A pea..and something you can check out for yourself
This is a recent experience... I write it here because you can go visit the hotel for yourselves next time you are in central London and see how you react. I, for one, was shitting myself.

My colleagues at work (feeling in a generous mood) treated me to a weekend at the Lanesborough hotel in Knightsbridge for my Birthday..basically a swanky boys weekend. I had no idea about this hotel, but it's seriously luxurious. When you arrive, a butler in a penguin suit unpacks everything for you and your ’outfit for the evening’ is pressed.. You are given personalized stationary ( complete with business cards) so that when you go shopping, you can leave a card for the packages to be delivered. No minibar, but a range of large crystal decanters..etc etc. Each floor has that butler on standby and I must admit I got used to having my own personal Jeeves quite quickly

The first day and evening, we lapped it up..We sat in the bar drinking martinis and generally behaving like ponces. Went to sleep in a massive bed feeling very good about life.The next day, in the afternoon, I was walking out of my room and as I was locking the door, noticed five middle aged women standing in the corridor looking around them smiling. As I was walking towards them to get to the lift, I thought their manner was a bit odd (no one really hangs about in hotel corridors) and asked if they were lost in a friendly way. They laughed self-consciously and told me that they used to work on this floor when it was a hospital. I must have looked surprised, and so they nattered on, taking out an old photo album to show me, full of b&w photos of themselves in uniforms reminiscent of Carry On Nurse movies... They told me that they had come down to London for the weekend and the management of the hotel had let them walk around for old times sake. I asked them what my floor was and they said it was the ward used when people were in and out of intensive care, and pointed out the window to the curving road where the ambulances would come in. They were reminiscing as much to each other as to me and one of them mentioned ”Wasn't the grey lady on this floor?” and another one said ”no” just as they remembered that I was still standing there. Of course, I had to ask ”who was the grey lady?” and they all went quiet. Realising they had put their foot in it, they started by telling me that it was all ”ok”, there had been a service by a priest when they had started converting it to a hotel and then told me (still standing there, really wishing I hadn't asked the question) that they always knew when a patient in intensive care wasn't going to make it because they would ask the nurses ”who is the kind lady in the grey uniform?”. Many patients had given them several descriptions such that they reckoned that ”she” was wearing the uniform of a nurse in the crimean war, when the hospital was originally built.

So, all excited, I went to join my colleagues in the hotel bar. One of them is mega superstitious, and whilst going a shade of grey himself, he asked for the concierge to come and have a word. I related what the nurses had told me and this concierge spoke quietly and rather seriously that, yes, there had been ”instances” in the 17 years he had been working there. The official line was that there is ”nothing” to worry about, but he said that a number of staff had seen things that had ”really scared them” (his words) resulting in them handing in their notices and just walking out.

I asked what the most recent one was and he told us this:

Two weeks before, a ”well known politician” was in town with his entourage. The concierge was on the night shift and this big shot came downstairs in the middle of the night, in his pajamas, out of breath. He insisted that there was a woman in his room. Being who he was, there was extra security present 24/7 and they immediately went up to investigate. They returned saying the room was empty and the concierge meanwhile tried to reassure the frightened politician that, look, when we look at the computer records of the use of your key-card, no one has entered the room through the door. To which he replied ”she didn't come through the door, she came in through the wall”. He refused to go back upstairs and they had to wake his staff to pack up all his stuff and he checked out immediately.

At this point, I am beginning to get decidedly unsettled. The rational part of me said, ”don't be silly, perfectly simple explanation to all of this”. But, having a casual encounter with the nurses, seeing their photo album made me superimpose the vision of a hospital (and a Victorian one at that) onto the luxury facade that had been built up. Add to that a concierge who seemed to confirm what these strangers had told me (he could have denied the whole thing) was too much of a coincidence.

We carried on drinking and enjoying ourselves, but as the day progressed, all three of use were getting more and more quiet, and lost in our thoughts, knowing that at some point we would have to walk upstairs to our rooms in, what was to us now: essentially a haunted house

The irrational side of me took over when I did so. I have to admit I was really scared. I went through the normal routine of getting to bed (brushing teeth, having a piss), in quiet terror, my heart hammering away and I refused to look at any mirrors (or the walls for that matter). I did not sleep a wink but lay under the quilt, every single sound amplified by my imagination

The next day, my colleagues looked as knackered as I felt. We were happy to check out..

