Richard The Friendly Ghost-Humorous and True Ghost Stories

I had a chance to post this in another forum and it got me thinking that maybe there are more "true" and humorous ghost stories. I should point out that if someone were to ask me directly I might still say I don't even believe in spirits, but as you will read there is a good deal of evidence in my own life indicating I could be wrong in that assertion.

About six years ago our next door neighbor, who was only in his mid thirties, passed away from cancer. We were not particularly close and at the time he died we were out of town for several months on business. He was a quite friendly and somewhat charismatic individual, yet still more of an introvert than not.

His widow would later describe him to me as something akin to the world’s greatest prankster. This is important to know.

When we returned home for good after his death, very odd things began happening immediately, literally daily, making the connection is pretty easy to make. “Richard” does indeed enjoy messing with me. I do a ton of tinkering with everything from amateur inventor projects to major home repair if I'm competent to do so. EVERY SINGLE TIME since Richard's passing whenever I get the tools out, they began to have a life of their own. Many, many times I may put a pair of pliers or some other item down and eventually find them somewhere else the next time I need it. For example, I have trained myself to only lay the wire strippers directly in front of me whenever I use them because I know I will need them multiple times and so it is sensible to have a dedicated location. Almost half a second later I have found them so far out of place as to be physically unreachable without getting up from the work bench and moving. Usually they are off to the side, maybe tucked under another tool, and sometimes I would swear they have completely disappeared until I finally get up to look for them and there they are exactly in my original line of sight where they were supposed to be or in contrast maybe under my leg where it would have been impossible to place without performing some act too distasteful to describe in a G rated forum.

I have a longer story that says when all the kids are failing, you have to eventually take a look at the teacher.
I know that Richard is only playing, but it gets frustrating when I need to do something quickly. He doesn’t seem interested in anything else in our lives, but whenever I get the tools out it seems to be the same as calling him on the psychic hot line and inviting him over.

I hope his playfulness means he is happy, and when my wife puts her tiny red and white night gown on that he is either downstairs playing with the sockets and wrenches or suffers temporary deaf and blindness.

I would love input about Richard or other stories of similar nature. Thanks for the time.

reply to post by samstone11
The reality of this stuff sometimes leaves me confused and trying to hold two opposing concepts at the same time. So on one hand, I don't believe in 'ghosts' because there's no sensible reason for them or even a rational hypothesis of how exactly they are supposedly powered. What energy propels them? Where would their supposed intelligence be located?

On the other hand, such things have been experienced by me, my family and friends at my parents' home. Objects have vanished from sight only to turn up where they should be days or weeks later. Voices in an empty room and footsteps on the stairs have also been occasional occurrences over the years. The 'voices' were male and have been heard by family and friends in daylight and late at night.

I recognise your routine of placing tools in particular places. I do it too and never fail with screws either; they always get placed in order of removal with electrical stuff. So whatever is happening...it's yours! You can't prove it and only you can be sure of the situation. For me, I've never managed to be 100% certain because of what I wrote up there. I don't believe in the stuff so my mind naturally goes to great lengths to dispute what it remembers happening.

reply to post by samstone11


So, you put down some tools and then you couldn't find them where you thought you'd put them.

Not exactly incontrovertible proof of the supernatural, is it?

I'm by no means a skeptic, by the way....but tools mysteriously dematerialising in one place and rematerialising in another is a bit of a stretch for me.

reply to post by CJCrawley

I absolutely agree with you. The deal here is that I don't necessarily believe in such things either, but since it very rarely happened before because I can be pretty OCD on such things and now it occurs virtually every time I do any work there seems to be a connection. I doubt there is any way to ever know if Richard is responsible or if I'm just getting old enough to not realize when I have senior moments, but I am recognized as a very organized person and this is the only part of my life where such things happen.

Does that make more sense?

I'll share one of many comedic ghost stories that have happened to me, this one being the most humorous in my opinion . The setting is six years ago at my family's house. No one is home except for me. My sister had a haunted CD player that turned on and off by itself at least three times a week. It didn't matter whose house it was in, which outlet was used, nothing. I say she "had" it because we ended up selling it in a garage sale, but that's another story.

I'd just gotten off work and went to lay on the couch for a nice, long, afternoon nap in the day-room. I was really, really tired after being awake 36 hours pulling shifts at the hospital. I didn't bother changing clothes, I just dropped my purse on the table and plopped down on the couch like a bag of rocks. I start to drift happily, reality fading at the edges.. the silence taking up almost tangible space in my ears. Then I hear this. At MAX volume:

www.youtube.com...

So naturally, my first thought is. "Oh #. I'm dying. I'm going to hell." I'm paralyzed, the music is so loud it sounds like it's coming from inside my head! I thought this was the soundtrack to the end of my life. I waited for the montage.

It took maybe 5 seconds. 5 endless, cruel seconds for my brain to turn on fully and realize that my sister left her Phantom of the Opera CD inside the player.

I told her the story when she got home. I still can't live it down.

Why would someone who you admit you were never close with, why would that person be content in afterlife, hanging round your place and moving a few tools around? Makes absolutely no sense at all, sounds like you're just forgetful to be honest.

reply to post by McCool

I fully understand your opinion. I am getting up in years, but generally I can count memory as one of my strong points and my wife would also add I have a touch of OCD. As I said, even I may not believe it is Richard either, but very soon after his passing his wife married one of his close friends and moved away never to be seen or heard from again--at least by us. If Richard really was a bit of a prankster and there are such things as ghosts it would make a little sense that he might come visiting if he wasn't able or is restrained from traveling very far. I am terribly uneducated in the spirit world and normally I would think you may be right when you say I just misplaced things. What has my attention is the absolute consistency and the fact I can remember much smaller details and items of any other matter with little effort.

Your comments made me curious more about such thing. Can anyone tell me how realistic this could be? If I were to be accept ghosts or spirits as real, are there "rules" like I see in the movies such as having to right a wrong before they can go into the light, or they get attached to a place and never leave, etc? If Richard is really messing around with me, does that constitute a poltergeist and is there a difference between "ghosts" and the "spirit" world? Don't worry about hurting my feelings, I really am curious.

Thanks for helping me think.

reply to post by samstone11

The deal here is that I don't necessarily believe in such things either, but since it very rarely happened before because I can be pretty OCD on such things and now it occurs virtually every time I do any work there seems to be a connection.

Sounds like a classic case of the self-fulfilling prophecy.

You knew your neighbour had died...and THEN you started losing tools and reasoned that there MUST be a connection between the two (otherwise completely unrelated) events.

But, as someone has pointed out, you didn't really know your neighbour and the story just doesn't make a lot of sense.