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Original poster

Tell me about a random unsolved mystery in your life....

935 replies

RevoltingPeasant · 15/04/2014 21:23

....inspired by the intriguing threads thread!

Does anyone have a mini-mystery, or a story they want to know the end to? We can all supply improbable answers Grin

Here's mine....

DH and I go for a walk around the block most nights before bed . Almost every night, at a particular point in the neighbouring street, there is an 'offering' of baked goods in the road.

Sometimes it is bread rolls. Sometimes, baguette. Once, about 8-9 Mr Kipling's Bakewell tarts. Just lying there in the road.

At first we thought it was for hedgehogs, but then the cakes? And in the road?? Confused

What's your unsolved mystery?

OP posts:
Thread gallery
16
hellymelly · 08/05/2014 21:51

tabvase, that's just how I felt too, I "remember" jumping from the top step of the stairs and almost floating to the bottom.

Twighlightsparkle · 08/05/2014 23:34

Was I hallucinating the night I woke up when I was about 5 to see a lady in old fashioned clothes throwing dust on me and saying " ashes to ashes dust to dust"

I hid under the bedclothes and fell back to sleep. Still remember the fear. Although it was years later before I realised when " ashes to ashes..." Would be said.

learnermummy · 09/05/2014 10:05

I don't remember flying downstairs but my 7 yr old DS recently commented that his baby sister flies down the stairs. When I questioned what he meant he said 'you carry her so she's flying'. Made me think of this thread!

Amyrose82 · 09/05/2014 19:55

Whoa some seriously freaky stories on this thread! Mine's from when I'd just got home from uni after my final exams - a couple of days later I had a plain white envelope hand-addressed to me pushed through the letterbox at my mum's with a job advert for a trainee reporter at a newspaper the next town over (I was a soon-to-be journalism graduate). Never found out who posted it, no-one I asked knew anything about it but I applied for the job and got offered a features writer position on their lifestyle magazine instead to start straight away! I'm now editor of a different lifestyle mag and would love to know who to thank for the info which kick-started my career!

Original poster
RevoltingPeasant · 10/05/2014 18:23

Wow, only just realised this is in Classics!

OP posts:
GinUtero · 11/05/2014 16:45

When I was a teenager my mum came downstairs one morning and opened the front door to find my dad's shoelaces on the doorstep. The unlaced shoes were in inside the house and the door had been locked all night. Only the three of us had been in the house and they both concluded I must have been playing a prank on them, only I had absolutely nothing to do with it. To this day they don't believe me - I'm 35 now and we still have frequent disagreements about it!

When I bought my first house and was living alone, I came downstairs one morning and opened the back door (theme here!) to find a cricket bat lying across my back step. It was splintered at one end, like someone had used it to smash things with, although there was no damage to my property. My immediate thought was that someone had intended to break in and then got interrupted, but if so, why leave the bat there? Furthermore, my house was a mid-terrace only accessible from the front and the back garden was surrounded by high fencing and thick hedges on all sides so how someone could get in my back garden in the first place, I wasn't sure. None of my neighbours had seen anything or recognised the bat. It still gives me the chills to this day...

When I was 20 I moved into a shared house in my second year at university. One of my housemates came to me with a child's drawing which he'd found in his bedroom. I had no recollection of the drawing, but it had evidently been done by my 6 year old self as it was addressed to my infant school teacher and said "from Gin, aged 6 3/4 on it" in my handwriting. It made no sense that I would have taken this drawing with my when I moved cities to go to university, let alone why, after being away from home for 2 years it should suddenly turn up in my housemate's room which I'd never set foot in before.

When I was a kid I answered the landline to a pre-recorded message: "It's your birthday! Just look out the window and you'll see what we mean!" I looked out of the window and a float drove past with bunting on it. It wasn't my birthday. I still don't get what they mean.

