There are millions of ghost stories throughout the world. Usually a lot of these ghost stories share some kind of common theme. They are the same stories told using different people and places, but the same message. There can often be some kind of scientific message as to why people keep hearing and or experiencing these stories. It could be a mass hysteria of ghost stories that are told so often they start to come true. Many of my family members have experienced ghosts and their stories sound very similar to other legends, and folklore. However, even though they are very similar to other stories, it does not mean that they aren't completely true to them. These ghosts can be as real as anything in science, but they might not be one of your typical horror movie villains.

The Reappearing Bloodstain:

My Mimi, or grandma, is seventy six years old and yet she is still more adventurous than I am at sixteen. For her seventy fifth birthday she went skydiving, when she landed all she said was “That’s a rush”. This is how she lives her life. She has been to every continent and worked more jobs than I can remember, and by doing this she has accumulated a lot of stories. In the 1980’s she owned the Martha Washington Inn, said to be one of the most haunted places in Virginia. She oversaw all the cleaning and upkeep of the Inn and this is where she found a bloodstain that would not go away. In front of room 403, she would constantly get complaints  due to a big red bloodstain on the carpet. She would clean it and it would be completely gone, and then it would come back the next day. This was very odd for her as she was a wizard at getting out stains. She had 7 children in the span of 10 years, and because of that there was no stain she could not fix. But this bloodstain kept coming back. She got so sick of this thing reappearing no matter what she did that she finally just replaced the carpet in that room. The next day it was back again.

The reappearing bloodstain is a very popular ghost story in many cultures. People believe that a tragic death leads to a piece of the person being left behind. In many cases that piece of a person is  blood. The Inn had been a women's college turned into a hospital during the civil war, leading to the story of this reappearing blood stain. It was said that a confederate soldier had fallen in love with one of the women in this school. He ran to go see her as union troops were closing in and he wanted to say goodbye to his love. But the union troops came into the hospital, and while trying to escape he was shot and died, forever leaving a bloodstain.

There are other stories of someone committing suicide and their family comes home to blood covering the floor, and no matter how many times they think it was cleaned it comes back. This reappearing bloodstain is easily explained in many instances. Blood can easily soak through carpet and wood, so even if you think you washed it it can be absorbed by carpet again. Sometimes these supposed bloodstains might not even be blood, but instead water stains from a leaky roof that may be assumed as blood because  a tragic event occurred there. The story of the recurring bloodstain is more often than not easily explained as something that is not at all supernatural.

The Haunted Barrack:

When my sister’s fiance, Jake, was going through his training in the Navy he often got the worst jobs.  He was positioned at an extremely old barrack that was rarely used anymore. This barrack was a massive building. There were two long floors and about 10 people staying there. The floors were separated by girls and boys and the boys were on the top floor while the girls slept on the bottom floor. This particular weekend most of the people that usually stayed in the barrack had left, and only Jake and two other guys were left. As a part of training Jake had to stay awake and go on routine checks to make sure all of the empty rooms were locked and there were no teens trying to prank them, or more importantly that the rooms were being used poorly by the other trainees. He was on his third walkthrough and he was still checking  that all of the doors were locked and empty when he came across one that was slightly ajar. He was a little confused because he was almost one-hundred percent sure he had already checked this door about three times and it had been locked every time. He brushed it off, locked it, and went to sit back down at his desk. At about 2 o'clock in the morning he went on another walk through. When he came across the room again the door was open about six inches this time. He was slightly confused because he sure that he locked it the last time around. He thought the lock might be broken so he went and tried to lock it from the inside. That worked. Then he tried locking it from the outside. That worked too. He double checked to make sure no one was in there playing a prank on him and after He was certain he had fixed the lock he sat back down. His desk had only been about 50ft away down a long hallway, so he thought he would have been able to see the door opening. At about 3 in the morning he heard a creaking and looked up and saw the door was a little open.

My sister Brenna was a sea cadet at the Buffalo Harbor from ages 12 to about 18, and most summers she would spend the night on the USS Sullivan. In her sea cadets class there were very few girls, and therefore very few people in her quarters. One night at around two in the morning she heard a loud metal clang. Her and the rest of the girls got up to see what it was, and found that about ten large metal racks had fallen from where they were connected to the wall with no one  around. They were all baffled, as in order to get these racks off the wall you had to push them up with a lot of force. It was humanly impossible for all of these racks to come off the wall and for the girls to wake up and see no one. She assumed it was one of the many ghosts she has seen on the ship.

In the United States there are hundreds of ghost stories similar to this one. Military bases or forts and naval ships are often home to many tragic deaths that breed this type of ghost story. Ships like the USS Hornet have had many deaths and accidents that make people feel like there is a ghost there. On the USS Hornet people have reported seeing a fifty member ghost crew. It is said that there are many disembodied voices and that equipment will turn on and off. The tragic stain left on these places makes it easy for people to assume that they are haunted, for believers it is logical. Often this is why people report seeing ghosts here. There have been so many legends and myths about these haunted places that people are looking for a spook and they want to experience a ghost or two. A normal gust of wind, or the sound of creaking pipes can turn into a terrifying ghost because it is what people want to hear. Often times the ghosts people see in these places are figments of their imagination, but there is just that little chance that it could be real that makes it so scary.

