Any strange or spooky stories or memories to share?

Many years ago as a teenager I fell off my bicycle and banged my head. I was taken to hospital and lost three days of my life due to concussion: however I was conscious of a woman in the background talking in fluent Spanish. When I came round I asked who the woman was, it was me apparently., I did one year of Spanish at school, but certainly not enough to converse fully. It has always flummoxed me since.

That really is weird Poppyjo 💃🏻

Is there anything in being close to somebody and one of you says exactly what the other is thinking, and not always something that’s expected?
I’ve thought of something strange that happened 20 years ago, I met a friend for a coffee and we sat outside the cafe chatting and looking at the passing scene when suddenly I felt enveloped in the most fantastic feeling of peace like nothing I’ve ever known.We went our separate ways later with me not saying anything about it.My friend phoned me a couple of weeks later to arrange a cinema trip then blurted out that when we were at the cafe she’d suddenly felt great joy and peace.She was a bit embarrassed about it as well.I just said oh really how nice without saying that I’d felt the same.I felt unaccountable jealousy cos I’d thought it was just for me.

When I was a child in the 60s, I used to stay with my grandparents in their cottage in Wales. These were very happy times for me, and for them. I spent all my school holidays with my Nana and Granddad.
My Nana and I had a funny little ritual. When I came back from visiting my friends or going for walks, I would knock on the front door and then I would stick my hand through the letterbox for my Nana to grab it and squeeze it before opening the door. One day, when I was about 8 or 9, I did this and felt Nana grabbing my hand as usual, only on this occasion the door didn't open! I knocked a couple of times more with the same outcome - my hand was held and gently squeezed again each time but the door stayed closed! After a while, getting worried, I went to the lounge window and looked through to the kitchen. I could see my Nana out there putting something in the oven.
I hammered on the window and she came and let me in. She said that she hadn't heard my knocks on the door, only the window one, and she certainly hadn't held my hand at any point until the last time when she had heard me. It took a while for me to calm down.
Funnily enough, in all the years after that, it never happened again. Very strange!

Many years ago, wanting a reasonably cheap holiday, my husband hired a camper van. His parents, our 5 month old baby and our German shepherd dog all drove down to Cornwall. We were looking for a particular campsite we'd been told about but we couldn't find it. We were out in the countryside with nothing about but we spotted a pub and stopped to ask where the site was. It was a lovely Spring evening and there were tables outside full of people enjoying drinks and food. The publican directed us, saying it was just a few miles down the road we were on and we'd be there in about ten minutes. After about 30 minutes driving, we still hadn't found the site and it was getting a little late so we decided to drive back to the pub and see if we could park up there for the night. We turned around and drove back but we couldn't find it. Bear in mind, we hadn't left the road we had been on so there was no way we could have missed it. The funny thing was, at one point on the journey, around the time we expected to get back to where the pub was, the dog started a deep growl in his throat and the baby started to cry as if she was frightened. She never cried when travelling. It was extremely unnerving for us all. We ended up driving back to the last town we had come from and found somewhere near there to stay. We asked around the next day but no-one seemed to know anything about the camp site, the pub or the events we had experienced. We found it strange though that no-one seemed keen to talk about it or ask anything about it!
We left there as soon as we could!!

Poppyjo

Many years ago as a teenager I fell off my bicycle and banged my head. I was taken to hospital and lost three days of my life due to concussion: however I was conscious of a woman in the background talking in fluent Spanish. When I came round I asked who the woman was, it was me apparently., I did one year of Spanish at school, but certainly not enough to converse fully. It has always flummoxed me since.

Wow! I don't know whether that would have been frightening or exciting! Hope you recovered well.

Sounds like Wuthering Heights with the hand holding, gulp!
The events you experienced with the pub and campsite are similar to many I’ve heard about and are inexplicable.Some friends in the past had drinks in a country pub near to the hotel they were staying in and went back the next day hoping for a lunchtime meal but never found it, in spite of knowing it was just on the edge of a village, and they knew the name of the village and the name of the pub.The village was there but the pub wasn’t and they were very unnerved by the whole thing.

Poppyjo

Many years ago as a teenager I fell off my bicycle and banged my head. I was taken to hospital and lost three days of my life due to concussion: however I was conscious of a woman in the background talking in fluent Spanish. When I came round I asked who the woman was, it was me apparently., I did one year of Spanish at school, but certainly not enough to converse fully. It has always flummoxed me since.

I believe our brains absorb far more than we realise or has been explored.

I read an interesting case where a young man started to speak Hebrew after concussion (he wasn't remotely Jewish). Of course, everyone was amazed and attributed it to reincarnation.

