To start a new woo thread

[arh25]

Has anyone had any woo experiences, particularly if it's something/someone you've seen? I know that not everyone believes, just I've had some odd experiences myself and it makes me wonder. Especially with Halloween next month and it being a little while since we've had a woo thread. Would love to hear your stories!

I’m sure this kind of communication will be discovered to have a scientific cause!

Wouldn’t life be boring if we all believed the same things and nothing unexplainable ever happened.

The house with the crying girl in York is on every walking ghost tour, I’m sure they are sick of people knocking 😆

Agree. A ghost seems much more plausible in most cases 🤣

Fabulous thread, OP! I agree with a PP's comment about telepathy. Although I do have a healthy dose of skepticism about what I believe to be the more far-fetched stories (although there is wiggle-room!), I believe 100% in telepathy.

My stories are pretty tame, but....

When my grandpa was a young man in pre-war Central Europe, he had gone on a tram to visit his father in hospital. On his way there, he saw his father on the tram passing in the opposite direction, so grandpa got off the tram at the next stop and went back home, believing him to have been discharged. Back home, his father had indeed been discharged, but hadn't actually travelled on a tram. But grandpa had been convinced enough he'd seen his dad, to have returned home again.

When I was a child, I walked home from school, and instead of ringing the doorbell, I went around to the lounge window to see if mum was in there and to wave. The lounge was a long room with French windows at the far end. I could see mum kneeling on the floor looking at something like a photo album in front of the French windows. She didn't notice me waving. So I went round the back of the house, intending to knock on that window instead. By the time I'd got there, she'd left and was in the kitchen, so I knocked on that window instead and she let me in. She asked if I'd rung the doorbell and she hadn't heard (was very hard to hear the doorbell in the kitchen at the back of the house) , and I replied that no, I'd just seen her looking at something on the floor of the lounge a few seconds ago. She told me she hadn't been in there at all, and had been in the kitchen the whole time.

I never believed I'd seen a ghost. What I believe (if not coincidence) was that I knew telepathically that she was at the back of the house and wouldn't hear the bell, and that's the way my brain relayed the information to me. Same with my grandpa's story perhaps.

Nothing is unexplainable. There are loads of things that are unexplained.

I assumed the poster meant that the woman's first words were after PP had told her about the child. I could be wrong, but that was how I read it/took it.

Go on... Have a go at some of these! Like a PP, I'm interested in both sides of the coin! Have a go at some of the more far-fetched ones, not the possible sleep paralysis ones though.

If you like of course. I'm aware I just sounded very demanding then! 😆

Love a woo thread. I am hoping someone starts a creative writing exercise in mid October with daily updates to the grand finale at Halloween. You know, hidden door in the house, noises in the wood. Something like that passed off as real so we can all call troll while thoroughly enjoying the ride!

I think some phenomena which we call 'the supernatural' might well be explained rationally in the future.

But sceptics - don't be so fast to dismiss people's experiences! I count myself a sceptic but...as Danny Robbins's tag-line goes,"I know what I saw!" We had a number of inexplicable (to put it no stronger than that...) things happen, but when we both saw a big fat roll of tape (lying flat, not standing up like a wheel) absolutely whizz across a flat table spontaneously - it didn't start slowly, or all off the end etc - we knew that something wasn't right.

It was completely stationary (no pun intended...) and shot horizontally very fast, then stopped. I guess it moved about 2 feet. No, the table wasn't sloping at all. No, there was no breeze in the room - dead of winter, all doors and windows closed. No-one was near to it. No, the kids hadn't attached a thread to it.

This is mild compared to some experiences people have - but I mention it because it was absolutely inexplicable.

The most frightening things are often very banal. Danny Robbins, himself a fence-sitter and open-minded, told a story that he said baffled and scared him.

A friend lived in a tiny, tiny flat and worked very long hours, so the flat was basically a dormitory. He used to take off his jeans each night and lay them on the chair right next to his bed. One morning they were gone. He searched the tiny flat over and over, but never found them. The windows were locked, doors locked, no-one else was in the flat. Just weird and unsettling....🤔

I actually find the little things more interesting. Those small, banal things that we just simply write-off and don't think about too much are often the strangest.

Terrifying

I seem to have a thing of seeing my kids doppelganger in the house.

1. My son would have been about 12.

I seen him leave the toilet and go in to his room. Literally 2 seconds later he came up the stairs. I went in to the bedroom and he said he was downstairs all morning. Went down toy partner, he said the same.

