My parents...
Always thought that I was scared of the horror and thriller films we used to watch on a Saturday evening, as I'd sit with a book, occasionally peeping over the top of it.

In reality, it had nothing to do with fear and everything to do with the sex scenes that were a certainty in each of these films. People getting their heads chopped off I had no problem with. Couples getting it on, sex-wise, I did, especially when sat with my mum and dad.
( CaptainCrackerjack live trout, slow motion, Thu 20 Sep 2012, 11:59, Reply)

People have mentioned music.
I like music, but I am not a music geek. I will listen to some utter drivel, if I like I like it I don't care if it's pop rubbish or a manufactured band, or some weird underground beeps and bongs.

A few times I have been humming a song in my head, sometimes out loud, then gone to put the radio on, and nearly to the beat that song has been playing. I recall specifically one case a few years ago, when Jamiroquai was not on the daytime radio 1 playlist, but the song I was humming came straight on the radio at the right point I was singing/humming along to.

Coincidence, yes - but still quite unusual.

This has been discussed before, before the advent of mobile phones, we would use the landline to organise going out with mates. Most evenings I would go out as a 16/17 year old. I would call at a similar time one specific mate, but the time range was a good hour, say 4pm to 5.30pm on average.

The number of times, I dialled one mates number to have him on the other end of the line. In that he had picked up the phone to call me, upon picking up the receiver ready to dial, he would find me on the end of the line. We did this both ways. No time for the phone to ring, just picking up and phone connecting at the exact same time. Once again, odd, but just coincidence!
(feedingtimeatthezoo day 1 of his bikini diet started, Thu 20 Sep 2012, 11:42, 2 replies)

The only one I know
Here’s the only ghost story I’ve had any connection with, purely because I knew the people involved at the time. Please feel free to tl:dr as it’s a bit of a long one. Let’s go back to 1978….

Me and a friend of mine were fresh faced freshers going out into the big wide world at Manchester Polytechnic – me doing photography, her doing drama. The drama course at that time was based around the old Granada studios in Didsbury, a proper old theatre of a building. While she was there, ‘L’ started going out with a guy called ‘P’ – another drama student – and it’s him that this story revolves around.

Towards the end of the first year, L and P’s class were working towards some kind of end of term production which involved late night rehearsals at the theatre. One night, P was in the green room below the main stage when he heard what sounded like a siren going off. He walked out of the room, up the stairs and along the wings to look out onto the stage. Everyone else seemed to be carrying on as usual so P just presumed it was someone mucking about with a fire alarm or something. He turned to go back down to the green room and that’s when he saw him. A man in a pin stripe suit, the lower parts of his legs apparently sunk into the floor, looking up at P and pleading ‘Help me’.

They found P in the car park in a state of shock an hour or so later. When he told everyone what had happened, it struck a chord with one of the lecturers who recounted the story to his wife. A few days after the incident, the lecturer’s wife gave him a photo to show to P. When P saw it, not surprisingly shaken, he said ‘Yes, that’s him’.

It turned out that the lecturer’s wife used to work as a make up artist for Granada and specifically on a series that ran from the 50s to the early 70s called ‘Armchair Theatre’. In the early days, a lot of the AT broadcasts were live and came from the studios that were now the School of Theatre. During one production she worked on in the 60s, an actor had unfortunately suffered a fatal heart attack half way through the broadcast but, being live, a decision was made to carry on and improvise around the actor’s part. The actor was, as you’ve guessed, the one that P reckoned he had seen, dressed in costume and standing on the original wings floor before it had been built up.

Naturally, when I first heard the story from L and P, I was suitably sceptical. Then, a while ago in the just-pre-Internet days, I saw a documentary on 'Armchair Theatre' that included a section on this broadcast (google "Armchair Theatre” Underground). The play was about a potential nuclear attack with a group of people gathered together in an Underground station and was punctuated with the noise of air raid sirens throughout.

Not sure what to believe nowadays but it makes a good creepy story when I can find someone who I haven’t told it too before.

