Tell me about a random unsolved mystery in your life....

When XXH and I were very young (19), first married and still living together in his parents spare room there used to be a square patch of light on the wall at night. Nothing we did could prevent it.. Even blacking out the window entirely...

LOTTIEandMia, sorry!

I keep coming back to this thread for more.. And obligingly, more has always arrived!

Frankieandmia I am intrigued... So you were holding your baby but you could hear ANOTHER baby elsewhere that you felt was her??

When I was a teenager I was very bored one day. I got out a load of old photo albums that had been in my family for years with photos of ladies in crinoline dresses they were so old. The first one I opened I noticed the year - 1877.

Then I noticed the month... July.

Then I noticed the day... 7th

The day I opened that album was 7th July 1977. EXACTLY 100 years to the day!

A few years ago my neighbour became very ill. I went to visit her in hospital and was told she had scepticemia. I had only recently done a basic course in reiki. I tried to practice some reiki on her. A doctor came along and said actually she was showing some positive signs of recovery. I texted my husband to say she was very ill and he should come and visit. As I finished the text I signed off with two x's for kisses. The kisses turned into the word God! She died 2 days later.

TheLateMrsLizCromwell I started a thread about it last week after spending another 2 days staying up until the early hours desperately hunting for it. I have even made a special trip back to the camp site to look in their library again but it wasn't there.

Can anyone help me find this book?

first time doing a link so I hope it works.

My Dad started writing his life story several years before he died - he always said for his grandchildren. It was handwritten in a foolscap notepad inside a presentation folder. It went missing around the time he died, and we've never found it. DM has moved house, but I always hope that it will appear somewhere.

Actually there is one thing that is a total mystery which won't be solved frustratingly.

My great grandmother was in service in London a hundred years ago. Family mostly back in the West Country but some sisters were also in service or had married and stayed in London.

I have a picture of her from a studio with a man and a boy of about 3. Taken in London. The group looks exactly like a family shot. He has his hand on her shoulder. Cannot see left hands to check for rings. She doesn't look like she's the nanny or other staff and he doesn't look well off.

We have no idea who the man and boy are.

She went home and fell pregnant and married my great grandfather and my grandfather was definitely his son. Her wedding lines say spinster so what's the picture about?

My best friend aged 9 was called Josie Hawkley - she moved away and we lost touch - often wonder about her and have occasionally looked on FB etc - if anyone knows her, please say hello from me

Ooh I remember another one. My parents got married on holiday with my grandad on a little island. My grandad died about a year after they got married, with me born a year later, and my brother 4 more after that.

We all went back to the island for a holiday, and as we walk past a cafe (which we hadn't been past before) my brother (3 years old at the time) starts dragging mum in, saying he wants to say hello to Fred. We were all a bit but it turns out that in this cafe there was a fishtank with a big fish called Fred. My mum was really freaked out by this, and asked my DB how he knew - DB replied "Grandad showed me here before, he wanted to say hello to Fred"

My DB is still adamant he remembers Grandad taking him in there and showing him Fred.

In the house that I grew up in, I would constantly be searching for things I'd lost only to turn around and find them dead center on a certain table. I always thought it was my parents, but when I was about 19 they went away for the week and I was home alone - and it still happened.

Sounds silly but it was often stupid things that definitely weren't there before, and sometimes it would be things that had been lost for years. After that week home alone I started saying "thank you" out loud whenever anything appeared

My parents still live at the same house but as far as I know they never experienced it.

About 7 years ago me and dp were asleep when we heard someone shouting him so I told him to go and find out who it was. This was about 6 in the morning. He got up checked everywhere, answered the door and looked through windows and there was nothing there and then it stopped. So he came back to bed and he said all he could see outside was extremely low fog. The voice sounded just like his mum so we asked everyone later that day and everyone thought we was weird. It still does our heads in today!!

I had a penpal from school and would love to hear from her again. She just stopped writing.

Yukiko Uenake - If you are out there, I have never forgotten you and hope you are okay.

Everythingisawesome - when I was at primary and secondary school, we were asked several times to sign up for penpal schemes. We had to tick which country we wanted penpals from. Is it possible you signed up as a smaller child and forgot about it? Perhaps they lost your form for a while so you forgot and then passed it on?

