Can we have a brand new spooky thread?

[ImprobablePuffin]

Inspired by the thread about places that creep people out, I wondered if we could have a spooky experience thread or just unexplained happenings?

I know there are historical threads about this type of thing but thought it could be time for a fresh one.

I personally have never seen a ghost but I've had uneasy feelings in places and my grandparents swore blind they had a ghost cat in their house. I also have a family member who woke up in a barn whilst working on a farm and screamed his head off because there was an old craggy lady looming over him grimacing.

(And all those desperate to tell us ghosts aren't real, it's all hallucinations etc etc we see you, we hear you but you don't need to tell us.)

I’ve lived in some fairly unusual places (part of an old monastery and an ex Victorian school house) with absolutely no reports of unusual activity but a few years ago I lived in a flat above a shop which had the most bizarre goings on. It was only about 100 years old or so and had some strange quirks, wonky floors etc and I’d just moved in with my now DH. The first few months passed without anything interesting happening and then we had a spate of events that still make me uncomfortable to think about now!

• running feet up and down the stairs (loft conversion was the bedroom) that my cat used to freak out over - toilet brush tail and growling
• candles arranged on the TV stand that would be found arranged in a line on the middle of the floor in the morning
• a jumper was drying on the radiator and in complete view of both me and DP dropped a sleeve off the radiator...and then tucked itself back in again
• stains that appeared on the ceiling in the living room whilst we were away for the weekend. Logical explaination was a leak, until we managed to scratch part of the stain away.
• friends house sitting my cat while I was on holiday reported that one night when they were watching telly they heard a racket in the closed bathroom - my toiletries had been flung across the room and into the bath.
• things routinely disappeared and then popped back up again.

My first thought - and more disturbing than anything paranormal - was that someone was gaining access to the flat at odd times and doing strange things, but we had the only keys (privately rented and landlord worked in the shop below so just asked us if he needed access) and the flat itself was generally very secure. We know the person who moved in after us and she reported several strange things of her own.

I love these threads!

We live in a Victorian terrace which was in the same family for around 60 years before we bought it.

DD was just two when we moved in and I was pregnant with DD2. I used to have a wee nap with DD in the afternoon and one day I woke up to see DD sitting up and waving and giggling. I whipped round and of course there was no one there!

She did the same thing a few days later when I was carrying her upstairs. I asked her who she was waving to and she said “the little old man”!!!

When we did renovations we found lots of glass bottle and coins in the walls. The builder insisted that we put them all back again or it would be bad luck. DH thought this was batshit but after the lite old man stuff I just let the builder crack on!

@LoveMySituation I was on of those threads at 3.30 this morning when I couldn't sleep after being kicked by my soon to be DD... maybe not the best time to be reading those and it got me thinking about when she's born and if she starts seeing stuff like kids do. We've had nothing happen in our current property and I knew the old lady who lived here previously who was lovely but my DF refuses to get a rocking chair for DD room incase it rocks by itself.

@LoveMySituation

Xsjrx do you know there's a unexplained board? Plenty of stuff in there to keep you going

Could you link to it please?

A friend of mine was in her flat alone one day and she heard a voice right next to her very clearly say “Gas!”

She jumped, freaked out a bit, then checked and double checked everything was properly turned off. It was. She put it down to a trick of the mind, but remained feeling a bit on edge.

Later on that day, her friend rang her for a chat and mentioned something about his cooker not working properly, so he was going to have to get someone in to look at it after he got back from a trip away, that he was about to leave for.

My friend didn’t mention the voice, but urged him not to delay and to get someone in as a matter of urgency, before he left. He grumbled a bit but managed to do so, and it turned out he had a gas leak.

Love this thread... thanks for starting another op.

Nothing exactly scary to add, but I've been wondering this for the longest time.

