Inexplicable things

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Of course you did!
Was it still there later that day when 'the night before' had worn off?!!

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When our boys were in primary school, we were driving along our track to catch the school bus one morning past a field that leads down to the sea when the youngest one (aged about eight) said “Who’s that man walking by the wall down there?” Neither my other son nor me could see anyone. I looked all round when I came back after dropping them off but no sign of anyone. Later I asked him for more detail and he said he couldn’t see his clothes as he was mostly hidden by the wall but he was wearing a hat like that detective on television. We could only think of a trilby like Jack Frost or Foyle. We have an old sepia photograph of my husband’s grandfather who lived here just after WW1 and he is wearing a trilby. Could it have been him? Who knows?

We were in France enjoying a bbq when we noticed a big cat lurking around the periphery of the house n grounds. I managed to take a photograph on my phone. We visited our neighbours later who recognised it as a Lynx. We had to notify the authorities who set up a trap. We never heard what happened as we were leaving the next day.

My husband was staying in a hotel in Buxton. Going to him room that night the fire hose starting uncoiling and come towards him all on its own mid air. I should say here that he doesn't drink much more than one pint of beer at a time.

We lived in a village in Wensleydale for a time and several people who lived in very old houses there had 'residents' that they lived quite comfortably with.

Barbadosbelle

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Of course you did!
Was it still there later that day when 'the night before' had worn off?!!

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If you're addressing me, I had been to see Joe Pasquale.

No drink involved, although people have suggested we were overwrought with excitement at seeing Joe.

This is the only phenomenon I’ve experienced in my life. In 2000 my mom became very ill and was living with my brother and his family when she could no longer care for herself. I would drive in every Friday after work (5 hrs one way) to be with her, back home on Sundays. I did that for a number of months.

On one trip driving in the clouds in the blue sky began to move around and I watched in fascination as they took formation - a perfect white staircase to even higher heaven. I blinked repeatedly -was it a mirage?

I couldn’t believe my eyes and pulled off the interstate to stare at it, along with a few other cars.

Was it a messsge to me? For someone else? What did it mean? I didn’t know at the time that the message (in my heart) was - this is the last trip you’ll make as she died that weekend.

It was a comforting omen and I think about it all the time.

Many things over time, but just one:

I hurt my back a few years back and had 3 months off work. Just as it was better, I was coming downstairs (steep and no carpet). Two steps from the bottom, my socked foot slipped off the step and I shot up in the air like a cartoon. I had time to think ‘my back! Oh help!’ And prepare for the jarring crash of landing, but then - having felt no impact at all - nothing - I found myself sitting quietly on the hall floor. I was stunned and just said ‘well, whoever that was, thank you!’

Somebody (a policeman, if that's relevant) told me that when he was a child, he and his friends would play on the railway lines, seeing who could hold their nerve as a train thundered towards them.

At the very last minute, on one occasion, a strong whirlpool of wind lifted him up and pulled him off the track.

It took just a split second, but he had never forgotten it.

We moved house in January 2022, having lived in our previous house for almost 31 years. It was a cottage, built as a tied cottage, in 1923, so it was almost 100 years old and had had several previous owners.

On the day we moved, I was walking round the now empty house, and was standing in my daughter's room. She had moved to France in 2017, and the room had become a guest room, usually for her and her other half when they came to stay. We had been very happy in the house, where we had largely brought up our children, as they were very young when we moved there in 1991, so both had lived there for most of their lives. It was home. But on that day, moving day, in my daughter's room, I suddenly felt a chilling presence, which took my breath away. I didn't see anything exactly, but there was definitely a presence in the room. I hadn't, until then, believed in ghosts, but this was a ghost. My only explanation is that, after 31 years of stability, we had disturbed whatever it was. A presence which had dwelt happily amongst us and which we had somehow upset or dislodged, due to the house move. Some years earlier, a neighbour had told me that someone had died in our cottage, in some sort of accident, I think, after inhaling fumes from an unsafe fire? I can't remember exactly, and the neighbour who told me the story had moved away and we had lost touch, so I couldn't check the details. My daughter's room had an old fireplace, which was disused but which we had kept as a feature, prettily painted and with pinecones and dried flowers in the grate. I had never given my neighbour's story a second thought until that moving day, when it suddenly came back to me.

