This still gives me the creeps

[WooWooCocktail]

I worked in a nursery for 10 years with 2/3 year olds. Every few years, the room would obviously be full of a completely different batch of kids but the children would talk every now and then about a child called Thomas in the room and in the garden. Sometimes they’d talk about his red hair and describe what he looked like when asked. They obviously had very limited vocabulary so they couldn’t have possibly managed to consistently teach this to new kids in the room every few months. The building we were in used to be an orphanage so they must have all been able to see someone us adults couldn’t.
Still creeps me out.

Share your stories of creepiness with me! I’d love to know

My favourites are the savernak forest with the dogs and the evil man in the night club that appeared twenty years later.
I had a very bad feeling in a National Trust house. Uppark in Sussex. I was fine outside. But inside there was a feeling that people had been unhappy there. It was overwhelming. I've had this in a friend's shared house. The upstairs hallway was terrifying. Also when a friend moved into her new house I had the same feeling. Just overwhelming sadness. But now she's been living there for years the atmosphere has completely changed.

Love this thread! Bumping for more woo! 👻

My DM has tons of stories re haunted experiences - one of her faves (no idea where this was) was a school house her close friends bought and said she could stay in one weekend.

So she goes down there with her dog, all is ok, goes to sleep then hears some really loud bangs downstairs - like someone is banging around downstairs but not burglars (no-one there) and in middle of nowhere) - apparently it was like someone was heavy walking around she says.

Anyway after both her and the dog being shit scared they both got up in middle of night and drove out of there...

She's also not seen a ghost but had a strange experience in a house where friends of hers (who didn't speak about this) saw an apparition and it turned out there had been a murder in that house when they researched via a local policeman.

There's a lane near where I live which feels eerie. But I don't believe it's anything woo just a combination of subtle factors plucking the strings of my subconscious. For one it's very remote and lined with poplars which make a hissing noise in high winds and there's a huge pylon which nearly straddles the lane.

People never seen to get an eerie sensation when they're in a brightly lit shop or busy airport. It's always somewhere that is just slightly off kilter in some way.

@VeryFoolishFay - what to make of it? The woman had checked the Parish Records before she got to yours, that's what.

I dont think she would have bothered. It took me a while to find it because the house had different names at different points and was recorded in different villages as the boundaries kept changing. I think it's just the sort of thing she throws out to reel in the punters.

I imagine most people died at home so in a house with records going back to 1640, I'd be very surprised if people hadn't died here at some point!

In any case, she can't have had too much confidence in her convictions because when she asked us how much we would charge for use of the property, we never heard from her again!

If she'd seen a real life ghost in the window, I would have thought she'd have begging to run some ghost hunting evenings...

So I think it was just a co-incidence, even though it made me jump when I first read it!

millythepink but some people I know have had experiences in a brightly lit shop or something - not sure how...

I suppose it could be suggestion but I know I've been in tons of old buildings, worked/visited them etc and rarely had 'feelings' but in these two places - I didn't see anything but definitely got a feeling of foreboding.

In Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese it was really really spooky - I was on a ghost Halloween pub tour but not a lot was said about that pub. I just got a real feeling of dread when I was in the toilet area - same with the other place in Canterbury - toilet/stairs area.

What was the place in Canterbury?

There’s some research suggesting that feelings of dread or foreboding are linked to subsonic noises from machinery and to -(can’t remember what it’s called)- electricity in the air. So people feeling wierd round pylons.

BertandRussell - I've tried googling it but not found the name!

Morphic resonance - didn't one of those historians do a book on it, Peter someone??

I know that when I was in the shop part in Canterbury and even the art gallery (connected by winding staircases) I was absolutely fine - nothing woo about that! or not that I felt - yet when I climbed stairs to toilet and the enclosed space - and I am not claustrophobic - I felt definitely scared and almost ran out of there!

Lincoln cathedral always seems so inexplicibly foreboding to me. If I see a photo of it my chests starts to feel tight. I've never even been in it, just been driven by it many times as a kid and always affected by it.

@MadameDD ME TOO in the Cheshire Cheese bogs! Never done such a quick wee in my life!

I used to work in our local Boots store, think small town in Wales, and the stockroom is horribly creepy. It is set out with racking and modern lighting but it is an old building.

I used to hate walking through there as you always felt that you were being watched. I had not been there long and was asked by my supervisor to go and get some stock to fill the shelves in the store. I went up in the lift and started filling my trolley with shampoos etc when I felt someone watching me, it felt like they were peering through the racking. I asked if someone was there, no answer.

I quickly filled my trolley and headed to the lift, it was a horrible feeling. I kept expecting someone to speak to me.

Turns out a customer had come into the shop years previous feeling unwell, they had taken him upstairs in the lift to the staff room which was adjacent to the stock room and he had had a massive heart attack and died.

I don't know if this is connected but all I can say was the stock room was the only part of the whole store that I felt like that. Very creepy.