When I was primary school aged, I could see what I now belive are "auras" - colours around people.
I would see them constantly, and was regularly in my "own world" and a "loner"
I remember vividly staring at my headteacher in assembly once, thinking that the purple halo around him was very pretty.
It never occurred to me that nobody else could see these colours.

I also used to feel de javu all the time. Especially in the school hall. I would regularly think "we've been here before."
I would regularly know what was coming next, a move of a lunchbox, a conversation someone was going to have.

I always felt like I had been here before, there was something, someone or a soul I already knew.

At times I could feel the world stand still, just for a couple of seconds.

I also had a sense, from very young I wouldnt be able to have children. Lo and behold, it's taken a few rounds of IVF to conceive.

I have also "felt" like I will die young. I dont like this one, I'm mid 30s and I'm still alive. So hopefully, I am wrong about this.

I was like this until my early teens, I have turned into a very "unremarkable" adult, although regular deja vu would continue into adulthood, but not for the last 10 years or so.

... does anyone have a reason, a name, any insight to why a child might be like this?

Is it what people would have you belive is a "gift", or is there mental explanations for this behaviour/thought process?

Our local church is Anglican and said to be haunted. My dad was a member of the PCC and was alone in the church in the bell tower doing some work. He thought he saw something out of his eye, looked up and a figure dressed in traditional Monk hooded clothes walked out of one wall, turned and looked at my dad, walked straight into the opposite wall and vanished

@Yellowcrockpot

Love this thread... thanks for starting another op.

Nothing exactly scary to add, but I've been wondering this for the longest time.

When I was primary school aged, I could see what I now belive are "auras" - colours around people.
I would see them constantly, and was regularly in my "own world" and a "loner"
I remember vividly staring at my headteacher in assembly once, thinking that the purple halo around him was very pretty.
It never occurred to me that nobody else could see these colours.

I also used to feel de javu all the time. Especially in the school hall. I would regularly think "we've been here before."
I would regularly know what was coming next, a move of a lunchbox, a conversation someone was going to have.

I always felt like I had been here before, there was something, someone or a soul I already knew.

At times I could feel the world stand still, just for a couple of seconds.

I also had a sense, from very young I wouldnt be able to have children. Lo and behold, it's taken a few rounds of IVF to conceive.

I have also "felt" like I will die young. I dont like this one, I'm mid 30s and I'm still alive. So hopefully, I am wrong about this.

I was like this until my early teens, I have turned into a very "unremarkable" adult, although regular deja vu would continue into adulthood, but not for the last 10 years or so.

... does anyone have a reason, a name, any insight to why a child might be like this?

Is it what people would have you belive is a "gift", or is there mental explanations for this behaviour/thought process?

I understand what you’re talking about and it makes sense to me. Some people are particularly sensitive psychically. Have you ever thought about taking some development classes? I know there will be plenty of people who scoff.

@birdsandbeesmakehay - no, I've not considered developmental classes, I am certainly a very unremarkable adult, and dont possess any of these "talents" anymore.
I get the occasional de ja vu, but nothing like when I was a child.

As a child I could predict what would happen next, for minutes at a time. Down to the sights, sounds, smell, smallest of movements etc.

I wish I had known that there was a name for my feelings as a child!

Lots of people as they get older get more closed off. You could open up again if you wanted to.

@BirdsandBeesmakinghay

Lots of people as they get older get more closed off. You could open up again if you wanted to.

I would be interested to know more, or what you understand of my childhood happenings, you sound like someone who might have experienced similar? Could you inbox me prehaps @birdsandbeesmakinghay

Apologies to op, or anyone else if I've swayed the original thread conversation - it's not exactly scary , but somewhat spooky I guess!

Only last week I took a new friend to the Marsden Grotto , a pub half carved out of the cliffs. We were sat in the cliff part only us there , when he started looking behind him and at all the lights. I didn’t know what he was trying to see . It turns out that he had seen a dark shadow go across my face and couldn’t understand how it had happened because there weren’t any lights that could have cast the shadow.

