Twin telepathy
So, I have a twin brother (I'm 2nd born, he calls me his afterbirth). We're fraternal twins, obviously, and never had any of that secret language or anything but there have been a couple of times when we've just known something is wrong with the other.

The first time it happened was in junior school, and I suddenly came down with a horrendous headache, at the same time I was screaming for twin.
Turns out he was in another part of school and managed to knock himself out after hitting his head on the classroom door.

The 2nd time it happened was a few years ago. My brother had a pain in his chest, but knew there was something wrong with me.
I was in the hospital having emergency surgery for a breast abcess and had told my husband at the time not to tell anyone until I was out of surgery.

Small things have happened since then, like I know when his back is bothering him because I feel it in my back. Even though there's pain, I just "know" it's not my pain.
( Batshitmentalist is sane for once, Fri 4 Jul 2008, 17:45, 2 replies)

Sennance
My otherwise sane (well, not sane exactly, but certainly cynical) mother claims to have had two very odd experiences.

1) Being a big Formula 1 fan, she never misses a Grand Prix. Except on 1 May 1994 when (and my Dad swears this is true too) she woke up in the morning, turned to my Dad and said ‘I can’t watch the race today, Ayrton Senna is going to die’.

She didn’t watch. He did die.

2) 10 years to the day after my Nan from my father’s side died, she woke up in the night to see her standing at the foot of the bed. They looked at each other and my Nan apparently said ‘Just checking to make sure you’re looking after my boy’ then vanished.

My Mum said she woke up, remembered and told my Dad about the weird dream she’d had.

About 9.30 that same morning the phone rang. It was my aunt – the wife of my Dad’s brother – and before Mum could even start to speak, my aunt started relaying the details of how my Nan had been to visit her the night before to check she was looking after my Uncle.

Later that evening it transpired that the third and final brothers wife had had the same experience. Oddly, my Dad’s sisters husband experienced no such thing.

Personally, despite my Mum still being freaked out when she thinks about it, I can easily explain to myself the first of those as one of those things that seem odd to the person they happen to, but, really, are statistically quite likely to happen, given that a) Motor racing is dangerous and b) It has Millions of fans. At some point, the likelihood is that of all the millions of people, a substantial proportion are going to think it’s likely that someone will die. Most will be wrong, one will be right. That day, it just happened to be my mother.

The second, I’m a bit more stumped to come up with a rational explanation.
( scarpe We Stole Bikes, Fri 4 Jul 2008, 17:33, 1 reply)

I hadn't even been born...
My mum swears this is true and my mum really isn't the type to embellish or imagine, however,i'm not wholly convinced but anywho as i said i wasn't even born.

*Flashback to 1986*

When my older sister was only a wee one, my family lived on a normal housing estate in maidstone, Kent. However, my dad could only find work in bristol (where we eventually moved after i was born). This meant that dear old dad was away for the week and only came home at the weekend, leaving my mum and my sister at home alone.

Everything was fine, except for anytime my dad left the house on a sunday night a lightbulb would blow. Now my lovely mother just put it down to coincidence being the sensible thing that she is.

However, after a few months of light bulbs exploding. My mum has put my sister to bed, sid good bye to dad and is watching tv. At about elevenish, she hears a thump from upstairs. Thinking its my sister having got out of her cot, mum hurries out to the landing. She looks upstairs to the landing, which is completely dark, despite my mum being sure she left the light on. She goes to switch the light on and nothing happens.
She just assumes there has been another bulb blowing incident, so she goes to get a torch. Heading upstairs, she find the bulb lying on the bookshelf at the top of the stairs. Having seemigly been unscrewed and placed there. My mums response was to assume that the bulb hadn't been fitted in the socket properly and had fallen.

However, it wa only after she went to bed that she realised that it was unlikely that the bulb could have fallen under its own accord and it was a screw bulb and had been in hat socket for as long as she could rememeber.
Also the book shelf was the other end of the hallway to the light socket and she had herad the thump of the bulb hitting the floor, indicating that the bulb had fallen and then been moved.

