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Minor Hauntings

Mr_Hermolle

Devoted Cultist
Joined
Oct 19, 2007
Messages
130
Does anyone have any tales of, for want of a better phrase, 'minor hauntings'? The kind of thing that you wouldn't notice unless you were fortean minded really - nothing really happens - certainly not anything to really be a 'ghost story' but something about it still lingers somehow...
Anyway, here's mine...
In summer 2005 I went on holiday with my parents to Scotland. We rented out what had once been a farmhouse for two weeks. This was in the North East, in Morayshire - near Elgin. The farmhouse was old - built in the 1700s (maybe 1800s?) and was part of still working farmland. Very rural and remote feeling. When we got there I immediately explored the house - it felt very old inside and didnt feel at all modern. While looking around upstairs the thought of a Red Setter dog kept popping into my head. Joining my parents downstairs my Mum asked if I had called out at any point - which I hadn't. Mum was convinced she had heard someone calling out. There were 3 bedrooms upstairs and I chose the smallest one. Out of the window were fields and a small path leading to a small wood. There was one room I didn't like - larger than mine - there was sonething about it that felt cold and 'lonely'. Throughout my two weeks there I associated this room with the thought of a malevolent old woman. No idea why. The lady who owned the farmhouse came over to introduce herself and she told us of previous tenants who had kept their dog in the house all day which constantly barked - the dog was a red setter, she said.
I loved the house and was also so unnerved by it too - it absolutely felt haunted. Walking along the corridors I became convinced that I would see someone around the next corner - the feeling of a presence, of 'otherness' was quite striking. The whole place felt unearthly.
The oddness crept into the surrounding landscape too. On the evenings I would go for a walk along the path by the woods, following the edges of the fields. It constantly felt like I was going to see someone- an edgy unnerving feeling that wasn't necessarily unpleasant. It was midsummer when we went and that far north it doesnt ever really get fully dark - even in the small hours, the sky doesnt go fully pitch black. One evening as I rounded the corner there was a sudden shock - I thought there was a figure sittibg down - but this turned out to be a sheaf of straw tied to the fence post- for some reason a lot of these fence posts had sheafs of straw to them. As I walked there was just an absolute conviction of something spectral. An air of utter unwordliness.
The feeling was most intense in the house though. I remember waking at 4am in the sun, listening to the sound of the wind through the trees in the wood, half-convinced that I would hear someone walk along the path up to the house.
The air of those two weeks was unnerving and beautiful, and I still think of it often now, and I've never felt a place feel so utterly, utterly haunted... But nothing happened at all even remotely disturbing. I've had other experiences in haunted places- genuinely weird things occurring (maybe) but nothing to ever equal the atmosphere of that farmhouse.
If there are such things as hauntings (and I am still undecided if there are) perhaps it would make sense that some hauntings- in their effects anyway - would be so subtle to be barely noticeable - unless someone is maybe interested in such things.
Anyone else have any tales of such minor hauntings?
 
Does anyone have any tales of, for want of a better phrase, 'minor hauntings'? The kind of thing that you wouldn't notice unless you were fortean minded really - nothing really happens - certainly not anything to really be a 'ghost story' but something about it still lingers somehow...
Anyway, here's mine...
In summer 2005 I went on holiday with my parents to Scotland. We rented out what had once been a farmhouse for two weeks. This was in the North East, in Morayshire - near Elgin. The farmhouse was old - built in the 1700s (maybe 1800s?) and was part of still working farmland. Very rural and remote feeling. When we got there I immediately explored the house - it felt very old inside and didnt feel at all modern. While looking around upstairs the thought of a Red Setter dog kept popping into my head. Joining my parents downstairs my Mum asked if I had called out at any point - which I hadn't. Mum was convinced she had heard someone calling out. There were 3 bedrooms upstairs and I chose the smallest one. Out of the window were fields and a small path leading to a small wood. There was one room I didn't like - larger than mine - there was sonething about it that felt cold and 'lonely'. Throughout my two weeks there I associated this room with the thought of a malevolent old woman. No idea why. The lady who owned the farmhouse came over to introduce herself and she told us of previous tenants who had kept their dog in the house all day which constantly barked - the dog was a red setter, she said.
I loved the house and was also so unnerved by it too - it absolutely felt haunted. Walking along the corridors I became convinced that I would see someone around the next corner - the feeling of a presence, of 'otherness' was quite striking. The whole place felt unearthly.
The oddness crept into the surrounding landscape too. On the evenings I would go for a walk along the path by the woods, following the edges of the fields. It constantly felt like I was going to see someone- an edgy unnerving feeling that wasn't necessarily unpleasant. It was midsummer when we went and that far north it doesnt ever really get fully dark - even in the small hours, the sky doesnt go fully pitch black. One evening as I rounded the corner there was a sudden shock - I thought there was a figure sittibg down - but this turned out to be a sheaf of straw tied to the fence post- for some reason a lot of these fence posts had sheafs of straw to them. As I walked there was just an absolute conviction of something spectral. An air of utter unwordliness.
The feeling was most intense in the house though. I remember waking at 4am in the sun, listening to the sound of the wind through the trees in the wood, half-convinced that I would hear someone walk along the path up to the house.
The air of those two weeks was unnerving and beautiful, and I still think of it often now, and I've never felt a place feel so utterly, utterly haunted... But nothing happened at all even remotely disturbing. I've had other experiences in haunted places- genuinely weird things occurring (maybe) but nothing to ever equal the atmosphere of that farmhouse.
If there are such things as hauntings (and I am still undecided if there are) perhaps it would make sense that some hauntings- in their effects anyway - would be so subtle to be barely noticeable - unless someone is maybe interested in such things.
Anyone else have any tales of such minor hauntings?
It sounds to me like you might be a 'sensitive' ... some people are just more in tune than others to the paranormal (we've worked with sensitives, I'm about as sensitive as a lump of cheese), the fact that you thought a lot about a red setter before learning that one had once lived there is too specific to me to be a coincidence and is impressive IMO.
 
