My Paranormal Experiences part 1: Ben Franklin, Footsteps, and a Cone-headed Ghost?

To clarify: I am an atheist. I don't believe in God, the Devil, the afterlife, angels, Demons, etc.
I'm also a skeptic.

I've always been interested in the "paranormal". It's been a topic to which I've devoted quite a bit of time over the course of my life. However, that doesn't mean I believe it all. Far from it, actually.
Quite a bit of what I've read I find hard to swallow.
I enjoy watching television shows about the paranormal, though more often than not I find them a source of humor rather than scares.
I find most of these shows suspect - whether it be the "evidence" they collect, or the way in which the conduct their "investigations".
In purely scientific terms, they get a failing grade. Spending a night in an old home with some video cameras, recorders, and various "ghost hunting tools" does not a scientific investigation make.
There are some curious bits of footage and audio that crop up from time to time that peek my interest, and I've seen some things that give me pause. However, on the whole, I'd say they are television shows and they are doing what TV shows do best: entertain.
What interest me more are the personal experiences people have. I've read my fair share of purportedly "True Ghost stories" and known credible people that have told me of experiences they've had and those, i find, are harder to dismiss... especially in light of the experiences I've had.

In my life I've had several "encounters" (for lack of a better term) with what could be best described as the paranormal.
The earliest being in the house I grew up in as a child )birth to 10 yrs old). It was an old house in an old town in Massachusetts. Formerly a one family home, we had converted it into a two family, renting out the upstairs to family members or friends.
I remember clearly hearing what sounded like people waling back and forth across the house during the night. Footsteps from the upstairs apartment were common while the apartment was occupied. but i'd hear these footsteps while it was between tenants. Now, this could be the house settling, but knowing the sound of people walking upstairs, I find it difficult to imagine I would mistake the two.
There was also the issue i had with my room.
I, being the youngest, had the smallest room - what had been a sewing room - and I refused to sleep in it. for whatever reason that room filled me with dread at night. I remember having a dream (i believe it was a dream) in which there was a man sitting in the closet talking to me. I recall telling my parents about it and saying I thought it was Ben Franklin. (Funny, I know.)
What was odd about this was, just before we moved we were doing renovations in preparation to sell the house when my father tore away some drywall near the attic. What he found there was the signature on a beam of the homes original builder. His name? Ben Franklin.
Obviously it wasn't the founding father Ben Franklin, but it was a curious coincidence given my dream.

another experience from childhood involved the home of my Aunt and Uncle.
We were invited to a large family gathering during the early fall at their home. One thing that happened that day has stayed with me all my life.
I had wandered into the house to find my Father. He and the other guys were watching football in the den.
I walked into the house from the back door toward the front of the house. The den was on the left through and open door, the hallway went from the back of the house all the way to the front door. I walked to the den, saw my father, and continued down the hall toward the door. There was a mudroom/foyer with french doors which had frosted glass. They never used their front door, instead opting for the back door since the driveway was accessible by that door.
There was the unused front door, a small mudroom, and then the frosted glass doors. As I approached, the sun was streaming in. It was later in the afternoon/early evening, so the sun was low. The house faced west so all of the sunlight was coming through toward me. As I got to the glass doors a figure stepped out from the side of the mudroom, behind the door, and directly in in front of me.
I was on one side, "he" on the other. The form was in silohuette, but towered over me. It seemed, at the time, he was much taller than my father, who was 6', and it had a pointed head. The closest comparison I can think of would be the coneheads from SNL (the least scary thing, figures).
I looked up, frozen in fear. the odd thing was I felt as if it were looking down at me. I don't understand how that would've been given the glass and the light, but i felt it. I could feel him staring at me.
I turned on a dime and bolted for my father in the den.
I was scared out of my wits by this "man". I told my Father what had happened but was reassured that I was just imagining things.
Even then i remember thinking "Where did he come from?" It was as if he stepped out of the shadows. There was no where for a person to have been hidings and it wasn't anyone playing a trick on me. Of all the experiences I've had, this had to be the most terrifying and has stayed with me my entire life.
I'd like to think i was imagining the whole thing. Chalk it up to childish thoughts, but there is more.
A few years later, at another family party - this one at my home - one of my cousins, whose house I had seen the figure 0 began talking about the "haunted house they used to live in.". I didn't immediately offer up my tale, but listened to what was being said.
The house, it turns out, was "haunted" - at least they thought so. Everyone in the house, including my aunt and Uncle, had had experiences. Voices, shadowy figures, you name it. It was your typical haunted house, but also extremely active.
Knowing this, It made me feel that my encounter may not have been my imagination, though doubt lingered.
I'm 32 years old now, and a couple of years ago another cousin of mine was staying with me for awhile. One night we got talking about hauntings and he says "Remember the house Aunt Jane used to live in?" I said "Yeah, wasn't it haunted?".. He then told me of an experience he had there once while sleeping over.
He had walked own the hall at night, the same hall i had walked down, and as he got near those same frosted glass doors he saw a tall, shadowy man with a pointed head behind the glass. He screamed and ran to my Aunt and Uncles room. They calmed him down, but he never stayed over their house again.
I had never told that story to anyone, yet here was corroborative testimony from a credible source. How had we, in the same house, both had eerily similar encounters with this cone-headed man?
We were both shocked to learn the others story and took it as "proof" (of a sort) that what had happened had indeed been real.


