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An Odd Thing That Happened In A Men's Room

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Tangent7

Gone But Not Forgotten
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This happened to me when I was around nine or ten years old. This would have been in the middle 1960s. At that time, my parents would take us about once or twice a season to the department store at the closest city to our rural home for clothing or whatever. Usually, the last thing my parents did was to have my brother and myself visit the men's room since the drive was fairly long. They waited outside as my brother and myself went into the small men's room. My brother went directly for the toilet and shut the door. I stopped and waited for a tall young blond man finished at the urinal.

My brother, disgusting heathen that most younsters seem to be, finished and went back out the door. For some reason, I waited. I'm not sure why. The man finished, went to the sink, washed up, glancing at me a few times. I felt the hair raise on my neck. He went to the door, opened it. I felt myself holding my breath in anxiety. He went out, then stopped and stuck his head back in.

"I'll see you again. Ok?"

I said nothing. He smiled at me and said, "I said I'll see you again, OK?"

I nodded. He disappeared out the door.

I did my business quickly, and for some reason I don't understand, was thoroughly spooked.

When I went out the door I asked my parents who were waiting for me impatiently if they saw that guy that just went out the door. They said no, that only my brother had come out. I protested, asking my brother if he found that guy as creepy as me, the one at the urinal. He scoffed, "What do you mean? There was no one in there, you jerk!"

I still consider this as one of the instances in my life that got me interested in fortean events. Anyone else? What was the instance that got you interested in the fortean?
 
Hi Tangent7,
Ok, I'll ask the big question -- have you ever seen him again?

Jandzmom
 
This put me in mind of something that happened back when I was a kid. It was family vacation time, and we usually did this by packing-up the old station wagon, and driving cross-country, stopping at various tourist traps along the way.

It was evening, somewhere in Arkansas, and we pulled-over at a rest stop to heed nature's call. My older brother and I did our business at the urinal, screaming and hollering and goofing-off after making certain that we were the only ones using the facilities. We exited, and passed our dad on his way in. My brother went back to the car with our mom, but I was tired of being cooped-up in the station wagon, and decided to wait outside for my dad. I saw the door to the restroom swing open widely, and stay open several seconds before closing again. A few seconds later, it opened again, and this time my dad exited the lavatory, stood in front of the now-closed door, and stared at it with a puzzled look on his face. He touched my shoulder, and told me to get back to the car.

I did, but he stayed behind, re-entering the restroom, and then coming back out. When we got back on the road, he related to my mom that while using the urinal, he heard the sound of coughing coming from the toilet stall next to him. The door to the stall slowly opened by itself, and then the door to the restroom opened (which I saw with my own eyes), and then closed.

My dad was a mountain of a man, a no-nonsense macho kind of guy who'd been a construction foreman and a prizefighter. He was genuinely shaken by what he'd experienced, and I had never seen him that way before. His story creeped me out to no end, and I was quite happy to put as much distance between us and Arkansas as possible.
 
Two things spring to mind here.

First, there are lots of stories on here and elsewhere about haunted lavatories. It seems that ghosts like them for some reason.
(There is even a Stephen King story about a ghost which haunts a toilet cubicle.)

Second, I think there is a more mundane explanation for the first story.
The brother who used the cubicle probably didn't notice the young man at the urinal. This young man may have been considering taking advantage of the little Tangent. It's not unheard of.

Brr.
 
I agree with escargot on this one but would like to add that maybe when the brother left the cubicle and went out to his parents his was perhaps misbehaving or such a handful (as kids are ) that they were distracted and missed the guy (Who sounds like a .......ile) leave the toilets.
 
I agree. The first thing that comes to my mind is that if this was some sort of supernatural creature like a ghost you are asking us to believe that:

- ghosts have to pee

- they seek out a men's room urinal in a polite orderly fashion

- they wash their hands afterwards

- they take the opportunity to proposition young children while they are there

and that they also

- hog the urinal while people are waiting

- disappear on leaving the toilet as though their only purpose for visiting the Earth was to have a bathroom break

I'm prepared to believe in the supernatural but..

Escargot says there are a lot of stories about haunted lavatories on here. Are there? Ghosts do this? But why? Have you got any links. I can only think of the one in Harry Potter (which is fictional)

[I can't help noticing that Ignatius' ghost didn't wash its hands - someone's got to push the men's room door open behind you you know]
 
Pretty much everything ghosts/Ultraterrestrials do is pointless and ridiculous - it's just that we're so used to hearing about them marching along with their heads tucked beneath their arms or repetitively walking in and out of walls that we stop noticing the high-strangeness of it all. There's no more 'point' to a ghost using a urinal than there is to it riding a phantom horse down a country lane or throwing vases across rooms - other than to get itself noticed - which seems to be the principal raison d'etre of these entities.

Although in this particular case, I agree that a prosaic explanation seems more likely.
 
Wow.

First of all, if you check the original post, I never claimed that I thought that the young man was a ghost or any other supernatural being. I simply said that the incident was sufficiently odd and unexplanable to me as a nine or ten year old boy that it got me interested in things fortean. After close reading, all should see that I explicitly gave only the facts as I remembered them (as a good fortean). I suppose I could have beefed up the 'fear factor' with florid prose if that was my intention, but it was not.

