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The paranormal

Give us your eerie stories

342 replies

winkywinkola · 17/08/2014 23:59

because I've none.

Go on. I love hearing about them.

OP posts:
MrsWinnibago · 18/08/2014 00:04

Funny you should ask! I posted not long ago about my council flat having an odd "thing" in the hallway. Seen fleeting movements down there...it's a block of 4, two up and two down with a shared hall on both floors and one staircase.

My elderly neigbour claims the fleeing thing is in fact "Poor Dennie" a little lad who lived on the ground floor in the 70's with his Mum who drank. He hung about there a lot....in the hall. He's still alive and living in a nearby city though!

But my neighbour is convinced it's "him". And I was about to post tonight about the strong winds...and me thinking I can hear mumbling voices from somewhere outside in the corridor!

I KNOW it's the wind. but it sounds just like a woman's voice!

FroyoBaggins · 18/08/2014 02:02

I'll share a spooky story :)

When I was nineteen, I had a full time position as a babysitter for a woman with two little boys. She lived in a perfectly normal semi-detached that was probably built sometime in the mid-70's. It was definitely not a creaky old house nor was it a haunting gothic manor. It was as normal as normal could be and for the most part, I was perfectly comfortable in the house.

But one day it all went a bit ... funny.

I arrived in the afternoon as I was scheduled to babysit for that day until eleven o'clock at night. This was a normal occurrence, in fact, two days a week those were my regular hours. When I got to the house, everything was fine. The older boy, whom I'll call "K" was working on some homework and getting ready to go out for a few hours with his step-dad. The younger boy, I'll call him "C" was feeling a little poorly and was content to lounge on the sofa for the time being. A few quick instructions from mum, and she was out the door and I was by myself with the two boys.

C was only around three years old so he and I cuddled on the couch until K was ready to be picked up by his step-dad, and after K left I decided that I would put C down for a nap as he hadn't perked up at all and was still feeling ill.

So the house was quiet. C had fallen asleep quickly and I was sitting on the sofa doing a bit of drawing and half-listening to see if he'd wake and want me. Everything was fine for about ten minutes and then I heard the 'pat pat pat' of little feet running down the hallway from the bedroom. This was a game that C played sometimes, where he'd dash down the hall and try to catch me to 'scare' me. He found it hilarious :)

So I got up and crept up the hall to his bedroom, expecting him to jump out of the bathroom as I crept past. But the door was ajar and there was no little face waiting to leap at me. In fact, I peered into his bedroom and he was sprawled on the bed, fast asleep. I thought for a moment that perhaps he was just playing at being asleep, but I watched him for a while and noted that his eyes never flicked open, his breathing was deep and even. He appeared to be out like a light.

I went back to the sofa and resumed my drawing, still keeping an ear open for C. Sure enough, about five minutes after I sat down I heard the same 'pat pat pat'; the same sound of a child dashing down the hallway. This time I didn't hesitate and wait to see if he was playing the game. I got right up and went to his room, peering in. He was still fast asleep and in fact, hadn't even really changed position. Feeling a little unnerved, I moved back to the living room and sat down. I didn't pick up my drawing pad this time.

As I sat there, I heard noises again; footsteps like before. They weren't quick and childish this time, though. They were loud and heavy like someone was stomping down the hall towards the living room. I jumped up as soon as I heard them, determined to go down the hall and check on C. But as I got to the entrance to the hall way, I felt as though I was being barred from moving towards the bedroom. I couldn't go down the hall, physically. By this time, I was in tears and terrified. I actually called my mum and told her what was happening, which I'd never done while babysitting before.

I retreated back to the living room, and after a few moments, C suddenly woke with a wail. He was in tears and crying, as well. But I still couldn't get to him and he didn't seem to want to leave his bedroom, either.

The whole situation ended when K and his step-dad came back to the house shortly after, because K had forgotten something. As soon as I heard the car door it's as if the something shifted and C came dashing out of his room, straight to me. He was still crying and I was having a hard time not spilling everything to K's step-dad lest he think I was mad or imagining things.

I did eventually tell him later on that night, as he noticed I was agitated and so was C. Thankfully he didn't laugh at me, he just said that he'd felt the house seemed eerie at times to him, too. He'd never had anything that dramatic but he did say that sometimes C would stand in the kitchen and stare up at something, carrying on conversations with the air.