Shocking Shadowman Showdown:

My house may be the scariest place in the entire world. Mainly because of the people living in it, my brother is a gross teenage boy. My dad is constantly sitting in his leather reclining chair watching the movie 8 Mile on a loop. My dog likes to sit in the corner eating rocks. And you can often find me and my sister getting into fistfights, and then immediately laughing at how bad we are at fighting. On top of that it is one of the most haunted places I have ever been. Our dogs refuse to go in our basement, which may be the coldest, most spider infested hell I have ever seen. Both dogs bark at the corner of the certain rooms. Doors will slam open and closed even if all the windows are shut and there is no draft. You will hear people walking up and down the stairs, even if you are the only person home. The scariest thing that has happened there was waking up to dark figure standing over you. When I was about 10 years old I was sleeping on my bottom bunk in my bedroom facing out toward the rest of the room. I woke up out of a dead sleep and I looked up to see a giant black silhouette that looked like a man. I couldn't make out any facial features, or distinguishing characteristics, I just somehow felt that this was a man standing over me, watching me with curiosity. I was completely frozen with terror this thing and I just stared at each other. Then I did the stupidest thing imaginable and without even thinking about it I reached out to touch it. Then it disappeared. A year or two later, at about 3 o'clock in the morning, my brother came sprinting down the stairs, and ran in my room and said he was sleeping in my room tonight. I was a little baffled as he had never slept in my room, I asked him and he just said it was scary up there. I woke up in the morning got ready for school and then forgot about it. Recently it came up in a conversation and I asked him about it and he had the same experience as me with the dark shadowy figure. I told my older sister about this and it turned out the same thing happened to her and none of us told each other because we thought no one would believe us.

Recently there are many people on the internet who report having very similar experiences to my family and I. The thing that we saw is often called the shadow man and different stories have slightly different versions of this man, some say they felt an evil presence and this man had red glowing eyes. Many say the saw and felt almost the same thing as me. There are many different theories as to why so many people are experiencing such a similar event including the person being a time traveler from the future, someone from another dimension, a demon of some kind and even an alien. It is also said that this is just a shared nightmare that many people have after reading stories online. The more diabolical version of this Shadowman is the hat man who is said to appear in times of darkness and is sent from the devil himself. The hat man is often reported wearing a fedora or a top hat and even more rarely a cowboy hat. He is said to bring nightmares with him and that seeing him is a bad omen like seeing the grim reaper. All of this could also just be an excuse for real problems a person is experiencing in his or her life, and the mind is just creating something so you don't have to face your real worries. It also could be a part of sleep paralysis, where many people wake up to see a terrifying hallucination like the shadow man.

Strange events:

My Mom and Dad are two of the strangest people I know. My dad likes to watch the same three movies over and over again, and my mom is often more like a friend than a mother. They also believe in the strangest things. My dad is convinced that he is psychic and my mom is one hundred percent certain that the illuminati killed my Great Uncle Karl. And they have some of the strangest ghost stories I have ever heard.

My parents were only together for a few months and separated before they knew I was a thing. My mom was living in a duplex when I was first born and it was the only place she ever experienced anything paranormal. She used to be somewhere in the house cleaning or cooking dinner while I was sleeping and hear me crying loudly. She would go upstairs to check on me only to see me napping soundly. This usually happened about once a week. On top of that, whenever she slept on the couch in the living room she would feel like there was someone staring at her, yet she would look up and no one would be there. She said she envisioned him as a man with a mustache wearing a cowboy hat. She moved out when I was about three years old, and my aunt moved in. After a year or so my aunt told her the duplex was definitely haunted, my mom asked why and my aunt was experiencing the same things as my mom despite them never discussing any of this before . Hearing the cries could have just been two mothers paranoid about leaving their child unattended, but the cowboy is a little harder to explain.

My dad has recently experienced many health problems, and has a hard time dealing with not being his normal self. One night a few months ago he woke up late at night to see a figure standing over him, it wasn’t a shadow man. He said it was a silhouette that was full of color standing over him, watching peacefully. He said it felt comfortable and safe. After being frozen for a little bit his first instinct was to protect his children, so he shot up and tried to attack it. He hit this thing and it made almost a whimper and then disappeared. He was left feeling protected. This could be attributed to him needing something to ease his worry. His brain could have come up with something to make him feel better. He believes it was a family member who passed away watching out for him, and saying that everything was going to be okay.

Ghosts can be pretty scary. But a lot of times it is all in our head. The chilling creaks of floorboards are usually just a house shifting and not an evil spirit trying to kill you. Doors slamming open and closed is probably just a draft and not a ghoul gawking at you. The shadow you see out of the corner of your eye is likely just a shadow and not a spiteful Shadowman. There is no concrete way we can prove a ghost story is fact or fiction. So there is always that chance that it could be something much more sinister than what you thought, so you continue to keep the covers over your head at night. Afterall it is better to be safe than sorry.