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Creepiest Fortean Story?

Dick Turpin

Justified & Ancient
Joined
Mar 28, 2018
Messages
1,025
There’s quite a few tales posted on this forum that genuinely gave me the creeps, but true or false, what’s creepiest fortean story you have ever been told / heard of.?
 
There’s quite a few tales posted on this forum that genuinely gave me the creeps, but true or false, what’s creepiest fortean story you have ever been told / heard of.?

That's like asking someone what their favourite cake is: Like - all of them, trooper.

As far as this board goes, one of the ones that has always stuck in my mind was the youth hostel connected shenanigans related by, mmmm, JohnnyBoy?(Jonnyboy?...something like that, I think; a real world aquaintance of Pietro Mercurios, I seem to recall).

I lost track of the thread years ago - I'm not sure it exists anymore. But if it does, I would be eternally grateful to the person who can direct me there - if only to see if it's as good as I think, or if time and a fallible recollection has polished it up beyond recognition.

I'm not saying it was terrifying - more that it stayed with me in a way that many tales don't. (In fact, I find it's generally not the obvious button-pusher stories that loiter in my memory.)

Another story that's always stuck with me is the Trainyard Ghost one.
 
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... As far as this board goes, one of the ones that has always stuck in my mind was the youth hostel connected shenanigans related by, mmmm, JohnnyBoy?(Jonnyboy?...something like that, I think; a real world aquaintance of Pietro Mercurios, I seem to recall).

I lost track of the thread years ago - I'm not sure it exists anymore. But if it does, I would be eternally grateful to the person who can direct me there - if only to see if it's as good as I think, or if time and a fallible recollection has polished it up beyond recognition. ...

The FTMB member you recall is johnnyboy1968. He hasn't logged on for a decade. He was a staff member at more than one youth hostel, so the incidents he related were at multiple locations.

His posts about incidents and ghost-hunting at the hostel are strewn among multiple threads such as:

https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/tonights-the-night.1577/
https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/anyone-seen-a-ghost.621/
https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/strange-folk.471/
 
Thanks for that, EG. (How do you do that? My searches never turn up anything of any use?)

I can't see the particular post I was thinking about, but I'll have a more thorough dig round later.
 
Thanks for that, EG. (How do you do that? My searches never turn up anything of any use?) ...

In this case, it turned out to be straightforward and didn't require any of my mod / admin 'powers' ...

Run a forum search on 'hostel'.
Go to the back (oldest) part of the results listing.
Open a thread that seems to deal with something ghostly / scary / creepy.
Find a post by 'johnnyboy1968'.
Click on this member's hot-linked name to access their member record.
Click on the 'Postings' option to list the member's posts.
Do a post listing page search on 'hostel' to find 4 hits, indicating this is the member you remember.
Do a forum search on 'hostel', limited to posts by 'johnnyboy1968', to get 'em all.

NOTE: Notably old / dormant member records don't show up in the dynamic suggestions listing that appears when you enter a search term in the 'Find member' entry box on the 'Members' page. If you used that search you'd not know there was ever a 'johnnyboy...' (actually there have been three).
 
This thread?...

Not that one - although it did remind me of the one I'm thinking of when I first read it.

In this case, it turned out to be straightforward and didn't require any of my mod / admin 'powers' ...

I used to be really pretty good at digging up old threads and the sources of half-forgotten memories and random inklings - but my mojo has recently taken an extended holiday, and not left a phone number.
 
There was a story, I *think* it might have been the phantom cigarette smoker thread, or one posted at that time. Handily, my terrible memory can't be more specific. The poster worked at an allegedly haunted office, and one Friday, being the last one out, called out "See you on Monday". Directly into her ear, someone quietly said "No you won't". My recollection is that the OP turned up at work on Monday and all was fine, but I always liked that one. It had so many layers of creepy, it just stayed with me
 

Well I'd vote dfor this one for sure. (and I do mean this one. I'm not confusing it with anything else).

It's a tale well told, believable and with characters in that you can relate to. It rendered all the more creepy by the fact that it has a possible `mundane` explanation - and that this is even more scary than the supernatural one.

There was also a strange on about someoene having a recurring dream of opening a fridge door and finding a ventriloquists dummy in it guarding a bottle of milk...or something. That was somewhat on the shivery side too.
 
There was a story, I *think* it might have been the phantom cigarette smoker thread, or one posted at that time. ...

Nothing like this appears in either the 'Invisible Smoker' or 'Phantom Cigarette' threads, and I can't locate anything remotely similar. :dunno:
 
Nothing like this appears in either the 'Invisible Smoker' or 'Phantom Cigarette' threads, and I can't locate anything remotely similar. :dunno:

Oh, that's my terrible memory I suspect that I just read them both at the same time, of course that doesn't mean they were posted at the same time! Thanks for looking though, I'll have a trawl through my emails and see if anything comes up.
 
