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Creepy Attic Stories Anyone?

Mr_Hermolle

Mr_Hermolle

Devoted Cultist
Joined
Oct 19, 2007
Messages
131
I've always been fascinated as to why attics always seem so damn creepy. I knoe they're generally unvisited spaces in a house, often full of old things (or even sometimes empty) but for some reason some just seem really unnerving and I can never quite work out why. I've lived in houses with cellars, damp and dark but they just dont seem to have as much of a haunted atmosphere as attics do. I would have thought cellars would feel at least as creepy - or a lot more unsafe - cellars would be easier to enter a house than attics after all - but attics feel more open to spectral incursion than cellars do.
Not had that much in the way of creepy attic stories, but here we go...
1) House in Hove, East Sussex, probably built in the 1950s.
There was a window in this attic so there was some natural light. This was a rented house I moved into in 2007. This attic was full of old stuff - piles of old crutches and newspapers dating from the 1950s amongst other bits of discarded lives. The first paper I opened had an article on a possible occult murder on some farm - quite famous (a farm worker killed by a pitchfork in a ritualistic manner) Far more disturbing though was a lifesize, lifelike baby doll. Finding that in the gloomy light was somewhat unnerving...
2. Another flat in Hove I moved into in 2011. This flat in a muse used to be lodgings for horseriders. I think it dated back to the 1850s. We didnt have a ladder to the attic so I never went up there till I moved out. What we did do though was chuck stuff we didnt want up there through a precarious method of standing on a chair balanced on a table. When it came time to move out I had to buy a ladder to retrieve the small amount of stuff we had lobbed up there.
Aside from our stuff, the attic was empty of stuff. Just a huge blank space at the top of the house.
I spent the last few days living alone in that flat, and after I had got all the stuff down from the attic, the flat began to disturb me. It felt like I had disturbed something. The flat felt, in a vague way, haunted. I was glad to move out.

Anyhow, that's it really - but its fascinating how many allegedly true ghost stories seem to centre on the attic - noises and footsteps often seem to be heard there, attic trapdoors frequently seem to be disturbed - but why? Its not as if any big events generally take place in attics, but they always seem to figure in haunted house tales.

So, anyone got any creepy attic stories?
 
Mr_Hermolle said:
Ive always been fascinated as to why attics always seem so damn creepy. I knoe they're generally unvisited spaces in a house, often full of old things (or even sometimes empty) but for sone reason some just seem really unnerving and I can never quite work out why. I've lived in houses with cellars, damp and dark but they just dont seem to have as much of a haunted atmosphere as attics do. I would have thought cellars would feel at least as creepy - or a lot more unsafe - cellars would be easier to enter a house than attics after all - but attics feel more open to spectral incursion than cellars do.
Not had that much in the way of creepy attic stories, but here we go...
1) House in Hove, East Sussex, probably built in the 1950s.
There was a window in this attic so there was some natural light. This was a rented house I moved into in 2007. This attic was full of old stuff - piles of old crutches and newspapers dating from the 1950s amongst other bits of discarded lives. The first paper I opened had an article on a possible occult murder on some farm - quite famous (a farm worker killed by a putchfork in a ritualustic manner) Far more disturbing though was a lifesize, lifelike baby doll. Finding that in the gloomy light was somewhat unnerving...
2. Another flat in Hove I moved into in 2011. This flat in a muse used to be lodgings for horseriders. I think it dated back to the 1850s. We didnt have a ladder to the attic so I never went up there till I moved out. What we did do though was chuck stuff we didnt want up there through a precarious method of standing on a chair balanced on a table. When it came time to move out I had to buy a ladder to retrieve the small amount of stuff we had lobbed up there.
Aside from our stuff, the attic was empty of stuff. Just a huge blank space at the top of the house.
I spent the last few days living alone in that flat, and after I had got all the stuff down from the attic, the flat began to disturb me. It felt like I had disturbed something. The flat felt, in a vague way, haunted. I was glad to move out.

Anyhow, that's it really - but its fascinating how many allegedly true ghost stories seem to centre on the attic - noises and footsteps often seem to be heard there, attic trapdoors frequently seem to be disturbed - but why? Its not as if any big events generally take place in attics, but they always seem to figure in haunted house tales.

So, anyone got any creepy attic stories?
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I've got a cool attic story but not so creepy.

We were having some work done by some builders on our attic when the boss man came downstairs and told me he'd found a broadsheet/newspaper from 1899 that had been stuffed in a hole in the wall up there. I brushed the soot off it, re acclimatised it as slowly as possible and it's now in a frame in our house. We've never got around to hanging it up though. A local newspaper.
 
I found a small coffin, probably about 5 feet long in the attic of my sisters bungalow in 2005. I was refurbing the place for her shortly after she moved in. It had previously belonged to an old lady who had died there. The lid wasn’t screwed down and thankfully it was empty. My sister left it up there,it’s probably still there now.
 
Stillill said:
I found a small coffin, probably about 5 feet long in the attic of my sisters bungalow in 2005. I was refurbing the place for her shortly after she moved in. It had previously belonged to an old lady who had died there. The lid wasn’t screwed down and thankfully it was empty. My sister left it up there,it’s probably still there now.
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Coming up to Halloween, she'd probably make some good cash selling that.
 
