I mentioned in a comment yesterday to Gypsy Woman’s post that I’d never seen a ghost. On second thought, Trish and I had a ghost/spirit experience four years ago, but it involved sound and energy, rather than a visual encounter.
The incident took place while we were staying at a beachfront hotel in the Dominican Republic. The hotel consisted of three buildings forming three sides of a square with a ‘garden’ in the middle. When we arrived, we found that the so-called garden was actually a fenced-in graveyard. So our second-floor porch looked out onto the nearby graveyard and the ocean beyond it.
We assumed it was an historical graveyard. But one day, the gate was open so Trish and I walked in. We’d barely gone ten feet when we noticed a grave marker indicating the man had been buried four months earlier. He apparently was a windsurfer, because his gravestone was the top half of a windsurfing board, and his epitaph said: ‘Where ever the Wind Blows will be there.’
We were puzzling over this grave that was about 30 feet from our room when an old man approached us with a shovel. He was digging a grave and was excited because he’d come upon a coffin from an earlier graveyard below this one. He said the sand keeps rising so graves are one on top of another. He wanted to show us the grave, but we’d seen enough.
As we were about to leave, for some reason I picked up a smooth stone from the graveyard and took it with me. By this time, Megan, who was 15, was demanding we move somewhere away from the graveyard. So we took a three-room apartment in one of the other buildings with a front porch facing the ocean. Ironically, the entry and side porch had an even better view of the graveyard.
On our last night, we went to bed about 11 p.m. About half an hour later, I came awake to the sound of loud pounding that seemed to shake the building. It went: BAM-BAM-BAM…BAM-BAM-BAM. Three strikes, like a wrecking ball hitting the wall, a pause, three more strikes. After several repetitions, Trish and I simultaneously sat up in bed, and the sound instantly stopped. It wasn’t frightening. If anything, it felt energizing, life-affirming.
We’d both heard it. It was no dream. Then we heard voices from inside the apartment. I got up and found the television on, even though it was off when we went to bed, and Megan was still asleep in the back bedroom. (She didn’t hear the pounding.)
In the morning, I took the smooth stone and dropped it over the fence into the graveyard. We were the only ones staying in the building, so there was no one to ask about the pounding sound. But, as we checked out, we told the manager what happened.
He looked confused, then said that ‘the spirits here are all friendly..muy simpatico.’ Oddly enough, neither one of us had been frightened. Actually, I had felt quite energized, as if I’d experienced expanded awareness and contact across dimensions. But then I didn’t see any ghost standing next to the bed, either.
Rob
We'll let Poe answer that:
"Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
"'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door –
Only this, and nothing more."
When the manager said "The spirits here are all friendly" it reminded me of a Huck Finn passage (chapter XIX):
"Once there was a thick fog, and the
rafts and things that went by was beating tin pans so the steamboats wouldn't run over them. A scow or a raft went by so close we could hear them talking and cussing and laughing–heard them plain; but we couldn't
see no sign of them; it made you feel crawly; it was like spirits carrying on that way in the air. Jim said he believed it was spirits;
but I says:
"No; spirits wouldn't say, 'Dern the dern fog.'"
If you Google three knocks, you'll see that the phrase relates to a legendary phenomena dating back to at least Victorian England, if not earlier. It's often referred to as the three knocks of death.
One site, terrifyingtales.blogspot.com, contains a three-knock post from 2007 with a couple of dozen comments tales.
Rob
You've probably tried saging your house already, right?
I don't typically YELL at it… I tend to say things to it like "GET THE HELL AWAY FROM ME!" and "STAY AWAY FROM MY SON!" Seems to work.
Oh- I started a new blog where I talk about these things a bit.
https://foundintheether.blogspot.com/
Jeninacide – have you ever tried getting angry at this energy? Raving at it to leave you alone??
The pounding that happens in my bedroom at night sounds like that. Sometimes it is REALLY LOUD and shakes the bed and sometimes it is softer but it is always in threes. Weird! Also- I sometimes hear voices like someone has left a T.V. or radio on somewhere- but nobody has. The knocking never scared me but lights turning on by themselves terrify me.
Maybe all three??
My daughter continues to have weird experiences with ghosts or aliens or just kinetic energy. We're not sure which.
The graveyard had a beachfront view. The hotel was behind the graveyard. I've always wondered if this was unique to the town of Cabarete or if it occurs elsewhere in the Dominica Repubic or in the Caribbean.
you know, the whole scene is just so surreal! the hotel buildings around a cemetery – the grave digger – shades of the twilight zone! love it!
Wow, what a story. To start with so strange to have a hotel around a graveyard. And you tell the story so vividly, I felt goosebumps.
oh, great to have definitive visual aids with such a story! neat imagery!
Finally found the picture of the windsurfer's grave.
– Trish
You definitely have a way with words. Your imagery is fantastic. Great story.
wow! wonderful story! and you know, rob, the thing about the girl in the yellow dress and the other incidents [non-visual – see my post "the spirits of the bungalow" on june 3] that happened there, i was never ever even uncomfortable – but others who experienced these things were – they were actually frightened by them – interesting how we each respond/react differently to the same or similar experiences, isn't it?
again, very interesting story! i could see the courtyard as you described it!