EDIT
Oooh. Just done a bit of googling and it seems the unfortunate actor died in make up.
( sponge monkey is knitting himself, Thu 20 Sep 2012, 11:11, Reply)

Another summer fayre win story like misterfeesh below
As a kid I was at a school summer fayre. I had about 30p to spend, so I was going around trying to decide how to best use my limited funds. I passed the "Wheel Of Fortune," without paying it much attention.

But suddenly I felt rather strange. It seemed as if the fayre had receded, like I was seeing it from a great distance. Like a mild out-of-body experience. I was filled with a feeling, a certainty, that if I went on that Wheel of Fortune, I would win.

So I went up, and asked for a number. There were two left, and for a moment I panicked, not knowing what to do. But then it struck me, whichever number I picked would be the right one. So I took one, pretty much at random. The stallholder span the wheel, clickety clickety.

I still felt confident. No, more than that, assured. The wheel slowed, I saw my number coming up to the pointer; it almost clicked past to the next one, but just held on, rocked back and stopped. I had won. I wasn't surprised.

Now, like anyone with a functioning higher nervous system, I reject the idea of ghosts and such nonsense. But is it possible to see into the future? That seems less clear. I have a lot of time for the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum physics; perhaps it's possible to get some feeling about one possible future? I can't deny that I won, after definitely predicting that I would. I certainly remember an odd sensation, too. Oh, perhaps it was coincidence and a faulty memory and wishful thinking. Makes me wonder, though.

And since you ask, I won a bottle of champagne. Which I was, of course, too young to drink.
(moon monkey is busy making memories worth repressing, Thu 20 Sep 2012, 10:51, Reply)

Random music
It must be something about all these stories this week, but I walked into my living room where I'd left my ipod charging in its dock last night and all of a sudden it started playing music. The song was "Automatic" by Less Than Jake. A somewhat creepy coincidence, no?!

I put it down to electronic malfunction and turned it off.
(Petite chien is going to do science to it, Thu 20 Sep 2012, 10:10, 2 replies)

"Religion is man's attempt to communicate with the weather."

( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Thu 20 Sep 2012, 10:07, 2 replies)

pointless spooky giant cuddly panda win
Once I was chatting to some friends while there was some town fayre kind of thing going on. In the middle of the conversation, I said 'oh hang on a minute, I'm just going to go and win that giant panda over there.' Having said this I walked over to the tombola stall and said 'I'll have the giant panda please' reached into the bucket and pulled out the ticket for the giant panda. Thanked the rather surprised stall keeper, picked up the giant panda and went back to talk to my mates.
I don't know why or how that happened or what made me do it. The panda just ended up sat in my friends garage going mouldy.
(teasus likes tea, Thu 20 Sep 2012, 1:59, Reply)

speaking of scary dreams
I used to share a house with a mate. He had the car and the job near the supermarket so he used to do all the food shopping and we'd halve the bills. He wasn't the most imaginative of people when it came to food and we were pretty skint so we lived for a while on a diet of cheap nasty pies served with potatoes and either baked beans or tinned peas. Yum!
One night I dreamed that I was eating baked beans. I ate so many that they started to ooze out of my ears. I could feel the individual beans glooping through my ear canal and it was truly horrific. For about the next ten years every time I tried to eat baked beans I'd retch. Even now I can only handle them in small quantities. I also do my own bloody shopping and eat real food for about the same amount of money.
(teasus likes tea, Thu 20 Sep 2012, 1:07, 3 replies)

captain caveman
Many many moons ago I had my office in the garage due to lack of space. Due to the lack of natural light and bare breezeblock walls, this became known as my cave.
The house had extensive telephone cabling all over it and I realised this could be used to pipe music around. I wired it all up to the output from my computer in the cave and we could have music all over the house with the aid of several pairs of old computer speakers I had lying around. not particularly hi-fi but surprisingly ok and we couldn't afford better anyway. We used to leave the speakers on most of the time.

