To ask for another creepy/weird/scary stories thread?

[JustGetThroughTheDay]

As it's almost Halloween season (for what it's worth) and because I have gone through every previous thread of similar stories.
I have a few but the first one that comes to mind is that a distant elderly relative lived in a dormer bungalow. The whole house felt oppressive and dark. I can't explain the feeling. I was maybe 13. If I went to the loo I would make someone else come with me.
One day, for some reason, my dad showed me the upstairs of the house and it was even more awful feeling than the downstairs. It was literally a bedroom and a tiny en-suite. No one else in the room but there was an indentation in the mattress that looked like someone was sat on the end of the bed. Stared at it for a bit and as I went to point it out to my dad it slowly raised back up to normal size.

When I tried to broach it with elderly relative she was so blasé about it that it made me feel a bit stupid. She was like 'oh yeah, built on an Indian burial ground (in north Lancashire) so I get lots of visitors'
I've only ever felt that oppressive feeling once since in Edinburgh castle (not in the dungeons)

Several years ago we had sold our house but couldn't find one we wanted to buy; so through ( my) gritted teeth, we moved into a rented place for a 6 month let so we had time to look for a place we both wanted - it was an old (16th C and later add ons) farmhouse and I didn't like it as was quite dark and had a big Yew tree in the garden. But having children and dogs, and being limited to a specific area for DH work, we dint have a huge choice of rental houses to choose from.

All of the land had been sold off and built on so it wasn't isolated but it was the original farmhouse;

Soon after moving in, in the summer, we invited friends for lunch- they had their 2 border collies with them who simply wouldn't come in the house that day; our dogs had moved with us and didn't seem worried though, and as it was a sunny day the dogs were all fine in the garden.

Needless to say, our time over the next few months there wasn't happy...at all.

My DH became quite 'different' and its no exaggeration to say that we rowed a lot, argued over renting, with me grumbling that I hated the oppressive dark house and at the time, both our boys were not doing well at school - leading to pressure and grumbling and very little relaxed family time....and in all- we all just felt 'at odds'.

Eventually we did find a place to buy we both wanted, but had extended the rental for a further 6 months due to purchase delays and other stuff - and I also remember that both DH and I had even come close to separating with the pressure of it all....and that made us individually, even consider breaking up.

We weathered it, through gritted teeth but almost daily, I felt a sense of something I can't describe, a feeling of doom? foreboding? but definitely anxiety...getting worse.

At last, our purchase began to move and a date was set to leave and we gave notice. Things definitely felt better and the mood lifted.

About a week before our move out date, a friend of mine came in for a drink one morning and we had a chat- I don't know her well but we had some closer mutual friends in common and while we were chatting, she remarked that she had taken her elderly Mum out for lunch the day before - her Mum lived in a care home in the village and had lived locally all of her life and was well into her 90's...my friend said that, as she was driving past our rented house the day before, she pointed it out and told her Mum that she was planning to pop in to me the next day as we were due to move on soon and she wanted a catch up.

Her Mum apparently looked a bit thoughtful and asked how long we had rented it for or had we bought it? My friend said no, we hadn't bought it but had been there a year....her Mum said she was pleased to hear it as the Farmhouse had been the scene of a murder suicide in 1930(ish)

Apparently the Farmer/owner, had shot his wife and 3 children there in the farmhouse, and then hung himself in the Yew tree.

Soon after the house and land had been split up and sold off and hence the original house had always been let, as the distant relatives that inherited it had no wish to live there and used it for income only.

Sadly, whilst it was 'woo', I was completely unsurprised, and thought back to our friends dogs who wouldn't come in, and the ghastly past few months with that growing sense of anxiety and almost - menace- increasing....it makes me quite shaky thinking about it and it was 10 years ago now....I often drive past the place and make a point of not even glancing at it....

