To ask if anyone has had any paranormal encounters/experiences

[HowlingBitch]

Or do we all need another ? I just find it all fascinating.

[electra]

Scary stuff indeed Vicar! Ouija boards are dangerous and not worth doing anyway because you never know who you're talking to.

[TakeItOnTheChins]

Yeah, never mess with Ouija boards - they're SO dangerous! Sometimes they predict what albums will be called!

[electra]

If you don't believe in spirits or in anything you can't see then you won't think ouija boards are dangerous. But I think it's more logical to consider that we aren't in a position to understand everything as we are limited by definition.

[JudysJudgement]

there is an article today in the Express (didnt read it, just flicked thru) about young children and why they are more prone to seeing this sort of thing

like i say, didnt read it so dont know if its interesting or not

www.express.co.uk/posts/view/254189/The-psychic-children

[nomadwantshome]

Visitn dover castle years back. Having a tour and there was a long corridor. At the end I saw someone go through a door at the end of it. I was transfixed by this but I didn't know why. Once I got closer I realised that it was a solid wall.

Driving home around midnight along a long country road with no turn offs, north downs. I saw a cars head lights behind me, it came closer and then I presumed went to overtake me. The lights then completely disappeared.


Along a winding country lane near by, there is a place were the the land suddenly drops away from the road. It's a small valley and goes uphill over the other side. Again, driving home around midnight I saw some lights, which I thought were tractor lights on the farm land below. The lights though came across the land far too fast and high and went back again. Maybe there was a reasonable explanation. I slowed to look and the lights came back again, I'm sorry but I wasn't going to hang around and sped off.

[garlicnutter]

Those of you who've seen orange lights in the night sky - were they anything like ?

[loveulotslikejellytots]

My Great Grandma on my Grandad's side lived with my Nan and Grandad (and my Dad and Auntie) for the last few years up until she died.

She stayed in my Auntie's room as it was the only room big enough to fit 2 single beds in. My Auntie used to sit one the edge of her bed and read to her while she plaited my Auntie's hair. My Auntie was only young but the night she died my Auntie was reading to her.

My brothers and I always used to have sleep overs at my Nan's and I used to sleep in the bed where my Great Nan's bed used to be. My Nan said that I came down one morning (3 or 4 y/o) saying that someone had been playing with my hair in the night. She asked me who, and all I could remember was that she was old and she was wearing a nightie with Purple flowers on it. My Nan knew who it was immeditately and told my Auntie.

My Great Nan still visits my Auntie and Me now. She sits on the edge of the bed and brushes and plaits our hair. There is never any pattern to her arrival, it can be a year or so inbetween visits or she can come twice in one week. But she always visits us both in the same night. Normally when something is troubling us.

What is even stranger is my Grandad still comments that (his Mum - my Great Nan) my Auntie and I are all very similar. The way we sit, talk, eat, our mannerisms etc. And we all have the same knuckles and hands!!! Random but true!

[ThatVikRinA22]

haha garlic....nope! definitely wasnt a chinese lantern. it was huge, and triangular, silent, with a big X in the middle..not a plane.

at least i was not the only one to see it. i lived in a village just out side of York back then, but workmen at Rowntrees factory in the centre of York saw it and it was they that reported it to police, and why it was in the Yorkshire Evening press next day, a tiny piece on the front, entitled Black Magic? or something...but it confirmed my sighting and meant i wasnt off my trolley at such a tender age!

[garlicnutter]

:) Vicar :) They are pretty, aren't they?
I think the ones where the UFO suddenly vanishes, or zooms away to a tiny point of light, ARE chinese lanterns. Not zooming or vanishing, just going out!

[ThatVikRinA22]

might be pretty but they are very bad for the environment,

what i saw definitely was not a chinese lantern, like i say, i wasnt the only one to see it, other people saw it too, independently from me. it must have been 1982.

This thing was the size of a plane, but totally silent, very fast and very maneuverable, and it hovered for a few seconds before twisting, thats when i could see the shape of it properly with this column down the middle and the two other columns off either side, it was really amazing to see. It didnt scare me, it happened quite fast, i didnt really know what on earth to make of it and i knew id sound like a loon if i told anyone, but i told my mother and a few people at school next day, it was that evening in the Press (the evening press came out in the evening! suprisingly!_) that i read about the work men in the centre of York seeing the same thing.

i quite like my little ufo sighting, makes me special!

[fgaaagh]

There are 2 (long) incidents that I know of which have been told to me by reliable, reasonable people I trust. I'll tell them both here since this is anon. I haven't even shared these with anyone else IRL, including DH, in case they laugh at me for believing any of this - since I'm totally unmystical, not religious, don't believe in ghosts, etc!!

1st:

Before I was born, my mum sadly lost a little girl close to term, happily followed by 3 boys with no complications (my brothers). She'd have been my oldest sister if she'd lived. After years of wanting a girl eventually my mum and dad had given up trying for another baby. My brothers grew up, and when they were young teenagers my mum took them to Blackpool for the day (my dad was at work I assume).

