To ask for personal/second hand accounts of the unexplained

I have one that I can’t explain. I’m usually very logical and scientific but I honestly can’t think of a likely explanation for this. I’ve posted about it on here once before on a similar thread but have changed name since then.

I was watching videos on YouTube about a sport I’m a fan of and also take part in. I saw a video which was a compilation type video with lots of dramatic sporting moments with an sad emotional song in the background. There was no sound on any of the individual clips, it was just purely the background song. As I was watching it, I suddenly had to cough but I caught my throat slightly and it sounded very distinctive. I rewound the video back slightly to what I missed and at the exact moment I coughed, there was a cough in the video. And it sounded the exact same as mine. I can’t explain it. I obviously can’t say with absolute certainty that the sound wasn’t in the video originally because it was my first time watching it, but I find it very unlikely given it was a sport video with a sad song over it. And even if it was already in the video, what a massive coincidence that it was at the exact same time I coughed (and it sounded the exact same)

I can’t explain it but I absolutely know that my cough is on that video. I don’t know how and I know it makes me sound crazy but I just know it is. I’ve told people in real life about it but nobody seemed to think it was as freaky as I do. Even if it’s just a coincidence it’s a pretty big one. I’ve listened to the song separately and the cough definitely isn’t part of it. Think of it as being similar to a very distinctive cough halfway through wonderwall, it’s very random!

like I said, I can’t explain it but that sound is my cough and it somehow ended up on the video. I don’t know how but it definitely is.

I was ridiculed by my friends for this one but I'll tell it anyway.

After my nana died in 1983 we moved in with my grandad as he wasn't coping, it was really on the threat of my parents marriage as my dad hadn't been a great husband (didn't get much better) but my grandad begged my mum. The three of us moved in.

Three bed house and my room was the box room, a very old house with old wiring. I was a very skittish child in the house, even though I'd lived there with nana and grandad and mum for a couple of years when my parents had separated but this time when I moved in I was 8. My mum had made the 'box room' perfect for me, I had a cabin bed but insisted on sleeping with the light on. One morning my mum came in to get me up for school and my bedside lamp had fallen over and melted the plastic handle of one of my cupboards on the bed almost half way through, there was black smoke marks on my ceiling and wall yet the lamp had been turned off at the switch, not the plug switch as we didn't have them, just sockets (and still don't have them) but on the lamp itself, mum couldn't explain it, grandad hadn't gotten up and certainly dad. So it was put down to nana making sure I was safe.

The other thing that happened was I was in sixth year at school, should have been at school but was skiving saying I had a free morning. I was woken by who knows what as I usually slept til Lunch time. And as I went to lie back down, and this is where I got ridiculed, my extension lead, which basically lay at the bottom of my bed the room was so small, with about five plugs in it, made a sizzle noise, and then it said my name, an electric noise said my name. I jumped out of bed and ran out of the room and the upstairs hall was filled with smoke, the kitchen was on fire!!

So that's my two, but my mum, who I lost five years ago had one about my nana. Before we moved into the house with grandad we lived five floors up in a multi story. My nana had died and after I would go to bed (aged 7) my mum had started drinking most nights, devastated at the loss of her best friend. My dad was out most nights and wouldn't come home til late and mum was in bed. One night mum had a dream but she said she was awake (IYSWIM) and she felt the bed depress beside her, she sat up but couldn't open her eyes and she felt my nana take her hands and felt her say sharon you must get on with your life, then mum felt at peace and slept. The next morning mum woke and found that the two very heavy, full chest of drawers at each side of the bed had been moved into the middle of the floor (the carpet hadn't been tackled down or whatever so the chest of drawers kinda held it in place and if you moved them the carpet came too) and the carpet was still in place. My dad woke me and asked if I'd moved them the next morning, both of them knowing I physical couldn't as it took both of them to lift them back and when my mum went to go upstairs the mirror my mum had bought chosen by my nana was lying on the stairs.