I used to work in a shop along the rows in Chester when I was a teenager, and the stockrooms were underground with no windows - really spooky. We all used to run and shut the lift gates quickly, because if you were on your own, you could always hear footsteps moving towards you in the lift before it began to move.

Oh yes, the Savernake Forest story is the creepiest thing I've ever read!
I found Thetford Abbey a 'heavy' place with a depressing atmosphere, rather than sinister. It felt like the abbey wanted all the tourists to bugger off. I'm not the only one who felt this. Generally though I love ancient places; they feel safe to me.

MadameDD
Was the place in Canterbury, Conquest House? Art studio and live music events in a medieval building. It’s supposedly where the knights that executed Thomas Becket met and planned their attack. Its odd frankly, and it’s not the only house in Palace Street that is like that.

I used to work in a nursery in a separate building in the grounds of a school. After the children had gone home for the day, another member of staff and I were locking up and we heard growling coming from one of the kid's closed toilet cubicles. We looked at each other and both said" what was that?" but when we checked there was nothing there and we were the only ones in the building..
Another time the same member of staff and I both heard another staff member's voice, she had a very distinctive voice and always used the same phrase, but she wasn't on site and was on staff training that day.
That building was quite modern but in the grounds of an old school, reportedly haunted. There were always random knocks on doors and things going missing and turning up in random places. And when you were alone at the end of the day, tidying up, there were eyes watching you. You were never alone in there.

There's a venue in Glasgow I used to work at that has a mix of everything, bars, restaurants ect...and there's this one bar/karaoke room area that always gave me the heebie jeebies. Only way I can describe it is it felt like someone was right up in my face screaming 'get out!'. Dreaded having to be in there.

Odd thing is it was the only area that made me feel that way in the whole building. That and the adjoining stairwell and bathrooms.

Haverhill, the whole of Thetford feels unwelcoming to me. It's a grim old town! I live fairly close by, but it's a place I avoid.

As a child I woke in the night and saw the reflection of a grinning jester in a mirror. Somehow I knew his name was Tomsk. I also had an imaginary friend in the graveyard, a skeleton called Paddington.

As an adult, we were driving through the countryside at 3am and there was a man walking along the grass verge wearing a large brimmed hat and what looked like some kind of oilskin coat. He looked rather like the monster from Jeepers Creepers.

I wrote about this on a previous thread but when my young daughter (around 3 years old) first started staying at her Fathers she kept saying she didn’t like it there. She said there was a man in a mask that kept coming into her bedroom shaking her awake and asking her to come with him. One day we were watching a hospital programme together and she pointed at a surgeon in a mask and she said that’s like the man at her Fathers flat that wakes her up.

I didn’t think much more of it until I happened to mention it to my Grandmother who then told me that the flats were built on an old mental hospital.

Please could someone supply a link to the Savernake Forest story?

I've never seen anything inexplicable, though have been on the receiving end of many strange apparent coincidences which have helped me out.
I do get that 'woo' feeling in various places, some quite creepy, others modern.
Once was in a pub toilet where the dryers used to turn themselves on. Another was in the minor surgery room where I work, but only on a Friday. I used to feel panicked in there, like something was in there with me. The only thing different on Fridays is that an ultrasound scanner is left on standby as opposed to being off. So I think electrical activity may be involved.

SAVERNAKE FOREST STORY: I don't know who the original poster is as it's been requested quite few times.

Is it this one?Found it. Warning: it's very long (sorry) and very freaky, and if anyone can come up with a rational explanation I'd be extremely grateful because I'm generally a pretty rational non-woo where's-the-evidence person, but I've never been able to explain this and it still makes my heart beat faster and the hair stand up on my arms when I think about it, years later.

I was pet sitting for my friend several years ago. She had moved into a sort of small holding right on the edge of a village in the SW, with a huge garden that backed onto trees. At the time she had a right menagerie - chickens, ducks, a couple of Shetlands, cats and four black retrievers, three fully grown and one a half grown puppy. Originally DH had been going to come with me as a little holiday but the dates she ended up having to go away for work clashed with a couple of his medical appointments so he stayed at home with our dog and I went to petsit alone.

It was about halfway through my stay, a couple of nights to go. Late evening, already dark when I heard a massive commotion from the chicken shed, banging and thumping. I assumed a fox or something had got in so went out to check. As I was halfway across the garden the noise stopped instantly as if it had been shut off; by the time I got to the shed all was calm and the chickens were all settled, mostly asleep. No sign of any intruder or disturbance at all, nothing to explain the noise or any indication that the chickens had made a noise. Bit freaky but I didn't (and still don't) know much about The Way of Chicken so I locked up again and left them to it.

As I went back in the house a small black shape ran past me out of the back door and I realised the puppy must have got out. It streaked across the garden and off towards the woods. Cue much cursing, then calling her name in vain. More cursing when she didn't come back. I grabbed a torch and put one of the other dogs on the lead, partly for protection, partly because I thought the pup was more likely to come back if I had one of her canine companions with me and partly because I didn't fancy my chances of finding my way back to the house on my own even though there were a couple of vague paths that I'd followed when walking the dogs throughout the week.