My mum has only ever spoken about this once, because she's a complete no-nonsense type, and I'm 100% sure she wouldn't lie to me about what happened.

But apparently as my brothers went off to buy some sweets at a stand, and my mum was watching them, a old-ish woman came up to my mum. She said that she didn't want to upset my mum but that she had a message to give her: the little girl that was lost before mum's 3 boys was not the only girl mum was supposed to have, and that this time next year another girl would arrive, followed the year after with another girl. She told my mum not to be upset and that the two sisters would get on in the way my mum never had with her own sister. When my mum asked her who she was, the lady said that she just had a gift for sensing these things and had waited until my brothers were out of earshot before saying something in case she upset her. The lady wished her well and said her goodbyes.

I arrived 1 year to the day that my mum went in Blackpool (although at night - I was born about 30 mins to midnight). My youngest sister arrived 13 months after me.

I have no reason to doubt my mum's story, and the one time she did speak about it, I did ask my brothers (seperately) about "the day trip to Blackpool" - although one of them couldn't remember anything about a sweet stand, my oldest two brothers do remember a candy floss stand and getting sweets there that day.

I'm not sure what to make of all that.

2nd:

When I was at university, I lived with 2 other girls, and I've kept in contact many many years later with one of them. We don't catch up very often, but I do remember a story she told me about our flat about 10 years after we moved out and went our seperate ways.

Again, she is a very solid, reliable person and was doing biology at uni. At the time, she had a boyfriend in the same year as us who was studying music - he had his own flat share a bit further from campus but they often used to visit live music bars/drinks promo nights and crash at our place for a few hours until lectures the next morning.

The incident she told me about, and doesn't like talking about even now, is that one morning they were walking down the road from a late night sesh at about 5am in the morning. She maintains that neither of them were anywhere close to drunk the entire evening, although they had been drinking earlier in the night, and she never touched drugs as far as i was aware (then and now).

As they rounded the corner to the house we were sharing, it was dawn - streetlights still on, but getting lighter. Rounding the bend, as they got to next door's gate, my friend noticed something at the other end of the street underneath a streetlamp. It was a figure walking AWAY from them with great big lopes, massive strides, just strolling. Apparently it looked very, very tall and very very thin - cartoon proportions, almost half the height of the lamp post. But no "detail" apparently - she tried to explain it and from what I could gather it was like an outline of a person, there was just blackness where the face, body, clothes, should have been - like an outline, or a shadow. Or a straw man with a circle where the head should have been. But much too thin and tall to be a straw scarecrow.

My friend stopped dead in her tracks, and her boyfriend noticed, asked her what's wrong, and looked to where she was looking.

He stared at it too. According to Ellie (my friend) the thing appeared to pause in its strolling and turn to the side to look around at them - the overwhelming sense of emotion that came from it was a rush of malice. She said it was like a wave of negative emotion came from it. For some reason she said that she seemed to feel as if it was ANGRY about something - that it had been spotted?

It turned a bit more and started coming towards them, and although it was at the other end of the road, it could cover the distance much faster than a normal human because it was so tall and long.

At this, my friend's BF apparently grabbed her hand, ran into our garden, and they frantically started trying to get the keys from her bag. They got inside before it reached our house, but when they looked back at the door after locking it behind them, the 2 panels of misty glass that covered the top half of our door had a shadow twig type figure, like it was looking for them in there. Apparently it stayed there for 15 or 20 seconds, peering in, whilst they cowered in the stairwell holding their breath.

She said she'll never forget the unhuman shape and thinness of the thing, and its stick arms as it peered in the glass. And the malice / feeling that it was very very angry at them for seeing it.

Paranoia of student drunks with too little sleep? Normally I'd laugh and say without a doubt, but I know my friend, and she maintains that she'd barely drunk that night, her and her boyfriend saw the same thing, later collaborated, and she was so freaked out by it that she never came home alone at dawn EVER again (I do remember her doing this, but I thought it had to do with knuckling down for exams!!, looking back).

[ThatVikRinA22]

that gave me goosebumps fgaaagh....reading this now as just not a good idea at night when youre alone! DH works nights....

[garlicnutter]

Oooh, fgaaagh, your friend's shadow man reminded me of something that happened when I was youth hostelling with a friend, aged 17. We both saw it and ran down to the big dorm room, where we slept on the floor for company. Ours was wearing a hat.

As you know, I'm pretty sceptical about paranormal events: not saying they can't happen, but I do believe 99.9% can be explained by known-world phenomena. We later found out there'd been a spate of sexual attacks on girls in that town; I thought we'd had a lucky escape from some crackpot woman-hater who likes playing tricks.

Still, your story prompted me to google "tall, thin, shadowy figure" and there are lots of similar tales! Some of them wearing the hat

[electra]

I find the incidents involving unidentified creatures far more frightening than the ghost - poltergeist ones. I hope I never see a wearwolf or shadow man. hey, it reminds me of that advert years ago that was creepy - anyone else remember it?

