To ask for your woo tales?

When my DS was 2 or 3 years old we took him to the transport museum in York as he loved Thomas the Tank and the Cars movies. We were approaching the area with the vintage trains when my DS said 'Mummy is that a Stephenson's Rocket' the engine he was pointing to quite far away and as we walked over to it I could read on the information plaque that it was indeed a Stephenson's Rocket (one of the first steam engines). The hairs on the back of my neck stood right up!

Now there is an engine in Thomas & Friends called Stephen and my son had a talking model (he had loads of different ones) and the Stephen one would say 'my name's Stephen I go like a rocket peep peep) but he didn't call the one in the museum Stephen he called it Stephenson's Rocket. How did he know, how? He was a toddler. I still think about it often.

Off topic, but my family is from Odessa too, and I was born there! It sounds lovely that you felt like you recognised it when you visited 😊

I briefly worked in property when I moved to London and my job was valuing homes. This often meant turning up to empty homes either because they were redevelopments, probate, owners out etc…
All homes have a different feel and I was quite comfortable doing probates or properties where something bad had happened, without getting spooked.
But there was one lovely old Victorian house on the main road (one of my favourite roads - if I’d had the money I’d have bought there) where I just couldn’t go upstairs. It was daytime, it was empty, there were builders working out in the road, but I just couldn’t make it to the top of the stairs - completely spooked for no good reason. It felt like something bad was up there - I tried several times telling myself I was being ridiculous, but just couldn’t.
Got back to the office, made up an excuse and got someone else to go…..they reported no issues, lovely house.

Still can’t explain it!

I agree that places soak up atmosphere. My parents viewed lovely new flats that had been converted from an old prison. My father is totally non-woo but he was white and shaky afterwards and said he just felt a sense of horror and dread. The only other time he reacted like that was when he visited Auschwitz.

Does anyone else believe in memories being passed down through the generations? My ancestors came from Odessa in Ukraine and when I visited there I just knew where things were and felt like i had been there before. I had info of where their house had been and just walked there without any guidance. I just knew where it was.

Following, love these 👻

I suppose the dogs didn't react because your entity was benign @CarrieMoonbeams, in fact it sounds lovely. In some ways I'd love to see a (nice!) ghost, but I would be very frightened. Twinkly lights though - yes, I think I could cope with that! ✨

@Verv , that's really interesting. I wonder if your parents ever found out what/if anything had happened there.

I've posted on a previous 'woo' thread about an incident we had in our previous house. I'm being lazy and I've copied and pasted it, below, because my 2 daft dogs did nothing to alert me when I had a really scary experience! Here it is:

About 30 years ago, a relative of mine was killed by a drunk driver. We were very close and I missed him dreadfully.

A couple of years later, I started having quite vivid dreams about him, nothing scary just happy times. Very soon after that, I was on my own at home one night as DH was working. We had 2 very vigilant dogs and they were sleeping in front of the fire, I was reading my book.

Suddenly I had the weirdest feeling - I just knew that there was something/someone standing in the hallway, just inside the living room. I had the strangest sensation on the side of my face, like a pins and needles type of thing. I was so scared that I couldn't even turn my head round to look, so instead I stared at the dogs to see if they'd react. They didn't so I kind of flicked my glance to the side (still too scared to turn round properly) and I saw what I can only describe as twinkling lights! I whimpered shouted "No, go away!" at which point the dogs obviously leapt up and started barking. Everything was back to normal instantly, and I checked all over the house, there was nothing there.

I did wonder later if it was the start of a migraine (although I've never had that type before or since) but it never happened again after that.

I am well known for my love of Christmas, so both DH and my brother said later that it was typical of me, to have a ghost made out of fairy lights!

@CarrieMoonbeams My parents bought a house years back when I was just a tot. Come moving day both of their dogs at the time froze on the front door, stuck their hackles up and growled towards the (empty) interior of the house.
Had to be dragged in rather than leading the way which was the norm.
One was a spaniel and the other a golden retriever and neither were dogs with issues. I remember the retriever being my companion and bestie in my early years and both were trustworthy in that sense so no reason for them to be aggressive unless something was WRONG.
Neither settled in the house and it was swiftly sold with parents being all rather tight lipped about it.
Future viewings, my mother always took dogs.

Some of us like a bit of 70s style, or maybe not exactly style, vibe.

The car park at our local shops has diagonal bays down one side and normal straight-on bays down the other. I'd parked up one afternoon in the diagonal bays to run in and pick up some things. DC and I both opened our doors at the same time on the same side of the car, DC closed their door first and came to stand by my open door. I had one leg out of the car but instead of getting fully out I grabbed DC for a hug and, playing about, pulled them onto my lap. They had grabbed the door handle and pulled the door closed as I pulled them in so I lifted my leg back into the car before the door snicked shut.

Next thing I knew there was an almighty bang and the car rocked. A car from the straight-on bays opposite had mistakenly pressed their accelerator while in reverse and had come flying across the car park straight into the side of my car. If I hadn't pulled DC in for a cuddle then they'd have been standing right in the open doorway of the car and even if I had pulled DC inside, if DC hadn't grabbed the door handle then the car door would have been open and my leg would have been out.

