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 love this post but am equally spooked too

That's such a sad story about your great great Aunt @Dramatico .

And @MariePaperRoses ...gone all goosebumpy when I read your post!! ooer!

I absolutely love stories like this.

I’m from Liverpool & Tom Slemen has written some brilliant Haunted Liverpool books, they’re spooky even if you have never been to the city before.

I’m sure I’ve told my scary story before but I’ll tell it again.

When I was about 8/10 years old the local youth club had a fun day on (Summer) I was sitting on the grass waiting for my
turn on the trampolines.

When out of nowhere a man who looked like a throwback to the 70s/80s was sitting there, I’d say early 20s, longish hair (70/80s style) with wine coloured lenses glasses on.

He wasn’t there when I’d sat down because I wouldn’t have sat near a random man, I’d never seen him before & I was always at the youth club.

Anyway, I didn’t feel threatened at all & he smiled & said “How is your dad?” I just assumed he must’ve known him, so I said he’s fine, he then asked how my mum was & I replied she’s fine too. He then said “tell your dad to stop worrying, I’m ok, tell him I was asking about him” so I just nodded then it was my turn for the trampoline.

The trampoline was about 5 meters away. Once I climbed on it & turned around the man was gone including the little deck chair.

That afternoon I went home & told my dad about the man & what he’d said. He scratched his head thinking of who it could be. He described all of his mates & none of them matched up so he chalked it up to someone he must know & that was that.

Years later me & my mum & dad were going through the photo album & got to a picture of a man in his early 20s, I instantly knew it was that man on the youth club field so I said, That’s the feller who was speaking to me about you dad when I was at the youth club.

Him & my mums face dropped, it turned out it was my dads younger brother who had been killed tragically before I was born. He’d been run over in his early 20s. My dad couldn’t believe it & I’ll never get over the look of shock when I told him that was the man.

That’s the one story that made me believe there’s something after life.

Sorry for the long story.

I've posted this before.

When the pandemic started and we were called in for vaccination I arrived at the hall and was handed a raffle ticket with a number on it which was called when it was my turn. I was gobsmacked to realise the ticket had my door number 283 on it. The nurse joked I was obviously meant to be vaccinated that day.

A couple of weeks later I was looking through an old memory box of things we kept when my mum died, and what's the first thing I pull out? A raffle ticket with my door number 283 on it which mum bought in 1980 and wrote the date on.

I've never been able to explain this as just coincidence.

I was putting out the washing and looked up to see the elderly next door neighbour looking out of her bedroom window . I knew she had been unwell for a while but thought nothing of it . The next day her daughter came round to tell me she had passed away two days previously. It shook me up I can tell you . I know I saw her in that window .

Two nights after dh died I woke up to feel a hand on my leg above my knee. When I moved it vanished, wish I hadn't moved now. Loads of things happened over the last year. Dh was close to DN too and they've had experience's in their house too.

I work in healthcare with older adults and I've had a few women say "I don't believe in that sort of thing BUT" and they tell you they've woken up to see their late dhs in the room sitting on the sofa or their chair looking calm & happy.

I love that.

So our local park has a jacobean mansion in, it was used as a hospital during the war, lots of history behind it, during the pandemic it was closed off, all staff working from home and obviously closed to the public.

Myself and my teenage daughter was walking our dog, we heard someone playing a piano, being that stupid person in a horror film I peered through the window with my daughter, there was a woman dressed in old fashioned clothes playing the piano, she looked up at us and waved, hard to explain but we could see straight through her, my daughter ran back to the car and I swiftly joined her!

I asked the gardener about it the next day and he confirmed the house was closed for members of the public and staff, when i told him what we had seen he said others had seen her too , still gives me goosebumps when i walk past that window!

I once had a weird experience while visiting a client in part of a building I later found out was a wartime makeshift morgue, so who knows if that's connected. I was going through my notes while they went to get the coffees and heard heavy steps coming down the stairs as if someone was carrying something. Went to the door to ask if they needed a hand... nobody there, no other rooms on that level. The footsteps had come from the 'right' places as the staircase curved around two sides of the room, until they were as loud as you'd expect in the corridor immediately outside, so it couldn't reasonably have been sound from an adjoining building. Well, I can't explain it!

Or if the bottom of the glass was wet or had condensation on it and the table was slightly tilted.

My mum always told me "the more you talk or think about them, the closer they get".