I know, they might have all been taking the piss...that thought did not help at the time

When you go visit it, think of a hospital and the layout of the place will make sense. In addition, ask if you can see the special luxury cigar smoking room in the basement. It's at the end of a long corridor and has no windows but set up with leather sofas and industrial strength extractors. The concierge told us it used to be the morgue.
(sabre32, Sun 16 Sep 2012, 17:36, 9 replies)

Shopping Basket
Many years ago my wife and I were viewing an old house with the hope of renting it. The renting agent told us that it used to belong to an old lady and that it was her son that was renting it since she passed away. I said to my wife after the viewing that it was strange that the house was completely empty apart from an old ladies type wheeled shopping basket in the main bedroom to which my wife replied "what basket?" we never went back there...
(Dazzer, Sun 16 Sep 2012, 17:31, 2 replies)

I was a ghost that terrified children. Sort of.
*De-lurks*

It's the late nineties and I am a young graduate. I've been invited back to the kids' theatre group to which I used to belong to direct a play featuring the older members (15-19) as an experiment into doing something other than pantos and Oliver!

The play chosen involves an adult cast but with one child character, played by a 10-year-old who was obedient and showed talent. He also wanted to be told stories. After telling him an elaborate version of Orpheus (I was reading Sandman at the time) he wants to hear a true story. I make up a tale of love and murder that took place in this very theatre... exactly one hundred years ago this very week.

Child is thrilled and happily goes off and tells the rest of the cast. They come to me asking if it's true. Delighted, I go on to make up more details and get other folks who run the place to corroborate the story, some adding details of their own.

The day before we open we're in the theatre during the day to rehearse. During a break the cast want me to turn all the lights off to see if they can see tragic "Suzanne" who was pushed off the balcony and now performs on stage as she never could in her lifetime. They sit on the front row of the audience and I go up onto the balcony where the light switches are.

The lights go out. After 30 seconds of silence someone squeals. A shape moves across the stage. Everyone saw it. They watch some more. It happens again.

From my vantage point I can see a tiny shaft of light filtered in via the foyer shines from the front door onto the centre of the stage. Every time someone walks past the theatre a shadow is cast. But never mind that, everybody else sees a ghost.

I silently walk to the other side of the balcony and push a roll of gaffer tape over the edge and sneak back. The tape gently rolls down the aisle, building up speed before it whacks into the stage with a definate bang.

Screams. I flick the lights back on. Someone claims the tape was on the stage earlier so something must have thrown it off. We get back to work.

Every now and then I go back to that theatre to support the group that helped and supported me. I also hear the tales of Suzanne and the jealous actress who didn't want her to be Juliet but her death was officially ruled a suicide.

I hope this story continues to be passed on. It made me realise exactly from where ghost stories come.
( Ambegris likes his tea stirred anti-clockwise, Sun 16 Sep 2012, 16:57, 2 replies)

Scary worksite
In 2007 I was contracted to work as a Support Worker for a Young Adult accommodation program in the glorious Eastern Suburbs. One of my clients was housed in a 2 bedroom house, which was owned by the state community services department, but was leased to a private, church-inspired organisation. My job was to hang out at this house, in the staff quarters, and wait for the adult client to come home with her "johns." (She was a former state ward, with an intellectual disability which limited her capacity to look after herself independently, hence the need for a support worker). She would have some company, and a bit of extra income, and we would document what he looked like, and whether he murdered us or not.

She wouldn't come home often - there were weeks where none of the staff had contact with her. It was weeks before I first met her. She hated the house, and so did the staff. Due to the "flexibility" within the Employment Award, I would be rostered on duty at this house for maybe four 24-hour blocks in a row. I might start at 3pm Monday, and not clock off (and go back to my own place) until 3pm Thursday. We were allowed 2 hours each day to leave the house, to buy food, or have a "break." Staff were rostered on alone, because it was a "one-on-one" placement, presuming that the staff would have the opportunity to develop quality, therapeutic relationships with the client, because there was only one client for staff to worry about.

This house had several large trees around it, but there were never any possums, which in hindsight I thought was weird, because every house in this city has possums, even in the CBD. I live in a block of hipster flats, so everyone encourages them onto the balcony with slices of organic, fair-trade fruit, and decaf soy lattes. They make a loud coughing noise, like old men with emphysema, and they fight on my roof. And shit on my car. They are the true "rats of the sky." This worksite, however, had nothing. Not even sparrows. The staff quarters were a bedroom, with a desk, and an ensuite. If you kept the windows open all year round, the stench of Glade Plugin teargas and body odour were bearable. The walls in the staff bedroom had staples all over them.