So that's all well and good, they don't mention it to anyone (this is august btw). At new year they were at a friends house sitting next to couple they didn't know, the female in the couple turned to my mum and said, I have no idea why I've to tell you this but I can't stop myself, the mirror meant you mum is saying move on. My mum hadn't mentioned my nanas death as she couldn't talk about it without crying.

That's my tuppence worth, I have one about my great uncle visiting me but I'm not sure if it wasn't just a crazy dream

Place marking ....love a spooky thread !

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 or so. 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. Except we don’t believe in that stuff.

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.

So whilst this is clearly an amusing non-woo anecdote, had we been woo-woo people in the first place, and had I never discovered it was the iPad, I could easily be telling you this as something I believed to be a genuine unexplained woo experience.

My only slightly inexplainable experience I’ve told before.

I was sitting on my couch but leaning forward looking at something on my laptop when a toy rolled down my back. It was a smooth plastic thing so not like it had velcroed to my shoulder and then come loose! Husband was in the kitchen making a cup of tea and kids (who were toddlers anyway) were in bed. DH swears blind it wasn’t him, but it had to be, right?!

I lived at home with my parents til I was in my mid twenties. I also was dabbling quite substantially with occultic items. I read tarot and Angel cards every day on my bed.

One day I came home from work and forgot my key. My mum opened the door in tears. She said that as she had been grabbing a cup that had my dad's name on it, it was pulled violently out of her hands and smashed on the floor. At that moment, she heard a crash from the hallway and when she went to look, she saw that a mirror which my dad's mother had given to her was in pieces, but all lined up neatly in a row and nothing broken. As soon as she clocked that, the musical instrument that my dad played suddenly made a noise. They were very shaken. The next morning, when we got up, we saw that the wooden box that goes above a window (don't know the name) had been removed and silently placed on the floor of the room below my bedroom. There was no damage and it made no noise. At the time I knew psychics and I asked them what was going on. There was more to the story that I won't go into without outing us but there seemed to be a bit of a campaign against my dad.

About 15 years later I renounced all forms of divination and became a Christian and wouldn't touch any kind of fortune telling again. I believe that I invited spirits into our home and they were messing with us. I don't believe any spirit apart from the Holy Spirit is good and I stay away from all things related to spookiness now.

In saying that, I do have supernatural experiences now but they are within the context of my faith (prophetic dreams, emotional healing or amazing changes in circumstances after prayer etc).

We lived in a haunted house.

When I was 4 I came down stairs to tell my mum (as I was playing in my room) the lady under the bed told me to come down stairs. Of course my mum freaked out and wanted to burn the house down.

In the same house you'd always see a black figure walking/gliding down the stairs in the corner of your eye and even my dad did and he isn't in to any spooky stuff!

My great nan died on NYE a few years later we were at my mums friends house for a NYE party. I turned to look at the front door and as clear as day as a white outline I saw my great nan and grandad.

When I was about 8 I woke up to see a headless man with an axe (think farmer type, denim dungarees, red checked top) and screamed obviously, now this one could've totally been a dream but still enough to freak me the fuck out even now.

Also we were moving from this house and all of a sudden a couple of months before the move this horrible rotten fish smell just wouldn't go away. My parents checked everywhere even the fire places/chimneys incase there was a dead animal. Nope, nothing. Then we found out that actually the smell of rotten fish is a sign of an evil spirit (luckily we found that our after we moved).

Now for me I've always seen spirits/heard them.

We then moved into a brand new build and I was in my room, windows closed when I heard a whistling in my room (I'm sure it was my great grandad) as he whistled just like that.

Another was I had new glasses and was looking in my phone at myself in them (as you do 🫣) I didn't take a picture but when I came off my camera I went to swipe off the camera and it has a frozen image of me looking at myself but with 2 figures behind me stood on the stairs so I screen shotted it and showed my mum who freaked out. As was I but it looked like my grandad and great nan (mums side).

Another was when I was in bed and something said 'go check mum' in my ear so I did. She'd fallen asleep downstairs but when I went to her she was making weird noises and I couldn't wake her initially (it was actually sleep paralysis).

