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It Happened To Me! Then I Realised It Hadn't

Cloudbusting

Cloudbusting

Not your average chicken
Joined
Jul 19, 2020
Messages
728
I'm hoping this hasn't been done before, and I hope this is the best place for this thread but mods please feel free to move if necessary...

I have had a few fortean experiences in my time but I've also experienced a few things that I initially thought were fortean turn out to be anything but, much to my embarrassment/amusement. :p Has anyone else experienced something similar?

To kick us off I'm actually going to share a story my Dad told me a few years ago...
In his mid to late teens, my Dad loved nothing more than going out and getting drunk with his mates, and it was not uncommon for him to stumble home in the early hours a few times a week. One night, sometime after midnight, he started to walk home with his mates and eventually split off from them to walk down a tree lined road towards his house. Walking down this road, he started to feel like there was someone following him. Looking around, there wasn't a soul to be seen but he did notice a large owl in the tree behind him. Thinking it was a bit unusual but not particularly strange, he continued on and heard a flutter. Turning around, he could see that the owl had flown to the next tree as he had walked. He continued to watch the owl whilst walking, and realised it was watching him and following him, flying from tree to tree. Feeling rather drunk and pretty creeped out (what was this beast - a demon owl?! :eek:) he belted it and the owl chased him all the way home.

Returning home, gasping, he found his parents were still awake downstairs and rapidly recounted the tale about the 'stalker/demon' owl to them. His parents did not believe any of it, blastered him for being a pisshead, then sent him to bed... A few days later there was story in the local paper about a hand reared owl who had been captured, having escaped a week earlier. Apparently this owl had taken to following people because it was so used being around people... So whilst my dad had indeed been chased home by an owl, it certainly wasn't as 'fortean' as his inebriated mind may have led him to believe. :rollingw:

Does anyone have any similar stories?
 
We used to have a thread on this! Lots of humorous misunderstandings.

As when my elderly neighbour complained about the men running up and down my stairs and shouting. :eek:

It was my teenage sons going about their normal business. Neighbour'd just had his first hearing aid and couldn't yet recognise background noise.
 
Cloudbusting said:
I'm hoping this hasn't been done before, and I hope this is the best place for this thread but mods please feel free to move if necessary...

I have had a few fortean experiences in my time but I've also experienced a few things that I initially thought were fortean turn out to be anything but, much to my embarrassment/amusement. :p Has anyone else experienced something similar?

To kick us off I'm actually going to share a story my Dad told me a few years ago...
In his mid to late teens, my Dad loved nothing more than going out and getting drunk with his mates, and it was not uncommon for him to stumble home in the early hours a few times a week. One night, sometime after midnight, he started to walk home with his mates and eventually split off from them to walk down a tree lined road towards his house. Walking down this road, he started to feel like there was someone following him. Looking around, there wasn't a soul to be seen but he did notice a large owl in the tree behind him. Thinking it was a bit unusual but not particularly strange, he continued on and heard a flutter. Turning around, he could see that the owl had flown to the next tree as he had walked. He continued to watch the owl whilst walking, and realised it was watching him and following him, flying from tree to tree. Feeling rather drunk and pretty creeped out (what was this beast - a demon owl?! :eek:) he belted it and the owl chased him all the way home.

Returning home, gasping, he found his parents were still awake downstairs and rapidly recounted the tale about the 'stalker/demon' owl to them. His parents did not believe any of it, blastered him for being a pisshead, then sent him to bed... A few days later there was story in the local paper about a hand reared owl who had been captured, having escaped a week earlier. Apparently this owl had taken to following people because it was so used being around people... So whilst my dad had indeed been chased home by an owl, it certainly wasn't as 'fortean' as his inebriated mind may have led him to believe. :rollingw:

Does anyone have any similar stories?
Click to expand...
I've got an owl based anecdote that's only slightly interesting in the middle of it ..

