Firstly - let's be clear. I don't actually believe in supernatural events
However, I've been presented with some tantalising reasons to doubt my own rational brain.

All of them happened in my friend Steve's house, a few while I was present too. That house, if such a thing exists, is as haunted as it gets. It lies at the bottom of my street.

We would have been about 13 at the time. Steve had been living in this house for about 6 months when we started noticing the weirdness. It started off with his dog, which refused to go anywhere near a particular corner of the room. Nothing particularly unusual about that. The dog soon died of a heart attack (it was quite old, so this wasn't entirely unexpected...) and so a new dog was promptly purchased to keep Steve happy. This one was a border collie puppy. When it arrived at the house it was full of the joys of spring, bouncing around and generally being a very happy dog. It skipped into the front room and then froze on the spot, staring at the same corner of the room that the previous dog had disliked so much. The little mite started shaking and pissed itself right there and then.
This dog developed a very nervous personality and would often be seen 'tracking' with his head, as if watching something that simply wasn't there. At least, we couldn't see anything. After a few months of vet appointments and animal psychologists, the dog had to be returned to the farm where they'd bought it.

Then there was the sleepover incident. One night I slept over at Steve's place after a day playing on the Amiga and eating pizza and crips. After collapsing into my sleeping bag bed, I awoke later to find that Steve was out of his bed. I heard him and his dad talking to each other downstairs, but I couldn't make out what they were saying, so I went down to see what was going on. They were in the front room, in the dark, trying to move the sofa. I turned the light on and asked what was happening, when they both suddenly screamed in terror for the briefest of moments, before staring at me, utterly pale. They'd both been sleepwalking, and had decided to move the sofa, which happened to be in the same corner of the room that the dog hated... the next morning was a bit strange over breakfast. Neither one of them could explain it.

A few weeks later, I was around the house again, playing computer games as usual. There was a loud crash from the spare bedroom, and when we tried to get in, the door was blocked, from the inside. After much shoving, the door opened to reveal that the wardrobe had toppled over, wedging itself between the two walls that formed the doorway. No-one was in the room when it happened. Steve's dad initally assumed we'd done it, but he accepted the explanation we gave him straight away, even though we hardly believed it ourselves.

The final straw was when we were sat downstairs watching videos one rainy weekend. Steve's mum was upstairs, cleaning. The familiar howl of the hoover was just about audible over the explosions of Die Hard. She shouted something downstairs, which neither of us made out properly. He replied "What?!" (as teenagers will do) but she didn't repeat it.

Then his mum walked in the front door, carrying shopping. She'd been out all morning, but we didn't know it. She asked why we looked so spooked by her arrival, so we took her upstairs, where we found the hoover plugged in and switched on. She hadn't even started cleaning that day.

They sold the house and moved out not long after that. Since then, the house has changed hands at least 5 times in fifteen years.
( chart cat has an itch, Thu 3 Jul 2008, 14:56, 2 replies)

Dogs (and cats) have better awareness than we do.
If the dog refused to go into the corner, I'd have refused to go into the room.
(TheWeeWitch hasn't been here much recently .., Thu 3 Jul 2008, 15:20, closed)

Yeah
I know what you mean. My dog hates the hoover, that's good enough for me, some other fucker can do it, I'm going nowhere near it.


OP, during this sleepwalking incident, were either of them , y'know, um, "sporting nocturnal wood"? Tell them that the sleepwalking excuse never works, it's still bum-rape.
(Rsoles, Thu 3 Jul 2008, 15:55, closed)