In my own place now and occasionally I see things 'float' across the living room if I'm in my bedroom at night (it's a flat so all one level).

My DS was also in the travel cot in the living room taking a nap and when I walked in I saw feet and jeans with a belt looking over the travel cot. That's as far as I looked up as it scared the shit out of me and I said leave now.

Wow, that was an essay. Some people don't believe in it and that's fine and could see what I've wrote and think what a nutter. But I've never been questioned and know what I've seen/heard!

I would wake pretty much every night at the same time...around 2am; toss and turn until 4am and I'd drift off to sleep again. Could never work out why but guessing it was stress/anxiety and thought nothing of it...but I was very much awake during those hours. One night, as usual I woke up, DH next to me and I saw a small lady, with a mass of blonde hair, tied up in a loose chignon carrying a white mug. I just lay there watching her walk alongside the bed. I blinked, frowned, looked away from her to the ceiling (thinking 'don't be bloody stupid'), looked back towards her and watched her walk through the wall.

2nd occasion I saw her. My DH shouted up the stairs 'I'm popping out'. I was at the front of the house and watched him reverse out the drive and off up the road. I thought I saw our daughter (aged about 5 at the time) in the back of the car...which I thought 'why has he taken DD with him?' Our daughter had a mass of blonde hair at the time. I went downstairs to find DD and DS both sat on the sofa watching telly. Who the hell was in the back of DH's car with him?!!? When he came back I asked him and he didn't have a clue what I was talking about. I've asked his family if the description of her reminded them of any deceased individuals but nope. Not seen her since but don't know who the hell she is!

Other thing:
My cousin's dad died. Cousin, her mum, me and my mum were in her kitchen a few weeks later. Cousin's landline rang. She answered it and it was just crackling/hissing on the end of the line; we could all hear it, it was really loud. Cousin put the phone down and did a 1471 to find out who had called her. It was her mum's landline phoning the landline. Her mum (who now lived alone) was sat in the kitchen with us. No-one other than my cousin and her mum had keys to her mum's house so who the hell phoned my cousins landline from her mum's landline?!?! We all decided that it was her dad communicating to say he'd got to the other side safely. Comforting if nothing else.

I love 'woo'....

F to read later

Living in a hot country we would go to sleep with just a sheet over us, during the night when OH went to the bathroom he would pull the blanket up from the foot of the bed, tuck it round me and pat my shoulder, A couple of years later I mentioned this when we were talking about small acts of kindness with friends and OH was shocked, 'But you always did that, not me!', we were covered with a blanket in the morning.
A few years later we were introduced to another couple in another country and it turned out that they had also lived in this flat, she asked us 'Did you get tucked in at night?' Forty years on and I still get goose pimples typing this!

A slightly topical one! Just before my 4th birthday, Feb., I can 'see' myself trailing behind my mother into the snowy garden, down the side of the house, to get some coal, just before lunch. The old lady from across the road came across, stood at the end of the path, and called to my mother 'Oh isn't it awful, they've just announced that the King's dead'. My mother always swore that never happened, my Dad had told her when he took a cup of tea upstairs before he went to work.
During the various Jubilees it's been said that he died in his sleep and it was announced on the BBC at 11.30, so Dad couldn't have told her yet we were both adament we were right. Sadly she's not here to continue the argument.

This is one of my absolute faves. Saved it to my phone as I like to re-read it...

(It's long but hang in there).

...

A friend persuaded me to submit this account, against my natural tendency on the matter. I have no real interest in following it up or being contacted in any way. It was a very frightening episode. It is traumatic enough, to be honest, to recall it just once at length here. But having set out to describe it, I will be as frank and as accurate as language can allow.

On the 15th July 2013, at about 7.45am, I was on my way to work and approaching the intersection and getting ready to take a left-hand turn. This is a notoriously dangerous intersection on any day, and there have been many accidents there. It is hard to see if the intersection is clear from the right and the left turn is particularly hazardous. I was running late and in a flustered state of mind. I had an important meeting that I’d been planning for carefully over a number of days, and a really stupid delay at the last minute put all of that in jeopardy. It should also be understood that a much better traffic signal system exists there today than was in place at the time of this incident.