It sounds to me like you might be a 'sensitive' ... some people are just more in tune than others to the paranormal (we've worked with sensitives, I'm about as sensitive as a lump of cheese), the fact that you thought a lot about a red setter before learning that one had once lived there is too specific to me to be a coincidence and is impressive IMO.

As someone who regularly experiences paranormal activity of the "haunting" variety, (see https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/ooh-err-nasty-house.37732/), I hate the term "sensitive".

It conveniently allows people to explain away an unusual experience as some sort of ghost, or a spirit, or even worse a demon. We have no idea what this plethora of phenomena is. Yet we are quite happy to bestow on people some sort of untestable "magical ability" and thus expertise.

It's baffling really.

The mediums/sensitives sadly do not help the cause of the investigation of hauntings in any way shape or form no matter what good intentions those people have.
 
I don't know if I've posted this before but nowt much Fortean has happened to me in my life but on this one occasion I felt that I had a flash of a building's past.
I think it was spring '94 when I started working on a small terrace house in Steyning (East Sussex). It was a long way to travel for us but we knew the client well, he just happened to buy this old place in Steyning. I remember it being spring of '94 as Kurt Cobain died at that time.

The first day we arrived we got the tour of house and gardens. The front garden had a bomb shelter in it, not like an Anderson one (is that a thing? I'm thinking WW2 type) but felt more like a small nuclear bunker but not underground (it took ages to destroy it during work on the front garden!). That was strange to me but not spooky.

The house itself was a small end of terrace 'cottage', a two up, two down with a small extension on the back. The client took us through the front door straight into the sitting room and then into what would've been a very small kitchen before the extension. Now my memory of entering this room, and it's been a long time since I entered this room, is that I followed the client through the door and saw the room, opposite the entrance was a window and I must've blinked or shut my eyes briefly because for a split second there was an old lady sat on a wooden bench in front of the window. She was wearing a black dress with a white collar and she was smiling at me and then she was gone! I've turned right and followed the client into the kitchen extension.
It was weird but I just put that experience to one side and carried on like nothing happened.

Love your post Mr_Hermolle, a very descriptive account.
 
It sounds to me like you might be a 'sensitive' ... some people are just more in tune than others to the paranormal (we've worked with sensitives, I'm about as sensitive as a lump of cheese), the fact that you thought a lot about a red setter before learning that one had once lived there is too specific to me to be a coincidence and is impressive IMO.
It was a bit of a coincidence but unlikely coincidences do happen. Was a weird one though.
 
I don't know if I've posted this before but nowt much Fortean has happened to me in my life but on this one occasion I felt that I had a flash of a building's past.
I think it was spring '94 when I started working on a small terrace house in Steyning (East Sussex). It was a long way to travel for us but we knew the client well, he just happened to buy this old place in Steyning. I remember it being spring of '94 as Kurt Cobain died at that time.

The first day we arrived we got the tour of house and gardens. The front garden had a bomb shelter in it, not like an Anderson one (is that a thing? I'm thinking WW2 type) but felt more like a small nuclear bunker but not underground (it took ages to destroy it during work on the front garden!). That was strange to me but not spooky.

