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The Scariest Fortean Thing Ever To Happen To You

Zilch5's earlier story reminds me of something that happened when I was at university. Completely banal explanation in the end, but it was terrifying at the time.

I was sitting in my room late one night, probably on the computer. My room was at the back of the house, upstairs, and from outside I heard this noise. It was this bizarre guttural wheezing quack - like a Satanic duck with a pack a day smoking habit.

I was a bit uneasy and went to get my flatmate, who thought I was being ridiculous. The noise had stopped at this stage so we went into the kitchen and talked about it a bit more. The kitchen was also at the back of the house, alongside my room and right by the back door, which led onto a deck with steps down to the backyard.

So, what happens then? The noise starts up again, even louder than before - now it sounds like it's on the deck! :shock: And what's more, it's slowly creeping closer and closer, quacking and wheezing and trailing off with a rattle. It was really very loud. We both just looked at each other and froze. I think we both wanted to open the door and see what was out there but were equally too terrified to do so! After a minute the noise sounded like it was right up against the back door.

...And then we saw some light through the blinds from the neighbours pointing a torch up at our deck, and heard them shouting about it being a possum. Well, of course it was. I'd heard them plenty of times before, but never making quite such a hellish sound. :? It's remarkable how terrifying an unfamiliar animal noise can be.
 
i was home alone one evening and faintly heard a strange wheezy sound coming from inside the house, within minutes it got louder and louder, interspersed with a recognisably human 'voice'. it was eerily gutteral while also being high pitched.
with my heart in my mouth i followed the sound and started climbing the stairs... and traced it straight to the bathroom where my housemates battery powered 'rubber duck radio' had back sprung into life after it had stopped working a couple of weeks earlier. i was almost disappointed!
 
nogoodnik said:
Zilch5's earlier story reminds me of something that happened when I was at university. Completely banal explanation in the end, but it was terrifying at the time.
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A possum can make such noises? Wow - never knew that - might have been one then as our dog totally hates them!

A ute? Well, this is one popular around here.

Holden_ute_96.jpg
 
strangely (or not, in view of some stories ive read) my scariest fortean experience didn't actually scare me until years after it happened. This was probably about.... I dunno, maybe 7 or 8 years ago, and i was living in Providence, RI, USA at the time. In the East Side of Providence, there's this old, abandoned rail tunnel that's been unused for maybe about a century. There are some odd stories about it, if you believe local legend, but I've honestly never looked closely into those. It's been sealed as long as I've known about it, with great corrigated steel or iron walls set in place at either end. There are doors to access it, but every time I had been there previously these were also sealed with an inch square iron rod welded into place across them to prevent people from entering (many of the local legends involve kids and other miscreants doing sinister things within).
Anyway, one day me and a few friends went to take a look, as there is some interesting graffiti down there, and on this incidence I noticed that the iron bar was missing. Completely missing. Not even any scars on the wall to indicate anything had ever been welded to or cut from that spot. And the door was slightly ajar. So, of course, we fetched some flashlights and went exploring. It was pretty banal, as I remember it. There was more interesting graffiti inside, a burnt out husk of a car about half way down, weird, spectral white mushrooms growing from the wooden crosspieces, but nothing truly unusual. We walked almost all the way to the far end of the tunnel, but had to stop because that end was flooded.
So, we turned back and left. This is the part I had forgotten until relatively recently. I remember walking to the end of that tunnel, seeing the light peeking in through the far door that we couldn't quite reach, seeing the water flooding that end of the tunnel. At some point while walking through it, I looked back, and the open door that we entered through was a tiny speck of light in the distance, as the tunnel was about a mile long. The next thing I remember was all of us running full tilt towards the door we came through, jumping over the ledge and gratefully exiting into the light of day. Not just exiting, either, we literally vaulted over the edge, splashed totally ungracefully into the water outside, and scrambled away from the tunnel.
None of us have really talked about what happened then. I, personally, only remember the far end of the tunnel, then skipping ahead to running up to and exiting the open end. No turning around, no walking back through the tunnel, no reason that we should have been running. Once we had exited, it was business as usual. We chatted vaguely about how underwhelming the whole thing was, but generally ignored the whole thing and got to chatting about other things. It wasn't until years later that I recalled the whole missing segment of this little adventure, and wondered what in the hell could have possibly happened to make us so eager to be out of that place. In the end, its that lack of memory that frightens me the most. I still have no idea what happened in there after reaching the far end of the tunnel, only that suddenly the door we had enter through was very close and I was running as fast as I could to get away from the place.
I've only been back there once - not that any amount of money in the world could persuade me to go back inside - and the iron bar is securely in place as if it had never been removed. I don't know what happened, and I'm fairly certain I don't want to know. As i said, the most disturbing thing about it is the total lack of interest we gave the incident, and the near total amnesia we all seemed to experience afterwards. I do have photos, to prove that we were at least inside the tunnel, but nothing that hints at what made us all flee the place so urgently...

wow... sorry for the long post. it still kinda freaks me out, and i dont like to think about it much. For the record - no alcohol or drugs were involved, and this was in the middle of the day, early afternoonish. The only other unusual thing I can think of is that we spent a good three hours in there, even though walking most of a mile and then sprinting back in a panic shouldnt have taken nearly that long....
 
