Can we have a seasonal spooky thread...

[valerianroot]

As nights are drawing in and Halloween is nearly here, I love these mumsnet threads.

I'll start, many years ago I lived in a flat where sadly two builders had died when their scaffold had collapsed outside. My bedroom was on the top floor and quite often I would hear voices on the landing outside (always at night of course ;) I would never leave the bedroom, even to go to the loo and it was really disconcerting!

Also another flat I lived in and there was something so off about it, the energy was so dark and there was a room off the kitchen that just felt cold and horrible, and it wasn't just me who thought it, friends who came over commented on it too.

Couldn't wait to move from either flat!

Description of The Thing at the Somerset B&B:

A female figure, part human, part animal. Human skin and body, the feet ending in a horn like structure - thing elongated horses hooves. The face was just exceptionally old - hundreds of years old. It / she was also not vertical, tilted about 20 degrees with the feet towards me.

ooh stuff like this really spooks me out, large institutional buildings. I read a lot of real life ghost stuff and this idea of a place being 'too dark' or 'blacker than black' comes up a lot.
I was told one once where the person looked down their stairs into their hallway, which was always a little illuminated by a streetlamp just outside the house, they said the small patch at the bottom of the stairs was just too dark, almost like a solid black, almost soft at the edges. I'm fascinated by this idea.

@crochetmonkey74

Ooh yes I didn't realize this was a proper phenomenon but yes blacker than black is right. The worst part about this was our residents had sensors in their rooms under their beds to alert us on the intercom who was up in what room. To turn it off you had to physically climb under the bed to switch it off. I used to feel an urge to vomit with fear Everytime I had to go under there. I've never known darkness like it. The feeling of dread that something was going to drag me under was overwhelming.

Now reading this late at night. Slightly terrified by these stories but loving them nonetheless.

I'm usually non-woo but occasionally things have happened to me that I can't explain. Here's one:
In the late 90s I has just started my NQT year in a London primary school. It was a typical victorian school building.
One evening I was working late to get everything ready for a supply teacher the following morning when I would be out on a course. I was really stressed and under time pressure because the premises manager would be locking up at 6.30.
I went tearing up the stairs to the staff room to use the photocopier and on my way passed a classroom with the door open and the lights on. I glanced through the door and saw a pair of kids sitting side by side at a table. They were obviously brother and sister, they looked so similar. They looked at me and I looked at them, but briefly, I didn't stop. I said Hi as I rushed past, and half thought that they must belong to the teacher as it wasn't unknown for teachers' children to wait for them to finish work. While I was using the photocopier it occurred to me that the teacher in that class didn't have kids. So I thought maybe the children hadn't been picked up, but then they would have had someone with them, also they were not wearing our school uniform. (When I thought more about this later I remembered the girl had on a pinafore and the boy a buttoned shirt. I couldn't actually say what colours they were wearing)
I finished my copying and went back the way I had come. The lights were off in the classroom and the kids had gone. I went back downstairs to my room, and started to pack up. The premises manager appeared and asked me if I was ready to go. I asked about the kids upstairs, if they had gone and who they belonged to. He was puzzled and a bit annoyed, said he had been round the whole school and he and I were the only people there. He went and double checked the upper floors and confirmed that there was nobody there. I was so tired and stressed out and now I thought I was going mad as well, and I started to cry. We left and he walked me to the end of the road and gave me a fag.
A couple of years later at his retirement drinks in the pub he asked me about it and I told him the story again. He said there had been a few odd things in the school over the years but then he clammed up and wouldn't give any more details. Maybe he didn't want to freak me out as I was still working there.

Years ago as a student nurse I was on placement in a day theatre located in what had at one time been a children's ward, old building, now demolished. Dept was closed at night and first person to arrive in the morning would collect keys and unlock everything, put lights on etc.

Fellow student and I arrived one morning to find lights on but no one around - the nurse had got there about 10 mins earlier and, as she walked down the corridor, been greeted by a loud, cheery "Hiya". She turned around, thinking someone else had arrived but quickly realised department was deserted and in darkness. She ran and locked herself in the office until she heard us come in.

The theatre wasn't accessible from any other door than the main entrance and there was definitely no-one else there when we arrived. Creepy...

I've a few weird night shift stories, but I think I've told them all before on here at some point!

Stayed at a house with my mum and our dog (sadly now passed) we were unpacking and there wasn’t any place in the bathroom to put my toiletries, so I just put the bag at the back of the toilet (on the cistern), started heading to my mums bedroom and I heard a thud and the sound of children giggling, my toiletry bag was on the floor, it couldn’t have fallen because it was right in the middle and not near the edge. Found out after we got home that the house used to be a school about 100 years ago.