We only moved a mile away, but to a bigger and more modern house, more in keeping with our ageing needs, but a bit devoid of character, to be honest. I am trying to make new memories here, with our lovely children and grandchildren, when they visit, but I secretly really miss the old house, in which we had likely lived longer than any other occupant. I wonder if our "ghost" also misses us? He or she is welcome here, any time....

Oh thank you.
I love these tales.

In my first flat, within a couple of hours, I was able to sort of sense the previous tenant, although I never saw anything.

I knew she had died there, somehow, and could sense whereabouts, and the circumstances.

I could describe her, although I never saw a thing.

Years ago, when I was pregnant with our first child, I was mucking out the byre one morning. I walked into the black cow’s stall and it was suddenly just as if the breath was completely taken out of me and I had to rush to get out of there. A complete feeling of dread had come over me. A couple of weeks later, that cow didn’t come back in off the hill and we couldn’t find her. My husband found her eventually, she had drowned in a bog, so I thought that was why I’d felt awful when cleaning out her stall. However, three months after that, my lovely dad died and I then became very ill and nearly died. Our baby was born at 28 weeks and he almost died as well. Not sure if any of these were linked to that feeling of dread in the byre that morning, but I’ve certainly never forgotten it.

That's so sad Moth.
I always think the universe is telling me something.
At present it is my leaking roof which I fear is a message to say I cannot stay living in this house. It needs to be the home of a family with youthful energy like we once had.

Yes I have seen a black panther in North Yorkshire near a lay-by as we drove past on a countryside road

Yes me too saw a black panther in a lay by as we drove past in the car in north yorkshire

One night over 30 years ago (my parents lived in the flat below me) I awoke as I felt someone sitting on the end of my bed. I wasn’t scared and switched on my bedside light, but no one was there. My children and everyone else were still in bed and ok. But then it happened again almost as soon as I’d put my light out and lay back down, though I felt an overwhelming sense of peace.
Following a deep sleep, I was awoken by my dear dad at 6am (who was terminally ill at the time) he had managed to climb the stairs and was telling me he couldn’t wake my mum. I knew instantly she had died (goodness knows how I knew) but I was able to help dad back down the stairs, try to give her the kids of life (though I knew it was too late) as dad pleaded me to try more. I felt her ‘say’ that she had skipped on to prepare a place for dad (I realise I may have just been comforting us thinking that) but it was the sense of calm z& peacefulness that amazed me. I was able to look after dad at home like he wanted for 10 weeks until he died hopefully thinking of his darling wife waiting for him. I feel she somehow had prepared me in someway that night, although I will never probably know for certain.

Miss Adventure thank you for such an interesting topic!

Not seen but many strange events happen in my house, and other homes nearby.
We believe we have a very restless spirit who has some unsettled business with about 7-8 families on the block.
I will just mention a few.
I was sitting alone one morning on my couch and across from me stood our portable electric fan. It turned on suddenly onto the lowest speed all by it's self. In order for this fan to be on at low speed one has to take hold of the dial, push it in and turn it 3 notches one way. So if this is not odd enough for you... the fan was not plugged in.
Another even in our house my husband and I were cleaning our basement and we had just placed a few small buckets of paint onto a shelf. My husband pushed them to the back of the shelf. I turned away and he was about to turn away and we heard a scraping noise and as we both focused on the shelf... 1 can was oddly balanced on the shelf at the front, waiting to fall. We slid the can back into place and it made the exact same noise as it had prior.
My husband got up to go to the bathroom one night and upon his return to the bedroom he saw a pale white ladies hand on the door, he waited because he thought it was me ready to scare him. As he moved through the door way he was startled to see a lady in a hooped dress and a very large floppy had standing in the doorway. She quickly vanished before his eyes.
We have many more stories of our spirit in our house from others who have lived with us (children and room mates) and have been told stories by our neighbours as well. One neighbour had taken her young daughter with her to a spiritual reading. And the medium told my neighbour... your daughter talks to someone. My neighbours said yes, she speaks regularly to an old lady, she tells me all the time. (this event took place years before we encountered activity.

