To ask about creepy things happening to you which can be explained?

[SerenDippitty]

As it’s bad form to go onto woo threads and suggest explanations, thought I’d start a thread for sceptics.

We have a light in our bedroom that doesn’t work properly. Doesn’t come on when you switch it on then comes on on its own later. We have had the electrics checked, nothing was wrong, but I still reckon it’s iffy electrics, rather than a ghost.

We once stayed in a holiday cottage in a fairly isolated coastal spot. Me, DH, DM, DB and Ddog.

Incident 1 - heard footsteps coming to our bedroom door and stopping outside. Explanation - dreaming. Other explanation- DB or DM going to loo - which was past our door at end of passage, Ddog asleep on bed throughout.

Incident 2 - not on same night. DM said she heard someone in the kitchen one night. Her bedroom was off the kitchen. DB denied it was him when asked. Eplanation - DM was dreaming. Other Explanation DB going to loo, denying it to wind DM up, this isn’t impossible.

Incident 3 - we were all having dinner in the living room one evening when the closed kitchen door suddenly rattled. We thought Ddog had got shut in but she was under the table asleep. It was a still night and no windows open in kitchen. Explanation - small earth tremor, the cottage was in a hot spot for them also high radon area.

I think most things can be explained. Any one else got any explainable woo stories?

Ex-DP and I used to live in a converted church. The bell in the spire had been disabled during the conversion (we knew this, having tried when drunk to have a go at bell-ringing.)

Yet every so often for about a year we’d be in our bedroom and hear the sound of church bells for about ten seconds. It wasn’t our church bell and we lived rurally, several miles from the next nearest church. It was a creepy mystery, as if the ghost of a former church warden were letting us know their presence.

Anyway, turns out I’d accidentally activated some some sort of in-game noise notification alarm alert thing in The Sims, which I played on my iPad, and the iPad was kept in the bedside cabinet overnight. One day it started church-belling when I was holding it and that’s how we solved the mystery.

This happened about seven years ago - My DS’s room (5 at the time) is right next to mine and outside both rooms is a blue nightlight in case he got up to go to the toilet or something.

I was heavily pregnant and had been having trouble sleeping, but on this night I’d actually managed to nod off. At some point in the middle of the night I woke and looked up to see my bedroom door open, the blue night light shining in and the silhouette of DS with his hand on the door knob, then he pulled the door shut and was gone.

I put my head back on the pillow, trying to decide whether I should go and make sure he was ok or wake DH to go do it, and then I remembered - DS wasn’t in the house, he was spending the night at his GPs.

I hid under the covers and went back to sleep.

Explanation - pregnancy hormone fuelled vivid dream.

A few years back I was having really strange experiences at night. I would wake up and see someone standing over me, with the face of someone I knew, very well just standing there and watching me sleep. A different person often. I would wake up as if startled, not dreamy.

And then I'd see them standing there and ask "What are you doing?" At which point they would walk off, open my closet doors and disappear inside. My husband would wake up to find me standing around looking into my closet for people.

This was for about 2 weeks every night. I had a doctor's appointment after 2 weeks and found out I'd had a miscarriage, after I found out, the experiences stopped.

We’re currently renting an isolated cottage in the grounds of a former convent — the owners live in the old stable block some distance away, and we can’t see their house or anyone else’s. I stay up late to work, and for several nights in a row was genuinely freaked out around midnight by what sounded like a heavy weight being thrown against the rather flimsy glass front door, as if someone was trying to shoulder it in — nothing visible when I looked out, but acres of slightly eerie dark orchard.

The third night I got there faster — turns out a hefty black tomcat springing up against the door makes quite a commotion! On asking the owners, they lived in this cottage years ago with their pets while renovating the stables, and their tom still thinks of it as home and tries to barge in, in the hope the door is on the latch...