Second, please check the question I posed to everyone. Was there an incident that triggered a personal interest in forteana?

Third, no, I never saw the young man again.
 
It seems pretty fortean to me! Most of the strangeness I've experienced could be explained in mundane terms but still remains largely a mystery in my mind. An event happens, and it's weird to me - meaningfully so - but maybe not to others as they hear the story.

For instance: the very weirdest experience I've ever had. It involved feeling very strange - almost like something was possessing me - running out the door of my apartment to escape it, and then seeing two men who seemed "otherworldly" and who chirped at each other like birds. I was a skeptic at the time and immediately thought I might need psychiatric treatment. But I don't like going to the doctor. :) After a while I slowly moved from the skeptical viewpoint to the fortean, accepting that to me the experience was extraordinary and would remain unexplained.
 
Hi Tangent7,
This was the event that made me realize that there were things that I don't understand, and might never be able to explain:

http://www.forteantimes.com/forum/viewt ... lash+light

I think an important question to ask, is what triggers our remembrance of our fortean event?

For me, my memory of my first fortean event was triggered when I picked up Whitley Striber's book "Communion." When I started reading it, I became very upset -- couldn't eat, couldn't sleep, had extreme anxiety --and had to stop reading it. I've never finished the book.

However, being able to share that event in such a supportive atmosphere as the FT message boards, has opened the door for me to accept that weird and unexplainable stuff happens to a lot of people, and many times we'll never be able to fully explain why.
 
LeapingEri said:
the very weirdest experience I've ever had. It involved feeling very strange - almost like something was possessing me - running out the door of my apartment to escape it, and then seeing two men who seemed "otherworldly" and who chirped at each other like birds. I was a skeptic at the time and immediately thought I might need psychiatric treatment. But I don't like going to the doctor. :) After a while I slowly moved from the skeptical viewpoint to the fortean, accepting that to me the experience was extraordinary and would remain unexplained.
Click to expand...
Yep, odd stuff happens (or seems to happen).

Don't categorise until you have enough information.
 
You know, i would say this had a mudane explination too, except, why did he, it , whatever, make it a point to say, twice, that he would see you later? and let's face it, mens rooms are creepy anywhere!
 
lots of things got me interested not just one event, to be honest growing up in a family where your mum, two aunts and a grandmother are all practicing witches/and or fortune tellers/psychic healers/mediums, gives you a bit of an open minded outlook on the weird
 
Hi Tangent. Yes, having an experience such as you describe often launches an interest in things fortean. The triggering incident can lie seemingly forgotten for years, until we hear or read about something similar .. or until we experience another weird event. At other times, it's only many years after the incident that we suddenly realise it couldn't have occurred ... not if reality is as we've been assured it most definitely is. Yet we remember the incident. So we're left with only two options; either reality is wrong, or our memory is (wrong). Most of us want to conform, so we often try quite hard to dismiss the out-of-place memory. But some memories can't be budged; can't be made to fit. At that point, some of us begin trying to make sense of our experience/s via research and by comparing them with those of others when provided the opportunity. That's the intelligent way to approach such a situation. That's undoubtedly how communication between humans commenced and the reason it continues.

I imagine you've been to quite a few men's rooms during your lifetime. I think it can be safely assumed you're able to differentiate between ordinary and extraordinary bathroom experiences :)

Since visiting the fortean forums, I've heard that bathrooms have been the location of some odd goings on. Maybe it's the water element? Maybe it's because people indulge in some pretty in-depth thought and emotion within the one place they can reasonably expect to be allowed a few moments to themselves? For example, one man told me that he retreated to the family bathroom to 'silent scream' (frustration, anger, despair), afterwards reappearing before his family in his usual relaxed guise. Public bathrooms must witness a lot. For whatever reasons, bathrooms -- even cheery-looking residential ones -- can sometimes feel quite unsettling. I guess most people are, without realising it, able to remember the 'feel' of bathrooms they've known, even if they can't remember too much detail about the rest of the house in question. So, powerful places, some bathrooms/toilets.

I would have been unnerved by the experience you describe and it would certainly have stuck in my memory. In fact, I wouldn't like to meet the person who wouldn't be perplexed by such an experience, because they'd have to be odd indeed ! The man you saw and who spoke to you could well have been a ghost or a replay of something that once occurred. Or it could have been the manifestation of some guy's fantasy as he slept, or sat somewhere in an office or truck. I'm happy to learn you walked out of it safely.

The experience that resulted in my own interest in what we term the fortean, by the way, was an early-childhood memory of seeing and hearing a conversation between a member of the clergy and the man he was (as it turned out) about to bury.
 
If ghosts exist, then the fact that they are seen/heard etc in a certain place needn't mean that they are using it for any human purpose. They might be simply 'going through the motions', as it were. ;)

They might also be attached to a particular part of a building which has not always been used for that purpose, as when buildings are converted from one use to another.