I kept babysitting for the two boys for quite a while afterwards, and never had anything like that happen there again, thank goodness. That wasn't my only eerie experience, though. I've had a few Smile

Good grief! I didn't mean for that to be so long Grin

SecretWitch · 18/08/2014 02:37

Froyo, much respect to you! I would have left shrieking down the road and never returned!

lettertoherms · 18/08/2014 02:47

I haven't recovered from the last spooky thread. The werewolf story and the shadowman story were fucking chilling. They still play on my mind when I'm walking outside at night.

SecretWitch · 18/08/2014 02:51

Oh yes, those two play on my mind..for instance I have just shut bedroom window incase weird shadow thing from Georgia? Alabama? has decided to vacation on the EastCoast..

thatwouldbeanecumenicalmatter · 18/08/2014 02:53

letter was that the one with the lollipop head that followed her and her bf home? If so then yes! I'm the same that story freaked me out and makes me scared to look out the window at night!

thatwouldbeanecumenicalmatter · 18/08/2014 02:57

I remember your thread MrsWinnibago Other posters said it was optical illusion off your tiles, I'm agreeing with them as the prospect of it being anything else is too scary!

SecretWitch · 18/08/2014 03:08

Oh, I thought it was the story about the teenager's camping trip. They kept coming up with an extra person, in the end, a girl ended up being a shapeshifter...

SecretWitch · 18/08/2014 03:09

apologies that was the most garbled post ever..

lettertoherms · 18/08/2014 03:18

Thatwouldbe has it, the lollipop head! He was all spindly and seven feet tall and looked in the window at them after they got inside.

I keep my windows and curtains closed at night now!

lettertoherms · 18/08/2014 03:35

I'll copy the post from a previous thread, I managed to find it. Thread here.

fgaaagh Wed 22-Jun-11 12:53:28

When I was at university, I lived with 2 other girls, and I've kept in contact many many years later with one of them. We don't catch up very often, but I do remember a story she told me about our flat about 10 years after we moved out and went our seperate ways.

Again, she is a very solid, reliable person and was doing biology at uni. At the time, she had a boyfriend in the same year as us who was studying music - he had his own flat share a bit further from campus but they often used to visit live music bars/drinks promo nights and crash at our place for a few hours until lectures the next morning.

The incident she told me about, and doesn't like talking about even now, is that one morning they were walking down the road from a late night sesh at about 5am in the morning. She maintains that neither of them were anywhere close to drunk the entire evening, although they had been drinking earlier in the night, and she never touched drugs as far as i was aware (then and now).

As they rounded the corner to the house we were sharing, it was dawn - streetlights still on, but getting lighter. Rounding the bend, as they got to next door's gate, my friend noticed something at the other end of the street underneath a streetlamp. It was a figure walking AWAY from them with great big lopes, massive strides, just strolling. Apparently it looked very, very tall and very very thin - cartoon proportions, almost half the height of the lamp post. But no "detail" apparently - she tried to explain it and from what I could gather it was like an outline of a person, there was just blackness where the face, body, clothes, should have been - like an outline, or a shadow. Or a straw man with a circle where the head should have been. But much too thin and tall to be a straw scarecrow.

My friend stopped dead in her tracks, and her boyfriend noticed, asked her what's wrong, and looked to where she was looking.

He stared at it too. According to Ellie (my friend) the thing appeared to pause in its strolling and turn to the side to look around at them - the overwhelming sense of emotion that came from it was a rush of malice. She said it was like a wave of negative emotion came from it. For some reason she said that she seemed to feel as if it was ANGRY about something - that it had been spotted?

It turned a bit more and started coming towards them, and although it was at the other end of the road, it could cover the distance much faster than a normal human because it was so tall and long.

At this, my friend's BF apparently grabbed her hand, ran into our garden, and they frantically started trying to get the keys from her bag. They got inside before it reached our house, but when they looked back at the door after locking it behind them, the 2 panels of misty glass that covered the top half of our door had a shadow twig type figure, like it was looking for them in there. Apparently it stayed there for 15 or 20 seconds, peering in, whilst they cowered in the stairwell holding their breath.

She said she'll never forget the unhuman shape and thinness of the thing, and its stick arms as it peered in the glass. And the malice / feeling that it was very very angry at them for seeing it.

Paranoia of student drunks with too little sleep? Normally I'd laugh and say without a doubt, but I know my friend, and she maintains that she'd barely drunk that night, her and her boyfriend saw the same thing, later collaborated, and she was so freaked out by it that she never came home alone at dawn EVER again (I do remember her doing this, but I thought it had to do with knuckling down for exams!!, looking back).

heslimedme · 18/08/2014 03:41

Oooo sitting here on my own in the dark getting spooked. I LOVE a creepy story!