Wtf.... that has ALWAYS freaked me out.

I love reading al these stories.

I remember one. I was walking in a cemetary with my 3 years old at the time, it was the shortest way from nursery and I don't mind cemetaries, they are peaceful.

There was a church at the end of it. One of the room had a huge window and as we passed it, my daughter stopped suddenly and looked inside the empty room and say "look at those people singing, Mummy", very excitedly.

I was a bit surprised so I tried to figure out what she was talking about but the room was definitely empty, no music or anything, it was a really quiet day. There was a high pitch sound, like an alarm, so I assume she was hearing that and being confused. My daughter then starts getting closer to the window, clearly looking at something that amazed her and wriggling like she was dancing. I felt goosebump and panic, for some reason, seeing her get closer.

At this point, I freak out but don't want to show it as didn't want her to start making up a story because of my reaction so I just told her I couldn't see from where I was but we had to go home. I changed the subject, went home and played with her. No mention of it again.

When her Dad came back home, he asked her how her day had been and she told him about her morning at nursery. He asked her what her favourite thing was today and she answered "the people singing the beautiful song in the church". Her Dad asked her what they were singing and she started singing a song (well singing"lalalalala", not words). He asked her if they seemed happy and she said yes.

My blood ran cold. I never mentionned it again but didn't walk near the church for months after that.

The Savernack Forest one was a peach. Really well written as an imaginative piece of writing, but I think it ended up being widely accepted as totally made up.

That has given me the biggest shivers on this thread! 👀

A few months ago someone was telling their ghost story about a Victorian man who was cycling towards her on some country lane, before he disappeared into the ether.

She made a lovely diagram to show us where she was and where the happy cycling ghost was.

I feel that on MN parking diagrams are overrated and ghost diagrams are underrated.

When I was about 14 (a long time ago), I had a sleepover at my best friend's house. In the morning I told her I'd had a strange dream about a prefect in our school. He was in 5th or 6th year so not someone we'd know to talk to, those boys were way out of our reach.

In the dream, I was sitting at a low table, looking through a book with photos of strange fish. As I turned the pages a shadow fell across the page and was aware of someone leaning over me. Then I was nudged, and a voice said 'Dig the Austrian'. I looked up to see who was speaking and it was the prefect. I then looked over to where he was indicating and there stood a man in Bavarian/Austrian costume - little hat with feather, short jacket, lederhosen etc. Then the dream ended.

I told all this to my friend and we thought 'weird' and then left it at that.

The years roll by and I'm in another city working when I bump into said prefect, we get together and are in a relationship.

He was doing a Masters and one day I went with him to the university library to wait while he checked out some books. I was sitting at a table leafing through a picture book about exotic fish, when a shadow fell across the page.... I had the strangest feeling that I knew what was going to happen before it did. He nudged me and said 'Dig the Austrian', I looked over and there was a man waiting. He wasn't in full costume, but he had the wee hat with the feather and a short jacket. I looked up at my boyfriend and he saw the look on my face. I told him to say nothing until we'd got to a payphone.

I phoned my best friend and he and I held the phone between us so he could hear.

I said to her, 'do you remember years ago I had that strange dream about X long before I ever knew him?'

And she said 'Oh yes, "Dig the Austrian"'.

That's actually a terrifying thought... Especially for a child. Poor you lol. I suppose she meant well.

No spooky story of my own but does anyone know if that OP found her grandfather clock chain that spookily vanished a few weeks ago???? I still think about it….

Mine happened only a couple of weeks ago.

Ds was playing on his xbox in our 'snug', I was pottering around in the kitchen. Dh was on the loo upstairs. We put an Echo Dot in the snug a few weeks ago so ds can listen to music while gaming.

I popped my head around the door to the snug to ask ds a question and suddenly Alexa piped up for no reason and started singing "Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do". It sounded like me singing, and I have often sung that song to my youngest.

As Alexa sang on, the tone turned slower and deeper until it became what I can only describe as demonic in nature, like it had been put through a voice changer. Ds and I looked at each other and freaked out. We both thought that dh had played a joke on us from upstairs somehow, which he completely refutes. We asked her to sing it again, and she did, perfectly normally.

Dh has a deep mistrust of Alexa anyway and believes 'they' (he doesn't mean ghosts, but secret services) listen in without the activation word. I bought him the Echo Dot as a present a few years ago but he absolutely hates it.

