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The Scariest Fortean Thing Ever To Happen To You

As a boy I used to explore with my jack russell an old landlord house in Co. Galway in the west of Ireland. Its long abandoned but fully roofed, only some bits of floor missing etc. I would go through the fields to it and wander about but one day as we headed down there I decided to go in the front door which was opened by just pushing it in so I headed up the stone steps to the entrance and just as I reached the door the dog stopped dead , dug his paws into the ground and the hair stood on his back. I got such a fright by my faithful old pals actions I immediately got a feeling of dread and took flight. I ran the whole way home across the fields. I still wonder to this day what the dog sensed. It was a place that attracted plenty of local ghost stories I remember the old blacksmith telling me and my father of the white lady seen in the field in front of the house and a previous owner had fled the house at night never returning for his belongings which were then appropriated by the locals. He claimed that the death coach pulled into the yard one dark night. There were no bad things done there as far as im aware compared to some other old landlord houses in the area but its a day I will never forget. A few years later I rode my bike down there to meet a mate and I cycled into the back of the house where the old stables and outbuildings were and again when I realised my pal wasnt coming I got the frighteners looking up at the house dead quiet and no one within miles a feeling of being watched hit me. Again I took flight like the wind on my bike. The mind certainly can play tricks on you but I can still picture the hair standing on the dogs back all those years ago.
Great post, welcome to the board :)
 
I had another interesting but sad experience as a kid. A neighbouring farmer, a really nice man and a family friend passed away after an illness in hospital in Dublin. I would walk to school , half mile on an old country road and as I passed his home perhaps a year after his death I looked in and saw a figure, stooped walking across the farmyard. It was a cold misty morning but to this day I believe I saw his spirit as his illness forced him to walk with a stoop. I have often thought of mentioning this to his son but decided long ago not to as it might upset him. I cannot think of any person in that small community that would have been walking across his yard at 0830 in the morning and the family had moved to the nearest town following his passing.
 
I posted this ages ago.

https://forums.forteana.org/index.p...er-to-happen-to-you.38959/page-9#post-1389706

However I went to a retirement do a couple of days ago (not in the building in question) and was talking to someone who also used to work there. There was no mention of any spooky atmosphere or weird happenings but she did mention, IIRC in respect of heating bills the ridiculously high ceiling in that corridor and rooms around it they must have been more than twenty feet (six metres) high. I remember they were decorated using tall ladders and rollers on poles. I also remember one of the painters saying that they had painted the trap door shut but he doubted that that mattered because of how high it was.
It then occured to me that when I heard that door bang, I never looked up! I don't know what noise it would have made of course but I was left with an uncomfortable image of something peering out of that trapdoor watching me trying the doors in the corridor.:omg:
 
Maybe not the scariest thing that's happened to me but probably the most fortean. My only contribution to The Fortean Times and I have reproduced the letter here to avoid confabulation of an event from over 40 years ago. . Not sure why I bring it up now - well, whatever.

By the summer of 1980 I had been on permanent night shift for over a year and had no trouble in sleeping soundly through the normal day-time disturbances in my parent’s farm-house in Bucks. It wasn’t a noise or a sudden movement that gradually woke me one afternoon however, but the persistent and quite unmistakable feeling that some-one was watching me as I lay in bed.
I’d never liked the prickly sense of unease when being intensively observed by someone out of my direct line of sight (a common protective instinct I guess), but it was usually fleeting and the situation frankly didn’t arise often. But this occasion was different, for it must have taken a very deliberate and protracted scrutiny to have woken me up in this particular manner.
My bed was under the window and I lay facing the wall, so as I opened my eyes and glanced up I could see under the thin curtains at the sky outside. It was roughly four o’clock on a gloriously sunny day, I could hear wood pigeons and the muffled bark of a dog and the cries of its owners in the nearby woodland. Everything felt familiar and normal, so normal that I closed my eyes to settle down again - but was almost immediately prompted by the discomfort boring into the back of my neck. It was as if some-one was behind me and staring at me, so I rolled over.
She stood in silence about six feet away, between the wardrobe and the Hi-Fi unit, in the corner of my room furthest from the door. It was difficult to say how old she was, maybe a slim 19 or 20 (my age) , as she wasn’t wearing make-up. Her simple bodice and skirt didn’t look shop-bought and I noted shallow breathing although I self-consciously did not linger on her chest. She wasn’t pretty in any conventional sense, I remember uncombed fair hair and a large sore or birthmark on her lower lip, an expressionless face and large sullen eyes that were staring intently and unblinkingly into mine.
My first thought was that one of my Mother’s visitors had accidentally wandered into my room and that there would be an embarrassed apology at any second. Bit annoyed but not wishing any fuss, I rolled back over to say don’t worry you didn’t disturb me and closed my eyes.
There then followed a long awkward pause.
The apology never came and the sensation of falling (literally) off to sleep was met by a rising panic on the way up. I could sense the girl was still standing there (and remained for quite a while) and my mind was starting to process the oddness of the situation. For some reason I didn’t want her to gain my attention again, either by talking to me and definitely not by reaching out and touching me. I had to make a very conscious decision on how to react and it was difficult. Even though the adrenaline was starting to kick in I was tired, I had a Shift that evening and I chose sleep. When I awoke, she was gone and my Mother later confirmed there had been no visitors that day.

