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The Scariest Fortean Thing Ever To Happen To You

Do you recall what the nightmares were about? Or shouldn't I ask? Maybe you don't want to remember them! :nails:


Hey, Escargot, please say it's not the cough, is it? And please let that be the truth. You're not running a fever, are you?
And please say you don't smoke either. That makes me think of scary cancer.
Escargot I hope you're feeling better soon! My cousin has been sewing masks too.
IbisNibs, I actually do remember and I have some of them written down somewhere in my collection of notebooks! I ought to dig those out later.
They mostly involved basements/cellars/other dank, damp, gross places, or dungeons...and really gross bathrooms! That was a common theme then. One particularly scary one out had me creeping down this narrow passageway down a set of stairs that were mossy and slippery while holding onto the equally slimy walls for dear life.
 
Hi guys,

Well, what's happened to me? Much like Escargot I to have had experiences of drips which aren't there. This used to happen at my parents' house frequently. In the beam of the kitchen door. I've felt drops, seen drops, as have other members of the family. But there's never any fluid on the floor or on us after experiencing that. Most curious.

But that isn't actually my weirdest experience. I used to be a member of a small theatre in Kenilworth, Warwickshire, by the name of The Priory Theatre. It's a tiny little local theatre, converted from an old church. The gravestones which had to be disturbed during conversion work decades ago are still stood up by the sides of the front car park if i recall correctly.

I was a member there for some 8/9 years during the 90s, doing a couple of shows a year. It's been modernised a couple of times over the years. Given extensions, and new slopes built up for disabled access. It was also rebuilt in part after a fire in the 60s I believe.

The place has had a number of reports have been made over the years, by theatre members, and stage crew, of some ghostly activity. Some of them have been a little bit vague, but aside from the are usual 'unusual' cold spots in that building which you'd expect from an old building like that, there have been the odd reports of spotting figures on the live camera feed to the stage when nobody was there, and people having conversations with an arriving stage manager they've spotted from up in the Fly Tower, only to be told over the comms that there's nobody at the desk - because the Stage Manager is in the sound booth.

The 'ghost' has gained the moniker of 'Priory Pete'. Although at least two people I can think of have told me they've thought the figure they saw was female.

Now I have to admit that I've certainly never 'seen' anything in that Theatre. Not seen. But I've certainly heard a few things. When I and one other member where opening up one evening back at the tail end of the 90s we swore blind that we heard children laughing and running around coming from upstairs in the dressing room. But we were the only people in the theatre. We'd only just unlocked and walked in. We looked around but it was a good half an hour before anybody else showed up, that evening. We were alone.

There was also another time when a group of five of us (All male) were chatting in the bar before a rehearsal, waiting for the director to arrive. We were laughing and joking, and during this I heard a very distinctive female laugh from the direction of the archway (Part of the original masonry of the building). But when we turned around there was nobody there. We thought that it might have been the director (Who was female) but she did not arrive for another ten minutes, her car parking up on the gravel outside while we were discussing what we had just heard.

But by far the weirdest experience I had there was turning up one evening for a rehearsal to find that the stage door was unlocked, ajar, and that the emergency lights had all turned on inside the bar. I walked through with another arriving member of staff who actually fetched a makeshift weapon from his before we went in, assuming that somebody might have been breaking in. But we searched the whole building, with another staff member manning the only exit. Nobody else went in, nobody came out.

The lock to the stage door requires a pin code to unlock it. And I was there locking up the night before. I double checked that the door was sealed, as did another member. Although the door could have been opened from the inside, nobody had been in during the day and I had been one of the last two to leave the night before.

But the creepiest thing was that the alarm was setting noise was beeping inside the foyer, and the answerphone - one of those old micro-tape reel answerphones - was playing. Seemingly on a loop. It scared the shit out of us.

But my colleague told me this was not the first time he'd seen this happen. He told 'Priory Pete' to stop "Dicking About" and set everything back in order. But after that I really never liked opening up of an evening, in case it happened again.

I understand that a couple of years back some theatre members did a charity 'sleep in' at the theatre, but perhaps rather predictably, nothing of note was experienced that night.
This would go nicely in the 'Haunted Theatres' thread or whatever it's called.
 
My Dad then said 'I thought you'd gone upstairs', to which I replied 'I thought one of you had!'. Mum said she hadn't heard anything, to which Dad replied 'Well Monty did as well, because he jumped off my knee and followed whoever it was.'