One evening, I was sitting at the desk, reading a book because of no internets. :( I was the only person in the house. For someone to be there with me, they would have to come in through the door, or through the skylight in the kitchen, because the windows had security bars on them. I heard a very angry, scratchy voice shout "Bitch" in my right ear. As if there was someone standing behind me. Scared me shitless. I didn't sleep at all that night. I didn't mention it to the next person on shift, even though we were pretty good friends, because I didn't want her to think I was nutty.

This co-worker phoned me one afternoon, several weeks later. She sounded really rattled, and I assumed it was because something had happened with the client, or one of her gentlemen callers, but no. My co-worker told me that she had been sitting on the bed with her laptop. She didn't have any music or sound playing, because it was necessary for us to hear if the client tried to sneak in through the skylight. She told me that she heard this really loud, horrible scream in her ear, as if someone was standing next to her. She was completely alone in the house, and was completely freaked out. I told her about the voice I'd heard. Somehow she calmed down enough to finish her three day block.

That house gave everyone on the team really bad vibes. We worked at a lot of sites where we were alone for days at a time, and none of us were freaked out at those sites in the way we were at this house. One of the staff attempted to "spiritually cleanse" the staff quarters, by burning sage and reciting prayers, but everyone still felt weird being in there. Several months after our contract to that property was finished, we were told by a manager that several years ago, the department placed a client in the house, with the client's bedroom being what was now the staff quarters. He'd had schizophrenia, which wasn't very well controlled with medication. He had stapled foiled all over the walls of his bedroom to stop people (aliens, government) reading his thoughts. Understandably, he had been very angry and miserable during his time there, and had eventually hanged himself in the ensuite.
(Boodicka, Sun 16 Sep 2012, 14:45, 8 replies)

My wife's bumhole was haunted...
...So we got Bob from B&Q down to do a séance. He spoke some mystical words and rubbed a frozen waffle on his face as he inspected my wife's buttocks.
Then he gave her a swift kick to the abdomen and the entity spoke. It said,
"Prrrrrffffffffftt!"
The room was filled with an unholy stench, and Bob explained that the Ghost was looking for a new host and that we should not inhale. We had to wait for the spirit to leave before we could take breath again.
(NoStrings Tastes like zombies!!, Sun 16 Sep 2012, 14:18, Reply)

This one time I died and then I had a feel of Demi Moore's tits while she was making pottery.

( Dr Preference AjcuiVd289, Sun 16 Sep 2012, 11:24, 8 replies)

A friend I went to school with
Told me this weird tale. They used to have a visitor who they refered to as uncle Jack. He was not really her uncle, but a guy that used to be engaged to her mother. Although her mum married someone else, they had remained on friendly terms. Anyhoo, one day Jack and his wife came to visit them and as they were just about to go my friend's mum gave him an almighty hug and a kiss then flew out of the room crying. After they had gone my friend ran after her and said "What's up?" "I am never going to see him again!" replied her mum, tearfully. Within the week 'Uncle Jack' was dead, he had a massive heart attack.
An ex of mine used to work in a care home. One of the residents was an old lady they used to refer to as "The witch", not because she was nasty or anything, but because she seemed to have an uncanny knack of predicting the future. One day one of the staff, an engaged lady, was proudly showing everyone in the home her new wedding dress and while everyone else was going "Ooh ahh "and "isn't it lovely?" etc etc. 'The witch' piped up "Yeah,nice dress honey, just seems a pity that you'll never get to wear it!" Of course everyone was puzzled by this remark but as it turned out just before the wedding the bride to be was killed in a car crash.
(Mackeson_drinker, Sun 16 Sep 2012, 7:12, 3 replies)

This one time a whole toilet roll managed to get used in just a day......
(shake'n'bake Tally Ho, Biatch!, Sun 16 Sep 2012, 5:54, 7 replies)

RIPPED HIS TROUSERS
If there's no such thing as the paranormal, somebody please explain this to me.

Myself, sister, sister's daughter and son were having a séance one night. We'd made letter cards and spaced them out on a glass table. We also had a YES and a NO card. We used an upturned wine glass in the centre and each placed a finger on the glass.

We began by asking 'Is there anybody there?'... as you do.

After a short time, the glass started going in circles and moving to random letters then back again to the centre.

After it spelled stuff like KJEBSPFDB for a few minutes, we were almost ready to give up, but then it started to spell the words TROUSERS, HIS, PURSE, MAM, RIPPED in no particular order.

Eventually it settled on
RIPPED HIS TROUSERS several times, with the odd PURSE thrown in. This is all it was saying now. After a while it changed to MAM.