That is an amazing story, almightyjackalope. It gave me the shivers, and I can completely imagine that thinking about it still freaks you out! Thank you for posting it.

Any chance of posting (links to) those photos you mentioned? I know you said they didn't contain anything unusual, but they would definitely make the setting more tangible for us.
 
kmossel said:
Any chance of posting (links to) those photos you mentioned? I know you said they didn't contain anything unusual, but they would definitely make the setting more tangible for us.
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+1

Don't mean to sound like I am questioning your sanity, BUT, is there a possibility it could be a combo of memory/dream?

What I mean is you recall going in the tunnel wandering about and not really seeing anything of note. Is it possible that the memory of running out of the tunnel away from something you cannot recall a dream you had in the period after the visit that has become merged with your memory and is now remembered by you as if it was part of the actual event rather than perhaps a particularly vivid dream you may have had back at the time?

EDIT:
Presumably this is the place you mean...?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Side_Railroad_Tunnel

Takes a while to get to the story of the tunnel...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uxwJcH5Zjk

Bit more Most Haunted: Hoodlum Edition... ;)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsGhKWbKJDA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxzOZ-OGUEc&NR

* That second video link actually would make a very good B movie. Bunch of kids go in and investigate an abandoned railroad tunnel, don't get very far, decide to turn back, as they reach the door it slams shut on them. Only option is to wade through the water to try and get out the other end but the batteries in the flashlight start to fade as one by one they begin to disappear...
 
There was a rescue cat i had wayback that when he had hairball, made this strange noise that sounded almost exactly like a 4 year old child saying "Yiney yiney yiney". The first time i heard it, it scared the living crap out of me, i was in bed and could see where the sound was coming from, and shuddered to think what i was about to find.

Also, about 6 or 7 years ago i was quite mentally ill and suffering from constant chronic migraine, one night i had several incredibly vivid auditory hallucinations, the voice was from hell, like what i might imagine cthulhu would sound like if you stuck him through a vocoder and a heap of reverb, but the freakiest thing was that i could feel the resonance of the voice in the migraine, like my whole head vibrated as it spoke.

Neither of those supernatural or anything, but still incredibly freaky.
 
McAvennie - thanks for all those links! thats the place. what strikes me about all of them, though, is that they all show the far end of the tunnel, as i experienced it! we went in from the other end. ive never even seen it from the other side like that and, from the 2nd youtube link, certainly never seen it unsealed like that.

as for your dream theory, no, im quite sure it wasnt a dream grafted onto my memory of the experience. unfortunately the only evidence i can present for that is my word, my gut feeling about the whole thing, and the fact that when i did try to ask one of my friends about it, about a year or so ago, he got rather agitated and wouldn't say anything about it, just kept changing the subject..... and now that i think of that, i think i'm gonna try asking him again, maybe he remembers more than I do...

as for pics, they rather pale in comparison to the links posted after, but ill try to knock together a flickr gallery or something in the near future. the most notable one (that probably shouldve warned us away) was a mandala shaped stencil job of a fallen horse, surrounded by the words "The horse is dead... From here we walk." anyone know, is that an actual quote from something? it does sound familiar....
 
almightyjackalope said:
when i did try to ask one of my friends about it, about a year or so ago, he got rather agitated and wouldn't say anything about it, just kept changing the subject..... and now that i think of that, i think i'm gonna try asking him again, maybe he remembers more than I do...
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Please do. And then report back! 8)

Sounds like a great story could be hidden away somewhere.

The actual place itself looks really creepy and interesting.
 
Whoa, I love those pictures!
As to the running away. I can remember when I was about 17, we [friends] used to scare ourselves with stupid things. Once for example we thought that a completely normal light in the sky [probably a star] was a UFO. Now nobody started off scared but we seemed to hype each other up. Its a strange feeling, it seemed to creep up on you and became more and more real until we all freaked. I mean completely irrational freaking, mixed with real fear. This happened several times [once in a cemetery at night, another time just by talking about the universe]. The main thing I'm trying to say is that in none of these cases was there ever a real threat or anything weird, we just talked each other into that state and yes it sometimes ended up with us legging it as if the devil himself was after us for no specific reason at all.
Maybe it is a thing that happens to younger people as they don't yet have the rationale.
The reason that you forgot about it might simply be because nothing actually happened.
Still I love your story and you should never say never ;)
 
Further to Dingo's post I recall, and have prob posted about it before, one night back in 98' 99' when I was at Uni and living in Darlington. Me and a friend were walking home from a night out and decided to take an extended route past what we called 'the murder house' on Piermont Crescent - where there had presumably been a murder, I never knew the actual story.

