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Not a village as such but I cycled past This house the other day. The google pictures make it look in much better repair than it actually is, and the garden is much more overgrown now, with the bottom right-hand window being boarded up. The house itself appears to be lived in, but not cared for.

As I rode past, I had one of those irrational feelings that I needed to get away from there as fast as possible, and that it was a dangerous place to be near.

I have ridden past it at least 5 times since and not had the same feelings at all.

;0)
Owners got old, maybe?
 
Owners got old, maybe?

I think you could be correct. I cycled past again today. It is called Woodfall Farm; Though not much farming seems to be going on.

AB4B6A7E-A039-44EB-9A60-55EF973B0BE4.jpeg


E975DAA7-165B-4E6D-B976-3D38E79CD400.jpeg


B882A92D-D477-442C-93F4-87309B44B3F7.jpeg


It’s a lot more over grown than in the Google image and isn’t as looked after.

Definitely no creepy vibe today though. Just a feeling of sadness that its being allowed to go to ruin.

It looks to me like the entire farm is on its way out.
 
Do we have a disappearing house thread ? There was a white-washed detached house on a prominant rural crossroads on the road out from Dartmouth towards Camelford. I can't be more precise until I've google-mapped it. It was one of those landmarks that confirmed you were on the right road and only an hour from the Cornish coast. I was a passenger in the early '80's but clearly remember seeing the crossroads but no longer the house in 1982 or so - my mate driving made same comment. No great mystery, maybe we got the road wrong. Except I have a memory of visiting the house (or one very similar) when we dropped off a hitch-hiker a couple of years before. He let us in the house and offered tea but had no biscuits - luckily I had bought my own cake (cherry I believe). We were lead through double wooden doors into the sitting room, but when it was time to leave I couldn't see any exit out of the room.
What our host had done was take the back off a tallboy wardrobe and position it behind the wall arch leading into the sitting room. Once in the room he closed the doors behind him - so instead of the way out, all your eyes saw was a grand wardrobe against the wall. Clever ghost.
 
Do we have a disappearing house thread ? ...

No. There are multiple stories about disappearing houses (once known / seen / visited, but seemingly MIA) but not a dedicated thread.
 
I was chatting to my mum at the weekend. Out of nowhere she starts talking about when we went to France on holiday. I was tiny, only about 5 or 6 so my memories are pretty much non existent. My parents borrowed a campervan and with the inlaws, me and my sisters we went travelling through France. My mum specifically remembers one village they stopped at.

They had been driving for a while and this seemed like the best village. They parked up in the caravan site and went wandering through the town. Mum said it was fairly early - it wouldn't have been too late as with three tinies, she wanted to get us all in bed. As they walked through the small town, every house they walked past had someone shutting the shutters. If it had been one or two houses, then she probably wouldn't have thought much of it, but she said it felt very much like as soon as my parents got to the house, someone came out and shut the shutters. She said there was something in the atmosphere, it felt oppressive and she felt really uncomfortable. There was nothing there for them, so they returned to the camper van.

Us little uns and my grandparents were in the van and mum and dad had a tent.. Mum said all night she could hear running water - she said it sounded as though someone was filling a swimming pool. The only thing was, there was no swimming pool - either on the site or near by. There was no river, stream.. and my grandparents said there was no tap running in the van. Mum said there was nothing that could have caused the noise, and yet hear it she did. And she can famously sleep like the dead, so it was a noise that managed to keep her awake.

By the time she woke up in the morning, she said she felt panic all over. She started packing up the tent and our stuff and said that she wasn't staying another night there, and they had to go on and find something else. No one else knew what she was talking about. She said my dad hadn't heard or felt anything and my grandparents just thought my mum was a bit odd - forever more they referred to it as the village where X wouldn't stay. She never felt anything like it anywhere else on the trip, it was just that one place and that the feeling went once they left and drove further on.


She thinks it was called something like veerl, or virl... she can't remember. It would have been North France at any rate - we went over by ferry and I know at some point we did Normandy and the Bayeaux tapestries. Sadly I can't see anything on the map that looks like it, and it's too far away for her to recognise it.
 
