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Allotment Ghosts

IbisNibs said:
Maybe a living person is actually there hiding in the underbrush watching you? Could be a curious, and bored, nature loving child spying on the adult world.
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They would have to have a key to the substantial padlocks or a lot of luck getting over the palisade fencing with the anti climb grease on the spikes.
 
Tempest63 said:
As a reformed believer in all things paranormal it surprises me that, when I’m alone at the allotment, I often get weirded out by the feeling that a presence is near me.
I’ve never seen anything there, or if I have, it’s a pigeon or similar flying by that I catch in my peripheral vision.
It happened again this morning on a couple of occasions whilst watering.
People can get very attached to an allotment so I wonder if they could linger on in some way, stone tape theory maybe?

T63
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I like that theory
 
Tempest63 said:
We’ve had it for about 5 years now. I tend to get there very early as it is a battle to get to the tap. Generally i’ve been and gone before anyone else arrives. I do believe it is probably in the last 18 months that I have started to get the feeling that someone is watching over me, it is only fleeting and at first I would spin round expecting to see another allotment holder. There is one particular overgrown plot that is not being tended where most of that feeling of being watched emanates from.
I occasionally hear snatches of words but it is so quiet there in the morning that it is the noises from the wildlife, birds that I hear and turn it into something it is not.
The sensation is not scary as such but, like anytime you feel someone is watching you, you find it a bit weird.
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Definitely sounds creepy!!
 
Tempest63 said:
As a reformed believer in all things paranormal it surprises me that, when I’m alone at the allotment, I often get weirded out by the feeling that a presence is near me.
I’ve never seen anything there, or if I have, it’s a pigeon or similar flying by that I catch in my peripheral vision.
It happened again this morning on a couple of occasions whilst watering.
People can get very attached to an allotment so I wonder if they could linger on in some way, stone tape theory maybe?

T63
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what is your normal environment? Is it urban? Are you used to moving around in the country?
 
That reminds me what may have been happening with secret residents while in covid lockdown. Hard to stay secret when the people who openly live there are working from home and struggling with insomnia.
 
Update on the allotment hauntings.
Haven’t been there for a few weeks but had a couple of beds to clear and feed and let them overwinter, so I headed off down there
On unlocking the shed there was stuff everywhere. Soil testers, bags of plant tags and all the little things someone keeps in the shed. Nothing big.
I don’t know how it happened or what caused it. First thing that came to mind was rodents but absolutely no other sign, the stuff on the shelves hadn’t been knocked off, no poo, nothing chewed.
Maybe it’s an allotment poltergeist?
 
Nemo said:
Try setting up a sound & motion activated camera for when you're not there.
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I’ve been meaning to do something similar in an attempt to catch the reprobates who break into the allotment sheds on an annual basis.
 
Spookdaddy said:
Some years back I was working on my flat, renovating some casing around a recessed window. It wasn't a straightforward fix, and at one point I scribbled a few calculations on some exposed woodwork. While I was doing so, I noticed a little higher on the same piece some more figures. These workings were in Imperial measurements and in a much nicer copperplate style than my own primitive scrawl - but I realised with a shiver down the spine that they were the exact same workings out as my own; the same calculations, related to the same practical puzzle – but separated from each other by around a hundred years.

I'm not sure I'm going to be able to express the following properly - but the effect was not simply that of feeling instantly connected, through a repeated action, to someone from the past, but that myself and that Edwardian joiner were somehow scratching our heads over the same problem at the same time.

(Bear with me – I will get to a relevant point eventually.)

I’ve worked on quite a few restoration projects, and although the above experience was probably the one that inspired the most forceful jolt of connection, instances that induce a sort of non-corporeal workplace camaraderie with the long dead are not unusual, or, I believe, limited to my own experience.

I wonder if the consciousness (or, probably it’s not that conscious at all) that you are repeating the actions of people in the past, in almost exactly the same way those actions would have been performed (or at least in ways that are recognisably similar) creates some sort of psychological echo effect that makes you aware of all the other physical actions that have taken place and of which your own are themselves an element of the reverberation. And maybe a side effect of the process is that we become sensitive to the idea that our companions in toil might even be keeping a watchful eye on our efforts.

This can probably happen in all sorts of environments, but I very strongly suspect it is much more viscerally powerful when connected to physical action. And there are not many actions more visceral – or venerable - than sinking a spade into the earth.

Or it’s just ghosts.
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This reminds me of something that happened to my stepfather, who was a lovely man but not much into anything he couldn’t fix with his hands. Cars! He was a mechanic all his life and also fixed people’s cars for a bit of cash-in-hand.

Unfortunately, he often worked in the garage with the doors shut when spraying.

Anyhow, one day he was doing that and he said suddenly he was ‘elsewhere‘. He was working on a huge round wooden wheel like the type you get on wagons. He was doing something, affixing the wheel, concentrating and could smell the wood, was conscious of being in a different place/time with different smells around him, he said, manure, horses, wood, etc, but knowing exactly what he was doing.

He half-joked that he switched places with the wheelwright from a different time, but it was always something that stuck in his mind ever after. He said it must have lasted a good minute or so before he was back in the garage, working, but he attributed it to the unventilated garage and the spray he was using. It made a huge impression on him though and got him thinking about the paranormal and time etc in a way he never had before.
 
