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

Gin those are all !!!

I've read this thread with huge interest over the last couple of days and I have a couple of my own to add.

When I was about 11/12 I was at my friends house who used to often claim that she had a ghost. I never really took her seriously as she usually told fairly elaborate stories. However, one day we were at her house listening to some music in her living room when the volume on the stereo suddenly turned full volume. We were both on the opposite side of the room to the stereo, and the only ones there. This was well before any remote controls and we had rush over a physically turn the knob back round to an acceptable level.

When I was about 8 my DB and I each had a goldfish who both lived in a goldfish bowl in my bedroom. One morning I got up and went to feed them as usual and noticed only mine was in the bowl.
Everyone in the house denied any knowledge of where this goldfish went.
Later that morning, my Nana who often came round to look after us in the school holidays was tidying my bedroom found a wad of screwed up newspaper in the middle of the floor and wrapped inside it was my DBs goldfish!
To this day no one knows how or why this goldfish ended up wrapped up in newspaper in the middle of my bedroom floor.
I have often asked my DB to own up if it was him and he has strongly denied he had anything to do with it!

My mystery is a bit dull, but very puzzling, to me anyway.

Last summer I hung a pair of socks on the washing line using one peg. Later, I went to bring them in only to find one of the socks was missing. The other was still hanging there. Thinking I must have imagined hanging the other out I checked the washing machine, but no sign of the sock.

The only other thing I could think was that, for some bizarre reason, the dog had taken it, but a) I'm sure he can jump that high (he was 11), and b) how could he have pulled one sock off but not other?! Anyhow, I checked his bed and all the places he may possibly hide a sock if he had taken up sock theft, but still couldn't find it.

I still have the remaining sock because I'm still hoping to solve the mystery of what happened to it's friend.

And a couple more (not so much mysterious but huge coincidences)

I went to visit my parents and we were reminiscing about my schooldays. I mentioned one particularly annoying boy who used to tease me and make my life hell. As I went to leave my parents house, a builder doing work on the neighbouring house wolf whistled at me. I ignored him, but then he went "oh my god it's you, Gin" and lo and behold it was said annoying classmate whom I hadn't seen in over 20 years. My parents had moved away from the area in which I went to school and he was the last person I ever expected to see again. Strangely enough, completely unprompted he actually apologised for being a total twunt to me at school!

While browsing a charity shop in an area of the city I don't usually visit, I was drawn to an unusual glass vase. It wasn't my usual taste, but for some reason I felt compelled to buy it. The next time my mum visited, she said: "I don't remember giving you great aunty Ellen's vase, I thought I gave it to Cancer Research." It turns out that I'd bought the same vase mum donated. I'd never seen it before, because it had been in my parent's loft since my great aunt died from stomach cancer before I was born and although my Mum regularly donated to charity shops it was the first time she'd ever donated to that specific branch, which wasn't her local one. Every time I look at the vase, it makes me smile.

When I was a teenager my mum came downstairs one morning and opened the front door to find my dad's shoelaces on the doorstep. The unlaced shoes were in inside the house and the door had been locked all night. Only the three of us had been in the house and they both concluded I must have been playing a prank on them, only I had absolutely nothing to do with it. To this day they don't believe me - I'm 35 now and we still have frequent disagreements about it!

When I bought my first house and was living alone, I came downstairs one morning and opened the back door (theme here!) to find a cricket bat lying across my back step. It was splintered at one end, like someone had used it to smash things with, although there was no damage to my property. My immediate thought was that someone had intended to break in and then got interrupted, but if so, why leave the bat there? Furthermore, my house was a mid-terrace only accessible from the front and the back garden was surrounded by high fencing and thick hedges on all sides so how someone could get in my back garden in the first place, I wasn't sure. None of my neighbours had seen anything or recognised the bat. It still gives me the chills to this day...