Cats do love us, don't they! Reminds me of our Puddy. She was so devoted to the kids that she'd follow them to school and get lost if I didn't keep her in at that time.
If I shouted at the kids she'd get between me and them and miaow at me to stop. We'd sometime pretend to have a row just to see her do it.

She'd also sit out on the front drive when any of them went out to wait for them, and if I dropped one off in the car and drove off again she'd know they weren't all home and would stay there until they were!

One day I was having a quiet sit down with a brew and the paper before going out to collect the mob from school when the radio in the next room started playing the intro to a play. It was about a school and the sound was of children in the playground.

Puddy heard it, leapt up and ran off into the kitchen to greet 'her' her kids. She must've been most disappointed to find nobody there!
So I wonder who your Monty thought he'd seen?
 
From what I've read, when people are starving they have less respect for nature, since extreme hunger drives them to do desperate things, like eat grass and rocks and anything else they can subdue in their fragile, weakened state.

Reminds me of something I read about Auschwitz after visiting it. There are lawns there which a former prisoner said couldn't have existed during her time as the grass would have been eaten. How terrible.
 
I just had a moment...

As I've said before, I've moved into this tiny, two bed old farmworker's cottage. I was sitting downstairs watching TV, when there came a most definite 'thump' from overhead, followed by the boards creaking.

Dog was lying next to me and didn't react at all. She's useless in the event of a breakthrough from the Dungeon Dimensions.

And then I realised. I'd left the spare bedroom window open. Spare bedroom opens onto a sloping single storey roof to the extension which houses the kitchen and bathroom. A cat, and probably not even my OWN cat, must have gone up the roof and into the bedroom and starting stomping about, investigating the new furniture.

Oddly enough there are no signs of cat occupancy, no 'cat circles' on the bed or marks on the duvet, but I'm pretty sure that's what it was.
 
I long for the days when I had animals. I'm living in a pet free environment. :(

I had this one cat named Token, she used to see things I couldn't see. Whenever it happened she would run to me and stand on the arm of my chair. Her hair on her back would stand on end and she would growl as she watched something go from one side of the livingroom to the other. The thing is I am pretty sure there was something there because just before she would come running to me, the power/electricity would go out.
 
Maybe she could feel power surges as they came through and before they blew the trip switch?

My dog hears things. She hears everything that happens in the village, with the resulting frequent 'leaping up from an apparent deep sleep into full frenzied barking mode', which often makes me spill my tea. She barks at everything. It's very annoying.

Feel for you not having animals, michael59. Couldn't manage without at least one furry creature.
 
Feel for you not having animals, michael59. Couldn't manage without at least one furry creature.
I acquired one of those sausage-shaped back support cushions and made it a tight-fitting leopard-patterned fur fabric cover.

If I put my hand on it, the feeling and texture are just like those of stroking an animal. Sometimes makes me jump!
 
My first Fortean experience happened when I was about five years old (I can't be exactly sure of my age when it happened, but I shared the experience with my older cousin M. who has an extraordinary memory for events and dates, so he might be able to clear that up).

I was, and am, an only child, but growing up I had a bunk bed, since the lower bunk provided a useful place for one or other of my cousins to sleep when they were visiting us.

On the occasion in question my cousin M. was occupying the lower bunk and myself (as usual) the upper. M. is about two years older than me and, as I recall, we were lying in our respective bunks and chatting about whatever inconsequential stuff a couple of five and seven year old boys talk about, when the bunk bed began to shake.

It was exactly as though an adult was standing at the head of the bed, holding on to the headboard of the upper bunk and shaking it to-and-fro with considerable force. Naturally, I thought that M. was doing it from the lower bunk. Naturally, he thought that I was doing it from the upper bunk.

From memory the conversation went something along the lines of:

M: Stop doing that!
Me: I'm not dong it!
M: Yes you are!
Me: No I'm not.
etc.

M: Prove you aren't doing it.

At this point I leaned over the side of the bed and dangled my hands/arms in front of his face.

M: You're doing it with your legs

So, I sat up on the edge of the upper bunk with my legs dangling over the edge in full view and leant over as well, so that he could see my hands. Throughout the above, which must have lasted for at least a minute, the bed continued shaking.

At seeing that I obviously wasn't doing it M. shot out of the lower bunk and stood against the wardrobe opposite the bed. From his point of view, I would have been sitting perched on the edge of the upper bunk, with my legs dangling and the bed shaking violently back and forth beneath me. I can still picture him now, with his mouth wide open in shock and his eyes like saucers. He bore a close resemblance to the promo photograph of Macauley Culkin from Home Alone:
https___blogs-images.forbes.com_robcain_files_2017_10_Kevin-Home-Alone.jpg

He then shot out of the room and burst into my parents' bedroom next door.