She put this down to either my sisters psychic energy missing my dad, or a very concientious burgler who tidies up after himself and doesn't steal anything.
(minsh, Fri 4 Jul 2008, 17:21, Reply)

MYSTERIOUSLY VANISHING PIZZA RIDDLE (old post but very applicable)
A few years back I got home to my Mums house from a night on the pish and decided to make some food. I was pretty trashed and it was more day than night after a heavy night out clubbling.

I decided a pizza would do the job and duly made the pizza, took the pizza up to bed and than ate the pizza.

I was woken a few hours later by the sound of my angry Mother shouting and telling me to get my arse downstairs straight away.

She was in the kitchen and not very happy at all about the charcoal remains of pizza under the grill.

This was very confusing to me as I remembered taking the pizza upstairs and eating it.

I took my Mum upstairs and showed her my empty plate and explained that I had no idea how the charcoal pizza got there.

Thinking back, the only explanation is that I was so wankered from my nights antics that I came home, put a pizza under the grill, took my empty plate upstairs and imagined eating the pizza. My friends still take the piss now.

But then again - Who turned the grill off and how come the house didn’t set on fire if I had left the pizza there and taken an empty plate upstairs?

I guess I'll never know.
( DUMBLONDE is a rubber lover girl, Fri 4 Jul 2008, 17:06, 2 replies)

There's a ghost in my anus.
We've all had this. You feel the familiar rumble in your lower gut and pressure against your sphincter that means it's time to go number two.
Straining on the porcelain throne, You excise your demon in one fel sploosh (neptune's kiss anybody?). Feeling considerably emptier, you get up to look your fallen foe in the eye before wiping and sending it on it's tubular journey.
But what's this? nothing in the bowl! not a smear, not a tagnut, Nothing. confused, you wipe anyway. The paper comes off clean as you realise your phantom shit has left no trace of its existance.
I place this unexplained phenomenon squarely on alien probes.
What came out of me? we may never know...
Length. i didn't see it.
( Willwillwritehiswill An arse like a slapped face., Fri 4 Jul 2008, 16:48, 3 replies)

i seem to be a little psychic
i've had weird feelings and premonitions my whole life. i try to ignore them, because they're freaky as hell. sometimes, though, i can't ignore them. sometimes they're really strong and i just have to take notice.
i can foresee me answering this qotw several times, but here's a quick-ish one for now:

several years ago, i was due to go into hospital for a much-needed operation. i'm not scared of hospitals in the least, i've been in and out of them my whole life, but this time was different. the entire week leading up to the op, i felt more and more apprehensive, until finally i had to tell my mum that i wasn't willing to go through with it. mum has been on the receiving end of my premonitions before and knows when to take me seriously, so she called the hospital and cancelled.

two weeks later, speaking to the doctor, i discovered that a water pipe for the under-floor heating had sprung a leak, soaking a ceiling tile to saturation point, until it fell from the ceiling and landed on a bed.
the bed i would have been in.
fortunately, there hadn't been enough time to give anyone else my operation time, so the bed was empty. if anybody had been in it, they would have been seriously injured, or even killed. those ceiling tiles are huge.
( Smash Monkey lowering the tone of the whole internet, Fri 4 Jul 2008, 16:31, Reply)

Derek Acorah... That reminds me.
A good few years ago now, I had a small office based in a Museum complex here on the North Norfolk Coast. Having known the owner for several years, we struck a deal for me renting space to use as an office in return for the odd little bit of admin. help when he needed it (I used to work for the Museum as a teenager, and knew how to run the place backwards).

The owner was based in London, leaving a rather 'skittish' manageress in charge of the day to day running of the Museum. At this point, it's probably worth mentioning that it's a large private collection of military vehicles and memorabilia.

The Manageress was very much 'into' the realm of the 'unknown'. Psychic hot lines, mediums, all that kinds of stuff, and in the course of her job, she had organised plenty of filming jobs on the Museum land, or using Museum pieces. (Band of Brothers, Allo, Allo and loads more.)