Fanari_Lloyd said:
This reminds me of something that happened to my stepfather, who was a lovely man but not much into anything he couldn’t fix with his hands. Cars! He was a mechanic all his life and also fixed people’s cars for a bit of cash-in-hand.

Unfortunately, he often worked in the garage with the doors shut when spraying.

Anyhow, one day he was doing that and he said suddenly he was ‘elsewhere‘. He was working on a huge round wooden wheel like the type you get on wagons. He was doing something, affixing the wheel, concentrating and could smell the wood, was conscious of being in a different place/time with different smells around him, he said, manure, horses, wood, etc, but knowing exactly what he was doing.

He half-joked that he switched places with the wheelwright from a different time, but it was always something that stuck in his mind ever after. He said it must have lasted a good minute or so before he was back in the garage, working, but he attributed it to the unventilated garage and the spray he was using. It made a huge impression on him though and got him thinking about the paranormal and time etc in a way he never had before.
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Yup, it'll be the spray. Makes very strong impressions of weird things happening.

Here's something I posted on'ere about my brother -

Big/small thing-

My bro once had to deliver some metal gates so he flung them into the back of a van and set off up the motorway.

After a while, he noticed that the motorway had about a hundred lanes and was a mile wide, and his van had shrunk to the size of a matchbox.

Didn't seem right so he pulled over. Suddenly he felt a violent pain in his head and opened the window just in time to throw up.

When he felt better he noticed a weird smell coming from the back of the van.

He soon found that he'd dropped the gates onto an aerosol can, puncturing it and freeing the propellant inside which had then gassed him!

He's a lot more careful now.
 
Mythopoeika said:
These days, it's more likely to be acrylic paint, but years ago it was mostly cellulose.
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All water based paints now - protects pandas and the like. Yep spraying stuff in a confined space is deadly. Had a few episodes meself, until I got all sensible and bought a spray painters mask.
 
He/She/It was back again yesterday.
I didn’t get there too early but put a good few hours into clearing a couple of beds and preparing one for overwintering broad beans. Had probably done an hour and half when that feeling of being watched by someone behind me descended.
I was busy so I cannot account for how a weird sensation just washed over me like that. It probably lasted about 20 to 30 minutes and it was gone again.
There was no one else on the allotment in all the time so I cannot account for it at all.
 
Tempest63 said:
He/She/It was back again yesterday.
I didn’t get there too early but put a good few hours into clearing a couple of beds and preparing one for overwintering broad beans. Had probably done an hour and half when that feeling of being watched by someone behind me descended.
I was busy so I cannot account for how a weird sensation just washed over me like that. It probably lasted about 20 to 30 minutes and it was gone again.
There was no one else on the allotment in all the time so I cannot account for it at all.
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There isn't someone illicitly living in one of the sheds, is there? I know our local allotment has had a few issues with homeless people setting up in the sheds - and even some husbands being banished from home deciding to sleep over in their sheds in preference to facing 'her indoors'.
 
catseye said:
There isn't someone illicitly living in one of the sheds, is there? I know our local allotment has had a few issues with homeless people setting up in the sheds - and even some husbands being banished from home deciding to sleep over in their sheds in preference to facing 'her indoors'.
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If there was someone living in their shed we would find the scrotes who keep breaking in and thieving from them.
 
Tempest63 said:
I was busy so I cannot account for how a weird sensation just washed over me like that. It probably lasted about 20 to 30 minutes and it was gone again.
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It sounds like the feeling came on suddenly, and fairly suddenly disappeared, rather than you just suddenly were aware of feeling that way.

It would be easy to dismiss as imagination. It's such a creepy, physical sensation though. I've only experienced it twice in my life, once when I had my back turned to a man with microcephaly who couldn't even stand, but was staring at me very lewdly. The other time when I was in a classroom with other people, but no one was staring at me. It felt like someone was spying on me clairvoyantly, which I don't even assume is possible. It just felt very creepy.
 
We took on our plot about a year ago after the last owner died. He was called Ken and was a thoroughly nice bloke. We inherited the plot and there was a lot of his old kit still there. An old green mac is hung in the corner of the shed. We've left it there as a sort of acknowledgement that Ken is still welcome in his old shed if he should ever drop in. I guess I too feel he's around from time to time. Oddly, we also found out that our plot used to belong to the father of our local butcher...perhaps they're both still there...laughing at my digging technique or enjoying a sit in the sun with me while supping us tea. We're all just passing through I guess.
 
Been back down the allotment everyday for the last ten days. Booked time off of work to get my plot sorted out and do a bit of work on the two, sadly neglected plots that my daughters have…a lot of hard work so far and only half way through theirs, mine in contrast is ready for the new season with some of the pea and bean nets up with only a couple more to do.
Anyhow, nice sunny mornings and no ghostly presence felt whilst working on my plot, but moving on to daughter No. 2 plot he/she/it made its presence felt again, twice. Each time it was fleeting and both times were on the same day. It sort of felt as if a presence had poked its head above a parapet to see what was happening only to recognise me and bugger back off again. The second time, an hour or so later, was like a double take “I know you but you are in the wrong spot…what are you doing on that plot?
Since I moved onto daughter No. 1 plot, nothing! But that is next to the car park and is generally busy with all the toing and froing.
Am back down there later today so will see if the presence makes itself felt again.
 
My plot is ready to go, with or without spooks. First four rows of broad beans have poked their heads above ground.

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