To ask what’s the creepiest thing that’s ever happened to you?

2 from me and 2 from my dad because his stories have terrified me since I was little!

I was staying with a friend in a cheap hotel in London that was in an old building, we were only 18. Got up in the night to wee and saw a girl in a Victorian style maid outfit standing near the window, looking out. Being drowsy I thought it was my friend and couldn’t work out where she got the outfit from. Called out my friends name, then the “maid” pulled the curtain shut and vanished. Obviously friend was in bed fast asleep.

When my grandad died, the week or so between his death and the funeral I constantly kept smelling him around the house, cigarettes, imperial mints and woolly jumpers. I told my mum and she said she smelled him too, and even heard him whistle once (which he did a lot). It stopped after the funeral.

My dad was military police stationed overseas in the 60s and one of his jobs was patrolling the airfield and guarding planes at night. He told a story of a terrifying black dog running from the perimeter fence barking and coming towards his vehicle like it was going to attack. he swerved to miss it and it vanished. It happened a few times and never failed to terrify him, once his friend even cocked his gun they were so sure it was real. many colleagues told him they’d seem the ghost dog too.

And the best of all… when my dad was a kid his family moved into a brand new council house that they later discovered had been built on the site of an old de-commissioned graveyard. He said when the lawn was mowed that coffin shapes would appear in the lawn (like crop circles lol!) and many times they would hear people talking in the garden late at night when no one was around.
They didn’t stay there long.

Not me but my dad.

My uncle was the apple of my gran's eye (in a nice way - they had 9 kids in total and she was devoted to all) as he was supposed to be the baby and was for roughly 6 years until my dad, the surprise baby, was born 4 months before the end of the WW2.

They grew up thick as thieves and were as close as close can be as boys. Uncle sadly died when dad was late 20's and uncle was early 30's and dad is adamant that he came to visit him a few nights after.

He felt a pressure on the edge of the bed like someone had sat down and he opened his eyes and swears there was my uncle telling him it's alright, he's at peace now (uncle had gone to Aden as a very young soldier and seen things no one ever should and developed a drink problem off the back of it but remained a lovely man) and that he could 'let him go'. Dad chatted with him for a short while and then he disappeared. He was adamant that he wasn't asleep and it wasn't a dream and that he'd really come to see him..

Mine isn't creepy ( and I've told it before so:)

My Dad died this year . When DH and I went to his funeral , our adult DC were at home , we have motion cameras that showed DD going to the loo, to get coffee etc. It triggers a "Ping" on DH phone .

The night before my Dads cremation (so the last night his body was at rest ) the camera triggered but no-one was nearby . There was a light orb that went slowly across the screen

My Dad wouldn't have had much truck with Derek Acorah (though he did read a book I had of his autobiography and said he'd had an interesting life ) ,
A few years ago DH and I went to one of his live shows and he said "Your loved ones will send you a sign. Not like Most Haunted . Most likely an item out of place or a feather " type of thing .

You can give me specks of dust and reflections all you like .
I think my Dad was doing his rounds before he went off properly .

I was reading this thread in my kitchen then I heard a creepy child’s voice (couldn’t make out the words) coming from the playroom above my kitchen. Nearly shit myself before I realised it’s one of my daughter’s dolls (baby Annabell or similar) that someone left switched on…

I have a story a colleague told me over 20 years ago that I've always found fascinating and would love a rational explanation to...

colleague lived on her own in a rural cottage so the nearest neighbour was at least a mile away. As a result she always worried about being burgled and was often afraid at nighttime.

Her doorbell rang one night and when she opened it a man who looked like he was high on drugs was standing there with a knife threatening her and demanding money. She didn't know if he knew she lived on her own but she pretended she didn't and so called out for her Dad (who had passed away 10 years previously btw). He was a country man and owned a rifle as he often went hunting. He was tall in stature and wore a certain type of hunting boot that were noisy. She instantly recognised his heavy footsteps coming down the stairs behind her and heard him draw back his rifle (or whatever the term is!) so he was prepared to shoot basically. She could even smell his old spice aftershave and could feel him standing behind her. The look of terror on the intruders face was so horrifying that he dropped the knife instantly and ran into the darkness. She locked the door and turned around and there was no one there but she knew in her heart that her Dad had come back to save and protect her. She reported it to the police and they never found out who the potential intruder was despite finger prints being provided. She wasn't interested in that but she really wanted to find him so she could ask him a description of the person he saw behind her...

