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Minor Strangeness (IHTM)

Ulalume said:
It was a quiet night tonight, but about 9 PM, we heard a gunshot. It was loud, but muffled sounding. Gunshots aren't too uncommon out here, but it being at night and the muffled sound seemed a bit eerie. Also eerie because it was so quiet, no noise the way there would be if someone had shot an animal attacking their livestock.

The reason it might count as minor strangeness, though, is that we all heard the sound coming from a different place.

Because I'm a wiz with MS paint, ( :p) I made this handy diagram of our positions in the house and where we thought the sound had come from:

View attachment 3211

The night was a reasonable temperature for once and all the doors and windows were open. Sound doesn't normally bounce around so much here. It was sort of like a game of Clue... "it was Col. Mustard with a shotgun in the woods" "no, it was Mrs. Peacock with a pistol in the road!"

Hopefully no one was murdered. We wouldn't have been able to find the victim, anyway!
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Re-upping this old post because this happened again tonight, except this time, instead of a gunshot, it was a very loud popping sound, much like someone stomping on a Capri Sun pouch. Again, we all thought it had come from a different direction. We went around checking for anything thing that might have fallen or burst (like a lightbulb) and checked the electrical boxes in case anything seemed awry, but found nothing.

To add to the weirdness, the only person who didn't hear it tonight was my husband, who was asleep at the time. He was woken by all the kerfuffle in the house, though, so I asked if he'd heard the noise. He said no, but he'd heard it last night (Thursday). This was news to me, so I questioned him. He'd been out on the front porch when he'd heard the pop from inside. He'd gone in and asked the boys what it was, and they'd said they hadn't heard anything. He must have failed to mention it to me, as I'd been here and heard nothing then either.

I sent OH back to bed and asked the kids about what their dad had reported the night before. They all said that they can't recall either a noise or their dad asking them about it on Thursday night!

I'll quiz him again when he wakes up. In the meantime I'll be keeping an ear our for any further strangeness.
 
Ulalume said:
Re-upping this old post because this happened again tonight, except this time, instead of a gunshot, it was a very loud popping sound, much like someone stomping on a Capri Sun pouch. Again, we all thought it had come from a different direction. We went around checking for anything thing that might have fallen or burst (like a lightbulb) and checked the electrical boxes in case anything seemed awry, but found nothing.

To add to the weirdness, the only person who didn't hear it tonight was my husband, who was asleep at the time. He was woken by all the kerfuffle in the house, though, so I asked if he'd heard the noise. He said no, but he'd heard it last night (Thursday). This was news to me, so I questioned him. He'd been out on the front porch when he'd heard the pop from inside. He'd gone in and asked the boys what it was, and they'd said they hadn't heard anything. He must have failed to mention it to me, as I'd been here and heard nothing then either.

I sent OH back to bed and asked the kids about what their dad had reported the night before. They all said that they can't recall either a noise or their dad asking them about it on Thursday night!

I'll quiz him again when he wakes up. In the meantime I'll be keeping an ear our for any further strangeness.
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Check the pressure overload valve on the heating system. Maybe the valve popped?
 
Mythopoeika said:
Check the pressure overload valve on the heating system. Maybe the valve popped?
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No central heating system in this house, only some crystal space heaters which have already been put away for the year since it's a warm climate. I suppose if it was anything important that popped, we'll find out soon enough, eh?
 
Ulalume said:
No central heating system in this house, only some crystal space heaters which have already been put away for the year since it's a warm climate. I suppose if it was anything important that popped, we'll find out soon enough, eh?
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OK, glad it's not the heating system!
Another thing it could be (and I have experienced this myself) is a tin of some volatile item (e.g. paint, paint stripper, alcohol) may suddenly make a sound if it heats up in direct sunlight. It's just the volatile substance outgassing and expanding the tin.
 
Mythopoeika said:
OK, glad it's not the heating system!
Another thing it could be (and I have experienced this myself) is a tin of some volatile item (e.g. paint, paint stripper, alcohol) may suddenly make a sound if it heats up in direct sunlight. It's just the volatile substance outgassing and expanding the tin.
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I'll check around to see if anything fit the bill Thanks for the suggestion!
 
