Ghostly Experiences

I actually have had quite a few eerie things happen to me in my lifetime, but two of them stand out from the rest. The first was 36 years ago, when my husband was assigned to Wright-Patterson AFB, OH. I was pregnant with our second child and we had moved into base housing. As I unpacked our belongings one day while my husband was at work and my oldest son in school, a radio sitting on the opposite side of the room all of a sudden came on, played for a while, then went off, all by itself. Shortly after, as I sat resting on the couch, there were HEAVY footsteps going up the stairs, which were about 4-5 feet away from me.

It sounded like a 200 pound man stomping all the way up the stairs. I sat there looking at the stairs until the sound stopped. There was one stair about 3-4 steps down from the top that always squeaked when we stepped on it, and it did indeed squeak as I listened to these footsteps climb upwards. In the same apartment, my husband and I both noticed a 'buzzing' sound that seemed to be coming out of the walls at night, and we had wondered what it could possibly be. A couple of weeks later, we were sitting outside in lawn chairs visiting with our neighbors, when I asked a couple of the ladies if they had any idea what the buzzing sound was that we heard at night. They looked at each other with a stunned expression then one of them said "We don't know whether we should tell you this or not". I answered that I wanted to know.

They then told me that the family that had lived in the apartment before us had a 12 year old boy. This boy was petrified to go into the bathroom upstairs and he said that he could hear 'them' coming after him with electric saws. His parents took him to the doctor, put him on medication, to no avail, and finally he became so hysterical that they had to move out of the military housing. I have to say I always felt eerie when I was in the bathroom, and didn't like to go in there. Other than the eerie feelings, there were no more unsettling incidents as long as we lived there. The other story I want to tell took place about 6 years later, when we were living overseas in the Azores, Portugal. I had a chance to go to a TOPS (Take Off Pounds Slowly) convention in Berchtesgaden, Germany. A group of us flew over on a military plane, and one of my friends from the Azores and I shared a room in the General Walker Hotel, in the German Alps, which was very close to the Germany-Austrian border and had a spectacular view into Austria. Eva Braun's little house was just down the hillside from the main hotel. This hotel has since been demolished, but it had a very interesting history behind it.

It had been the wartime hideout and vacation site to Adolf Hitler, and he even wrote some of his book "Mein Kampf" (sp?) there. There were military bunkers beneath the hotel where the top brass went for safety from attack. At another point in history, it was a hospital, and there were facilities nearby where attack dogs were kept, to guard prisoners. The famous "Eagle's Nest" was in sight from the hotel, where Hitler had built a home high on the mountaintop, and would meet with his top officers. When it was discovered that Hitler frequented this area, the British heavily bombed the town and one can still see little frog pounds in the mountains (same area where Song of Music was filmed) that are actually bomb craters. Anyway - I sensed something 'evil' or creepy in the room we had from the first moment we walked into it. On the second night of our stay, we had gone down to a small hotel club to visit with some of the other guests. I had a headache and told my roommate I was going to go back up to the room and go on to bed. No sooner had I gotten into the bed than I heard a 'clink' from the area of the bathroom sink, where there were two metal glass holders on the wall, on either side of the sink. It startled me a little, but I figured it was someone in the room next door, bumping into the wall.

I closed my eyes again, and all of a sudden, it was as though someone had picked up one of the glasses and slammed it back into the holder. I laid there looking at the area, knowing there was something very evil, foreboding and dangerous standing right in front of the door, looking at me. I could see nothing with my eyes, but the fear and the knowledge that something was there was so overwhelming and definite that I could not move, even though I wanted so badly to run out of the room. But I would have had to run through the area where I knew something very frightening was standing. All I could do was pray for safety. I have never had that feeling before or since, and hope I never do again! After a few minutes, my roommate came back to the room, and with a great feeling of relief, I dropped off to sleep within a few minutes. The next morning as we had breakfast, I told her about what had happened in the room before she returned the night before, and she told me that after she had gotten into her bed, at which time I was asleep, she heard keys moving around on top of the dresser, which was at the foot of the beds. Thinking I was up doing something, she opened her eyes to see what I was doing, only to find that I was still in my bed and no-one was close to the dresser.

I was glad that we were to return home the next day, as I would not have wanted to spend another night in that room!! With all the evil deeds that were done in that building, as well as all the souls who suffered wounds and illness and died there, it's not surprising that something of this nature would happen. Interestingly, I didn't really know much about the history of the hotel before our arrival, so I don't believe it was my mind playing tricks, or expecting something to happen.

By: rrhodes31@cox.net