When I was 18 and still living at home with my parents, I was invited on a night out with a girl I'd recently met through my summer temp job. I'd arranged to stay at her house for the night. We went to a club and unbeknown to me, she spiked my drink (yeah, nice girl) I remember sitting in the corner of the club at 2am feeling like the world was going to end while she was snogging some bloke's face off. More than anything, I desperately wanted my Mum to be there to help me, but I was miles from home with no money to get a cab, so eventually I went back with the girl and caught the bus home in the morning. As I walked through the door Mum came rushing towards me asking if I was ok (she had no idea what had happened to me, this was pre-mobile phones) but she said she'd woken up at 2am and heard music coming from my bedroom and thought: why's Gin playing music so late? Then she realised that I away that night. She woke my dad but he was insistent that there wasn't any music. At the time I used to compose songs on my electronic keyboard and Mum said it was one of my songs she could hear and she instinctively knew that I was trying to communicate with her and that something was wrong (and she's not remotely "woo" usually at all)

There's probably more anecdotes, but these are the ones that come to mind right now. I've had a strange life!

GinUtero · 11/05/2014 17:37

And a couple more (not so much mysterious but huge coincidences)

I went to visit my parents and we were reminiscing about my schooldays. I mentioned one particularly annoying boy who used to tease me and make my life hell. As I went to leave my parents house, a builder doing work on the neighbouring house wolf whistled at me. I ignored him, but then he went "oh my god it's you, Gin" and lo and behold it was said annoying classmate whom I hadn't seen in over 20 years. My parents had moved away from the area in which I went to school and he was the last person I ever expected to see again. Strangely enough, completely unprompted he actually apologised for being a total twunt to me at school!

While browsing a charity shop in an area of the city I don't usually visit, I was drawn to an unusual glass vase. It wasn't my usual taste, but for some reason I felt compelled to buy it. The next time my mum visited, she said: "I don't remember giving you great aunty Ellen's vase, I thought I gave it to Cancer Research." It turns out that I'd bought the same vase mum donated. I'd never seen it before, because it had been in my parent's loft since my great aunt died from stomach cancer before I was born and although my Mum regularly donated to charity shops it was the first time she'd ever donated to that specific branch, which wasn't her local one. Every time I look at the vase, it makes me smile.

SaskiaRembrandtWasFramed · 11/05/2014 18:01

My mystery is a bit dull, but very puzzling, to me anyway.

Last summer I hung a pair of socks on the washing line using one peg. Later, I went to bring them in only to find one of the socks was missing. The other was still hanging there. Thinking I must have imagined hanging the other out I checked the washing machine, but no sign of the sock.

The only other thing I could think was that, for some bizarre reason, the dog had taken it, but a) I'm sure he can jump that high (he was 11), and b) how could he have pulled one sock off but not other?! Anyhow, I checked his bed and all the places he may possibly hide a sock if he had taken up sock theft, but still couldn't find it.

I still have the remaining sock because I'm still hoping to solve the mystery of what happened to it's friend.

IfAtFirstUDontSucceed · 11/05/2014 20:28

I've read this thread with huge interest over the last couple of days and I have a couple of my own to add.

When I was about 11/12 I was at my friends house who used to often claim that she had a ghost. I never really took her seriously as she usually told fairly elaborate stories. However, one day we were at her house listening to some music in her living room when the volume on the stereo suddenly turned full volume. We were both on the opposite side of the room to the stereo, and the only ones there. This was well before any remote controls and we had rush over a physically turn the knob back round to an acceptable level.

When I was about 8 my DB and I each had a goldfish who both lived in a goldfish bowl in my bedroom. One morning I got up and went to feed them as usual and noticed only mine was in the bowl.
Everyone in the house denied any knowledge of where this goldfish went.
Later that morning, my Nana who often came round to look after us in the school holidays was tidying my bedroom found a wad of screwed up newspaper in the middle of the floor and wrapped inside it was my DBs goldfish!
To this day no one knows how or why this goldfish ended up wrapped up in newspaper in the middle of my bedroom floor.
I have often asked my DB to own up if it was him and he has strongly denied he had anything to do with it!

JessePinkmansHoody · 11/05/2014 23:05

Gin those are all ShockShockShockShockShock!!!

GinUtero · 11/05/2014 23:16

Jesse tell me about it!!!

hellymelly · 12/05/2014 17:04

Gin I think the bat was thrown into your garden, and possibly splintered on the step. Maybe a quarrel or maybe someone who wanted to quickly get rid of the bat!

SistersOfPercy · 12/05/2014 17:26

In my back garden I have a plant pot with an (almost dead) camellia in it. It's been there for years. One summer I went out to tidy round and noticed something at the top of the pot glinting in the sun. I found a gold signet ring with initials on it.