I was a reluctant cub scout in the late 70's .. I was bored with something they were doing one day so I decided to sneak off and explore round the back of the building instead. This area was bracken, weeds, small trees and the like when I almost walked into a huge owl just standing on the ground that was completely white. From memory, it was over half my standing hight .. I'd like to tell you I have some profound moment and that me and this owl shared some kind of knowing look but we didn't. It just sort of stumbled away in fear as if it had a broken wing or something. Then I returned to the carpark at the front of the building.
 
escargot said:
We used to have a thread on this! Lots of humorous misunderstandings. ...
Click to expand...

One of the threads you may be referring to would be this one:

Misperceptions
"A thread for stories where you thought you experienced something weird or ghostly or odd, but then realised it was after all something mundane that you had temporarily misperceived. ..."
https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/misperceptions.22321/

It includes my own embarrassing "encountering a ghost" story from childhood:
https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/misperceptions.22321/post-1377496

Similar stories can be found in:

False Memories
https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/false-memories.1485/

It Never Happened, But...
https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/it-never-happened-but.61665/
 
Not a fortean tale, but back in the late 1980’ I found a job working as a postman.

Once I got reassigned a ‘’walk’’ that I was unfamiliar with, which had me delivering mail to residential flats, shops and pubs.

Obviously the pubs would be closed when delivering the 1st class early morning post, and one particular pub had no letter box, so I would simply slide the letters under a door.

On the 2 class delivery though the pub would be open, so I’d enter and hand the letters to the barman / barmaid.

After about a fortnight of doing this, I walked into the pub one afternoon, and the landlady asked me if the pub ever received 1st class post– I told her yes most days, but she said she hasn’t received 1st class post since I took over the walk 2 weeks prior .

I told her about me posting letters underneath a door, and she asked which door. The pub had multiple doors and I couldn’t tell which door from inside the pub, so asked if she would step out onto the street so I could show her.

I showed her the door in question and a furious look came over her face. It transpired that the door was a false door and on the other side of the door was a fruit machine. I helped her move the machine to one side and there were between 30 to 40 letters stacked up underneath it.:)
 
Cloudbusting said:
I'm hoping this hasn't been done before, and I hope this is the best place for this thread but mods please feel free to move if necessary...

I have had a few fortean experiences in my time but I've also experienced a few things that I initially thought were fortean turn out to be anything but, much to my embarrassment/amusement. :p Has anyone else experienced something similar?

To kick us off I'm actually going to share a story my Dad told me a few years ago...
In his mid to late teens, my Dad loved nothing more than going out and getting drunk with his mates, and it was not uncommon for him to stumble home in the early hours a few times a week. One night, sometime after midnight, he started to walk home with his mates and eventually split off from them to walk down a tree lined road towards his house. Walking down this road, he started to feel like there was someone following him. Looking around, there wasn't a soul to be seen but he did notice a large owl in the tree behind him. Thinking it was a bit unusual but not particularly strange, he continued on and heard a flutter. Turning around, he could see that the owl had flown to the next tree as he had walked. He continued to watch the owl whilst walking, and realised it was watching him and following him, flying from tree to tree. Feeling rather drunk and pretty creeped out (what was this beast - a demon owl?! :eek:) he belted it and the owl chased him all the way home.

Returning home, gasping, he found his parents were still awake downstairs and rapidly recounted the tale about the 'stalker/demon' owl to them. His parents did not believe any of it, blastered him for being a pisshead, then sent him to bed... A few days later there was story in the local paper about a hand reared owl who had been captured, having escaped a week earlier. Apparently this owl had taken to following people because it was so used being around people... So whilst my dad had indeed been chased home by an owl, it certainly wasn't as 'fortean' as his inebriated mind may have led him to believe. :rollingw:

Does anyone have any similar stories?
Click to expand...

Sorry great stories, thank you for posting. I think though, that's the best avatar I've ever seen.
 
I was doing the lunchtime washing up at about 3.30 this afternoon (hey, at least I was doing it!), looking out of the kitchen window as I did so. For a moment I thought I saw a flame flickering above my reflection, and I was about to turn around in alarm when the flame resolved itself into a pair of cabbage white butterflies, out in the garden, doing that fluttering dance around each other. Just for a second there I thought I was (a) being granted the gift of tongues, (b) being visited by a corpselight, or (c) about to spontaneously combust!
 