Again, I'm no great believer... but I believe in the things I experience. That is something I will never take from someone. If you are credible, then I have no choice but to believe you experienced what you say you experienced.
Now, were these experiences paranormal? I don't know. Where they ghosts? I don't know. I don't know enough to make any definitive statements. All i do know is that they were real to me and I remember them clearly.

There have been several other encounters over the years, which I will share later. These, in my opinion, are much harder to explain and much more frightening (at least to me.)

Curious, anyone else ever encounter cone-headed or elongated headed(?) entities?

the ghost of dan akroyds career>?

great post dude. sorry i havent much to contribute. at least someone else experienced what you did.

reply to post by okamitengu


Thanks. Yeah, dan's career is as dead as whatever the hell was haunting me. who knows, he'd probably take that job these days.

It's good to have corroborative testimony.
With these things it's hard to say, definitively, whether or not something happened. when it happens to someone else, in the same place, and the experiences are so similar, it makes debunking it that much more difficult.

Good old ghost stories.

I am also an Atheist, pro-science-based facts, disbelieve in the same things, and also enjoy watching Ghost Adventures(bro!).

I have absolutely no clue what the cone head could be other than someone wearing something. How old was the house, and where was it? Could it have been a KKK members house or something like that where they would wear unique garb that would create that appearance?

That being said, I have had a few experiences myself where the things that happened were completely unexplainable.

Mine happened in my new track home in Southern California which just so happened to be in an old battlefield. There were Mexican, Native American, and Civil War people who fought and died in the area. I went to a small valley school which even had two graveyards which were the resting place for some of the natives. Like I said I experienced things in a brand new track home which had no history. I would constantly see a black shadow at the end of the hallway in the corner of my eye, hear footsteps upstairs, even hear/find things on the floor. My family also would individually experience things when alone and never spoke about it until later.

The strongest incident in my mind is one which there was no explanation. I was home alone watching tv just sitting on a couch. Across from me was my desk which had some items on it, including a heavy solid metal fork. All of a sudden while I was sitting there this fork goes flying off the desk and lands a few feet away, directly towards me. I immediately get up and go investigate what happened. As I was looking at the fork and the desk I suddenly got this immense electrical feeling, the one they talk about on the shows. Every hair on my arm stood up and I felt an intense electrical charge. And while I was experiencing this feeling I noticed the tv was suddenly getting more and more quiet. I quickly looked to my left and noticed the volume being turned down by itself. The volume was running through an amp which has a manual dial, not digital, which requires a remote or physical contact to change the volume. The combination of the 3 all at once completely blew my mind away.

Ever since then I have only felt that electrical feeling a handful of times. I think I have some unique sensitivity to electricity because if there is a power outage I can physically feel it. I also wake up out of a dead sleep right before power is returned during power outages. Really bizarre stuff!

Thanks for sharing your experiences with us. Wow, this the first time I have ever heard of anyone sighting a cone head type being. There are skeletons with cone heads, some were forced into that shape by certain cultures, some may be alien, who knows?

I would like very much to hear about your other experiences.

reply to post by ImNotACylon


If you don't believe in the afterlife, demons, etc., after having these experiences... I don't know what to say!
I am probably wasting my time typing up this reply, but...

Here is an article on cone head aliens:
www.google.com... eads&ei=zV9sUcTWJMeXyAH__4GwBQ&usg=AFQjCNFWzTaaEHTHV03q9wB0PjgC02DgTg

Here is a video on cone head aliens. You and your cousin were probably visited by one (more times than you remember!).




I look forward to hearing the rest of your story. I have a thread on the paranormal... over 130 pages! So, I'm always interested in hearing these stories. S&F for you, Guy!!!