Any how it was gone 2am and as we walked past one house there were two girls stood at the gate just staring at us. 'Chavvy' kind of kids - as anyone who knows Darlington will be familiar with - but something felt odd at the time. For some I suppose that is a perfectly normal thing to be doing at 2am.

Anyhow, shortly after we heard a short, slow whistle. Not a person whistling more a toy being blown. For some reason this terrified us and we ran a good 100 metres down the road. What was weird was that it continued in short bursts of a few seconds but never sounded as if it was getting further away. When we stopped running and started laughing about it it started again right next to us. We legged it after that back to the safety of our own street.

Such was our terror we regrouped and returned with greater numbers, our other flatmate, but nothing was to be seen or heard.

I remember it being terrifying at the time. But looking back now nothing particularly happened, it was just a whistle in the middle of the night. And most likely was in some way connected to the girls we had seen. At the time though we were petrified.
 
It's funny how frightening seeing people standing around at night can be. When I was 16 a friend and I were cycling back from a party. We were going along a lane on the Somerset levels at about 3am and it was moonless and extremely dark.

Suddenly our next-to-useless bike lamps picked out a man just standing in the road, staring out into the darkness. He didn't turn to look or acknowledge us or even move a muscle as we cycled past and I recall looking back and seeing, in the glow of the red lights on the backs of our bikes, the utter pitch-black night swallow him up behind us.

The idea of that person, standing quietly alone in total darkness a couple of miles from the nearest house was really un-nerving.
 
That reminds me of an anecdote by Thomas Hardy, the English novelist, who used to follow a path from his family's cottage to Dorchester every day to go to school and back. This meant that some mornings and evenings he would walk in the dark amongst the fields and hedges. If I remember well, one day he had to pass between two men who were sitting on chairs on both sides of the path in complete silence. He never knew what they were doing there, and he remembered that as the most frigthening experience in his life.
 
I've had two of those encounters with unexpected people. The first one occurred when I took some friends caving. I had been caving before a bit with friends who were experts (for those who know about such things, one had been president of the NNS) and I had learned just enough to be dangerous.

I took my novice friends to a long but easy cave. We were in about a kilometer and as I led them down a 2m wide passage I saw something out of the corner of my eye. Close enough to touch in a small recess in the wall a man was standing. We had seen no light and did not see one in his hands. He was about 20 and was dressed casually and did not have on any caving gear. I was shocked for a second, but then said hello and he replied in kind. We kept moving into the cave and never saw him again.

I mentioned the event to my caving friends and they thought it might be an odd duck they knew who like to test himself by caving alone and at times did not use a light to practice what he would do if his light failed.

The second encounter was very strange and I've been meaning to post it here for a while. It's a bit long so next chance I have I'll write it up.
 
Oh yup, get it up here, we need to see it! :D
 
Fuck you, Iocssolus and escargot.

'It is not people's shortcomings which 'handicap' them: it is society's attitudes.'
 
Drunk night in Stafford

Before I tell you this very brief story I must warn you I'd drunk a couple of pints and a few liquors....and may have inhaled marijuana smoke.
Its not really a fortean occasion but it happened to me and my friend many moons ago at University. I've always thought about it since and it scared us rigid at the time.

We had the munchies and were walking down Weston Road from the University to the petrol station. The road wasn't busy at all - it was late night, winter and all the students had gone home for Christmas holidays.

As we approached the bottom of the hill of Weston Road we noticed things in the road and on the pavement. The objects were about 2 metres across and looked like dead pigs, or dead bodies. At the time we thought immediately that something had happened here - like some Hungerford or Dunblain massacre so we actually hid in a front garden, shivering and whispering with paranoia.

We must have stayed there for at least 25 minutes until my friend peered over a wall and approached one of the objects and found them to be sandbags which had been scattered by vandals. We carried on bemused. The weird thing was that we both immediately presumed they were dead bodies at the same time! This was almost certainly the results of intoxication and too many computer games but still its a fairly interesting story.
 
Re: Drunk night in Stafford

cardinaluk said:
Before I tell you this very brief story I must warn you I'd drunk a couple of pints and a few liquors....and may have inhaled marijuana smoke.
Its not really a fortean occasion but it happened to me and my friend many moons ago at University. I've always thought about it since and it scared us rigid at the time.

