• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Personal Stories About Black Shapes , sense of foreboding

stu neville

stu neville

Commissioner.
Staff member
Joined
Mar 9, 2002
Messages
13,692
Morning, everyone. I am doing a lengthy piece for the mag, and sourcing quite a lot of material already posted on here, but I need your anecdotes.

Specifically, this kind of stuff, mostly outdoors, but especially when you've experienced more than one of these at once:
  • Black or grey shapes, large or small
  • A sudden intense fear or disorientation, feeling of immense sorrow or outright panic
  • A feeling that you need to leave where you are immediately
  • Sudden absolute silence
  • A distinct feeling that you must not discuss this or think about it
  • Very quickly forgetting the incident, regardless of how frightening or intense it was
  • If you were with someone else, did they experience the same thing, or were there differences in their account
  • Where it was (the more precise you can be, the better), and especially if it's somewhere you've been before or since and felt no such thing on any other occasion.
Feel free to post on here, or PM me (just title it personal account or similar) - I won't quote anyone without permission, am happy to anonymise. Thanks all in advance :)
 
Hello, I dont know if this is what you are looking for but please feel free to use it.

Back in 1992/3 I was living in Merthyr Tydfil and is where this event took place. I was walking home from a friend's house quite late in the evening (1-2am), when for no discernable reason a feeling of what I can only describe as abject terror came over me and I began to panic. I was suddenly very aware that I was a lone female (22) and felt extremely vulnerable. I remember checking out my surroundings and could see nothing/nobody around which somehow made my fear intensify. I quickened my pace trying to get myself home as quickly as possible whilst at the same time being hyper vigilant of my surroundings. Suddenly, I felt my attention drawn upwards and this is the moment I almost lost the plot because directly above me was a massive dark, silently moving shape. I started running as though my life depended on it (at the time it felt like it did) and I knew that this shape was above me the whole time. In retrospect it was as though I was being stalked (for want of a better word) and I can't properly put into words the huge amount of fear I felt. The danger felt very real. The strangest thing however, is that once I was back home, the feelings of imminent danger just went away and I seemed to forget about the incident. Decades later I can remember how terrified I was but for whatever reason I can't really recall much about the dark shape itself, as though I have a mental block(?). The incident was truly bizarre and I've experienced nothing like it since.
 
A couple of anecdotes, maybe not entirely relevant, but might be of interest.