What's the shadowman story??? Do tell!

heslimedme · 18/08/2014 03:53

Eek! Wish I hadn't asked. Totally spooked now.

NutcrackerFairy · 18/08/2014 08:55

Froyo, that is freaky.

I had a similar experience with DS when he was around 18 months old [although not at all scary, yours sounded terrifying!].

I put DS down for a nap in his bedroom the middle of the day and was sitting in the living room.

After about half an hour I heard a thud and then the sound of his running footsteps coming down the hallway. I sat there with a big smile waiting to see his cheeky little face come through the doorway... but he didn't.

I remember getting up and walking to the hallway, thinking he was hiding there waiting to be found... but he wasn't.

Thoroughly confused now I went to DSs bedroom... to find him absolutely fast asleep and snoring!

I would love to know what that was all about. It was the middle of the day, I hadn't touched a drop of alcohol and wasn't tired, hadn't nodded off. Was wide awake. Had heard the thud of DS climbing out of cot and his footsteps as loud as day.

Very strange.

FroyoBaggins · 18/08/2014 09:15

SecretWitch Oh, I wanted to run shrieking from the house, honestly! If the little one hadn't been sleeping when it happened, I would have grabbed him and scarpered outside and just waited for someone else to come back. I was on the verge of begging my mum to come and sit with me.

NutcrackerFairy Oh, your story is very similar! Isn't that strange? Did you find the atmosphere changed at all? Maybe not, as you do mention that you didn't find it scary. But it is odd how alike the stories are :)

Squidstirfry · 18/08/2014 09:30
Idontseeanyicegiants · 18/08/2014 10:02

I have one Smile
When I used to go to church regularly I became friends with the vicars daughter and would go round to hers frequently. The vicarage is a huge Edwardian place, utterly beautiful and in the middle of the graveyard Smile. The thing was that there was one room of the house that was permanently freezing. The dogs refused to go in there and frankly so did the family, they had electricians, plumbers and all sorts out to get to the bottom of why but the place was fine.
Anyway we had a sleepover one night and dared each other to stay in this room on our own for 5 minutes. I walked in, sat down in the cold spot and felt sick. Looked around and could clearly see the outline of a man sat at the table in front of me, not doing anything weird, just reading. I thought it was the vicar so said hello, he ignored me, stood up, walked towards me and vanished.
I ran out like my arse was on fire straight into the Vicar and everyone else who asked me who was in there with me as they heard a mans voice!
None of us got much sleep that night Grin

winkywinkola · 18/08/2014 10:03

Froyo, did you mention it to the mother? How scary in the daytime too. Yikes. And you had to go back.

OP posts:
CalamityKate1 · 18/08/2014 10:27

The stick man story posted by letter/fgaaargh is a hoax.

Afaik it began life as a "let's make up a story and see if we can start an urban myth" type thing.

Just goes to show how easy it is - it's always "this happened to a friend" or a friend of a friend :)

HangingBasketCase · 18/08/2014 10:30

When I was about 13/14 I went through a phase of playing Ouija boards with my friends and even, on occasion, my younger brother and my cousins. Now I don't care what anyone says about them just being an old parlour game or whatever, I will never touch one of those things again.

The first time I played one was with my cousin, who'd played one before with her friends. My brother insisted on joining us. We made the board on a piece of A4 paper and used a glass from the cupboard. All was well to begin with, lots of silly messages came through which we laughed about. I remember the glass getting hot though. Then my cousin decided to ask the spirt or whatever it was to show itself. It refused to show itself, but said it was in the toilet. We were terrified by this, and me trying to be the big I am, decided to go and look in the downstairs loo. When I touched the door handle I got a small electric shock from it, and then when I went inside the loo it was little full of cracking electrical energy, static like if you see what I mean?. We tore the board up and I never touched one again for a while.

Another time I used one was with my friend, exactly the same as before it started off well enough, but the "spirit" kept telling us it was either dead celebrities or historical figures. I remember the names Elvis, Hitler and JFK being spelled out. This caused us much amusement, until it decided to tell my friend that she was going to die in a fire. Once again we destroyed the board, and I've never touched one since.

My friend is still alive by the way, almost 15 years later. But it was so sinister that I've decided I will never use one again.

FroyoBaggins · 18/08/2014 10:43

winkywinkola Yes, I did end up mentioning it to the boys' mum. She believed in the supernatural herself so she didn't laugh at me or fire me on the spot :) I certainly did have a hard time being in the house after that, especially at night for some reason. I guess I just felt the whole atmosphere had changed for me.

lettertoherms · 18/08/2014 10:51

Whaaaaat?