Also, it could be your fridge/freezer. I had a similar loud bang once some months ago and thought it was a fuse blowing but couldn't find any evidence to support it, but when I opened my freezer the next day a large-ish piece of ice (which had clearly sheared off the inside wall cos it had the same shaped indentations) dropped out the door. I think it made the loud 'crack' sound as it separated from the surface.
 
Trevp666 said:
Also, it could be your fridge/freezer. I had a similar loud bang once some months ago and thought it was a fuse blowing but couldn't find any evidence to support it, but when I opened my freezer the next day a large-ish piece of ice (which had clearly sheared off the inside wall cos it had the same shaped indentations) dropped out the door. I think it made the loud 'crack' sound as it separated from the surface.
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Oh yeah! Good thought! My fridge has made loud cracking noises before.
 
Ulalume said:
Re-upping this old post because this happened again tonight, except this time, instead of a gunshot, it was a very loud popping sound, much like someone stomping on a Capri Sun pouch. Again, we all thought it had come from a different direction. We went around checking for anything thing that might have fallen or burst (like a lightbulb) and checked the electrical boxes in case anything seemed awry, but found nothing.

To add to the weirdness, the only person who didn't hear it tonight was my husband, who was asleep at the time. He was woken by all the kerfuffle in the house, though, so I asked if he'd heard the noise. He said no, but he'd heard it last night (Thursday). This was news to me, so I questioned him. He'd been out on the front porch when he'd heard the pop from inside. He'd gone in and asked the boys what it was, and they'd said they hadn't heard anything. He must have failed to mention it to me, as I'd been here and heard nothing then either.

I sent OH back to bed and asked the kids about what their dad had reported the night before. They all said that they can't recall either a noise or their dad asking them about it on Thursday night!

I'll quiz him again when he wakes up. In the meantime I'll be keeping an ear our for any further strangeness.
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I had something like this happening a few years ago, it turned out to be a sealed hard plastic 25L fuel container with a small amount of petrol (gasoline) in it, (boat outboard remote fuel tank), which expanded during the day and contracted suddenly in the evening when it cooled down, I only discovered it by accident, being near it when it happened once ( really made me jump ). I like your 'stomping on a Capri Sun pouch', it is a perfect description of the sound.
 
As mentioned on another thread, the window frame can sometimes make a loud crack noise if there is an issue with its fitting. This has happened in our bedroom once or twice.
 
I am sitting here at my desk this morning, checking emails, Twitter, Instagram, this forum, drinking a cup of coffee and eating some raisin/fruit toast when I feel that my right palm is damp.
Looking down, my palm is all bloodied from two small gashes, the larger one approximately 1 cm in length still bleeding.
All I've done this morning it get up, have a shower, make breakfast for my wife and I and sit down here. I've touched nothing sharper than a butter knife.
No idea what I could have done.
Minorly strange, but then it's Easter, so perhaps it's stigmata. o_O
 
Lord Lucan said:
I am sitting here at my desk this morning, checking emails, Twitter, Instagram, this forum, drinking a cup of coffee and eating some raisin/fruit toast when I feel that my right palm is damp.
Looking down, my palm is all bloodied from two small gashes, the larger one approximately 1 cm in length still bleeding.
All I've done this morning it get up, have a shower, make breakfast for my wife and I and sit down here. I've touched nothing sharper than a butter knife.
No idea what I could have done.
Minorly strange, but then it's Easter, so perhaps it's stigmata. o_O
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Check to see if there are any bats about.
 
Did you hold the raisin/fruit loaf in your hand to slice and were careless with the bread knife maybe?
 
Papercuts? Although I see nothing in the list of the actions you did...
 
Iris said:
Has your skin cracked because of all the hand sanitiser you have to use?
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Dry skin yes, cracked no. I've not been out of the house for a week now. No @dejamikic, didn't handle paper either. I really did few tasks before I sat at my desk. The larger cut is stinging enough this morning to make me question how I didn't notice doing it, but again, it's just one of those case of minor strangeness (or a minor accident).
 
JamesWhitehead said:
I remember that Southport's local paper used to run a weekly quiz, featuring photographs of the elegant architectural features overhead. Lord Street, the main shopping boulevard, had once been home to dozens of very distinctive shops, banks and tea-shops; at ground-level, those businesses had their identity, sometimes literally, plastered over by standard chain-store designs. They were just so much floor-space! Above ground-floor level, the external features, at least, were left in peace.