Place: 4 bedroomed house in Ickenham, Middlesex.
Time: 1985 - 1993
Ages: 13 - 21
House I lived in when I was a teenager. Thought it was haunted - feeling of someone walking into the room behind you, no-one there - sounds of banging in the attic - nothing that could not be put down to an overactive imagination. Still pretty unnerving. Atmosphere was the strangest. I'd be sitting in my room at night, and there would come this sudden feeling that I was very 'remote' from the rest of the house. An odd feeling of 'loneliness' (though that's not the right word) - a feeling of being in some space larger than the house - accompanied by a sudden 'get downstairs' feeling. Seemed to happen a lot over the 8 years or so living there. Still, overactive imagination...
Anyhow, and more specifically. April 11th 1990. Family away - me and three friends staying over. No drugs, no drinking. Sat in the living room talking - about midnight. I suddenly get a feeling of something approaching from the garden, thin figure wrapped in grey shroud. Then start shivering - teeth start chattering. Feeling sudden sense of panic. Other friend says that when he had stayed over the other night he had felt a sense of 'evil' coming out of the hallway. Night kicks off into panic. Electricity starts switching on and off. Feels that we're being played with. One of my friends wants to be a priest (he did end up becoming a priest actually). Decide to 'bless' the house - downstairs dining room cold and empty feeling - that odd remoteness. Upstairs. The atmosphere 'thickens' - we are really not meant to be there. Bathroom the worst for some reason. Felt like a huge hospital in a bathroom, if that makes sense? Not a tiny bathroom in a suburban house that the 4 of us couldn't fit in. Nasty, nasty feeling. None of us like looking in mirrors - we all come to this conclusion separately - as we discuss weeks later. Back to the living room finally, the only 'safe' feeling place in the house. Eventually fall asleep - myself and the future-priest lay awake talking till dawn to drown out the sound of a 'crackling' outside the window to the garden - as if being produced by something crouched down under the sill.
Pretty eventful night. Anyhow, next day we all get up, and no-one says a word about it. we have breakfast - prepare for our jobs, and I feel almost... ashamed of something. I'm not sure over what - a feeling of shame and a deep, deep sadness, as if something I loved has been lost forever. It's that sense of shame that stays with me the most.
Two of us stay in the house while two go off to their jobs. Gets to the afternoon. Grey day I remember. Watching daytime soaps. Then this feeling comes down - slams down. A sense of utter, utter oppression - like a gloomy day whose gloom has become almost tangible. We look at each other. Just get out. GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT. We fled. Early afternoon, and we grabbed our coats and just fled. Felt like there was something nasty and dangerous and poisonous in the air. Absolutely horrible.
Not saying there was anything supernatural about it at all - some kind of weird hysteria is the most likely culprit - but even a 'rational' explanation doesn't take away from the feelings.
That was the most eventful night there.
Couple of other incidents.
1) Sometime around 1990 - 1993. Take my dinner up to my room while everyone else eats downstairs. Distinctly hear the sound of someone running down the landing, down the stairs, open the front door and run up the front garden path. Look out of my window. No-one there. I sit back down, mentally shrug and get on eating my dinner. Don't think much more of it till my Mum comes up five minutes later and asks what I had been doing. Everyone else downstairs in the living room heard the same thing, someone running down the landing, down the stairs, then slam the front door. She's convinced it was me. It doesn't strike me till much much later how utterly bizarre the whole thing was - and how utterly bizarre no-one wa sthat concerned about it at the time. If someone from outside got into the house, which is the most rational explanation, maybe a burglar, that would be concerning, but no-ones that bothered about it.
2) Sometime around 1990 - 1993. Evening. I'm in my room playing the guitar. I look across the room to where a box of paints is sitting (for painting Warhammer miniatures I was quite into for a wheel). The box rises up into the air - about a foot or so, then slams back down. I'm not near it. Nothing's near it that could have caused it. I shrug, think 'that was interesting' and just got back into playing the guitar. I wasn't spooked out. disturbed or frightened. I wasn't even particularly interested in it. Weeks later it strikes me that I might have witnessed a 'poltergeist' incident - but even the event doesn't register. I can't trust my memory on what happened now 25 years plus later - but I do know what I thought I saw at the time, and that it just wasn't that interesting.
 
Mine from the same thread Min posted

'a man shaped hole in reality'
One of the few things I've seen or not seen that I can't explain if you get my drift.I know I posted this many years ago but not sure what thread.
Was driving down a lane ,thick woodland either side,on my way to try to track down some Wild Boar. A boar sized (not shape) black "hole"ran into the woods on the left hand side of the lane.It was just an amorphous void,no definiate edges,could not understand or explain what it was.What was really wierd was that the first thing I thought was "Blackbird", immediately followed by "Who the f*** are you trying to kid?", it really felt like something had put "Blackbird" in my mind. Someone at the time possibly Swan suggested a tulpa caused by my youngest (autistic) son, good a reason as any.
 
Don't know if it's of interest but I used to have this thing I privately called 'nightmare landscapes' when I was in my early teens. I would be out walking through a stretch of countryside (did not always occur in same spot or every time)- used to do this a lot as from where I lived as it was a shortcut to local town- and suddenly the whole atmosphere would change and it seemed as if everything had become very strange and frightening and I would feel hairs on back of my neck rise and become afraid of looking too closely at anything around me, it usually passed away (after about 20 minutes) as suddenly as it came. Never actually saw anything but always had the feeling I might and that it was something I very much didn't want to see!
 
There's a lane between my village and the suburbs, it's unlit and about a mile or two long. Not particularly isolated there are few houses but it runs through woods and farmland for the most part. About 2/3 of the way there's a hairpin junction with another lane leading up through more farmland. This always being my route. Like most British lanes it's either hedged or enclosed by trees. As an aside, this little road will be familiar to many who learned to drive in the 2000s, as it was featured in the most popular of the training computer things for the Hazard Awareness section of the theory test.

I've driven this road for years day and night, yet for a few weeks around 2010, everytime I drove this route home (never out) at night as I approached the junction I was overcome by an absolute certainty that there was soneone in the back of the car. It was a little Polo estate (I think it was an estate) so no one could have been but the sensation was overwhelming. To the extent that one night utterly pissed off with it all I pulled in at a little passing spot and searched the back of the car. I've had absolutely no belief in anything paranormal for years so while I realise this was just my imagination, it's really out of character for me to be bothered enough by sonething like this to pull over. It also strikes me as odd as it was always in the same place, came completely out of the blue, and created such an incredibly intense feeling of a 'presence'. Around that time I changed to a two seater, so I don't know whether it was that which stopped it or if it'd just fizzled out on its own before that.