Mr_Hermolle said:
Oh god, I've just read that. That really would be far too unnerving to sleep in after that!
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You'd think so, wouldn't you? But for some reason I wasn't scared or spooked, just a bit puzzled by it. Perhaps being only 20 (ie., young and invincible) helped. My initial feeling was that 'something' was checking that I was OK.
 
Attics and cellars are uncanny places, as described in this British Psychological Society article by Professor Lucy Huskinson.

Uncanny places

Following in the footsteps of his colleague, Josef Breuer (1842-1925), Freud compared the mind or psyche to a house of several storeys, each of which corresponds to a different layer or strata of consciousness.

The dark basement rooms (or attic space) came to represent the unconscious realm of the mind, for these rooms in our homes are rarely visited and they tend to be where we store our forgotten possessions (see also Box, ‘Hidden rooms’).

It is perhaps unsurprising that fictional depictions of haunted houses or of homes besieged by unknown intruders tend to locate the origins of the threat within the kinds of places or rooms of the house that Freud and Breuer associated with the unconscious – within the dark basement (The Babadook, 2014), in the otherwise empty spaces of cavity walls and crawl spaces under floorboards (Within, 2016), and in dusty attic rooms (Psycho, 1960).

These fictional narratives like to explore the ambiguous nature of the ‘double’, playing with the boundaries between reality and imagination, often leaving the reader or audience uncertain as to whether the mysterious threat is of otherworldly origins, an actual person, or the projections of a disturbed mind.
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Swifty said:
Maybe you could say "I'll get rid of that coffin for you if you'd like?". I don't know your situation so that might be a bad idea and I won't pry into that mate. It would be a cool thing to own though
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I’ll ask her husband as I’ve known him from school and he’s one of my best mates. He did suggest to make a table out of it when I found it but we noticed the lid was warped so not much use as a table.
 
Stillill said:
I’ll ask her husband as I’ve known him from school and he’s one of my best mates. He did suggest to make a table out of it when I found it but we noticed the lid was warped so not much use as a table.
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Pease keep us updated. Mainly so I can be jealous of you if you get it.
 
Stillill said:
Will do. I do still wonder how someone ended up with a coffin in their attic.
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It's not the most obvious place to put one I suppose although it'd be better for most people than just having it leaning up against a wall in the living room or something.

What would you do with it if he/they agree to give it to you?.
 
Stillill said:
I’ll ask her husband as I’ve known him from school and he’s one of my best mates. He did suggest to make a table out of it when I found it but we noticed the lid was warped so not much use as a table.
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People make bookcases with them, often painted up in Day of the Dead themes. I'd do that. :nods:
 
When I was a kid, two of these creepy little feckers lived in the attic.

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I was convinced the scary little b@stards were running around in the loft once everyone was asleep. I inherited them at some point, though I have no clue when I agreed to it. When I bought a house of my own they were just there one year. I assume either my dad or brother thought it would be funny.

I had my mother-in-law create Santa outfits for them. But they are still creepy as Hell! My wife refuses to let me put them out at Christmas.

I believe that my nan had collected Kerrygold Butter tokens at sometime in the 1960s that she saved to send off for them.
 
Stillill said:
I’ll ask her husband as I’ve known him from school and he’s one of my best mates. He did suggest to make a table out of it when I found it but we noticed the lid was warped so not much use as a table.
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Drinks cabinet! Line it and put in shelves, perhaps put a mirror in the back, LED lights...
 
I have an attic but it's more of a loft room, accessed by a proper flight of stairs, not a ladder. I sometimes find myself half-imagining that there's someone hiding up there and I have to go up and look around, I think it's just because it's a space that I can't easily see into. I sometimes have the same feeling about the spare bedroom (which usually has the door closed). It's that 'closed space' thing.
 
Swifty said:
It's not the most obvious place to put one I suppose although it'd be better for most people than just having it leaning up against a wall in the living room or something.

What would you do with it if he/they agree to give it to you?.
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It’s highly unlikely that I’ll get it as she doesn’t speak to me or any of the family (it’s all very odd as nobody knows why). It can be a bit awkward sometimes as I’m her postman,when I have a parcel for her I just knock and leave it outside. I can ask him but if she knows it’s for me then it’ll be a no.
 
Stillill said:
It’s highly unlikely that I’ll get it as she doesn’t speak to me or any of the family (it’s all very odd as nobody knows why). It can be a bit awkward sometimes as I’m her postman,when I have a parcel for her I just knock and leave it outside. I can ask him but if she knows it’s for me then it’ll be a no.
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Might not be anything personal, it could be mental illness. Is there any history/suspicion that this could be the case?
 
catseye said:
Might not be anything personal, it could be mental illness. Is there any history/suspicion that this could be the case?
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No it’s definitely not personal. When she left home in the early 90s she just abandoned the family. She lives about a 3 minute walk from my mum and dad in the next road and sees them probably twice a year for about ten minutes.
Even when I see her husband which is fairly regular she is never mentioned by both of us. She’s a complete stranger to me.
 
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