Someone on the internet didn't tell the truth?!

I'm glad to hear it! I can stop being freaked out by it.

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Wigglykitten · 18/08/2014 11:41

When I got married, there were 3 guest bedrooms at the venue where we stayed after the wedding, an ancient barn with an equally ancient historical house. We had a room, MIL had a room, and my parents and my 4year old son had the final room. The next morning at breakfast MIL was full of stories about how she was terrified all night, kept hearing noises and the curtains in her room kept billowing out all by themselves even though the windows were closed. We hadn't heard a thing in our room and neither had my parents in theirs. We put it down to a bit of attention seeking as she likes to be the centre of attention all the time, coupled with the fact that it was a very ancient building so was a bit creaky.

DH and I decided to go back and stay there or our 5th anniversary. We had a lovely afternoon walking in the grounds, and walked to the ruins of an old priory. When we were there I started to feel like someone was watching us. There was nothing in particular, but the hairs on the back of my neck were prickling and I just didn't like it at all.

We went out for dinner, then came back to the room (the same one we had stayed in on our wedding night), watched TV for a while then went to bed. I don't think I'd been asleep for long when I woke up and heard footsteps coming up the wooden stairs, and then along the passageway towards our room. I was frightened because we were the only people staying there, and the owners lived in a separate wing of the house. I lay there for a while, heard nothing else and convinced myself it was in my imagination, but then it happened again. Footsteps coming up the wooden stairs to outside our door, then again and again. I woke DH up at this point because I was terrified. He heard the noises too and told me it was just the house settling at night. Then scratching noises started behind our bed. Scratching and scraping sounds that didn't sound like animals. It sounded too deliberate for that. Then our door handle rattled. DH leapt out of bed and opened the door but there was nobody there.

I burst into tears at this point and said that I wanted to go home. DH just cuddled me and told me there was nothing to worry about, calmed me down and I finally managed to get to sleep.

I woke up the next morning and I felt a bit silly. DH didn't want to have breakfast so we left. We'd driven a few miles when he pulled over into a layby and burst into tears (very not normal for my DH). It turned out that when he'd opened the door that night he'd seen a dark shadow shaped like a person at the end of the hall and his car keys lying in the middle of the passage. He'd stayed awake all night, and had heard noises all through the night, plus seen the billowing curtains that his mum had seen, and the chandelier on the ceiling had started swaying in circles.

We were both a bit freaked out, and I don't even like looking at some of our wedding photos as they have the house in the background. Rationally we know that it was an ancient building so was creaky and draughty, and my DH probably dropped the keys without noticing when we came back to our room after dinner, and our imagination did the rest, but it felt so completely real at the time. I never want to go back there ever again!

Dookles · 18/08/2014 11:43

Something eerie happened to me last night..
I have an old music box/carousel that used to belong to my mum. My mum died 11 years ago in the room I now use as a bedroom and I keep this little music box as a keepsake.. I haven't touched it in months, it just sits there on the shelf gathering dust..

At about 3am this morning..... The bloody thing starts playing all on its own!! The room goes absolutely freezing and my son woke up, now normally he is grumpy as hell if he's woken up but no, he's just laid there, staring at the corner of the room that my mum's bed used to be in (where she died) and is smiling from ear to ear... When the music stopped playing my son looked at me, still smiling and promptly went back to sleep.

Of course, I didn't! I was too creeped out!

I'm not sure what to think about that!

TheEndOfTheWorldAsIKnowIt · 18/08/2014 12:15

I have got an eerie story, I was babysitting for my niece one day whilst my sister and bil went to a wedding. I was 15 and she was around five months old. My sister was going to be away for most of the day and into the night so I was staying at her house with a friend.
I had put the baby down for a nap and was getting everything ready for the evening, DVD sweets and popcorn. My friend had walked to the shop so I was on my own with the baby upstairs when I heard a voice shouting my name. I went to the front door thinking it was my friend coming back but there was nobody there. Then I heard footsteps running up the stairs and along the hallway towards the babys room. I ran upstairs and into her bedroom. She was fast asleep in her cot but the cot bumper had came unfastened and was covering her face. It was quite a thick padded one that has separate squares with stitching between them. I grabbed her out of the cot thinking the worst but although she was boiling hot she was fine. My friend came back about ten minutes later.
I still have no idea who called my name or whose footsteps I heard but I think I owe them my nieces life...

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