Well, my family doesn't have much experience with ghosts, except my mother and me. We are not religious but we do believe in God, Buddha, Hell and such. My mother and I had a lot of dreams... of course, let me tell you about dreams....
Dream is the pictures, motions, sounds, feelings the brain produces when we're asleep. I have a whole book talking about dreams by various scientist, but I'm not gonna bother you with it. You can see that many thing happens when we dream. Mendeleyev ultimately finished the Periodic Table from his dream, Tartini re-played his dream and composed "Devil's Thrill"... People too, also have nightmares and stuff, but how many actually had their dream affect their normal life? I'll tell you some stories, and I swear my arse that they are all true:
- My mother moved to HCM city after married my father's family, her parents stayed in Hanoi. We go to Hanoi every summer to visit our relatives and everything is nice. One night in 2002, my mother was washing clothes on the 2nd floor. She then heard my grandma's voice "T., T. (annon name for obvious reasons), dad's gonna visit you tomorrow before he goes." My mom was surprised and looked out the balcony, but no one was there. Of course, my gramps were in Hanoi, thousand kilometers away. She thought she was just tired and went to sleep. Tomorrow nothing happened, and her story didn't really get our attention. But that night, I had a dream. It was very strange when you started to dream and knew exactly that "damn, I'm dreaming." I had a lot of those before and I could change the dream on my whim, you know, make a girl appears, change her look and then shag her like rabbits... but that dream I couldn't change anything at all. I was laying on my bed, unable to move, then I saw a cat, big, black cat jumped at my mother. The cat had my grandpa's face. I woke up violently, ran to my parents' room and saw her was awakened too. Her face was all pale and she said "I just saw a black cat with your grandpa's face jumped at me." About ten minutes later, the phone rang. It was from Hanoi... my gramp passed away...
- About 4 years later, 2006, we started to raise cat. We love cats and I bet you do too. However, my dad is a very very very bad pet keeper. He thought animals aren't human, so they only need one meal a day and get treated like just an animal they are. Needless to say, the cat became very weak and sad, the rest of the family (me, mom, my little sister) got really pissed off and tried to treat the cat better, we often had extreme arguments with my dad about it. One day, the cat stopped eating. He said "see, because you fed him too much now he has stomachache." It died a few days later. From then, I started having dreams about the cat jumping on my chest to sleep, just like how it was before. It told me it loved the family, but my dad will pay someday. But my dad didn't share the same dreams, he actually never dreamt about those stuffs. He told me that he saw the cat walking on 2 legs like a human when he rearranging the storehouse at night. It was creepy but as a true man he didn't get scared and simply kicked it away. The next day, my dad fell off the stairs and injured his back very bad. He told us that when he was laying down the stairs, he saw the cat, standing on 2 legs, grinned at him.
- Long time ago, like more than 10 years, my dad's dad was keeping a parrot. It never talked and seemed completely useless. Me and my cousin loved to play with it, while I gave the seeds and sometimes hit it with a stick, my cousin pluck its feathers and flicked its head. One day, we had a cold. It was expected because we were playing under the rain. That night, I was sleeping and relised I couldn't move. I was like "fuck, dreaming again." The parrot was looking down at us. And my cousin looked terrified. It started jumping and struggling in the cage, screaming in a very strange voice: "Vomit! Vomit your fucking gaaaaall!", "I'll kill youuuuu!" then broke the cage to fly at us. I was so scared I woke up, and saw my cousin next to me shaking, I woke him up too. He said to me "It was scratching me!". The family downstairs was noisy, so we tried to walked down. We saw everyone standing by the parrot's cage, where the bird laid down. My mother said it suddenly laughing like a maniac and dropped dead. When we told everyone about our dream, they said it was fortunate we awoke on time, or the parrot might really kill us.