The phone call came from the 'Most Haunted' TV show... "We'd like to do a show based at your museum, if you'll let us"?

This is where the trouble began. The Manageress immediately said "Yes"! without consulting the owner.

They duly arrive a few months later. The whole production crew, Yvette fielding, Derek Acorah and all the rest.

A bigger bunch of complete f*ckwits you will never meet, Ladies and Gentlemen.

They paraded around as if they owned the place throughout the day, regularly taking the piss out of the day to day running of the Museum while they were setting up, and using their status as 'celebrities' to schmooze and coerce others to do what they wanted.

Not officially employed by the Museum at the time, my working pattern was getting seriously disrupted by all this, and the final straw came when I was waiting for a call to come in, and Acorah wanted the room immediately.

"I have a job to do, don't you know who I am"? He bellowed.

Through gritted teeth, I calmly replied.

"You're the psychic, you tell me".

Eventually, they got on and did their filming in the evening and throughout the night.

Interesting revelations came to light when I finally saw the finished episode. Derek Acorah had somehow managed to contact the spirit of the current owner's father who had initially set up the museum. I can only assume it was a mere coincidence that they rifled through the entire office during the day, producing old photograph albums and documents that belonged to the owner, and had no right to be disturbed.

Also of interest was the presence of Douglas Bader in the Museum. That's right, THE Douglas Bader. There was lots of gushing from Acorah that the original owner had flown with Bader in Hurricanes during the war, and he went on describing their great friendship and range of missions that they flew.

The fact that the original owner (Who I had known for 10 years before his death) had never flown any active missions in WWII (although he was a trained Hurricane pilot) because he was promoted to help plan the D-Day landings as a land based officer only (due to showing 'initiative' early on) obviously had nothing to do with it either.

The final straw in the programme came when they were describing Douglas Bader for the viewer.

As Derek Acorah spoke, a title comes up on screen, with description, to aid the viewer identify who Derek has 'contacted'.

Was it a glowing tribute to Douglas Bader's keen skills in the air, and his subsequent status as a wartime hero, and national hero as well? Maybe it would be a tribute to his daring exploits and the many dangerous missions he flew during the war?

No.

The caption simply read:

'Douglas Bader - Famous for his tin legs'.
( The Great Architect is still waiting for his account to be deleted on, Fri 4 Jul 2008, 16:30, 3 replies)

Snowy Ghost
We were in some sort of ski resort or something when I first saw him (this was a while ago and I’d had one or two bumps on the head that week already). I’d been a bit mental the night before and ended up not making it back to my apartment and stupidly found myself lying on the snow outside. Luckily enough I was found, but according to the doctors I almost died of exposure and the guy who found me later said I’d been going on about some old guy I used to know who had passed away a couple of years ago. Damn right I was going on about him … I saw him and he asked me to do him a favour.

He’d lived fairly close to us when we were growing up, a sort of uncle/friend of the family and I’d had an experience kind of like this before. Just after he’d died I was in the middle of something important and bloody stressful, and I thought I heard his voice in my head telling me it’d be alright, and it turned out it was. It was probably just my imagination calming me down but it helped at the time.

When I saw him in that ski resort I was a bit out of it as I said, but I was sure he was telling me to go and see his pal. So when I got my shit together I went to where I think I was supposed to go, and I actually met this wee guy who knew my ‘uncle’. It was a shame, he looked really disabled, couldn’t talk properly and lived in a real shithole, but after a while I got to know him, and you know, for such an old weird wee guy he taught me some pretty cool stuff. There’s some shit going on with my family at the moment, especially my dad, so I won’t write any more, but I’d just like to thank old Ben from down the road for telling me about his pal, it’s changed my life.

Your’s

Luke S.
( Cheeses of Nazareth Where's Captain Kirk? www.whereiskirk.com, Fri 4 Jul 2008, 16:10, 4 replies)

Facebook
is down. exoplain that.
(papa bouba slap your face, Fri 4 Jul 2008, 16:00, 6 replies)

I control the lights!! yes i do!
Ok....about ten years ago I was walking the mile or so from the train station to my house late one night....

