To ask what is the strangest/creepiest thing that has ever happened to you?

[JudgeyHotPants]

I have two strange/creepy unexplained events that stick in my head.

The first happened when I was teenager, my DF ran his business from our family home and we had a phone/fax machine in the living room. Whenever we picked up the phone we could always hear a radio station playing very distantly on the other end. I'll never forget the time I picked up the phone to ring a friend and could hear Penny Lane playing!

The other is slightly more sinister. My DM and I were at home alone one evening, it was summer and still warm and I had the bedroom window open. I can remember hearing a loud crash in the garden, thought maybe the cat had knocked something over and thought little of it. Then my mum suddenly popped her head around the door told me that she was going to bed and that she'd "locked all of the doors". Thought it was an odd thing to say, but thought little of it. That night I was kept awake by the next door neighbours security light going on and off, and when I got up the next morning my DM pointed out that the garden ornaments and solar lights from next to the fence had been smashed.

That's when she told me that she to and heard the crashing sound the night before, and got up to investigate and when she looked through the kitchen window she was convinced she could see a person peering through the window, as as if they were standing next to it with their back against the wall and peeing in from the side, but wasn't sure if she was seeing things or not! She was scared enough to lock all of the doors, but not to ring he police it seems! Still freaks me out now! I'm sure someone was in our garden for whatever reason!

Cheaptrickster I live in Wrexham! I have been into NatWest bank a few times and I think its an odd place and an odd shaped buildings. I think it used to be a tesco once. Not sure though. I do know that Wrexham council have destroyed so many of the towns beautiful old buildings and built ugly replacements on the old sites so maybe your mum is sensing something from something that used to be there before the tesco building

Natwest even

I have had three crazy dreams that have been somewhat like premonitions.

Dream 1:
When I was 18 I met and fell head over heels for this guy. Our relationship was going from strength to strength until I went off by myself to visit my family for the weekend.
I got back late Sunday night and went to bed looking forward to seeing my boyfriend the next day. That night I had the most vivid and terrifying dream that my boyfriend had turned into some sort of monster and he was trying to kill me. The dream was crazy and came out of nowhere and I woke up feeling very depressed and certain that our relationship was over.

My boyfriend called shortly after to tell me that he was breaking up with me b/c his ex girlfriend was pregnant with his baby... I guess the dream was symbolic -at least he didn't actually try to kill me...

Dream 2:
Another time I had a dream that my mum was sick, she called me into her bedroom and asked me to look at this fish tank that was sitting beside her bed. In front of the fish tank were 3 tubes of blood, when I asked what they were for my mom looked sad and then the fish in the tank started to eat each other. My mom and I both started screaming and I woke up. I got a phone call that day from my mom saying she had to go in for some tests because they thought she had breast cancer. (Tests came back negative!)

Dream 3:
Dreamt I was walking home when I bumped into an old school friend that I hadn't seen in 10 years. As we were talking my dead grandfather came walking up with a big smile on his face, (it felt as though he was an angel and was coming to see me - it wasn't scary), but as he walked towards me my dad came around the corner, staring straight ahead and walking like a robot, when I called to him he wouldn't answer and then when I looked at my grandfather he had a solemn look on his face. I felt like my grandfather had come to take my dad... Woke up feeling strange, and then on my way to work bumped into the girl from my dream that I hadn't seen in 10 years! I thought for sure my dad was going to die - but he didn't.

So these dreams were somewhat like premonitions but not quite.

When I was little, I saw a man's arm come through the ceiling of my bedroom.

Now, I feel sure it was a dream but I was terrified at the time.

I went to a spiritualist meeting when I was 15. Afterwards a woman asked if j was psychic. I said no. She said that throughout the meeting there had been a tall man with white hair standing behind me with his hands on my shoulders. She said he was wearing paint stained clothes and had black dirt under his nails.

She said he is always with me, looking after me.

My grandad (who died when I was 3) was an artist and owned a plant nursery. I've always found it comforting to think about that.

Love small world stories, rude. They're amazing.

I have really enjoyed this thread, some really scary stories, others really touching but I decided to have a quick look, at the end of reading it all, for scientific explanations and found this fascinating theory which could go a long way towards explaining how some of you managed to see such weird stuff: It's from an answer to Guardian's Notes and Queries.

Vic Tandy of Coventry University has told the story of how he accidentally stumbled upon a set of conditions which allowed him to "see a ghost". This involved the existence of very low level sound waves trapped inside a building where he found himself working late at night. The presence of this infra-sound was traced to a faulty extraction fan which was making the air vibrate at around 19 cycles per second. Mr Tandy further discovered that infra-sound around this level has previously been linked to a number of physiological effects including breathlessness, shivering and feelings of fear. He himself reported feelings of discomfort, cold sweat and depression prior to his experience. The human eyeball has a resonant frequency of 18 cycles per second, and it has been suggested by Mr Tandy's associate, Dr Tony Lawrence, that the eyeball may vibrate in sympathy to low level waves causing a "serious smearing of vision". The normal waking human brain operates at between 7 and 14 cycles per second in what is known as a beta state. When it operates at levels above or below this rate, we are in the areas of drug use and of hypnosis, meditation, sleep and near sleep, day-dreaming and the out-of-body experience: states in which we are "seeing" in some way even when our eyes are closed. So a set of several circumstances occurring together may bring about a situation whereby human perception changes or is enhanced, and it may be possible to replicate these conditions in a laboratory situation.

Recently I keep getting woken up by the smell of bacon cooking. At about 4am. No one else is awake. No bacon has been cooked. It is annoying. The smell lingers and usually results in me having to wander out of my warm bed for a snack before sleep will happen again. Tonight it is not bacon, more plasticy. It is stomach turning.

