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My Three Things

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sdoig

Junior Acolyte
Joined
Nov 8, 2013
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Hello! -thought I would post my three most interesting Fortean things to happen to me!

1) In my parents old house, my bedroom was in the 'maids quarter' and had a separate flight of stairs. I was 15 (22 years ago) and had a friend sleeping over. We were blethering into the wee hours when someone ran up the stairs. My friend said matter of factly 'Someones coming up the stairs' , to which I replied that that couldnt be as the burglar alarm was set and if my parents or sister had decided to come up my flight of stairs they would have to had put off the alarm which we would have heard. Suffice it to say, we were pretty spooked and to my regret (now) we never investigated!

2) I took my new girlfriend (now my wife) fishing at a wee pond a few miles from town. It was surrounded by willow scrub and was quite shallow (it is in a natural phase of drying out) It was beautiful sunny day and it was a flat calm. All of a sudden about 30 feet in front of us a water spout formed , it was more of less stationary and reached a height of perhaps 10 feet and remained for maybe 10 seconds before collapsing.) It was eerily silent for a while afterwards.

3) Less exciting was driving back from Glasgow on the Dual carriageway with my wife about 10 years ago. She had just returned from a solo holiday to Borneo to see Orang Utans. Naturally I was a little jealous and she was telling me all her stories. We just reached the outskirts of Perth, still on the Motorway when an extremely large Wild Boar appeared at the verge and stood bold as you like and started sniffing the air. I felt it was trying to make up for what I had missed! (For those not in the know - Scotland is not really known for any self sustaining Wild Boar populations at present!)

That'll do for now! :)
 
sdoig said:
Hello! -thought I would post my three most interesting Fortean things to happen to me!

1) In my parents old house, my bedroom was in the 'maids quarter' and had a separate flight of stairs. I was 15 (22 years ago) and had a friend sleeping over. We were blethering into the wee hours when someone ran up the stairs. My friend said matter of factly 'Someones coming up the stairs' , to which I replied that that couldnt be as the burglar alarm was set and if my parents or sister had decided to come up my flight of stairs they would have to had put off the alarm which we would have heard. Suffice it to say, we were pretty spooked and to my regret (now) we never investigated!

2) I took my new girlfriend (now my wife) fishing at a wee pond a few miles from town. It was surrounded by willow scrub and was quite shallow (it is in a natural phase of drying out) It was beautiful sunny day and it was a flat calm. All of a sudden about 30 feet in front of us a water spout formed , it was more of less stationary and reached a height of perhaps 10 feet and remained for maybe 10 seconds before collapsing.) It was eerily silent for a while afterwards.

3) Less exciting was driving back from Glasgow on the Dual carriageway with my wife about 10 years ago. She had just returned from a solo holiday to Borneo to see Orang Utans. Naturally I was a little jealous and she was telling me all her stories. We just reached the outskirts of Perth, still on the Motorway when an extremely large Wild Boar appeared at the verge and stood bold as you like and started sniffing the air. I felt it was trying to make up for what I had missed! (For those not in the know - Scotland is not really known for any self sustaining Wild Boar populations at present!)

That'll do for now! :)
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Thanks for those. Some of us old hands here have posted a few strange events that have happened to us across various threads in the past. Maybe a top 3 is a good idea.
 
I like the sound of the large boar Sdoig - they are really formidable and a good representative of Pictish mythology - I tend to agree with you that some one, or something was listening


754px-Pictish_symbol_stone_from_Dores.JPG



Found in the highlands of Dores...
 
I love the pictish symbol stones. Many are now in museums but they have been replaced in the field by excellent replicas.....
 
sdoig, interesting post!

Mine are splattered liberally in various threads. Top three?

1. Full body apparition in the most 'modern' room in the old ex farmhouse I grew up in. Someone else saw it, as well. It was hovering a few foot up in the air. My dad told me the next day that room was re-modelled drastically before I was born, when that part of the house essentially collapsed. The original floors from before I was born had been three feet higher.

