(Name-changed so as not to out self...)
While Girlguiding's generally accepted to have done a good job at scaring away/reforming Peg O' Nell, the attics at Waddow Hall are still... creepy. I was once working up there with one of the other cleaners when I heard, very distinctly, over the noise of the vacuum cleaner, her calling my name. Turned off the vacuum, heard her call "Marie" again so trotted along to see what she wanted. I walk very quietly so the poor woman almost leapt out of her skin when I came into the room as she'd not called me & wasn't singing as she worked or doing anything else I could've mistaken for her doing so. I have a sense that whoever called was as startled as I was by my hearing them - as if they were used to saying hello to people & getting no reply & they couldn't resist making sure I HAD heard, but then felt bad for frightening me. (So NOT Peg, unless she's been VERY much reformed in an altered-out-of-all-recognition-not-just-stopped-drowning-people way.). Lots of guiding campsites & holiday houses that have been in use for a long time do have a really lovely feel to them though: it is as if they soak up the joy & enthusiasm & determination to leave the world a little better than we found it & keep giving it back out.
When I was in Y7 I went to Dover Castle with a schoolfriend & her family. When we were in the tunnels under the castle I saw a man dressed in a WW2 soldier's uniform at the opposite end of the tunnel we were in check his fob watch, look up at me & smile, then go off into a side tunnel. Except the tour doesn't go that way; there were no reenactors on site that weekend; & nobody else saw him even though he was standing behind the guide, effectively. I wasn't at all perturbed at the time as I assumed we were about to go down there & it was a living history type-thing... Even now I don't find the memory of him scary - he was a very... gentle... presence: like someone's dad?
When I was wee & would go into my parents' room after a nightmare I was always a little unnerved by the old man sitting in my father's chair by the window. He was a benign presence, it was just that one doesn't expect there to be anyone in one's parents' bedroom but one's parents! Am not sure who it was - possibly he came with the chair, as it were (Daddy got it from a secondhand shop) but it has also occurred to me it might have been my maternal grandfather, who died before I was born (& who was an older father, in his 70s when he died).
The music rooms in my secondary school were in the attics of the eponymous building for most of my time there. Going up there alone was horrible - the stairs & corridor were most unsettling & a couple of rooms "felt" worse than others. A friend who started at the school in Y10 used to ask me to go up with her when she went to practice before school, either to do my own practice or to sit in the room with her & read. Her parents were missionaries & she'd lived in China from the age of 3 - a FIERCELY evangelical Christian, no truck with woo, but still frightened by those rooms. (Well, I suppose she'd have been open to the idea of demons? Hum.) The woods in the school grounds had some creepy places too - I would love to know the truth about The Haunted Hockey Field. It was close enough to the edge of the woods & had obviously once been cleared so COULD have been a games field. It was really REALLY strictly out of bounds (to the point of a staff member patrolling) - the story was that there was a risk of the ground giving way & girls plummeting into the cave system below! Said caves are said to be exceptionally-incredibly haunted, but on top of that the pitch was alleged to have a collection of ghosts from a train that derailed & crashed down onto it (some versions of the story had it happening during a match, naturally...)
Sometimes when I'm alone in the house I've smelled flowers associated with my mother, who died when I was 10. I've also smelled rock cakes baking when there's nothing cooking, a smell associated with HER mother. (Full disclosure, I do have epilepsy, is a chance that is my weirdy brain...)
A truly distressing!weird was that the morning after Mummy's sudden death (of which I was not yet aware) I woke up & heard her in her bedroom. I thought she had been discharged from the hospital & come home after I'd gone to bed & ran in to see her only to find the room empty & the clock beside the bed showing we were going to be late for school. Daddy came upstairs & told us she'd died; & after making a frankly quite inhuman noise followed by starting to sob, then running & locking myself into the [one, yup, no weeing for anyone] bathroom, curling up on the floor & in-between those huge-gulping sobs & keening noises, calling for Mummy, begging her to come back (because of how that's a thing that might work 🙄). I realised I could hear someone else crying. But not someone in the house, in the bathroom. And alongside my calling for my mother, saying I wanted her back; I heard her saying she had her father back. My Granny M saw lots of her family & friends as she was dying. I know scientists say that's our brains shutting down, but...
Sometimes when I'm very unwell in hospital I get the sense that Mummy is there - I've felt her stroke my hair in the exact way only she (& randomly a Girlguiding Leader - who's looked after me when I've been v unwell, she doesn't randomly go round caressing coiffures) did. I've felt her holding my hand & smelled "her" smell. Obviously my brain might just be pulling out memories to comfort me, but I would so SO like to believe she's there. I'm pretty sure she also stopped me from committing suicide as a teenager - a neighbour with ME so severe she basically never leaves the house & never socialises in any way was out for a walk as I was going home to get things to enact my plan & she basically forced me into her house & kept me there for actual hours. She talked a lot about how her mother & my Granny M had been friends; & chatted on about Mummy & also how wonderful Daddy is etc (& how she'd look after me if she were my stepmother, that was SUPER awkward). I didn't dare try after that: I had visions of mummy landing a bishop on me or something...
I've not actually slept because I scared myself reading the thread so I'm pretty sure I've forgotten, uhm, several...