When I was 20 I moved into a shared house in my second year at university. One of my housemates came to me with a child's drawing which he'd found in his bedroom. I had no recollection of the drawing, but it had evidently been done by my 6 year old self as it was addressed to my infant school teacher and said "from Gin, aged 6 3/4 on it" in my handwriting. It made no sense that I would have taken this drawing with my when I moved cities to go to university, let alone why, after being away from home for 2 years it should suddenly turn up in my housemate's room which I'd never set foot in before.

When I was a kid I answered the landline to a pre-recorded message: "It's your birthday! Just look out the window and you'll see what we mean!" I looked out of the window and a float drove past with bunting on it. It wasn't my birthday. I still don't get what they mean.

When I was 18 and still living at home with my parents, I was invited on a night out with a girl I'd recently met through my summer temp job. I'd arranged to stay at her house for the night. We went to a club and unbeknown to me, she spiked my drink (yeah, nice girl) I remember sitting in the corner of the club at 2am feeling like the world was going to end while she was snogging some bloke's face off. More than anything, I desperately wanted my Mum to be there to help me, but I was miles from home with no money to get a cab, so eventually I went back with the girl and caught the bus home in the morning. As I walked through the door Mum came rushing towards me asking if I was ok (she had no idea what had happened to me, this was pre-mobile phones) but she said she'd woken up at 2am and heard music coming from my bedroom and thought: why's Gin playing music so late? Then she realised that I away that night. She woke my dad but he was insistent that there wasn't any music. At the time I used to compose songs on my electronic keyboard and Mum said it was one of my songs she could hear and she instinctively knew that I was trying to communicate with her and that something was wrong (and she's not remotely "woo" usually at all)

There's probably more anecdotes, but these are the ones that come to mind right now. I've had a strange life!

Whoa some seriously freaky stories on this thread! Mine's from when I'd just got home from uni after my final exams - a couple of days later I had a plain white envelope hand-addressed to me pushed through the letterbox at my mum's with a job advert for a trainee reporter at a newspaper the next town over (I was a soon-to-be journalism graduate). Never found out who posted it, no-one I asked knew anything about it but I applied for the job and got offered a features writer position on their lifestyle magazine instead to start straight away! I'm now editor of a different lifestyle mag and would love to know who to thank for the info which kick-started my career!

I don't remember flying downstairs but my 7 yr old DS recently commented that his baby sister flies down the stairs. When I questioned what he meant he said 'you carry her so she's flying'. Made me think of this thread!

Was I hallucinating the night I woke up when I was about 5 to see a lady in old fashioned clothes throwing dust on me and saying " ashes to ashes dust to dust"

I hid under the bedclothes and fell back to sleep. Still remember the fear. Although it was years later before I realised when " ashes to ashes..." Would be said.

tabvase, that's just how I felt too, I "remember" jumping from the top step of the stairs and almost floating to the bottom.

Before my my grandas funeral my nana gave me a necklace with princess wrote on which was my grandas pet name for me as I was his only grandaughter. I wore it all the time and never took it off. One night in bed I woke up feeling like I was choking I turned the light on and found the necklace on my bed split down the middle through the word princess. I dunno if this was a sign he wasnt happy with the way I was living as the family had fallen apart after he died.
Another one was when I first moved to were im living now my brother would stay over and I would sleep in the living room. I would hear a grandfather clock chiming through the night which has happened more than once ive asked the neighbours and they dont own a clock that chimes.
Final one was when I split from my ex and had to move back in with my mam was stuck in the spare room with dd who was only one at the time. I spent most of the night crying and feeling like shit and my blanket started to give off these glowing lights which freaked the hell out off me like a glow in the dark duvet was really scary I dunno why this all happens at night.

I used to fly downstairs too! I could jump from the top step, fly head-first and would land perfectly. I'm only 90% convinced it was a series of dreams

Then as I got older, it got harder and harder to fly, until I was just standing in the middle of the living-room flapping my arms in vain only to hover a few inches off the ground. Now I don't even dream of hovering :(

I think that's EXCELLENT symbolism about losing the idealism of youth. My imagination can no longer soar dizzy heights.

yes-if i can work out how to put a picture on here!

