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!

We've got some strange goings on with our car. The other day DH got back from taking older DC to school bus and said that I had left the full beam switch on - I hadn't as I hadn't driven at night for about a week. I went out later that morning to take younger DC to school and the petrol cap was open - it can only be opened by a button inside the car.

We don't have any neighbours or houses nearby and DC are never in the car without us so it couldn't be one of them. Then yesterday DH took DC into town, parked, did some shopping got back to the car to find the rearview mirror turned half way round the wrong way! Very odd indeed.

The park in the village where I grew up consisted of a large grassy area lined with hedges and trees, with swings and slides in a gated bit in the middle. As a teen we would often walk through there at night to get home. I was there late one night with 3 of my friends. We were walking through, me at the back as I'm a bit of a dawdler, I looked up and one friend was stood leaning against a tree (about 6 metres away from me, to the side). I must have been there a couple of minutes chatting away to him before I realised he hadn't really said anything. I thought it seemed weird, and asked wtf he was doing and got a bit of a chill run through me. Just as I asked that, said friend, who I'd been chatting to all this time, shouted from the complete other side of the park, they'd not noticed me stopping and had all carried on walking. I literally turned for a second, blinked, and there was nothing there, just a tree. Don't know if it's just funny that I'd been talking to a tree, creepy that it was a bit woo, or creepiest that someone might have been stood there watching me all that time. I was 100% sure it was my friend I'd been talking to, but it physically couldn't have been.

Another off the top of my head - my lovely grandma had just passed away and I'd been asked to have my young nephew for a few days as my sister arranged the funeral (it was a long drive away). They didn't want to confuse him and he'd only met her a few times, so they didn't mention anything about her to him. We were home alone in the living room playing on the floor, and he suddenly looks up to the doorway, to the right of me, and starts laughing and reaching his arms out to be picked up saying "xxxx" (grandma's very specific pet name). A few moments later he looked to the door again, looked confused and said "where has xxxx gone?", got up to have a look, then went back to playing. I tried asking him about it but he didn't have much speech at the time as he was a toddler, I was quite creeped out when it happened, but I find it comforting now.

Not woo but very creepy at the time. You know all those stories about waking up and seeing someone in your room? Well it happened to us, except it wasn't a ghost, we were on holiday and it was a real person. We were being burgled.

It was about half eleven and I became aware of movement in our apartment. It was open plan with the sleeping area raised up behind voile curtains. I realised in the dim light that I could see a figure in the sitting area. I nudged dh awake and we both watched, amazed, as what was obviously a burglar began rifling through our drawers.

Dh shouted 'what the hell are you doing' or something, I turned the lamp on and the man was clearly drugged up and mumbled something about speaking to the manager and ran back out the door.

We looked at each other like 'wtaf?' I rang reception and dh jumped out and got dressed. Within minutes we had the night manager and security guards banging on the door. They went off to look around and came back with a man in handcuffs and about six policemen. They were all arguing and shouting and it was quite scary and dh had to ask them to leave. They came back in the morning to fix the beach door and take our statements. We spent the rest of the night with a wardrobe in front of the door.

It did cross my mind that if we hadn't shouted and alerted him, he might have wandered off again and left me wondering what I had seen.

Not ghostly but scary enough for me to nearly shit my pants

Walking down the"lines" (its an old railway track that has been repaved and generally used by all as a shortcut to get into town) before Xmas around 7 at night.
No one was around, this was usual, no one really uses it in the evening its saved for all the pissheads to get home and the street lights started flickering. Thought nothing much of it, when a bloke fell out of the bushes and just started to run at me. All of a sudden all the street lights flicked off and I was in pure darkness surrounded by trees and bushes.
What do I do. Fucking run like hell scared shitless. Lights turn on around 15 seconds later, this bloke is gone. No sounds, no movements in the bushes, it was just so eerily quiet. No where for him to go as the bushes and trees are all fenced off. Completely and utterly terrified me I've never been back down there.

Mine's not woo at all but a mystery I can't work out.