There lots of 'haunted lavatory' stories on here, ie this very messageboard.

Hospital bogs in particular seem to be full of ghosts. :shock:
 
If only Matthew Manning would loosen up a bit and reveal a little of what he knows. It was Frederick Myers I think, who reportedly advised Manning, re: the afterlife: ' Even if I told you what it's all about, you wouldn't believe it'. I suspect it's right under our noses. I think what we consider to be 'reality' may in fact be the dream, and our dreams a blurred version of the many realities. We'll probably fall over laughing after we 'die' :lol:
 
A friend and his first wife were awoken every friday night at approx midnight by something that opened their street facing door (twas locked), clumped up the stairs, walked past their bedroom to the bathroom betwixt theirs and their child's and noisily relieved itself. The toilet flushed on completion.

No one there. Ever.
 
My dad used to report the same thing a while ago when I lived at home. Only when he investigated, he'd find this large shadow person lying on the floor, moaning ferociously and giving off a very bad odour.

Naturally, he went back to bed and it had gone in the morning :lol:
 
realspooky said:
My dad used to report the same thing a while ago when I lived at home. Only when he investigated, he'd find this large shadow person lying on the floor, moaning ferociously and giving off a very bad odour.

Naturally, he went back to bed and it had gone in the morning :lol:
Click to expand...

And strangely, the phenomenon stopped when you moved out. ;)
 
[And strangely, the phenomenon stopped when you moved out. ;)[/quote]


He hasnt reported it since :p
 
All my beliefs about ghosts seem to be going down the pan (er pardon the expression). The shadow man seems to have some sort of tradgedy associated with it but what is the other haunting about? The toilet actually flushed? Not the phantom sound of a toilet flushing? I just can't believe ghost do this. Did it use any of the bog roll?

[I can't help noticing that there was no mention of the taps being turned on and off. Hmmm. ]
 
spiritdoctor said:
All my beliefs about ghosts seem to be going down the pan (er pardon the expression). The shadow man seems to have some sort of tradgedy associated with it but what is the other haunting about? The toilet actually flushed? Not the phantom sound of a toilet flushing? I just can't believe ghost do this. Did it use any of the bog roll?
Click to expand...

One could assume that if ghosts existed then they may (if you'll excuse the pun) go through the motions even after death. If one returns to fmailiar places then the toilet is a location one visits often without too much conscious thought involved. If they are acting on instinct then visiting the toilet woudn't be unusual

The first story sounds more like an Ultraterrestiral (as graylien says) or some kind of portent or vision.

spiritdoctor said:
[I can't help noticing that there was no mention of the taps being turned on and off. Hmmm. ]
Click to expand...

Obviously male ghosts - I bet they left the seat up too.
 
jandzmom said:
For me, my memory of my first fortean event was triggered when I picked up Whitley Striber's book "Communion." When I started reading it, I became very upset -- couldn't eat, couldn't sleep, had extreme anxiety --and had to stop reading it. I've never finished the book.
Click to expand...

This book upset me mightily as well, and I had to sleep with a light on for a few nights. But I never felt as if I could "relate" to what Streiber claimed had happened. I've never thought I've been abducted or had any other VERY Fortean adventures, just minor, puzzling things (posted herein, elsewhere).

Jandzmom, did you feel like you were reliving something that had happened to you personally when you read Communion?
 
I do believe in the afterlife. If ghosts and similar spectral phenomena are part of or are caused by the "spirit essence" of a deceased person, I can't help but assume that that person was not, how shall I say, "all clear" when he or she left this world. That is, they had some unresolved issues, and are not ready to graduate and proceed to the next level of existence, whatever that may be.

I also think that a ghost that haunts a lavatory or a city dump or other such déclassé places is inferior somehow to ghosts that haunt, say, art galleries or theatres.

I think there is a hierarchy of existence in the afterlife, and that the "spirits" we hear reports about or come in contact with may really the least significant of these beings.
 
Haunted loos?? when you think about it a lot of people have died on the loo my poor old father in law for one.
And a para medic told me it is quite a common experience with heart attack victims.So maybe that’s the answer .
Last memory/etc and the reason for the haunting :wide:
 
My dad also died in the bathroom. Not quite on the loo, although he'd gone in there, felt poorly and put the toilet seat down to sit down on to recover himself; then wallop down on the floor. My mum heard the thump and came running up.

It wasn't a bad way to go, all things considered. My mum also died nearly ten years later in the same house, in the next room. When we visited her prior to selling the house, I often wondered if I'd hear a mysterious thump from upstairs, but never did.

It was bought and transformed into student housing. There will be much mysterious thumping from upstairs now, and any otherworldly thumping will get lost in the background noise, sadly.
 
Who me said:
Haunted loos?? when you think about it a lot of people have died on the loo my poor old father in law for one.
And a para medic told me it is quite a common experience with heart attack victims.So maybe that’s the answer .
Last memory/etc and the reason for the haunting :wide:
Click to expand...

I wonder if some of them are left with a sense of, er, unfinished business.
 
You've just reminded me that my dad's cousin died on the loo last year!
 
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