Gym any chance of a photo/s (front & back) of your plate please.?

Cor! this is like a spooky Antiques Roadshow

14 yo DD overheard me talking to DP about this thread and when I mentioned the flying downstairs as a child thing she was "OMG I did that!!" and went into great detail about it.

TBH I think she was quite relieved to hear that other people have experienced it!

Yes Murmur and the poor little sod had taken his time telling ME about it as he said it seemed more "real" to discuss it! It gradually stopped happening though. And we got out heads round it by rationalising that although it was alarming for him, he never felt like the boy was in any way dangerous. It was HIM after all! I tried to tell him it was probably his subconscious giving him someone to pace himself against but he was adamant that it was a living breathing swimmer who splashed him and puffed as he swam past.. Only problem was the pool was empty apart from DS and the small issue of the swimmer being his "identical twin".. Same jammers (trunks) and everything.

He was never scared enough to stop training though (fortunately as he has CF and it kept his lungs clear for years). And he used to avoid it a lot by not staying late that often as it only happened when he was training late alone.

Interestingly, I would have always been on the (admittedly) far distant poolside with my head in a book when these occurrences happened. I never saw any DS doppelgängers

jesse, that is creepy! Was he frightened?

My son, now 21, swam competitively as a teenager and so spent a large part of his childhood training in the pool. When he was about 14 he told me that something was worrying him.. He said that quite often, not all the time, when he was in the pool alone, he'd be swimming along, giving it his all, when he would be see "himself" swim past him. He said for a long time he was too afraid to look at the other boy's face as he knew there was no actual swimmer in the pool with him, but on the occasion he plucked up the courage, he met the boy's eyes as the boy overtook him. It was him! Without a doubt.

This happened for a few years...

i have a very old fashioned plate in my cupboard. it has a gilted scalloped edge and pictures of yellow roses in the middle. i found it in the cupboard and assumed it was one of my mum's old ones and she had brought a cake over on it or something. mum says she has never seen it. neither has mil.
plate still there-no idea where on earth it has come from.

Has anyone tried googling the "floating downstairs as a child" thing? The www is full of it! Although mostly talking on forums. I wanted to find some facts!

I can remember doing it so vividly as not just downstairs either...

Nice try. The ar-gee man is coming for you next.

"I was old enough to know the difference between a dream and something I actually heard"

Nobody's ever old enough for that, the brain is too tricky a thing. The most likely (and Occam-friendly) explanation is that you weren't awake. Or at least not as awake as you thought you were - there are various states of partial waking in which the brain and body sleep cycles get slightly out of synch and hallucinating very real-seeming figures on or near the bed is common when that happens.

Nice name,

"I keep finding weird things on the floor at home.
They look like a copper coloured nib of a pen (but not hollow) so a teensy, long cone shape with flat ends. They are about 3-4mm in length, and look like they have a 'screw thread' on it. I have no idea what they are or what they are for."

These are from inside the door handles.
handleswww.doorhandlesdirect.co.uk/20/section.aspx/6839/metric_grub_screws_cone_point_in_pack_of_5

When I was a student nurse, many years ago, the accommodation was in the grounds of a very old mental health institution, and there were patients there that had been there for over 50 years as the result of an illegal abortion.

manderin I obviously don't want to cast aspersions on your family, and that is NOT what I'm doing in this post but.....I was reading this thread with a friend and she said her grandmother was sent to a "mental institution" in her 20s in the 50s. Whole family knew she went to a mental institution but no one knew why. Turned out it was an illicit image pregnancy as a result of rape, and she obviously didn't want to bring "shame" on her husband by going public with this news so went away for a "rest" :-( such a sad story.

Any chance there could have been anything similar in your family??