I was left sitting on the edge of the bed, slowly processing the fact that
  • My older cousin has abandoned me
  • The bed is still shaking backwards and forwards
  • He wasn't doing it - therefore someone/something else was
  • I was thus alone in my room with that unidentified (and invisible) someone/something
So it was my turn to leap out of bed and race into my parents' room, where M. and I spent the remainder of the night.

Years later, when I was a teenager, my mother said that she and my father mightn't have been so understanding of sharing their bed with us for the night if the exact same thing hadn't happened to their own bed the week before it happened to mine!
 
My first Fortean experience happened when I was about five years old (I can't be exactly sure of my age when it happened, but I shared the experience with my older cousin M. who has an extraordinary memory for events and dates, so he might be able to clear that up).

I was, and am, an only child, but growing up I had a bunk bed, since the lower bunk provided a useful place for one or other of my cousins to sleep when they were visiting us.

On the occasion in question my cousin M. was occupying the lower bunk and myself (as usual) the upper. M. is about two years older than me and, as I recall, we were lying in our respective bunks and chatting about whatever inconsequential stuff a couple of five and seven year old boys talk about, when the bunk bed began to shake.

It was exactly as though an adult was standing at the head of the bed, holding on to the headboard of the upper bunk and shaking it to-and-fro with considerable force. Naturally, I thought that M. was doing it from the lower bunk. Naturally, he thought that I was doing it from the upper bunk.

From memory the conversation went something along the lines of:

M: Stop doing that!
Me: I'm not dong it!
M: Yes you are!
Me: No I'm not.
etc.

M: Prove you aren't doing it.

At this point I leaned over the side of the bed and dangled my hands/arms in front of his face.

M: You're doing it with your legs

So, I sat up on the edge of the upper bunk with my legs dangling over the edge in full view and leant over as well, so that he could see my hands. Throughout the above, which must have lasted for at least a minute, the bed continued shaking.

At seeing that I obviously wasn't doing it M. shot out of the lower bunk and stood against the wardrobe opposite the bed. From his point of view, I would have been sitting perched on the edge of the upper bunk, with my legs dangling and the bed shaking violently back and forth beneath me. I can still picture him now, with his mouth wide open in shock and his eyes like saucers. He bore a close resemblance to the promo photograph of Macauley Culkin from Home Alone:
View attachment 28088

He then shot out of the room and burst into my parents' bedroom next door.

I was left sitting on the edge of the bed, slowly processing the fact that
  • My older cousin has abandoned me
  • The bed is still shaking backwards and forwards
  • He wasn't doing it - therefore someone/something else was
  • I was thus alone in my room with that unidentified (and invisible) someone/something
So it was my turn to leap out of bed and race into my parents' room, where M. and I spent the remainder of the night.

Years later, when I was a teenager, my mother said that she and my father mightn't have been so understanding of sharing their bed with us for the night if the exact same thing hadn't happened to their own bed the week before it happened to mine!

A similar thing happened to me in Southport somewhere in the early/mid-80s. I woke to find my bed shaking quite violently for what seemed like a few minutes. I was baffled, unnerved, etc. Turned out to be an earthquake!
 
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Turned out to be an earthquake!

That would have been my first thought too, but there weren't any reports of an earthquake then, as far as I know (and if there had been then my parents would have certainly have brought it to our attention in order to reassure us). Also, the whole experience went on too long to be one afaik.

I've also considered whether it could have been a heavy (escorted) vehicle on the road outside. But, anything capable of having the effect on my bed that we experienced that night would have also caused all sorts of problems to structures along it's route. :dunno:
 
I long for the days when I had animals. I'm living in a pet free environment. :(

I had this one cat named Token, she used to see things I couldn't see. Whenever it happened she would run to me and stand on the arm of my chair. Her hair on her back would stand on end and she would growl as she watched something go from one side of the livingroom to the other. The thing is I am pretty sure there was something there because just before she would come running to me, the power/electricity would go out.
I've probably mentioned it before but Ms Petes cat and her baby granddaughter would often sit next to each other on the living room floor. On several occasions they would both look up at the same time and remain motionless and silent for a minute or two (unusual for both of them), almost as though someone was bending over talking to them, and they were concentrating on what was being said to them. Wish we'd taken a film of it.
 
