Uncanny tales 👻

[Abhannmor]

I'll start.

This one happened to an friend who was driving to her night shift as a care assistant. As she approached a tiny village in North Cork she felt the steering wheel being pulled violently to her right. She stood on the brakes and brought the car to a halt before inspecting the roadway behind her. To her surprise it was perfectly smooth, no massive pothole or loose gravel.

Continuing round the bend into the village much slower , she braked again - there was an elderly man right in front of her . Making his way across very slowly. She later told me ' I'd have killed him stone dead if I hadn't stopped that first time. Whoever or whatever yanked the steering wheel was his guardian angel that night'

F

Ooooh 👻 you just gave me shivers@Abhannmor

I don't have any stories myself, but love to hear others!

Spooky stories can have happy endings sometimes

I have no stories, but i do remember hearing stories about people following a 'lamp' out in the bog or fields and ending up lost and ultimately dead. The 'lamp' allegedly being supernatural. That always freaked me out tbh.

That sounds similar to the 'wandering sod' - places you must avoid or you will end up back where you started. Presumably because you annoyed the daoine maithe'. A remedy against this to turn your coat inside out! @Chickenkeev

I didn't know about the coat but that's weird!

I have never seen my (very urban) husband laugh as much as he did when I turned my coat inside out before climbing into a fairy fort after a cat who’d got stuck in a tree.

Love a good creepy story. Plus stepdad and step grandmother (sadly latter passed) are/were Irish.

In 1991 before it was possible to use google to get the answer to any random thing you were curious about, I went to au pair for the two small children of a single mother (I had assumed)

On the first night, I was in bed, lights off unable to sleep because of the constant sound of mopeds. I lay there, eyes wide open and saw a face about 10 inches away from my own. His face was a reflection on water. He was about forty with glasses and a neat beard. He had green eyes. I still remember his face, he was not a person I knew but he reminded me of my old history teacher.

I shut my eyes and opened them repeatedly but he was still there. Eventually I succumbed to it and just stared back at him. We locked eyes.

He downloaded me and he saw that I was very disappointed with myself, but he understood I would do my people-pleasing best in this role and never hurt his children. He knew that and I felt his faith in me. I felt aware of who I was under his scrutiny. I understood my own weaknesses and strengths too. He was so compassionate in his assessment of me.

I got out of bed and turned on the light and sat on the edge of the bed. I told myself ''when I get back in to bed and open my eyes, he'll be gone''. But I turned off the light and got back in to bed and he was still there. Eventually I gave up on trying to make him 'go'. I fell asleep with him watching me.

As soon s the little girl knew I was kind, she started crying and her mother snapped at her ''why are you crycing'' She said ''you know why, i'm sad. Because daddy died'' The mother shushsed her. When her mother was at work, the little girl was on my knee and she was drawing her Daddy who of course had a beard and glasses. I handed her the green pencil for his eyes. That whole summer I felt like it was my assignment to allow Julia to be sad.

There are scarier stories I know but this is my one and only 'ghost' story. I don't tell it in real life because there's always a pause before the person asks ''were you taking night nurse?'' or something like that.

Years ago myself and DH rented a house across the road from a lady who was seriously ill with cancer, I didn't know her well but would say hello when we met etc, anyway one beautiful summers evening we had just finished dinner in the kitchen and I was walking into the sitting room when something caught my eye from our large bay windows, there was a large piece of black paper gently falling so slowly straight down from the sky, it was swaying over and back slightly as there was a gentle breeze, I called for my DH to come look and he just caught the end of it as it fell straight into the ladies back garden across the road, I didn't think too much of it until the next morning when my other neighbour told me the lady had sadly passed away in the night

When my father in law was (unknown to us) dying of covid in hospital in a European country, I had the most vivid dream of him as a young man trying to get my attention by pulling me out of bed by my big toe. I woke up feeling like I was being dragged from the bed. It felt too early to call and check on them so we left it until morning only to find that he had been taken into hospital in the night around the time of my dream.

