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.

Wow… this is amazing!

I have no woo stories personally but really, really enjoy these threads.

True or not, the Savernake forest is a classic woo thread, IMHO.😄

I think the scariest woo story I've read on here is about the woman who stayed at an old farmhouse turned hotel in the SW and saw something floating behind her whilst on her own in part of the hotel. Scared me shitless!!!

Unfortunately, I can't remember what thread it was on so if anyone else can, please post it for us.

As a child I was brought up by my darling grandad (long story involving my narcissistic mother,enabler father and the fact I'm the scapegoat)

We had an amazing relationship-he was (and still is) everything to me-I was his carer and he was my everything-we adored each other

When I was 14,he started to show signs of dementia and my mother,aunt and uncles whipped him into a home faster than you could say 'he needs to go into a home' (even though they'd all promised him they'd never do that to him)

Anyway,he got more and more ill-its a cruel disease-the part that makes them who they are is gone but they are there-sat in front of you

He'd been going downhill for about a year,when it was clear he wasn't going to make the next few days

The home rang my parents to tell them this (they didn't pass that bit into me so I could say my goodbyes-in fact they didnt bother either) and I could only go about twice a week due to school

5 days later,I could go see him and he was laid there,wired up to loads of machines,a shell of the man he was-and he turned his head to look at me-we locked eyes and I told him how much I loved him (it took a lot of effort on his part-he was very weak)

I said my goodbyes and that I would come see him in a few days and left-crying my eyes out and refusing to believe I would never see him again

He died the following morning

2 weeks later,at his funeral,my mates mum (who was the manager of the home) came and told my mother that he'd spent his last week 'pushing' someone/something away while shaking his head and muttering my name (she told me this while laughing and saying it was bollocks)

I firmly believe he hung on for me-to say his goodbyes to me-and was 'pushing' whoever it was away-I hope it was his wife-the granny I never met

He saw me and could finally 'go' and be at peace

I hope to see him again when I go

Does anyone remember a long-running ‘live updates’ woo story, years back, from an OP who worked in a business based in an old mill building with inexplicable goings on in the upper floor? It was obviously fiction (and MNHQ deleted it, I think…?), but I can get behind a plausible, skilfully written story with credibly-timed updates (ie not ‘OMG, I JUST WENT UPSTAIRS TO THE STOREROOM AND A HEADLESS HORSEMAN CANTERED THROUGH THE WOMEN’S TOILET DOOR!)

Out of all these tales, it's the dancing legs that have got me properly spooked!

I'm enjoying The Witch Farm podcast currently after discovering Uncanny. I often say "Bloody Hell Ken" when I'm surprised, annoyed etc 😆

I remember reading Verv's missing necklace story in an earlier thread; I don't doubt it, because the same thing has happened to me a few times, an object has gone missing, and later appeared in a place that I absolutely, 100%, had checked thoroughly beforehand, and it was definitely not there. It's also happened when I was alone in the house, so nobody to play tricks on me, nor any pets to carry something off.

I've mentioned previously that one morning I had opened the shower curtain and was about to take my robe from the hook, put it on, and step out of the bath (over bath shower, obviously). As I opened the curtain, a pair of tweezers, that had been on the window ledge opposite the shower end, dropped down out of the air in front of me. A couple of days later, the same thing happened with an empty toilet roll tube, that had been in the bathroom bin. Both times the bathroom door was bolted, and I was (obviously) alone in the room.

As I've said, lots of odd things have happened, that's just one or two incidents. I know more about the background to events than I'm comfortable saying here, but I've never felt threatened, nor been harmed or anything. After seventeen years of stuff happening, it's only occasionally now that something happens. Like I say, it doesn't bother me. 🤷‍♀️

I used to volunteer for a local youth club. I was walking there in the early evening when I decided to take a short cut down a little side street. Broad daylight, not normally anything dodgy about this street at all. The sun was just starting to go down so my shadow was casting a shadow on the wall next to where I was walking, when I saw a shadow of a man behind mins, reaching out to me with both hands, like he was about to attack me from behind. I whirled around but there was no one there. I got such a strong sense of foreboding - it honestly felt like a warning. To the point I took a different route home after the youth club had finished. I've never actually used that side street after dark/a certain time.