I can't explain what happened, but I'm not woo so prefer to think it's a tech glitch or a practical joke by someone with better knowledge of Alexa than me. But it remains switched off, gathering dust.

If anyone has any ideas on what triggered this, there's a 12yo boy who would love to know!

I spotted this late last night but didn't read it then for obvious reasons.

We used to live in an old mill house. DD (5) woke crying in the night that there had been a lady standing next to her bed. She said she was still there while I was in the room - she was able to describe her as an elderly lady dressed in a white nightgown. I didn't mention it again, and had dismissed it as a bad dream, but one day DD was playing in her room and she turned to me and said 'this is the lady's bedroom you know'

My childhood home was also, had an oppressive atmosphere and I recall, even now, being terrified at night, which for some reason I never mentioned to my parents. I only found out many years later that they were convinced the house was haunted, and there had been some strange happenings in the house - minor things like items moved to improbable places, or things switched off. They were about to get the priest to come and bless the house but decided to sell the house instead.

It explains just a years later, when looking for a live in renovation project, they dismissed a house on having a bad atmosphere, which at the time I thought seemed like a flimsy reason not to buy what looked like a lovely large house closer to my school.

Someone will, but it was just an obviously fictional ‘spooky story’ in one of those long, regular ‘woo’ threads, about a woman pet-sitting in Savernake Forest, who goes out into the woods in the dark after what she thinks is an escaped puppy, the dogs get spooked, and a demonic voice rebukes her when she says ‘God’, so they all dash back indoors, pursued by something unseen.

I never understand why it’s achieved such iconic status on here!

Savernake Forest:

"Warning: it's very long (sorry) and very freaky, and if anyone can come up with a rational explanation I'd be extremely grateful because I'm generally a pretty rational non-woo where's-the-evidence person, but I've never been able to explain this and it still makes my heart beat faster and the hair stand up on my arms when I think about it, years later.

I was pet sitting for my friend several years ago. She had moved into a sort of small holding right on the edge of a village in the SW, with a huge garden that backed onto trees. At the time she had a right menagerie - chickens, ducks, a couple of Shetlands, cats and four black retrievers, three fully grown and one a half grown puppy. Originally DH had been going to come with me as a little holiday but the dates she ended up having to go away for work clashed with a couple of his medical appointments so he stayed at home with our dog and I went to petsit alone.

It was about halfway through my stay, a couple of nights to go. Late evening, already dark when I heard a massive commotion from the chicken shed, banging and thumping. I assumed a fox or something had got in so went out to check. As I was halfway across the garden the noise stopped instantly as if it had been shut off; by the time I got to the shed all was calm and the chickens were all settled, mostly asleep. No sign of any intruder or disturbance at all, nothing to explain the noise or any indication that the chickens had made a noise. Bit freaky but I didn't (and still don't) know much about The Way of Chicken so I locked up again and left them to it.

As I went back in the house a small black shape ran past me out of the back door and I realised the puppy must have got out. It streaked across the garden and off towards the woods. Cue much cursing, then calling her name in vain. More cursing when she didn't come back. I grabbed a torch and put one of the other dogs on the lead, partly for protection, partly because I thought the pup was more likely to come back if I had one of her canine companions with me and partly because I didn't fancy my chances of finding my way back to the house on my own even though there were a couple of vague paths that I'd followed when walking the dogs throughout the week.

Off we trudged into the wood along one of these paths, me calling pup's name at intervals and trying not to imagine murderers and rapists behind every tree trunk. We got to a point where it felt like the trees were starting to thin out and I remember thinking that I didn't remember a clearing on this path and we must have gone wrong somewhere when the dog with me slowed right down and started to resist going forward. I tried to jolly her along - while my stomach suddenly dropped like a stone - and she started growling, a really low serious rumbling growl. By this time I was practically shitting myself. I tried shining the torch ahead but the beam just sort of bounced back off the darkness if that makes sense? I got the sense of something - or somethings - moving but just sinuous deeper black shapes against the blackness and always on the periphery of vision. (The hairs on my arms are standing up again just remembering how completely and utterly terrified I was. I have honestly never known a feeling like it.)