I had a really creepy dream the other night. Well I don’t know if it was one dream or all different ones.
I was acting in a haunted theatre. Then a voice said “Warning this place is very haunted. Then all these ghosts started floating round going upside down and doing back flips in midair.
Next I was out side with a group of people, and a giant Donald Trump came walking over with a gun and said I haven’t decided who I want to shoot yet. Then he pointed at me and said “I’ve chosen you” This lady then appeared and said.
Do you want to live. Then, You must answer “Yes I want to live at this moment.”
Then I was in this big old house which had been converted into a care home and I said
I’ll see her again, I just know it. To which someone replied “who”. You know the ghost she was a nurse. I then started walking up the stairs and looked up and saw the ghostly nurse looking over the banister.
She had a friendly kind aura to her and was smiling.
Sorry if that was confusing dreams are like that though, aren’t they.

On holiday we visited Beachy Head in Sussex (famous beauty spot and suicide point as it’s a very high cliff).

I’m normally ok with heights but as soon as we left the car I felt uneasy. We had lunch in a pub up there and I couldn’t eat. Then we walked along the cliff path and I felt sick and dizzy the whole time, in the end I went back to the car. I felt like something was pulling me towards the edge! Like a magnetic type of pull. It was terrifying. We weren’t even near the edge (no fences but it’s chalk so not safe to go too close in case the edge gives way).

My family thought it was funny. It was the most beautiful view, a sunny day, lots of people around. We’d walked over the downs and I’d been fine.

The next day I researched the place and there are lots of stories of a ‘dark monk’ luring people over the edge of the cliff.

It just felt like a very bad place, I’ve never had such a strong reaction to a cliff before!

My parents live in a very old house out in the sticks. They’ve mentioned funny things happening around the house but it’s never worried them. It’s a lovely house, very cosy and welcoming.

When my daughter was around 3, we were sleeping in one of the beds at the back of the house. There is a chair in the corner of the room. It is pitch black at night around there, no artificial light coming from the streets, nothing.

DD is chatting away to me when she suddenly stops and says, “who’s that Mummy?”, “who’s who?” I asked. DD responds, “that lady in the corner with the brown hair”.

😬

@Laiste your story really reminded me of something that happened to me and my cousin (C) about 30 years ago.

Winters day, snow on the ground and we were walking the dog in the countryside around the village. I was about 12 and she would have been 8 or 9. The walk takes you a circular route across fields, through woods and back across another field then a short wooded path back to the road.

It was a murky day and snowing on and off, some time in the afternoon so not dark/dusk. There were people about, other dog walkers etc. We walked through the woods and out into the final field and we were just chatting and mucking about a bit with snowballs. Dog was off the lead and running around, chasing sticks as normal. There was no one else in the field and we decided to build a snowman. After a couple of minutes we noticed the dog was beside us, crouched in the snow, hackles raised staring across the field. I put her lead on, thinking there might be another dog about, looked up and there was a tall man walking across the top of the rise toward the tree line. Couldn't see any detail about him other than he was in dark clothes. He turned and looked toward us and it was the strangest feeling, like time being slow? It felt like I blinked and he was at the edge of the trees and moving down the hill toward us but moving very strangely, half crouched - I can't really describe it. Dog started growling/snarling for real and I can remember looking at C and grabbing her hand and just running, full pelt, for the road. Got to the edge of the village and looked back - nothing there.

I remember it 30 years later like it was yesterday and I don't think I've ever had such a feeling of pure panic, knowing we had to run and the feeling of wrongness and how the atmosphere in the field just changed from normal to muffled and oppressive.

Done that walk loads of times before and since and never experienced anything remotely similar.

"Let's Read" channel on YouTube has lots of stories too, some early ones are creepy pasta though which I don't listen to, much more interested in the supposed true ghost and paranormal. I like the subscribers stories from Reddit.

Perhaps worth a mention that some are stalking/"crazy" ex/being attacked/chased kind of stories which aren't always clearly noted as being in certain videos. There's no overly graphic descriptions or accounts but if you're particularly sensitive or affected by those kinds of stories I'd be mindful of which you choose.

Warning: very long ramble!
In my late teens i worked in a shoe shop in an old part of a busy town. The shop was 2 buildings knocked into one so one big shop floor and one big stock room upstairs. One way up and down - a straight staircase which came out down onto the shop floor. No back door or side door - all the stock came in through the shop front door and we had to carry it up the stairs.