The house itself was a small end of terrace 'cottage', a two up, two down with a small extension on the back. The client took us through the front door straight into the sitting room and then into what would've been a very small kitchen before the extension. Now my memory of entering this room, and it's been a long time since I entered this room, is that I followed the client through the door and saw the room, opposite the entrance was a window and I must've blinked or shut my eyes briefly because for a split second there was an old lady sat on a wooden bench in front of the window. She was wearing a black dress with a white collar and she was smiling at me and then she was gone! I've turned right and followed the client into the kitchen extension.
It was weird but I just put that experience to one side and carried on like nothing happened.

Love your post Mr_Hermolle, a very descriptive account.
...and yours too. That sudden flash of the woman sounds startling. Interesting thst you 'put it to one side' - seems to be a common thing in inexplicable events and only strikes one as weird later.
 
I hate the term "sensitive".

It conveniently allows people to explain away an unusual experience as some sort of ghost, or a spirit, or even worse a demon. We have no idea what this plethora of phenomena is. Yet we are quite happy to bestow on people some sort of untestable "magical ability" and thus expertise.
I like the term "sensitive" as a way to indicate people when they notice subtleties and nuances that others miss, but I think you make an excellent point, Naughty_Felid. Mindlessly chucking people into a category because they've reported a certain type of experience, and not exploring the what or why of those types of experiences, is stupid.
 
...and yours too. That sudden flash of the woman sounds startling. Interesting thst you 'put it to one side' - seems to be a common thing in inexplicable events and only strikes one as weird later.
I guess it was such a brief odd thing and I was doing my job at the time, all be it looking at rather than doing the work, that it caught the twentysomething me off guard.

I can't remember how long after the event I thought about it and tried to rationalize it, I put it down to maybe the early morning start or the long drive.
I've never had a vision like that since so I guess it was my mind playing a trick on me.
 
I guess it was such a brief odd thing and I was doing my job at the time, all be it looking at rather than doing the work, that it caught the twentysomething me off guard.

I can't remember how long after the event I thought about it and tried to rationalize it, I put it down to maybe the early morning start or the long drive.
I've never had a vision like that since so I guess it was my mind playing a trick on me.
Even a trick of the mind is interesting - the idea of something in your mind reacting with the place to form that sudden image - which must have an origin somewhere
 
As someone who regularly experiences paranormal activity of the "haunting" variety, (see https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/ooh-err-nasty-house.37732/), I hate the term "sensitive".

It conveniently allows people to explain away an unusual experience as some sort of ghost, or a spirit, or even worse a demon. We have no idea what this plethora of phenomena is. Yet we are quite happy to bestow on people some sort of untestable "magical ability" and thus expertise.

It's baffling really.

The mediums/sensitives sadly do not help the cause of the investigation of hauntings in any way shape or form no matter what good intentions those people have.

So agree re sensitives/mediums, in my opinion they do a huge amount of damage to the genuine pursuit of the paranormal and bring the whole field into disrepute. The late - and very quiet - Derek Acorah and his 'spirit guide' are at the celebrity end of this money-making scam:

"So what do we know about Sam? Well, Derek has revealed that before he passed over around 2,000 years ago, Sam was known as Masumai and lived in Ethiopia. And Derek, in a former life (but probably not called Derek), was “a little black boy” living in the same village as Masumai. Masumai chose the name Sam in order to fit into modern Western society" :oops:

https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/enter...elebrity-big-brother-2017-contestant-profile/

...and the £1.00+ per text charlatans at the other ("I'm a 4th Generation natural psychic"):

https://www.asktheanswer.com/im/ata...MI58WfzY2u8wIVsYFQBh0gcQZ9EAAYBCAAEgIvPvD_BwE

:headbang:

To be blunt, any paranormal experience I start to read that begins with something like "I have always been in touch with the spirit world since an early age" or similar is immediately 'binned'.
 
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I guess it was such a brief odd thing and I was doing my job at the time, all be it looking at rather than doing the work, that it caught the twentysomething me off guard.

I can't remember how long after the event I thought about it and tried to rationalize it, I put it down to maybe the early morning start or the long drive.
I've never had a vision like that since so I guess it was my mind playing a trick on me.
Perhaps, but you didn't see - for example - a pink-spotted pygmy hippo on the bench but rather a woman who certainly looked as if she once lived there, which makes me lean towards a 'stone tape' ghost...
 
I remember a very similar event - going for 'after work' drinks with my old work crew (this will have been the early 80's) we decided to drive to a pub I'd never been to before. We all met up in the car park and went in together. As we walked up the steps and in through the door I was compelled somehow to ask 'where's the cat?'

