Dusk Maiden of Amnesia & My Ghost Stories

I while back, I watched Dusk Maiden of Amnesia.  It’s about a ghost girl, and the first boy who can see her as she truly is and touch her, as well.  I really enjoyed it.  Despite being about a dead girl, it’s not terribly macabre, although there are a few creepy parts here and there.  Overall, it’s very light-hearted, with a touch of mystery as the Paranormal Investigation Club tries to investigate how exactly Yuuko, the ghost girl, died, since she doesn’t remember it herself.  It gets darker as it goes on, and the last episode is a bit of a tear-jerker, but it never gets very depressing.  Without spoiling anything, the ending is a total cop-out of a properly dramatic and emotionally fulfilling conclusion.  It has some mystery, some supernatural, some romance, some fanservice; it’s got something for everyone.  And it reignited my interest in the paranormal, too.

When I was younger, I loved the paranormal and the supernatural.  I knew oodles about ghosts, UFOs, monsters, mothmen, cryptozoology, Men in Black…  I’m pretty sure I read every single book at my middle and high schools on those topics.  But since high school, I haven’t really maintained that interest.  There’s still a bunch of stuff I recall, but, probably because I don’t believe in much of it anymore, with the exception of aliens, I haven’t researched them much until now.  I’m currently reading The Haunted, by Owen Davies.  It’s a cultural history of ghosts in England, and it already has the hilarious anecdote of a man threatening to kill himself so that his ghost will tear his lover to pieces if she doesn’t listen to his instructions.  (Now may be a good time to reveal that I have a dark sense of humor, but come on, isn’t that hilarious?  How can you take such a threat seriously?)

When I was in elementary school, I came across a stone once outside, whose general shape and size suggested to my young mind an old axehead.  My father even strapped it to a wooden rod so that I could have my own axe.  Looking back, it was most probably just a coincidentally ax-like piece of rock.  It was far too small and light to do much, and the stone didn’t seem like it’d take much of an edge.  But back then, I imagined it had once belonged to the Native Americans who had once lived there, perhaps inspired by the fact that, relatively near where I found it was a Native American burial ground, or so people said.

Once, my friends and I even went ghost hunting there.  We brought the axehead as bait, and a thermometer, in order that we could detect the ghosts’ arrival by the drop in temperature.  Unbeknownst to us, my father was also out there, throwing pebbles and such to scare us. (I really hope I’m as good a father to any potential future kids I might have as he was to me.)  As a kid, I always wanted to investigate everything.  I remember I even left questionnaires for Santa Claus for him to answer for me, and I asked the Easter Bunny his real name, too.  Had I not become an atheist young, I probably would have asked God questions, too.  (My father gave him the name Ralph.  I have no idea why.  Maybe it’s an old cultural reference I don’t get.  I’ll go with Harvey should my kids ever ask me the same thing.)

That was only my second encounter with ghosts, though.  There was another.  I had a rather interesting house, growing up.  Constructed in the late 1800s, it was a brothel during World War II, the home of a sailor and his wife after that, and owned by drug dealers after them, at whose party a young girl broke her neck and died while going down the laundry chute, and finally, it belonged to us.  The sailor’s widow still kept in touch with our neighbors, and she once visited them.

On the first night, I woke up my parents, saying that a knocking had awoken me.  But when they investigated my room, they couldn’t hear anything or find something that might have made the noise.  Eventually, they decided it was just my imagination, and everyone went back to bed.

On the second night, my older sister woke up the whole house with a shriek.  When my startled parents arrived, she said that she had woken up in the middle of the night, and seen a man standing at the foot of her bed in the shadows, staring at her.  By the time my parents had reached the room, though, he was gone.

Nothing woke up my parents during the third night, but the next morning, I had a story to tell them.  When I had woken up during the night, I had seen a man, floating above my bed, soaking wet, one arm in the air.  I had been too young to be frightened, and he had eventually vanished.  I hadn’t even bothered to make a disturbance about it until the next day, when I had happily told my parents about my bizarre encounter.

Who was this man?  The widow’s husband, who had once lived in the house, had died while at sea during a rain storm.  He had been tossed nearly off the ship, catching the side with one hand, holding himself up, when his ship and a neighboring one, brought together by the storm, collided, and he was crushed between the two iron hulks.  That man had been who I had seen in my room, still wet, still hanging on, brought back by his old wife’s return to the house in which they had once been so happy.

I was too young to remember it now, so I have only my parents’ testimony, but it makes for a good story to tell.  Even though I don’t believe in ghosts anymore, I still really love ghost stories.  I actually really enjoy the supernatural and paranormal in general.  Maybe it’s connected to my love of history.  I wonder if maybe I’m just dissatisfied with mundane day-to-day life.  It would explain a lot: my interest in history, my love of stories and fiction, my propensity for writing, &c.  Just a thought…  I certainly can’t dismiss it out of hand.  Real life is fun and all, but isn’t it fun traveling elsewhere?

So, does anyone else have their own personal ghost stories?  Ever seen something creepy and spooky at night?