Strange happening that have a rational explanation.

[soapydopeybubbles]

I love a good ghost story and I'm intrigued by paranormal phenomena, although I don't actually believe in anything woo because science. However, I also have a rather overactive imagination and quite often manage to scare myself silly especially if I read them just before bed despite repeatedly telling myself that I don't believe in all things woo.

MumsNet has had plenty of threads about unexplained paranormal happenings; psychics, mediums, ghosts and unbelievable coincidences so AIBU to ask for stories about things that have happened to you but that turned out to have an entirely rational explanation?

Lol Viva that's brilliant! I would have shat myself too, as who would ever expect sheep to be on the roof.. I wouldn't be able to comfort myself with logic. I've always wanted to live in a hillside shire house from Lord of the rings but will have to have a re-think now!

A few days after my mum died, my dog started barking at the foot of the stairs in front of the stair gate, wagging his tail & staring up at the top of the stairs. There was nobody else in the house & it was freaking me out a bit. Eventually I opened the stair gate to see what he would do - he rushed upstairs into my bedroom & tried to get the Easter egg I had just opened & left on my bed.

I used to work in a record store back in the day when we put empty cd cases on the shop floor and filed the discs on wooden shelves behind the counter. For a couple of months I was convinced I had some kind of guardian angel helping me to find the discs easily for customers as I would find them sticking out further than the rest. Logically it was just that as new stock came in it was put at the front of the racks so sold quickly

The other week I was alone in the house as DH and DS were out. I had woken late after a very late night working and was taking a leisurely shower when all of a sudden a 50 pence piece flew at my face and hit me on the nose. I was SO freaked out. I was convinced something unseen had thrown it at me.

Later that morning when I went to make the bed I turned the pillow back to discover that DS (aged 5) and put his stash of coins under my pillow. So clearly the 50 pence had been caught in my hair and when I shampooed it fell out.

Mine is from my first camping trip for DofE. I was ready for bed and tucked up in my sleeping bag. I thought I could hear someone unzipping the tent and was terrified. I tried to tell the girl I was sharing with but she was asleep and wouldn't wake up. I carried on listening in the dark. Turns out the sound was my eyelashes against the nylon sleeping bag.

We lived in a Victorian cottage which was basically a horror film wet dream with creaking floorboards, squeaky doors and endless bit going bump and bang in the night. We never thought anything of it until we were re-doing the bathroom and pulling off some old tiles. One came off with a huge chunk of plaster attached and what appeared to be hairs embedded in the plaster. I pulled at the next one, and there was a huge hunk of hair sticking out of the plaster and running along towards where there was an inbuilt cupboard.

I freaked out thinking that someone had been walled up in there and we were about to have a hairy skeleton flop into the bath, but a quick google revealed that horse hair was quite often used to reinforce plaster and stop it from breaking up - mystery solved.

Another one - camping in Yosemite national park and heard a really horrendous sort of snuffling noise in the night. Turned out a bear was trying to get into my tent! Not exactly non-scary, but completely of-this-world scary as opposed to woo scary.

Sitting in bed reading, airing cupboard doors very slowly and squeakily open... Then one of the bloody cats jumps out!

I few months ago I was lying in bed when I thought I heard a cat meowing downstairs.
It seemed unlikely as we don't have any cats and dd doesn't have any cuddly toy cats that meow, so I got out of bed and went out onto the landing. I heard the meowing again. One of the neighbours' cats had started jumping onto the windowsill so I wondered if a window had been left open and it had been brave enough to come inside.

As I walked downstairs I could hear the meowing coming from the lounge. I opened the door, switched the light on and looked around, but couldn't see anything. I went over to the windows, pulled back the curtains and found that the windows were all shut.

It was starting to freak me out. Then I heard the noise again. I looked over and saw dd's bloody phone. She'd gone and changed the ring tone so a sodding cat.

Another time I was freaked out by voices from the conservatory in the middle of the night - until I realised that it was just the radio, because I'd accidentally set a timer.

THis one was a story my primary school teacher told when we were doing some sewing.

She had once dropped a needle whilst sewing, and it totally disappeared, she hunted, it never turned up. Not even when she cleaned the room thoroughly.

years later she had to have an xray and there, half way down her leg, was the needle! she had not felt it go in at the time or ever had any pain from it moving about. If she's still alive it's there to this day.

bettycatkitten you do realise that if you were in a horror movie, you'd have laughed at her cat making you jump and then an actual murderer would have appeared behind you don't you?!

Mine is similar to other people's... Heard the most god awful demonic voice coming from the kitchen of our rented flat - had many a weird experience there so properly cracked myself. Pushed open the door to find... A novelty watch that spoke Austin Powers quotes when you pushed a button. Battery was wearing down and had triggered the voices. Try it now... Say 'oh behave' but really sloooooooowly.

Not an eerie one but a scary experience. When I was a young student nurse many moons ago - I used to do some home care agency work for extra cash.

I looked after a little old disabled lady one night. The son looked after her but had booked a carer as he had a rare night out he wanted to go to.

I sorted little old lady for the night and went upstairs to sleep on my designated spare bedroom.

In the middle of the night I heard the front door shut and a drunken son stumble about.

Next thing I heard a groan in my room, with a rhythmical shuffling, more groaning and my name being called.