One day I had the bright idea to set the yell of captain caveman as my incoming email noise. cue the whole family jumping out of our collective skins as this bloodcurdling yell of something like "aroobadijudeglenagablewoo" resounded around the house at something like 11pm

DukeEuphoria's post reminded me
(teasus likes tea, Thu 20 Sep 2012, 1:02, 2 replies)

Gost in the machines...
Time and time ago, back in the days when the pentium was new and exiting, when the SNES was very nearly the bees knees of all things entertaining, and the PS1 was the very cutting edge of excellent...

Came home one late one evening. Bleary eyed and with my head still full of curly brackets, ampersands and double equals signs. To find Best Beloved cowering in the corner of the sofa, curled around a pillow and with evidence of extensive crying all around. Poor girl was utterly terrified.

Over the next 15 minutes I tried to pry an explanation out of her in between bouts of sobbing. Whatever this was it had scared her very badly, badly enough that she didn't want to talk about it.
So I wrapped my arms around her and we just sat there quietly.
About 20 minutes later she screamed, jumped up and started crying again. Managing to tell me this time that she'd heard "The noise" that she was certain I'd managed to banish from the house just by being there.

Explanation pours out of her like water from a burst dam. All afternoon, ever since she got home, there has been this strange high pitched screaming half heard in the background, too quiet to pin down and too intermittent for her to be certain of its objective reality.
Given that her mother is a full blown Loop-De-Doo schizophrenic and has the paperwork to prove it, the poor lass was pretty certain that it was either a) ghosts (unlikely) or b) the onset of The Voices trying to talk to her. She wasn't keen on either.
I had, of course, heard nothing...

Quietened down again and listened intently, about 15 mins later there it was. A definite, if faint, ethereal screaming noise. Lasted a long and faintly sphincter tightening 30 seconds and then faded away.

I knew that noise of old, I recognised my foe and knew how to deal with it in seconds. Told best beloved to leave the room as she wouldn't want to see what I was about to do, and took up the universal remote as the closest blunt instrument to hand...

Closing the door so that the dear girl would not be disturbed by my actions I did what I knew had to be done to banish the specter.

Switched off the amplifier that was feeding from the Playstation to the speakers. Seems that setting the volume to zero when you pause Silent Hill doesn't _quite_ result in utter silence.

Nasty bug, they should fix that...
( DukeEuphoria Comes highly reccomended, Wed 19 Sep 2012, 18:50, 1 reply)

Back in the nineties I worked for a gentleman in Atlanta called Mr Turner, who was a bit of a big shot in the media.
One day he was having a meeting with Kate Hudon's mother, so I walked into the office with a some coffee, and offered it to them by saying "Ms Hawn, Ted?"
( Dr Preference AjcuiVd289, Wed 19 Sep 2012, 15:06, Reply)

Creeping myself out
Now, I admit I have an open mind to these things but one particular incident really did spook me out.

a mate was showing me round their new house (rented and shared accomodation) and I have to say I wasn't taken with the place. It felt.. weel strange for want of a better word. Still it was dark and rubbish outside so I put it down to that.

Anyway, there was one room left to look at on the second floor. As I put my hand on the handle to open it I could see exactly what was in the room. It was as though someone had shown me a picture really quickly and took me back. My mate behind me actually asked me what was up so it must have been obvious something wierd was going on.

I explained the above and pushed the door open for fear of looking like some sort of ghost fearing wuss and it was exactly as I had seen. A room empty bar one chair, small wooden one at an angle to the window as though someone had been sitting their and looking out.

Ok not the scariest story in the world but nothing I could explain and soemthing that has made me keep the aforementioned open mind.

5t.
(fivetide, Wed 19 Sep 2012, 14:37, 4 replies)

A bump in the night woke me from my sleep
I do wish my house would stop wandering around at night.
(ParaSitius is an Optimistic Pessimist, Wed 19 Sep 2012, 13:52, Reply)

Sleep
Sleep comes too easily, it's like falling down a well, I can feel it happening, the buzzing starts and I know that they are coming, the faceless shadows that torment me. I can feel the hysteria and panic rising, can't run, can't scream. I feel hands around my ankles pulling me down the bed and through the veil of my half closed lids I see in the mirror on the chimney breast, shadows pouring through the wall as the room bends and twists into an endless tunnel with no light at the end.