The person who went in in front of me said 'he's over there', and pointed to a cat asleep on a chair. I hadn't been able to see it until I was fully inside the pub.

As far as I'm aware there was no sign of a cat on the way in, no smell or cat bowls or anything. I just somehow 'knew' there ought to be a cat.

Pathetically minor and not even a haunting, just a 'sensing of an animal'.
 
All pubs should have cats.
Like 'bodega cats' :D

EAmHI97X4AE9sSW.jpg


https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodega_cat
 
I remember a very similar event - going for 'after work' drinks with my old work crew (this will have been the early 80's) we decided to drive to a pub I'd never been to before. We all met up in the car park and went in together. As we walked up the steps and in through the door I was compelled somehow to ask 'where's the cat?'

The person who went in in front of me said 'he's over there', and pointed to a cat asleep on a chair. I hadn't been able to see it until I was fully inside the pub.

As far as I'm aware there was no sign of a cat on the way in, no smell or cat bowls or anything. I just somehow 'knew' there ought to be a cat.

Pathetically minor and not even a haunting, just a 'sensing of an animal'.
What about cat bowels? That normally gives the game away. :puke2:
 
I don't know if I've posted this before but nowt much Fortean has happened to me in my life but on this one occasion I felt that I had a flash of a building's past.
I think it was spring '94 when I started working on a small terrace house in Steyning (East Sussex). It was a long way to travel for us but we knew the client well, he just happened to buy this old place in Steyning. I remember it being spring of '94 as Kurt Cobain died at that time.

The first day we arrived we got the tour of house and gardens. The front garden had a bomb shelter in it, not like an Anderson one (is that a thing? I'm thinking WW2 type) but felt more like a small nuclear bunker but not underground (it took ages to destroy it during work on the front garden!). That was strange to me but not spooky.

The house itself was a small end of terrace 'cottage', a two up, two down with a small extension on the back. The client took us through the front door straight into the sitting room and then into what would've been a very small kitchen before the extension. Now my memory of entering this room, and it's been a long time since I entered this room, is that I followed the client through the door and saw the room, opposite the entrance was a window and I must've blinked or shut my eyes briefly because for a split second there was an old lady sat on a wooden bench in front of the window. She was wearing a black dress with a white collar and she was smiling at me and then she was gone! I've turned right and followed the client into the kitchen extension.
It was weird but I just put that experience to one side and carried on like nothing happened.

Love your post Mr_Hermolle, a very descriptive account.

At least she was smiling, could have been a Ghostbusters library situation and you don't want that! I wonder if it was an echo of the past, or what you "expected" to see there, or something in between?
 
One of my sisters lives in a flat in a house that must date back to the 1870s if not earlier. It is part of a very small collection of showrooms etc and a garden centre. I was looking out of her window on a dark and rainy night, and I'm sure that there was a young man wearing a raincoat and a trilby hat, but with long hair walking past very quickly.

It was an impression that lasted a split second and might have been a car headlight or something, except I didn't think it was. I've had some odd experiences but I don't go looking for them and it seems odd that a man dressed in mid 20th century clothes would have long hair.
 
One of my sisters lives in a flat in a house that must date back to the 1870s if not earlier. It is part of a very small collection of showrooms etc and a garden centre. I was looking out of her window on a dark and rainy night, and I'm sure that there was a young man wearing a raincoat and a trilby hat, but with long hair walking past very quickly.

It was an impression that lasted a split second and might have been a car headlight or something, except I didn't think it was. I've had some odd experiences but I don't go looking for them and it seems odd that a man dressed in mid 20th century clothes would have long hair.
When I was younger I had long hair and wore a fedora :)
 
I did a fair bit of film photography in the 1990s and I regularly used a friend's basement darkroom to make black-and-white prints. One Saturday I worked at this task for much of the day while my friend was out running errands. After a few hours I decided to take a short break. I sat in an armchair in the basement outside the darkroom and studied the prints that I'd made so far. I soon became aware of what sounded like slow, deliberate footsteps overhead. I was certain it wasn't my friend because he would have come downstairs to let me know that he had returned. Also, I would have heard the back door open. Both the front and back doors were solid and required a good push in order to gain entrance to the house. Even in the darkroom with the door closed and the radio turned on it was possible to hear the exterior doors open and close.

I went upstairs but as soon as I reached the main level the footsteps stopped. I checked the doors and confirmed that both were locked. All the windows on the main floor were shut so I went up the next level to the bedrooms. Those windows too were shut and nothing seemed out of place. I then went back down to the basement. I'd been seated for only a few moments when the footsteps started again. I listened to them for several minutes before once again venturing up to the main level. Silence prevailed. I returned to the basement only to hear the footsteps yet again. Being something of a glutton for punishment, I made a third trip upstairs only to encounter more silence. By this time I was quite unnerved so I went back into the darkroom, cranked up the radio and continued working for just over an hour until my friend returned.