In some cases, I gather, the internal features also survived, as businesses shrunk. Whole floors could be used just for storage or sealed off as time-capsules. I gather the old Co-Op in that town - since home to Poundland and Macdonald's etc, has a ballroom on the top floor, essentially in mothballs! Inquisitive workers have found their way up there from time to time, though I have not seen any photos! :)
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That'd be fascinating to see...

I always do the same thing down Coney St in York, having done some research on Regency era shops - we had to figure out where some places we' researched actually were... and some of the buildings still standing, on the upper storeys were things like an exhibition space for travelling freak shows, big warehouses of early chain stores, etc. And as you say, often the upper storeys haven't been messed about as much.

Talking of shop storage space, someone who works in a shop on Stonegate (major tourist route down towards Minster) in York tells me that she's been told that the famous Roman soldier ghosts we've all heard about, seen at the Treasurer's House in York, below ground level, have also regularly been seen in the cellar spaces below the Stonegate shops - so much so that many of the shops elect to use a dedicated storage space elsewhere in the city centre, rather than their cellars. This is the first mention of other sightings of those ghosts, I have ever seen...

The thought of a mothballed ballroom is wonderfully evocative.
 
JamesWhitehead said:
I remember that Southport's local paper used to run a weekly quiz, featuring photographs of the elegant architectural features overhead. Lord Street, the main shopping boulevard, had once been home to dozens of very distinctive shops, banks and tea-shops; at ground-level, those businesses had their identity, sometimes literally, plastered over by standard chain-store designs. They were just so much floor-space! Above ground-floor level, the external features, at least, were left in peace.

In some cases, I gather, the internal features also survived, as businesses shrunk. Whole floors could be used just for storage or sealed off as time-capsules. I gather the old Co-Op in that town - since home to Poundland and Macdonald's etc, has a ballroom on the top floor, essentially in mothballs! Inquisitive workers have found their way up there from time to time, though I have not seen any photos! :)
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We've walked down Lord Street many times - it's a shame that it has deteriorated like so many town centres, albeit with the buildings largely intact. Fascinating about the ballroom.
 
JamesWhitehead said:
I remember that Southport's local paper used to run a weekly quiz, featuring photographs of the elegant architectural features overhead. Lord Street, the main shopping boulevard, had once been home to dozens of very distinctive shops, banks and tea-shops; at ground-level, those businesses had their identity, sometimes literally, plastered over by standard chain-store designs. They were just so much floor-space! Above ground-floor level, the external features, at least, were left in peace.

In some cases, I gather, the internal features also survived, as businesses shrunk. Whole floors could be used just for storage or sealed off as time-capsules. I gather the old Co-Op in that town - since home to Poundland and Macdonald's etc, has a ballroom on the top floor, essentially in mothballs! Inquisitive workers have found their way up there from time to time, though I have not seen any photos! :)
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That’s my old home town! I didn’t know that about the ballroom above McDonald’s. I’ve often wondered if the story that Lord Street was what inspired Napoleon to build the Paris boulevards is true or not.
 
IbisNibs said:
As I was reading the most recent posts on the "Signs From God" thread on these beloved Forums, I heard what sounded like a chorus singing one sustained note, the kind of sound used in movies to indicate epiphanies or the present/intervention of God. I heard it twice.
It could have been an extra loud car radio, a strangely musical water pipe (one I've never heard in this building before), or train wheels scraping along the rails if the sound had carried on a puff of wind. Most likely the car radio, as the the window is cracked open a little, like my brain.

(BTW, I'm not religious. I see weird things in the bottoms of coffee cups, and could see them in pork snack items if I came in contact with such things, but it doesn't make me believe that what I see exists in any other context.)
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Was just reading on twitter a guy who normally doesn't suffer from tinnitus saying that at the periphery of his hearing, he keeps thinking he can hear people talking.

I do think if one of our five senses is being deprived of its usual fodder (and at the moment life has quietened down for most of us) , then it will start to fill in some gaps.
 
Mr Spagooter said:
Evening all!

About 6-8 weeks ago I was driving back from band practice in Cumnor (Oxfordshire) and had to take a detour as part of the a34 was closed. It routed me a fair way off the beaten path to get back northbound and I ended up out into the sticks towards Bletchingdon/Kirtlington.