I was spending the weekend at a castle (living history not posh friend's). It is part ruin and part inhabited. Owner was away and said we could sleep wherever we wanted. I chose a creepy bedroom high up - and across a flat roof bit - that was the room above/below one of the ubiquitous Mary Queen of Scots Slept Here rooms. I think during her incarceration there, her servant or something had slept in the room I chose. It was a nice big room, high up in a tower.

(We could even have slept in the dungeons if we wanted! Cold, though - most people slept in the kitchen and a few of us adventurous souls spread out through the building).

I shared the room with my two sons. No way was I going to be alone in there at night.

So we spent the evening with everyone else, eating and drinking and generally having fun down in the kitchen. Various of us were dotted around the castle to sleep. At some point, sons and I took ourselves off to sleep. To get there we had to go up a spiral staircase (ever tried that in 15thC poulaines - those long pointy toed shoes)? Funny. Totally impractical on spiral staircases. And then lift a latch cross a corridor, and then walk across the flat roof area to get to this bed chamber. The flat roof area played monk singing music on a loop in the day when the public were there but we had it switched off.

As sons and I lifted the latch of this massive oak door and pushed the door open, to cross the flat roof bit, we heard this deeply creepy cracking sound. It was sort of rhythmic and... weird. Couldn't tell where it was coming from and we were crapping ourselves so we ran across the open air bit, this horrible sound following us the entire way. Like it was chasing us.

Absolutely cacking ourselves. I didn't get a wink of sleep and had to reassure the kids "the ghost" wouldn't get them, totally lying because I thought it might. The room we were above/below (below I think) was an infamously haunted room - I was too frit to commandeer it. We'd heard tales of workmen running out screaming, etc. Big group of us but nobody took that room.

In the morning we went out in broad daylight - the creepy sound that had "chased" us across the roof was a flag, cracking in the wind.

I might as well have had a full night's sleep.
 
Back in the 1990s I mistook a pile of old sacks in the moonlight for a crouching witch-like figure. The simulacrum was uncanny. I showed it to my buddies at the time, and they freaked out too. One even ran inside to get a pistol because we're Americans and we do stuff like that when confronted with the supernatural. A handgun is a pretty good holy symbol if you have faith in it. Had we been drinking? TBH yes. The bad news? While we had a handgun, nobody had a camera.
 
Ghost In The Machine said:
To get there we had to go up a spiral staircase (ever tried that in 15thC poulaines - those long pointy toed shoes)? Funny. Totally impractical on spiral staircases.
Click to expand...
Maybe if you'd had suspenders for them it would have been a little easier.
poulaines-worn-medieval-man-th-century-pop-art-retro-vector-illustration-vintage-kitsch-poulai...jpg
 
escargot said:
Reminds me of reading, many years ago, that there are more guns in the USA than there are toasters.
Click to expand...
I don't doubt that is true. For all the bluster, we Americans are a timid lot, and we never feel safe without the means of killing things we perceive as a threat, which might be anything given our bizarre religious proclivities. As to the comparative absence of toasters, well, the same applies in Japan. I discovered the reason to be that a Japanese toaster costs $270 and only toasts a single slice at a time.
 
bugmum said:
Probably more guns than kettles too, having seen those horror videos of Americans making tea in the microwave. (And then having the nerve to describe it as "British tea"!)
Click to expand...

I am British and I often make tea in my microwave.
 
IbisNibs said:
XBergMann, look what you've done to poor Bugmum! I am American and I have never owned a gun. I also think fast food smells like flatulence. I am truly weird.
Click to expand...
It's okay to be a statistical outlier IbisNibs. The only reason I own guns is because my fellow Americans own guns. In truth, the only parties who win from this arrangement are the arms manufacturers, but in my defense I have been eating venison I shot and dressed myself for the entire quarantine period. Like you, I also loathe fast food, but that is because I have lived overseas for a long while and my tastebuds began working again.
XBergMann said:
I am British and I often make tea in my microwave.
Click to expand...
You sir, are a felon, and you should be horsewhipped. That is like a Japanese person using sweetened condensed milk during Chanoyu.
 