Stockroom was tatty and gloomy and laid out like a big library - 10 foot high open wooden shelving for all the shoe boxes arranged in straight lines. There was no proper ceiling, it was open to the rafters. You could walk round the edge (the little staff room was on the far side) or up and down between the shelves obvs. Every time a customer wanted something it had to be fetched from that stockroom (you got very fit working there). It could take whole mornings to unpack deliveries up there, and mostly we would work in two's for that sort of thing, but not always and of course you'd be doing your own running up and down to serve your own customers.

So the scene is set.
It was dead quiet up there, you couldn't hear the traffic or the music from the shop floor, and when you got to the top of the stairs it would feel as if you were stepping into a thick unpleasant atmosphere. Add to this the strangest feeling that you were disturbing something ... something really really pissed off and malevolent. EVERY time you went up there it was only a matter of moments before you got the feeling that a presence had sensed you in it's space and rushed silently to where you were. The feeling followed as you moved around, watching and hating. Personally for me the feeling of being watched wasn't as if it was peeping between the shelves exactly, but instead from quite high up looking down. I would become increasingly panicy and i'd practically throw myself down the stairs to get back to the shop floor! Going to the staff room was really unpleasant because you had to go to the corner furthest away from the stairs. I'd put the little radio on in there and close the door.

There were 5 members of staff. Four of us (including the male manager) were feeling the same thing. It came out because it became obvious that none of us liked being up there alone for long. However there was one member of staff, L, who was adamant that we were all bonkers and for months she took the piss. (In a jokey way). One day the rest of us were all standing about on the shop floor when L came shooting out onto the shop floor from upstairs; she'd been on her tea break up there. She was in floods of tears! She said she'd heard footsteps right behind her all the way from the staff room and heard and felt something right behind her on the stairs. We gathered round her and comforted her and the manager went up to check (!?) but of course there was no one up there. She actually gave her notice in that afternoon.

A friend of mine suggested that i speak out loud upstairs and say we meant no harm and can we be left alone ect. I felt a right twat but i did it. Well honestly it made things worse - i would NOT recommend ever doing that. We all ploughed on, but this was my final straw:

A week or so after L left the manager was sick and i had to open the shop one morning. Went in through the shop front door, turned off the alarm and locked the door again. I had no intention of unlocking the fire door at the foot of the stairs until another staff member turned up, so i began sorting the till. The next person arrived (F) i let her in and locked the street door behind her again and we joked about putting off unlocking upstairs for as long as possible. We stood fiddling with the bags for the float.

Suddenly the noise began. It was the loudest banging on the ceiling. Big individual bangs loud enough to rattle the shop lights. Roughly one per second, like someone stamping but harder than a person could stamp. Me and F were absolutely wide eyed at each other. She crossed herself (religious) and we both stared up. This was bad enough considering there was no one up there and that we were a detached building - but get this: these bangs were going diagonally across the ceiling. We were both sort of following them with our eyes' our heads moving with each one. BUT - you can't move diagonally up there. The shelves all run parallel to the walls, iyswim? So WTF?

The noise stopped at the far corner. Me and A decided we wouldn't unlock the fire door to the stairs until the other 2 staff members were in and we'd all go up together. Well it took so much courage but we went up ... and there was nothing to see! The usual thick atmosphere but no massive dents in the floor or anything. I worked my day and readers; i did not go back.

Laiste you’ve posted that story before and it’s a corker. I’m not surprised you never went back! Do you know if the shop is still there? They must have trouble keeping it staffed!