I approached the intersection in a hurry. I looked to the right and believed that I had correctly viewed that nothing was approaching from the right, so I made the left turn. As I crossed the intersection, I glanced right once more and saw a vehicle heading straight for me at what could only have been in excess of ninety miles per hour. We saw each other. I saw the look in the other guy’s eyes because we were that close. A collision was absolutely inevitable. There is no way on this earth that it could have been avoided.

What happens next is EXTREMELY difficult to describe, but I will do my best. And this can be (and must be) taken to apply to everything that I am going to attempt to relate from this point onwards. Words, even the most carefully chosen words, capture no more than 1% of this experience at best, and even then very poorly. This is quite possibly the most frustrating thing about giving this account.

Across from the front of the car on the left, in almost the opposite direction to the oncoming vehicle, was a field. I suddenly became aware of a very large 'object' approaching slowly on a diagonal across this field. It was coming directly towards my car. Time was not functioning normally while this was happening, if it was functioning at all. I had the space to notice this happening, but I can’t explain how I was able to do that. The object when I first saw it, appeared to be about the size of a ten-floor tower block. It subjectively seemed to be about two or three hundred yards across the field. These size and distance descriptions are meaningless, as I’ll try to explain in a moment.

The object resembled a giant waterwheel lying on its side and rotating as it approached me and my vehicle. As it got closer, this didn’t take time, as we understand it. I saw that my first observation about its size was wildly inaccurate. It was more like the size of a small city. As it got closer still, I understood that all scale and distance estimates were meaningless. It was larger than what we think of as the world. As it approached me, I became aware of its power and significance. My mind interpreted this as being an up-close, giant-scale physical object.

Okay, now this part is particularly difficult to explain. As the object drew near to me, a kind of sensation came over my person and I knew exactly what this thing was. Not only that, but I knew everything that pertained to it, what it was, what it was doing, what it’s 'business' was with me, where and when I had seen it before, why I was seeing it now, and many many other things that I cannot now recall.

I had seen the object before I was born and I will see it again when I die. We all knew it before we were born. We will all see it when we die. But this information is eclipsed from us while we are alive. And that was why I was seeing it now in the experience, because I was in the process of dying in a fatal car crash.

Here’s what I can remember, as best it words can tell. This wheel wasn’t something that moved towards me through the world, or through reality somehow. That was an illusion that my senses were constructing for me. The wheel WAS reality, itself. It represented EVERY CONCEIVABLE POSSIBILITY for a life or for a world that could ever be envisioned or imagined. As it approached, I became aware that what we call our world was contained within it. It was simply one of the numberless slots or paddles in the 'water wheel.' It had always been so. My life, your life, our world, all of us - we were a part of this wheel structure and we had always been a part of this structure. It simply now made itself visible to me.

There then began the truly terrifying dimension of this experience. Words cannot even begin to describe the level of fear I experienced. The water wheel sort of rolled across me and then across the place where my car was in the road. As it did so, I began to be hit by each of the paddles in the wheel.

Remember that all of this is just a way of talking. It does not, and cannot, remotely describe the real situation as it actually was.

But some sense of it can be had by imagining that in the space of each 'paddle' there was a kind of spinning film of water, like a waterfall on its side. Imagine a film of water being thrown outward from the wheel in each slot, as if by centrifugal force. Imagine being slapped or splashed by each of these films as you collide with it and pass through it to the next one. This is what was happening. Except these weren’t just films of water. They were (for want of a better term) possible realities or what we might think of as universes or worlds. Again, our world, our entire universe as we normally think of it, was simply one among an infinite number of these. How did I know that there was an infinite number? I just did. A kind of knowing came with the event, and there was no doubting this knowing. It WAS so, and I knew it was so.

