend we got onto the subject of her nursing ghost stories. Of course her confidentiality requirements don't allow her to discuss much that is work-related, but she was able to tell me enough that it stoked my desire to fulfill one of the items on my bucket list: to take a real ghost tour with authentic ghost investigators just like on the TV shows.

So, in Las Cruces, New Mexico there is an old hotel that dates from the Old West. It's been a hotel, a bank, a brothel, and other things during its history. It's a historic landmark and a local ghost investigator society is allowed to charge customers to accompany them on a genuine ghost investigation. So I paid the money and we showed up for the "tour". It's the Amador hotel and is currently being restored to its original floor plan and is right now closed to the public.

It's important to note that one of my trademarks is that I wear an Australian slouch hat (looks like the classic movie green safari hat with puggaree). On this particular evening, the sun had gone down and I decided to leave it in the car for the ghost tour. To most people it looks like a "green cowboy hat" if you're not familiar with the old Tarzan movies. I was the only one in the group to wear such a hat to the tour, even though I left it in the car. This will become significant in a while, you'll see.

During the ghost tour, we were invited to silently walk through some of the corridors on the ground floor of the hotel. I have a "gift." I can walk into a haunted building and sense if there is an evil presence there. While walking in one of the corridors, I definitely felt the presence of something totally evil that did not want us there. Others in the group noticed it too.

As the evening progressed, the ghost investigators did the usual "parlor trick" of placing a flashlight on a table with the head mostly unscrewed, so that the "spirits" are supposed to answer questions by turning the flashlight on and off. They did this through several questions. At one point, they tried to contact the spirit of a famous local murder victim. The murder was never "officially" solved, although a book was written by a man who claimed to have solved the murder. He claimed that a man who lived with his mother was the killer and the investigators had totally missed it. So at one point during the "contact" session with this murder victim, members of the audience were allowed to ask the spirit of the deceased girl some questions. Most asked about the political intrigue surrounding the murder, etc. When it became my turn to ask, I asked if she had been murdered by the the guy with the two dogs who lived with his mother. The flashlight flashed once for "yes". This is something that probably was not faked because unless you've read that author's book you would never believe the murderer was someone other than the people named in the official narrative. Had the ghost hunters somehow been willing to fake the answer to that question, they almost certainly would have had the flashlight stay in the "off" position for a "no" answer.

The investigators also made it a point to tell us that the spirits in that hotel like to mess with electronic devices. Several just wouldn't work right during the tour. This will become significant toward the end of my story.

The ghost investigators contacted the spirit of a little girl who made a toy move. At one point a flashlight left in an adjacent room turned on so brightly that it lit up the adjacent room like a huge spotlight was turned on! We went back into that room and there was the lowly Maglite sitting on the table. No spotlight. When people started asking the child ghost questions like, "What's it like on the other side?", the spirit suddenly shut up and didn't want to talk anymore. Can't reveal there's a Heaven and Hell, kid, is that the deal?

As we went upstairs, no one was left on the ground floor, and yet we saw one of the flashlights turn on and stay on as we ascended the stairs.

On the top floor, the ghost hunters contacted a prostitute that had lived in the hotel. As they asked the spirit questions, several women felt their hair getting brushed by something invisible. The ghost hunters just laughed, and said, "She doesn't like women for some reason." At this point they asked the spirit, "Is there any man in this room you do like?" The spirit answered audibly through one of those spirit boxes, "COW...BOOOOOYYYYYEEEEEEEE." Remember I had left my safari hat in the car, and how I had described it as looking like a green cowboy hat to a lot of people?

There were several more minor things like cold spots and more women getting their hair brushed, but eventually the evening ended and my girlfriend and I went to our separate homes.

Days later, my girlfriend frantically called me one afternoon to ask if I had experienced anything strange at my house. I said, "No, why?" She explained that a radio she left in her daughter's room had turned on spontaneously while her daughter was in school. Upon inspecting the radio, we found that the alarm was turned off, and the switch was set to "manual", meaning you had to move it to the on position with your hand.

A few nights later, as I was lying in bed, I was awakened by the sound of the carbon monoxide alarm going off. Note that this was the time of year when it was still too warm to have the furnace on. There should have been no source of carbon monoxide anywhere in the house. Later that night, I felt the same evil presence above my bed that I had felt in that hallway of the old hotel. I saw what looked like an indistinct black shape moving across the ceiling. Quickly I shouted at it, "In the name of Jesus Christ you were not invited into this house and I command you to leave."