@Laiste mine is very similar.
So this is going back a few years and I move to Cornwall from Manchester with two absolutely adored cats. After a year or so Kit Whitby, who is jet black, and his brother are poisoned...possibly accidentally, possibly not... his brother survives, Kit Whitby dies at the vet's.
Shortly after that I move with my OH to a flat above a shop. Funny layout, in that you access the front door through an unlit passage at the side of the house. The street stairs come off the passage at right angles, and you walk up the stairs to a kitchen and what we used as the bedroom (it had a radiator in it, upstairs was unheated). Big open-plan kitchen, and an open staircase - imagine a sort of backwards Z of stairs - going up to the bathroom and what we used as the living-room.
No pets allowed in the flat, but shortly after I moved in I began to see the figure of a black cat darting about upstairs. I assumed it was Whitby, not knowing he was dead - having been taken so suddenly. I'm not sure, now. But increasingly I HATED going up to the toilet in the dark. There was also a window inset into our interior bedroom wall, overlooking the staircase - for extra light, I think - and I think it was about a fortnight before I covered it with a scarf. I always had the feeling of something - not someone: never someone - watching me through that window, as if he/she/it was part-way up the stairs and had just stopped to look through the glass. It was a very specific point, three steps from the top of the street stairs: your head would be level with the window on one side, and about level with the middle of the bathroom stairs on the other. I always had the feeling going up the bathroom stairs that "it" was looking up at me, and I could not bear, absolutely could not bear, to look down on the way down for the unshakeable feeling that "it" was there in the dark. Waiting for me to look at it.
So we lived there for a year or so. J saw the black cat, too. He was mad as hell with me the first time because he assumed it was a real cat and I'd got a kitten without telling him. Nuh-uh. After a while we did get a real kitten. He wouldn't go down the stairs, either. He would stop on the third stair down and go no further. (When we moved house he LOVED outside. It wasn't that he wasn't an outdoor cat.)
Nothing happened, just an overwhelming sense of unease about those stairs. When we finally moved out, the first time J went to the toilet at night he told me how relieved he was to not be worried about seeing the Thing On The Stairs.
We'd never spoken to each other about it. Never. But he'd noticed it, too.
The PS is that after a few months I was chatting to the guy who ran the tattoo shop downstairs from the flat, and I said "yeah we got a kitten, you probably heard him careering about"
Ian looked at me blankly and said "what happened to your dog?"
He had heard a dog: a big one, by the heaviness of it, barking in the flat while we were out at work.
I never found out what it was about that flat. I don't think I want to. But I'm glad I don't live there any more.

VenusClapTrap i have indeed! A couple of times over the years i think. I guess i should c&p it somewhere so i don't have to keep writing it out all over again

It's completely the truth I know anyone can say anything on here but it really is exactly how it went down.

Weather the shop is still there or not - i don't know. I confess this was late 90s and i moved away from London 20 years ago. Lost touch with everyone i worked with that long ago. One interesting fact though - i did post that experience on a website once a few years ago, and the next day a teenage girl messaged me in the comments and said that she's so exited - she was skimming though the website reading the stories and she's familiar with this one because mother has told it to her almost to the letter! (from the mum's perspective) She thought her mum had worked with me in the shop while that was all going on. We exchanged info. and it turned out to be true! What a coincidence! Her mum had been there with me and the others when 'L' had come down crying and was the next to turn up when F and i were still quivering after hearing the banging. This girl wasn't born when this all went on - but she reunited her mum and me through a scary experience :)

Cattermole - the something. Yes. Not human. Ours felt male, but at the same time not a human. Not unintelligent, and so angry ... i mean why?

Just thinking about it is raising the hairs on my neck @Laiste.

Yes to male, and yes to not human. Or, possibly, human and no longer alive. Just rage. It did not want us in its house and it would have hurt us if we had acknowledged it.

I’ve posted this before and it’s about a shop I worked in.
I was the manager of a high street shop which was in an old Victorian building. Not sure if it was a converted house or if it had always been a shop due to it’s location, I worked there for 9 years.

The shop was, obviously, at the front and a doorway took you through to my office, the ground floor stock rooms and after walking through those you got to the staff area. There was a flight of stairs leading up from the stock room to a further two rooms upstairs which we also used.

I hated those stairs. When walking through to the staff area I’d avoid looking up because I frequently had a feeling that I was being watched by a man who was standing on the landing at the top. If I was alone I’d run past while looking down at the floor. When I needed to go up I’d make sure that the stair lights were on before I’d go up (all upstairs windows were covered for security reasons so it dark) and before walking into each room I’d put my hand around to turn on the light and wait a minute because on a couple of occasions I’d walked in, turned on the light and watched a mist in the middle of the room start to disappear. Stock would often be on the floor too when there was no way that it could’ve fallen.