...when I walk under a street lamp. The light goes off as I walk under it. 'That's weird' I thought to myself and walk on. When I'm about 20 feet away it comes back on again.

The same thing happened with the next light.

...and the next light....

...and the next light....

By this point I'm both baffled and more than a little bit freaked out...and run the rest of the way home.

The same thing happened to me about four or five times over the following years. All late at night and on the same route home.

It even happened when a mate was with me. We tested it and the lights went off when I went under - but not when he did.

So are there aliens in the street lamps? Or am I just supernaturally in charge of the lights?

B*ggered if I know.
(stairpotato, Fri 4 Jul 2008, 15:54, 11 replies)

A massive coincidence
I used to go out with a girl whose best friend, Michaela, lived a couple of miles away in the middle of an estate. One Christmas we got back from a 'do' late and went to the local KFC. When we came out we were harangued by a little cat who ended up following us the half mile home. We fed it but before sending it on it's little way I opened the name cannister on it's collar and replaced the paper with new details. I left the same address and phone number but changed it's name to 'Pissflaps'.

A couple of days later we were in the pub with Michaela and her other half and they started to tell us about a cat that had turned up on their doorstep one morning. When they opened it's cannister they were highly amused by it's name - 'Pissflaps'. It must have walked straight from ours to their place (like, 2 miles away remember). They rang the owner who was completely bemused but came round and picked it up. What are the chances of that, eh? Eh? Supernatural I tells ya.
( routine has perfected burgers, Fri 4 Jul 2008, 15:50, Reply)

Star Trek Ghosts..
Since Scotty, the famed chief engineer on the Enterprise, died in 2005, Leonard Nimoy claims his ghost has been visiting him as he sleeps.

Spocky, eh ?
(ISignedUpToTalkShit but that was another QOTW, Fri 4 Jul 2008, 15:48, 3 replies)

Never more!
I'm a confirmed mentalist and when this started happening was resolutely off the medication so feel free to lend whatever amount of creedence you will to my little tale of little consequence. But it goes on bothering me.

I'd gone into my second term at uni a mental wreck. One aspect was believing myself psychically connected to a girl I'd met over the summer. I was obsessing over her in a rather unhealthy way so no surprise when she severed all contact with me soon after I left the town in France where she lived. I began to get into Edgar Allen Poe and his poems of romantic/intellectual loss like The Raven and Ellenore. One autumn night I was sat up late reading The Raven when I heard a "tap tap tap" at the wall. I was rather freaked out, but in my addled state sort of tolerated it with a shruf of the shoulders and rather blithely ascribed it as a general indicator of the unavoidably dark turn my life had taken. It probably wasn't a raven, more like pigeons roosting in the old blocked-up chimney, but at the time I was prepared to believe anything.

It should be noted that although I was in the midst of full-blown paranoid schizophrenia, I never hallucinated visuals or heard voices - just became very deluded resulting from making connections between everyday things that could have been coincidence or perhaps weren't (now promise never to tell my psychiatrist I give the latter view the time of day..).

Come Christmas I'd had enough and decided to run away to France to meet (read: "probably scare shitless") this girl again. On the road to the station a car passed with some chavvy youths leaning out of the window, and as it passed the youths seemed to make a very loud croaking sound, exactly like a raven. This was disturbing.

OK, so maybe I did hallucinate that time.. but fast forward over the years, over 8 years of being on medication that renders me "normal" in the eyes of everyone I meet and all-but-completely removes the delusions, then every now and again a car will pass, usually a small knackered-looking car filled with chavs, and one of the windows will be down and from the car something will croak extremely loudly like a raven, making me jump out of my skin every time. I never get "oi hippy" or "gay" or any of the usual to expected from my appearance - just the fucking loud croak.

