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

This is my most favourite MN thread EVER!

I found my cousins in Australia and we are in touch regularly. They have no idea what happened to him. I would love to know. He would be in his late 80s now so may well not be alive. Australia is huge and I suppose it was easy then to disappear, I think Darwin was pretty remote at the time. It is upsetting for close family who are left. His brothers and sisters never forgot him. They lived in the same small area until very recently so he could have found them if he had wanted to. My dad always thought he had died somehow.

Marcipex that is so sad about your Aunt and her baby.

My mystery is from when we first moved to our house (victorian). DD1 was only just 2. We were having a nap one saturday while dh was at work. She sat up and waved and was looking over at the opposite corner of the room. I asked her what she was doing and she said she was waving at "the old man". I of course turned round and there was nothing there!!

She mentioned seeing him a few times after this incident, mainly on the stairs in our house. I had forgotten about this to be honest until DD2 did the same thing after a nap and said the old man is looking at me!! She was roughly 2 years old too.

Freaked me out at the time however I've never felt uncomfortable or frightened in our house and as I work from home I'm here most of the time.

Lulu - my family has a similar story to that. My dad had a cousin who he was close to. One day he told us he was moving to Spain with a friend and after that we never heard from him ever again and he also cut contact with all other close family members.

I cannot find a single trace of him online apart from the electoral records from when he lived in the UK. It's very odd indeed. My dad is quite upset by not knowing what happened to him but he has had dreams that he has passed on. It's unsettling for everyone.

My dad's brother emigrated to Australia at the end of the 2WW. He married, had 4 children, they all came across to visit in the late 1950s. He wrote regularly to his parents and brothers and sisters. Early 1960s wrote to say he had split up with his wife. My dad and his family never heard from him ever again. My dad tried everything to track him down but nothing. His children last heard of him in Darwin, they lived in Brisbane, not long after he left. Odd thing happened, my dad was in a pub just after it happened and an old friend of my uncle's said 'Your John looks well. Nice to see him back'. He swore he had seen him in that pub a few nights earlier. My dad never believed it, said his brother would never ave come back to our small town where he was well known and not gone to see his parents and family. This was all way before me. My dad searched for him for the rest of his life but never found out what happened to him.

I have a weird one from today, I'm gobsmacked.

DS has just turned 2 and loves windmills so we went to one today. Strangely he refused to go close to it, saying "No, ok here" and "Other way!"

We asked him when we got home why he didn't want to go in and he said "Frightened at windmill" so I asked what had frightened him and he said "Bell too noisy inside."

I can't think why a windmill would have a bell in it but sure enough, on the windmill's website it has a bell inside! How does my two year old know that?!

Hairy that has rather upset me. Maybe your sons made the couple up to comfort themselves and they have forgotten it was their imagination IYSWIM. I wouldn't be able to ring exSIL up and give her a piece of my mind.

Thought of another one. Many years ago my dad was made redundant and money was very very tight. That summer he was reversing into the garage and hit something that turned out to be a box with 12 bottles of rather good wine in it. The box was unmarked and had no delivery note. This was before the internet so he couldn't find out where they had come from, they were mixed, no obvious company on the labels. He asked all the neighbours - very rural area and there weren't many, but no-one had missed an order. My parents waited a few months in case they were claimed but no-one turned up so they started drinking it at Christmas. So who left it there?

My mum gave me a Georgian ring which had been my grandma's. I lost it and could not understand how. I rarely wore it and kept it in a ring box in my jewellery drawer. About 6 times over 4 years, I emptied the drawer and went through every box thinking I might have put it in a different one. by mistake and it was not there. Eventually, my mum asked about it and I told her the truth and she was upset that it had gone. My mum died in January and the night before her funeral I could not sleep and I emptied the drawer, in the vain hope of a miracle and being able to wear the ring for her funeral. The ring was back in its original box. I have no idea!

Here's mine. I bought a car. When I went to collect it I took my mum along as we'd been shopping. I was swapping my old car for a newer one.

The salesman took one look at my mum and asked if she'd ever worked in such and such. They chatted for ages. Then he asked how her children were. Mum was confused, said I was there. He said she had left work to have a baby. Mum denied everything.

We went home and I asked her in private. Said I'd love to know if I had any older siblings. She told me she left for another job and they were just nasty rumours.

She didn't marry my dad until 3yrs later and I was born 4yrs later. I've tried telling her I wouldn't mind if she changed her story.

Also, which version of my grandma's story is the truth? Was theman in the pictures with her mum her dad or her stepdad? Why did her sister run away from home? All dead now so no-one to ask. Why did she only ever have one child in a pre ww2 era?

More recently, How can you not know you're pregnant. For nine months. How can you get admitted into hospital to be told you're in labour.

I used to fly too. Some days I look at someone and pictures or colours come into my head. I know what's going off in their lives as if they had told me and I will sometimes ask them about it which confuses them as they haven't told me anything. I also answer my husbands questions before he's even asked them.

Love this thread.
Mine is - what happened to my grandfather? Grandmother divorced him either whilst pregnant or shortly after my mum was born and brought mum up on her own (there was apparently domestic violence as he didn't want children). We have divorce papers somewhere which has a national insurance number. When dm was diagnosed with illness she was curious to know about her father and I said I'd look. Didn't managed to get anywhere so paid the forty quid or so to smedley as I had NI number. They came up unable to help. Now DGM hadn't had anything to do with him or his family for the fifty odd years between their divorce and her death, they divorced around WW2 time so he could have been in the forces (surely a record though), emigrated or I suppose changed his name. But he might have gone on to have other children and mum may have had siblings. He is surely dead now but I'd love to find out more

How the hell my sink basin has managed to get a crack in it.