2. My husband had a faceless ghost, in 'Scottish widows' type hooded cloak, turn its face (non-face?) towards him in a dark wood, at Sudeley Castle, when he was re-enacting in the 1970s.

3. Couple of years ago, at night, very late, a couple of miles outside York, husband and self saw the shadow of a cat cross the road in front of our car when we were slowed to a crawl in thick fog. When the shadow (with no cat attached and night time so...shadows?) hit the grass verge it instantaneously morphed into a recognisable cat - but transparent. It disappeared into the woods. Where there is an impenetrable wire fence. My husband saw plants and things round it that simply aren't there. I thought I was seeing thngs so asked him what he just saw and he described that - shadow, solidifying into transparent cat (eyes not lit up in headlights), that vanished through a fence into the woods. My ancestor was a gamekeeper, who in an early 19thC court case, gave an account of being attacked by poachers in that very wood. He was nearly killed. No cats involved, so I can't say the two are connected! But it's weird that it's that wood.
 
jimv1 said:
Thanks for those. Some of us old hands here have posted a few strange events that have happened to us across various threads in the past. Maybe a top 3 is a good idea.
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My stories are far too long winded and rely on multiple overlapping details, to be able to fit 3 of them in one posting!

Truncated versions:
1. Sign of The Cross. A cross disappears from my the chain around my mum's neck, a cross my late father had given her. Searching turns up nothing, I address the air and ask "them" for it back, return to her room and there it is right bang in the middle of the floor as if by magic. 9 years later my mum has dementia and been gravely ill. In the course of one afternoon she reports my dad had been standing by her bedroom door but said nothing, a book arrives in the post about synchronicity being communication from the departed and in which is the story of an american woman with the SAME NAME as my father who's CROSS pen had vanished, she asked "them" for it back and it appeared slap bang in the middle of where she's searched a dozen times as if by magic, and again same day my mother gets distressed demanding "the tin box"...the only candidate for which being one in her bedside drawer she'd have no reason to be aware of. Give it to her and she searches through it, triumphantly pulling out the chain with the cross on it. Three years later still I read a review of a book by the Exorcist author William Peter Blatty about his conviction his dead son has been sending signs. One incident described in the review involves the disappearance of a "miraculous medal", a particular catholic talisman, that had belonged to his son, from the chain around Blatty's neck. He asks for it back and...as if by magic..it reappears bang in the middle of the small confined space he and his wife had searched a dozen times. The description of the "miraculous medal" rings a bell.. I retrieve my mum's chain to confirm that next to teh cross is indeed a "miraculous medal."


2. The Five Year Sign. A young friend had died. At his funeral his sister told of hm dressing as Mary Poppins as a kid, and after the funeral balloons were released into the air, one speeding off ahead of the others. I saw it as symbolic of his soul flying off to heaven and mocked up a photoshop cartoon of him as MP flying on a balloon rather than a brolly.

Two years later, starting with a dream the image or theme of flying off holding on to a balloon, or of balloons generally, kept cropping up in endless succession... the connection to the late friend's funeral finally occurred to me. I tracked down his best mate who told me that the deceased, an alleged prodigy, had been deeply interested in the afterlife before his unexpected death, and seeming signs from him were turning up every day. During the course of these discussions a second mutual friend of the dead boy posts on HIS facebook a Banksy image (called "there is always hope") of a young girl reaching out for a heart shaped balloon, along with the caption "They say you die twice..one when you stop breathing, and again when someone says your name for the last time". I contact hm to ask what the significance of this was, and he explains the image had become a personal talisman for him as it had been turning up around him all the time, starting on new year's eve...the day I had the dream that started my own balloon themed coincidences.