None of my questions about your story are supernatural-related. Why did the apparition in your bedroom ‘download’ you? Why would you have googled ‘Does the deceased father of my charges habitually haunt the house?’? Why did the children’s mother try to stop them telling you their father had died? What did you being kind have to do with the child crying?

Will o the wisps

Download was not a thing that existed back then. Now I know the word, that's what it felt like. He saw into me, saw my thoughts and saw who I was. I dont know why the mother was so emotionally unhealthy that she wouldn't let a five year old cry.

I didnt Google anything obviously. I said that I couldn’t/didn't Google, as in, I did not understand that the mum was a widow til I had this experience.

Thanks@ChanelNo19EDT it's a very unusual story. It completely makes sense to me. Thanks for sharing it.
I suppose some people are so frightened they will be overwhelmed by grief that they try to suppress it.

There was a programme on today on Radio 4 at 1.45pm to by Terry Pratchett's daughter and they were talking about the banshee.
It's a bad idea to pick up their combs, they won't like it.....
They were also discussing the tradition of keening women and a possible connection to the banshee.
There was more and it was interesting.

That's right. If you saw a comb lying on the grass better leave it in case it is the banshees !

I read a thread on here that I will never forget and still think about now.
It was about a woman that was house sitting for a few days for a friend, & the dog was always barking at something at the bottom of the garden, the garden had a gate that led into some woods or something. So she went in the wood a little at night with the dog and all of a sudden felt an evil presence the deeper she went in, like she was being followed and watched by a ghostly presence. Dog felt it too as was constantly barking whilst standing still at whatever was in front of them, she bolted it back to the house as fast as she could and the dog followed.
Does anyone know what thread this was?
Brrrrr, gives me shivers every time I think about it 👻😬

It’s mildly famous on here as the ‘Savernake Forest woo story’. I’m never sure precisely why it’s proved so popular — it’s far too overworked to give any impression of unstudied ‘this really happened and I’m not inventing it to harrow up your imaginations’ on a board generally hostile to trolls who don’t get their trolling right. The second demonic voice that tells the OP not to say ‘Jesus’ is a step too far. I think the best hit was the chickens.

If you search ‘Savernake’ it will probably come up.

Stories don't need to be factually true or in a journalistic style to be good stories or to have relevance or resonance.

I was hopeful that this thread would have the generosity of spirit to be an encouraging and appreciative thread, not a wet blankety one.

Quite agree @Villagetoraiseachild surely the whole point is that this is stuff we don't know about and can't prove. Hence ' uncanny' rather than just 'canny'.

Herewith two dreams my sons told me at Christmas.
One son dreamt of a man with golden antlers. In the dream he 'knew' this imposing figure was a god of some sort. The god had come to test him in some way - which he never discovered. He communicated that he didn't want to be tested and the dream ended. But it was so vivid it has stayed with him for many months.
The other guy has that annoying dream where you either can't wake up or think you have woken up whereas the dream is still happening? Then he becomes aware of the presence of an old woman. Ancient in fact. But he can't ever see her , just knows she is there. I must ask him for more details as a bit of drink had been taken at this stage....

Ooh thanks for the dreams, @Abhannmor !
The twelve days of Christmas are a particularly potent time for dreams, I am told by a pal who is into a philosophy
So we both try and take note.
I have had a few clear dreams (not twelve nights dreams) of those who have passed over, which were not scary, but lovely and reassuring.

I’m not wet blanketing in the slightest, only expressing bafflement at the (to me unwarranted) credibility of that particular story on a site generally very invested in troll hunting.

Or is ‘making stuff up’ not considered a sin on woo threads, even when you see a story changing over the course of a thread, even though ‘I saw a headless lady’ is as unprovable as ‘I said this to the person playing music loudly on the bus and the whole top deck burst into applause’?

I’ve said up the thread that I think the trad ghost stories of where I grew up are ‘real’ in that they’re a real way of expressing cultural traumas.