I was chatting to my mum at the weekend. Out of nowhere she starts talking about when we went to France on holiday. I was tiny, only about 5 or 6 so my memories are pretty much non existent. My parents borrowed a campervan and with the inlaws, me and my sisters we went travelling through France. My mum specifically remembers one village they stopped at.

They had been driving for a while and this seemed like the best village. They parked up in the caravan site and went wandering through the town. Mum said it was fairly early - it wouldn't have been too late as with three tinies, she wanted to get us all in bed. As they walked through the small town, every house they walked past had someone shutting the shutters. If it had been one or two houses, then she probably wouldn't have thought much of it, but she said it felt very much like as soon as my parents got to the house, someone came out and shut the shutters. She said there was something in the atmosphere, it felt oppressive and she felt really uncomfortable. There was nothing there for them, so they returned to the camper van.

Us little uns and my grandparents were in the van and mum and dad had a tent.. Mum said all night she could hear running water - she said it sounded as though someone was filling a swimming pool. The only thing was, there was no swimming pool - either on the site or near by. There was no river, stream.. and my grandparents said there was no tap running in the van. Mum said there was nothing that could have caused the noise, and yet hear it she did. And she can famously sleep like the dead, so it was a noise that managed to keep her awake.

By the time she woke up in the morning, she said she felt panic all over. She started packing up the tent and our stuff and said that she wasn't staying another night there, and they had to go on and find something else. No one else knew what she was talking about. She said my dad hadn't heard or felt anything and my grandparents just thought my mum was a bit odd - forever more they referred to it as the village where X wouldn't stay. She never felt anything like it anywhere else on the trip, it was just that one place and that the feeling went once they left and drove further on.


She thinks it was called something like veerl, or virl... she can't remember. It would have been North France at any rate - we went over by ferry and I know at some point we did Normandy and the Bayeaux tapestries. Sadly I can't see anything on the map that looks like it, and it's too far away for her to recognise it.
Wonder if the running water noise could have been an underground stream, land drain or hidden culvert? Mum was clearly spooked!
 
Wonder if the running water noise could have been an underground stream, land drain or hidden culvert? Mum was clearly spooked!

There's a stream that goes under my local cycle track - but you wouldn't know it's there. However, you can just about hear it on quite nights and it has a marked temperature drop. That used to freak me out until I found the stream.
 
People may have been closing the shutters to keep their houses cool during the heat of the afternoon. Maybe your mother had never seen anything like that before. She had three small children, so it makes sense to me that she would be on hyper alert after experiencing an anomaly. Mothers are much more tuned in to potential dangers when their children are involved.

the garden is much more overgrown now, with the bottom right-hand window being boarded up.
Obviously you had a better view of the place than I, Marksourbutts, but the bottom window looks like it has a shutter up, a la the windows in the French village that Little_grey_lady visited as a child. At least, it looks similar French shutters I've seen.
I like trees too, but the tall yews, or whatever they are, in the first photo of the house make it look like the house is confined and unwelcoming. I find the house more open and friendly looking without those trees.
 
I've really enjoyed going through this thread!

The village of Llangynog did it for me. Think it would make a great setting for a folk horror movie (although perhaps I'd watched An American Werewolf... too recently before passing through).

We were passing through on the way to North Wales and it was just getting dark. The combination of the very austere looking chapel in the centre and the rapidly darkening mountain pass that hangs over the village (and the complete lack of people) certainly made it in an atmospheric visit.
 
I've really enjoyed going through this thread!

The village of Llangynog did it for me. Think it would make a great setting for a folk horror movie (although perhaps I'd watched An American Werewolf... too recently before passing through).

We were passing through on the way to North Wales and it was just getting dark. The combination of the very austere looking chapel in the centre and the rapidly darkening mountain pass that hangs over the village (and the complete lack of people) certainly made it in an atmospheric visit.
I know what you mean. A lot of those remote villages look pretty bleak in anything but perfect weather, and Llangynog really does feel like the middle of nowhere. That said, I once spent a pleasant few days' holiday in a caravan just down the road, and it's actually quite a nice area to explore.
 