[poutintrout]

Garlic I'm so glad you mentioned the big cats thing in London because I'm sure that I've seen one too. We were driving through Belsize Park about 9 or 10 years ago, it was dark and I swear I saw a lion cub run up someone's drive. It was definitely not a fox or a dog/cat, it was too stocky. The telling thing for me was the tail. It was thinish with a tufty end.

I was so convinced at what I'd seen that I did ponder calling the police or something but thought that they'd think I was a crackpot so didn't. I have thought about this often over the years and still believe what I saw was a big cat cub.

[seeker]

'I hope I never see a wearwolf or shadow man. '

Don't worry, you won't!

[electra]

seeker, I hope you're right but you cannot dismiss people's experiences when you weren't there. I've seen things that cannot be explained easily but they didn't scare me like seeing a strange creature might!

[seeker]

"you cannot dismiss people's experiences when you weren't there."

I'm not saying they didn't see something. But is wasnt't anything paranormal. Absolutely certainly it wasn't.

I've beeb spooked before - everybody has. I remember the shadowy figure in the pantry whan I was a child that scared be so badly I couldn;t talk about it for months. I kept seeing it. Eventually I told my mother - we went together to look and found a patch of damp that, from a child's eye level looked exactly like an hunched old man. And I was petrified one evening alone by a repeated tapping at my door when there was nobody there. When I looked in the morning, I found a piece of guttering hanging loose and blowing in the wind. ALL the experiences people havba had can be explained like this. Honestly, they can.

[garlicnutter]

Haha, verity, is that the non-existent airbase near Malvern?
They had to 'fess up a few years back - since its location appeared in an online game We saw loads of amazing slinky, black, ufos supersonic planes last year, but it's been pretty quiet lately ... budget cuts, I bet!

[garlicnutter]

Just catching up on the posts I missed earlier. Terraviva, your advice is absolutely sound and the best possible, imo:
The biggest force in the universe is love. If you ever get spooked by something that you don't understand or that scares you, just think about love & imagine light - surround yourself with it - feel it in your heart. (And even if you think this is all bollocks, it still works even if it's just the psychological effect of calming and soothing yourself.)

[PigeonPair]

This is a bit of a friend of a friend story, but my friends Father was staying in their new home alone while his wife and children had gone to see her parents. In the middle of the night, he felt the duvet slipping off. He pulled it back on but once again it was "pulled off" him and again, and again. By this time, he was absolutely petrified and ran downstairs putting all the lights on. When he went into the sitting room, there was a log that had fallen out of the fire and was smoking on the carpet. He is convinced somebody was trying to warn him.

[seeker]

"The biggest force in the universe is love. "

No - the biggest force in the universe is reason. The human mind is a wonderul, intricate, powerful thing.

[garlicnutter]

I agree, seeker - but where reason fails, love may conquer. Ime, this is even true of real-life 'evil presences'.

Speaking of which: Tiny people are often large insects, toads or small mammals. Nobody sees them in full, uninterrupted daylight do they? If ghosts are restless spirits, how come so many of them are cars, tractors & trucks? Large cats are often large cats, as previously mentioned. If you saw something you felt sure was a lion or panther, it probably was a lion or panther.

There is a cold spot in my house. Even plants won't grow there (woo!) It's in the corner where a North-facing wall adjoins an east-facing one, both external ...

XH#1 and I had a lovely little cottage in a small terrace, near a large prison. The houses were originally built for the prison staff. We used to hear footsteps in the attic - which was odd, because the attics were just vent spaces; not big enough for a person to move around in. We heard these often at night, and sometimes went outside to see if something was falling onto the roof or there were any animals up there. Mysterious!

After a few years, we mentioned this to some of the prison officers in the pub. They fell around laughing. Pointing out the obvious, they told us that the rooves of our terrace made a popular exit route for escaping prisoners ...

And, in a flat on the top floor of a tall block, we used to hear all sorts of sounds coming from above. Heavy footsteps, things banging & crashing, music, voices. The space above our flat was the lift maintenance area, which could only be accessed through heavy, locked steel doors ...

... or from above, which is how the guys who ran a pirate radio station up there got in and out

[Tarenath]

"It seems so odd... I mean, you would have NO IDEA what could happen. Especially the less benign-seeming ones. E.g. the one where the little girl woke up with scratches on her back/bedroom wall (maybe those people did move, just an eg). You wouldn't leave your DC to sleep in a room with a live wolf/angry old man etc."

The night that happened, DD spent the night in our bedroom and DH spent the night in her room with an attitude of "GTFO, this is our house". We haven't heard anything since, and neither of the children have brought up "ghosts". Maybe we did imagine the whole thing, and DHs vigil gave us the psychological boost to stop imagining, or maybe we didn't and it really has pissed off. I'll probably never know.