- 7/7/2007. I remember it because there is no way I could forget it. That night I was playing Red Alert 2 until midnight, and started hearing the sound of chopsticks hitting. I've been hearing that noise every night since I was a kid, so even when my mom said it's a bad omen, I didn't care. Things went normally, except the noise was louder and louder. I felt a presence in the room, but didn't dare to look back. Suddenly, my game crashed. I was like that's it I'm going to bed. The moment I shut down the computer and stand up, something grabbed my legs. I jumped back and stared under the table, nothing. Somehow chilled, I hurried to the bed. In Vietname, there are a lot of mosquitoes at nights so we had to use sleeping net, unless we have an air conditioner. Anyway, I went to sleep. Then I opened my eyes, looking at the ceiling and unable to move. I knew exaactly what's gonna happen... the night was quiet, but a wind from nowhere blew the net, it got really bent inside, I'm not sure if I described it right, you know how clothes and nets are like when a wind blows right? Yeah, like that. The net was blown very far inside my bed, and suddenly it got pierced by a hand. Half an arm from the side violently piercing the net, leaving holes. Very quickly it reached my hand, grabbed it. The feeling was realistic, too realistic it hurt. It was like someone trying to crush my hand into pieces. I was scared but fuck that shit, I have a black belt in Taekwondo, I crushed it back. We were grabbing each other really tighly for a minute, then an invisible head popped in, I know because the net made the shape. I used my other arm to punch it. Again and again. I couldn't move my lips, I can't shout or scream of even breath, let me tell you, that's an uncomfortable feeling. Finally the head broke and the "crawl" disappeared. I woke up, looked at the clock. 2am. So I was only asleep for like 15 seconds. My mom rushed to my room and asked why I was laughing so loud at that time. I told her about the dream but she said she only heard me laughing like in some sitcom comedy.
- I had an older sister, who was born in 1989 in Hanoi. But we had a very bad cold in Hanoi that year, and my sister died. My parents were young, so they got over it after a year. Then they moved to HCM city. The year of 1993, my mother was bearing my little sister. One night she had a dream, my older sister visited us and said: "I've gotten a job now, I'll be protecting someone in the Comb Street (a street in Hanoi) so I can't look after you anymore. Please be careful, because I've been protecting you for 4 years, the bad omens stacked up and can be very bad once I'm gone." When my mom spoke to my dad, he laughed and said it was just nonsense. In that year's summer, my dad had a car accident and broken his leg. Because he was a sailor, this injury cost him his job and our main income. We were one of the richest but just after one day, the customers never visited us again. My mom didn't mention the dream again because she knew my dad would be furious.
So, those are what I could recall as "spiritual dreams" that I knew and all true. I know some people that had dreams and encountered ghosts when they did something when they awake, and some results are very nasty. But there is not like all dreams were bad. Some people who was helping someone or being very close to someone, dreamt that the person visited and advised, or even helped them from bad things. My friend in the secondary school once told me his dad dreamt of his closest friend who died 2 years ago, told him that there is a ghost in the house. He listened and hired a shaman, the guy dug randomly in the garden and found an abandoned grave. His family then brought the bones to the temple and since then their business went very smoothly.
You can find thousands of these stories in Vietnam, mostly from the countryside or areas near the river.
So about your comments on me. I have to say that yes, I've encountered a shitload of stuffs in my humble 21 years of life. Actually 17 years, these last 4 were peaceful as hell in Plymouth (except last night and some nights before that) :3 Some fortune-teller said I had a strange sign. I was born in a specific hour in a specific place at a specific day, which granted me an ability to encounter the spirit world, but they couldn't harm me. Because of this combination the encounters shall be very brief, but as long as I'm not dwelling too far, they will leave me alone.
Now I know Touhou.
Anyway, when it comes to this we Asians often use the Zodiac to guess the ability we possess. My dad for instance, is a Dog, so he "guards" the house and cannot be harmed directly from spirits. However many spirits hate him and his "spiritual" life is in constant danger. This is somehow true since he never had nightmares, and whenever he's at home, we can sleep in peace. My mother is a Tiger, she is strong but the spirits like to gather around her (as tiger is the King of Forest), some may even want to possess her for the power the zodiac has. She by far had the most experience with ghost in the family. I'm a Horse, so I can sense the spirits, and have the ability to run away from them. My sister is a Rooster, she's a stupid cowardly scaredy-cat, but she never encounters any spirit in her life. (rooster is the messenger of the Sun) Completely safe, that kid.