It's more of a coincidence than a woo moment but pulling DC into the car like that isn't a usual thing, I just did it on a whim.

I've been thinking about houses with bad atmospheres, because DH and I were talking recently about a house that we went to view in the 'olden days' (mid 1980s).

Of course there was no online process at that time, and we lived far out of the area anyway, so there's no way we could have known anything about the awful history of that nice wee country cottage. Just driving up the driveway though, DH and I looked at each other - the atmosphere seemed really oppressive and I felt very cold all of a sudden.

We rationalised it by saying that it was probably because of the trees surrounding the house, but tbh if the estate agent wasn't sitting in her car waiting for us, I think we might have just turned round and gone home. We just went through the motions of looking round and got out as soon as we could. It was a beautiful house, but nope, not for us.

I won't type the details of what had happened in that house (although it had happened a few years before and the then owners continued living there) and we didn't find out until a year or so afterwards when we were living in our new house a couple of miles away, but that house definitely had a really sad feeling.

The house that we ended up buying was also a really old one, so obviously we knew that, realistically, several people would have died there over the years, but it had a really good atmosphere.

I've never forgotten that feeling from the other cottage, it was awful 😢

We’ve just returned from a holiday in a very old thatched cottage. The other morning I walked into the kitchen and saw low down on the glass door what looked like a child’s handprint. More strangely I rubbed it and realised it was on the inside….

My good.friend was walking along a main road, she saw a man coming towards her... she looked down for a second and back up and the man vanished.. problem was there was no way for him to have gone cos next to them was thick bushes and she would have seen him struggle to climb in to them in the second it took for her to look down and back up

My dsis used to live in a house that was unwelcoming and experienced various things too.. it was that uncomfortable there it was the main reason she moved out as she hated every moment there...the upstairs was a lot spookier than the downstairs however...

@GETTINGLIKEMYMOTHER thats what it feels like in my home... a friendly prescence that watches over dgc so as far as I'm concerned shes welcome to stay.. rather that than a hostile one

I’ve probably told this before, but here’s a doggy one.

Friends who lived in half of an old converted barn - it felt like an entirely separate house though - had a lovely old Flatcoat retriever, Charlie, who was on his very last legs - the vet was coming the next day to put him to sleep.

Same evening, the adult son of next door neighbours came with his GF to visit his parents. This was well before smartphones so while there he went upstairs to check emails on his mum’s computer.

While checking, he was unnerved to see, out of the corner of his eye, a dog go past. Asked his GF, ‘Did you see the dog?’
‘What dog? He’s downstairs!’ (Current dog was a Dalmatian.)

What he’d seen was their former dog, a Weimeraner, so utterly unlike the other.
The son was so spooked, he took them both off to the village pub!

But the general consensus was that their old dog, who’d been best friends with Charlie, had returned to keep him company on his way.

None of them had ever seen any hint of such a thing before.

Some years later at a 🎄drinks do, the (very un-woo) adult son told me about it - he said he’d never have believed it if anyone else had told him such a thing.

@Tellmeyourwoostories I wasn't sure myself do I just googled it and this came up 😬
As I say, I didn't see it myself so who knows 🤷‍♀️

Dd has seen babies one and two, at the age when they’ve just learned to wave, so around 8 months, smiling and waving while she was holding them, at someone who wasn’t there. Same place each time, on the landing near the bathroom, with no mirror or anything else that could produce a reflection.

One of the former elderly owners of the house had died in it not long before she and SiL bought it. Dd was not especially spooked, though - the owners had had 3 children and you could tell from the moment we first walked in to view, that it had been a happy family home - it had such a lovely warm atmosphere.

When I was 9 we moved to a house where one of the previous owners, a woman only late 20s or early 30s, died in childbirth shortly after moving. Around the same time, my younger sister, only 3, used to say that ‘a lady’ would sit on the end of her bed and smile at her. She wasn’t at all bothered, just matter of fact about it.

OTOH dh and I once viewed a house that looked perfect on paper, but the atmosphere inside was horrible - so sinister! We didn’t even look upstairs - I just couldn’t wait to get out.

My DH saw a man on a beach who couldn't have been there. The only way to get down to the beach was to climb down via a rope that my DH had put there himself and hidden.

This man was wearing a long trench coat, walked down the beach and into a cave. He never emerged. When DH checked, he wasn't in the cave.

Later he was telling some 'old boys' what he'd seen and they said "you've seen the old coastguard ".

@Downunderduchess you again? Why keep de railing what was a good thread.... is there nothing better to do over there in australia?

Moving on I have some more stories to add:

I currently live in a bungalow and when my dgc have stayed over in the spare bedroom have mentioned a friendly looking old lady watching them, mostly waking up to seeing them but also on occasion when playing... she has her hair in a bun and an old fashioned collar type dress with slippers and glasses chain... They were a bit unnerved at first but it feels friendly here to dh and I so we tried to comfort them that she is watching over them and is their other dgm lol... I havent seen her yet but dh has but honestly it feels very friendly here thank fully.. I assume she was previous owner .

Other story I have is when I was in my early 20s I lost my ddog and would see him on occasion wandering around the house or out of my peripheral near me following me like he used to a lot before he sadly got unwell... I have some more stories but have already shared a few and dont want to bore you