A friend's grandmother was dying. The old lady was in her nineties. She had been deeply asleep for most of two days but rallied on this day. She was propped up on pillows and actually smiled at my friend. She knew her name as well.
She lay there, smiling and smiling, and it seemed to be a smile of pure joy. The old lady was looking past my friend, staring at something
My friend took her hand and her Gran spoke for the first time in days.
'They are all there. Every one.' And she kept smiling.
'Who is there?'
Her Gran named her own father and mother, her grandparents...loads of long dead relatives.'They're in the mirror. Come to take me home.,' And she smiled and smiled.
My friend said she felt as if bugs were crawling up her spine and scalp. She sat looking at Gran, careful not to look to the side or behind. Gran started to mumble but with pauses as if she was listening to someone else speak. Them she fell asleep. My friend looked round. There was a perfectly ordinary mirror hanging there with no spectral occupants.
Gran died later that day.

@CharDee thank you so much for coming back and sharing it again!

These are great and really scary! Getting me in a real Halloween mood :)

My Mum's story but a very beautiful one. My mum was very close to her aunty El and uncle Jack much more so than her own mother- she would spend weekends with them and they (childless) treated her like their own. My mum would sleep with her aunty in the same bed, even on returning for visits as an adult as they would chat the whole night. Her uncle died many years before her aunty, who became very ill and was dying when my mum was in her forties. Her aunty was calling for her, but my mum couldn't get there immediately due to finances/ organising childcare for me etc. It took my mum a week to get there- her aunty hung on the entire time. When my mum got there , her aunty asked her to sleep in the bed again so they did, chatting in the night. In the morning, my mum woke and went to the bathroom - the door was open and she heard her aunty say 'Jack' and when my mum went back, her aunty had died and there was one tear on her cheek. It gave my mum great comfort and me too.

@crochetmonkey74

My Mum's story but a very beautiful one. My mum was very close to her aunty El and uncle Jack much more so than her own mother- she would spend weekends with them and they (childless) treated her like their own. My mum would sleep with her aunty in the same bed, even on returning for visits as an adult as they would chat the whole night. Her uncle died many years before her aunty, who became very ill and was dying when my mum was in her forties. Her aunty was calling for her, but my mum couldn't get there immediately due to finances/ organising childcare for me etc. It took my mum a week to get there- her aunty hung on the entire time. When my mum got there , her aunty asked her to sleep in the bed again so they did, chatting in the night. In the morning, my mum woke and went to the bathroom - the door was open and she heard her aunty say 'Jack' and when my mum went back, her aunty had died and there was one tear on her cheek. It gave my mum great comfort and me too.

That's lovely

My DDad developed dementia and was in care. He hadn't spoken a lucid sentence for about nine months when he died. He had been semi conscious for days when suddenly he sat up and smiled and spoke to his mother who had died in 1985. He had a particular nickname for her. His face was wreathed in smiles and it was clear she had come to collect him. His speech to her was perfectly lucid and as if he was having a conversation. He died ten hours later but I believe his soul went at that point as he didn't wake up again.

[quote ToffeeNotCoffee]@ShirleyPhallus

The forest one is fake?? What?! It’s like the best thing about MN!

Yes, the forest one is fake. It's the one where the dog sitter chases a shadow into the garden after dark and is spoken to by a scary other worldly voice when she stops to catch her breath. She runs back into the house and the puppy she is dog sitting is safe and sound in the kitchen.

It's been debunked as a fake. Which is what I suspected as it runs too smoothly and holds the readers' attention very well i.e. like an author would.[/quote]
But how do you debunk something as 'fake' when it's just an anonymous internet poster posting about some spooky incident that supposedly happened to her? Unless the labrador who accompanied the poster into the woods came on and said it didn't happen that way?

If I'd written the Savernake Forest story I'd take out one of the two different supernatural voices that speak to the OP in the wood (demonic and clearly unimpressed by her invoking the name of God, the other commanding the benign) -- two is two many. Though the unexplained noises from the hen house is good as a way of building up atmosphere.

When I was 7 we were having a massive community bonfire at the local rec. Multiple guys were made and everyone was pitching in bringing old wood and what not, baking parkin pigs, pie and pie - the whole November 5th shebang that doesn't happen much in communities anymore.

Anyway, I was privy to the building of the bonfire and the placing of the guys because my parents were amongst those who'd organised the evening. I was sat on a swing watching our particular guy being placed atop the fire when I clearly heard him crying and my name. I ran up to the stack and started shouting to my dad to please take him down because he was upset and didn't want to be burned. Everyone had a good laugh and clearly it was just childhood imagination but it felt very real, and I was genuinely heartbroken that they ignored me. So much so that when they lot the bonfire I couldn't watch it because I thought I could still hear the guy crying my name.

I'm not batshit, honest! I had a very vivid imagination as a child and it served me well because I became a writer of supernatural and horror fiction.