Neither my girlfriend or I have had another incident, but we don't go on ghost tours anymore, either.

[Doc Safari]

I did get one really good ghost story out of my girlfriend.

She said one of her best friends had a husband who died at home. While he was in bed awaiting the inevitable, they summoned a priest to give the last rites, etc.

Supposedly this happened on a day where there was no wind outside, and all the windows in the patient's bedroom were closed.

My girlfriend said that they were all standing around the person's bed when he expired, just as the priest was administering the last rites. After the person died, they all felt a cold wind whoooooooooosh around the room.

My girlfriend emphasizes that there was no wind at all that day and that all the windows were closed.

They interpreted the "wind" as the person's soul leaving the body.

[glocktogo]

I'll preface my stories by saying I'm not superstitious and don't believe in ghosts. While I'm spiritual I'm not religious. Overall I always work off logic whenever possible, so I'm looking to dispel rather than confirm any bouts of paranoia or doubts about the mundane dread and doom life brings about. I do however believe wholeheartedly in evil, regardless of what form it takes. Yet despite 5+ decades on this rock and travelling all over the country and half the world, only two examples are forever burned into my brain. Both will undoubtedly go with me to my grave.

The first story is one that's a little more "pedestrian", but happened later in life than the other one. I was only shortly out of the Corps and while still getting my post .mil career up and running, I was working security jobs. One job I took for the OT was working Christmas season security at a chain retail outlet that had been targeted in a series of armed robberies (this was back in the late 80's, when cash was still king). In one of the robberies a suspect had killed a manager.

It was coming up on closing time and every register was packed with customers. I was posted up between the registers and the manager's office where the safe was. There was a guy who had come in 10 minutes or so earlier (saw him from the back) who was now loitering near the exit, adjacent to the registers. He was wearing a large, blue, down filled coat. He had a beard and a scar on one side of his face. He pinged my radar because he hadn't purchased anything and he was just standing there. He didn't seem like the usual husband who'd had enough and just wanted to get out of the crowded aisles to wait for the wife/kids to get done.

After a quick scan for other anomalies, I oriented myself to focus on him exclusively. Before that I had been tucked away a bit and don't believe he'd seen me. As he's standing there, he crosses his arms, but his right hand went inside his coat. Now I'm on high alert and move to a better position. As I do, he turns and looks my way. At that exact moment I feel a cold wave wash over me. He has completely dead eyes and I know I'm staring at someone who's pure evil. Not just a bad person or a violent person, evil with a capital "E".

Then he moves his hand deeper into his coat. I'm not gonna lie, I'm scared now. This dude is seriously bad news and the hair on the back of my neck is standing up. But I suck it up and take two steps towards him as I slide closer to a wall. My gun side is towards the wall and no one can see it but him. I've got a Ruger GP100 loaded with .357 Glaser Safety Slugs (late 80's remember) and two Comp II's full of .357 125gr JHP's on the belt. I'm mentally checking off my sight confirmation and remember that if I do need to reload, the 125's will hit 6" higher at 20 yards. He's staring hard at me and his arm is moving like molasses inward. So I unsnap and take a full grip on the gun as I set for a strong Weaver stance (again, late 80's). He can see that I have a clear shot with no one behind him, plus I have partial cover and he's in the open. Several seconds pass but it seems like an eternity, then he turns and storms out of the store.

I can still clearly picture him to this day. I've actually drawn on bad actors since then, but this is the one and only time I've ever felt what I felt when he turned and stared me. A week later another store was robbed two towns over. No one was hurt but a shot was fired. I never heard of them catching the guy and moved out of the region a year later. I still believe it was him and that he was way more than your garden variety armed robber. Evil has a different "vibe" and when it's active that vibe seems to be on a whole other level.

This was a long post so I think I'll save the creepier story for another time.

[Doc Safari]

My father died after a 2-3 month bout with cancer. He went to hospice finally and died about 24 hours later.

As per his request, we had him cremated.

To make a long story short, my dad and I had discussed moving my mom to town from the ranch for all kinds of good reasons, and I agreed to move to the ranch and manage it while we investigated selling it. So at the ranch house I placed the container with his ashes on the mantle for safekeeping while I waited for my mother and brother to decide where to spread his ashes and when. Since my brother lives out of town by a considerable distance, I knew those ashes would be there for a while.

Almost as soon as I moved into the ranch house, things began breaking or needing sudden maintenance at a constant rate. The water softener stopped working. The pilot light on the water heater had to be re-lit. Somehow the drain line to the septic tank became clogged and all the drains backed up for some reason. A plumbing fitting on the water system for the pecan trees broke and leaked just out of the blue. I could go on but you get the picture.