All it was saying was MAM. MAM MAM MAM MAM MAM. We decided that it probably wanted my mother at the table, so we gave her a shout and she happily joined us. As soon as she sat down, it went back to
MAM PURSE
RIPPED HIS TROUSERS
repeat...

It spelled that no more than twice when my mum suddenly let go of the glass and all the colour went out of her face.

She instantly put her hand to her mouth and looked totally freaked. We asked her what was wrong but she just sat there in the same position just shaking her head whenever we asked if she was ok. I can still see her now.

After a minute or two she got up and went into the kitchen. We all followed her in there and found her taking her purse out of her handbag. She then took a photograph out of her purse, one I had never seen before. She showed it to us, it was a photo of her dad and a mate of his (both long dead). They were standing in front of a building with iron railings in front of it.

She went on to explain that she had found this photo about a week previous, and had not seen it for years before that. I think it was somewhere her dad used to work, and one day he had got locked in by the locking up guy who didn't realise my granddad was in there working late.

Apparently, he managed to get out of a window, but then had to get past the iron gates. He got on top of the gates ok, but when it came to jumping down, his trousers had caught and it ripped them. My mum remembers her mum giving her dad a right telling off because he'd ruined the trousers.

My point is, none of us at the table knew this story, mum had never mentioned it to us, because, the simple reason she had also forgotten it until the words were spelled out on that table just a few days after rediscovering the photo. A photo that had been missing for years.

We decided that day, none of us together or individually would ever have anything to do with another séance, and we never have.
( Black Moon Not cracked, I'm all up to be., Sat 15 Sep 2012, 22:45, 9 replies)

I am a firm non-believer... However...
There are certain goings on at the current Miss Blueberry's house that I just can't get my head around.

She lives in a very old house with her parents that, once upon a time, used to be the maid's quarters of the local manor house (lovingly restored to be a block of flats..). There are obviously strange noises a plenty in an old building that can, more often than not, be attributed to windows rattling, pipes creaking and wind down the chimney. The usual malarky.

One evening, however, we were alone in the house on the ground floor and heard footsteps in the room above us. Our first logical thought was that someone had come home early without us knowing. As it is a large house this happens often without anyone hearing the front door. The footsteps continued, quite a definite noise, and started coming down the stairs to the corridor outside the room. They stopped about halfway down. We went to the corridor to see who had come home, no-one there. Strange, we thought. "Oh well, must have forgotten something upstairs" said the missus. We went into the room, put on the tv and settled down. About half an hour later her parents came home with both the dogs. Half an hour later her brother returned home with his girlfriend. This accounted for everyone that could have been in the house. It was definitely footsteps and the room above us that we heard them in was her bedroom. I didn't really sleep much that night

More recently we have been redecorating the house for her parents and a flurry of things have happened to me specifically since. I was carrying a ladder through the house one day to paint the ceilings when all of a sudden it stopped in a doorway. The obvious thought was that I had caught it on the door frame. "Nope, not caught on anything, good few inches around it on all sides" I though. However, the thing wouldn't budge. Suddenly it was thrown upwards out of my hands. I have no idea what could have caused this, but I certainly couldn't put it down to anything sane.

The next day I was feeding the dogs when I heard a balloon popping next to my ear. I was fully expecting to see young miss blueberry right behind me, giggling, after playing a "good" prank on me. I looked up to see everyone else on the other side of the kitchen. I asked them if they heard it, none of them had. The dogs kept sniffing the air in the corner where I had fed them though, and barking at the nothing that was in that corner. There are balloons in the room next to that one.

A few days after this, painting a new section of the house, we were removing paintings from the walls. I went to remove my first painting of the day and it fell from the wall, straight down. I was roughly two feet from it when it fell, walking towards it. "The wire must have gone on the back" I thought. There was no wire, a solid metal hook on both the wall and the painting. There is no way that painting could have fallen straight down. It hadn't moved for 6 years previously.

I don't like her house any more.

Sorry about the length, mine's shrivelled in irrational fear
(blue36c, Sat 15 Sep 2012, 21:34, Reply)

Weird
I've not seen a ghost.. Or I don't think so.. But there are 2 things I remember that are filed under 'unexplained'

1 my grandad died.. And I dreamt about him a few weeks later. He was in the back garden with my nan's dog (also dead) and my cousin (alive).
I thought to myself, why is my cousin there?.. He's alive..
My cousin killed himself 15 years later at the age of 21.. I remembered that dream instantly when I.heard the news.. Not scary, just unexplained.