Nothing else like this happens to me. Perhaps somewhere at the back of my subconcious Edgar Allen Poe and the memory of my lost love have lodged permanently resulting in this semi-regular - about once-yearly - hallucination. Then again perhaps I was right to be paranoid - perhaps I'm being watched by giant crows controlling the fate of the earth. Either way an explanation would be nice..
(lost, Fri 4 Jul 2008, 15:36, 10 replies)

Ball Lighting
About five years ago, on a windy but rainless day, I was fetching myself some food in the kitchen when a blinding flash appeared out the corner of my eye. I turned to witness a rapidly diminishing blue ball of light hovering in mid-air, accompanied by a electrical "pvooof!" sound as it disappeared. The light it cast didn't strike me as particularly bright, but my mother immediately came running, having seen it shining into the garden which she had been observing from the window upstairs - she thought I'd been electrocuted.

I explained the situation and eventually drew this:


( Digeridude Lord Wellington's Beef Trapeze, Fri 4 Jul 2008, 15:31, 7 replies)

Old Army Barracks
Pop! Be gentle...

Not me but a trusted friend recently moved into a new development here in Cornwall. His place being part of a converted army barracks,lovely place with big tall windows. He tells me one day he has a ghost. I love thid kind of thing so I excitedly ask if he has seen it. He emails this response...

I haven't seen it im afraid but its there...

first of all i came home and some of my books had been pulled out (but not randomly) the first was pulled out as far as it could be without falling over, then there was a gap of two books and the next one was pulled out halfway then another gap of two books and the last one was pulled out about an inch. Couldn't explain it but didn't give it much thought.

Then last weekend K (his girlf) and I slept upstairs because we had friends staying and she was woken by a noise right by her ear which was followed by a sound across the room, she thought it must be the cat but looked down to see it on the bed. it sounded like tarpauline being dragged across the floor and would start and stop.

She didn't wake me because she knew i'd want to sleep with the light on.....lol

Spooky huh?
(raggerbun clicks, Fri 4 Jul 2008, 15:31, Reply)

opposites attract
I'm not saying that he and I are unsuited, just that we are different. I firmly adhere to knowledge, science and logic; he is relaxed about such things to the point of disregarding them - he thinks it's another form of brainwashing. I like my world ordered and I like to be in control; he wants consciousness expansion. I read text books on the psychology of perception and reality; he spent his formative years poring over Carlos Castaneda.

This dichotomy leads to an interesting tension. The arguments start small - views ventured over a cup of tea where we each get indignant with the other - but they grow, and sometimes they rankle. How can he say that invisible beings surround us? Likewise, I see him look at me as if I am the alien creature when I tell him that science works.

"Haven't you heard of Occam's Razor?" I challenge and, pushing his long hair back from the month's worth of beard on his lovely face, I know I have erred in mentioning any razor at all.

He sparks up a joint. "You're so... closed-minded!" he scolds, exasperated.

Later, as we lie wrapped in the tangled sheets, he tells me about astral projection. I consider that maybe sometimes we are talking about the same thing using different vocabulary. I want his ideas to be true for him. It's just that for me, the supernatural is not a part of existence in which I wish to indulge because it doesn't carry the neatness of proof. I can't believe in what he says. I just can't.

"I bet I astrally project farther than you tonight," I murmur as I fall asleep. At this, he moves his body away from me slightly and I think that someday it isn't going to be enough that we tolerate each other's opinions.
( crackhouseceilidhband Fuck off back to Mumsnet, Fri 4 Jul 2008, 15:21, 32 replies)

Coincidence or Magic? You decide.
The laws of chance not only allow for coincidences, they require them.

So, my amazing tale of the unexplained is that recently, spookily, I have seen a whole bunch of otherwise intelligent b3tards who are so moved about their own particular coincidences that they are prepared to posit an entire second reality in order to explain them.

Grr. Rant over. I'm off to watch a Richard Dawkins video.
( Amish Information Systems hates misplaced, commas, Fri 4 Jul 2008, 15:20, 10 replies)

For a long time now...
...there has been many occassions in my life where I have dreamt events or scenarios, then weeks later they happened, or even they relate to things that happened in the past that I never knew about (if I can of anything with anymore significance, then I'll post them).

