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Ghost Stories

Posted: Sat Oct 22, 2005 9:34 pm
by toomanyhelicopters_Archive
Spudboy wrote:Ok, I have one that is related to audio equipment...

I used to live in an old (1915) condo in a six-flat on the south edge of Uptown in Chicago. Our place was the finished basement and first floor. Among more than a couple odd things being moved (including a glass carboy for beermaking being thrown 10 feet across the storage room and shattered from the shelf it was sitting on with over a foot of clearance to the edge) etc, we had several instances of feeling weird cold drafts - in the summertime - around the stairs or in the basement, and one of our friends that looked after our cat while we were gone expressed reluctance to do so again as "you guys have something in the basement".

My home studio was set up at the far end of the basement (basically one big room), and I was toiling away late one night playing with some sequencing software and my Akai S2800. It was about 3am, and I was taking a short break to light a cigarette and dig up some more samples, when suddenly this groaning sound erupted from the speakers, at double the volume of anything else that night. I froze. Then, this slow, strange rhythm started playing with a droning noise...loose, but seemingly orchestrated. I was a little freaked, but I figured ok...old building, power surge - my synth is freaking out. So, I unplugged the MIDI cables from the back of the sampler.

It kept playing.

Now, I'm freaked. For those unfamiliar, the S2800 is a simple machine. You load samples, and trigger them via MIDI - no onboard sequencing or triggering capability beyond the "play" button for a single sample. This was a multi-track performance of some sort.

Once I managed to shake out of my stupor, I grabbed a tape and jammed it into my 8-track. The music stopped, but I hit record and sat down. After about a 2 minute break, it did it again. Similar, but with some minor differences in timing and note selection.

I should also mention that the entire time, I feel chilled and my hair in on end. My wife (apl4eris to you) ran down halfway through the second time, asking what this was, and also experienced this cold/electrical feeling.

After a few minutes, it stopped, and never played again. The sampler worked perfectly to this day, and I have absolutely no rational explanation for this, but here is what I got on tape, for your judgement.

Sweet dreams.

P.S. I intend to use this as a hidden track on a record, so all rights reserved.


Awesome story! I feel like this is The Ring or something...

Have you tried playing it back sped up? Cause the groaning sound, to me, sounds exactly like what you get if you track a vocal through a delay pedal with the tape sped up... then when you play it back at normal speed, it sounds all spooky like that. I, uh, knew some guys back in college that used to record stuff like that when they were on acid.

Are you sure you weren't just chillin in your basement on acid? :D

Ghost Stories

Posted: Sat Oct 22, 2005 9:40 pm
by Spudboy_Archive
Yeah - the samples are all things that I had loaded into the machine at the time...That one is most likely a flamenco singer vocal sample I loaded with the intention of chopping up but never got to it - female voice, pretty high register, in its natural state. But it wanted to sound ominous, I guess.

And the only inebriant that night was vodka, and not a lot of it.

Ghost Stories

Posted: Sun Oct 23, 2005 8:29 am
by johnnyshape_Archive
Spudboy wrote:Ok, I have one that is related to audio equipment...



My home studio was set up at the far end of the basement (basically one big room), and I was toiling away late one night playing with some sequencing software and my Akai S2800. It was about 3am, and I was taking a short break to light a cigarette and dig up some more samples, when suddenly this groaning sound erupted from the speakers, at double the volume of anything else that night. I froze. Then, this slow, strange rhythm started playing with a droning noise...loose, but seemingly orchestrated. I was a little freaked, but I figured ok...old building, power surge - my synth is freaking out. So, I unplugged the MIDI cables from the back of the sampler.

It kept playing.

Now, I'm freaked. For those unfamiliar, the S2800 is a simple machine. You load samples, and trigger them via MIDI - no onboard sequencing or triggering capability beyond the "play" button for a single sample. This was a multi-track performance of some sort.

Once I managed to shake out of my stupor, I grabbed a tape and jammed it into my 8-track. The music stopped, but I hit record and sat down. After about a 2 minute break, it did it again. Similar, but with some minor differences in timing and note selection.

reserved.



I have also had odd sampler shit happen with an Akai (CD3000XL). Stuck my headphones in it one day and realised it was quietly playing through my loaded sample set to itself in a madly random fashion. Like it was writing a little something for itself. Never done it before or since.