*pie and peas

I remember years ago me and my friend went to the cinema. It was a really old building that was closed and moved to a new site not long after. I went to the toilet and my mate waited outside. I was in the cubicle when I heard someone come in and go into the cubicle next to me. The door to the toilets were flung open and slammed into the wall and then the cubicle door was slammed shut and I could hear them in there. I came out and washed my hands and the door to this cubicle was shut. So I went out and said to my mate about this person banging round in there. She said she had stood outside the toilets and no one had passed her. It was a quiet night and not busy. We went in to look and the cubicle door was open. No one was in there, yet no one had left as they would have had to walk right past us.

I've got two but they are not super scary.

First one. My boyfriend at the time worked in an old pub on the outskirts of a small village.

He sometimes stayed there overnight in an upstairs room and I joined him one evening after closing. Only three of us were there, another single guy was in a different room upstairs. I was the only woman on the premises and because of the location it was not somewhere pedestrians walked past.

After we were tucked in bed and starting to drift off I started to hear a woman singing downstairs. It was a kind of sad melody, no words, the only thing I can compare it to is it sounded a bit like the part in the Little Mermaid when Ariel's voice is being taken away from her by the Sea Witch.
I held my breath for a moment, didn't move a muscle and whispered to my boyfriend "Can you hear that?!" and he replied "I was just going to ask you the same. I couldn't bring myself to say it out loud"

He was also feeling creeped out. Somehow we both felt it was something ghostly rather than a person downstairs.
We put our heads under the covers and stayed there until we fell asleep!
The guy in the adjoining room hadn't heard anything when we spoke to him the next day as he had been listening to music wearing headphones before going to sleep.

Weeks later we were talking to a regular local who told us (without hearing our story) that the pub had a ghost of a young woman who sometimes appeared in the fireplace of the bar on the ground floor.

Second one:

I was with the same ex boyfriend. Things were ok between us at the time. However, in time he would slowly become emotionally abusive, this would then get worse and he would start gaslighting me, although I was too young to see it at the time.
My Grandma had passed away a year or so before and she appeared to me in a dream. She told me that I couldn't trust my boyfriend and that he was lying to me about where he was going and who he was seeing.
Things were good between us (or so I thought!) so I brought up the dream in a joking way the next day and he went MENTAL. Told me I was nuts and needed help.
You've guessed it.. it turned out further down the line that he was seeing someone behind my back and times when he'd told me he was working late, or going into work on different days to usual he was actually seeing her.
I still don't know it my subconscious was telling me he was a bad 'un or if it really was my Grandma. Either way, it was right!

I used to live near Savernake Forest and I believe that story could be true!

I was walking the dog at dusk one night and I heard voices. DDog and I watched from behind a tree as two blokes buried a bag. When I heard them drive away I poked a stick in the soil, went and got a spade and dug it up. It was full of.......does anyone remember trimphones? This would have been about 1975. Sorry not spooky but SF is very spooky generally.

@TheSquashyHatOfMrGnosspelius

I used to live near Savernake Forest and I believe that story could be true!

I was walking the dog at dusk one night and I heard voices. DDog and I watched from behind a tree as two blokes buried a bag. When I heard them drive away I poked a stick in the soil, went and got a spade and dug it up. It was full of.......does anyone remember trimphones? This would have been about 1975. Sorry not spooky but SF is very spooky generally.

They were burying a sack of old telephones at dusk in the middle of a forest? Not even a demonic incantation or a skeleton cat or a witch's bottle?

@ShirleyPhallus

The forest one is fake?? What?! It’s like the best thing about MN!

Nah. That's the Penis Beaker thread

Here's another;

I was staying in a B&B and had to get up early to catch a train. The owner was really nice and offered to do me an early breakfast. I was on my own in the dining room and a little black dog ran in. I called to it but it ran under a table on the other side of the room. Almost immediately, the owner came back in. I said the dog had come in and she looked surprised, and said she didn't have a dog. I said I definitely saw a small black dog and we both looked under the table where it had gone. No dog.

@ShirleyPhallus

Great thread!! We need to find that really spooky one about the woman in the farm building who ran out after her dog and then felt a presence etc etc - anyone know what I’m talking about?

Yes!! But can't remember the thread for it though

F 🥰

Clandestin yeah sorry. Nothing spooky. Just trimphones but they were new trimphones nicked from a shop : )

@TheSquashyHatOfMrGnosspelius

I used to live near Savernake Forest and I believe that story could be true!

I was walking the dog at dusk one night and I heard voices. DDog and I watched from behind a tree as two blokes buried a bag. When I heard them drive away I poked a stick in the soil, went and got a spade and dug it up. It was full of.......does anyone remember trimphones? This would have been about 1975. Sorry not spooky but SF is very spooky generally.

The best part of this story is you digging it up 😂