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

To all those who got mystery Valentine cards in the post, my mum used to ask work colleagues to write and post one to me. She then technically wasn't lying when she said she hadn't sent them. It'll be a version of this.

Had a really nice coatrack disappear years ago after we had bought it and got it back to the house.Moved and cleared the whole place out but it never turned up, and it wasn't something that could have slipped down into cushions or the sofa..

Great thread. I'm another one who does the phone about to ring and knows who is on the other end before it happens and thinks of people who then materialise. I have an odd quirk with large electrical appliances where I think it might be nice to have a newer one with maybe prettier lights or different functions and totally unexpectedly my existing one dies, forcing the purchase of the nice new shiny one. (I try not to visit electrical stores for this reason).

Dad's plot not it

Six years ago my dad was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and given three to six months. This meant he wouldn't make it to his and mum's ruby wedding anniversary. He said he wanted to buy mum a ring and we started planning how to get him to a jewellers with mum. He deteriorated very quickly however and died 13 days after his diagnosis. My dad was half Irish.

We had the funeral and a few weeks later the stonemason rang mum to say that the headstone was in place. Mum went to check the stone and take some flowers and there sitting on the headstone was a claddagh ring - an Irish love token.

My mum is too freaked to wear it though!

No idea how it got there. Dad's it is next to a path but the ring looked carefully placed not dropped.

My friend once lost her ring at a beach where she used to visit frequently on holiday.

A year later, she was lying on a sun lounger, put her hands down idly to run her fingers through the sand.... her fingers happened upon her lost ring.

Not a mystery really - but an astonishing stroke of luck!

Nursey - noooooo!
Selecta - noooooooooooo!

Blimey, SelectA, how spooky.

PPs who've mentioned seeing looky-likeys have just jogged my memory of something similar that happened to me.

I have a Danish friend who lives quite close to me; he used to have one of his Danish friends lodging with him for a couple of years, but eventually his friend went back to Denmark. About 18 months after the guy had left the UK I was shopping in our local high street and thought I saw him, I did a double-take but then realised it wasn't him at all. I then went to meet some friends for a drink and who should walk into the pub but both the Danish guys together. I asked the visiting guy if he'd been in the high street half an hour previously, but he said no. I was a bit

OH MY GOODNESS selecta
Woo, shivery and hair stands on end with that one!

Fascinating thread!

Okay, this will totally out me if any friends are reading but this is the freakiest thing that's ever happened to me and I will forever wonder - who was she and how did she know?

I used to be a member of a particular club which organised all sorts of activities across the country. It was just after Christmas 2000, just into the new year, and DH and I were living in Newcastle. Our car had been written off and I was temporarily on the bus to and from work. Going home one day I was aware of an old woman who I'd never seen before staring at me from across the bus. Every time I glanced at her she was looking at me, frowning. It was quite disconcerting. As I stood to get off she put her hand on my arm and said "don't go on that trip." I was a bit startled and just said "sorry?" or "excuse me?" She repeated, quite forcefully, "you're planning a trip, a journey, quite soon. Don't go on it, it's important." Well, I wasn't planning any journeys so I just said "okay, thank you", got off the bus and dismissed it as a slightly batty old woman, told my DH later in a "guess what random thing happened to me today" joky way.

About a week later, I received an invitation in the post to an event just outside London being organised by the club, to take place on 28th Feb of that year. I really fancied it, it sounded fascinating and right up my street, so I booked a place, paid a small deposit and researched the possibility of going. Eventually, after much working out of the permutations, I reluctantly decided it just wasn't doable, cancelled my place and wrote off the deposit. Not only would it cost a lot of money which I couldn't really justify when we had a new car to buy but it would also involve getting a stupidly early train, the 4.45am, out of Newcastle to get to King's Cross in time to get across London for the start of the event. It did cross my mind that I'd ended up semi-planning a trip after all and I felt rather spooked, even while joking with DH that at least the old woman - who I hadn't seen since, and in fact never saw again - would be happy I wasn't travelling.

On the morning of the event, the 28th Feb, I felt a bit of a pang that I wasn't attending. Later that day, I became aware of news stories about a rail crash that had happened that morning. It was the Selby crash, in which ten people died and dozens more were injured. The passenger train involved was the 4.45am Newcastle to King's Cross...

Nursey, what you just wrote made me shiver. I can't reveal why, but it has to do with Cold Reading..btw..not to be all mysterious, saying more could embarrass me more than I usually embarrass myself here...

Oh also! (Here I go again)

My mum got a psychic. She always gives fake names to them. First thing he said was 'there's a man stood here, he has twelve red roses and a can of Stella in his hand'

We'd put 12 red roses and a can of Stella on his grave the day before. My dad. I was about 10 at the time.

How he knew I will never know. I know about cold reading, but he blurted it out.

Secretwitch honestly I'm not very woo but I do believe in energy transfer and something happened. I fully believe it. That wasn't the only weird thing to happen there to be honest. I think a lot of posters may have stories about Hinning House!

Oops, screwed that up...should have read drain energy from available sources like batteries in torches..