Also I have a nasty habit of dreaming about people who i end up going out with. I had one of those dreams the other night. But the dream left me with a very very bad feeling. Something tells me that the guy is better to avoid if I can actually put this into practice. Unfortunately I suspect that the dream will be accurate and I will be unable to avoid and regret the whole thing bitterly afterwards.

Bitchy, there are certain medical conditions that can cause you to smell things that aren't there ! I'd go for a check up !

bacon I second what granny has said. I'd actually get that checked out.

bitchy not bacon

No creepiness to report as such, but I've been reading this thread avidly for two nights before bedtime and going to bed mildly scared - you know, as you do. However, I had a horrible yet plausible dream last night in which one of my DC died and now I'm irrationally terrified nervous that it may have been some sort of premonition :( stupid, I know. Sometimes people just dream shit at least that's what I'm telling myself

Mines happened tonight! DD first night in her big girl bed, went to check on her and she is sound asleep holding her grandfathers mobile.

He died 4 years ago, we have moved house twice since, including one move to a different country! I recently decorated her room, I'm a clutter free person and if that phone was in her room I would have known! It's unmistakably his, not a common phone and obviously quite an old make

When i was younger i had a very vivid dream about an earthquake in a place wherei could understand people. The next day there was an earthquake in Japan. Never happened since, though.

My nana was from a Romany background and always "knew" when things were happening - would always phone if one of us was ill, for example. I do seem to have a sixth sense about things, i usually know if something will actually happen or not.

I suffer from Fibro and CFS, the doctor just looks at me and says "what do you want me to do about it?" if I ever go visit. It is pointless.

Driving home over the peaks tonight we go past a village that has a lot of restless souls. A lot of people died centuries ago under sad but unfortunately common circumstances at the time. Due to the lay of the land it is not uncommon to see willow-the-wisps which can be particularly unnerving when in the dark with freezing fog.

Another small world one...
Seven years ago DH and I went on a trip to China, connecting flight was from Paris to Beijing. I had the window, DH was in the middle & a large French gentleman was in the aisle seat.
We stayed in Beijing for 5 days then travelled over 600 miles south to Shanghai.
Out & about sightseeing in the biz of Shanghai, we both saw the French man.

My little sister used to sleep in a cot in my room - she's 10 years younger than me.
She woke at some ungodly hour one morning and I could hear her grizzling "Teddy, Teddy!"
I half opened my eyes and could see the damn thing on the other side of the room. Obviously, I was going to have to get out of my nice warm bed and get it for her.

I muttered "In a minute" and closed my eyes. She grizzled for a bit more, then stopped. I hoped she'd gone back to sleep but, when I looked, she was happily cuddling Teddy in the corner of her cot!

Coincidences: my eldest son and her eldest daughter were born 16 months apart; exactly the same gap as between my brother and I.
Both my own children are also 10 years apart, as she and I were.
My two were exactly the same weight and born at exactly the same time of the morning: 2.18am.

Oh no!

Are there no more?

Not woo but creepy all the same.

I once woke myself up growling 'Murder' in my sleep, in the same voice that the kid in the Shining says "Redrum".

Wasn't dreaming about murder, or anything. Just saying it out loud.

Freaked myself well out - good job DH wasn't next to me, I think he'd have been worried

When I was at primary school, about year 5 or 6, a new girl started in our class. She could have been my double. We looked so alike, everyone noticed when she came into class. Not that strange on its own, but both her parents had the same name as my parents, our fathers had a very unusual welsh name. She also had a sister the same age as mine who had a variation of the same name too. Our names were completely different. She moved abroad after a few months.

In my late teens I was renting a room from a couple, they had sold the house and moved away so I was in the house on my own till completion. A few times I would feel something on my shoulder when I was in the kitchen and dining room, just a soft pressure. Talking to my friend I told her this, she said that her late MIL used to follow her around the kitchen with her hand on her shoulder. That I thought was a bit creepy, I had never met her MIL.

Her late MIL used to do that before or after she died? Either way it's quite creepy!

Her MIL used to do that when she was still alive. She had died a couple of years earlier and it used to be her house.

Ten or so years ago I used to get woken up in the middle of the night by my mobile phone ringing - when I checked the display it was my work desk phone calling me. It always stopped ringing just as I picked it up.

I always thought that there must have been a rationale explanation (bored security guard, maybe?) but there wasn't any at they would have known where I sat, or had my personal mobile number. It happened every few weeks for months and then just stopped. It was very odd.

I also have a small world one.

Second year at uni, some friends showed me around their house and I admired some Chinese lantern and paper dragon decorations they had around the place. They explained that when they moved in there were two cardboard boxes addressed to the property with no name on. They didn't know what to do with them, so eventually opened them and found these paper decorations inside.

Several years later. I'm out to dinner with then boyfriend who I had met at uni and some of his friends, also from the same city. We were talking about travelling and they started talking about their amazing trip to China several years ago. "Do you remember," one said to the other, "about all those amazing Chinese dragons and lanterns we bought and had shipped back to the UK? They never arrived - I wonder what happened to them." I was like this:

When I was young and misspent, I walked home, tiddly, through the local church yard. A grave had been dug for the next day and I fell in it.
I shouted and screeched, jumped and clawed, but I was stuck there for the night.
I curled up in the corner then I heard some footsteps and some older guy singing. My voice was hoarse, I tried to shout, he wandered along then he fell in, right in front of me.
I put my hand on his shoulder and said in a husky voice 'you'll never get out of here'

but he did.