I know what you mean. A lot of those remote villages look pretty bleak in anything but perfect weather, and Llangynog really does feel like the middle of nowhere. That said, I once spent a pleasant few days' holiday in a caravan just down the road, and it's actually quite a nice area to explore.

Yes, would love to go back! There’s a real bleak beauty to that area... and enough to get Forteana senses tingling.

Plus, the pub in the village looked pretty good from afar!
 
I
MMW: Is this the 'Darned house' by any chance? - http://g.co/maps/hrszm

If not, could you link to the location?

I have an old (now ornamental) milepost/stone in my back garden with 'Duns' and 'Exomh' written on it. Any idea where Exomh is? The 'h' at the end end is in lower case so it may be a longer place name that ends with an 'h'.
I know account retired and poster is now amongst the wraiths of the forum, but I saw this and my first thought was "Exmouth". That random 'o" is a very 18thc thing to do. So I looked up Exmouth and there's a place nearby called "Dunsford".

9 years on and maybe someone else came along in the intervening pages to solve the question but yes, my money's on that.

Talking of creepy places, we used to go to Devon a fair bit in the 1980s for re-enactments at Powderham Castle - became a firm favourite. A few years later we even went on holiday for a week in Starcross, when our kids were little.

Not a village but small seaside town (creepy at best of times). Last year, I had to go down there for work for a couple of days. We were excited as we'd loved it down there in the 80s and 90s. We were staying in Dawlish where we'd had a few happy days out many years before.

Something really forlorn about it now. Husband went on the cool railway along the coast in the day whilst I had to work. He said it was eerie. Whether that was the cumulative effect of returning to a place we'd last seen when our 29 year old was 2... and the sort of mix of memories and reality. Or whether something else I dunno. I was sort of happy/sad to leave. It was odd.

Have been asked back next year. Am defo going because the people were outstanding - but the place I once only had really fun memories of is now sort of tarnished a little by that indefinable weirdness we both felt.
 
I lived in the area for 53 years and moved away in 2016. The first time I went to the Black Horse was last year (gloriously sunny evening) with my brother. I'd heard of the Pubs but only went to a handful, unlike my brother who was a member of 3 local darts leagues and my elder sister who was a lush.
Just wondered if you know or have been to a place called Jordans near Chalfont st.Giles? My granddaughter goes to nursery there. William Penn is buried there. There is also a Friends meeting house there.
I’ve always found this place creepy,it reminds me of a filming location where somebody takes a wrong turn on a road and ends up in a forgotten village.
It’s very picturesque and looks idyllic but still gives me the fear.
 
Just wondered if you know or have been to a place called Jordans near Chalfont st.Giles? My granddaughter goes to nursery there. William Penn is buried there. There is also a Friends meeting house there.
I’ve always found this place creepy,it reminds me of a filming location where somebody takes a wrong turn on a road and ends up in a forgotten village.
It’s very picturesque and looks idyllic but still gives me the fear.
It seems that the whole village was set up by the Quakers and many of the properties are owned and managed by a non-profit society.
So, many of the residents may be Quakers.


Oh yeah... and the Prince of Darkness himself owns a mansion nearby.
 
Just wondered if you know or have been to a place called Jordans near Chalfont st.Giles? My granddaughter goes to nursery there. William Penn is buried there. There is also a Friends meeting house there.
I’ve always found this place creepy,it reminds me of a filming location where somebody takes a wrong turn on a road and ends up in a forgotten village.
It’s very picturesque and looks idyllic but still gives me the fear.

I've only been once about three years ago, when the Friends meeting house was used for an Open Day by the local branch of the British Dowsing Society. I don't think the C of E would have been so accommodating - the wife of the vicar in Amersham refused to let Yoga Classes to be held in the Church hall some years back because it was non-Christian. The Chesham vicar in 1974 prayed for the souls of the audience watching The Exorcist in the Embassy cinema. Anyway, dowsing with rods was brilliant, found the Mains pipes with no trouble and at the end of the session we were instructed to find (dowse) the resting place for William Penn in the graveyard. I couldn't do it but some did - or rather what they found was his grave stone, I believe no-one knows where his body is actually buried. Probably somewhere in Pennsylvania.
 