Ghost Stories

Posted: Mon Oct 24, 2005 9:03 am
by diego_Archive
I have no ghost stories to share, but I always wondered about those ouija boards.
I know that most of us have experienced with them when we were young, have you???When I was 15-16, I played a lot with those ouija boards with my friends.
I have to admit that I never understood how it "works", or if it's true, etc....
But once, ouija freaked me out.

Me and my friends used to cut little pieces of paper, writting every letter of the alphabet, as well as Yes and No, and Good Bye.
Anyway, one night I was with two other friends, very good ones, who I trusted too.
I was at one of my two friends'place, in his living room and we played ouija, asking stuff to a "spirit", "entity" or a "ghost" (whatever....). We never really believed in that game, always thinking that "how the fuck that wood thing could move alone???".
So we decided, we gonna try to test and trick us.
So me and my friend left the living room while the other one was hidding any object underneath a big antique metal bowl, which was belonging to his dad. After a few minutes we went back to the living room, sat down and played again with the board, while my friend who hide the "object" was watching us.
After a few minutes, we managed to "make the wood thing move" and to contact a "spirit". We asked him what was underneath the bowl.
It wrote K-I-N-G.
My friend totally freaked out and I looked underneath the bowl to see a chess piece, the king.

How on earth could we have known that?????
I never understood that???
I never played ouija again.

Ghost Stories

Posted: Mon Oct 24, 2005 9:37 am
by Linus Van Pelt_Archive
My only Weird experiences have been with Ouija boards. Some spooky, some boring, only one worth mentioning. I was at my cousin's house and she had a Ouija board on her computer. You use the mouse as the planchette, and it moves the pointer on the screen, and the board is on the screen, and when the pointer pauses over a certain letter, it adds the letter to a text bar at the top of the screen. Nothing fancy at all. You could grab the mouse as normal and move it over letters, and it would put down what you were mousing over.

Anyway, once we started, it was moving so slowly and erratically that it would pick up other letters, or spaces, or whatever - garbage characters, that would make it hard to read. For example, it might move around, and the text bar, after a while would read:
I A M3 A DEGAD LGG GG ADY
(instead of I AM A DEAD LADY (and no it didn't say that, I'm just giving an example))

So it's going, and we're talking to somebody, and she's saying something about "Hel3p h i m" and we're all "Help who?" (cause we were just little kids that didn't know who from whom), and she was all "Hjjj jelp hjjim!" over and over, and we're like, whoa lady, calm down and tell us more! And all the time the planchette (mouse) is moving really slowly. And then the planchette stops, for about 5 seconds. Then it starts moving again, really fast! And it spells out, rapidly, and without any garbage characters or any wrong spaces, the following:
TICK TOCK TICK TOCK TIME IS RUNNING OUT
then
TOO LATE
then
Good Bye.

That was the end of Ouija for that night.

Ghost Stories

Posted: Mon Oct 24, 2005 9:50 am
by diego_Archive
I just remember this story too:

When I was 13, I went with my mum and brother to Orange, in France, where there's a very old roman outdoor theatre.

Image


During the visit, I had a very strong feeling of "déjà vu" and I managed to walk around the theatre knowing exactly where I was going. It was like I knew what was after this corridor on the left and after that corridor on the right.
I regularly have "déjà vu" sensations and it disappear after 3-4 seconds. But this time it lasted at least for an hour.
It felt really strange, but not scary, kinda cool.

Ghost Stories

Posted: Mon Oct 24, 2005 10:08 am
by that damned fly_Archive
you must've been there before. you know...in a previous life.

you yourself are a ghost of someone else.


way to be original.

Ghost Stories

Posted: Tue Oct 25, 2005 4:42 pm
by John W_Archive
On of my favorite haunted house movies is the original version of 'The Haunting' (the remake really sucked). Silly, b/w, a little creepy in parts.

The thing that gets me is that for all you hear about haunted houses... there just aren't that many good movies out there about them.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057129/

Ghost Stories

Posted: Sun Jun 25, 2006 2:36 pm
by kenoki_Archive
bump, anyone?

Ghost Stories

Posted: Sun Jun 25, 2006 2:45 pm
by tallchris_Archive
My girlfriend says that one of her apartments was haunted. And that the ghost spooned her one night. I don't know what to think of this, as I don't believe she would lie about this.

I worked at a bowling alley for a year, and everyone I worked with claimed the place was haunted. True, the basement was large, creepy, and had been a bullet factory during WWII. But I never felt as if the place was haunted.

It should be noted I was one of the few people that worked there who had never done acid.