2 my mum used to own and let a cottage in Cornwall which was a great place for me to take young lasses for a weekend for guaranteed filthy sex. But. Every girl I took there had horrific screamy night terrors on the first night, always claiming to have known there was another threatening presence in the room by the door.. not scary for me, but getting woken by loud screaming did make me shit my pants a little bit. I loved that place, but mum sold it as it was too far away to maintain regularly. Unexplained weirdness.
Apologies for lack of shed sex.
(bangthedrum, Sat 15 Sep 2012, 21:16, 4 replies)

I AM HAUNTED
by the fact that one day I'll log in here and read a some what lengthy story that eventually turns out to be about Luke Skywalker seeing the ghosts of an old man, a little goblin creature and his father as a young man with a mullet whilst attending the latter's cremation in some kind of arcane religious ceremony.
(FartThroughAWalkieTalkie wished you were dead in ditch on, Sat 15 Sep 2012, 18:55, Reply)

The scientific term is Pavor Nocturnus....
...and the fear it produces is incomparable to anything I've ever experienced.

I'm asleep, basically. But I don't know this when it happens. Please remember that as you continue to read. All I know is I'm lying in bed, completely paralyzed from my head to my toes. And then they come. 'They' are the barely-glimpsed demons that I catch in the dark through the needle-like gaps in my eyelids that it takes every ounce of strength in my body to force open. They creep, at first, around my bed; clawing at the covers and whispering to each other. The whispering gets louder as they circle. They have eyes of fire and feathers on their heads. They appear to be discussing me and, in doing so, getting angry. As they get angry they start to beat, claw and kick me. I still feel the blows despite the physical paralysis. I want to scream but I can't. The covers are removed completely and the whispers turn to screams - other-wordly shrieks of malicious, hateful intent. With every fibre, sinew and muscle in my body I'm trying to move; to run or defend myself. But I can't. I can feel tears rolling down my face. I can feel sweat on my face. But I can't move an inch. I am, certainly, about to die in a most horrific way. Sometimes I'm hauled on to the floor or thrown against a bedroom wall. Sometimes I'm just set-upon and torn to pieces where I lay, stricken and immobile. But the savageness of their attack, the acrid smell of death upon their breath and their terrifying, dripping maws are always the last thing I witness before I wake up on the floor, against the wall or wherever they have deigned to leave me, caked in sweat, shaking and weeping.

The doctor calls them Night Terrors and, as they only occur once or twice a year, hasn't deemed them worthy of treatment.

What I shied away from telling her is the bit that really scares me.

Sometimes I can still hear their whispers after I've woken.

Re-post from the 'Creepy' QOTW
(R. Jimlad twitter.com/sirmarkymark, Sat 15 Sep 2012, 15:36, 3 replies)

I'd rather have a piece of toast.

( BraynDedd Natasha Kaplinsky's labia majora, Sat 15 Sep 2012, 15:11, 2 replies)

I once saw a goatse.
It was fucking terrifying.
( CaptainCrackerjack live trout, slow motion, Sat 15 Sep 2012, 13:14, 2 replies)

I once had sex with a goat.
In a shed.
(Vigilante Man weeps because you're stupid., Sat 15 Sep 2012, 12:23, Reply)

Proof of life after death
My pal's wife is a mad thing. Always wanting me to get up crazy sex things ( with his permission). So far she's had me shag in the middle of a huge storm on a field or go to a swinging club with her.
This time it was in a cemetery. She wanted sex in a graveyard. Meh it was sex: I was up for it.
Come the agreed night we meet in the pub opposite a well known city centre graveyard full of celebrity graves that is open late ( the dead centre of town - fnrr) She gets drunk which gets her frisky and we decide to go for it.
The first attempt is aborted (her hanging over a gravestone, me behind is a failure as another couple wander in nearby, perhaps for the same purpose who knows?) so we go further in the grounds until we find a big flat stone grave. I put her on her back and we go at it a second time.
After a few minutes I realise this is not the greatest experience I've ever had, my knees hurt on the stone and it's a tad cold but in for a penny in for 3 inches I think so I keep humping until I suddenly hear quite a lot of noise nearby. I look up and suddenly there are flashes of light everywhere and I realise a crowd of around 20 mostly Japanese tourists are photographing us as we jump up, part dress and get the hell out of there like, err, two bats out of hell.
It was an organised ghost walk we didn't know took place every weekend.
I like to think that to this day some guy in Nagasaki shows the pictures to some pals as proof of life after death. And that he is convinced the afterlife is banging great fun.
(beaverwastemanagement a real company. I want to work for them!, Sat 15 Sep 2012, 7:37, 14 replies)

Closed doors
In my early teens I shared a room with my brother. We had a bunk bed, they don't do much for privacy but are definitely more fun and provide at least a small bit of personal space. My brother, being a few years younger than myself liked to have the door to our room slightly open and the hall light on. The bed was positioned such that you could see the door and the comforting hall light on.