Nursey, some woo believe spirits drain batteries from available energy sources like batteries in torches and cameras. Wonder if there were some spirits tagging along with your class?

Oh and just reminded by the above poster... When I went on that particular holiday I left my brand new beloved Ted Baker hoody on the back of my computer chair in my room. When I can back it was gone. I have no sisters, my mum didn't do my washing... It was gone. I never ever found it and we've always wondered where it went

I have way too many of these weird things. I wonder if my dad is haunting me...

God I have so many of these

I went to the Lake District with school (another school trip one) before I went I had a torch and one of those cameras that auto printed (Polaroid?) it all worked. When I got there both wouldn't work. I tried everything. I was gutted. As soon as I got home I told my mum. She tested them and they both worked! She didn't believe me that they didn't.

Ha! I should be just BOF really, but I keep cocking up name changing.

BOFster, this has nothing to do with your creepy story...

I've just realised I've been reading your name as BOFaster

I have a one:

In 2007, I sent DD then 14 off on the French exchange in a gorgeous fluffy cream cardigan, it was brand new and DD was wearing it for the first time. Anyway, she returned two weeks later wearing the cardigan (I swear she was wearing it as does she) and we got into the car to head home. She took the cardigan off in the car as it was warm and threw it on the back seat of the car. We drove home and while DH took her case into the house I looked in the back seat if the car for her cardigan. It wasn't there. DH swears he didn't take anything off the back seat when he came out the house to get the case and DD says she didn't move it after she threw it onto the seat. We checked the case i case we imagined it but it wasn't there either. We looked all over the car and never found it. Car is sold now, and still not found cardigan.

Oh, I've remembered another woo one. I am NOT woo at all, but after I'd split up from dd1's dad, many years ago, a friend of mine persuaded me to go along with her to see a clairvoyant. I was very sceptical, and did my best to say nothing to what I presumed were his lucky guesses. He seemed to get a lot right: he said that both my paternal grandparents, and my maternal grandmother were watching over me (my only grandparent left at that point was the one not mentioned), and he said I had one daughter, described her etc. Quite possibly a coincidence, and definitely not looking me up- it was pre-Internet, I hadn't given my real name, had never seen any other psychics.

Anyway, the session was taped, and I played it through when I got home, looking for remarks which weren't 'hits' that I might have overlooked through confirmation bias etc. It all sounded quite kosher.

There was a part where he said that "Ladies often ask me who they might marry, whether they'll have children with them and things like that. I always say that you make your own fate, and that nothing is set in stone, you can always change it. But if you stay with the chap you're with now, I can see you conceiving twins in September '99..."

He went on to describe my putative future.

I was going out with a guy at the time who was frankly a bit of a waster, and the thought of having twins with him filled me with horror, so I made sure he was long gone by that September.

The new year's eve of 1999, I held a house party. We were telling woo stories ec, and I remembered the cassette of that reading, and dug it out to play for a laugh.

It began as it had the first time I had played it, continued for several minutes as I'd remembered it. Then he made his speech about nothing being set in stone and being masters of our own destiny...

Then it went completely blank...

It still gives me the heebie jeebies now.

I got an appointment card when I was about 15/16 for a vaccine - TB maybe?
Anyway it said the date and day, the day was wrong but we presumed just a typo and went on the date and time on the card. Receptionist looked completely confused and it took a while to work out. The appointment was for the previous year hence the day being wrong
How had an appointment card been lost for nearly a year in the post?!
I never did get that vaccine

I bought an exercise bench years ago that had to be assembled. The last thing I had to do with it was to put the hand grips on the ends of the bars.
They wouldn't go on because they were or seemed to be too small. I soaked them in hot water to soften them up and smeared washing up liquid on the ends of the bars.
Eventually, after a real struggle and loads of swearing, they went on. I went downstairs to calm down and get a cold drink. When I went back upstairs, the grips weren't on the bars but instead, were stood on their ends on the padded bench.

What a brilliantly intriguing thread

My beloved Granddad died in 1986 and was buried in Aberdeen. My parents moved us to the US shortly after. My father became very ill with cancer in 1995. My family was devastated and very frightened. My dad was a very devout Christian as was his father. One night, when things seemed very bleak, my uncle went outside to be alone. He returned inside the house very quickly, clutching something in his hand. He was crying and could barely speak. In his hand was my Grandfather's wedding ring. My uncle said he was sitting on our steps and heard something hit the ground in front of him. When he picked it up and saw it was a ring, he reckoned one of us had lost it earlier. He nearly fainted when he held it up to the porch light and read the inscription inside RM to GD 1936. As far as we knew, my Grandfather was buried with his wedding band, as was my Grandmother. Although we were shocked, my father found great comfort in this tangible gift from his father. It was with him when he died five years later..

At university, a lecturer from another department would give me hellishly evil looks every time our paths crossed. They were unmistakeably directed at me, and people regularly asked me WTF it was all about. I had no idea, wasn't ever in his department, didn't even know his name, and hadn't done anything to upset anyone he might have been connected to.