Anyway, I must have been about 11 or 12 at the time, and I remember having a very vivid dream. I was sat in one of the singular chairs at my Nana's house, looking out the front window on to a very dark, but clear night. The room itself was quite warm, and inviting. There were other people in the room with me; my Nana and her two sisters. But, there was also another elderly woman, someone who I had never met, and didn't know who she was. They were all chatting about when they were younger, and Sunderland in the past when they were girls.

All of a sudden, they all stopped talking, and starred at me, as if I had just walked in to the room... but I was sitting there originally. My Nana then smiled at me, and asked "Do you know who this is?".

I was very unsure at what was going on first, but then I answered "No".

The unknown woman then smiled at me, and said to me in a soft voice, "My name's Sarah. It's very nice to meet you. I've heard so much about you from Pam*."

* (My Nana)

Unfortunately, I can't remember much else of the dream, as it's disappeared as time has passed, but we all talked for a while, and Sarah continued to ask questions, and I continued to answer.

Suddenly, I was being woken up, and it was a bright summers morning. And life went on.

Later in the day, I remembered about the dream, and asked my mam "Do we have someone called Sarah in our family?"
"Yes. Well, we used to. My great aunty Sarah, she was your Nana's aunty. But she died way before you were born. Why?", she said.

A little taken a back with my revelation, I proceeded to tell her about the dream. Afterwards, she dismissed it as just pure coincidence.

To this day, it still freaks me out. Could it have been a conversation from beyond the grave?


Length?... About 7hours 40minutes of sleep.
(ShaunyBoi has been surviving fires since, Fri 4 Jul 2008, 15:17, 1 reply)

Dead schoolkids of Singapore
For the last few years, I used to rent a condo apartment with my GF's sister (the sisters are always better looking)...anyway from time to time I would have to babysit my chinese "niece", daughter of the flatmate. Aged about 3.5 years, she already had a history of imaginary friends etc.

On the particular night anyway I was minding her and she went into a tantrum. As we had limited powers of communication (we would speak basic Indonesian), I managed to get her to agree to calm down if we went out for a walk.

We were walking past a nearby Japanese school, the kid up in my arms, when she asked, "What is that little girl doing over there?". We walked over to where she was pointing, the were some flowers and a little memorial sign detailing the events that caused some young schoolkid to lose her life there some years previously. I brought this up with her parents, they had never brought her anywhere near that area, and there was nobody else on the island minding the kid at any stage.

Also used to know a guy in Jakarta who claimed to see dead people everywhere and was regularly scared shitless while walking down the street, opening doors in old houses, etc. Reckon he had a screw loose though..
(schmig, Fri 4 Jul 2008, 15:07, Reply)

I have no idea what this means
I always hear footsteps running up and down the stairs, and someone dropping things in the room above me even when i'm home alone.
Ive stood in my room in the dark at night and can feel something watching me and sometimes touching the back of my neck for a second.
My littel 6 year old brother has told us many times that he wants to move back to our old house, the one in the country with the green door and white fence...even though we've only ever lived in central Harrow and he was brought up in this house.
My cousins used to see a man in a top hat standing at their front door. when they were little. BOTH of them, and they are a few years apart and have seen him at different times so it cant just be one of them playing a trick.

Ohh, and when my mum was little she went downstairs where there was a man in her kitchen. She asked him who he was, and he said he was captain scarlet. He then made her some cereal, watched her eat it and then left, never to be seen again.

I have had the same daydream ever week for the past 10 years.
I imagine an object, it could be anything, a pencil, a toy car, a thumb anything.
The thing gets closer and closer and larger to my face, so much so that i feel scared. it does it in "jumps", so it goes, "closer..closer...closer..etc". then it starts to disintergrate, become rotten, putrid old and ugly. then i snap out of it. I have no idea what it means, but it freaks me out so much.
(leftehhhh, Fri 4 Jul 2008, 15:05, 2 replies)

Deja Vu
I know the feeling of Deja Vu has been explained scientifically. For those not in the loop. Its when youre doing something, and then suddenly feel like you've been doing this before. Its to do with information going between left and right hand side of the brain having a slight delay.

