It's not that I don't believe in hauntings and the supernatural, but it's another thing to be superstitious. I had a good friend who grew up in Atchison, Kansas, on L Street. It was haunted from his earliest days and He had stories that could curl your toes. He had a very small TV room where visitors and family often saw an elderly man sitting. If they did a double take, the sofa would be empty.
They had a French foreign exchange student staying with them once. On his first day, when my friend's mom rang the differ bell, the student showed up and, counting the set places around the table, looked perplexed. When my friend asked if anything was wrong, the fellow asked if the man in the TV room would be joining them. Everyone speed what they were doing and they explained about "George" (which was what they called him). The student turned and rushed back to the TV room and returned ashen.
The following week, he brought home an Ouija board and another friend (also French). They set it up in the basement and it wouldn't work properly. The plancette (finger device) flew all over the board. Asking if the spirit was angry, it went to YES, then M and back and forth.
Two people there had names beginning with "M" -- Matthew and Mark (my friend). They asked if it was Matthew and it went NO, then "M" and repeated it. They then asked if it was mad at Mark and it shot to YES, M, YES, M and they stopped.
Mark said he changed places with the recorder and sat at the side table. They began again and Mark told me he suddenly felt light headed. The paper he was looking at blurred and he felt like he was falling backwards. The next thing he knew he was on the floor and everyone was around him looking terrified. Matt had his right hand in a fist and was yelling at him to stay down! He tried to get up, but was too dizzy and his face hurt. And everyone began telling him to stay down.
He said he had no recollection of it, but they told him he had suddenly leapt from the desk and had attacked them, screaming obscenities. Matt hit him but he had jumped up again, swinging at the closest of them and had been knocked down again. It was the third time that he began to come to.
He never used an Ouija board again.
He said the spirit in the TV room had never spoken to them, nor did he seem violent in any way. One time, he recounted, his mother was carrying laundry downstairs. She tripped and someone with "strong hands" caught her. Supposing it was her husband, she turned to thank him and no one was there.
Mark said they would hear loud noises that sounded like a full chest had fallen over and that things had fallen out of it. But when they searched, everything was in place. They would see what looked like car headlights on the wall late at night, but when they looked outside no car would be there. Even more oddly, when they put their hands up to see where the light was coming from, they would cast no shadow.
One night, Mark felt creepy for no particular reason and decided to go to work early (he delivered pizzas). Hours later he returned home, where his dad told him he'd come home a short time later to find Mark's younger brother, terrified, and sitting on the sofa with his dad's loaded revolver in his hands. He normally came home and went to bed, but he heard footsteps upstairs that particular night and then heard the crashing sound and things hitting the floor. So he got his dad's pistol and decided to wait. His dad checked all the upstairs rooms but could find nothing amiss.
I met Mark's family and they seemed perfectly well balanced. They had many stories, but over a long period of time. Every night wasn't Halloween, but for the most part they just got used to it. At first Mark's dad was angry about Mark's brother getting the gun, but he understood why he got it.
Even though a gun isn't going to hurt a spirit, I still think I'd feel better with one!