It transpired that his grandmother had worked as a cleaner for a rabbi and had taken the boy, then a baby, with her. He sat in his pram whilst she did her chores and must have "absorbed" some of the household's conversations which the head injury somehow released.

Once he was better he had no recollection of any Hebrew at all.

We still don’t exactly know what the human brain is capable of do we?

We visited Corfe Castle in Dorset many years ago with friends. It was my husbands first visit there He wandered off on his own for a long period of time and was acting very strange so distant and preoccupied and I felt cross and embarrassed as we were with friends. That evening he told me and our friends he had been in a battle at Corfe Castle and lost his life in the past. It had all come back to him walking around. It was all very powerful and distressing to him. He refuses to ever discuss it again or go back there. He is very down to earth and up until this strange experience never believed in anything like that. He has never experienced anything like this again to my knowledge

Many years ago my mother and I visited a castle in northern Italy. It was open to the public and tourists were free to wander around at will, although there was a curator on site.

In one of the rooms was a mullion window overlooking the valley below. It was a spectacular view but I was more taken with a painting on one of the wooden shutters at the side of the window. It was beautiful and my mother and I had quite a conversation about it and would mention it for years to come.

Ten years later we were in the same area and once again visited the castle. The first thing we did was visit that room and look for the painting. Except there were no wooden shutters and no painting.

I asked the castle curator what became of it. He had worked there for 30 years and, despite my insistence, assured me that no such thing had ever existed.

He took us from room to room in the rest of the castle but there was nothing even similar. He even asked his elderly mother who had been the curator before him but she also confirmed that nothing fitted my description.

Did our mind play tricks? Were we witnessing the past? Who knows.

Many years ago, strange things were happening at my house. I believe they were related to my husband’s cousins who are spiritualists.

It was late afternoon. I was in one of the bedrooms and I heard the sound of growling which reverberated around the ceiling.

A few days later, it was around 1.30am in the morning. I was the only one still awake and was sitting in the front of the computer.

Heard the cat flap went and suddenly, I heard scratching noises behind me. Got up, looked behind the curtains and there was nothing there, so went back to the computer.

I was thinking to myself that I was going to give, whatever it was, the fright of its life by turning on the video of a prayer on Youtube at full blast.

Before I got the chance to do that, something hit me really hard on my back in between my shoulders. It was so painful that I could not breathe. The pain eventually subsided, and I turned off the lights and went to bed.

Whatever it was, it had telepathic abilities and could read my mind.

flappergirl that’s a strange one, do you think despite what the curator told you, he or somebody had removed and sold the shutters?Did you visit anywhere else that you could have confused with that particular castle?

This is certainly not as strange as your experiences! My mother always could think of someone and no matter how long since she had seen or talked to them, they would call or contact her. It was uncanny. Since I have gotten old, the same thing happens to me but not as frequently as it happened to her. It still seems eerie to me.

Oreo

flappergirl that’s a strange one, do you think despite what the curator told you, he or somebody had removed and sold the shutters?Did you visit anywhere else that you could have confused with that particular castle?

It is really strange Oreo. I know it was the same castle because the painting was in the Dante room (he had stayed there). The painting was of him standing in front of the very window with the wonderful view of the valley below.

I found it spell binding to think I was standing in the same spot that Dante had centuries earlier, gazing upon the same unaltered view he had seen. So the whole experience was very specific, if you see what I mean.

It is of course possible that someone rather "enterprising" had removed the shutters since our first visit but
I did inspect the the walls to see if there were any fixings where shutters may have been but there was nothing.

That was nearly forty years ago and I've doubted myself ever since!

On the evening of my 18 Birthday I went for a walk along the River Thames with a boyfriend. He was feeling unwell and whilst he lay on the grass to 'recover' I sat on a bench looking towards the river. There was a tree in front of me and much to my amazement a tiny little man dressed like an elf peeped at me from behind the tree! I must add that I had had no alcohol and hadn't fallen asleep! My family think this story is hilarious but I know what I saw

I’ve probably told this ‘past life’ one before, but here goes anyway. Friends were visiting a site of Greek or Roman antiquities in IIRC Cyprus, where none of them had ever been before.

As soon as they entered, friend’s little grandson, only about 4, certainly pre school, said, ‘I used to live here!’ And went on to point out the site/remains of his house, and his friend’s house - he even gave an appropriate by slightly garbled name for him - and the cave where they used to hide, and the pool (bath) where they used to swim.

Needless to say, the rest of the family were seriously spooked!
When they left, he said (very happily) ‘Thank you for bringing me home.’