Pecan about unbroken hens eggs in fields... I once had half a dozen eggs go off and was about to throw them out but, in a fit of giddiness, let the kids have a throwing competition to see which one could whang an egg furthest into the field behind the house. A few days later I saw a woman walking through the field, stoop and then stand up with an unbroken egg in her hand. She looked around her, really puzzled. I watched her from the kitchen window and tried not to pmsl.

LadyEmma - don't be ridiculous. If there really is someone held prisoner they need help now, not after the bank holiday. Police expect to work every day you know!

LetterToHermioneGranger - could you share a relative but not know it due to it being the result of an affair?

babyhinder - I have only read up to your post as had to stop to post though I am sure others will say the same. White feathers are said to be a message from someone.

I went to see Sally ? at a show. She was speaking to someone near me but every thing she said had me gasp as it was relevant to me. I am sure it must have been my Nana. The woman who thought Sally was talking to her said no to every point. I wish I had spoken up.

Luckily, I'd divorced her brother by the time my sons told me.

Hairylegs- have you ever bought this up with your SIL? I would be wanting answers. Hopefully they were just friendly ghosts.

I often get the feeling I'm going to see someone before I actually bump into them. For example, when wandering around the shops I would suddenly think of a person who I maybe hadn't seen in a few years and would just "know" I was about to bump into them.

My weirdest incident happened when I moved house. When I was about 10 my younger cousin sadly passed away of meningitis. About 10 years later my mum and I moved into a new house. Before moving in we decorated the bedrooms. My bedroom had just been carpeted and was completely empty of any furniture. The day after the carpet was fitted my mum and I went back to the house. We opened the door to my bedroom and lying in the middle of the floor was a childs badge. It was the face of a teddy bear in profile and the name printed on the badge was the same as my cousin. It was my mum who had fitted the carpet and no one else had been inside and neither me or my mum had seen the badge before. I still have it 20 years later even though all the enamel is crumbling away on it. Still have
No idea how it got there

Hairy I find that terribly disturbing. I hope they were not real people, iyswim.

Oooh I've just remembered another one!

My grandad died when I was still a child. He's the person I get my love of horses from. One of my most treasured possessions when I was growing up was a book he'd given me for my last birthday before he died, a collection of ballads by W H Ogilvie with illustrations by the sporting artist Lionel Edwards. Grandad had written a little inscription for me on the flyleaf, referring to me by the pet name that only he used for me rather than my first name. I adored that book.

Sadly, when I was in my late teens, the book disappeared. It took me a little while to notice, as I no longer felt the need to read or handle it every day, and then longer still for us to work out that it must have fallen into a box of stuff that had gone to the charity shop. As soon as I realised, I went to the shop to try to get it back but it wasn't there. :(

Fast forward about six years. Me and now-DH were out for the day in a touristy market town about fifteen miles from where my parents lived. One of the things we had in common was a love of Lionel Edwards, and I had probably mentioned the loss of the Ogilvie book in our early days but DH has a disability which means he really struggles to remember names, especially the names of authors, poets, actors etc. We were browsing in a second-hand bookshop and I noticed DH buying something. When we got outside he gave me the bag and said "I bought you a present".

I opened it and it was the Ogilvie book. THE Ogilvie book. There was my grandad's inscription on the flyleaf. DH hadn't even realised - the pet name had meant nothing to him, he'd forgotten the poet's name if I'd even ever told him it and he'd only bought it for me because of the Lionel Edwards illustrations. He was a bit bewildered when I started crying - with happiness!

I'd love to know the path it had travelled from a charity shop to a second-hand bookshop fifteen miles away!

SIL deserves a punch on the nose!

That's it really. My sil and her bf would come babysit when we went shopping, she would wait til we'd left and push the boys back in their room. We would always catch the 1 pm bus back, so she knew we'd be home by 2, but she'd let the boys out so we never caught her.
Years later when they were teens they asked me who were the old man and lady were who babysat when SIL came over. They remembered being locked in their room, feeling very sad, but then the old couple would come in and make them happy again. They'd sing songs, play games, and the man would do magic tricks. They even described what they looked like. They'd go away again when SIL came back up the stairs to let them out. She'd give them sweets and chase them outside so we'd see 2 happy children when we got back. I never had a clue they hadn't had lunch and had been locked in their room for 3 hours. They were just little kids!
Who else was in my house? Did she let them in?
It's a mystery.

When I was little in a pram in the garden of my parents' rented cottage in a tiny Suffolk village in the 1960s, my mum gave me her bracelet to play with, the one she had got for Confirmation. I apparently dropped it in the grass and it was never seen again. The property has been redeveloped recently and I do wonder if they found it. I would love to be able to give it back to her.

Erimentha please do tell us the plot - maybe one of left it in that campsite library...

Wow Greyhound, I can't decide if that is really cute or really creepy!

My aunt was making apple crumble. She had got to the stage of smoothing the crumble topping when she had to answer the telephone. When she came back, there were little hand prints (like a child's) in the crumble. There were no children in the house.