The 'earthquake' thing reminds me of the scariest un-Fortean thing that happened to me. Well, one of them anyway.

I woke up in the middle of the night to noises in my wardrobe. A kind of muffled banging thump. I woke my then other half and told him that the wardrobe was making noises. He sleepily raised his head, said 'earthquake' and then went back to sleep again.

I live in Yorkshire. We don't have any truck with that 'earthquake' thing. And anyway, the noises were getting louder.

I tiptoed over and opened the wardrobe door, whereupon my big black cat, who had clearly been shut in there for some hours and was now very irritable, a la Greebo, shot out and away down the stairs.

There's something uniquely scary about noises in the night that nobody else seems to react to, I think.
 
The 'earthquake' thing reminds me of the scariest un-Fortean thing that happened to me. Well, one of them anyway.

I woke up in the middle of the night to noises in my wardrobe. A kind of muffled banging thump. I woke my then other half and told him that the wardrobe was making noises. He sleepily raised his head, said 'earthquake' and then went back to sleep again.

I live in Yorkshire. We don't have any truck with that 'earthquake' thing. And anyway, the noises were getting louder.

I tiptoed over and opened the wardrobe door, whereupon my big black cat, who had clearly been shut in there for some hours and was now very irritable, a la Greebo, shot out and away down the stairs.

There's something uniquely scary about noises in the night that nobody else seems to react to, I think.
Probably uniquely scary also to have a large black cat jump out at you when you open a wardrobe door!
Ms Petes had a large black cat who was fascinated with wardrobes and chests of drawers and would climb in them unnoticed and go to sleep given the chance. You couldn't see him in there he was so black. On more than one occasion he went missing and was found curled up at the back of a (very deep) drawer. Inevitably would just yawn and reluctantly climb out.
 
Cats can give you a scare if you see them unexpectedly. When I was small we had an outside toilet and I hated going out in the dark.
One night as I opened the toilet door to go back inside I saw a movement and screamed.
The cat went one way and I another.
 
Cats can give you a scare if you see them unexpectedly. When I was small we had an outside toilet and I hated going out in the dark.
One night as I opened the toilet door to go back inside I saw a movement and screamed.
The cat went one way and I another.

Our outside cludgy has a luxurious toilet lid cover which the cats nap on. There's a battery-operated 'approach' light in there.

It switches on when Tim the cat hears anyone walking over the rattly flagstone beside the back door.

He jumps off and pokes his head through the door as if to say 'AGAIN? I was JUST getting comfortable!'
 
Back in November of 2010, I posted in this thread (#166) about a strange individual I encountered in a cave. At the end of the post I wrote “The second encounter was very strange and I've been meaning to post it here for a while. It's a bit long so next chance I have I'll write it up.” Several people including escargot and locussolus indicated they would like to read about it. This week when I visited Charles Fort’s grave I passed by the site where the second encounter took place and my memory was jogged about the promised post. So here we are ten years later and here it is. Before I start, I noticed a typo in my original post. NNS should have been NSS for the National Speleological Society, the main caving organization in the USA.

The encounter only lasted a few seconds and an outside observer would not have considered it unusual, so my story needs a little background. First it occurred when I was in my early 20s and owned a very fast car that I drove on the edge. When I went out at night to see friends I usually returned late traveling north along a four lane deserted road, Van Rensselaer Boulevard, that at the time ran through a sparsely populated area. Unless the weather was bad I would briefly exceed 100 mph (please no lectures and I did not drink at the time) and then slow way down and slide around a 90 degree right turn onto Menands Road (Rt. 378) and be home in less than five minutes. Here is a link to a google map of the area https://www.google.com/maps/@42.6982594,-73.7409371,16z

If one proceeds directly through the intersection, you enter the Albany Rural Cemetery where Charles Fort is buried.

I was majoring in physics and was (and still am) quite skeptical about many paranormal subjects including ghosts, the spirit world and the like. Some nights when I got home I would go for a run that included areas in the cemetery and never thought twice about it.