All this went on for a while but eventually attention moved on, until last year.....Twice over a week or so I had the distinct spooky sensation of "someone" pulling at the hood of my top, while alone at home. The second such occassion followed immediately after a dream about a dark skinned young man who had "come back". I half jokingly asked the air "is that you..Matteo?" and the second I said his name a previously never noticed red light on the smoke detector over my head went out. // Next day I started writing all of this up to someone and note that it's coming up to the 5th anniversary of Matt's death. Checking on facebook for the exact date I notice for the first time his last ever posting "..is alive. Just went missing for a while. Back in the land of the living tomorrow.". Then I notice the date on it.. 5 years to the day that I'm reading it. I hurriedly type out this whole new saga to his best friend and as I reach the end notice a new posting at the top of my newsfeed. A friend in Belgium has posted a pic of himself, in hooded top, staring a city skyline and a tiny familiar figure flying off, with the caption "always believe your dreams. Never give up. Mary Poppins.". The person who posted it was called ...Matt.

3. My precognitive dreams collectively. But you've suffered enough to want examples!
 
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"Couple of years ago, at night, very late, a couple of miles outside York, husband and self saw the shadow of a cat cross the road in front of our car when we were slowed to a crawl in thick fog. When the shadow (with no cat attached and night time so...shadows?) hit the grass verge it instantaneously morphed into a recognisable cat - but transparent. It disappeared into the woods. "

This set me thinking. Given that one explanation for a ghost often given by mystics is that the deceased person doesn't realise they are dead yet and remain around their old "haunts", wouldn't you expect to see far more cat or dog ghosts? I love my cat to bits, but she isn't the most intelligent creature (took her 3 days to puzzle out how to use the cat flap) and surely wouldn't be able to rationalise dying as time to move on to a higher plane of existence. If this is what ghosts are, then I would expect the world to be full of ghosts of dead creatures less sapient than homo sapiens. Imagine if all those flies you swatted over the years came back to haunt you?
 
blessmycottonsocks said:
"Couple of years ago, at night, very late, a couple of miles outside York, husband and self saw the shadow of a cat cross the road in front of our car when we were slowed to a crawl in thick fog. When the shadow (with no cat attached and night time so...shadows?) hit the grass verge it instantaneously morphed into a recognisable cat - but transparent. It disappeared into the woods. "

This set me thinking. Given that one explanation for a ghost often given by mystics is that the deceased person doesn't realise they are dead yet and remain around their old "haunts", wouldn't you expect to see far more cat or dog ghosts? I love my cat to bits, but she isn't the most intelligent creature (took her 3 days to puzzle out how to use the cat flap) and surely wouldn't be able to rationalise dying as time to move on to a higher plane of existence. If this is what ghosts are, then I would expect the world to be full of ghosts of dead creatures less sapient than homo sapiens. Imagine if all those flies you swatted over the years came back to haunt you?
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There are quite a few dead pet stories out there. I for one heard our dead cat at her food bowl.
 
blessmycottonsocks said:
"Couple of years ago, at night, very late, a couple of miles outside York, husband and self saw the shadow of a cat cross the road in front of our car when we were slowed to a crawl in thick fog. When the shadow (with no cat attached and night time so...shadows?) hit the grass verge it instantaneously morphed into a recognisable cat - but transparent. It disappeared into the woods. "

This set me thinking. Given that one explanation for a ghost often given by mystics is that the deceased person doesn't realise they are dead yet and remain around their old "haunts", wouldn't you expect to see far more cat or dog ghosts? I love my cat to bits, but she isn't the most intelligent creature (took her 3 days to puzzle out how to use the cat flap) and surely wouldn't be able to rationalise dying as time to move on to a higher plane of existence. If this is what ghosts are, then I would expect the world to be full of ghosts of dead creatures less sapient than homo sapiens. Imagine if all those flies you swatted over the years came back to haunt you?
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What got me about it is it was just so ridiculous. A cat? Why a cat?

My husband thought just a random time slip as he saw some different vegetation around and behind it. (I didn't notice that). An abberation in the way time moves, is the only real explanation I can accept - for any type of 'ghost'.