I was terrified and thought the son was wanking in my room but it was pitch dark and i couldnt see anything. I quickly worked out my escape plan of basically just legging it and shot down the stairs.

I then heard the noise again coming from the little lady's room as I was by the front door. Bless - it was her trying to call me as she needed to use the loo and there was a baby monitor linked to my room. Hence, it sounded like the noise was coming from my room. She was groaning as she was trying to get out of bed herself.

When I left in the morning - the son was really grateful for the care I gave his mum and wrote a lovely sincere letter to the agency about me.....

Oh sorry - Ive just realised OP asked for a ghost story and Ive just given her a wanking story! doh!

Just remembered another one - I was staying over at a friends and we were woken up in the middle of the night to hear a shrill shrieking coming from her wardrobe. Being hysterical teenagers we whipped ourselves up into a serious frenzy, daring each other to open the ,door and eventually decamping to the living room to sleep with all the lights on.

We talked about it ENDLESSLY for weeks, and it wasn't until about 6 months later that she was rifling through her shoes in the bottom of the wardrobe and discovered a dessicated frog. She told me about it and eventually we worked out that the shrieking that we had heard weeks earlier was actually similar to the sound that frogs make when they catch them, as amplified by the encounter taking place inside a wardrobe...!

when cats catch them

DH and I went camping early on in our relationship- neither of us campers. Came back from the pub into this field where we had put the tent. It wasn't a camp site, just a field by a wood in the middle of Northumberland. We were the only tent- got undressed and into sleeping bag cuddled up. About an hour later I woke and I could hear someone outside the tent, sort of circlng it. I woke DH and we listened. The person got really close to the tent, they seemed to be in more than ne place at once and it was pitch black.Suddenly they scraped alng my side of the tent. I screamed and Dh jumped up and scrambled outside with a torch to find a couple of sheep looking more scared than us.

We went back to bed and during the night it started to rain. Dh woke me up saying 'Lu I think it's an earthquake'. The tent was movng. We had put it up on a banky field and the rain was running down the field and making the tent move. It felt like the ground was moving. The tent collapsed and we gave up and hauled everything back to the car, drove home and wete in our bed by 5.30am. Have never camped agan.

When I was about 5, DSis2 and I were tucked up in bed when a hoarse voice outside our first-storey window croaked "Are all the children in their beds? For now it's eight o'clock!"

DSis and I huddled together in panic stricken terror.

The next day, it turned out not to be Wee Willie Winky but my dad who had been clearing the guttering on a stepladder.

You must have been so scared at the time belly but I have just had a giggle at your story and your wanking comment.

I have also finally thought of an example of my own.

In 2007/8 while living in uni halls (in the UK) I was woken in the wee hours by my bed shaking violently. I slammed the bedside light on only for the shaking to suddenly stop. Being rather confused as opposed to scared I went back to sleep and had actually forgotten about the whole thing until I spoke to DH (then BF) on the phone and he asked me if I'd felt the earthquake.

Woke up to thumping on the front door, not too loud either. Then it moved to my window. Finally getting up coueage I pull the curtain back to see next doors soaking moggy. Theyd gone away for the night, the dh had forgot to get her in and it was storm using do she freaked out.

She came happily in with me and gave the neighbours such a cold shoulder when they came to get her. She ended up fone spoiled cat thst weekend!

The door on DP's old van used to squeak the words: "All right, Rich?" (His name is Richard). Used to spook him no end at times

Surely there must be a few more, MumsNet (or NunsNet as autocorrect wanted ) can't just be populated by those who are woo?

On a separate note my DDad is incredibly woo and used to scare me silly with ghost stories when I was little. For RE homework at secondary school we had to write a ghost story (no idea why) and the one he told me (that he claimed had happened to him) scared me so much that I refused to stay at home by myself for the 10 minutes it was going to take him to pick my DB up from Scouts.

For some reason I thought that our house, which I'd felt comfortable in for years was suddenly going to become haunted solely because I'd listened to a scary story.

I had a haunted kitchen. Every so often I would hear 'the black velvet band' playing. I worked out eventually that a tiny, plastic, violin [St Patricks day freebie] would, when a floorboard was trodden on, nestle up to me tin foil in the drawer and the subsequent connection produced the wailing noise. Spooked me for ages though.

the dog was asleep in the kitchen me and dp in the liveing room, the door slightly ajar. all of a sudden the dog gets out of her bed and starts growling she walks into the liveing room and stares back at the kitchen still growling, teeth showing all her fur stood on end. me and dp are looking at what shes looking at but could only see the kitchen work surfaces we were both wtf can she see ( i was shitting myself convinced it was a ghost)
then the bread bag fell off the microwave, it was the plastic bag slowly unravelling that had spooked her. bastard plastic bread bag ghost.

I was in the kitchen and turned round quickly from the sink, only to catch a slinky black shape out of the corner of my eye right behind me. My heart missed a beat, and then I turned round the other way and the slinky black shape turned round too, as if to hide from me. For a daft moment I thought a cat had got in to the house (we have no cats) and was standing on its hind legs close behind me. So, slowly, slowly, so as to outwit the cat, I very careful twisted round only to find ... a black bra that had got caught to the hem of my jumper by one of its hooks, and was swinging behind me like a tail.