Halloween is upon us and nothing gets us in the spirit like a hair-raising ghost tale. We asked our readers to share the creepiest things that ever happened to them. Go ahead, open that bag of candy and settle in.
Sharp-Dressed Apparition
On a trip to Eureka Springs several years ago, my wife and I stopped at the Crescent Hotel to get a Starbucks coffee and while there, I had to use the restroom. When I opened the door to the restroom, there was a gentleman standing at the sink in a full suit with vest and had a bowler hat on. I didn’t think much about it but when I turned back to speak to him, he was gone. No one had left the restroom though. I thought it was strange. I had heard the hotel was haunted but I didn’t believe in ghosts. On a follow-up visit to Eureka Springs during a business trip, I stopped by again, but due to a knee condition, I opted to take the elevator and on the wall of it was a picture from 1930. In the picture was the same gentleman I had seen on the earlier visit in the same suit and hat. He was standing on the steps of the hotel when it was a sanitarian. Apparently I had seen a ghost after all.
-Jerry Saunders
Reappearing Ornament
When my husband and I bought our house in 1998, we knew the previous owner had lived in it for 40+ years and died peacefully in the home. As we moved in, we remarked on the old ornament of a red bird that had been left hanging in the kitchen window. Neither of us liked the look of it, so I took it down.
A few days later, my husband left very early to catch a flight for a business trip. After he left, I noticed the ornament was back in the window. I remember thinking it was weird that he had hung it again. So on my way to work, I took the ornament down and put it in the recycling bin outside. When I returned home that day, it was hanging in its spot in the window again.
I’ve left the ornament in the window for the last 17 years, only moving it at Christmas time to put it in a place of honor on the Christmas tree.
-Kristen Heldenbrand
Disappeared
My dad and my two brothers-in-law were headed out to pick up dinner. It was early evening and already dark. One brother-in-law went out before the others. My sister’s house was at the top of a steep, dead end street. When my dad and other brother-in-law were ready to leave, they went out and couldn’t find my first brother-in-law anywhere. After about 20 minutes of calling for him, looking in the woods and at the top of the street my dad heard a car door slam. He looked down the street but there were no cars there, and he didn’t see anyone except our missing brother-in-law walking up the hill. He was dazed and very confused. He had no idea where he’d been and didn’t remember walking down the street or being in a car. This happened many, many years ago, and to this day he will not talk about that night.
-Sandy Greene
Heavenly Workout
As I was walking through the house to Ginger’s home office, I passed on my right a cheerful sun room on the other side of a sliding glass door. A woman in her 60s, with reddish hair and wearing kelly green sweats, was helping a man in his 80s to exercise, stretching, that kind of thing. They didn’t look my way.
As I got to Ginger’s office, I asked, “Who are the man and woman in the sun room?” Ginger said, “What man and woman?” Me: “You know, in the sun room.” Ginger: “What sun room? There’s nobody else in the house. Show me what you saw.”
We walked back toward the front door and there’s no sun room and no elderly couple. I described the couple for Ginger. Her mother had died several years before, but her mother had red hair and her favorite color was kelly green. Ginger’s father had Alzheimer’s and was at that moment in a day program for Alzheimer’s patients. When he returned home, he, indeed, looked like the man I saw.
I have no explanation. I was well rested and had taken no untoward chemical substances. Nothing about the encounter seemed spooky. It seemed like the most natural, most benign thing in the world.
“Ginger” said my experience made her feel better. She’d felt as if her mother were watching over her, she said, and this just reinforced her feeling. Her father has since passed on. And Ginger, despite a dire prognosis, is still alive and very active helping others with her rare form of cancer.
-Anonymous
Haunted Hotel
My family has always loved Halloween, so one year when the holiday fell on a Saturday, we booked a room at the Crescent Hotel in Eureka Springs. We spent the day visiting the downtown, bought a pair of geode bookends at a store and later took the “haunted hotel” tour. The kids took photos and they all had “orbs” that some TV shows suggest are spirits, so all went to bed happy with our ghost fix.
That night I was startled awake with the idea that something was tapping my forehead. A nightstand was between the beds, its surface was covered with drinks, phones, etc. The stone bookends were at the back of that table.
As I lay there, I heard a slow scraping, then a loud thud. When we turned on the light we found that one of the bookends had been dragged across the tabletop, clearing a path around all of the other items, and dropped off onto the floor. That was enough for me, we haven’t been out looking for ghosts since.
