The Face On The Tintype

This next story is taken from Real Ghosts, Restless Spirits And Haunted Places.

               The Face On The Tintype              
  
The personal experience of Richard Aeillo.

     "The old barn on our property was built in June 1863, and it is still intact and as solid as a  battleship.  We had been installing some 4x4 posts in the barn to build stalls for our two Belgian mules.  Now, the holes that we dug for these posts had to be deep, because the mules they would contain are big and powerful.  At the depth of about three feet, I spotted something shiny in one of the holes.  All three of us working in the barn saw the object fall out of the post-hole digger when it dumped the dirt.  I picked it up and looked at it in amazement.  It was an old tintype portrait of a bearded man.

     "When I sent an image of the tintype to Eastman Kodak for analysis, they said that judging by the color of the picture and the clothing style of the subject, the portrait would be dated around 1845-1860.  Amazingly, the tintype had been under the earth for 140 plus years and the frame had not rusted away, nor had the image disintegrated.

     "But here is the kicker:  When we first moved into this house, we often saw the image of a man looking in our large (4x8) window.  We still saw it when we had the lights on bright and really lit up the room.  The image was so detailed that sometimes I thought I was seeing my own reflection.

     "The image on that old tintype is the same man that we would see looking at us.  And here is another eerie thing to contemplate:  When we first unearthed the old tintype, its emulsion covering was clear.  Now it has started to fog over and there is another image superimposed on the picture over the man's left shoulder.  You can see the glint in its eye and the mustache too.  And it appears that other images are beginning to form."




               Join Me In The Crawl Space

From the files of the "Ghost to Ghost" website.  (http://www.ghosttoghost.com>)

     The personal experience of anonymous:  "One day I was working with a friend in a brand new home in Ogden, Utah.  We were doing the heating and air conditioning.  My friend was checking the furnace and discovered it had a bad transformer, so he left to go get a new one.

     "While he was gone I continued installing the duct work.  I got an eerie feeling and looked over my shoulder and saw an old woman standing at the base of the stairs.  I figured she was the homeowner.  I said 'hi' and asked her if she needed anything.  She just shook her head 'no' and smiled.  I went about my business.

     "Then I felt the same eerie feeling.  I looked over my shoulder and there she was, about five feet from me.  I got off my ladder and said:  'Can I help you?'  She smiled and , once again, shook her head 'no.'

     "Just then I heard my partner pulling around the house.  I turned to see where the woman was and she was already by the base of the stairs, about 50 feet away.  I said: 'Are you sure you don't need anything?'  She just looked at me and motioned with her finger for me to come with her.  Of course, I said, 'no way!'

     "Then I heard my friend enter the home on the first floor.  The old woman again motioned for me to follow her.  She was backing toward a crawl space just under the stairs.

     "I took my eyes off her for a second to try and figure out where my friend was and when I looked back, I saw the most horrifying old woman motioning to me with a bony, leathery finger.  This time she said, 'Get over here!'

     "I watched her disappear into the crawl space.  That was it.  I got out of there fast.  Finally my friend joined me and I told the him the story.  He just laughed and told me to stay outside if it would make me feel better.  And that's exactly what I did.

     "I did some research on that area, and learned that most of the land had been used as a Native American tribal burial ground.  To this day I haven't returned to that site!"



               An Encounter with a Hugging Ghost

Real Ghosts, Restless Spirits And Haunted Places
Brad Steiger

Darnell and her husband ran a small construction business and had been contracted to do a job in an older section of a nearby town.  The house was built in the early part of the 1900s, and they were to gut totally the inside of the home and hang new drywall, put in new flooring and paint, as so forth.
     The Personal Experience of Darnell:  "One day I was in the kitchen, nailing down the plywood flooring.  My children were with me and were busy playing in the yard by the back door and inside on the first floor - all of them nearby so I knew what they were up to.  I was working at a steady pace, on my hands and knees working my way backward toward the stairs leading to the second floor off the back of the kitchen.  I was tired and had stopped for a moment to catch my breath.

     "I straightened up at the base of the stairs, still on my knees.  I was suddenly hugged from behind by a small child.  It was such a loving hug that I turned around to give whichever of my children had given me this wonderful feeling a hug in return.  There was no one there.

     "I immediately got a cold, eerie feeling and jumped to my feet.  I called out to the kids.  They were in my pickup truck parked a few feet from the back door, coloring in their coloring books.

     "I packed up my things and left.  I told my husband what had happened and the reason that I did not finish my work.  He was astonished.  He then told me that in the 1930s, a small boy had been playing with his brother, who was emotionally disturbed, and had been accidentally pushed down the stairs and had died.

     "When we returned the next day, the owner accused us of going upstairs in the bedrooms and unrolling rolls of wallpaper and pulling down the window shades and generally making a mess.  While we worked in the days that followed, we could hear feet running back and forth upstairs.  Tools were missing, and the owner kept accusing us of going upstairs where their personal belongings were and messing them up.  We never went upstairs at all.  We were told not to.  We did not invade their personal space.

     "We finally left the job unfinished because of these strange happenings.  I could not seem to stay in the kitchen.  I would get goose flesh and feel strange sensations of happiness, loneliness, and love."