And because I had knowledge and understood what was happening in ways I can no longer communicate, I was afraid. I understood that I was about to be subject to the process that humans approximated with the term 'reincarnation.' This was why the wheel had come. I represented a kind of discrepancy that had to be fixed. The event, or perhaps the imminent event, on the highway had caused me to slip out of or fall between the paddles on the wheel. This structure had some kind of cosmic purpose of sorting things into their correct natural place. I was afraid and resisted being 'sorted' so the wheel stepped up its aggressive attempts to 'sort' me correctly.

With this came another understanding that frightened me even more. I knew that unless I soon selected one of these realities to slide back into, that the wheel would coerce the situation by deciding for me. One way or another, I WOULD be 'sorted' whether I liked it or not. If I didn’t choose for myself, I would simply be fitted into place at some nearest position on the wheel to the point where I failed to make the decision; if that makes sense. I was aware of having a limited ability to choose, but not much. Even that limited ability wasn’t much use because each reality slammed against me and through me before I could make much sense of what it contained.

Even I did not remain the same from one slot in the wheel to the next. It was as if when each film broke over me, I was destroyed and made again from the ground up as a completely new self. There was no continuous 'me' that traveled unaltered through that wheel and can somehow report back on this experience. This is just one of the many things that is so very hard to explain. The very idea of a continuous self was contradicted by this experience.

I have forgotten, or perhaps it was deliberately suppressed, the vast majority of what I saw in the various universes or paddles of the wheel. At the beginning, they seemed very similar to this world we inhabit, or believe ourselves to inhabit. For example, I have a floating memory of seeing various different scenarios of how the accident played out. I suspect that these were all nearby paddles on the wheel. In one of them I remember seeing what looked like my vehicle thrown right off the road and so badly damaged that it looked like it had been folded in the center like a pocket knife. I seemed to recall many other scenarios like this that I can no longer remember. To clarify: what I mean is that I seemed to file or flip through numerous conceivable (quantum?) possibilities for the outcome of the accident. I can remember doing this, but I cannot remember what any of these particular 'worlds' contained.

I have no explanation for why I failed to experience any of the phenomena usually reported with the imminent death situations like the tunnel, the light, and so on. I suspect that imminent death experiences are symbolic scenarios that flash up just as someone is entering or exiting the wheel, but before the situation has developed very far. At no stage did I see anything whatever that resembled what we humans would think of as an afterlife or spirit world or life after death realm. It’s as if we are either on the outer surface of the wheel itself, in one of its realized worlds, or else we are dead and we are the wheel itself. The wheel is a space where all uncreated possibility exists, but nothing completed or actual. And bear in mind that nothing was concealed from me. I was the ALL, and knew the ALL. I certainly don’t retain it or pretend do, but I knew it then.

I began to grow extremely panicked. Each time I thought I was just beginning to get a handle on things, I would be slapped over violently and ruthlessly into a new slot in the wheel and a whole new 'me' would crystallize, along with all the memories and assumptions that went along with that world. I remembered none of who I was just a moment ago in another paddle on the wheel. I had no memory whatsoever of where I had come from or the highway situation in my world. I had zero memory of that world. I knew I had come from a 'somewhere' but had no recollection of where that was, or even who I was. It was about the most bizarre thing that you could imagine.

Somehow though, and I can only assume that it happened without any conscious action on my part, the possibilities appearing in the wheel began to narrow down and become somewhat more familiar again. Scenarios associated with the accident began to appear once more. I say once more, but I have no real way of knowing whether this was a separate incidence of this to what I described above, or whether it was really the same incidence because time was functioning so unusually during the whole episode.

Again I saw, or seemed to see, variations or possible world-outcomes where I died in the crash. I seemed to understand intuitively that if I went 'into' any of these, I would be there for only a few moments or minutes at most, and then I would have to come out and face the wheel again almost immediately. I didn’t want to do this. But there was an odd kind of knowing associated with that too. The wheel didn’t seem bothered one way or the other. It didn’t seem to matter to it whether I emerged again in three minutes time or three decades time. All it cared about was sorting me, and there was a kind of ruthlessness to this that I will not soon forget.