I find it hard to believe human beings have 'souls' let alone cats.:)
 
GhostInTheMachine said:
What got me about it is it was just so ridiculous. A cat? Why a cat?

My husband thought just a random time slip as he saw some different vegetation around and behind it. (I didn't notice that). An abberation in the way time moves, is the only real explanation I can accept - for any type of 'ghost'.

I find it hard to believe human beings have 'souls' let alone cats.:)

Cynic I think. !! I began my long and eventual escape from religion when the religions teachers told me my dead cat did not have a soul, and i would not see it again in heaven. I knew better, even at age 6. Someday i hope you will know that too. My remote viewing practice has taught me that objects and things we would ordinarily think of as non sentient also have a perspective onto reality and a type of consciousness.
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MorningAngel said:
Lol we had dried food upstairs in a bowl. Her brother was still alive but fast asleep downstairs.
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Our kitty of 18 years used to rattle the blinds covering the back door to signal she wanted to go out. Both I and my wife heard those blinds rattle every few days for 2-3 months, until we moved. Our imagination? Probably. But I like to think the old girls spirit is still around.
 
sdoig said:
Hello! -thought I would post my three most interesting Fortean things to happen to me!

3) Less exciting was driving back from Glasgow on the Dual carriageway with my wife about 10 years ago. She had just returned from a solo holiday to Borneo to see Orang Utans. Naturally I was a little jealous and she was telling me all her stories. We just reached the outskirts of Perth, still on the Motorway when an extremely large Wild Boar appeared at the verge and stood bold as you like and started sniffing the air. I felt it was trying to make up for what I had missed! (For those not in the know - Scotland is not really known for any self sustaining Wild Boar populations at present!)
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A spot of local knowledge here... There's a farm (Hilton Farm) that keeps Wild Boar at Craigend between Bridge of Earn and Perth, right next to the motorway. Mystery solved!
 
Carse said:
A spot of local knowledge here... There's a farm (Hilton Farm) that keeps Wild Boar at Craigend between Bridge of Earn and Perth, right next to the motorway. Mystery solved!
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Brilliant! Thanks for that! :)
 
Ghost In The Machine said:
My ancestor was a gamekeeper, who in an early 19thC court case, gave an account of being attacked by poachers in that very wood. He was nearly killed
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Off topic, but couldn't let it go unanswered! My ancestor was also a gamekeeper around the same era, GITM! He was involved in the Rufford Park Poaching Incident, which inspired its own folk ballad! He had to give evidence in court when one of the other keepers was killed by poachers. This was Nottinghamshire though, so just over an hour from York.

To keep it on topic (even though I've posted this in another thread) we often heard a cat in our kitchen when I was a child and mum felt it circle her legs on numerous occasions. I lived on a very busy road and none of the neighbours kept cats, so it was unlikely we were hearing a noise from elsewhere. A few months after my childhood dog had to be put to sleep we realised the cat had disappeared too, we no longer heard or felt it, and we like to think she had taken the cat with her, wherever she'd gone.
 
Amoradala2 said:
When i was in my late teens I kept a cockatiel (bird) It was banished to my bedroom in its last months for being too noisy in the living room. It didn't like being stuck upstairs and would let out a sad mournful whine in protest.
This sad sound continued in the weeks after it died :(
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You should see 'em fly in the wild Amoradala.

Small flocks of 'em but they're shaped like drops of mercury - rounded one end and sharp and pointy at the nether end.

I apologise if you might feel that this reflects on you (it isn't intended), but I would outlaw any bird in a cage - and that old furphy about caged birds not surviving in the wild?
 
Rabbit Will Run said:
Off topic, but couldn't let it go unanswered! My ancestor was also a gamekeeper around the same era, GITM! He was involved in the Rufford Park Poaching Incident, which inspired its own folk ballad! He had to give evidence in court when one of the other keepers was killed by poachers. This was Nottinghamshire though, so just over an hour from York.