In my 20s I lived alone in a flat in London for 3 years. It was a purpose built block of flats with a communal entrance but each flat had its own letterbox in its entrance door and the postman would deliver letters directly to each flat rather than there being a letter box or multiple letter boxes at the main entrance to the block.

I once found a handwritten note, addressing me by name, put through my door. The message inside was from a man and was along the lines of he had enjoyed meeting me on the tube recently and if I would like to meet him again, here was his phone number.

Except I know I had not met anyone recently on the tube! The entire time I lived in that flat I had a boyfriend (now my husband) and, although I only saw him at the weekends as he lived in the north of England, there is no way I would have chatted to a strange man on the tube. I am really shy, I just don't do that sort of thing. Anyway, I always drove to work and only used the tube at the weekends when my boyfriend was with me.

It really confuses me to this day. Who was this person who knew my name and where I lived - not just the apartment block but my actual flat within it! I suppose the obvious suggestion would be that someone who knew me was messing around, but I had very few friends and most of my social contacts at the time were either with my boyfriend, my siblings or my work colleagues, none of whom would have done something like that.

It's just weird. Fortunately, it didn't freak me out at the time as it probably would now. I was too shy to call the number, but I wasn't scared I was being followed or anything and, iirc, it was shortly afterwards that I got married and left London anyway.

My tv keeps turning itself on when nobody is near the remote

Crikey SleepThief, something nabbed him!

Dumbledoresgirl - the same sort of thing happened to me when I lived in Paris in my 20s, for about 6 months got regular calls on my land line from someone who clearly knew me but wouldn't identify himself. I didn't recognise his voice and he always used to call in the evening if I had been out - the phone would ring a few minutes after I got in. He was never threatening, just wanted to chat but I would always end the conversation as it totally freaked me out. At the time I had only been living in Paris a few months, had moved there to study and didn't know many people - had certainly not been handing out my number to random guys or anything. The calls just stopped and 15 years later still have no idea who the caller was.

I've got 2:

1. my auntie has 2 daughters, both older than me. One day she had come to a psychic who said to her "auntie giraffe, your daughters pregnant but it won't be easy". She asked which one and psychic said the small haired dark one. Auntie shrugged it off as my cousins are all blonde. She was telling me about it as I love this kind of thing. A week later I found out I was pregnant, and DS was born at 32 weeks due to PET!

2. me and DH had always loved a certain house near us, but was always out of our price range. His grandfather loved it too, and always said if it came on the market then let him know as he would loan us the money to buy it. Sadly he died, but left a substantial amount to us. The day the money cleared into our account, the lovely house went onto the market and was easily affordable for us due to the inheritance. We now live there ??

I picked the phone up once to make a call. Instead of a dial tone there was a woman on the line. I said hello, she said oh Cherry, iand started talking about things I had no clue about.

During the ensuing complicated conversation it transpired our lines had somehow crossed. She had made a call to her daughter, which had somehow routed directly to my phone instead. The extra confusion arose though because I had exactly the same name as her daughter.

Are there any more? Please please please please!

Another from me..

October/November 1997. cant exactly remember when but I know it was then ish as it was around my 13th birthday. Anyway, we were driving to Euro Disney for the halloween/bonfire celebrations. There was 7 of us in the car and I was one of the ones in the very back. I couldn't really see much ahead only out if my side window. It was dark and we were driving through Paris along side the Seine (sp?) going through lots of tunnels. We had been through a few and then went into this next one and I came over all cold, goosebumps, panicky, sick feeling, shaking - the lot. I wanted to get our so bad. As we exited the tunnel I whipped my head round to look out of the rear window.. All I could see were hearts, flowers, Diana, Dodi.. All graffiti on the outer side. It was the Tunnel where they had crashed not a few months before. It was the strangest feeling.

FrankSpencer, it's the curse of Classics. Nowhere near as much traffic as AIBU so less scary stories get shared.