1. My youngest son would have been about 18 months old. I woke up to him sitting behind me,we slept on a pullout sofa so it had space behind.

I wentvto grab him thinking my partner had brought him down. He shirked back giggling went to get him again. He basically dissolved before my eyes. Ran the stairs and there he was stretched out in his cot.

1. Funnily enough this is the baby from no.1 but this happened last year so he was about 16.

I was in my bedroom which is downstairs, seen my son walk into the kitchen.i wanted to see him so I went in and he wasn't there. He wasn't out the back so I called him and he came down the stairs. He wasn't downstairs at all yet. Last one involves my partner. I'm a light sleeper,so I felt my partner getting out of bed. Walking around it to go out the door. But when I turned he was asleep in bed. I've no explanations for these. But I've loads of things happen to me. I must attract them or something.

That is very disturbing.

I’m all for that if it’s either well done or so hilariously terrible it becomes funny, like Tristan, Molly and the haunted camping pods.

ETA Actually, I want whoever did that long thread from years ago about the strange occurrences in an old mill converted into offices to have another go. It was all very low-key and plausible and mildly eerie, and deserves more credit than the schlocky but much-acclaimed Savernake Forest or Angry Man in Nightclub ones.

As the neurologist Steve Novella says-
“When someone looks at me and earnestly says, "I know what I saw," I am fond of replying, "No you don't." You have a distorted and constructed memory of a distorted and constructed perception, both of which are subservient to whatever narrative your brain is operating under.”

Posted this earlier this year -

Will try to keep long story short. I neither believe nor disbelieve in spirits, but this has really made me think.

In the last two years we have had two new neighbours. Out for a drink with one of them and she asks me if the previous owners of her house had ever mentioned a presence in the house (I think the house was probably built in the late 1960s/early 70s). They never had. She said that ever since she had been there she had always felt there was someone else with her in one of the bedrooms. Also a different smell to the rest of the house. She had mentioned it to the other new neighbour, who I don't know very well. Neighbour No 2 said she was some sort of medium and offered to go into the room. She said there was a spirit there of a man wearing a leather apron and she had asked him to leave. All well since then. Different smell gone. Neighbour No 1 had never felt afraid, just that she was not alone.

Purely by chance last week I bumped into my old neighbour in town. We went for a coffee and I said, you'll never guess what, and related the story. The room in question had been her son's room. She said they had never experienced anything and we had a bit of a laugh about it.

Last Saturday I had a call from my old neighbour. She had seen her son that morning (he is now married with two children) and jokingly said did he know that his old bedroom was haunted. To her shock he replied yes! He said that he had sensed a presence many times and for some reason he always pictured in his head a man with a leather apron. She asked why he had never mentioned it and he said he thought he would be ridiculed by the rest of the family. However, he had been concerned enough about it to speak to our local vicar at the time who came and said a prayer in the room whilst my friend was out.

New neighbour and old neighbour met once, on moving day, and the son had never met them.

Even stranger. Back in the day, the site where the house is used to be occupied by the village blacksmith/farrier. We are now trying to find any old photos of the village that might show the forge/blacksmith.

Make of that what you will.

@CurlewKate can we not have 1 thread to talk about experiences.
You don't have to come on a thread you don't believe.
Block it and go and live your life.

I don’t need you to believe me, Curlew. Your opinion on my and my husband’s experience is irrelevant.

All I know is that I do not spend a night alone in my house nowadays. If he’s away, I go and stay with a friend. And I’m Mrs Sensible, if ever you met one. And he saw what I saw.

Have the humility to realise that you can’t pontificate about other people’s experiences.

My sister lives in a house her husband inherited from his grandmother. She strongly disapproved of them living together before marriage, and much less having a child. Called sister and baby horrible names. Anyway, she died and they got the house. About three years later, little nephew was in the garden on his own, talking away to someone not there. Sister investigated. He said he was talking to an old lady, used her distinctive name (that he could not have known or overheard) who used to live there.

I've had supernatural experiences in my house - and one or two outside it - for about nineteen years now. We've lived here for 23 years. It's still going on, something happened just yesterday. It's only ever harmless stuff so I've never felt threatened by it.

One of the most notable occurrences was a few years back. I was standing at the bathroom sink brushing my teeth. Door bolted, window shut. I felt something very lightly touch the back of my lower leg (i.e. my calf). As I turned and looked down the empty Kandoo wipes box (those purple and green ones), that had been sitting fully - i.e. not near the edge - on a corner shelf, four feet away from I was standing, was now on the floor right behind my heel.