TGS is the gift that keeps on giving, with board members irregularly undertaking elongated trips through backwoods mjolby etc ... in the hope of coming across a burnt out gas station, or even a square of scorched earth where one might have stood ... theres no greater exemplar of the depth and illusiveness of the ihtm, always just out of reach ... ive even considered a trip out there myself, in a man-without-a-past kind of way
 
TGS is the gift that keeps on giving, with board members irregularly undertaking elongated trips through backwoods mjolby etc ... in the hope of coming across a burnt out gas station, or even a square of scorched earth where one might have stood ... theres no greater exemplar of the depth and illusiveness of the ihtm, always just out of reach ... ive even considered a trip out there myself, in a man-without-a-past kind of way
If I could afford it, henry, I'd go tomorrow. :) It's such a great story.
 
"There was also a strange on about someoene having a recurring dream of opening a fridge door and finding a ventriloquists dummy in it guarding a bottle of milk...or something. That was somewhat on the shivery side too."
I think that one was called The ventriloquist's dummy and his bottle of milk.
 
I find the ones that are totally outside our terms of reference creepy in that they potentially shatter our grasp of the world. Cows on hind legs talking to each other, giant spacehoppers etc. The sort of thing that is found in here - https://forums.forteana.org/index.p...hind-legs-other-cases-of-real-weirdness.4630/

I think we also had a 'Gibbering Insanity' thread but I can't find it now - it may have been merged or lost.
 
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I think we also had a 'Gibbering Insanity' thread but I can't find it now - it may have been merged or lost.
its that one, i just told the mods to merge it with another older and more obscure thread about the same subject
 
There was a story, I *think* it might have been the phantom cigarette smoker thread, or one posted at that time. Handily, my terrible memory can't be more specific. The poster worked at an allegedly haunted office, and one Friday, being the last one out, called out "See you on Monday". Directly into her ear, someone quietly said "No you won't". My recollection is that the OP turned up at work on Monday and all was fine, but I always liked that one. It had so many layers of creepy, it just stayed with me

Ahhhhh, after vaguely searching on and off for (literally) years, I found it! And managed to get almost every detail wrong.

It is post #40 on the "anyone seen a ghost?" Thread, by Jonnyboy1968. He worked in a youth hostel, said see you on Saturday, and the voice said no. Still creepy though. All the way back in 2002. I cannot tell you how much finding this has cheered me, it's one that I often thought of :hapdan:

Can I link to it?

https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/anyone-seen-a-ghost.621/post-28243
 
I cannot tell you how much finding this has cheered me, it's one that I often thought of :hapdan:

Pure belter, you star! That's the exact post I was thinking about in my first outing in this thread. Thanks.
 
Pure belter, you star! That's the exact post I was thinking about in my first outing in this thread. Thanks.

It's delicious! Genuinely one that pops into my mind every so often - and I would never have connected your post, because I was convinced JB1968 experienced it in an office. I'm glad we're both sorted!:cool:
 
It's delicious! Genuinely one that pops into my mind every so often - and I would never have connected your post, because I was convinced JB1968 experienced it in an office. I'm glad we're both sorted!:cool:

Plus EnolaGaia nailed it in the suggested searches - go mods!
 
I find the ones that are totally outside our terms of reference creepy in that they potentially shatter our grasp of the world. Cows on hind legs talking to each other, giant spacehoppers etc. The sort of thing that is found in here - https://forums.forteana.org/index.p...hind-legs-other-cases-of-real-weirdness.4630/

I think we also had a 'Gibbering Insanity' thread but I can't find it now - it may have been merged or lost.

The cows story was great, I remember it being sui generis as a lot of the most unnerving stuff is. It also reminded me of either a short story or the opening/early chapter of a Young Adult novel I read as a teen, the young protagonist is staying somewhere in the countryside, an old(ish) lady is reckoned to be a witch, said child(ren) spy on her one night and she raises the corpse of a horse in a field, only it stands on its hind legs. The description really creeped me out at the time. Sadly that's all I can recall.
 
I read one recently that I thought was creepy, found it whilst reading through Albert Rosales' brilliant Humanoid Sighting Reports, which is indispensable reading for accounts of high strangeness. But what is ''Pancake Perspectives''?... The forerunner of Batter Aficionado magazine?

12.
Location. Cadgwith, Cornwall, England
Date: 1988
Time: late night
The witness had been staying at a local cottage when one windy and rainy night she was unable to sleep. She was thinking of going downstairs for a while when she looked down the hall and there, at the end of the hall, to the right of the toilet, stood a black figure. It looked like it had a hooded robe on. She just stared, frozen in bed. All of the sudden, the figure lifted slowly from the floor and extended its arms out on either side and proceeded to swiftly float right towards the witness. The terrified witness turned around and dove under the covers. She could hear a rustling sound right above her head. But before she knew it there was dead silence. She waited at least 15 minutes before coming out from under the covers, when she did this the figure had vanished.

HC addendum
Source: Pancake Perspectives issue # 17
Type: E
 
But what is ''Pancake Perspectives''?... The forerunner of Batter Aficionado magazine?


Alas, it seems to be a UFO publication. Not that that is bad but I wanted it to be batter-related :(

Loren Coleman explains:

Jim Aho has published another issue of his Pancake Perspectives,
which he notes is named after a special event:

>One of Wisconsin's most famous UFO close encounters took place
>on April 18, 1961. Joe Simonton of Eagle River reported that he
>was given three pancakes by aliens. Since then, this story has
>been shared around the world, but if you think about it, the
>only reason we can even talk about it today is because he had
>the courage to tell his story in the first place.
 
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