The Whistling Ghost

Name:            A. W. 
Email:           
Location:        England
Type:            Ghost
Date:            Friday, July 28, 2000
Time:            11:22 AM

Although I am an extremely skeptical person, I have had two experiences bizarre enough to add to this site. They both occurred within the space of a week, when I was eighteen, and in the company of my boyfriend at the time.

One summer, my boyfriend's parents went on holiday for a month and left us in charge of the house. By the end of the first week, we were bored, broke, hot and hungover. One afternoon we invited a friend round and decided to do a homemade Ouija board - we cut out rectangles of paper on which we wrote the letters of the alphabet and the words "yes" and "no", arranged them round the circular kitchen table, then placed our fingers on the upturned glass in the middle.

Nothing happened. Not even a slight wobble. After fifteen minutes of asking if anyone was there, our arms grew tired and the whole idea lost its novelty, so we agreed to gently remove our fingers on the count of three. As soon as we did so, the glass shot across the table at an incredible speed towards our (now very pale) friend and stopped abruptly on the "no" card. Shaken, we removed ourselves and the Ouija paraphernalia to the garden, where we burned the paper, and smashed the glass. It took quite a few cigarettes and shots of whisky before we dared venture back inside, but nothing remarkable awaited us there, and we calmed down.

After our friend had gone home, my boyfriend took a bath while I changed in the bedroom. Suddenly I heard someone whistling outside the bedroom door, two feet away. I stepped into the landing: nothing. I reasoned that it must have been my boyfriend, but minutes later he came into the bedroom, drying his hair, and asked, "this sounds weird, but did you come into the bathroom and whistle?"

I slept fitfully that night; I kept waking up to hear whistling from the garden (the house backs onto private fields, so anyone who might have been wandering there shouldn't have been). In the morning I put it down to bad dreams, but my boyfriend admitted to having heard the same thing.

The last straw came when we went downstairs for coffee: whistling came from behind the closed door of the master bedroom, and a couple of small (but heavy) ornaments rocked on their shelves, then fell to the floor. All the doors and windows were closed; there was no draught. My boyfriend and I bravely packed, entrusted the house keys to a neighbour and fled to stay with another friend who lived twenty miles away.

This friend and his parents lived in a large, newly-built house in a farming area. Ploughed fields as far as the eye could see. We spent a few enjoyable days there until we recounted our Ouija tale to this friend, who offered to set up his own Ouija board so we could figure out what happened. We demurred, but he decided to do it on his own anyway. My boyfriend and I, less than comfortable with this idea, retired to bed.

That night I had a nightmare in which a man, naked and covered in blood, had got under the covers at the foot of the bed and was slowly crawling up the bed, over our bodies, grinning malevolently. I awoke in the pitch black with a start, drenched in sweat. My boyfriend was sweating, too. I asked if he was awake. He replied that he was, and that he'd just dreamt that a man covered in red paint was crawling up the bed.. Hysterically, I ordered him to turn on the light. Of course, there was nothing there.

The next day (our friend reported nothing unusual following his solo Ouija efforts) my boyfriend's parents phoned to say they'd come home early. Tentatively, we returned home, but found nothing more sinister than some curdled milk in the fridge.

My then-boyfriend and I parted company long ago, but I keep in regular contact with his parents, and they've never reported any paranormal whistling in their home. Then again, I've not brought it up..