I told my friend about this incident and he was unsurprised. He had lived in the house for several years at that point and in a matter-of-fact way said he frequently saw figures in the house. That was the first I'd heard of it. He said they were benign and that I shouldn't be alarmed. Easier said than done. I'm glad I was there during the day and not after dark. I didn't see anything odd, fortunately. It was the noise that puzzled me.

I'm prepared to accept that there may be a non-Fortean explanation for the footfalls but I've never been able to think of one. This incident took place during the height of summer so it can't have been the furnace making noises. My friend had no animals at the time and he lived alone.

Over the course of the next few years I met two individuals who had lived in the same neighbourhood as my friend and had also experienced various Fortean phenomena. I didn't know where either of them lived until they mentioned it. One believed she had a poltergeist in her house. Neither of these individuals knew each other or my friend. They all lived several streets apart. The coincidence is certainly strange.
 
That was a wonderful and descriptive post @Mr_Hermolle. It felt a little like that at the big, rambling place in Wales I stayed at in September (which I posted about in Anyone Seen A Ghost). I didn’t sense any particular ‘people’, but I’d say it was a ‘minorly’ haunted place.

I think ‘minor hauntings’ are incredibly interesting because they often gain no attention outside the immediate vicinity unless, maybe they are sold on or used as holiday cottages. I lived next door to a haunted house when I was young and didn’t know a thing about it until I was older, when the place was owned by a jockey and he wrote about it in a biography. (I also knew a man who had visited and stayed there with his aunt who told me that it was quite normal there to hear heavy footsteps along the landing and coming down the stairs when he, his aunt and cousin were all sitting in the living room watching t.v. in the evenings).

Similarly there were ‘minor’ village/local hauntings and legends that people mentioned but would never appear in any book about ghosts. I love tales like that more than the more famous ones.
 
That was a wonderful and descriptive post @Mr_Hermolle. It felt a little like that at the big, rambling place in Wales I stayed at in September (which I posted about in Anyone Seen A Ghost). I didn’t sense any particular ‘people’, but I’d say it was a ‘minorly’ haunted place.

I think ‘minor hauntings’ are incredibly interesting because they often gain no attention outside the immediate vicinity unless, maybe they are sold on or used as holiday cottages. I lived next door to a haunted house when I was young and didn’t know a thing about it until I was older, when the place was owned by a jockey and he wrote about it in a biography. (I also knew a man who had visited and stayed there with his aunt who told me that it was quite normal there to hear heavy footsteps along the landing and coming down the stairs when he, his aunt and cousin were all sitting in the living room watching t.v. in the evenings).

Similarly there were ‘minor’ village/local hauntings and legends that people mentioned but would never appear in any book about ghosts. I love tales like that more than the more famous ones.
I wonder how many minor hauntings are out there... where there's not much really to investigate - not much happens, but still... I'm going to have to track down your post in that thread. And there does seem to be quite a lot of posts about footsteps as well which is interesting. I wrote about my teenage house in the Nasty House thread in the ghosts forum, and the house I believed to be haunted (again, open to conjecture if it was of course) - I heard heavy footsteps run down the landing, down the stairs then the front door open and slam - footsteps ont he front path. Looked out of the window - no-one there. Mum comes into my room, surprised I was still there - they'd all heard exactly the same thing downstairs... She was convinced it was me still, leaving the house in a bad mood. Something spectral or a real person in the house - either option is pretty sinister, and as the years go by, the whole event just seems more and more sinister. There really is something very very unnerving about footsteps heard in an empty room though.
 
I wonder how many minor hauntings are out there...
I expect it’s not uncommon. It’s strange how, as you meet people at work or socially these happenings will emerge about places they lived, experiences they had that they’ve seemed to accept and just file away under ‘strange’. Most wouldn’t report it or even write it down, (especially in the days before the internet and forums like this or Reddit). They just relate it at times. Several times I’ve been talking to a group of people about things like UFO’s or ghosts etc and there’ll invariably be someone who says ‘Nah, I don’t believe in ghosts — but there was that time…’ and proceed to tell you about the time they saw/heard a ghost or something paranormal happened to them.

The post I made is recent and I put pics up. Page 38 and 39 and looking at page 38 thee are other posts mentioning footsteps, which yes, are disturbing. I did think I heard several processions of them at Alexanderstone (where we were staying) but it was a very ‘creaky’ old house.

Anyone Seen a Ghost
 
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