We had the munchies and were walking down Weston Road from the University to the petrol station. The road wasn't busy at all - it was late night, winter and all the students had gone home for Christmas holidays.

As we approached the bottom of the hill of Weston Road we noticed things in the road and on the pavement. The objects were about 2 metres across and looked like dead pigs, or dead bodies. At the time we thought immediately that something had happened here - like some Hungerford or Dunblain massacre so we actually hid in a front garden, shivering and whispering with paranoia.

We must have stayed there for at least 25 minutes until my friend peered over a wall and approached one of the objects and found them to be sandbags which had been scattered by vandals. We carried on bemused. The weird thing was that we both immediately presumed they were dead bodies at the same time! This was almost certainly the results of intoxication and too many computer games but still its a fairly interesting story.
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:lol:
 
tonylovell said:
Fuck you, Iocssolus and escargot.

'It is not people's shortcomings which 'handicap' them: it is society's attitudes.'
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Extraordinary.

That merits an instant final warning, tonylovell. Any more of that and you're out.
 
I actually find sandbags very scary ... and anything hessiany actually.

Here in Toronto a lot of people wrap up their more precious trees in hessian for the winter and they look really creepy.
 
Re: Drunk night in Stafford

McAvennie_ said:
cardinaluk said:
Before I tell you this very brief story I must warn you I'd drunk a couple of pints and a few liquors....and may have inhaled marijuana smoke.
Its not really a fortean occasion but it happened to me and my friend many moons ago at University. I've always thought about it since and it scared us rigid at the time.

We had the munchies and were walking down Weston Road from the University to the petrol station. The road wasn't busy at all - it was late night, winter and all the students had gone home for Christmas holidays.

As we approached the bottom of the hill of Weston Road we noticed things in the road and on the pavement. The objects were about 2 metres across and looked like dead pigs, or dead bodies. At the time we thought immediately that something had happened here - like some Hungerford or Dunblain massacre so we actually hid in a front garden, shivering and whispering with paranoia.

We must have stayed there for at least 25 minutes until my friend peered over a wall and approached one of the objects and found them to be sandbags which had been scattered by vandals. We carried on bemused. The weird thing was that we both immediately presumed they were dead bodies at the same time! This was almost certainly the results of intoxication and too many computer games but still its a fairly interesting story.
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This happened to me last year but it was in reverse as I couldn't believe what I was seeing.

In the midst of a hit and run that happened so fast, right before my eyes, in a snowstorm. :(
 
stuneville said:
tonylovell said:
Fuck you, Iocssolus and escargot.

'It is not people's shortcomings which 'handicap' them: it is society's attitudes.'
Click to expand...
Extraordinary.

That merits an instant final warning, tonylovell. Any more of that and you're out.
Click to expand...

I dunno, I leave you lot alone for a day while I pop out to see the treasures of Tutankhamun and I come back to this! :lol:
 
Anconite said:
"The Horse is Dead, From here We walk" and the accompanying symbol are from Daughter of Hounds by Caitlin R. Kiernan
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she does mention them in that book, as well as a much creepier trip down that tunnel, but to my knowledge the graffiti predates her book. she does live in providence, so shes likely to have seen in herself at some point. i cant remember when the book was published, but my trip down the tunnel was roughly 2003ish. could be i have my information wrong and someone put it up in honor of her, but thats not how i understand it.

good job with the reference, btw. shes one of my favorite authors, and no one ever seems to know of her...
 
almightyjackalope said:
Anconite said:
"The Horse is Dead, From here We walk" and the accompanying symbol are from Daughter of Hounds by Caitlin R. Kiernan
Click to expand...

she does mention them in that book, as well as a much creepier trip down that tunnel, but to my knowledge the graffiti predates her book. she does live in providence, so shes likely to have seen in herself at some point. i cant remember when the book was published, but my trip down the tunnel was roughly 2003ish. could be i have my information wrong and someone put it up in honor of her, but thats not how i understand it.

good job with the reference, btw. shes one of my favorite authors, and no one ever seems to know of her...
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I used to go down there in college, before they blocked off the entrance and exit. No joke, it happened after a particularly scandalous outdoor party that led to a police raid. Just a harmless bunch of artists and some bonfires, dancing. Local news reported satanic art students the next day on tv. Later that week, the entrance was sealed tight. :(

Spend some fun adventurous evenings exploring that tunnel with friends and being scared to death, trying to find the creepy graffiti and possible tunnel people. the car in the tunnel was there back in the early 90's.

What was amazing is the marshland at the other end.........lit by the distant city, with the creepy abandoned rail bridge. Shivers!
 
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