The strangest thing that's happened to me was that when dd2 was a baby about 12 months old, I had the experience of holding her in one room while she was crying in another. I was not the only one who witnessed this and it freaked us out but never happened again ...

For about 2/3 years, I was inundated with letters from girls in Indonesia. Literally loads each day! I was about 14 at the time. They all wanted to be my penpal. My mum was still getting them occasionally after I left home at 18. How did they get my name & address? Why so many? So weird.

This is my most favourite MN thread EVER!
caractacus - me too!

This is a very silly one:

Went to a lovely hotel near York with DP. Had a posh meal, called 'rondelles of beef' which turned out to mean beef formed into circles. Rondelle sounds like round, easy enough to work out. Never heard that word before though.

Next day, paying obligatory visit to York Minster, we were oohing and aahing over the amazing stained glasswork, when a guided tour came past and the lady said 'now here we see a classic example of rondelle style windows, which of course just means round'.

I was like OMG! But have since learned that this is indeed a thing, it has a name. You hear a new word or expression for the first time, then see it many times again quickly. I'm a v clever person so the mystery is why did I never hear the word 'rondelle' until I was 30-odd? :)

I have one...

When my son was about two and a half a young friend of mine was found dead in his flat. Let's call him Jeff. He hadn't turned up for work and our boss had gone round to see if he was ok. Jeff was a real character, much loved at work but very mercurial and suffered from extreme highs then terrible lows. We all thought he had committed suicide.

I wasn't at work and a very good friend called to tell me what happened. I was terribly upset, and really angry with him. All the way through the day I would exclaim loudly. Things like "oh Jeff why didn't you tell us? You didn't have to do this!" I was so frustrated with the fact that he'd died alone, possible feeling very uncared for, and we all were so, so fond of him.

About six o'clock my son turned to me:
Son: Jeff is here mummy.
Me: wha....?
Son: Jeff is here. Say hello to him!
Me (slightly freaked) hello Jeff
Son: he says it's ok mummy. He's happy now. He's going on a boat to the island.
Me (confused and upset now) ok. I'm sorry though. Really sorry.

I promptly burst into tears, my son hugs me for a long time then just runs off and plays again. There were no more mentions of Jeff.

The following week, I was relating this to a very, very good friend of Jeff's. She went really white and shaky and told me that I wouldn't know this but my son was right. Jeff was being cremated and his ashes would be taken to mainland Greece. They would then go by boat to an island that he loved very, very much and they would be scattered there.

Still gives me shivers.

Could the lady in lilac be an angel?

Ooh Mrmenmug, that's given me goosebumps!

In my dad's cousin's case it has been speculated that he may have been gay and was afraid of people's reaction but we are not a homophobic family at all and he only went missing about 10 years ago.

Early 1960s. I have no idea about him possibly being gay but I think it's unlikely. My mum's uncle was gay and it was never an issue in our family. My dad's brother was always a bit of a 'bad lad' and had been involved in petty crime from being a young teenager. My dad thought he had got into bother again and was just embarrassed at another mess and leaving 4 children. Once he'd gone off my dad thought something must have happened to him. I don't suppose we'll ever know now. He wrote to his children periodically, no return address, for a couple of years and then stopped.

My MIL died in hospital in the early hours after a long illness. I went downstairs to a courtyard for fresh air as the sun was rising about 5am and sitting on the bench I looked up and saw a women stood in the corner.

She was wearing a lilac orderly uniform. She said "she has gone hasn't she? She's at peace now you know". I smiled and looked away because I was filling up, and when I looked back she had gone.

After we packed up the clothes and said goodbye to MIL, I went to the front desk to say goodbye and thanks to the night nurses. I also asked them to pass on my thanks to the orderly downstairs in the lilac uniform.

They looked confused and said, "you must have got the colour wrong - we have green and dark blue here. Haven't had lilac for at least 5 years. But funnily enough, a few other people have mentioned seeing someone dressed similarly dressed in the early hours of the morning"

Still wonder what/who it was

Lulu and Lottie - when did these people disappear? Might they have gone off to live with someone of the same sex? was it a time when this was very stigmatised?It might be a reason to cut contact. Sad