Paranormal Séances: Strange Youth Memories Unfold

Memories of youth, the paranormal, séances, strange stories. With this jumble of words, I want to introduce you to some memories of mine which, who knows why, came back to me today, and from one came others and then others again, in an avalanche.

The first memory that came to mind was many years ago, I was a young girl, 15-16 years old or so. I lived in a huge house, very old. In fact, it is said that it was built by the Grand Duke of Tuscany around 1600 and used as an inn.

The second and top floor was not inhabited then. We were a family of four and had more than enough rooms on the first floor. One evening we were in the living room watching television and suddenly we heard very loud banging upstairs.

It seemed that in the corner room, the biggest one and the one with two windows, something was banging right in the windows. We thought it was a bird that had entered through some window and was banging here and there just to get out.

My father armed himself with a candle, as there was no electricity upstairs as the rooms were not being used, and all four of us walked up the stairs. When we reached the landing the noise was even louder.

The door to that room was closed. My father went ahead and opened the door and the moment the handle turned the noise fell silent. We entered the room, which was empty and the windows were closed, but there was nothing in the room.

We looked at each other not knowing what to say or what to do. We closed the door and went down the stairs and returned to the living room. We never talked about this between us, not even trying to explain it.

And we never heard anything in that room again. Today it occurred to me, and the thing I remember most is that when I got to the top of the stairs I felt a cold wind that lasted only a moment, but my skin crawled.

That house was later renovated and divided into three flats. Needless to say, I did not want the flat that included that room, which became the wardrobe room of my brother's flat.

I haven't set foot there since that time. From this memory, which still disturbs me a little to this day, even though no one has ever heard any more strange noises coming from that room, memories came back to me a few years later, when, young and unconscious and curious about everything, we wanted to try seances.

It started one August, in a small village in the mountains, a large group of boys and girls of almost the same age and a desire to have fun. In those days it was not like now that in holiday villages you try to do things to attract holidaymakers and make them spend time having fun.

There was only one bar in that village, and a couple of times in August, on Sundays, a little orchestra played ballroom dancing. Near the village was the old people's house that had been abandoned because it had been rebuilt in the centre of the village. It was a huge room with tall windows all broken and a wooden stage at the back.

There were some wooden tables and long benches left. Also to pass the time, we decided that summer to clean the place up and go there in the evening after dinner with a record player to dance.

We worked there for a whole day, but in the evening, armed with candles, since there was no electricity, a few batteries and a record player, we all found ourselves there to dance a little. That year a girl from Rome had come on holiday for the first time and at one point in the evening she said: ‘this place would be great for a séance. We do a lot of them in Rome, I'm a medium. Shall we try?’

Everyone agreed although I must confess I had never done any and I was a little afraid. We put the table in the middle of the room, the benches all around it, and sat down. It was the classic séance with the saucer and the letters around it. We all took hands and that girl started calling a count, who I don't remember what his name was, but she told us that he was her spirit guide. After a while we all laid a finger on the saucer and it slowly started to move.

I must say frankly that many of us had to laugh, we didn't really believe in those things, we were just doing it for fun. However, given the place, which by the way was very close to the cemetery and a bit far from the village, the room with the huge shadows that only candles can make, and a bit of suggestion, we all fell silent and at that point thunder exploded in the air, together with lightning that flooded the room with light.

It almost seemed as if it had fallen next to the house as not even a second had passed from lightning to very loud thunder. None of us, somewhat taken aback by the novelty of that new pastime, had noticed that the weather had changed, it had started to rain and that thunder was just the beginning of a very strong thunderstorm.

This however scared us a little, so we waited for it to rain, then nobody wanted to go home alone, so we organised a kind of procession to accompany each other.
We didn't do any more séances there, although we continued to do them at various holiday homes that summer and also summers afterwards.

I personally stopped when a lady who worked with me, after a story I told about séances, where by the way nothing exciting ever happened except once when a girl, perhaps very impressionable, fainted, told me about her experience. She too used to do séances as a girl, just like us.

It was a fun way to spend the evening, to get together and maybe make fun of someone who took them a little too seriously. So she told me that one evening at one of these sittings, a girl, a friend of the landlord's, who had never done them, took part. It was a session like many others, a little chat, a couple of laughs and some teasing.

When the lights came back on, this girl spoke about self-deception. She said that the mind is able to make us see even what does not exist if we are conditioned enough. And that to some somewhat fragile and even gullible people it could happen that such experiences could, once in solitude, turn into something concrete even if only imaginary. Suggestion, she explained, is a very powerful and dangerous thing.

She was honestly more frightening than the seance. The lady later told me that she went home and went to bed. She couldn't sleep and was always thinking about that talk of the mind. She didn't even turn off the light, she was so frightened.

She tried to sleep but could not, those words were spinning like spinning tops in her mind. At a certain point she saw the wardrobe door that was opposite the bed slowly open, it opened almost halfway and closed again with a dull thud.

Needless to say, that night, even though she was grown up, she wanted to sleep in bed with her mother and father, to whom she told what had happened and who teased her for a lifetime.

However, she has not had any more séances since that time and that story frightened me a little too, even though I have never seen any strange or peculiar things, but I have not wanted to do any more séances since then.

Have any of you done or do things like that? Does anyone have stories to share? Memories of youth or tales from some old people that are a bit scary?

I still remember the evenings spent as a child, when in the evening after dinner we would go to someone's house and around the fire eating ‘frugiate’, which are chestnuts cooked on the fire, we would listen to our grandparents tell us scary tales.

We children would stay for hours listening to those stories of ghosts, ruined houses, princesses kidnapped by ogres, and so many others that I no longer remember.