I had a funny encounter with ghosts that scared the you know what out of me when it happened, but now that I've done research and such I realized that they weren't mean ghosts, they were nice ghosts.
It was in high school, and some friends and I were playing poker in a room off a friend's barn. At some point in the night I was getting frustrated at a friend who was taking too long to place his bet or fold, and I said "Will you just f-in' raise you *impolite phrase implying his mother was canine*?" I was looking at my cards, planning my move, when I hear like it's right next to me "that's not a nice name to call people."
I looked up at my friend, who had used the phrase several times, including at least once that nice and said "Well, you don't have to get cranky about it, you hypocrite."
He looked back at me and said "what?"
I said "You know you call people *name* all the time. I don't know why you have to berate me for calling you that. It was all in fun."
He looked at me like I was nuts and said "I didn't say anything."
My turn to look at him like he's nuts and say "Yes, you did. You told me that wasn't a nice name."
Another friend looked at me like I'm crazy and said "Keelhaul, he didn't say anything."
The friend whose barn it was got all excited and said that I must have heard one of the ghosts! I was skeptical at the time, and said something like yeah, right, you're pulling my chain. She told me that there were ghosts, that the barn had burned down a hundred years ago or something like that with people trapped inside, and that there was at least one ghost haunting the property. She saw him once, and he had a nasty habit of scaring the horses.
Thinking that this was still an elaborate hoax I sat back, stretched my arms and said "if you're out there, buddy, show yourself. Give me a sign you're here." As soon as the words were out of my mouth my soda tipped over and soaked all the chips in the middle of the table. Nothing else on the table was disturbed, just my soda. I swore again, but my friend said that the ghost must like me, because normally when drinks get tipped they wound up on people's laps, and mine tipped the other way.
We then went on a ghost hunting trip to another section of the barn, where two sisters were supposedly killed. My friend put a ball on the floor, and it started rocking back and forth even though there was no wind. My friend also played a tape she had made of the sister's talking. I heard one female voice say "it's cold in here" and another reply "then close the door". I never heard these voices before. My friend mentioned that they couldn't keep the drapes on the window in one room, every time they put them up they would get knocked off within a couple hours, and they had to put their clothes away immediately in a drawer because if they left them on a bed or hung them in a closet they were thrown all over the room. She claimed it was the little girls playing with them.
I didn't go to that friends house again for a while, but now that I'm totally into the Ghost Hunters and such she and I are thinking of doing an exploration of the house ourselves sometime.
Oh, and I have a "gift" too. Ever since I was little I could figure out exactly where I was and how to get where I needed to go. My mom noticed this once when I was in Orlando for the very first time. My parents were trying to find the right way to get on the freeway?expressway?whatever to get to Tampa, and they got lost. They pulled over and started looking for a map when I gave turn for turn directions. I was six. They wanted to see what would happen, so they followed my directions, and lo and behold it lead to the right road. Now, if I print out directions and try to follow them, I get lost, but I know immediately that I've gone the wrong way. It's hard to explain, it's just a feeling that I've done something wrong and need to go back and correct it. DH was once following directions from the internet when we were apartment hunting, when I (who was sleeping about ten seconds before saying this) suddenly blurted out "you want to turn left here!" He said, no, the directions say to go straight. I told him that there was no road if he went straight, and he'd have to come back and turn left. He didn't believe me... until he went straight and about a half a mile down ran into a "dead end" sign that was mostly obscured by some bushes. He got out our map, looked at it, and realized the only way to get around would be to go back to where I said to turn. He's called me "the human GPS" ever since.
