Short, scary ghost stories

short, scary Ghost Stories home | Real Ghost Stories | Classic Ghost Stories

WANTED short, scary ghost stories - fiction or factual - for publication on this site.If published, we will be happy to list author's biographical details and a link back to your Web site.Copyright will remain with authors. Send submissions/outlines to abracad.

page 4 of 5 | page 5 | page 1 | table of contents

REAL GHOST STORIES (Collected and Edited by William T. Stead) online

REAL GHOST STORIES by William T. Stead

Chapter II. The Evidence of the Psychical Research Society.

When they met that lady, two days after, she volunteered the statement that Mrs. A. had appeared to her about three o'clock in the morning of the night before last, robed in violet, and had a conversation with her ("Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World," p. 256.)

_A Doctor's Experience of the Dual Body._

Whatever may be thought of the Psychic's description of her experiences in her thought journey, they are vivid and realistic. Here is the description given by a medical man in a well-known watering-place on the south coast of his experience in getting into his material body after an aerial excursion:--

"I was engaged to a young lady whom I very much loved. During the early part of this engagement I visited the Hall in the village, not far from the Vicarage, where the young lady resided. I was in the habit of spending from Sunday to Monday at the Hall. On one of these mornings of my departure I found myself standing between the two closed windows in the lady's bedroom. It was about five o'clock on a bright summer morning. Her room looked eastward, mine directly west, and the church stood between the two houses, which were about five hundred yards apart. I have no impression whatever how I became transplanted from the house. The lady was in a camp bedstead, directly opposite to me, looking at and reaching out her arms towards me, when my disembodied spirit instantly disappeared to join the material body which it had left in some mysterious way. As I returned and was fitting in to my body on my left side, when half united I could see within me the ununited spiritual part on glow like an electric light, while the other united half was hidden in total darkness, looking black as through a thunder cloud, when, like the shutting of a drawer, the whole body became united, and I awoke in great alarm, with a belief that if any one had entered my room and moved my body from the position in which it lay on its back, the returning spirit could not have joined its material case, and that death, as it is vulgarly called, would have been inevitable."

In the morning at the breakfast-table the young lady said she had a strange experience. She saw M.D. in her bedroom, looking at her as she sat up in bed, and that he disappeared after a short stay; but how he got there she could not say, as she was positive she had locked her bedroom door. So one experience corroborated the other.[5]

[5] Quoted from a remarkable work by James Gillingham, surgical mechanist, Chard, Somerset. Mr. Gillingham sent me the name of the doctor, and assures me that the narrative is quite authentic.

_Speaking Doubles._

While discussing the subject, some friends called at Mowbray House, and were, as usual, asked to pay toll in the shape of communicating any experience they had had of the so-called supernatural. One of my visitors gave me the following narrative, the details of which are in the possession of the Psychical Research Society:--

"Some years ago my father and another son were crossing the Channel at night. My mother, who was living in England, was roused up in the middle of the night by the apparition of my father. She declares that she saw him quite distinctly standing by her bedside, looking anxious and distraught. Knowing that at that moment he was in mid-Channel, she augured that some disaster had overtaken him or the boy. She said, 'Is there some trouble?' He said, 'There is; the boy----' and then he faded from her sight. The curious part of the story is that my father at that very time had been thinking on board the steamer of having to tell his wife of the loss of the boy. The lad had been missed, and for a short time father feared he had fallen overboard. Shortly afterwards he was discovered to be quite safe. But during the period of suspense father was vividly conscious of the pain of having to break the news to his wife. It was subsequently proved by a comparison of the hour that his double had not only appeared but had spoken at the very moment he was thinking of how to tell her the news midway between France and England."

Next