That night as I approached the corner I saw a figure standing on the corner I would turn around. This was unusual as I had never seen anyone in the area late at night. When I got closer I realized it was an old man and was looking forward to seeing his reaction as I thought he would either jump back in fright or give the young hippy hot rodder a look of disapproval. As I passed by him, no more than 15 feet away, I looked out the passenger’s side window into his face. He seemed very old and my eyes instantly went to his. My impression was of extremely dark and piercing eyes that gave the impression of intense hatred. In a couple seconds I was heading down the hill towards home and was thinking that was unexpected. I suddenly had an odd feeling on the back of my head and thought something was touching it. My hair was fairly long, blond, and pretty limp and to my surprise when I reached back I found all the hair on the back of my head standing straight out. I was shocked as I had seen dogs’ hair stand on end and heard people say that someone’s hair stood on end but I thought it was just an expression and did not happen to humans. I was very confused by my reaction and when I reached home and found a family member still awake reading I asked them to go back with me to look for the man as I wanted a witness and also so I could see if they has the same reaction. At first they declined but then I showed them my hair that was still standing and off we went. We drove all over the area and could not find him. The next day I called a friend who lived in one of the three houses near the corner and asked if he was aware of any older men who lived in the area and he said there were not any and he never saw anyone walking around at night. I was a little shaken by it and for a few days wondered if it was an omen of some kind and slowed my driving a bit but after a week I was back up to speed.

Since that happened I have been in quite a few “hair raising” situations including walking for miles alone through head-high grass on a moonless night without a light in leopard country and while my senses were on high alert my hair was as limp as normal. In all the years since the event the only times when my hair stood again were on the few occasions when I recounted the story. Over the years it stood less and less and after about ten years stopped standing when I recalled it.

So my encounter was strange because of my completely unexpected reaction and I still have no insight why it happened. As a footnote a local newspaper ran a story 20 years later about strange encounters in the area. One woman described an encounter with an old man at the eastern entrance to the cemetery. I don’t remember the details but at the time it sounded somewhat similar to what I had experienced. I thought about contacting her to compare notes but decided I was happy not knowing more. At the time I did not know Charles Fort was buried a half mile from the corner, but looking back I find it a strange coincidence.
 
The kitty posts remind me of a scare though it was non-Fortean. We had moved an old house to our property and were living in a garden shed while we got the house up to city code. We were with our two cats and two pups. Not too bad. We'd actually moved a full-sized fridge into the shed. Made a loft level place to sleep. Perhaps it was more cramped for our cats than we realized.
I opened that fridge one evening to see our cat Jeremy looking up rather casually from a veg bin. My blood runs cold every time I think we might have smothered him in a closed fridge.
 
When I was a young teenager I shared a bedroom with my elder brother, with the beds arranged end to end (feet to feet). He says he was woken up one night by the rapid banging of my headboard against the back wall. No it wasn't what he and you all thought - I was fast asleep having a vivid but mundane dream about a tedious game of basketball in the school gym. Brother stuck his foot out in a vain attempt to push my bed against the wall to trap the headboard, but rapidly withdrew it as my whole bed was vibrating. I was pulled out of my dream and fell at what felt quite a height into my bed. My brother, already quite freaked out by then, says my bed lifted half an inch off the floor and came down with a crash. I think I carried on sleeping - he didn't.
 
The kitty posts remind me of a scare though it was non-Fortean. We had moved an old house to our property and were living in a garden shed while we got the house up to city code. We were with our two cats and two pups. Not too bad. We'd actually moved a full-sized fridge into the shed. Made a loft level place to sleep. Perhaps it was more cramped for our cats than we realized.
I opened that fridge one evening to see our cat Jeremy looking up rather casually from a veg bin. My blood runs cold every time I think we might have smothered him in a closed fridge.

I guess it would take quite a long time for a cat to suffocate in a normal sized fridge? (Now, THERE'S a sentence I never thought I'd ever have cause to type!).
 
I once got a phone call out of the blue one afternoon. There was absolutely nothing odd about the ring or anything about getting a phone call at that time, but I was struck by a sense of dread and a vision of ghosts and graveyards in a faux eerie almost parody green. I figured, based on the vision and premonition, it was either a ghost calling me, or my intuition telling me that the phone call would place me in danger. I elected not to answer it. Does that count? Probably not. Really I was probably being paranoid, but security experts tell us to listen to our instincts, so I did.
 
I was left sitting on the edge of the bed, slowly processing the fact that
  • My older cousin has abandoned me
  • The bed is still shaking backwards and forwards
  • He wasn't doing it - therefore someone/something else was
  • I was thus alone in my room with that unidentified (and invisible) someone/something
I commiserate with your situation Calgacus03. I wonder if your bed was copping a random vibration from nearby machinery travelling thru some sort of rock substrate under a foundation stump beneath your bed? Did it ever happen again? It sounds like a recipe for desertion anxiety.
 
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