Baffled I took it in and cleaned it up but couldn't for the life of me work out how it had gotten there. After about a month it suddenly came to me that the initials were that of my next door neighbour who'd died a couple of years before.

I called his son who described the signet ring his Dad had lost years ago, the same ring. He came up and took collected it, happy he had something of his Dads (he'd died deeply in debt, an alcoholic who'd remortgaged the house so Son had been left with nothing at all)

The thing is, how did it get into my garden pot and how was it on top of the soil? If it had, genuinely been there for years why had I not seen it before? I tended that pot every summer. To this day I wonder about that.

StuntBottom · 12/05/2014 17:40

Sisters, your signet ring mystery is probably down to a magpie. They are attracted to shiny things and have been known to steal rings and other bits of jewellry. Quite possibly it stole the ring (maybe from the window sill if the man had taken it off to wash up) and it could have been in its nest for years. Maybe it just fell out in time or the magpie was moving it and dropped it in your pot.

BigRedBall · 12/05/2014 17:45

Do magpies really steal shiny things? I thought that was just something you read in nursery rhymes and fairytales.

StuntBottom · 12/05/2014 18:01

'Tis true! We did an Easter egg hunt in the garden with little foil-wrapped eggs and a magpie stole some.

GinUtero · 12/05/2014 19:48

Helly the bat didn't look like it had been thrown, or if it was, by pure coincidence it landed precisely straight across the step - it looked like it had been deliberately placed, if you see what I mean. Also the end that was battered (extremely battered and rotten, like it had been repeatedly used for smashing things up) was hanging over one side of the step, it hadn't actually impacted with the step.

hellymelly · 12/05/2014 20:32

Gin that is rather scary!

minipie · 19/05/2014 17:11

I have a slightly dull one.

DD spent some time in hospital after she was born. On getting her home we received a stunning bunch of flowers and a card saying "Congratulations on getting [DD's name] home, love from Simon and Helen".

We don't know a Simon and Helen. All the Simons I know (including work colleagues, clients, etc) have partners not named Helen, and vice versa. We have racked our brains for the right people to thank but are stumped.

Miriama · 26/05/2014 18:05

Great thread. This is just a bit weird, but for the last few months everytime I check a clock its 11.11am. Doesnt matter if Im in a car, work or at home. Weird!

iMN · 27/05/2014 07:59

minipie the florist had a mixed up moment, wrote the wrong names?

luckiestgirlintheworld · 02/06/2014 11:30

Perhaps the Wilkos bowls are designed like that? To have one bowl in the set without squiggles (or in a squiggly set, one bowl with squiggles). And you'd both just never noticed the odd one?

Gatekeeper · 02/06/2014 13:15

Miriama! for me it's quarter to nine

MrsCosmopilite · 13/06/2014 15:01

I have a couple...

Why did my Gt Grandmother move up to London? The 1901 census shows her in Somerset. In 1902 she's in London, getting married 2 months prior to my GF being born

What happened to my late mum's ring? A number of items were stolen about 18 years ago when work was being done to their house (suspect the contractors as it's a pretty busy road). The one I particularly remember had six oval shaped pale pink diamonds.

What happened to my silver ring with emeralds in? I had it before I moved home in 1992. I packed everything. It was rented accommodation and I was very careful to pick up everything. That, a silver V-shaped band and a cassette tape went missing.

What happened to my Canadian penpal? We used to correspond regularly. In a few letters she'd mentioned a guy she was interested in, but apparently nothing was going on. Then she just stopped writing. (This is pre-internet). I wrote a good few times after and never heard from her.

Finally - what happened to David Gosling? As far as I recall this was the name of a boy at my primary school, in my class. We had been on a school trip and were being dropped off so the coach could go back to the depot. He got picked up by his parents at a bus stop along the way (standard procedure for those that required this) on the Friday. He never came back to the school. I don't recall anyone ever mentioning anything about his leaving either.

MrsCosmopilite · 13/06/2014 16:30

Sorry - and another (possible trigger)

What made my Father's Gt-Grandfather and two of his sons commit suicide? GGGf cut his own throat. Two months later one of his older sons did the same. Two weeks later another son threw himself under one of his own horses.
Rural location, agricultural family. Not a wealthy area, but not a poor area either.