After that night she was never afraid of being on her own again. I find it very comforting to think that our loved ones who haves passed on are still very much with us in a way that we don't understand...

Im fascinated by these stories but I'm hiding this thread now because I am up several times in the night feeding baby in the dark and my husband is away so I could do without being scared shitless thank you very much

Last month I got a text from a dear friend to tell me her mother (who I knew very well, as her and I had been friends for decades) had died. I sent her my condolences etc., and then she phoned to say she wasn't going to mention it but that this had happened:

Her mother lived in the USA and they'd not seen each other for some years, and had had a sometimes fraught relationship.

She had a very vivid dream in which her mother appeared, holding out her arms to her saying 'my daughter, my daughter'. She woke up, looked at her clock and it was 7.00am. All day she felt uneasy and unsettled.

In the afternoon she got a phone call from her step-father in the USA telling her that her mother had died that morning, when she worked out the time difference it meant her mother died at 7.00am UK time.

Good story @Jevarakh

I kind of guessed it was though for 2 reasons. The way you describe the entity as sort made up of marbles or similar sounded more surreal than supernatural

Your roman centurion not having feet is a nice authentic sounding touch as it's a well reported phenomenon, but not unless they are in a basement or ground floor

Ooooh that is a good one. And yes, even if made up, it's the unsettling feeling it leaves you with that makes you feel spooked. Quiet spookiness rather than bells and whistles angry Roman soldiers!

To be fair - alcove could be made up too, but I really like it regardless. I like the low level spookiness of it - no real drama, just a slightly sinister alcove! It’s always the first story I think of when these threads come up. There are other good ones too.

Here you go - Alcove:

CharDee

I've told this on here before but it is still something that we can't explain!

When DH and I first moved in together we moved in to a church/monastery that had been demolished apart from the outside and then nice apartments had been built in like the shell of this old building.

We had seen a few apartments up for rent in this building and always missed out on getting one, so when one came up on Rightmove we jumped at the chance to move in and just called the agent and said we'd rent it without viewing first. I know that wasn't a very smart move but this building was beautiful and but he apartments were all similar and we'd seen 5 before now.

We move in and everything is great. It was a duplex apartment with the bedroom and a bathroom upstairs. The downstairs was an open plan area with a big island in the middle with the oven and hob built in to it. At the back of the kitchen was a small alcove/corridor. Maybe about ten steps from the end of the kitchen to the end of this little part. There were two stone steps leading down to it and the floor was stone with old brick walls. We assumed it was just a bit of character left in from the refurbishment of the old building and loved it.

When friends came over we used to use the alcove bit to hang up coats. There wasn't a light there during the day the light from the big windows lit it up but of a night it would get quite dark. After a few weeks I started to feel uneasy being home alone, especially if I was standing in the kitchen part. The end of the island was where the hob and oven was and the alcove started directly opposite the end of the island. So if I was cooking it was behind me to the left. I had my back to it. I mentioned this to a few friends and they said that they always felt scared going to get coats and bags but just thought that was because it was dark. Another thing too, in front of hob was a sort of half wall that went from the island counter top all the way up to the ceiling so say if you were stood in certain parts of living room area you couldn't see the oven or see the alcove part.

One day, DH was sat on the couch and I was cooking. I could see him from where I was standing. I was looking at the pan and then suddenly felt someone grab my left shoulder. I thought it was DH so I turned but no one was there. I turned again and DH was still sat down. There was no way he could have done it. I told him what had happened and he said that had happened to him a few times while he had been stood there.

Our 6 month contract ended and we decided to move as I had a new job. The agents were showing someone around and we were on our way out when we bumped in to them in the corridor. They were showing a friend of a friend around so we had a little chat and they later rented it out.

We bumped in to them a few months later and asked how they were enjoying it there and they said they loved it but asked if we found the kitchen drafty. I said no but always thought the alcove bit was a bit chilly. They looked a bit puzzled and asked me when I meant. I explained where I meant and they said "There's just a wall there. There's always just been a wall there." I asked if it had been put up perhaps after we moved and they said that it wasn't there when they looked around and that they would absolutely remember seeing that.

