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 agree and I have "know it all's" in my own family who look down on anything like that and claim there must be a rational/simple scientific explanation (and yet they cant give me one).
I dont get in any arguments, no point.

And as someone already mentioned CurlewKate, I remembered that name - very annoying poster constantly commenting on everyone's experiences in a dismissive, rude way. Please leave this thread!

Hmm. Two different sobbing girl ghosts with different hair colours and different clothes, seen years apart? How nice that the afterlife involves pamper parties for the undead at which little spectral girls can have a dye job.

Of course there are loads of things we can’t explain. That does not mean they are inexplicable. Science isn’t finished. Of course we don’t know everything-but we do know some things.

And to the poster who politely told me to leave the thread? No.

That's worrying...me and my husband watched a programme recently which was like modern day threads. It's like we were being prewarmed. If a nuke goes off I seriously hope it's not on a weekday so we are all at home together

@UnctuousUnicorns

It's these banal ones that I find most fascinating.

Very weird indeed!

DD and I just sitting on the bathroom floor performing experiments with a toilet roll.
We have an open staircase from living room up to bathroom entry and the house is modern and a bit thin, so it was very easy to know where the sound came from.

I'm not sure where your loo roll cardboard came from but as long as it wasn't stuck in your hair all along that's cool 😆

It cracks me up that Danny Robbins is getting approving mentions for his ‘open-mindedness’. Danny Robbins, having tried a lot of different things (stand up comedy, writing soap opera and sitcom, children’s tv etc), but his big success has been his supernatural play and his longform podcasts about alleged hauntings, and Uncanny.

Bluntly, he has a considerable vested interest in continuing to be ‘open-minded’ while feeding people’s interest in the supernatural.

For him to point out the obvious about several episodes of Uncanny (that the people believing they were haunted had obvious MH problems and/or were very vulnerable) would kill his ‘supernatural entertainment’ brand.

I mean, I enjoyed the Battersea Poltergeist and The Witch Farm, but you’d have to be incredibly gullible to think that what they describe and dramatise are actuslly supernatural interventions.

I don't know about Danny Robbins as I've only ever seen him on Uncanny but it's the stories themselves I'm interested in. I eye rolled a lot during season 1 but there were stories in season 2 that I couldn't so easily dismiss. I felt dreadful for the poor guy who was haunted after his dad's death, as a boy. He definitely believed he was being haunted for years and I felt desperately sorry for him. You could argue that he had mental health issues, and that crossed my mind, however, you can't put everyone's supernatural exoerience down to poor mental health. That's as shortsighted as everyone who insists every woo experience is real.

This thread has become hijacked. As they usually do!
Op asked has anyone had any woo experiences. That’s it. Either describe them or politely start your own f thread!

Oh yes…the ones who scoff and tell you there must be a rational explanation and then…tumbleweed. That chap on uncanny does try his best, but quite honestly, his explanations are the wackiest things on the show!

We all have a very individual take on this, I’m sure, and we’d all be at some point on the spectrum of belief with Curlew at one end and my friend Sue (name changed!) at the other. She thinks every shadow is a spook. I’m not like that - I take a lot of convincing, but I’d never be dismissive of someone recounting an experience which had genuinely affected them.

I think it was Peter Ackroyd (who compiled an anthology called The English Ghost) who said “Ghosts may or may not exist, but what is certain is that people see them”. My experience hasn’t involved “ghosts”, whatever they may be - and again, who can pin down what is meant by so many different people? I don’t think people are necessarily lying when they claim to have seen a ghost, but the question is - do they have any objective existence? But people most certainly see things.

I was in my early 20s, about 22 or 23.

I appreciate his taking up this subject enormously. Of course most people watch with a critical eye, but it’s refreshing to see people listened to so sympathetically and not sneered at.

Well, duh - he makes money from his fascinating programmes and podcasts - and good for him!

Everything thst has been said on this thread can be explained, but the fact is that the people telling the stories, which are often important to them, don’t want to hear the explanations, because they experience those as an attack or an undermining.

I remember years ago on here someone posting a long story about a silent troop of ghost riders on Oxford Street that suddenly disappeared, and getting really cross when someone else pointed out that the Household Cavalry mounted regiments go (or used to — it may be that their stables/barracks has moved) along Oxford Street at dawn on their way back from exercise in Hyde Park. They do absolutely look eerie if you’re not expecting them, especially if visibility is poor, but the lack of hoofbeats and sudden disappearance were clearly (probably unconscious) embellishments.