AlchoPwn said:
Back in the 1990s I mistook a pile of old sacks in the moonlight for a crouching witch-like figure. The simulacrum was uncanny. I showed it to my buddies at the time, and they freaked out too. One even ran inside to get a pistol because we're Americans and we do stuff like that when confronted with the supernatural. A handgun is a pretty good holy symbol if you have faith in it. Had we been drinking? TBH yes. The bad news? While we had a handgun, nobody had a camera.
Click to expand...
We have 3 ghosts that you can only see in the night time. One is in the bathroom; as you enter for that late night/early morning whizz the ghost is pressed hard up against the wall and is silhouetted by moonlight streaming through the bathroom window behind it. In daylight it is the tall radiator/towel rail with the towels all plump and folded hanging off it.
As you leave the the bathroom at night, there is one to the left that stands tall and hulking, which by morning transforms into a coat stand where all our dog walking coats, leads and hats sit. And on the right is another mass which takes on humanoid shapes in the dark, but is a coat rack With all our non dog walking coats on it.
We know what they are, but even so there have been times when tired and bleary eyed I have had to do a double take; I wonder if any of our overnight guests have had a fright and have felt a little too silly to mention it in the morning.
 
During my period of loving all things American (which still exists but to a lesser extent) I bought a 6 foot tall fibreglass statue of a US police patrolman. I positioned it in a darkened corner on the landing in my house. It would scare the jeebers out of anyone going upstairs to go to the loo and even when people knew it was there it had the same effect. Eldest son has it in his house now and the same thing happens.
 
Cloudbusting said:
I'm hoping this hasn't been done before, and I hope this is the best place for this thread but mods please feel free to move if necessary...

I have had a few fortean experiences in my time but I've also experienced a few things that I initially thought were fortean turn out to be anything but, much to my embarrassment/amusement. :p Has anyone else experienced something similar?

To kick us off I'm actually going to share a story my Dad told me a few years ago...
In his mid to late teens, my Dad loved nothing more than going out and getting drunk with his mates, and it was not uncommon for him to stumble home in the early hours a few times a week. One night, sometime after midnight, he started to walk home with his mates and eventually split off from them to walk down a tree lined road towards his house. Walking down this road, he started to feel like there was someone following him. Looking around, there wasn't a soul to be seen but he did notice a large owl in the tree behind him. Thinking it was a bit unusual but not particularly strange, he continued on and heard a flutter. Turning around, he could see that the owl had flown to the next tree as he had walked. He continued to watch the owl whilst walking, and realised it was watching him and following him, flying from tree to tree. Feeling rather drunk and pretty creeped out (what was this beast - a demon owl?! :eek:) he belted it and the owl chased him all the way home.

Returning home, gasping, he found his parents were still awake downstairs and rapidly recounted the tale about the 'stalker/demon' owl to them. His parents did not believe any of it, blastered him for being a pisshead, then sent him to bed... A few days later there was story in the local paper about a hand reared owl who had been captured, having escaped a week earlier. Apparently this owl had taken to following people because it was so used being around people... So whilst my dad had indeed been chased home by an owl, it certainly wasn't as 'fortean' as his inebriated mind may have led him to believe. :rollingw:

Does anyone have any similar stories?
Click to expand...

The same thing happened to me over the period of a week on middle of the night walks in college, I referred to it as my owl stalker/good omen.
 
I bet @JamesWhitehead can find this somewhere - there was a FT item years ago about route-learning bus drivers who'd slow down on approach to a bus stop for a woman wearing a red jacket, to the instructor's amusement.
'She' was actually an optical illusion created by a pillar box next to a low wall or summat.
 
escargot said:
I bet @JamesWhitehead can find this somewhere - there was a FT item years ago about route-learning bus drivers who'd slow down on approach to a bus stop for a woman wearing a red jacket, to the instructor's amusement.
'She' was actually an optical illusion created by a pillar box next to a low wall or summat.
Click to expand...

Whatever it was dates back more than decade, because you alluded to it 10.5 years ago ...

https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/sunningdale-rolled-car-road-ghost.41143/post-967213
 
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