But as others have said, it was all completely forgotten after about 5, and he’s now in his teens.
Interestingly, though, he has Italian ancestry on his father’s side, and Greek ancestry through a maternal grandfather.

GrannyIvy, that gave me the shivers. I hope your dh is not still disturbed by what must have been a very distressing experience.

Llamas99, sounds as if you mother was telepathic, which TBH I don’t find particularly strange at all - not when you think what a very cheap radio can do, compared with the complexity of the human brain.
Obviously it’s not very common though, which is why people often scoff.
My mother was occasionally acutely telepathic over very long distances, but only (AFAIK) when someone was in some sort of distress. She was in any case an acutely sensitive type, which TBH could make her difficult to live with - so quick to take offence at the tiniest thing, etc.

I remember the first such occasion (that I knew of) very well - I was only about 12. She woke up in the morning utterly convinced that her much younger sister in Canada had had another baby.

She wasn’t even particularly close to that sister, and there’d been no word of a further baby - she already had 3 children. This would have been in the v early 60s, so overseas phone calls never happened, and letters were very few.

My mother was quite specific - she’d woken at 6.30, looked at the clock, and gone back to sleep until the alarm at 7. During that half hour she had an incredibly vivid dream about her sister having the baby.

We thought no more about it, until maybe 3 weeks later, when a birth announcement card arrived, giving both date and time. When we worked it out, taking into account the time difference, the baby was born during that exact half hour when my mother had the dream.

My aunt explained that she hadn’t mentioned the pregnancy, since after her 3rd she’d suffered two miscarriages.

This was just one of the very few, very specific instances I know of.

Nothing really to recount but I just want to bump this thread as I love it. Hope that's okay?

Thanks Skydancer it’s a really good thread isn’t it? I’ve read all the comments and some very strange and spooky ones there are.😲
Hopefully others will add their own experiences but I think at the moment politics has taken over.😄
Wonder if Number 10 is haunted?

Brilliant thread Oreo. I have a question for flappergirl...was it Gradara castle where you had your spooky experience?

Flappergirl,
OMG! That must have been terrifying! How on earth did you sleep after that??

A friend of my sil was told by a consultant that she wasn't able to have a child.
My nephew aged 5 told her that the baby would be his friend.
No baby appeared.
20 years later when his child was born friend announced her pregnancy.
She was 45 had thought she was going through the menopause.

Nannee49

Brilliant thread Oreo. I have a question for flappergirl...was it Gradara castle where you had your spooky experience?

Nannee, I've PM'd you.

Crossstitchfan, I was more bemused than anything to be honest. I could put it down to a mismatched memory or a moment's aberration but my mother also saw the painting. We talked about it! I suppose I'll never know the answer all these years later.

A very recent happening in my house. I live alone and am legally blind, so an Alexa unit, gifted by the Blind Foundation some years ago, tells me the time and sets alarms etc.

When it was installed by them, I chose an English, male voice.

To change this, I understand you must go to an app, something I can't do - but then have no need to, so it's stayed English all this time .

Okay, that's the scene so far
In August my son flew from New Zealand to London, ostensibly to work but things went dreadfully wrong and we had some tearful (on both sides) video calls about what to do.
Just before he went off to bed he'd decided to come home.

However, as I got on with my day, happier but still distressed for my boy, I spoke to a friend who passed away 3 yearss ago, asking if he could help, as he had so many times in our 30 year friendship.

Later, my son told me that out of the blue, he'd been offered a definite job in Australia, firm enough for him to book his flight, not home but from London to Sydney!

Now the job was a lovely coincidence (?) but not exactly spooky.
Until I asked Alexa the weather forecast for the next day, hoping to do some laundry and was answered by a strong Aussie accent

I was so shocked, I even had to ask, 'What's that accent?'
The voice said 'Mate, surely you know I have a true blue Aussie accent...'

Mmm, well you didn't yesterday Mate

Now, was this my old friend, expert in these types of devices, letting me know he had a hand in this Australian job?

I'd like to think so.

This is not the first time he's 'dabbled'. He gave me a Samsung tablet just before he died but a few months later it went wrong.

Two sighted men at the Blind Support group took it as they are used to mending them but could do nothing.
So it sat on the dresser a couple of months until very reluctantly, because it reminded me of my friend, I decided to recycle it.

Before I did, I said, out loud, ''Well old friend, if you were here you'd make short work of this wouldn't you?"

I switched it on and it worked perfectly and did so for ages.

The guys at Blind Support said there was no way it could be okay. But it was.