To keep it on topic (even though I've posted this in another thread) we often heard a cat in our kitchen when I was a child and mum felt it circle her legs on numerous occasions. I lived on a very busy road and none of the neighbours kept cats, so it was unlikely we were hearing a noise from elsewhere. A few months after my childhood dog had to be put to sleep we realised the cat had disappeared too, we no longer heard or felt it, and we like to think she had taken the cat with her, wherever she'd gone.
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So cool. I saw Martin Carthy perform somewhere round about 1982 - maybe he sang that song! Will ask my husband.

It does seem that being a gamekeeper was extremely dangerous. The year after my ancestor and his mate were attacked, just down the road, another gamekeeper was murdered by a poacher. They found the gamekeeper's gun some distance away from his body - apparently they had to drop their gun if actually pursuing someone, so it wasn't as if they were even armed.

Just drove past the ghost cat spot tonight and two sons in the car - STILL don't believe us re. the cat.
 
I posted about my "top three" before...

1. Seeing "shadow people"/"ghosts": I saw shadows of people walking around on their own without real people there to cast the shadows. At the time, I thought they were apparitions from beyond. I could only see them at night. It was also inexplicably emotionally disturbing and made me extremely sad for no reason that I could explain, as well as the obvious frightened that you'd expect. This was later explained; it's a rare side-effect of medication that I was on.

2. False memory: I very clearly remember owning a motorcycle and learning to ride it and passing my test in my teens. It never happened! But later in my early 20s, when I wanted to learn to ride "in real life", I seemed to have obtained the skill (enough to pass the test more or less instantly) from the imaginary episode, apparently out of thin air. This one remains completely unexplained.

3. I met my doppelganger: Several people I know have met a guy who looks EXACTLY the same as me, and I met him once too. He's deaf and when I met him I didn't know sign language (but you can be sure that I went and learned it afterwards). Having prepared myself for meeting him, I saw him on a passing bus a couple of times but have never met him again. Patrons of the Leeds Deaf Club won't believe that we are two separate people and when I go there asking, they all think it's a crap practical joke. This one isn't supernatural, he's quite real; however, if it wasn't for other people seeing him I would think I had something related to Capgras delusion.
 
The point of motorcycling brought back another memory for me as well. I rode two wheelers in the late 60's early 70's. You didn't have to pass a test back then if you kept to anything under 200cc. Fast forward to the late 90's rules changed. Inspired by my then girlfriend's father who had been a keen motorcyclist and who really liked me, but sadly passed away a few months earlier, I decided to take lessons and take the bike test.
It was early February and freezing. I could not no matter how I tried get the hang of doing a U turn in a narrow road to the extent that I told my instructor that there was no point in doing my test that pm. She insisted and I wobbled my way round Blackburn . Time for U turn and suddenly such a strong image of girlfriends father came into my mind that I was quite taken aback. I succeeded for the very first time in doing a U turn and passed! Looking over me? Possibly - in fact I split up with girlfriend a short time after and on one of my subsequent visits to a medium a message came through that Harry (that was his name) says that you got a really raw deal! Coincidence, fanciful I dont know but thanks Harry for inspiring me anyway!
 
sdoig said:
Scotland is not really known for any self sustaining Wild Boar populations at present!)
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Uncommon but not unheard-of. This site lists several sighting of wild boar in Scotland, including one photographed near Blairgowrie in Perthshire:

Blairgowrie.JPG


I'd love to see one. Especially through a telescopic sight. From a safe distance up a tree!

Wild boar sausage: Mmmm...

maximus otter
 
I can offer the following, randomly selected from the constant flow of weirdness that is my life -

1. The 'phantom drip' that follows my family around. Gunge/ectoplasm dropping from ceilings onto floors, furniture, people's heads...
2. Our ghost cat. Comes and goes, appears/disappears as it likes.
2. When another car nearly hit mine and ran me off the road on way to Techy's house, he heard me call him and was waiting for me outside his house when I arrived. He knew what had happened and that I was OK.

There's a lot more but y'know, some is personal.
 
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