I never mentioned any of this to my staff because I thought they’d think I was mad and also because they might refuse to go upstairs and it’d be left to me.

Anyway, one day I was in my office just before we closed and one of my staff members was mopping the ground floor stockroom floor. Suddenly she ran into my office, shaking, and she said she’d looked up the stairs and a man was staring down at her.

This is one my uncle told me:

He was in the army, stationed near Uckfield, 1960s. One night, in their barracks, they were polishing their boots for parade and 2 of the boys lightbulbs went out. (I say boys as they were all about 18/19).

One boy knew where to get spares; an old shed nearby. He and another lad went off to get the spare bulbs, it was dark and raining. My uncle stayed behind.

An hour later one of the boys came back, so scared he couldn’t speak but had blood on him. So a big group of them went to the shed thinking there’d been an accident. They found the other lad unconscious on the grass, bleeding from deep gashes in his legs, like knife slashes. They carried him to the medics and went back to their barracks.

The boy who’d been to the shed then told what happened; the shed door was locked so he gave his friend a bunk up to get in the window. Friend inside had a torch and was looking for lightbulbs when he heard a horrible deep cackling from the other part of the shed. He called to friend outside to shut up, friend insisted he wasn’t laughing. Both thought the other was pulling a prank! Then boy inside started screaming and shouting and scrabbling to get out of the window! His friend (now scared) pulled him but felt resistance like something was pulling back. There was a struggle and boy eventually fell through the window. He hit his head. Friend ran to get help, back to the barracks where my uncle was.

They never heard what happened to the injured boy as two days later they were posted to Germany and split up. But when they went to the shed in daylight the next morning they found the boy’s torch (a metal one) completely twisted up and crushed.

I am the least woo person, ever. But, I am genuinely scared of the lane which runs past my Aunt's house. Night time is when it's at its worst, but even in broad daylight, I hate parking my car in the lane, it makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Just a really horrible sense of danger, pressure, foreboding, I can't really describe it?

Never mentioned it to anyone. A few years ago, I caught a taxi and chatted to the driver about local places we knew. Totally out of the blue, he admitted that he hated doing pick ups from the pub in my Auntie's village, and avoided night time pick ups. This was because he had to park and wait on the same lane outside her house for his fare, and he felt like he was in danger, just by being there.

Up until that point, I hadn't mentioned a word about my Aunt, or where she lived. It really shook me up. I don't know what on Earth is going on with that lane but there is something very, very wrong with it.

One night I was woken up at about 4am by a loud noise that sounded like a plastic bag flapping about. I peeked through my curtain and a pigeon was repeatedly flying at my window trying to get in. I jumped and the pigeon dropped dead. That day my mother died and apparently that morning she had told my dads (I guess in a slight loss of reality moment) that there were loads of birds sitting at the end of her bed.

I thought it was a bit weird but put it down to coincidence. Ten years later, different house, different location the same thing happened with the velux window in our room. That day my grandmother died.

Today, I saw a post on Twitter about a woman whose wife had died, a few tweets back was one about a pigeon repeatedly flying into her window early that morning.

Yeah, bit wary about birds now.

@RattleOfBars Uckfield is quite near a place where apparently 6 lay lines cross 6 lay lines (allegedly) and there's a lot of talk of satanic worship and general creepiness around those parts.

There's an American feminist website called Jezebel which - for some random reason - does an amazing spooky true ok its the internet so who knows stories thread every Halloween. The threads go back to at least 2011 and the best stories are completely chilling.

Disclaimer: I don't know a thing about the website except that it self-identifies as feminist and does a good spooky stories once a year .

I don’t like Somerset because it feels weird. I’m sure Somerset as a county will recover from this devastating blow but I found it odd.

@GlitterCookie

That’s interesting, I had no idea about the lay lines!
I think the army camp was in Maresfield, near Uckfield. It’s been pulled down now.

My uncle always wonders what the boy found inside that shed and what clawed/slashed his legs. And if he ever regained consciousness to tell the tale!

Laiste wow that’s amazing! Clearly an experience never forgotten by all concerned.