My grandfather had been ill recently and had been submitted to hospital, we had visited a few times and he was lucid enough to teach me how to make a decent paper-airplane. As time went by his condition worsened, depressing, but expected for someone in their late 80s. At the time I prayed for some peace in his passing. If it was his time to go, I asked the big guy in the sky to let it be painless.

My grandfather passed away a few days later. Whilst I know it was more coincidence I always felt a bit guilty for "praying" for him to die.

A few months later, the funeral had passed, family life had gone back to normal and I had a rather vivid dream. I had dreamed my grandfather had come into my room, stood by my bunk bed and tucked me in. He stood there for a few moments in the comforting way that a content family member does by the bedside of a child or grandchild before he walked from the room and shut the door behind him.

I woke up after dreaming this and noticed the door was closed. We never shut the door to the room. I got a big dose of goosebumps, I was sure I had been dreaming. Unnerved, I opened the door to the hallway and getting back into bed I stared at the hall light until I fell back to sleep.

I never mentioned this to anyone. A couple of years later at a family gathering my siblings and I were sitting round chatting and talk got onto ghost stories.

My brother then related the exact same dream I had about my grandfather's visit to our bedroom, the only difference being that he stood by the lower bunk nearer my brother.

I'm not much of a believer in ghosts. But I had never mentioned that dream before. Coincidence perhaps? But the chills I got when he told that story are something I will never forget.
(TheASK, Sat 15 Sep 2012, 0:07, Reply)

One night I opened a bottle of wine
And when I woke up next morning there was still some wine left in the bottle.

Some kind of paranormal activity is the only plausible explanation for this weird phenomenon.
(Figmaus, Fri 14 Sep 2012, 22:08, 10 replies)

This must be all bollocks
Because I'm a rational, intelligent man with as broad an education as you can get and I KNOW there can be no such thing as ghosts.

But a lot of years ago we bought an old farmhouse. The farm had long since gone and the house was actually a listed building in the middle of suburbs. We moved in together with our cat.

If you're not familiar with cat behaviour let me tell you that when a cat encounters another cat that it isn't familiar with it arches it's back, fluffs it's tail up, flattens it's ears, bares it's teeth and sticks as close to walls as it possibly can.

The first time our cat got to the top of the stairs in our new house this is precisely what she did. Just at the top of the stairs, nowhere else in the house.

We'd taken a couple of weeks off to move in and over the first week we watched the cat

Cat behaviour primer lesson 2. When a cat gets to know another cat, and decides it poses no threat, it will either ignore it or play. Cat play behaviour includes running about with tail raised, rolling and play-fighting.

Within a week of moving in to the house our cat was play fighting with an invisible, imaginary cat at the top of the stairs, but ONLY at the top of the stairs. She seemed to miss her imaginary friend in other parts of the house.

Cats can't read, and are unable to assimilate logical, coherent explanations for natural phenomena. Obviously I have no reason to believe in ghosts but the cat did.
( The Disappointed Caravanner of the year, Fri 14 Sep 2012, 22:04, 3 replies)

Years ago..
My ex g/f had some friends around so I sat and played some Xbox while they chatted. One of them was a practicing witch, I took all of that stuff with a pinch of salt. So they decide to do a "protection spell" on the house (we had not long moved in).
They get a candle, bowl of water and some other crap and sat in a circle on the floor, I'm lookin on bemused and the witch one starts with "protect this house" stuff etc etc. Candle is lit as she's saying all this stuff. Then at the end (I'll never forget this) she says "The spell is finished". At that exact moment the candle goes out... No draughts in the room, no-one blew it out and the flame didn't flicker or waver as if it had been blown or somethin, it just went out.
I just sat there thinking WTF?!? Still freaks me out to this day.
(Outrun Is it the weekend yet?, Fri 14 Sep 2012, 21:45, 1 reply)

Beetlejuice, beetlejuice, bee......

(Misery McUglywife an attention seeking sociopathic fuckstain., Fri 14 Sep 2012, 21:31, 7 replies)

A Roasted Pea
A bit over five years ago, I needed open heart surgery to repair a defective mitral valve. Three "creepy" things:

1) Two nights before the operation, I was sleeping in my bed. I woke up around 2am, and standing at the foot of my bed was my ex-wife. There were several strange things about this; firstly, I was living about 8,000 miles away from where she lived, in Sydney. Secondly, she had died eighteen months earlier. And finally, she was dressed in her "going away" outfit from our wedding, 25 years previously, and appeared as if she was the young, attractive 19 year old that she was when we were married. She spoke to me - "Don't worry, we will be back together soon." I knew I wasn't dreaming - I could hear other sounds, saw my (current) wife sleeping next to me.

