I've heard many a ghost stories in my time - some give me chills, others don't. My own conventional wisdom is that when I get the chills, the story is real.
Do you believe is ghosts?
My best friend (in university) parent's lived nearby in a town once rich with steel mills and coal processing plants. As did her parents parents - as did my parents and my parents parents. Most towns along the Monogehela River have that same claim to fame, and families there are born and buried there for generations. In fact, I was just back in the 'burgh and was still struck by the people who live there seemingly because the just can't leave home. I was asked at least once a day while I was there "How can you live in Montana?" as if it were a foreign nation.
I digress....back to my best friend's parent's...
Her grandfather died in the late summer of my last year there at school. Her grandmother was quite a woman - strongly independent, and quite the cook. I had been to many dinner's, and she was always a fantastic hostess. The death of her husband was hard on her. Depression sat in, as it does for many spouses who lose their partner after decades of marriage. Soon it became evident that she couldn't keep the house up, and by mid-fall it was decided that she were to move into her daughter's house (my best friend's parents).
Moving a lifefime - two generations - out of a house is a big ordeal. It isn't like moving out of just any-old-house...moving out of this house took weeks, as the family was not content with just moving out - every inch of the house was painstakingly gone over, cleaned, dusted, and cared for like a precious old antique.
It finally was coming to the closing date for the new buyers - who were rightly anxious to get into this gorgeous craftsman wood and brick home, with it's gorgeous porch that overlooked the river valley. Every thing - everything - was gone from the house, and my best friends mother still made one last trip back to the home where she had been raised. Something was eating at her, and she found it extremely hard to leave that 'one last time'.
She had walked out the door and back into the house, walking around the living room and the kitchen several times...and finally the overwhelming feeling overtook her. She stood in the kitchen and looked up and said, outloud "What is it Pop? What am I forgetting? What do you want?" - speaking to her father, of course.
Silence. She turned in a circle, looking upwards, in the kitchen.
Suddenly, one of her feet froze - it felt as if someone was pushing down on her foot. She looked down. "What is it Pop?" she said, outloud. The floor creeked under her feet, which had not moved.
Something told her to rip up the lineoleum - commonsense told her not too, but she simply couldn't not do it, the feeling so overwhelming that it was.
Up came the lineoleum, revealing a loose floorboard, and under that floorboard was $1,500 in old U.S. money. Not a hugely sum by today's standards (now nearly 18 years as I tell this story) but certainly a significant amount of money for a steelworker's family in the late 1950's - early 1960's (which were the dates on the bills). Parents familiar with not only the Depression, but also with the long strikes that could really tax a family's resources - keep in mind that labor strikes amongst Pittsburgh Steelworkers were not uncommon.
My best friend's mom was crying when she told me the story - because I just had to hear it directly from her. Not painful tears, but just a 'I can't believe I just had a conversation with my dead father' type of crying.
I still get chills when I think of this story.
So that's my ghost story - anyone else have one?