I found a piece of plaster on the window-sill. The colour matches the previous colour of my living room wall, but looking at all the walls and ceilings, there’s no obvious gap in the walls. Admittedly, I had the rooms decorated but how did this piece turn up on the window-sill ? I wonder ….

I've heard, seen and felt many strange things over the years. One I distinctly remember was when packing up to leave my childhood home at the age of 14. Our house had been an old inn and was built around 1700.

I was in my bedroom, kneeling on the floor and putting all my small personal bits and pieces (jewel box, some letters, a teddy bear) into a box to be loaded onto the removal van.

As I put the final item into the box, I felt a tear on my cheek and I said out loud "goodbye old house". At that moment I received a thump between my shoulder blades. It was quite hard and quite distinct. So much so that I immediately turned around expecting to see my irate mother telling me to hurry up.

There was of course nobody there. My parents were outside on the driveway and the house was completely empty.

I was on holiday in the Lot valley and went out to the washing line very early one morning. I disturbed a very large black cat, it sped off into a maize field, I could hardly believe my eyes, it had a long tail which I could see through the maize stalks. When I turned to the washing line there was a pile of poo with steam rising from it. For the rest of the holiday we wondered if we would see the bete noire again, my BIL did but I did not.

We were on holiday in Majorca in 1977
with my young son and twelve year old niece.
The big house we had rented was set in a gated garden just outside the village and the decor and furniture were very old and traditional.
The two cleaners used to arrive on a scooter quite early, sometimes before we’d got organised to leave, so we used to sit on the big balcony watching the harbour below.
Through the glass doors we noticed the old lady helping them, dusting in the living room and I commented to my husband she must be one of their Grandmothers. We wondered how she got here, as they arrived by scooter and decided she must live nearby.
I went into our bedroom one day as I thought they’d finished and she was smoothing the cover on the bed, so I just walked out again.
Once when they were almost finished and just mopping the hallway, I asked them had the other lady left, they looked confused, so I said the old lady who helps you and described her.
They both started backing away with their hands over their mouths and their eyes wide.
They rushed out of the door leaving the buckets and mops in the hallway, I went to my husband on the balcony and told him what had happened, he said they might have been scared of getting in trouble having their Gran help them.
Ten minutes later a car pulls up and a woman knocks at the door, she’s from the agency and says the cleaners are in a state and wants to know what I’ve said to them.
When I told her, I really didn’t want to get them into trouble but a lady who could be a Grandma we think, has been helping them to clean.
She now, looks totally shocked and when I described the lady, she said “omg it’s the doctors wife”.
We found out we were staying in the village doctors house and he died a while ago and his wife a few months before, the family who lived in Spain decided to rent the house out until they decided what to do with it.
The agency woman told us the cleaners were adamant they would not come back, so we would have to manage without them for the rest of the holiday.
Very strange but true.

In my teens I was walking with my mother. It was early evening in summer time. At the top of the hill we stopped and watched a light just above the horizon, it moved slowly west to east and back again we watched it until it went west and disappeared into the trees. Neither of us had any idea what it was.

In my late teens, I was in my bedroom and heard a strange intermittent hissing noise coming from a corner of the room. Some weeks later the chap I was seeing, bought me a surprise gift of a cockateil, complete with cage, and I placed the cage and occupant on a cabinet in that same corner of the room. I'd not seen that type of bird before and knew nothing about them. However, I was really spooked when the bird made the exact noise I had heard some weeks earlier! It turned out that is a sound they make when alarmed about something. Why I heard it weeks prior to the arrival of the bird and in the same part of the room I have no idea. Weird!

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