Real NC Ghosts: Patch Readers Share Their Spookiest Experiences

NORTH CAROLINA — If you're looking for a good scare this Halloween season, there's nothing like a chilling ghost story to get your heart racing and adrenaline pumping. Some ghost lore, like the lonely woman hitchhiker who disappears right before reaching her address, seems universal to almost any town or city around the globe, and almost too fantastical to believe. But other stories — those confided in hushed whispers by friends, family, or someone in your community — those have the power to really get the imagination going.

If it can happen to them, why not you?

Thanks to Patch readers, we now realize there are plenty of chilling stories to go around in North Carolina. Here are some of our favorites. Enjoy and happy Halloween!

Julie Miller, Cornelius

My father passed away in 2012, but was in hospice for a time before his death. As I sat with him in hospice, we had long talks about what happens after we close our eyes in this world and open them in the next. I asked him to give me a sign from beyond after he passed to let me know that he was okay. Then I added "but no glass breaking or sharp objects or anything, okay?" and we laughed.

Several months after he had passed away sadly, it was summertime and I was cutting cucumbers in my kitchen on a glass cutting board that I'd had for 20+ years. Suddenly the air around me got very cold and my little Ginsu knife's blade snapped in half (cutting soft cucumbers!) and I turned toward the family room with it to comment and show my family the broken blade.

When I turned back around, the glass cutting board exploded into a million pieces all over my countertop, floor, and stove. I stood there frozen and knew that this was a sign from my father. As my family and I cleaned up the glass, I leaned down and noticed the glass was "popping" up from off the countertop and "crackling" as if it had gotten super cold and was heating back up to room temperature. I'd never seen glass behave this way!

After this startling event and the ensuing cleanup, my (then) husband said, "You know, that Ginsu was a gift from your father." We agreed that it was my dad's way of giving me the sign that I had asked for, but humorously it was exactly what I had asked him NOT to do. He was contrary like that and I love and miss my dad dearly.

Donna Brittain
I was visiting a friend who just lost his father last week. We were sitting on his porch talking and....we both looked at each other. For 30-45 seconds all sound stopped. No leaves moving, no birds, no wind. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I know his dad was there with us. It was weird, but comforting. Like the day my mom went to heaven and a totally white hummingbird hovered over a flower on my porch, looked at me and flew away. My mom's favorite bird. Again.....comforting. I've never in my life seen a white hummingbird. I'm sure there can be albino ones, but still. Angels among us.

Betsy Drab
Well the story begins in 1984 in a rural town in Tennessee. My husband and I lived in a little stone home on the side of a mountain. We had to open and close the gate to drive up to our home because of all the cows.

Harvey (our ghost) was living with us at this time. I would be carrying a tray of food into the living room and the door would close and latch. I would get upset and yell to Harvey to open the damn door. After about 30 seconds the door would open all the way for me. Strange!!! This was a usual occurrence till we moved a year later. What an IMPY ghost!!

In 1974 at dusk I was riding my horse back to the stable. I had to go through a lot of woods to get there. I was crossing a creek and was coming up the other side when my horse stopped dead in his tracks and started to shake. I saw a bright light at the top of the hill but I couldn’t get my horse to move. Then the bright light went away and my horse snorted a little and was willing to go up the hill then. I found at the top of the hill a big area of grass that was all flattened by something very large. We ran all the home!

Marlene Van Ast
We bought a house where a baby cried all night! It made us feel sadness. I did some research on the house and property. There was nothing abnormal in the history.

Hilary Olson, Mooresville
Hilary Olson, who is originally from England, said she has several experiences with ghosts, but the first one in her Mooresville home stands apart.

"I came downstairs early in the morning. My husband had gone to work. He had just left and it was very quiet in the house. Really quiet," she told Patch. She was in the kitchen of her home that has an open floor plan.

"I looked over at the fireplace and there was a gentleman sitting there. He had his head down and his elbows on his knees with his arms kind of crossed and his head was hanging down. I just looked up and I blinked a couple of times to see if it was shadows, and it wasn't. All I said was, 'Hi.' He lifted his head up and never said a word. He just nodded. I carried on and then he was gone. I mentioned it to my husband, and he said it sounded like his dad," Olson said.

"It wasn't a spooky thing. It wasn't frightening. It was my husband's father who had passed away and I had never met him,"she said. "That's why I didn't know who it was."

Wendy Miller, Moooresville

"There was a ghost in the house I grew up in down in South Carolina," Wendy Miller said. "Everyone in my family saw him from time to time over the years, and we affectionately referred to him as 'Charlie.'"

The house Miller grew up in was built in the 1930s, and had a front door with an old skeleton key lock. Miller's father installed a deadbolt when the family moved in, but "now and then, we would be locked out of the house," she said. Her dad ended up having a skeleton key made and kept it on his key ring to prevent having to climb in the house through the bathroom window.

Then there were shadows that would appear in Miller's room. One night, her mother awoke in the middle of the night and realized her husband was not in bed. He was prone to sleepwalking, so she got up to look for him, Miller said. When she passed by her daughter's room, she saw a man standing by her bed. "She reached out to grab [my dad's] arm and her hand went right through him," Miller said.

On another occasion, Miller and her mother were at home alone one night. She went to bed before her mother, but was later startled when later that night she saw a man walk down the hallway toward's her parent's room. "I thought, 'Who is that?'" she told Patch. She ran to her mother's room and flipped on the light, but only succeeded in waking her mother up. She was so spooked by the incident that she slept in the car in the driveway that night.

"For the most part he was harmless, but still scary," she said.

Do you have a spooky ghost story? If so, we want to hear it! Tell us about it in the comment section!