My point is that the story was important to the poster (can’t remember why, might have been a significant anniversary of a dead relative who had something to do with horses or the military), who got furious at the rational explanation.

I don’t disagree with Peter Ackroyd’s statement that ghosts may not exist but people see them anyway, @CoffeeCantata, but the Oxford street ghost riders poster was never going to get on board with the fact that she misperceived a surreal but absolutely not supernatural sight, misremembered details to make it more dramatic, and bound it up in her mind either memories of a dead relative and had clearly retold it often.

They're always hijacked and they ruin which can be a very interesting thread.

@Tcateh "I'm not sure where your loo roll cardboard came from but as long as it wasn't stuck in your hair all along that's cool 😆'

😅 No, I was standing in the bath at the time (as I said, over bath shower), and the roll (and tweezers on the other occasion) dropped down in front of me, beyond the side of the bath, so would have been about a foot or so in front of me. It literally just dropped from the air above, and in front of me. Perhaps a diagram is needed. 🤔

@AndSheDid

Please see my posts upthread about the Winterwood incident and the sellotape business. I’m not being bossy, but if you make a rash statement like “everything on this thread can be explained’, then …be my guest, and it had better be good!😄. I await enlightenment.

The two incidents were salient ones in about 9 months of unsettling (to my sceptical husband and self) and frightening happenings in our house. I haven’t given the whole detailed scenario for brevity. They stopped, thank goodness. But though I love our house I wouldn’t spend a night alone here now.

Seriously though - please let me know your rational interpretation.

Best not to engage, I find. Many years experience has told me. Any explanation proffered for my experiences by the scoffers have usually amounted to them presuming I'm either lying, or mentally ill, or I must have been in a trance, or some patronising bs like that ("I'm sure it was real to you" etc.) I've learnt to ignore it.

@AndSheDid

Please don’t leave it to tumbleweed and silence after that offer, as I find most ‘rational’ people tend to!

"But though I love our house I wouldn’t spend a night alone here now."

I was thinking about this once. I'm 55 now, and I don't think I've ever spent a single night alone in a house/flat etc. in my entire life. Family home, school residentials, various student residences, living with boyfriend who became my DH, then with our children. DH has been away for work, but the kids have been home with me. Spent a few nights in hospital. Not one night alone.

If you met me, Unctuous, you’d think I was a very no- nonsense person, and I am. But I have a couple of friends lined up for when my husband is away and either they come here or I take my duvet and sheet etc and camp out with them!

Right back to the woo please .

My MIL was in hospital having end of life care. My DH was with her and I was with our DC at home, they were 6 & 8 and not fully aware of what was going on. My 6 yo was my MIL’s favourite GC - her words not mine! That night my 6 yo who is a brilliant sleeper came into my bedroom and said someone was stroking and kissing his cheek and it woke him up. A minute later a text came through from DH saying MIL had died. Strange coincidence

Speaking of dreams, I once dreamt that the tap on the bathroom sink came turning on. I would turn it off as firmly as I could, leave the bathroom, then hear water running and turn back around to see the tap was on again. Turn it back off, walk out, hear the tap running again. It was driving me crackers. This was - in real life - some years into what had become pretty regular instances of supernatural activity in the house. In the dream I spoke out loud, saying, "Is that you that keeps turning the tap on? If it is, knock now so I'll know!" There was then (in the dream) a knock at the front door. My dream self jumped out of my dream skin, and I woke up.

So that was my dream. About a year later, it started happening for real. We'd recently had the bathroom renovated. New taps on the sink and everything. You only had to turn the taps off lightly ; they never so much as dripped. Anyway, it started happening - in real life - that I would use the bathroom, walk out, and, yes, hear running water, to look back and see the tap was on. Not full flow, but running lightly, not just dripping. I wrenched the tap closed as hard as I could, it still happened. Although unlike in my dream, it didn't keep happening over and over again, making me have to go back into the bathroom time and time again to turn the tap, which was maddening, in real life it only happened on each visit to the bathroom.