And a one that isn't creepy but strange all the same. My grandparents were truly in love. My grandfather would bring her a bunch of her favourite flowers, red roses, once a week 60 years. She was heartbroken when he died. When she herself was dying, receiving end of life care at home, she kept saying "He is coming for me soon".

An important detail in this story is my grandparents had a boring back garden. A small square of grass surrounded by privet fences. They didn't have any flowers. My grandmother died during the morning. In the afternoon, when we went outside, there was a single red rose in bloom. I absolutely couldn't have failed to notice this on an earlier day. There were no flowers growing the day before and never had been. I genuinely believe they both wanted me to know that they were back together again.

@Pebblesflintstoneandbambamrubble

I loved reading your post, I know all those places very well indeed.

It’s reminding me of a Pixar (I think) film from a year or two ago, where two boys use magic to bring back their dead father for a day, but it goes wrong and they only get him from the waist down and spend the day dad-dancing in between trying to find some McGuffin that will allow them to complete the spell.

These stories are giving me the heebie-jeebies but I can't seem to stop reading.🙈 If I can't sleep tonight, I blame you ALL!

I do find the rationale very interesting and possibly plausible and do honestly have an open mind but one thing I get stuck on with ghosts is clothing and accessories. Why are they in traditional dress, with weapons or items of the time when those items are actually buried/in museums/destroyed/disintegrated?

Maybe an imprint of the person/animal or a full 'scene' (anyone remember that one of a nurse getting the lift and it opening onto a WW1 hospital scene?) but just the soldiers in their uniforms strutting past an Ikea sofa obscuring David Dickinson on the telly is very hard to rationalise.

And are there ghosts of other kingdoms/phyla/classes - like mushrooms, viruses, bacteria, insects etc and if not, why not.

Honestly, honestly, not taking the piss or being close minded but twenty questions for every one answered. I want my animals that have passed to visit me. Why do some do and some don't?

Sorry @StowOnTheWold - not expecting you to answer these! Just general thoughts.

@StowOnTheWold That's a lovely analysis and really got me thinking about photography, film and the veils between dimensions! Thank you.

That's very interesting!

This is so lovely, @Pebblesflintstoneandbambamrubble — I love that he hung on for you.

Haha, I've never heard of that...might chase some royalties!

To clarify (if it was my farmer legs you were thinking of) they weren't dancing like Riverdance or anything...more like knees together, slightly bent swinging very slowly from side to side.

Dad dancing shuffle legs in baggy stonewash jeans and New Balance trainers would have had me in full pisstake mode, not in a panic!!

I say Bloody Hell Ken a lot, too!

Uncanny’s coming onto the telly soon.

And they've managed to get a Friday the 13th! Bloody hell, Luna!

Now that is spooky!

I’m sure that film is called Onwards. It was a lovely film 😊Correct me if I’m wrong though.

Holiday cottage mid Wales. Spent a week being woken every night at the same time, initially one sort of noise and as I became more sleep deprived as the week wore on, it upped the anti to include some other stuff. Essentially it wanted me to get up and wait until dawn and then I could go back to sleep, I did drift off at one point and it woke me up with a strong smell of tobacco and beer. It wasn't scary, more annoying as I had children with me who had reached the stage of sleeping through the night !

I was thinking about that one too, I read it originally in the old farmhouse my parents used to live in. It was really well written but I'm not sure how factual!

Ghosts are cultural. Different cultures have different ideas of the supernatural. Even though sleep paralysis is a biological process, the sinister ‘presence’ people sense depends on their cultural background. Where people ‘expect’ to encounter ghosts or what those ghosts do depends on their culture’s ideas about the supernatural — jinn only ‘possess’ people of a Muslim background, for instance. It’s one of the issues with treating people from some backgrounds for what medicine would call dissociative disorders — negotiating cultural belief and conventional psychiatry.

😅 Sorry,, but I think "The Monkey's Paw" has already explored that premise!