We went home and looked back through photos and in the six months we'd lived there all the photos we'd taken hadn't included that part. There were photos where the wall by the oven had covered where it had been. Nobody else seemed to have captured this mysterious corner of the apartment apart from one who had taken a photo from the front of the island but half of the photo where it would have been was just black.

I went on this persons Facebook to see photos and there was one of them sat on the island with their keys with the entire back wall of the kitchen behind them- no alcove at all. They moved in the day after we left so there wouldn't have been time to put up a new wall.

DH and I were so confused but then we thought about it more and realised that the entire inside of the building had been removed so why would there be an old brick and stone part?

We looked back at the pictures the estate agent had put on and there weren't any that included that area so couldn't tell if it was there or not.

I honestly don't know what it was or if we all imagined it. There is just no explanation for it at all but I'm just glad that my friends and DH had at least seen it too!

It smacked of fiction.

BUSTED!

It's a short story I wrote.

Read it at a literature festival one year, in a cemetery at night.

Very effective it was too.

What was the alcove story?

Once when I was 14 me and my friend were out up to no good one night. It was really dark and we decided to cut through a long alleyway to get to her house. We knew no one would know as she was home alone that night anyway so we weren't bothered how late we were. Anyway we cut through this alleyway and half way down it there's a stone block. This night there happened to be someone sat on the block. It was a really dark night, no street lights but whoever was sat in the middle of the alley at gone midnight were all in black. Everything was black, couldn't make out any features but it was definitely a tall man. For some reason I got really close and just started laughing uncontrollably. I couldn't walk away or anything all I could do was stand next to this person and laugh. Maybe it was a fear reaction but it was really odd. My friend had the opposite reaction and she started crying hysterically trying to drag me away. After about a minute I did snap out of it and we both ran back the way we had come because my friend rightly refused to go past this man who never once even looked at us just sat dead still.

F

When I was a child I slept in a twin bed in my mum’s room. Dad was disabled and slept downstairs. Often, at night, I would see a circle of ligh about the size of a ping pong ball on the wardrobe door opposite my bed. It fascinated me and I used to get out of bed and put my hand over the light. The light didn’t shine on the back of my hand and if I peeped under my hand it was still there. I mentioned it to mum and asked if she had seen it and she said she had but it was ‘nothing’. I still haven’t a clue what it could have been.

Alcove was on a different thread, not this one.

Not spooky but certainly scary…

I was 16 and on my way home from the youth club at the vicarage. This was a quick ten minute walk but involved a very dark path and it was a dark night.

As I turned into the path (had walked down there a million times before) I heard footsteps behind me. I turned to see a man about 30 seconds behind me. I sped up slightly and so did he so I sped up again and so did he. I started to feel a bit panicked so I called my dad…luckily it was the early days of mobiles and I had my Nokia brick with me and actually had some credit. I was only two mins away from home so I spoke to my dad and said loudly something along the lines of “hey dad, I’m almost at the end of the path, are you there to meet me yet?” He wasn’t supposed to meet me at all but he said “on my way” and ran from home to the path. As soon as my dad came into view, the man behind me disappeared, like he just went into the bushes or something.

I’ll never know whether the man was harmless or not but there was a period of sexual assaults in the area at the time so I’ll be forever grateful that my dad was home and picked up the phone!

My absolute favourite one of these is the alcove story - that was properly creepy.

Anything that’s too dramatic like the Roman soldier one upthread or the Savernake Forest story always ring a bit false to me. It’s the little encounters that are spookiest.

Doctor one is most terrifying on this thread!

My six yr old son sighed one day and said “ I really miss my mum”. I laughed and said “ I’m right here!”. He looked very serious as he explained he missed his other the mum, the one he had in California. He told me they both died in an auto accident. He said he flew up to the sky and then picked me to be his new mother..

Weirdly, he adores California, visited the state several times before deciding to attend college there.

I bought a Victorian house from an old lady who had to go into a home because of dementia. All the internal doors had a lock, but there were no keys. They were an attractive original feature. I'd lived there a few years and came down in the morning to find I was locked out of my front room. I could see that it looked as if a key had been used to lock it. My children were equally baffled and we had to get the lock sawn through to get into the room. I found out later that day that the old lady had died that night.

When I was a child my great uncle passed, who I had never met. My Gran, mum and myself when to visit my great aunt. Not long after arriving I was doubled over with stomach craps, went and lay down on one of the beds, when we left the house so did the pain. Mum still won’t talk about 😂