2) Just after the operation, when I was in the ICU recovery area, tubes stuck in me (ever tried peeing in a tube stuck up your jap's eye?) it was shift change for the ICU nurses. There was one nurse for every two beds - and my nurse was briefing her replacement. After she told the new nurse what had been done to me, she said "They had a lot of trouble starting him up again." - referring to the point in the open heart surgery when once your heart is back inside your chest, and they have reconnected all the blood vessels and all that stuff, they get the little paddles to zap in back into pumping. That filled me with no end of confidence....

3) The next evening, now in a normal (single person) hospital room, I was trying to sleep. My chest hurt like buggery - after all, I had been assaulted by a doctor wielding a circular saw, had a vital organ pulled out... you get the picture. And I still was peeing through a plastic tube. A creature appeared at the end of my bed, long fingers, pale white skin, looking like the classical undead. He reached out towards me, and said "We missed getting you this time, but we will be back." Behind him, there was a progression of spirit like forms crossing from my room to the corridor.

I didn't sleep well for the rest of the week. But a pleasant highlight was when a young, attractive nurse removed the catheter from my old fella.... (sadly, the length wasn't up to his usual extent)
(Maclir, Fri 14 Sep 2012, 20:56, 4 replies)

My guilty pleasure
is answering questions 232 weeks late.

It certainly beats doing anything interesting on a Friday evening.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Fri 14 Sep 2012, 20:47, 5 replies)

Weirdness in Surrey...
Back in the mid-80's when I was around 9yrs old, my family moved. We'd upped sticks from the big shitty and found ourselves in the semi-rural idyl of Haslemere, Surrey.

For us kids it was great - went from tiny flat with balcony, to huge house with endless gardens. The street we moved to was a real mix - some very tired, old terraced cottages and a larger number of 1930's semis - in which we lived.

At first I didn't want move, leave school, make new friends - so I was bribed. A shiny new BMX was waiting for me in the porch when we first arrived at the house and that did indeed take the sting out of moving.

I was in 9yr old heaven. Cruising the quiet streets, jumping kerbs, conducting massive back-brake skids down the hill. A decent place to grow up. The school wasn't bad - and I entered on a wave of popularity having not only been to London but lived there all my life. AND I owned a BMX. Things were going to be ok.

Everyday after school, I'd run home, get changed and jump on the BMX and ride aimlessly up and down our street. It was on one of these evenings that I met Janice.

Janice lived at the very end of the road, in the very last of the ancient terraced cottages. It was obvious even to my 9yr old self, that Janice and her family were exceptionally poor. There was no car in the drive, the front lawn was an overgrown mess of weeds, bare light bulbs hung in every room and Janice herself was a state.

She had pure fire-red hair, 'cut' by her mother into a perfect pudding-bowl. She wore hand-me down clothes and seem to live in a pair of faded, denim dungarees. And worst of all, was her bike. Janice's bike was not cool - well not cool for 1985. It was a Raleigh Chopper that she must have inherited from some older brother who had long since flown the nest.

But I liked Janice. At first she was shy. Slowly trailing me round the street as I showed off with my bunny-hops and attempts at wheelies. But her confidence grew and after a while we started chatting. I told her all about London, about the tube, about Harrods, about Oxford Street and she hung on my every word. Smiling shyly with a hand over her mouth, always trying to cover up the gaps where her adult teeth had yet to descend.

I soon forgot about her un-coolness and aching poverty and I actually began to look forward to seeing her each evening. On one particular summer's night, she didn't appear - which wasn't unusual, she often wouldn't come outside, despite me waving through the window. But on that night I really wanted to see her. I had new trick to show her (I could now bounce confidently on the front wheel) and I couldn't wait till the next day.

I wheeled my bike up to her front door, searched for a bell and finding none, I knocked on the door. An elderly looking gentleman opened the door, followed slightly behind him by a frail woman wearing curlers in her hair.

'Um...I live up the street and I was just wondering if Janice could come out to play'. I mumbled, fidgeting and staring at my shoes.

'Janice?' Said the old man.

'Janice?' Echoed the frail lady.

'Yes, Janice...I was wondering if she wanted to come and ride bikes again.'