Now, I know the ranch is old and things do break, but it seemed like every few days something else broke.

On top of that, I was sitting quietly in the living room one night and I thought I distinctly heard a "moan" at the front door.

Finally, one day my clothes drier just wouldn't turn on.

I called a repair man and he thoroughly disassembled it, only to exclaim, "There's not a thing wrong with this drier!" He discovered that one of the breakers had tripped.

I immediately called my mom, and told her, "There's something going on. I think dad's spirit may be unhappy that his ashes haven't been spread. He's making things break right and left! Come over to the house! We're spreading his ashes TODAY!"

So after she arrived we spread his ashes over where his favorite cat had been buried, and said a few words.

After that things stopped breaking.

Now, after living there a few years, things do break, but only at a rate one might consider "normal", as in, once in a while.

Not one thing right after another like when my dad's ashes were on the mantle!

A couple of years later I sold his Dodge Ram pickup because I bought another four-wheel drive vehicle. The new buyer took less than a week to total it. I'm not saying that's supernatural, but after all the other crap I'd been through I was tempted to think that was Dad coming back from the grave to make sure no one else drove his truck!

______________

I could tell other stories, like the image of a skull-like face being frosted into the glass of one of the ranch house windows. It was there for years before it faded to just a blob.

I've seen many things out of the corner of my eye at the ranch: things flitting by the window just as you turn to look, etc.

__________

If I think of another really significant one or two I'll post it, but that's all for now.

[rero360]

When I first enlisted and before I left for basic I would go to my armory for drill weekends to learn the ropes, I didn't have a car yet so my parents would drop me off at the armory Saturday morning and pick me up Sunday afternoon/evening. Sometimes I would catch a ride with someone and spend the night at their house but most of the time I would sleep in the armory, almost every time I was alone in the building all night.

One month, its winter time in western NY and at the end of the day on Saturday the full timer in the unit told me that he was locking up and turning on the alarm, said that no one would be in until he showed back up in the morning and to not leave or the cops would be there within minutes from the alarm going off. So I go up into the locker-room which is a small alcove above the drill hall floor across from the rest of the armory. Its an old build, constructed in the mid 1800s and it creaks a lot, especially with the steam pipes for heating. Well, I'm in my sleeping bag just about to fall asleep when I hear a door open and slam shut. I go investigate every single door in the building, and no snow tracked inside, no footprints in the fresh snow outside, all doors inside are just as they were before I went to bed. I shrug it off and go back to my sleeping bag and almost instantly I hear it again, so I know that its not my imagination, I wasn't in that weird half awake half asleep zone where you experience things that don't actually happen. So I get back up and investigate again and same results, nothing. At this point its pretty late and I'm beat, so I just say out loud "whoever is here, stop it, I'm trying to sleep." went back up to my sleeping bag and went to sleep.

Talking with the full timer the next morning he relayed an incident that happened to him, he was in the armory basement working in supply, no one else was in the building when he heard a basketball being bounced across the drill hall floor right above him. He thought that maybe the recruiter had returned with a potential recruit and was shooting some hoops so he went up to talk with him and there was no one there. The front door was still locked and the basketball that was previously wedged under the pool table that was under the stairs leading up into the locker room was now sitting in the center of the drill hall floor.

The only other times I experienced anything was once I was babysitting for a family and I went outside of their house to get a breath of fresh air around 2am and I felt like something came up behind me and tried to push me down the hill. The other one was at a friend's house that was an an old farmhouse, probably originally built in the mid 1800s. they had a guest room upstairs where everyone would toss their coats during their Christmas Eve parties, there was no door on the room and while the whole house would be super hot, that one room would be freezing cold, like meat locker cold. My friend's mom's boyfriend refused to sleep there alone as whatever it was in the house would slam the toilet seat all night long.

[Rogue556]

I know there are a lot of people skeptical about these sorts of things, and it's understandable if you yourself have never experienced it. I truly hope no one has to as it's a terrible experience and stays with you forever. I doubt many will believe any of what I'm about to say, and I've never told this to anyone but very close friends and immediate family.

This will be a long post, but it's the only way to really explain my experience so I apologize for the long comment.

I've had encounters with things nearly my whole life, from the time I was four years old till now at 28. I'm not convinced that every single incident I've experienced is legitimately paranormal and it would probably be silly to assume so, but I do have one specific experience that spanned over a few years that without a doubt was something demonic.