The farm-house was not old, it had been built for the family 15 years earlier with no indication that anything had existed on the (agricultural) site before. It did have a glorious view over the Chess river valley, where only the rubble of a 13th century church remained of a settlement rumoured to have been wiped out by the plague. I’m not a believer in ghosts as deceased Spirits, but I am intrigued by the idea of sightings possibly being a passive replay of past events under special circumstances (á la Stone Tapes). What I experienced though was not passive but an interactive event. The girl was alive as far as my senses could judge. I don’t know why she was staring at me so intently, but it was something my unconscious brain had perceived (somehow) as a potential threat and woken me. If this was some sort of a time slip then the girl was in my bedroom at least 10 foot above ground level.
I'm not saying there isn't a rational and mundane explanation, I just don't know what it is.
 
Maybe not the scariest thing that's happened to me but probably the most fortean. My only contribution to The Fortean Times and I have reproduced the letter here to avoid confabulation of an event from over 40 years ago. . Not sure why I bring it up now - well, whatever.

By the summer of 1980 I had been on permanent night shift for over a year and had no trouble in sleeping soundly through the normal day-time disturbances in my parent’s farm-house in Bucks. It wasn’t a noise or a sudden movement that gradually woke me one afternoon however, but the persistent and quite unmistakable feeling that some-one was watching me as I lay in bed.
I’d never liked the prickly sense of unease when being intensively observed by someone out of my direct line of sight (a common protective instinct I guess), but it was usually fleeting and the situation frankly didn’t arise often. But this occasion was different, for it must have taken a very deliberate and protracted scrutiny to have woken me up in this particular manner.
My bed was under the window and I lay facing the wall, so as I opened my eyes and glanced up I could see under the thin curtains at the sky outside. It was roughly four o’clock on a gloriously sunny day, I could hear wood pigeons and the muffled bark of a dog and the cries of its owners in the nearby woodland. Everything felt familiar and normal, so normal that I closed my eyes to settle down again - but was almost immediately prompted by the discomfort boring into the back of my neck. It was as if some-one was behind me and staring at me, so I rolled over.
She stood in silence about six feet away, between the wardrobe and the Hi-Fi unit, in the corner of my room furthest from the door. It was difficult to say how old she was, maybe a slim 19 or 20 (my age) , as she wasn’t wearing make-up. Her simple bodice and skirt didn’t look shop-bought and I noted shallow breathing although I self-consciously did not linger on her chest. She wasn’t pretty in any conventional sense, I remember uncombed fair hair and a large sore or birthmark on her lower lip, an expressionless face and large sullen eyes that were staring intently and unblinkingly into mine.
My first thought was that one of my Mother’s visitors had accidentally wandered into my room and that there would be an embarrassed apology at any second. Bit annoyed but not wishing any fuss, I rolled back over to say don’t worry you didn’t disturb me and closed my eyes.
There then followed a long awkward pause.
The apology never came and the sensation of falling (literally) off to sleep was met by a rising panic on the way up. I could sense the girl was still standing there (and remained for quite a while) and my mind was starting to process the oddness of the situation. For some reason I didn’t want her to gain my attention again, either by talking to me and definitely not by reaching out and touching me. I had to make a very conscious decision on how to react and it was difficult. Even though the adrenaline was starting to kick in I was tired, I had a Shift that evening and I chose sleep. When I awoke, she was gone and my Mother later confirmed there had been no visitors that day.

The farm-house was not old, it had been built for the family 15 years earlier with no indication that anything had existed on the (agricultural) site before. It did have a glorious view over the Chess river valley, where only the rubble of a 13th century church remained of a settlement rumoured to have been wiped out by the plague. I’m not a believer in ghosts as deceased Spirits, but I am intrigued by the idea of sightings possibly being a passive replay of past events under special circumstances (á la Stone Tapes). What I experienced though was not passive but an interactive event. The girl was alive as far as my senses could judge. I don’t know why she was staring at me so intently, but it was something my unconscious brain had perceived (somehow) as a potential threat and woken me. If this was some sort of a time slip then the girl was in my bedroom at least 10 foot above ground level.
I'm not saying there isn't a rational and mundane explanation, I just don't know what it is.
Very vivid account!
 
Hi been a while since i read the old paper fortean times magazine, just an interesting fact your post reminded me of, if you put a siamese cat in the fridge it will turn completely black (the same colour as its muzzle, feet, tail end etc..) not that i condone putting cats in fridges, it returns to its original colour when it warms back up, a bit like those 'global hypercolour t-shirts you could get in the '90 s (because everyone needed to see when you were hot and sweaty lol) on another note, we had a cat when i was very young, it would sit by my baby brothers cot and stand guard, coming and meowing to tell my mum when he was crying, not really fortean but interesting.
Forget cats....How can you tell if an elephant has been in the fridge?


...Footprints in the butter!

(Sorry!)
 
In one of the houses I lived in as a young boy had the usual front porch lights, but the front yard still was very dark at night.

I walked out to retrieve something out of my mom’s car, but I felt the hair on my head and arms starting to stand up.

Then I heard a strange humming noise.

I returned to the inside of the house as fast as possible.

I never told my mom the real truth why I did not get her book out of her car.

I just said I couldn’t find the book in the car.
 
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