At this point the dog sank right down, still growling, hackles up and refused to budge. I muttered something like "Jesus, you have got to be kidding me" and this ugly gurgling inhuman sort of voice hissed, right up close as if someone was right next to me "don't say that name". At the same time there was a horrible snickering sort of laugh. I cant express how utterly petrified I was. I can't remember having any coherent thoughts apart from the word "evil". That's the only clear thing I can remember. Me and the dog were frozen to the spot with pure fear. Then a different voice, really commanding, said "GO. BACK." That sounded more in my head but echoey, where the others had sounded out in the air IYSWIM?

Wherever it came from it did the trick. Me & the dog turned and belted back through the woods. She basically towed me, I just clung onto her lead stumbling to keep up and sobbing with fear. I lost the torch somewhere on that wild run but there was no way I was stopping to find it. How I didn't run blindly into a tree I'll never know, she guided me I guess. I can remember thinking desperately that I mustn't let go of her lead or "they" would get me.

When we got back to the garden she suddenly stopped - I did fall over her this time, onto my hands and knees - turned around and started snarling, proper teeth bared, rabid-looking snarls, back at the trees and the darkness. I thought I heard the snickering again but the blood was pounding in my ears so hard I can't be sure. I scrambled up and ran to the back door and she followed me but backing and snarling all the way as if holding something at bay. Oh, and the chicken shed was banging and thumping again. I got the back door open, me and her belted in, I slammed home every bolt behind us. The other dogs left behind were staring at the door and growling too with their hackles up and when I saw all three of them, puppy included, acting like that I started to cry properly because I honestly thought I was trapped in some horror film nightmare and was going to die. I don't know - I still don't know - what the black shape was that ran past me out of the house and triggered all of this because the puppy was right there in the kitchen.

Anyway I made sure every door and window was locked and bolted, I turned on every light in the house, I wandered round mumbling all sorts of weird half-religious half-spiritual shit to ward off evil spirits. Gradually the dogs settled down and stopped growling, and eventually stopped glancing at the door. Funnily enough I didn't sleep for one second that night and I rang my DH and begged him to come over the last couple of days. I know I didn't dream it because I was covered in scratches from running through the woods and had grazed hands from where I fell over the dog in the garden.

Nothing like that has happened before or since and I hope it never, ever does. It was the single most horrible, terrifying experience of my entire life."

she's ordered some new chains!

I've name changed to share a story, as it's not my own, told by a work colleague of my mother's decades ago.

She'd been told she was having a miscarriage, early around 6-8 weeks and had pains and heavy bleeding. For comfort she slept with a small doll slightly smaller than the size of her hand overnight and the next day it had disappeared. After a few days her morning sickness hadn't gone and she discovered she hadn't miscarried after all. She decided it was linked to the doll!

I'd have said she hadn't actually had a miscarriage, but a haemorrhage, and no scan to check or confirm. It sounds sillier now I've typed it out.

I’m loving this thread…. I’m an open minded sceptic so I try to keep the middle ground although I have had plenty of spooky experiences.

My most recent may be grief brain or may not - either way I found it comforting.

So my DP of 11 years died very unexpectedly in January 2022 and I’m still not quite right in the head as a result. We were total soul mates and didn’t meet till we were both 42. Frankly his loss seems like the ultimate insult from Fate.

Anyhoo, while organising his funeral I was up until near enough 3am one morning writing my eulogy. I was weirdly wired but had finished so went up to bed.

I went round to his side of our bed where the spare sockets are and was plugging in my tablet - as I stood up, I clear as day saw DP come into the room and walk past the light coloured fitted wardrobes as if he was coming to bed too. I even heard the creaky floorboard we have…. He was wearing his dressing-gown, which I had appropriated and was also wearing…. I was frozen for a second, then tip toed round the bottom of the bed….. this will sound all kinds of weird / pretentious but my DP was a very creative character and had built us a four poster out of Akro poles and other scaffolding, garnished with about 10 of his decorative swords, and it’s a repository for scarves and other dangly stuff. At the foot of the bed is his short wardrobe - our TV is attached to this- so once he’d gone round the corner as it were, he was hidden from view.

I tried to apply logic, thinking my son had come in or something but obviously there was no-one there when I gingerly walked round the bed.

I then attempted to recreate the alleged optical illusion by bending down and standing up again quickly as I had been when I saw him, but couldn’t “make it happen” again

It was simultaneously lovely and saddening….. and it was the creaking floorboard that has me convinced it wasn’t necessarily just a hallucination….