Bump

MrsGiraffe - that's a lovely story. DH had always said 'I would love to live in that house', and having had problems finding somewhere suitable for us, he popped a note through around half a dozen doors, including that one, saying 'if you're thinking of selling, please contact us'. We had a call the following day from a local Agent, saying that they'd just put the 'For Sale' board in the garden of DH's house, did we want to view. We did (on my birthday) and have now been living here for 20 years. Couldn't afford it either - frightened ourselves half to death with the mortgage at the time

at Apprentice's black cloaked ghoul whisking away into your wardrobe.
Fucking scary that you both saw it.... did you touch her/it?
Did it look like the old hag from Snow White?

A friend of a friend lived in a Victorian house in North London. One room in particular was always icy cold and impossible to heat. They found out later a man had killed himself in that very room.

Sad that I've reached the end of the thread, although I'm now scared of EVERYTHING. The post about the girl having to light candles and sit inside them arranged in a circle to protect her from something that was rushing to get her was the reason I couldn't get to sleep last night.

I do suffer from sleep paralysis very occasionally, but not the 'old hag syndrome', which sounds horrifying! I just wake up, unable to move, no feeling of being crushed, and no fear, just a bit unpleasant.

More posts please! Especially from those who promised to come back with their extra-scary stories and haven't yet...

This had dropped out of my Threads I'm On for some reason. Just came across it in Classics and I had no idea it was still being updated. Looking forward to reading all the latest updates.

I'm starting to think we should petition MN Towers to put this back in AIBU so that it gets more traffic and we get more scary tales!

I didn't know this was still going. I'm going back to read all the new stories.

I am over my rotten cold and will post tonight - in a meeting right now.

I even reading this thread for the past few days (when I really should have been doing other stuff!) but I love scary/unexplained/unusual stuff so I'm gutted I've come to the end now...

I have a very tame story from when I was quite little, say around 7 or 8 and it was just a couple of days after my grandad had passed away. I was asleep in my room when I suddenly woke up, not for any particular reason but I saw stood at the foot of my bed, my grandad. As clear as day. Smiling at me and pushing his false teeth out at me (like he always used to do). I wasn't scared, I just looked at him, laughed and went back to sleep. I told my parents the next day it I don't think they (or anyone else) believed me and passed it off as a dream. It definitely wasn't, i was fully awake and I'm sure he came to say goodbye. My grandad was lovely and this is definitely something he would do.

OK - this one hasn't happened to me but my mother. I think I posted it once here.

Years ago she was housesharing in Kingly/King Street in Covent Garden with a bunch of female friends. One day my DM got spooked by a variety of things (I think she'd been messing about with Oujia board though) and heard a man's voice over and over in her head, when she was out etc... swearing and saying awful things. She is not schizophrenic! She also lost her DF's gold cross that he'd carried through WW2 etc. A male friend stayed with her gave her a Victorian silver cross and the voices stopped.

FFW a few years. She had a close friend (not sure if she stayed in the same house) who sadly passed away of cancer. This friend's close friend Sue came to see my DM and they got friendly. They saw each other quite regularly as Sue's DM was in a care home nearby and Sue stayed over. Anyway they were both in the kitchen chatting when they got talking about house-shares and Sue suddenly said "Did you stay in XXX street?" (where mum had lived) and recited the following story. Apparently Sue had been in the house when suddenly she'd looked up and a skirt (old fashioned, Victorian, black and white striped hem had gone past the closed door, you could see the bottom half of the door-gap). this person had apparently been a vision of a woman and had gone through a room to the other room where when Sue went in a few minutes later one of the other housemates was sitting in a corner shivering and sobbing (at what she'd seen, the same). They decided to look further into this and a young policeman who was friendly with them and had cups of tea with them and they decided to ask him to investigate further. He did and discovered a young woman had been violently murdered in that house in Victorian times. This is a true story by the way. And same house where my mum got spooked (by the murderer?).

My DM also hears occasional things - like phone ringing the exact time when her uncle passed away (she was very close to him, nursed him through cancer and he left her a very big legacy). also a light up bulb toy sort of trinket lit up either when/around the time my nana died about 10 years ago. didn't light up before hasn't done it since.