I was a senior in highschool at the time and was suffering from a pretty horrible state of depression stemming from multiple areas of my life. At that time I felt truly lost (I'd had depression issues most my life by this point, but at this time I'd say it was at its peak). I had hit a low point and really didn't know what to do.

Then something happened that I can't explain. I had walked outside one day into our backyard and sat at a bench we had in the middle of the yard. It was September and the weather was in the 70's that week. I was feeling overwhelmed and was attempting to get some fresh air when I heard something speak to me. It wasn't exactly like someone was standing in front of me speaking, but more like a soft voice whispering in my ear. It said only one word, but it was 100% clear. "Church" was what I had heard. I was stunned as I'd never had anything happen to me like this before, and that same week I experienced the same thing multiple times. The voice, though I'd never heard it before, sounded familiar. When I say familiar, I don't mean like an acquaintance you hardly know or someone you've only spoken with in passing.. I mean the voice was as familiar to me as the voice of my own mother or father, if not more. I can't really even find the words to explain it, as I'm not sure those words exist.

Roughly a week later from the last time I heard this voice, and at what seems to be perfect timing, I had a few friends of mine randomly invite me to their church. It had been years since I'd last been invited to attend church and I felt conflicted whether I should go or not. (For clarification; I wasn't some loner who never talked to anyone and was invited by people I didn't know. I was fairly popular and played a lot of varsity sports, so I already knew most that attended the church). I ended up going at the last second after thinking about the voice I'd heard. I felt like it must have been a sign, and today I am certain it was. I know for a fact the voice I'd heard was God speaking to me.

Now that probably doesn't sound like a demonic story, and that's because it's not.. but that's not where the story ends.

I started attending church regularly and had got very active in our youth group. From the moment I started attending church I began noticing some very odd things happening around our home, and I began feeling uneasy (I had not felt this way until this point). The first negative experience I had was after I had come across a bible verse that spoke to me, and I had included the bible verse in a drawing I was making. Well, I had the drawing set on my desk in my room. That night I woke up to hearing things shifting and moving around the room in a way that didn't make sense. I slept with a fan on, but the sounds were coming from parts of the room uninterrupted by the wind of the fan. I began to feel uneasy and forced myself to sleep. Upon waking, I found the picture on the floor, face down, with a notebook placed on top of it. I wasn't sure what had happened, but I tried to rationalize with myself that it had simply fallen off of the desk and landed that way. For the next two weeks I experienced the same thing over and over again, and the sounds of moving objects always seemed to get louder night after night.

At this time I had a collection of brass saved from all the different calibers I'd fired, and I setup one of each caliber on a shelf as a sort of decoration (probably around 15 casings). At around 3 a.m. every single night I could hear the brass casings move around. I decided to orient the casings in the center of the shelf, side by side, and keep a mental note of their location to see if they were indeed moving. Well, 3:30 a.m. that night, like clockwork, I began to hear the casings clinging together. I woke to find that all of the casings had moved from the center of the shelf, to evenly spread out on the edge of the shelf nearly falling off, with an almost perfect distance between the cases. No way that could have happened by accident.

At this point I hadn't spoke to anyone about the occurrences and I was the only one, other than my parents, that lived in the house.

Things started getting gradually worse until the uneasy feeling I had began to turn into a feeling of dread, fear, and doom that I've never experienced before. Not just like something wanted to kill you, but a thousand times worse than that.. As if something wanted your life, your soul, and everything between.. and wanted to see it all destroyed. It's hard to explain, but it's a feeling of evil that you can not comprehend.

Things started to escalate to the point it was nearly impossible to live in my own home. At night my room would come alive with the sounds of objects being thrown around, and I started feeling something physically on the edge of the bed at night, as if someone was crawling on the edge of the bed with one hand depressing the mattress down, then the other hand depressing the other side, then the feeling of a knee or foot, followed by the other side, depressing the bed down and crawling upward until it was mounted on top, face to face with you. I never saw it, as it was dark and honestly I was scared to death. I was able to move (so not experiencing sleep paralysis) but in no way did I want to move. I could feel it roughly and inch from my face through the bed sheets. The feeling of evil is something I can't describe, and I'd not wish it in anyone.

Things continued to get worse, and I began having these feelings in other areas of the home, at different times of the day. I would use the garage door the majority of the time and come in through the garage to the laundry room and into our kitchen. The feeling of dread and doom would always seem to follow me coming halfway through the garage, and follow me through the house to my room. I could feel something on the back of my neck as if it were there breathing on me. This most often occurred at night, but would also happen on occasion during the day. I felt as if I was being chased and hunted by something.