Before anyone tries to insult my intelligence by suggesting that the box fell off the shelf and "bounced" across the floor, to then bounce up again and hit me on my calf, no, it didn't. It was sitting flat, fully on the shelf, which was about four feet from the floor, shoulder height to me (I'm a shortarse). Had it fallen off the shelf onto the tiled floor, I would have heard it hit the floor. Besides, it doesn't bounce - I tried letting it go from the same height several times, and it just dropped straight down to the floor with a sound that no way would I have not heard. Even when I tried flinging it hard onto the floor it didn't bounce, and it absolutely did not bounce four feet across the floor towards the sink where I was standing at the time. No, the first I knew that the box wasn't on the shelf was when I felt that very light touch on my calf, and looked around and down to see it.

Anyway, that's just one incident. There've been loads more, like I said, nothing scary or harmful. I'm used to it by now.

I am not sure how “woo” this is, as there is a rational explanation. My father and my partner were both terminally ill and ended up dying within 48 hours of each other. I texted my partner on the Wednesday to tell him that my Dad had died, but didn’t get a response, which didn’t surprise me as he was in the last stages of pancreatic cancer. He then died on the Friday. The next day I had a text from him. It said, I am so sorry about John (my Dad). I may not be able to be with you in body, but I’m always with you in spirit.
The rational explanation is that he sent the message on Wednesday but for some reason it took three days to arrive. It’s weird, though.

At 6 or 7 I was sleeping over with cousins and for some reason woke up in the middle of the night and remember saying "Uncle B is such a lovely man isn't he?" To which everyone agreed and then went back to sleep. In the morning we woke to the news he had died at 3am. He was only early 40s.

Driving home late one night I slammed on my brakes as a grey misty outline of a woman walking her dog crossed straight in front of me. I saw her hit my bonnet and go over the car. When I got out and went to look noone was there. Terrifying! I checked the news for the next month expecting to hear a body had been found or there was a.missing person. Nothing. (and no evidence of anything on my car!)

First visit to now MIL's I was walking down her old winding stairs and felt someone shove me in the back, but managed to regain balance. Said to whoever had done it "it's OK, I'm not that bad". I jokingly said to MIL that someone didn't want me dating her son and learned that a previous girlfriend had fallen down and broken her legs! Having literally just discovered that I'd early miscarried, my then 2 year old stopped on the same spot and looked up to me and said, "Next time mummy. Next time".

Of course you don’t. But I just thought it was interesting how a neurologist responds to “I know what I saw”. It wasn’t intended to be dismissive or offensive. I find discussion on this subject hugely fascinating.

I am not woo in the slightest and would love some explanation for what we see and hear.

My story. Me, aged 5. I’m playing on the floor of the bedroom of the family house in the middle of nowhere and my mum hears me talking to ‘a man’ a few times when I’m in the room. Nobody was with me, just the two of us in the house and nobody for miles around. Mum assumed I was playing a game.

I then started to refuse to go into the room or use the bathroom next door.

We get home, mum talks to my gran. It’s the room my grandpa had died in.

When I was older I got a very bad feeling about the barn and couldn’t make myself go in there. A swing was set up in the rafters, there were bigger toys in there and bales so it would have been a cool place to hang out.
Eventually found out a cousin had committed suicide in the old barn just after the war and the new one had replaced it.

I was so glad when the house was sold. The place gave me the willies as a teenager. The vibe in the house and area was so dark.

NC for this!

I am also a sceptic generally, BUT...

When I was 14, I stayed the night at my schoolfriend's house. Her brother (a little younger than me) was away at the time, and I slept in his bed.

In the middle of the night, I was woken by the bedroom door smashing open violently. No one was there. For some reason, I didn't panic and went back to sleep.

In the morning the door was still wide open, and on the carpet was a chip off the chest of drawers it had smashed into. So I don't think I dreamt it. Nor could it have been a sudden draught: the door had been firmly closed when I went to bed, and had a handle that you pull down to open it.

My friend had sometimes mentioned that their house had a poltergeist, but until my own direct experience of it I hadn't believed her. It was very inconvenient for them because they'd sometimes get up in the morning (after hearing footsteps on the stairs) to find the front door open, etc. Not ideal for home insurance!

My feeling at the time (and now) is that it had something to do with sexual energy around puberty. I felt as though I had triggered something by sleeping in her adolescent brother's bed when I myself was going through puberty.

I think this is why Stephen King's Carrie is such a powerful story -- it taps into something we sort of know, instinctively.

The poltergeist in my friend's house gradually ceased activity as her brother matured.