I looked up at the couple and finally got a good peek into Janice's house. It was threadbare. No carpets, peeling wallpaper and those horrible, glaring bare light bulbs swinging gently from side to side. But hung on the wall by the stairs, was the one semblance of a normal family life - a large, framed photo of a grinning, missing toothed Janice, sat on her Chopper, leaning forward into the camera with her elbows propped up on the handlebars, resplendent in her favourite denim dungarees.

The woman approached me at the doorstep. Something was not right. She looked me up and down and then actually prodded me with her fingers. I began to back away.

'Janice?' The old woman said again. 'Janice?'

'Yes, Janice.' I managed to say in return, pointing up to the photograph, deperately trying to manoeuvre my bike to face away from the house and mount it at the same time. 'You know, Janice, she lives here.'

'Son,' said the old man in a detached, almost dream like voice, 'son, Janice was killed in 1973.'

Suddenly, the world seemed to turn too rapidly. I felt light-headed and knew I was gonna puke at any second. Whilst my head whirred and my balance deserted me, I noticed the frail looking lady had practically collapsed.

She ended up kneeling on the carpetless floor clinging to the old man's legs, wailing incomprehensibly whilst staring at me with a terrifying expression, one caught half-way between pure hatred and unadulterated love.

I staggered back. Managed to mount my bike and tore off down the street to the safety of home. It was weeks before I could tell my story. I told my Mum. She didn't laugh. But she did mention it to one of the other mothers at school. Later my Mum came to speak to me. She relayed what the other mother had told her. That there was a girl called Janice. That she went to my school. And that she lived on my street.

Janice was killed in the summer of 1973. A delivery van wiped her out as she cycled down the road that led to our street.

In later years I named my daughter Janice. It only seemed right.
( Albert Marshmallow is a completely irredeemable cunt, Fri 14 Sep 2012, 18:35, 12 replies)

Woooooo!
A pearoast from a different age, this is. I actually found it again by googling - author unknown? Pah! It was me!

A few years ago (lots of years ago now, actually), I was involved in the conversion of some 17th Century buildings in Durham City, England, from houses into shops and a cafe.

For those who've never been, Durham is an old Cathedral town, with many old buildings crammed into quite a small space.

These particular buildings were based around an old courtyard of Saddler Street, and consisted of a large building of about three storeys and a narrower one of similar height. These were seriously old and atmospheric buildings; the smaller of the two had beams which were reckoned to have been old ship's timbers from about the time of the Spanish Armada, and the larger one had lots of narrow passageways upstairs, and a big oak panelled room.

While I helped prepare the smaller building for use, the larger building was being converted into a Cafe.

Taran, the daughter of the owners of the Cafe, used to play alone on one of the upper floors of the building while her parents worked downstairs.

(At this time she was about three years old, I think, and her parents swore later that they hadn't mentioned death to her in any particular way - all her grandparents were still alive and she'd never had any pets which might have expired.)

On this occasion her parents could hear her thumping about upstairs, and called her down.

"Don't make so much noise, dear!" they said.

"It's not me, it's Davvy making the noise" she answered promptly.

Like many children of that age, Taran had pretty regular games with imaginary friends, so her parents weren't too impressed by this attempt to duck the blame.

"Well, ask her not to be so noisy" they asked.

"I will", said Taran, "but she likes making noise because she doesn't get to play much. She says she's been dead for such a long time that she can only come out to play with me"...

In an interesting development, a few days after this happened, Taran (who had never been spoken to about death, remember) started holding funeral services for her Barbie dolls; putting them in boxes and surrounding them with flowers, saying prayers "for the dead Barbie" and generally being quite alarming. She stopped short of burying them, though!

Over a few months, the cafe was finished and opened, and in time Taran's fascination with death wore off, and - as far as I know - nothing more was heard of "Davvy".

- - although it's worth mentioning that the staff at the cafe often receive warnings from people who visit the upstairs toilets that they can hear a child playing in the stockroom...
(richardm, Fri 14 Sep 2012, 18:18, 3 replies)

I quite enjoy having guests.

( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Fri 14 Sep 2012, 15:53, 2 replies)

I ain't afraid of no goats.

( Dr Preference AjcuiVd289, Fri 14 Sep 2012, 14:57, 3 replies)

Back in primary school I read some ghost story picture book.
One of the stories that stood out was that whenever you hear an owl hoot at night it means that someone is about to die.

Still freaks me out sometimes when I hear owls hoot.
( Airman Gabber Living life like a 70's BBC presenter, Fri 14 Sep 2012, 14:25, 8 replies)