I continued to keep these occurrences to myself, and things continued to get worse. At one point, in the middle of the day, I was taking a shower when I heard what I can only describe as a blood curdling roar, similar to a lion or grizzly bear, but much more ominous. It sounded like it was directly on the other side of the shower curtain. I flung the curtain open and swung wildly, but nothing was there. Realizing there were no one else in the house at the time, and our dogs were outside I scrambled out of the bathroom. I truly felt under attack at that moment, and it wasn't until the curtain was open and I realized nothing was there that I felt compelled to tell my mother of my experiences. I asked if she'd felt anything different about the home the last couple months, and she looked at me shocked. She explained she'd felt she was being watched at all times of the day, and even noticed our two golden retrievers acting strange. She explained she was getting odd feelings in the garage, and felt something watching her late at night while in the living room and during the day and night in the master bedroom. We walked the house together and I asked her to make a mental note of all the places she felt she had been watched from. I was able to pinpoint every spot exactly without her having told me. This made her very emotional as she'd simply passed it off as her imagination.

Over the next couple months things got worse still. Our golden retrievers began barking and growling at corners of the rooms in the house where the ceiling and walls meet. Larger objects began moving around. I'd be walking through the house during the day or night and dining chairs would suddenly move a foot or two by themselves. Toys in the spare bedroom of the house would go off. The closet in that room had a toy box with balls and other toys. At night you could hear the balls bouncing against the closet wall (the shower I heard the growl in is directly on the other side of this closet). On a few occasions I actually heard my own mother calling my name as if she were in the other room. When I'd check to see what she needed, I'd realize no none was home but me.

Roughly a year later from the start of it all, I had just graduated and was a few months out from moving for college. Things were still not good, and every member of the family was experiencing things in the home at this point. At the time, whatever it was seemed to focus on me most of all. I had told a few friends that there were some odd things going on in our house, but never went into detail. My best friend had just come back home to visit and was staying with us for a week. He was asleep on the floor, and I was on my bed. Well, 3:30 a.m. comes around and I was asleep for once. Suddenly I wake up to my friend yelling and shaking me. He's screaming "Get the f**k up, get the f**k up right now! We're getting the f**k out of here!" My friend had woken up to the sound of things moving in the room, and was feeling the same thing I had felt so many times. He explained he felt an extreme feeling of dread and death that paralyzed him in fear. He explained to me that he could feel something breathing on him, and at one point he felt three large fingers touch his thigh and poke him with all three fingers three different times. He said he was so scared he couldn't move and felt like if he had, whatever it was would have surely killed him. He said the final straw that allowed him to jump up and turn on the lights was hearing me talk in my sleep. He explained he heard me talking to someone, but couldn't make out the conversation. He said the only thing he understood that I said was "No, I'm not ready yet". Hearing this caused him to peak through the covers and he explained to me that what he saw was a large, very dark area on the edge of my bed. He said it stood out because even in a pitch black room, it was substantially darker than everything else. Seeing this he panicked and ran for the light switch. We drove around town that night until sunrise, and slept at the home of one of his family members the rest of the week. We did have to go back into the house for some of my clothes, but waited till mid day. My parents were out of town but were expected back any time. While gathering my things, we heard the doorknob turn and the rubber weather seal on the door leading from the garage into the laundry room open, and then heard the door shut. We both turned to each other and I told him my parents must be home. He walked across the house to the laundry room, and no one was there. He checked out front and in the garage, but there were no vehicles. No one had entered the house. He quickly came back to explain to me what just happened. We started gathering my things more quickly when we heard the same sound again. We looked at each other confused, and stood quietly listening for footsteps. We knew what we'd heard and that specific door is the only one that makes that specific sound when opened. We walked together to check it out, and still no sign of anyone. We walked back to grab my stuff when we heard it again... but this time the door opened with enough force that you could feel the draft across the house. As quickly as it swung open, it swung closed. The door slammed closed angrily and with enough force that the windows in the house shook. We grabbed a rifle and shotgun from my closet and started clearing the house, thinking it must have been a person. We cleared the entire house, including the attic, but found nothing. We both began feeling uneasy and left the house as quickly as possible.

I ended up moving for college and during that time I did not experience what I did back home. Every time I came home I felt like I was right back in hell again, and eventually I just quit visiting.