-Dana Meyer
The Uninvited
Before moving to Little Rock in 2012, we lived in New Orleans. We were only the second owners of this 75-year-old home, the original owners lived there until they both passed away. After weeks of online research and questioning my neighbors, I found out that the wife passed away in the home (at her request) and the husband was brought to a local hospice, where he later passed away.
The first week we moved in, we got a dog and she immediately started acting funny and barking at things in the hallway. She would move her head as if she were watching something walk by, then bark. That’s when we knew something was up.
One night, we were all in the living room watching television and we heard something loud hit the floor in the guest bedroom. I had a picture of my father I framed on the nightstand and when we walked into the guest bedroom, the picture frame was face down on the floor, lying next to the closet door, which was about four feet from the end table. That moment was the very first time in my life that I truly believed in ghosts and spirits. We knew that someone (most likely the wife) was still hanging around in the house after we had moved in.
A few weeks later, I was in the backyard pulling weeds in one of the flower beds that butted up against the house and I came across a block of cement. It was covered with leaves and as I wiped away the debris, I began to see initials and a date carved into the cement. It turned out to be a grave, which I later learned was for a baby. The wife apparently requested that she die in the bedroom next to her baby that was buried outside of the bedroom window.
I mentioned my findings to one of my neighbors, who knew the previous owners very well, but she would never indulge any information regarding the grave. She only mentioned that she was pregnant at one time and that was it. Also, both of their obituaries said nothing about the two of them leaving behind children.
After further research, I learned that she apparently had this baby when she was in her 50s, which one could only think that maybe the child was stillborn or passed away at a young age.
After I discovered the tiny grave, I started looking for other things to put the pieces of the puzzle together. I started digging behind the garage where our dog had previously dug up random pots and mason jars thinking there may be more clues. We had a hammock under the trees in the backyard and as I was shoveling into the ground, one side of the hammock became unhooked and fell to the ground. If anyone has seen a hammock, you know that they are hung with a “S” curve hook. You have to literally finagle the “S” hook to remove it from the hammock stand.
I knew then and there that I was asking for trouble. I stopped digging and I then began to clean off the grave site. I pressure washed and scrubbed it and planted flowers around it. Ever since I did that, we never heard or saw anything else from the wife again.
-Leslie Gordy
The Caring Ghost
It was cold air brushing against my left side, enough air to move my hair, that first got my attention in our new house. The cat bowed up and hissed as we watched the shadow moving away. This became a regular occurrence, but it wasn’t long before our house guest got real.
He would open the door to let the kittens out so they wouldn’t cry, and he would move the gun from the night stand to the middle of the bedroom floor like he wanted it gone, then I saw him face-to-face. He appeared to be from a black and white movie, gray from head to toe wearing a wide brimmed hat and overcoat. He never spoke and only appeared in person when I was sad. I came to believe he had and was a caring spirit.
I talked to co-workers about the occurrences. Someone asked, “Didn’t you move into Linda’s house? Have you seen the man in the hat and coat?” Apparently Linda talked about him frequently, hallelujah I wasn’t crazy! The house is still there and I wonder if he is. When I talk about him now, I refer to him as Casper my friendly ghost.
-Debbie Watts
Unshackled
Up until I was 7 years old, my family lived in a house that overlooked a very old cemetery in the distance, sitting up on a hill. My bedroom window faced that direction, and one night under a full moon I kept getting out of bed to tell my parents that I was seeing a ghost in white running through the graveyard. They kept telling me to go back to bed and go to sleep. A few days later we saw on the news that an escaped prison inmate had escaped a nearby prison and had been caught in the woods behind the graveyard, wearing a white shirt. My parents suddenly realized that prison inmate was “my ghost.”
-Robin Stauffer
The Friendly Ghost
The story of Casper, my personal friendly ghost. Twelve years ago I bought a house in west Little Rock. I was recently divorced and [the house] was a really good deal (should have double thought that, I guess). I had major repair jobs to do before I actually moved in, so was spending most evenings there alone, working.
About one week into my tasks, I was painting a wall in the family room where I could also see down the hallway. Out of the corner of my eye, as plain as day, I saw a liquid mercury like figure moving from the master bedroom to the guest room. I’d painted the master a Merlot red and I guess he didn’t like it.
Later neighbors hold me the sweet former owner had requested to be at home when he passed away — in the master bedroom. No worries, they said he was the sweetest little old man. Weird as it seems, he is my protector and comforts me when I am having a horrible night. While I accept him with loving arms, the three roommates I’ve had don’t share my loving attachment and he has scared the begeebers out of them. But he’s my Casper.
-Claudia Connerly
This post originally appeared in October 2015.