Inexplicable things

Miss Adventure thank you for such an interesting topic!

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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....

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.

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!’

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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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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I think children see strange things, or perhaps interpret what they see in a strange way. One of my children (aged about 2) used to regularly see a “monkey” in the garden, close to the window. She’d wave to it, was always delighted to see it, and would call me to come and see it too.

One of my grandchildren, again aged about two, once called me, thrilled to see a bear in the garden next door. Looking out of the window, I saw it was my female neighbour.

I was glancing out of the windows on to the lane and I saw something moving. I grabbed my phone as I was aware of big cat stories. It was a very thin dog. I got a lead and put her in the garden. She ate and drank. I phoned rspca , they took her straight to the vet as she was so thin. She had had puppies so not sure wether she had been dumped or escaped. Her nails were long . I was ready for a big cat but found a poor dog.

The cat I saw was not a moggy, either, and people have suggested it was a big dog, perhaps.

It was totally feline, though, and it made my hairs stand up, (probably literally!) and my eyes fill up with tears, even before I saw it. I could sense it.

Thank you all, these are marvellous!

When my mother died, for various reasons,I slept in her bed for a while ( she died at home but not in her bed ) and I was woken several nights by a feeling of the bed quite strongly vibrating for several minutes. I obviously don't know for sure if it was my mother but I do know she strongly believed in the afterlife. A few other strange things happened after that for a while but nothing in recent years unfortunately.

I also saw a large ish black cat ( definitely too big to be a domestic cat) crossing a country lane in W Sussex near Plumpton Racecourse. It disappeared under a hedge but it was the tail that convinced me it wasn't a regular moggy.

My husband and I stayed at my sister's house. At about 4 in the morning, both my husband and I heard somebody walk down the stairs, past our bedroom before opening the squeaky front door and closing it again. We assumed that our BIL had been called out in the night so went back to sleep. However, in the morning the BIL was tucked up in bed and had never left the house, neither had anyone else. My sister said that she often felt that somebody was standing directly behind her but there was never anyone there so she thought it was a ghost.

One night we saw a golden coloured animal run into the bush down in Gippsland. It didn’t look like a dog, more like a huge cat. That was about 1999, never saw it again. We didn’t report it because we thought no one would believe us. I thought maybe an escaped zoo animal at the time.

My ex husband woke me up one night in the early hours when it was just about light. He'd been to the loo in the bathroom overlooking the main road. There was a big black panther like animal sitting near a fence on the other side of the road. I noted where its head reached to on the fence, then ran to get my camera (before camera phones), and opened the front door to take a photo but it had gone. This was in a town where there had been at least two other sightings that I had heard of over the years. I measured the fence the next morning and it could not have been an ordinary cat. It did seem a bit surreal at the time though.

My sister lives in Devon countryside. The local vet who is a friend of hers has often seen 'big cats'.

Someone mentioned mink - we see them quite often here as live right next to the river.

Wildcats are so rare in Scotland now as they've interbred with domestic cats. Our neighbours have a crossbreed which was rescued as a kitten somewhere near Aberdeen.
I feed her when they are on holiday and confirm she is quite wild. She is shy and does not like being stroked.

Sorry this is OT.