My good friend—let's call her Jane to protect her identity—told me her ghost story last year, and since then it has been confirmed to me by several people who were around at the time. It took place back in the late '90s when she was in her early 20s.
Jane was living on a farm in very rural Appalachia with some other folks around her age because they were trying a back-to-the-land-type situation post-college. Most of their neighbors were really friendly and helpful, lots of old ladies making food for them and former coal worker guys who would help around the farm. There was one neighbor in particular named Jim who was known to be a former meth addict, but was cleaned up and acted as sort of a paid handy man around the farm. The farm was really old, including the main house which was built in the early 1900's. Each of the people who lived there had their own room, including Jane, who took the room closest to the front door of the house.
Eventually, one of the neighbors told Jane and her friends that the house was rumored to be haunted by a ghost of a man who lived there in the 1930s. Jane and her friends never really took it seriously, but they would joke around and try to scare each other in a pranking way. One night, though, Jane woke up because she felt the presence of something unusual in her room. She opened her eyes and could see a dark, ghostly figure standing silently in the doorway, staring at her. She repeatedly told the figure to leave, saying "You need to go now. I do not want you here." Eventually after a few minutes the figure left. She didn't tell any of her friends because she didn't want them to freak out or think she was crazy.
A few days later, one of the other women who lived in the house told Jane that the ghost had appeared at her doorway and had actually come in her room, but she had laid in her bed silently in response. Jane then confessed the same thing had happened to her earlier, except the ghost left when she told it to leave. The ghost continued to appear to Jane occasionally, but she would just tell him to leave and he would.
That autumn, they had to stop paying Jim the handyman because they were running out of funds and couldn't afford to have him around. Angry, he turned on the farm people and started doing terrible things to the farm, including vandalizing the barn, messing up the garden, etc. They never had proof that it was him, so the police couldn't really do anything, but they were convinced he was the one doing it. One horrible morning in the middle of winter, Jane came outside and saw that the farm dog was hanging from a tree. They all assumed it was Jim who had done it and they called the police, but Jim wasn't in his trailer up the hollow. It looked like he had skipped town.
When spring came, the snow started melting and one of the neighbors found Jim's body in a creek that had been covered in snow for a while. The police investigated and surmised that Jim had been high on drugs, fallen into the creek, hit his head and froze to death. He died around the same time the dog was killed.
Anyway, the creepiest part of the whole thing was that Jane realized that the "ghost" had stopped appearing to her around the time that Jim went missing, but didn't put two and two together until they found his body. She told me that she's now pretty sure that it was Jim standing in her doorway silently at night, and that is so much creepier than a ghost.
Sleep tight. Don't forget to lock your doors at night.