Despite the "proof" I still feel theres something perhaps more sinister going on.
As once, I was walking down a road, and suddenly got the old deja vu feeling. At the same time i imagined a number 007 bus coming around the corner. I found the thought rather amusing. James Bond Bus :)

I think i turned a shade of white when 10 seconds later a bus came around the corner with 007 on the front.

So is the deja vu feeling just about a slight brain malfunction or are we tapping into things unknown?
(Miggyman, Fri 4 Jul 2008, 15:04, 5 replies)

An "Unsavoury" place
I want to start out by saying I am not accountable for anyone who tries the following methods..but what I saw has made me NEVER want to do it again.

I read that by inducing a trance and achieving a state that is comparable to REM stasis, we can view/tap into the ethereal plain. By opening our "third eye" in the centre of our foreheads..apparently.

WARNING - You are only an observer, and should never at any time interact. You must also protect yourself and your home by imagining wrapping everything in light.

Lie on a bed, or in a comfy chair, arms by your side. Empty your mind of all thoughts.. Close your eyes and concentrate on slowing your breathing right down..counting slowly to 7. Keep repeating the process until you begin to feel your soul lift from your body.

When you achieve this state, picture in your minds eye a field, with a stream, and as you look, you see a bridge. Walk onto the bridge, and over to the other side.. this is when you will see the other plain.

I tried this, and achieved the state, saw the bridge and walked over it..everywhere was dark, and I began to wonder why I had wasted my time.. then in the distance I could see something coming towards me, it wasn't clear at first, but as it came closer I could see it was a snake of sorts, moving through the air? (there wasn't a floor, it was kind of like an immense void) Then it began swallowing its tail, until there was nothing left.

Then I saw a mirror, moving through the void towards me. It was a full length one with ornate gilded framing, but the mirror itself was like water.

Out of the mirror stepped an old man, in clothing that an old man wouldn't wear, almost like black leather/pvc. His head turned and looked me directly in the eye. My body was frozen with fear, and I couldn't move or scream out..

His smile was more a depraved grin as he reached out to grab me.

Somehow I snapped myself back to reality and quickly wrapped myself in light. It was as if, they were not aware of me before.. but now they were, and I didn't feel safe for a long while, and consequently have not done it again for fear of drawing their attention.
(TheRiddler Hmmmmm... I concur., Fri 4 Jul 2008, 14:48, 4 replies)

I was haunted...
...by the spirit of chickens and turkeys once... it was ok though they were only poultrygeist
(mrpaulo shaving the world, Fri 4 Jul 2008, 14:45, 7 replies)

I was using
a well computer operating system developed in the early 1970's to make a program for aeroplanes to count the number of reports of paranormal activity that they had from their staff.

That was my Tallys Of The Unix-Planed.

/Coat
( Trollman, Fri 4 Jul 2008, 14:37, 2 replies)

Oh yeah....
This old Victorian house we used to live in drove us mad with weird noises, stuff being moved about and stuff like that. It got to the point where we actually had a priest in to perform an exorcism! The weird stuff went away for a couple of years after that. But then I got into some financial difficulty, and defaulted on the mortgage. True to form, stuff started going missing again, cold chills in some of the rooms, horrible noises like children crying... it turned out the house had been repossessed.
( browser still relating boring anecdotes into a void on, Fri 4 Jul 2008, 14:33, 1 reply)

My great grandfather asked me to say goodbye
Longevity runs in my family, and I have been fortunate enough to know 4 of my great grandparents, of whom only one went a bit ga-ga (Boba). My great grandmother wasn't able to care for him herself (as she too was getting on a bit) and so he lived out his final years in a home where we all used to visit regularly and confuse the poor chap by talking to him for a few hours when he didn't have a flaming clue who any of us were. Except me. He thought I was his sister who had died over 50 years ago (for the record I don't look anything like her). I, being 12 at the time, didn't enjoy this experience and wasn't very good at playing along, and after being freaked out on numerous occasions I am sorry to say I was relieved when a clash of engagements meant I missed one of our weekly visits.