The crushing pain in my chest starts and I can feel such malevolence in the room with me, I am going to die. It is going to kill me. I try to focus myself and try to move a finger, a toe and as soon as I do the shadows vanish.

Other times, I get the same sensation of falling and all of a sudden I am sinking through the matress, watching coils of metal and wads of foam give way to pipes and dust, then I stop because I am stuck, to my own sleeping feet. I am my own shadow, like Peter Pan, partially sewn on by Wendy.

Very occasionally, I climb out of the window and swim through the night sky, every so often touching down to push of from the ground. I see back gardens of friends houses and twinkling lights, it looks like a toy town from up here and I feel so happy.

I am, I must admit, fairly likely to atribute experiences I can't explain to something other worldly and I realise that the above is due to weird sleepy time chemicals but the flying dreams, I love!
(GirlOfTheWorld, Wed 19 Sep 2012, 13:18, 1 reply)

I knew a ghost once,
belonged to the recon unit.
(ParaSitius is an Optimistic Pessimist, Wed 19 Sep 2012, 12:53, Reply)

when I was a bit younger, in the 80's...
Me and two other scientists got kicked out of our cushy positions at a university in New York City where we studied the occult. We decide to set up a shop in an old firehouse (which we cleaned up to via a montage) and further pursue our interest in this subject, trapping pesky ghosts, spirits, haunts, and poltergeists for money. We thought it was a great way to make money. We wise-cracked our way through the city, and stumbled upon a gateway to another dimension, one which (we discover) will release untold evil upon the city. Some books floated about, a fridge went mental, the bath got broke, Hilarity, shocks, thrills and spills developed into one of the smash hit movies of the 80's. Oh and Siguorney Weaver went nuts.
( Ya What Skiddlyboop, Wed 19 Sep 2012, 12:53, 6 replies)

I occasionaly have dreams
Dreams where I'm asleep in the very bed and room that I'm asleep in, so when I wake up, I'm where I was in my dream and for a few seconds (depending on what happened in the dream) it's very confusing to know what's real and what isn't.

The last one I had was in Welsh Wales. Me and the Mrs were sleeping in the spare room of the in-laws. In my dream/reality something started crawling up the bed, but I could genuinely fell this 'thing' as it crept up the bed and over my feet and legs. I knew I had to wake up and deal with this thing before it attacked my and my wife. I knew the only way to stop it was to scream. This would wake me up and scare it away. (makes perfect sense).

Now I don't raise my voice other than when I'm watching football, I rarely shout at all, so to scream felt impossible.

But I did, 3 times. It woke me up as i felt this 'thing' climbing higher up the bed, I looked down and saw, for want of a better word, an 'orb' floating at the bottom of the bed.

My screams had woken the wife up too.
"Are you ok? what's wrong?"
"nothing" mumbles I, "it's fine".

It proper shit me up though and I couldn't sleep then. I'm still convinced it was just because I was in Wales. Stupid Wales.
( Ya What Skiddlyboop, Wed 19 Sep 2012, 12:05, Reply)

My childhood best friend Paul was more prone to superstition and such nonsense than I was
I was always the coldly rational one, he was more "Well it could happen, couldn't it?".

One dark winter evening we were walking through a quiet area of town, and as we passed a streetlight, it went out. Paul froze, shocked, convinced that some eerily occult force was at work. Naturally I laughed at him, but he was really spooked.

"OK, look," I said, "If there's something freaky going on, the next lamp will go out too, when we walk past it. If it doesn't, then this one was just a coincidence."

So we started walking again, past the next lamppost.

It went out.

We ran.
(moon monkey is busy making memories worth repressing, Wed 19 Sep 2012, 11:35, 2 replies)

Questioning my sense of reality.
Mrs Vagabond and I watched the Sixth Sense. I knew nothing about it at the time, and got really into it - I watch films pretty innocently - I'm not one of those too-cool-for-school geeks who like omg totally saw it coming.

