To start the spooky stories thread?

[SurpriseItsMeHorseyNeighNeigh]

Of course I'm not, it's Halloween, let's get scared.

So what is the spookiest/most unexplainable experience you had? We're talking paranormal here.

I'll start.

A few years back, 2 of my friends and me were walking in the street when I saw a boy sitting under a tunnel, on a ledge. He had his hand under his chin and was weirdly transparent. It lasted 3 seconds then he fell back and disappeared through wall.

I stared at it and as I said "did you see that?", one of my friend asked what. The other answered "there was a boy sitting there who went into the wall". I said I saw it too but then, as she was terrified to even acknowledge that kind of thing, she said "obviously, it was an optical illusion".

I did not insist... But I know what I saw..

After my cat got run over he came back to visit. I could hear purring and felt him weaving between my legs but nothing there. Happened a couple of times after he died.

@Gindrinker43 That is comforting

Oh, I like these.

One fine summer evening I was walking to my friend's house. I was about halfway there and walking down a perfectly normal street on a council estate. I was the only person around.

Suddenly, I found myself surrounded by the noise of what sounded like a big fight involving dozens, possibly hundreds of people. Lots of shouting and yelling and what sounded like impacts on wood, like when you're chopping logs with an axe. It was all very loud. It stopped as suddenly as it started. It must have only lasted for 30 seconds or so. I've often wondered if it was a 'stone tape recording' of some ancient skirmish, although I was doing my 'O' levels at the time and I've also wondered if that had an impact on my subconscious. I had a few other odd experiences around the same time. This was in a large town in West Yorkshire.

Oh - and when I was living in Bavaria many years ago, I was out for a bike ride near Lake Chiemsee. I was in a quiet lane and saw a bloke on a horse approaching me from the opposite direction. It was a narrow lane, so I was keeping an eye on him to make sure he'd seen me. I had cause to look down briefly, and when I looked back up a fraction of a second later, horse and rider were gone. There was a fence on one side of the lane and a sort of embankment on the other. Nowhere for them to go. Always been especially baffled by that one. He looked perfectly modern and 'normal', with a riding helmet and green clothes and brown or black boots. I've often tried to remember if I could hear the horse 'clip clopping' or if it was silent.

In the middle of the night, still asleep, I had the distinct sense of being watched. I opened my eyes and saw an unusually tall, silhouetted figure of a man in the doorway. He was entirely in shadow, except for yellow eyes, and he had a coldly evil air about him. I told myself it was just a dream and he disappeared. A few nights later I had a terrible nightmare. I realised I was dreaming at some point and tried to wake up, but there was something pushing down on my chest. With a huge effort I forced myself awake and sat up to see my bedroom door was open, when I always closed it, as it was a shared house. The rational explanation is probably too much cheese and sleep paralysis, but the sense of a real, malevolent being holding me down was very vivid. I moved house not long after, and never had an experience like that again.

Count me out!

There have been some very spooky threads here in the past. The one about the dog walker in the Savernake Forest and the Goatman thread (which was reported around the world iirc) means I won't get to sleep easily. Especially as I have to drive through the forest tomorrow!

My daughter's friend came to our house in hysterics after she saw a woman with no legs floating towards her when she was walking down the road to our house. I walked past little boy who went past a car and disappeared I also drove past a cyclist on a country lane and he wasn't behind me when I looked in my mirror.

I've nothing to add at the moment, but you all might like to know, if you don't already, that the lovely Danny is back on Radio Four with series 3 of Uncanny - and there are going to be some Uncanny TV specials, starting on BBC 2 on Friday 13th of this month.

Hope you're all right @StowOnTheWold ! I always think supernatural things are harmless, even if alarming. I'm sure I've seen some very friendly spirit people as well!

when I was a student had a part time job assisting a florist and we were doing a get in to a church for wedding flowers the night before. it was a big money wedding with a lot of floral stuff near trees and so on in the church so it was too much to do it all on the morning.

I was alone at one point and heard this sudden loud horrible noise that made me jump. I'd never heard anything like it - it was a sort of banging crunch.

scared the shit out of me. went near pelting out the church to find the others unloading.

we went to investigate and the area it had come from was near the bell tower but there was nothing there and all doors were locked.

Later found out that a man had committed suicide by jumping from the bell tower about 100 years before.

Once I heard that, I put two and two together and think that was the noise I heard. the realisation scared me more than when I was actually there.

I'm a total sceptic and would have thought if I'd known that I'd imagined it but I swear that I had no knowledge of the history and had never heard the tale.

Never went back to that church again.

Absolutely fine, but thank you. I have come back from a walk in the dark to watch the storm. The worst thing about spooky threads is that I end up reading the posts until the early hours (then wonder why I am tired in the morning...)

Some years ago we were on holiday in Romania. We’d booked an AirBnB in Transylvania. It turned out to be a charming little inn in the foothills of the Carpathians.

The first night we were there I awoke to the noise of a knocking at the window. I was strangely drawn to the sound, as if in a trance. In this mindless state I was compelled to draw back the curtains.

I was shocked. Outside was a man who looked like our old plumber - before he went home after Brexit - but floating in the air and displaying very sharp-looking teeth. He drifted away, muttering something.

Later I repeated to a local what I thought he’d said and apparently it meant, “You still owe me for the price of the more expensive taps you insisted on.”

I still shiver when I think about it.