After a few days of this, I mentioned it to DH who said the same thing was happening to him. The water pressure was normal, no other taps or anything were acting oddly. After we'd spoken about it, it never happened again. We didn't do anything to the taps, same washers/cartridges in them, it just stopped. I no longer had to twist the taps closed as hard as I possibly could, they just stopped turning on, right from after DH and I spoke about it.

That's just another instance, there are more, too many to mention, really.

Ive had a few odd experiences, but the 2 most notable -

I'm an urbex photographer, so have spent a lot of time in abandoned buildings. I will preface this by saying im not woo, largely sceptical and dont get freaked out easily, generally i find abandoned places exceptionally calming.

Weird thing 1 - Not scary
I was exploring Blackburn Royal Infirmary with a friend. We had come up a fire escape and were climbing into the building through a first floor sash window which was open/broken that led into an open plan ward. I went first, and as i was hauling myself through saw a man crossing the ward from right to left. Was a bit surprised to see him so said "Oh! Hello, sorry" - no response. Assumed he was another photographer so didnt think much else of it as you do run into them sometimes.
Turned back and took my friends backpack from her through the window and had her hand to pull her through, she looks up and past me and says "Hi.."
We were both by the window dusting off our knees and got our first good look at the ward - absolutely nobody in it. I asked friend if she'd seen the man and her response was "well yeah i said hello to him!"
The weird thing was that as soon as we stepped into the ward our feet were crunching glass/plaster etc and our steps were really audible. His were not, he was crossing in absolute silence. He was also crossing from the direction of a doorway to the end of the ward that had no exit and was in the middle of the ward when we saw him.
There was no time for him to retrace steps and leave in the couple of seconds between seeing him clearly enough for two people to say hi, and disappearing completely. We went all round the hospital that day and it was otherwise deserted and silent. Neither of us were scared by it at all.

Weird thing 2 - bloody scary.
Same friend and I were exploring a place called Birkwood in Lesmahagow which was an ex psych hospital. We'd been trying to get in for ages and had our first success. Summertime and a dry clear quiet day.
We had been in the building for 5 hours or so and worked our way down from the upper floors to the lower. Birkwood had some fantastic and beautiful spiral staircases which were the goal of the trip. We had finished up and were on the gorund floor in the doctors office, which was off the main entrance hall and still had some psych textbooks on the bookshelves.
There was a partition wall in the corner which was plaster but had been broken through to reveal an alcove that was full of old patient notes, which we were sitting down reading. Id got a numb foot so had got up, left the office and wandered down a small corridor towards the nurses quarters.
I'd stopped because i could smell fresh cigar smoke, really strongly so was just standing in the corridor trying to pinpoint the odour. Friend came out of the doctors office to give me a row for smoking inside (i did smoke at the time, but im not daft enough to do it inside an abandoned tinderbox) - I told her it wasnt me, and we both stood there really quietly like "WTF". We moved into the main hallway where the smell was really pungent. It was 100% fresh cigars. We were standing there in silence trying to see if we could hear anybody moving around and then it all got really quite horrific. There was a shift, it got cold, and if i had to describe it, it felt like the building was breathing in, like the air got sucked out of the place. Our hackles went up, and then there was a series of BANG BANG BANG as the doors in the upper floor started to slam shut almost as if they were closing in a row and the sound was coming towards us. We decided to bolt, but didnt have time to get down to the basement where we originally got in so grabbed our bags and ran straight down to the main front door which was boarded either side with plywood. We were totally bricking it and could feel/sense this rush behind us like a wave of GET THE FUCK OUT so frantically kicked out the plywood to the right of the door and head-dived through it.
Could not get out of there fast enough.
The building collapsed completely about a month after that, and I was googling it (i always thought it was an insurance job by developers as it was listed but derelict) and as i was searching found a load of stuff about it being haunted and who had died there, and most of the reports mention phantom cigar smoke.

Well, you say that, but pretty much everyone on the thread has specifically said ‘No sceptics should post.’ I imagine the same could be said for most sceptics who annoy you by going silent.

I’m also aware that many people’s woo stories are important to them. Whether it’s because they’re associated for them with dead loved ones, or because they’re key to how they see the world or constitutive of their identity because they’ve been told and retold so often. I don’t believe these stories involve the supernatural, but I’m sensitive to their importance to their tellers in some cases.

The thing is when naysayers come on they ruin the flow.
And people don't want to post for fear of being ridiculed.