I've been reading all of these great stories on your site for almost a year now. I thought I would share some of my own experiences. My family has always been firm believers in ghost. We've all had encounters somewhere at some point. I had my first encounters at a very young age. Let me set the stage.
     The year was 1989. I was five years old. My mother and I had to move in with my aunt and her three kids because she was struggling a bit with money being a single parent and all. My aunt owned this two story house. It was sturdy, but it was starting to show its age. The main thing that you really need to know about the house was that there were only two bedrooms upstairs, one that was to the right and one to the left.
     A couple of months of living there, I started to hear noises up stairs, just rustling and footsteps whenever nobody would be up there. Well unfortunately my mother and I slept up there in the room on the right. We slept in the floor and my cousin slept in the bed.
     One night my cousin and my mother were talking. It was really late possibly going into the early morning hours. Everyone was asleep, but us. My mother all of sudden tells everyone to be quiet. So we all quieted down. We heard someone walking up the stairs. There was no door to the rooms and our heads were pointing right at the entrance. Anyway we heard someone walk into the room, but we couldn't see anything.
     All of sudden the pillow that we were using in the floor flattened down like someone was standing on it; me being five years old. I didn't know what to think of this. I started asking my mother what it was. Then we heard the footsteps move over to my cousin's bedside near the window. It was then we seen a shadow on the floor reflecting from the moonlight, but there was nobody there. My cousin was almost in tears asking my mother what was there. My mother just kept telling her to be quiet. We then heard this "shadow" walk out of the room and back down the stairs.
     I don't remember much after the experience except my heart was racing. I finally got back to sleep. My other experience is more simple, but more frightening. This one was a few months after that other experience in the same house. My mother and I had gotten the other bedroom all to ourselves after my cousin moved out. One night as we were trying to get to sleep in the bed; we heard someone walking up the stairs. My mother was facing the entrance of the room. I had my back turned to it.
     All of sudden I feel this hand reaching under my neck and moving around like it's looking for something. I told my mother to quit. She said she hadn't done anything; me being five years old. I didn't believe her. I said you touched my neck. She again denied that she ever did. We both then heard something walk out of the room and back down the stairs again. We never did see anything though. The odd thing about that room was that the corner of the room was pitch black at night. I've never seen a place so dark before. It was unnerving even to me and I was only five years old.

      My name is Steven and I'm from Northern Ireland. I witnessed something when I was just seven years old that to this day still has an imprint on my mind.
     When my mother met my stepfather we moved from a place in Coleraine called Winston way into a flat on a street called Westbourne crescent, also in Coleraine. It wasn't long after moving into this flat that my mother noticed that there was a small bird which would sit at the kitchen window every morning tapping its beck on the glass. We didn't really take much notice to the bird; we just thought that it must have been fed at the window by the previous occupants of the flat.
     Our flat was a two story flat with just one other below us. In the other flat lived a family of four. The layout of the flat was two bedrooms one on either side of the stairs, which led from the front door. My room was on the left and mum and dad's room was on the right. The landing at the top of the stairs was square in shape and quite small. Opposite my room door was the door to the kitchen, and next to that was the living room door. If you stepped out of my bedroom door and went directly left that would be the bathroom. My room was a small rectangular shaped room with the door opening into the room itself. My bed faced the door on the opposite side of the room and it was in this bed that I started to witness something which to me was not normal.
     I was asleep in bed one night when suddenly I woke for no reason. I did not open my eyes fully but enough to see that there was two silhouettes at the bottom of my bed. One of which was smaller than the other. They made their way towards the open kitchen door and vanished into the shadows of the room. I closed my eyes and began to cry loud enough so that my mother would here. My mother came to my room and I told her what had happened. She took me to her room where I slept until morning; frequently after that that the bird which tapped at the window in the kitchen would waken me with its constant tapping. I believe the tapping would start at around six in the morning, I do not the exact time because I would always go back to sleep only to be stirred by my mother for school at 8am.
     A few months after my first scare I was asleep in my bed with a torch because of the fright I had received previous, I was woke again. Only this time when I squinted my eyes to the bottom of the bed I discovered there was a man standing at the foot of my bed with a young boy. Both of which were dressed in Oliver twist like clothes. Their faces were blackened with a black dust. I closed my eyes again and lay there for what seemed like forever until I fell asleep again.
     My mother never believed what I was telling her about what I had seen she said I must have been dreaming or imagined it. Nevertheless she moved my bed so that it was behind my bedroom door when it was open.
     Moving my bed did not deter what I could only think were ghosts. I awoke with the sound of the tapping bird as I did almost every morning. It was daylight through the curtains. Out of the corner of my eye I could see a silhouette of a person moving along the side of my bed and across the bottom. I said to myself it must be dad and went back to sleep. Later that morning when I got out of bed I asked dad what he was looking for in my room and he said 'I wasn't in your room son ". I knew then that it was the man that I had seen previous at the foot of my bed. That was the last time I ever witnessed them. I am now 26 years old and this has been in my head since I was seven.

     Hi! I have a story for you! This happened just the other night ~ November 15, 2006, I swear, this really did happen! I was walking outside to feed my dogs after work, and Baby (my Lab) was looking over behind the barn, and acting really nervous, and seemed like she was trying to get my attention. So I looked over to where I thought she might have been looking, and saw a shadow of something I couldn't really describe, ducking back behind the barn, I heard a loud crackling sound, and then an awful sort of whine, and then nothing. At that moment see, I was already running back inside. I don't know what the thing was, but I didn't like it, not one bit. It sounded like, not right, just put it that way. It sounded like something I have ever heard, never want to hear again.     The past few nights, and I thought maybe I was just dreaming, I kept hearing a few people whispering, this was in my kitchen, about 3:20 am. Now, I don't know? I thought I was dreaming though, we certainly didn?t have any company, my husband and child was asleep by the time I finally got home.     I don't really think that my house would be haunted; I know that someone was once murdered here, but lately there have been some things I couldn't really explain, not logically anyway. Are these "Shadow-People"? Are they Devil's minions? What the heck do you think they could be?

     I have a story I would like to share. This happened earlier this year, and was after my friend was injured and killed, following an accident that occurred during construction of a new library downtown, mostly a freak accident. I don't like talking about it much, so I will leave it at that (no offense, just not something I choose to discuss all too often).     When it happened, I was driving down these back-roads, and there is a place I used to go to get away, it is on this dirt road that leads to some sort of factory, I believe?     I was just driving around, and I'd had a few beers, and also had a few on me (I wasn't drunk), anyway I see something that to this day I don't understand what this means. I see my friend standing by the side of the road, he is waving and there is something that looks like a shadow person standing at his side? Shadow person, is that right?     I mean, this didn't so much as look like a person, as it did a ghost maybe?     It is difficult to describe, but a lot like some of the other stories here. Can you tell me what, no why I saw what I saw? Maybe why I saw it? I don't like thinking to much about it, it bothers me when I do, it's weird.