Why do I read these 😳 I'll never get to sleep now, I'm so easily spooked

@StowOnTheWold A storm and spooky stories, sounds great!

@WhileMyDishwasherGentlyWeeps Ha ha, very funny!

@WhileMyDishwasherGentlyWeeps Did you exorcise him or did you not want to faucet?

I have quite a few stories but I'll tell this one ...
Mid eighties my friend and I decided to skive off school for the day, of all places we thought it would be a great idea to skive off in the graveyard!! Why I've no idea...!
Hot summer's day and we were lying on the grass on a slope, my friend stood up and walked over to a tree shaking her cardigan as it had grass on it

I sat up looked over at her and then just at the bottom of the slope to the left side I saw about 12 men dressed in black long coats and top hats no women and every one of them was turned around staring at us, they were stood at an open grave
I jumped up called my friend she turned round and saw the men we grabbed our stuff and ran out the back way to get out assuming there was a funeral going on

We couldn't open the gate at the back as it was locked so we had to turn and run back up the pathway going past the funeral going on to get out..only as we passed there was no funeral no men no nothing going on..we stopped looking over to where we'd seen the funeral

We thought they must of moved quick but logically it wasn't possible..we walked over to the church doors they were locked we checked outside the church which was in a country lane thinking well they'll be a funeral car parked up but no there was nothing outside church

We must of got very brave because we walked over to where we saw the men and there was no open grave, no heaped soil ..but there was a headstone in that exact spot and it was dated from the late eighteen hundreds 😳

We literally ran all the way back to school and I'll be forever grateful my friend was with me and she witnessed it too..

The one with the girl who went to a bar when she was young and saw a gloomy blond guy, then 20 years later (when she was still young, obviously) and she saw the same guy looking the exact same, still gloomy and staring at her.

I get scared just thinking about it...

I love these so place marking , I've just sent my story to the uncanny email , !

@pippapipps I love that story. I'm just wondering if they thought you two were ghosts!

How bizarre - have YouTube on in the background and have been half listening to the story of a very haunted house in Berkeley Square in London …. And here’s this thread!!

My first ghostly encounter occurred when I was about 11 or 12.

Early 80s, and every summer I’d be packed off with my Grandmother to stay with my Aunt and cousins in Scotland.

This particular year my Aunt and second husband were living in a large, rather grand if slightly dilapidated Victorian house overlooking a village some miles outside Edinburgh. No idea how they afforded it, but I do remember they didn’t have curtains in some rooms etc. The big windows had wooden shutters though, but we’re a bit broken so they weren’t used. There was a coach house in the garden, and a sort of maids room annex at the back through the kitchen.

Best of all it had a ghost story attached - so I and my cousins were already fascinated and tried to devise methods of communication with the ghost, to no avail.

The story was that back in Victorian times, the master of the house had murdered one of his maids and hidden her body at the back of the dining room cupboard. Each room did have a built in cupboard set into the thick brick walls. The dining room cupboard was half the depth of the others with wallpapered wooden slats while the others were full depth of the walls with solid backs. Despite entreaties, this was never investigated.

So I got a bad stomach upset, possibly food poisoning as no-one else got it, but as a precaution I was isolated in the bottom bunk bed in the room I was sharing with my female cousin. It was only accessible through the bigger bedroom it was attached to, where my cousin bunked in with her brother.

Some time during the night, I woke up because someone was tucking me in. I was curled up facing the wall, and the sensation of my pillow being fluffed and the mattress slightly lifting as the sheet was tucked under woke me. I felt hands smooth the blanket then heard footsteps as someone left the room. I looked over my shoulder and saw a female figure with what I thought was white hair passing the window as they went through the door. It was a moonlit night and I saw a clear silhouette - this was a room without curtains and the shutters, as mentioned weren’t functional.

I thought nothing of it, convinced it was my Nana, and fell back into a fitful sleep.

In the morning Nana came in quite early to see how I was doing. I mentioned I’d woken up when she came in during the night - and she denied it was her….thinking logically she took sleeping tablets so she was unlikely to have been prowling around in the wee small hours….

Fair enough - must have been my Aunt…., but no, she too denied having been in. My two adult cousins were quizzed - nope, not them either. It had definitely been a grown up, because of their height in relation to the sash window. Only my Nana had white hair, which had stuck with me because the moon had made it sort of glow…..

Of course it was put down to a fever dream as I was unwell, but it was physical touch that woke me….. and it wasn’t scary or unpleasant so I didn’t think anything was amiss at the time…..

My Aunt was very no nonsense and everyone dismissed it to discourage our febrile pre-teen imaginations getting out of hand…..

But I know it was real ….. I can still recall the details vividly, and I’m 54 now.

TLDR

The ghost of a possibly murdered Victorian maid tucked me in when I was unwell as a child……

Placemarking....for reading in the daytime tomorrow

I was going to say sleep paralysis too! Isn’t it interesting how so many of us see a dark figure and feel something pushing down on our chest.

I would have some walk around my bed and try and drag me off the bed with my feet. It’d then walk up to my face and just stand there. I couldn’t move, wake up or open my eyes but I could see a dark shadow.

I was having these experiences so often in the space of a handful of months. Haven’t had sleep paralysis for about a year and I thank God! Never ever want to experience it again

Also thanks for the thread OP. It’s a nice change to the graphic ‘what’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to you’ thread