I realise this isn't exactly a thrilling tale but I'm not putting it very well.
 
@stu neville ther's my post from 'panic in the woods' thread, touching on points 2 (panic), 3 (leave now!), 6 (forgot about them for a long time - years) and now I think on it, 8 (both familiar locations I had been to/passed numerous times before - and since):

https://forums.forteana.org/index.p...d-sense-of-the-word.26643/page-5#post-1929922

Related follow on posts:

https://forums.forteana.org/index.p...d-sense-of-the-word.26643/page-5#post-1930028

https://forums.forteana.org/index.p...d-sense-of-the-word.26643/page-5#post-1930152

https://forums.forteana.org/index.p...d-sense-of-the-word.26643/page-5#post-1930331

https://forums.forteana.org/index.p...d-sense-of-the-word.26643/page-5#post-1930579

https://forums.forteana.org/index.p...d-sense-of-the-word.26643/page-5#post-1931523

Hope they're of relevance/use.
 
"A feeling that you need to leave where you are immediately."

@stu neville


In January I was on my uppers, and took a driving job.
Central London.

On the first morning's training we had been told to report at 9am, I had got there at 8.40am.

Just after 9am all the trainees were in a waiting room, where we sat and talked amongst ourselves as we waited for the instructor to arrive.

I was gripped with a nervous feeling inside me, and a feeling of dread, that I was making a terrible decision to do that job, and I should leave immediately, and not do the job.
To run away from the office.

This was not a touch of "first day nerves", rather this was distinct, scary and upsetting.

Nonetheless I stayed, and the feeling left after about five minutes.
I took the training, and started the job, which I did for one month.

It did not go well, to the extent that the vehicle I drove was damaged or vandalised by someone without me noticing, possibly whilst it was parked, and sustained damage which was then deducted from my wages.
Taking into account fuel expenses and sundries, in spite of working long hours, I made a grand total pre-tax of about £30 for a month's work!

I wish I had listened to my "instinct".

But, things work out for the best, and having done the job for a month, at least I know what it entails...and when friend asked me if I would recommend that he do it, I told him "No."
 
BeardSprite said:
@stu neville ther's my post from 'panic in the woods' thread, touching on points 2 (panic), 3 (leave now!), 6 (forgot about them for a long time - years) and now I think on it, 8 (both familiar locations I had been to/passed numerous times before - and since)
Click to expand...
Tremendous - thank you.
Victory said:
I was gripped with a nervous feeling inside me, and a feeling of dread, that I was making a terrible decision to do that job, and I should leave immediately, and not do the job.
To run away from the office.
Click to expand...
All part of the same thing, so great!
 
there's a stretch of woodland near where I live in the Calder Valley, it's one of my favourite walking spots, there's a small clearing where a stream drops over some rocks into a pond beneath. It's definitely a nice peaceful spot to sit on a summer day and just relax, but every now and then, maybe once every 6 months or so, as I approach the area and sit on my favourite bit of flat rock I get the distinct feeling that I'm not wanted, when I get this feeling I've always moved on down the path and it drops away as I leave the area until the day I thought I'd ignore this feeling, just shrug it off and sit and see what happened.

Almost immediately the feeling intensified I could feel the hair rising on the back of my neck, I decided I'd sit and see the situation out "stop being so daft" I muttered to myself. as soon as I'd said this it was almost as if I was surrounded by a field of static electricity, it was a bright sunny day and yet at the same time I felt as if a dark cloud had come over the sun.

I jumped up and looked around, there was nothing to see but I had the distinct impression that something was just behind the bushes ready to spring at any moment. I screamed out "I'm sorry, I'm sorry" and took to my heels following my usual route following the stream down the valley. when I got a few hundred yards through the woods I stopped and looked back, I was panting, I was scared but The air around me felt normal again.

I visited the same place a few days later, very gingerly I'll admit, I took a few oatcakes from home and left them on the flat rock as, I suppose a kind of offering. I've been back many times since, on the couple of occasions I've had the "not today" impression I've heeded it and moved swiftly on.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top