I found myself back on the highway in what seemed to be a very short distance back up the road, still approaching the intersection. This is just one of the many mysteries associated with the event that I cannot explain. Did I choose a world which was a version of our universe in which the accident hadn’t quite happened yet, but was just seconds away from happening? I can’t say, because I have no memory of making that decision. I remember the look on that driver’s face as clearly as if it were yesterday. I remember him bracing back on the wheel. But I braked as I reached the intersection and that driver, or his car, were simply nowhere to be seen.

@Tha Bloody hell, that's like a short story by Stephen King!

@PinkButtercups a rotten fishy smell can also be an electrical fault - we had a really strong fish smell in our kitchen and it turned out the socket behind the dishwasher had nearly melted through 😱

That's familiar... I think you've posted that one before on another woo thread?
I love it though; the thoughtful "ghost" that tucks people up at night!

@AbcMurders i think they need the house checking ASAP for carbon monoxide or even a gas leak.

Nope no electrical faults either!

@QuestionableMouse

It’s a new(ish) build and they’ve lived there for over 7 years. So I don’t think it’s that? Plus it doesn’t explain all the stuff always falling etc. And that horrible heaviness when entering. I think they’re energy vampires 🧛🏿‍♀️ 😅

I don’t believe in ghosts really but could swear blind I saw someone else’s face in a mirror once staying in a house where a few people said odd things happened.

My mum and all her siblings swear there was a bedroom in their granny’s house (super rural Jacobean) you could hear footsteps

Never hurts to get it checked! And don't rely on an alarm - they don't always pick up low levels which can cause issues in humans.

When I was about 8 I shared a room with my younger sister and I was on the top bunk. I looked at the bottom of my bed and saw a little girl leaning against the bottom of the bed with her head sideways, she was beautiful and not scary looking at all but I was so scared I hid under my covers all night and never saw anything again

Same house when I moved rooms when wallpaper was changed had a giant blue star painted on the wall - no idea why?

This is probably quite outing as have told a few people IRL who may be on here, but I name change frequently so here goes.

Shortly after we moved into our first house I saw a woman in Edwardian dress crossing the top of the stairs. Broad daylight, a warm summer's afternoon, solid as anything for a moment or two. I wasn't scared, oddly. The house always had a nice feeling to it.

Then a few years later we had our first child, a boy. One night I fell asleep while breastfeeding and woke to the physical sensation of someone shaking me and calling me to wake up. DS had fallen into the crook of my arm with his airway blocked - it still chills me to this day thinking what would have happened if I hadn't woken up at that moment. A short time after, when DS had moved to his own room, I woke up one night and heard a woman's voice singing a lullaby over the baby monitor. It sounds like something out of a horror film as I type this, but I comvinced myself it was just the dregs of a dream and didn't think too much of it.

I didn't see or hear her again but oddly both my siblings had experiences when staying in the house when their children were babies; she seemed to be drawn to them.

Anyway about five years ago a relative asked me to do some research on their house; I hit a wall and idly began researching the history of my own house instead, which I hadn't previously done. I soon found census records and discovered there had been a woman of the approximate age as the woman I'd seen living in our house in Edwardian times. The next record I found was a coroner's report. The first baby born in the house had been this woman's son, who had tragically died when he was a few months old when she had fallen asleep breastfeeding. Her son's name was, bizarrely, the same as the name we had chosen for DS!

When I was in my 20s my then boyfriend was killed overseas in tragic circumstances. The night after we found out he had died, at around 2am I got a call on my mobile phone from the country he had been in, there was no-one on the line, but a distant crackling noise. I was freaked out and hung up quite quickly. There was no-one in that country that would have my mobile number, he didn't have a phone with it stored on or anything.

Another unexplained thing happened after my dad died a couple of years ago. He had bought my son a wooden magnetic rocket when he was a baby and a piece had been missing for ages. I had previously turned the house upside down looking for it as my son loved the toy. The day we got back from my dad's funeral, the missing piece was on the floor in the middle of the living room, and I strongly felt my dad's presence for a few moments.