A Catholic Priest from our local church as a kid went to see the Excorcist. I think that he was qualified to perform an excorcism if my memory serves me well, but he never talked about them.
 
One of my favourite quotes of his:

Sharon "I got you purple and black balloons Ozzy."

Ozzy "Balloons... balloons... I'm the Prince of fucking Darkness."
 
One of my favourite quotes of his:

Sharon "I got you purple and black balloons Ozzy."

Ozzy "Balloons... balloons... I'm the Prince of fucking Darkness."
Somewhat off-topic, although it does - tangentially - implicate another elder statesman of the British music scene. I just found out what balloon is in Vietnamese: (quả) bong bóng. The -ng at the end is pronounced more like -m, and the accent on the ó in the second bong indicates a rising tone. So, hum the Frog Chorus to yourself. You know: bom bom-bom bayeeyah. The second and third syllables give you both pronunciation and tone.

(And the quả is a determiner which indicates something round. You also use it for, inter alia, eggs and apples.)

This knowledge delights me.
 
There's a village called Newbie, near Annan in Dumfriesshire. I don't know if you'd even call it a village as such as it appears to have no local amenities. I was working at a nearby facility and took a wrong turn leaving one day but I figured that I could pick up the main road further along. That's how I discovered that Newbie comes to a dead end. As I executed a three point turn I was filled with a deep sense of uneasiness, the place seemed unnaturally still and silent for a hot, sunny day during the school holidays. The houses were uniform, red brick 50s/60s style and they just felt "wrong" and unsettling. I was aware that I was probably being irrational but I locked my car doors, wound the windows up and got the hell out. The very memory of the place give me the judders. I was talking to a guy at work the other day and I mentioned this experience and he agreed that Newbie has a very weird vibe, just something you can't quite place. I did think about going back there but......naaaah.
 
There's a village called Newbie, near Annan in Dumfriesshire. I don't know if you'd even call it a village as such as it appears to have no local amenities. I was working at a nearby facility and took a wrong turn leaving one day but I figured that I could pick up the main road further along. That's how I discovered that Newbie comes to a dead end. As I executed a three point turn I was filled with a deep sense of uneasiness, the place seemed unnaturally still and silent for a hot, sunny day during the school holidays. The houses were uniform, red brick 50s/60s style and they just felt "wrong" and unsettling. I was aware that I was probably being irrational but I locked my car doors, wound the windows up and got the hell out. The very memory of the place give me the judders. I was talking to a guy at work the other day and I mentioned this experience and he agreed that Newbie has a very weird vibe, just something you can't quite place. I did think about going back there but......naaaah.

Looking back from the “dead end”, or - as locals call it - Muirbeck Road, Newbie:

A401DE2B-B479-4128-A7E0-7068E4BE600B.png


maximus otter
 
There's a village called Newbie, near Annan in Dumfriesshire. I don't know if you'd even call it a village as such as it appears to have no local amenities. I was working at a nearby facility and took a wrong turn leaving one day but I figured that I could pick up the main road further along. That's how I discovered that Newbie comes to a dead end. As I executed a three point turn I was filled with a deep sense of uneasiness, the place seemed unnaturally still and silent for a hot, sunny day during the school holidays. The houses were uniform, red brick 50s/60s style and they just felt "wrong" and unsettling. I was aware that I was probably being irrational but I locked my car doors, wound the windows up and got the hell out. The very memory of the place give me the judders. I was talking to a guy at work the other day and I mentioned this experience and he agreed that Newbie has a very weird vibe, just something you can't quite place. I did think about going back there but......naaaah.
You don't need to have amenities to be a village. This is a mistake made by people who think a 'village' is 10,000 people, two shops, a school and doctor's surgery.

My village has nothing. No shops, no pub, nothing. Well, we've got a church, but that's not a lot of use on a Friday night when you want a bottle of wine and some chips.
 
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