When my second child was three he told us about a lady that used to sit on his bed and watch him. He wasn't a very good talker but he told us about her all the time. Shortly after the lady started visiting my Son walked over to his brother who was in his high chair a tipped it over, out of nowhere. He was beside himself and said 'the lady' made him do it. We had someone from our church come and pray with us and the lady seemed to disappear....
Until my next Son was three and told us about 'the lady' that came into his (shared with elder brother) room a lot. Once I heard him scream from upstairs and he said he'd been playing and the lady had shocked him. The youth and family worker from church came and asked the lady to leave the boys room. That was the last she was spoke of.
My friend knew the people that lived in the house before us and they didn't use that room because they were so scared of it! We moved before the next child reached three years old!
Both boys said that the lady looked just like me

Two doggy ones:

Relatives bought a big old pub, parts of which were very old.
There were unused and neglected attic rooms, which they wanted to do up for their children.
However, although none of the family ever sensed anything untoward, their dog refused absolutely to set a paw across the threshold of that part of the building.

Relative mentioned it to an acquaintance who was said to have ‘the gift’ and she offered (unpaid) to take a look.

She said that that part of the house had once been an unofficial knocking shop, where an outwardly highly respectable man had once gone too far with a girl, who had died.
She said he was still there, suffering from appalling guilt.

However, she asked him to go, and he evidently went, because from then on their dog was perfectly happy to enter that part of the house.

2nd doggy one, friends of ours lived in a semi detached stone barn in Devon, very thick walls so it never felt like a semi.

When their lovely flatcoat retriever Charlie was on his very last legs - the vet was coming the following day to put him to sleep - the neighbours’ adult son came to visit them with his girlfriend.

In the days before smartphones, he went upstairs to check his emails on their computer. While up there, with his mind on emails, out of the corner of his eye he saw a dog pass the door, and very startled, asked his GF whether she’d seen it.
‘No!’ she said, ‘he’s downstairs!’ The family dog was a Dalmatian, but the dog he’d seen was their previous one, a Weimaraner, that had died some years previously, but had been great friends with the flatcoat next door.

The son was extremely shaken - nothing like that had ever happened to any of the family before. They had to assume that their old dog had come to keep Charlie company on his way.

My old house had a ghost of a man, who must have been from the early 20th century by his clothes. He just walked up & down the hall and sometimes through the lounge. He wasn't scary, he didn't seem to notice us, he was just.... there...? And it was nice to feel like you weren't on your own in the house.

I have a cat one. When I was about fourteen I was in the garden and saw a stripey grey cat that looked exactly like our old cat, who had died a couple of years previously. It darted across the lawn into a shrubbery.

I knew all the local cats and this wasn’t one of them, so I thought “Ooh, someone’s got a new cat just like our old Bob, I wonder where he’s come from” and I trotted over to the shrubbery to say hello to it. No cat. There was no way out of that shrubbery without me seeing it. It had vanished.

I questioned whether I had actually seen a cat at all; maybe it was a trick of the light or a brain fart or something. But it was comforting to think that it might have been old Bob hanging around his old garden.

Im going back about 19/20 years ago but before me,my arsehole ex met and married a lady who had two kids herself
They where desperate to have a child together but nothing was happening-doctor couldnt find anything wrong
For some reason he went to see a psychic and without him saying they wanted a baby together she told him that his granny (who was long dead) was holding a baby
Wrapped in a blue blanket and was really happy to keep him until she was ready to hand him over
The problem was,she added was baby would be his only bio child-but his wife would have more
He laughed-a baby?they’d been trying for 4 years-it was unlikely they’d have one now and they where married for life-neither would cheat on the other
6 months later,she got pregnant
Just shy of 9 months later along came a baby boy
When he was about 5 he happened to tell his parents that he’d loved living with his great granny but she had told him it was time for him to meet his parents and that she’d always be with him-and he’d often mention she was there (normally around bedtime)
They broke up and divorced when he was almost 7 and she met someone else and had two more babies with her new bloke