My nephews, who were very young at that time, were constantly talking about a scary lady under the bed in the spare bedroom (same bedroom where the toys go off by themselves) and they would only sleep with adults. I got a call from my mother roughly a year after I moved saying she and my father had both been pinned down in their sleep and had seen some kind of mist like darkness coming from the corner of their master bedroom. Appliances in the home started going off by themselves. My mother had unplugged a hair dryer and as soon as she left the room the hair dryer turned back on while unplugged. She rushed back into the room and it had turned itself back off.

My mother and father both decided to started attending church together due to these occurrences. They have now been heavily involved in church for at least the past eight years and have blessed the home multiple times. There is no longer anything in the house as far as any of us can tell, but we still don't let our guard down.

My best friend still refuses to go in the house alone.

I'm not sure what triggered this thing, but I can only imagine it didn't like that I was beginning a relationship with God. I truly believe it found my new found faith dangerous, and set out to destroy me and my family.

Ironically enough, this evil rearing its ugly head to me is one of the biggest reasons for my belief in God today. When you realize there is a constant battle occurring all around you, and you've seen it first hand, it makes denial impossible.

That's the short version, as I'm sure I've left out plenty of other occurrences. Sorry for the massive post.

Sent from my SM-N910P using Tapatalk

[AndyLate]

Before I retired, my wife, our 3 sons and I often drove to Nebraska and South Dakota to visit our families.
I was driving on a 2 lane highway 5 miles south of the NE/SD border about 7 p.m. (after dark) when we met a semi (tractor-trailer). Just after we cleared the semi's headlights, I saw the lights of the pickup that was passing the truck in our lane and somehow flicked the wheel just far enough right to miss the pickup but not drive off the shoulder, and then just far enough back to put us in our lane.
Maybe my reaction time was fast enough in my 20s to save us, and my touch delicate enough to pull that manuver off in a 1997 Dodge Intrepid without ending up in a ditch at best, but my youngest son swears he saw an Angel move our car. He was 3 or 4 at the time and said it without being asked when my wife was telling my parents about our close call. She said I dodged the pickup and saved us and he said "No, God saved us, an angel moved the car".

I still wonder 20+ years later if the idiot passing the semi in a no-passing lane on a blind curve in a 4wd Nissan or Toyota compact pickup truck realizes how close he came to killing himself and (at a minimum) my wife and I.

[JoshNC]

I was the only one in the group to wear such a hat to the tour, even though I left it in the car. This will become significant in a while, you'll see.

Ha, brother you’re probably the only person in America to wear such a hat. Hahahaha.

[Doc Safari]

Before I retired, my wife, our 3 sons and I often drove to Nebraska and South Dakota to visit our families.
I was driving on a 2 lane highway 5 miles south of the NE/SD border about 7 p.m. (after dark) when we met a semi (tractor-trailer). Just after we cleared the semi's headlights, I saw the lights of the pickup that was passing the truck in our lane and somehow flicked the wheel just far enough right to miss the pickup but not drive off the shoulder, and then just far enough back to put us in our lane.
Maybe my reaction time was fast enough in my 20s to save us, and my touch delicate enough to pull that manuver off in a 1997 Dodge Intrepid without ending up in a ditch at best, but my youngest son swears he saw an Angel move our car. He was 3 or 4 at the time and said it without being asked when my wife was telling my parents about our close call. She said I dodged the pickup and saved us and he said "No, God saved us, an angel moved the car".

I still wonder 20+ years later if the idiot passing the semi in a no-passing lane on a blind curve in a 4wd Nissan or Toyota compact pickup truck realizes how close he came to killing himself and (at a minimum) my wife and I.

You reminded me of an incident in college. I lived on a side street off a lightly traveled road. I got in the habit of just running the stop sign from the side road to the main road because there was never a car in sight.

One day I was going to run that stop sign just like always and "something" put my foot on the brake. Right at that second, a speeding car went by. Had I run the stop sign like I always did, I would have been T-boned at about 70 miles an hour.

[Bubba FAL]

We felt that there was something going on in the first house I lived in as a kid in Detroit. The basement was partially finished. No one in the family was comfortable being down there alone, especially at night. Just a weird vibe going on.

Our bedrooms were upstairs, the only bathroom on the main floor. I got up in the middle of the night and went down to the bathroom. I heard someone calling my name repeatedly from the top of the stairs. I'd answer, but the only reply was my name being called out. My sister and parents were pissed because I was yelling up the stairwell, "what do you want?" and woke them all up. No one could explain what I had heard.

Thankfully, we moved out of that house about a year later.