A few days after the missed visit I had a strange dream in which I had gone to visit Boba and he was totally compos mentis. And unlike other dreams I used to have I remembered exactly what he said, which was:

"MsZuzu, please tell Edith that I'm sorry these last few years have been difficult, but everything will be alright now and she can be happy. I love her, and you all take care of yourself".

I woke up and in a bemused fashion told my mum and asked her who Edith was. I watch the colour drain from my mum's face as she told me that Edith is the name of my great grandmother (which I didn't know because the only person who ever called her that had been Boba). About 10 minutes later my grandfather phoned to tell us that Boba had passed away in his sleep in the early hours of the morning.

I'm sorry to say I was too afraid to pass on the message myself, but my mum and aunt did it together. We are not a religous family and it was all a bit 'strange' for some people to accept. But it wasn't spooky, it all felt very nice at the time and the memory of it has been a comfort to me through the death of other family memebers and friends.
(MsZuzu, Fri 4 Jul 2008, 14:27, Reply)

On the Wards
Reminded by 31eeweep, have a remix of my first ever post, from the "Sleepwalking" QotW...


In the last decade of his life, my grandfather had a number of strokes. Many were minor, but a couple was fairly major and resulted in him being unable to walk without a frame at the best of times - and even then, he was none too steady on his feet.

Still - it wasn't the strokes that finished him off in the end: it was the gradual shutdown of major internal organs over the course of about a week. As a result, he was hospitalised for the last weeks of his life while various tubes were inserted into him and he responded by turning a livid shade of yellow.

So the picture you have is of a very ill and helpless old man. This picture is accurate. That's what he was.

This did not stop him, one night, from getting up, dressing (I can only assume that this means “dressing gown” rather than the full shirt and tie gig – but you never know), and walking off the ward. It was only by chance that he was seen by the night staff waiting for the lift.

Not sure if being half in a coma counts as sleepwalking, but - dammit - it should.

Length? Half of ward 81, and would’ve been longer if the nurse hadn’t stopped him…
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Fri 4 Jul 2008, 14:25, Reply)

I had a weird thing the other week
I was re-reading a message I'd posted on this forum a while ago, and it felt as if every time I looked at it, it had become a little bit longer. After a while it got to the stage where it seemed to be growing longer line by line every time I pressed F5. Words were adding themselves or changing, whole metaphors were re-invented. I'm not ashamed to admit that it was rather concerning - even scary, but perhaps it was no more than my imagination. It was as if every time I turned around, my living room had rearranged itself.
( flatfrog Staring vacantly into space, Fri 4 Jul 2008, 14:24, Reply)

Attack of the zombie frog...
Ensconced within the comfort of my sofa, a plate of freshly heated food upon my lap and a yawn in my stomach. Hands rubbed together and I'm ready to eat.

A forkful of food poised by my eager chops and the sometime third resident burst in from the garden and trotted, show-horse like into the living room.

There was something odd about the way he padded across the room, head held back and a dark blot obscuring his mouth that raised my suspicions. Sure enough he confirmed my concerns as he deposited the dead frog at my feet.

*brilliants*

Food at hand, a dead frog at feet and my stomach shuts itself with a refusal to accept its gifts. The cadaver must be removed before dinner, there's no doubt about that.

"thank you old friend, your gifts are heartfelt, but oh so misguided, now scamper back to the garden and don't darken these doors again (for a bit)." The cat duly obliged, with some gentle, foot related encouragement.

A tentative touch, followed by a more thorough examination confirms that it was indeed an ex-frog and up he was scooped for transportation to his final resting place.

The hand hearse passed first through the open door and into the cool evening air. A twitch from the deceased amphibian was swiftly followed by a desperate face-bound lunge and your 'heroic' narrator lets fly with a shriek so girly the neighbours rushed to their window, bursting with concern.

"It's a fucking zombie frog" was all I could muster before embarrassment forced me back into the depths of the house, where my dinner was growing cold and my shame still very warm.

I'd moved house before I'd lived it down.
( Moey, Fri 4 Jul 2008, 14:23, Reply)