Now bearing in mind this was around midnight, I'm driving in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by fields and wooded areas. I turn a slightly sharp right hand bend, slowing the car down and there stood in front of me, on the right hand side, was a man with his back to me.

Now the weird thing is, he was already still when I caught him in the headlights (as it were). He wasn't mid stride or anything. Just deathly still and he didn't move an inch, it was almost as if he were frozen.

It gets weirder as he didn't even turn to face the car or acknowledge the presence of a car discovering him in the middle of nowhere. He just stood still. I slowed down to see if he needed help or anything but as I approached, something was really 'off' about it so I kind of panicked and drove on.

I tried to get a look at him as I went past, but couldn't really see any facial features due to the positioning of the lights.

I'd estimate his age based on clothing and posture as being in his 60's. He wore a flat cap with a reddish jumper and beige slacks.

I debated turning around to drive back and absolutely confirm what I had seen, but something about it really gave me the creeps, so I didn't go back. Which I regret as it's not like me to not try to be rational.

As a result of this, I did a bit of research into the area and I believe there was a taxi driver that was murdered back in the late 80's very, very close to where I witnessed this. The gent in question was of an older age also.

Maybe I'm just being stupid? It really was a very strange scenario. I can't think of a scenario where an older gent would be standing alone, in the arse end of nowhere, at midnight, in daytime clothing (it was a very cold night).

I should also add there wasn't any car parked up on this road that he could have embarked come from.
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I'd say burying, or had just buried, his murder victim's body. Don't have nightmares.
 
Lord Lucan said:
I am sitting here at my desk this morning, checking emails, Twitter, Instagram, this forum, drinking a cup of coffee and eating some raisin/fruit toast when I feel that my right palm is damp.
Looking down, my palm is all bloodied from two small gashes, the larger one approximately 1 cm in length still bleeding.
All I've done this morning it get up, have a shower, make breakfast for my wife and I and sit down here. I've touched nothing sharper than a butter knife.
No idea what I could have done.
Minorly strange, but then it's Easter, so perhaps it's stigmata. o_O
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If it helps this happens to me fairly often! I never feel the cut at the time and never have a clue how it happened. Always my hand/fingers so I'm just clumsy I guess.
 
Lord Lucan said:
The larger cut is stinging enough this morning to make me question how I didn't notice doing it, but again, it's just one of those case of minor strangeness (or a minor accident).
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As part of the day job I regularly have to open cardboard boxes, and can cut myself sometimes quite badly on ragged/sharp edges of the card as I rip it open. For some reason, maybe because the cardboard is thick, I don't feel the cut at the time, but can later notice stinging and then look down and my hand is covered in blood.

On another note - I'm from Exeter and regularly visit the Exeter Memories Facebook page. Where 'older' members of the board complain how much nicer Exeter used to look pre 1930 with its lovely old buildings in the High Street, and how awful it is that they were knocked down to build the 1950's monstrosities that now stand there.

I keep going on to point out that it wasn't the Council, it was the Luftwaffe that was responsible for ruining the city centre, but they won't have it. It was Modern Life as far as they were concerned, that did away with the historic buildings...
 
catseye said:
it wasn't the Council, it was the Luftwaffe that was responsible for ruining the city centre, but they won't have it. It was Modern Life as far as they were concerned, that did away with the historic buildings...
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What had poor Exeter done to deserve the tender ministrations of the Luftwaffe? I've visited the city, and enjoyed it, but it didn't strike me as ever having been strategically important. What did I (as opposed to the Luftwaffe, presumably) miss?
 
It was in return for Britain bombing the historic city of Lubeck (I don't suppose that had much strategic importance either). Exeter was part of the "Baedeker raids" (Baedeker being a tourist guide to historic spots in Britain).
 
Strangely, I understand that Blackpool escaped from any bombing campaign in WW2. This despite the construction of bombers on Squires Gate Lane and an airfield on Stanley Park. It is alleged that Hitler wanted the place undamaged and to continue as a hotel resort after the invasion, although I've never seen any written evidence of this. Weird that my grandmother chose this town to move to in the late 30's when her husband died, even though she had no connection to the place and was moving away from her family. By doing so she and my mother escaped the terrible experience in other towns and cities.
 
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