He wouldn’t have been less woo if he tried but it gave him food for thought

My mother knows a lady who is psychic but my dad is very closed minded
One day the lady was round and she suddenly turned to my dad and said
‘Why did you give cottoncandyandpeaches mum two wedding rings?’
Nobody knew that he had-her fingers often swell up so she swaps them
She then told him some very personal stuff that nobody knew nor could have known which prompted him to get his backside to the doctors and in turn saved his life
She also told him to move some money out of one bank and swap it to another account or lose it-so he did
Northern rock went under about two weeks after he did
He either goes out when she comes round now or his words ‘keeps my mind blank in case she thinks up some more stuff’!
I think he was more freaked out than he’ll ever admit

@Gorkastalker

My old house had a ghost of a man, who must have been from the early 20th century by his clothes. He just walked up & down the hall and sometimes through the lounge. He wasn't scary, he didn't seem to notice us, he was just.... there...? And it was nice to feel like you weren't on your own in the house.

As the very old joke goes: "My roommates swear this house is haunted. Funny, I've been living here almost two hundred years and I've never seen anything strange"

Okay, I didn't say the joke was any good!

@GETTINGLIKEMYMOTHER I was absentmindedly reading this thread, read your post and immediately burst into tears, what a wonderful thought that our past dogs come back to help their friends. Snotty much

I was visiting my aunt's family for the first time in their home country, and went downstairs in the morning to make myself a cup of tea. My cousin was in the kitchen, too. The kitchen faced the garden. I saw a black and grey rabbit come through a flap in the patio door and land with a loud flump on the floor. My cousin looked up at the sound. "It came through the cat flap," I said to myself, feeling as if something was not right. Then I realized that the rabbit had vanished, and that the patio door was solid glass with no cat flap. I told my cousin what I had seen. He had heard the same thing but not seen anything, and said oh yes, that was a rabbit they used to have, who was buried in the back garden, along with all their other deceased pets...
I felt quite strange after that and didn't spend time in the garden.

Family friends had a poltergeist. The mum was into crafting and had a tin of buttons. One morning they came downstairs to find the buttons arranged all over the kitchen floor in intricate patterns.

We had loads of weird things happening growing up. It's stopped a bit now although I'm currently missing something in the house which I'm sure has been pinched by something mischievous.

Another one.

I visited my cousin in London years ago.She gavemeher room,which was in the attic.

Anyway went to bed,and i just couldnt sleep.
There was an old women in a rocking chair in the corner.She was dressed in Victorian clothes.
Told my cousing the next day and she said when she moved in first,they wouldnt let her sleep.So much noise in the room,up and down the stairs.

So she had a few drinks this night and was trying to sleep and failed.
In the end she told them she was there to stay and to eff off.
She didnt really have a problem after that😂

We used to live in a very old house in several floors. It had had many different people living there over the years and often multiple occupancy.

OH was suffering awful insomnia for a while and would sleep in one of the bedrooms which was empty so as not to disturb me. He told me in a matter of fact way that there was a woman spinning in the corner of the room in highland dress at night. After some enquiries, we found out that one of the previous occupants had his elderly mother from the Highlands to live there with him .

Bumping this in time for Halloween…

The morning after my grandad died, I was alone in my flat early in the morning. I woke early- it was summer, so light- and remembered what had happened. I picked up a book to start reading to take my mind off things so that I could hopefully fall back to sleep, which I did.

Sometime later I was aware of someone picking the open book off of my chest and closing it, and putting it on the bedside table. Then I was aware of someone sitting on the bed next to me and I thought, half asleep “oh that’s grandad”. I heard footsteps retreating and the front door banging shut. At that point I woke properly and freaked out, saw book on the side of the table and was really confused.

I’m sure it was a dream or something else easily explainable, but I’ve never forgotten it and wonder if it was him saying goodbye.