@GlitterCookie the day my grandmother died a pigeon flew and landed on my bedroom windowsill. It stayed the entire evening and all through the night. The next morning I got ready for school and it was still there looking through and just as I was about to leave for the day it flew away!! I always say that my Nan is a pigeon now but my mum says she wouldn’t have liked that as she didn’t like pigeons

I haven't got anything to add (Thank God) but I've read a post here a few years ago about a creepy wooded(?) area near Ham House in London and although I've saved the thread ,it's gone now. Does anyone remember it?

I love a good woo thread! I’ve got a few stories, not as good as most of these...

My most recent one wasn’t long ago - a few months back in lockdown. For context we live in a nice, happy house, no bad vibes here (unlike our old house!)

One night I woke up, having had a dream where I fell down the stairs. Lying there, heart thumping, my DD comes running in, she says she’s had a bad dream. Which she then goes on to tell me was her falling down the stairs...bit weird that we’ve had the same dream I think...

Then the next day, I mention it to my older son in a “ha ha, this was weird” kind of way and he says - but I was awake and I heard someone fall down the stairs...

But there was no one else it could be...DH was asleep in bed next to me the whole time...😬

I went to university in a lovely town, the college was old-ish but there'd been a town there for much longer, & it was very pretty & quite rural. I stayed in halls my first year, like you do. They were typical ugly soulless blocks, probably built in the 60s-80s. All the halls were on one side of campus, separated from the rest of the buildings by a small river - it was a pretty small campus. I had weird unsettling dreams intermittently all year, of people lost, children crying, being shut into a cold dark house with weird unpleasant smells. Being hungry. In the second & third year I lived "out" in houses with friends (mostly the same friends I'd lived with in halls, they were great), & the dreams stopped, at first I just assumed I was more settled. It was only sometime in my second year, during some history research, that we discovered that the halls were built in the general vicinity of what had been the plague pits.

I suffered depression all through my childhood, teens, & early 20s, & had quite a few unsettling experiences. Since I've been better, quite a few years ago, it's stopped happening. I wouldn't wish it back.

I’ve posted this one before I think, under a different name (serial name changer!)

Our old house was originally a two up two down estate workers’ cottage, but it’s had a double storey extension in the 70/80s so that it now had a front bedroom and large bedroom in the old part at the front and two modern bedrooms in the back and a double size living room in the old part with a kitchen in the new part at the back. It was on a massive bit of land, and when we went to look at it, we thought it was a bit of a dream. I had a moment in the living room where I welled up, and I thought it was with positive emotion that this could be the house for us!

So we bought it, moved in several months later on beautiful summer’s day and all felt very positive about it. But very quickly thinks started going south...

Me and DH had the front bedroom in the old part of the house. And I started to feel uneasy in there - I felt like I could see a shadow by the window, where logically there shouldn’t be one. And over the next few weeks I built up huge dread about going home and even once, went in, felt like someone was upstairs and so left the house again and didn’t come back til DH was home 🙈

I told him about it, but never when we were at home because I felt like it was a bad idea to mention it in the house 😬 and never in front of the kids because part of me thought I was just a bit crazy. He didn’t get it at all.

So we converted the loft and it was a lovely room over the fields and we decided to go up there and give the front room to the oldest DC. The first night in there (bear in mind he was a teen) he came down really anxious and freaked out and unable to sleep - although he didn’t give us a reason. He settled down, was ok, and he seemed fine. So I tired to put it out of my head.

But over the months I would always hate going in there to do anything, and the door always seemed to end up closed when you’d left it open. Once I was standing in the bathroom and I saw my DD run past me into the room, but when I went in to get her

• she wasn’t there!

On another occasion me and DH ended up sleeping in there again for some reason, and I woke up and saw a fleeting figure in the doorway.

So nothing major every happened, but I was thoroughly freaked out, and not at all sad when we found and moved into this house music quicker than we’d originally planned! The Christmas after we moved, I bumped into someone I know vaguely and he said “have you moved?” I say, yes, we have and he says “did you ever find anything weird about that house?” At this point I’m like, you’re kidding?! But no he’s not kidding “I didn’t like to say when you lived there...” and apparently it had been his grandad’s house and they’d always thought there was something creepy about it, with doors opening and closing on their own...😱