Off we trudged into the wood along one of these paths, me calling pup's name at intervals and trying not to imagine murderers and rapists behind every tree trunk. We got to a point where it felt like the trees were starting to thin out and I remember thinking that I didn't remember a clearing on this path and we must have gone wrong somewhere when the dog with me slowed right down and started to resist going forward. I tried to jolly her along - while my stomach suddenly dropped like a stone - and she started growling, a really low serious rumbling growl. By this time I was practically shitting myself. I tried shining the torch ahead but the beam just sort of bounced back off the darkness if that makes sense? I got the sense of something - or somethings - moving but just sinuous deeper black shapes against the blackness and always on the periphery of vision. (The hairs on my arms are standing up again just remembering how completely and utterly terrified I was. I have honestly never known a feeling like it.)

At this point the dog sank right down, still growling, hackles up and refused to budge. I muttered something like "Jesus, you have got to be kidding me" and this ugly gurgling inhuman sort of voice hissed, right up close as if someone was right next to me "don't say that name". At the same time there was a horrible snickering sort of laugh. I cant express how utterly petrified I was. I can't remember having any coherent thoughts apart from the word "evil". That's the only clear thing I can remember. Me and the dog were frozen to the spot with pure fear. Then a different voice, really commanding, said "GO. BACK." That sounded more in my head but echoey, where the others had sounded out in the air IYSWIM?

Wherever it came from it did the trick. Me & the dog turned and belted back through the woods. She basically towed me, I just clung onto her lead stumbling to keep up and sobbing with fear. I lost the torch somewhere on that wild run but there was no way I was stopping to find it. How I didn't run blindly into a tree I'll never know, she guided me I guess. I can remember thinking desperately that I mustn't let go of her lead or "they" would get me.

When we got back to the garden she suddenly stopped - I did fall over her this time, onto my hands and knees - turned around and started snarling, proper teeth bared, rabid-looking snarls, back at the trees and the darkness. I thought I heard the snickering again but the blood was pounding in my ears so hard I can't be sure. I scrambled up and ran to the back door and she followed me but backing and snarling all the way as if holding something at bay. Oh, and the chicken shed was banging and thumping again. I got the back door open, me and her belted in, I slammed home every bolt behind us. The other dogs left behind were staring at the door and growling too with their hackles up and when I saw all three of them, puppy included, acting like that I started to cry properly because I honestly thought I was trapped in some horror film nightmare and was going to die. I don't know - I still don't know - what the black shape was that ran past me out of the house and triggered all of this because the puppy was right there in the kitchen.

Anyway I made sure every door and window was locked and bolted, I turned on every light in the house, I wandered round mumbling all sorts of weird half-religious half-spiritual shit to ward off evil spirits. Gradually the dogs settled down and stopped growling, and eventually stopped glancing at the door. Funnily enough I didn't sleep for one second that night and I rang my DH and begged him to come over the last couple of days. I know I didn't dream it because I was covered in scratches from running through the woods and had grazed hands from where I fell over the dog in the garden.

Nothing like that has happened before or since and I hope it never, ever does. It was the single most horrible, terrifying experience of my entire li

HebeMumsnet - the area I'm talking about is downstairs in Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese - strangely enough when I went back a year ago I'm not sure if the toilets etc have been redone but it looked different (very new compared to the old ones).

I recall going into this old toilet there with a friend (who's very non woo despite being an Irish parents Catholic convent girl) and getting a really strange feeling - either that something nasty was down there with me or that something would happen to me. I told me friend not to go anywhere! And I'd only had 2 drinks, not drunk or anything.

Strangely enough I did post about this here under a previous username and someone else (OpheliaBalls?) said she'd had the same experience yet when I PM'd her about it (I wanted to be sure I wasn't going mad) or tried to get her to elaborate on the other thread - she wouldn't.

The strange thing is - I've always been sort of woo but non woo if you know what I mean? I've never seen anything, don't really want to, but don't discount that ghosts etc are real. If this was down to the pub's dodgy plumbing I doubt it - because it wasn't an external noise or anything, nor am I especially nervy - this was just a gut feeling of dread and doom. We went to the Viaduct Tavern on the same ghost walk and the cellars there are meant to be haunted. I wouldn't like to be there by myself - but I didn't get any gut doom feelings there. I've also done countless walks and a walk work treasure hunt (don't ask...) round the City.

another place I've felt 'woo' about - is Smithfield. This is a few years back. I'd just started working near the Barbican and I'd go on walks round the area - I had no idea re Smithfield apart from the fact it was a meat market - nothing else...

anyway on a few days I got a really strange, almost religious feeling - but not necessarily of dread, more of maybe vague sadness, almost like I was with the angels - but not quite - a not quite 'being there' sensation - really strange and again, no nerves etc. Then I found the William Wallace plaque and found it it was the place used for burnings etc.

My mum - she's far more woo than me and hears/sees stuff etc but has more tangent feelings.

He Phantom dog walker is spooky!!