As a result it had the desired effect, and I enjoyed being scared and disturbed by it.

After the film, we went to bed, and had a minor disagreement. Not anything serious, and we soon made up.

As we lay there after making up, I realised that Mrs V had arranged to have me assassinated. Not only that, but she had arranged to do it tonight; and she was going to have me shot by an archer or crossbowman, so that it was silent and wouldn't awake the neighbours. I was terrified! The code word for the assassination was "Charly" but I couldn't figure out if this was to commence the job or to confirm it was done; basically I wouldn't bloody know until it was all over, I was absolutely bloody petrified and at that precise moment, completely in her sleep, Mrs Vagabond, eyes shut, shook me awake, and whispered, "Vagabond! Vagabond! 'Charly'!"

I FLEW out of bed - bollock naked - and (to my credit, I feel) rolled across the floor to the window, where I crouched under the protection of the sill, terrified and drooling, in what was, Mrs V says, an absolutely threatened, dangerous, completely animal state. I didn't know whether I was alive, or dead. I was genuinely questioning myself and reality.

She says it took her about five minutes of gentle talking and persuasion to talk me back.




As an epilogue/conclusion, I presume I must have been saying "Charly" or something in my sleep, and Mrs V had picked up on it.
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Wed 19 Sep 2012, 10:36, Reply)

I know a scientist, and sometimes she can't explain things.

( Dr Preference AjcuiVd289, Wed 19 Sep 2012, 1:50, 9 replies)

The Tunnel Story
There are 2 road tunnels from The Wirral to Liverpool, the old opened in 1934 that at the time was the largest underwater tunnel ever built and the new, opened in 1971, not long after I was born.
For some reason, although, it is a bit dark, the old one used to scare the pants off me as a child, and my brothers too. So anytime we found ourselves being driven thorough it we would beg, no, PLEEEEEEAD dad to tell us the family scary story.
Pleeeeeeeeease dad…. PLEEEEEASEEEE..
He would occasionally give in and it went a bit like this.

My granddad was engaged to be wed, to a lovely girl, his first love. They both used to work in the mills over Salford way and they had finally set a date. The night before the nuptials, he was on his way back from work and saw his sweetheart across the street. She was waving at him, in a long white frock, calling his name.
"Harry! Harry! Over here!"
He knew it was considered bad luck to see your bride the day before a wedding so he pulled his head into his collar and quietly grinning with glee ignored her and ran all the way home to his mam, full of excitement for what was yet to come.
He burst through the door and was met, by my great grandma, stood in stony silence

“Sit down son, I have something to tell you”

His heart almost froze, the look on her face told him she wasn’t messing about. He sat down, cap in hand and asked her what was wrong.

“It’s Elizabeth”

“Oh I just saw her! She was in her dress and waving at me! but I carried on I can't se...."
“No she wasn’t…son, she…she…was killed this morning, in the fac’try, there was nothing anyone could do. Son, I’m so sorry”
She fell to her knees in grief.
He broke down. He begged and cried to make it not true, he couldn’t believe it. He had JUST seen her waving at him! Calling his name! It couldn’t be true! His heart broke into a million pieces.
After the doctor had been, given him something to sleep, he finally passed out in a state of shock.

A young man, heartbroken, barely wanting to even live without his love.
When he finally got up in the next day, he stumbled downstairs, and as he came into the parlour his mum looked at him, and gasped.

“SON!”
Her hand flung to her mouth, as she found herself unable to speak.
He looked at her confused face, and knew he didn’t look right. He turned back to the hallway and looked at himself in the mirror aghast. He had gone from beautiful dark chestnut brown hair to a head of bright snow white fluff, completely overnight. The shock they said.
The shock of losing his love and then seeing her as a ghost.


Tl:dr Dad makes up a ghost story not only to scare his kids, but also to excuse the crap genes that he gave them that made them go grey at 19.
( Herb Alpert's Taxi Driver I have very beautiful lips, Tue 18 Sep 2012, 23:43, 4 replies)