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The Scariest Fortean Thing Ever To Happen To You

Binghamton

Gone But Not Forgotten
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May 11, 2009
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Halloween is just around the bend. Though this type of thread has probably been done before, let's get it rolling again. What is the scariest thing that has ever happened to you-fortean-wise, that is?

Me? In 1976 I experienced a phone call that was similar to those explained in John Keel's book, The Mothman Prophecies TWO HOURS before I actually bought the book. Before I went to the place I bought the book, my parents and I were talking and the phone rang. I picked it up and heard what sounded like an open line where someone was banging on a big oil drum. I hung up, then picked up the phone again. I let my parents hear it. After checking three or four times, the regular dial tone was there. I read the book that weekend, realized what had happened, and went major paranoid. Was that weird phone call connected? Don't know. I've thought about it and it still makes me wonder.

What about you? What stories do you have in your background that still scare the bejeesus out of you?
 
hmm...weirdness has doggedly followed me my whole life (or maybe I've followed it?) so it's hard to choose. I guess I'll go with the most obvious one:

When I was 17 I moved out on my own, into a ramshackle apartment...really a converted back porch in a former day-care center. A horrible place, but good enough for my impoverished self. It was cold and damp even in a hot climate, and seemed dark even if I opened all the windows and turned on all the lights. One of those places.
It also had the same quality that a lot of schools, etc. have when everyone is gone, all those spooky echoes of time gone past.

The first night i slept there, I was woken up by my digital alarm clock. I was confused, because I hadn't plugged it in. Maybe it had batteries in it? I tried to shut it off, to no avail. I opened the battery compartment. No batteries. i couldn't turn it off because it wasn't actually on.
I had to stuff it in a closet under a pillow before I could go back to sleep.
The time on the clock was 5:15 AM

The next night, I was woken up by my smoke detector going off in the hallway. Got up in a panic. No smoke, nothing. And I couldn't shut it off, either, had to remove the battery. 5:15 again.

The third night, (and I have to admit I was wondering what was going to happen at 5:15) I was woken up by a mirror falling off the wall and shattering. I thought the brackets holding it to the wall must have slipped, but when i went to check, they were all in place. None of them were shifted at all.

It wasn't unusual to find the bathroom taps turned on in the middle of the night, either. In a horror movie, everyone would have known it was time to leave, but I didn't really have that option. I chose to ignore it the best I could. It got worse though. The door and window frames started to weep this strange rusty looking fluid (not tree sap, it was too watery, but too thick to be water) which gave me the creeps. No one would visit me there, the place scared them.
After a year, I started to have dreams that there was blood under the living room carpet, which gave me an ominous feeling all the time...

Not long after that, a police officer dropped by to warn me that the man who had murdered the woman who lived there some years before was about to be paroled - just in case he tried to "re-visit the crime scene".
First I'd heard about it. I was living in a murder apartment. Thanks for telling me, Landlord! Wow, was I ever glad to see the back of that place!

I never did establish if the crime happened at 5:15, though.

Well, I'm sure there's a few Fortean themes in there to choose from, regardless of how sceptical you are. :lol:
 
Funny you should ask, I just moved out of a house that had a poltergiest,
it , among other things, flung and hit me on the head with a CD jewel case and all, and hurled a tin breadbox at my wife.
Its antics were seen at various times by at least five of my friends.
It spooked them so badly that they would not return to the house.
The house became infested with brown recluse spiders which only targeted me and I was bitten 7 times in all , and got gangrene from a couple of the bites and was in danger of losing a leg and possibly dying. :shock:
 
shame neither of you had the foresight to use video to record any of the occurances. id love something truly strange to happen to me so i could leave a running camera on. locked off on a tripod with everything in frame. thats the only way these things can be taken seriously im afraid.
if an electrical alarm clock went off unplugged and with no batteries in, then i wouldn't shove it under a pillow, but thats just me. id have searched for the source of the electrical charge (which would have to have been specifically intended for this purpose, not more, not less.)
you say five of your friends saw or witnessed these events? could you go into detail please? were they there individually or as a group? what did they witness? thanks. ;)
 
My friends individually saw my sons toys move about without batteries in them, and things such as apparitions of "shadow people".
There was also a transparent civil war dressed apparition from time to time.
Everyone noticed how it was darker than it should be even with the widows cleared and the lights were often needed during the day.
Things would scoot across the floor in front of us. And footsteps would clearly be heard on the floor next to the bed at night and in the living room.
Often there would be an impression on the bed as we tried to go to sleep that looked and felt as if someone had sat on it.
Things pushed off of shelves. Sometimes a crash would be heard and things from a mantle or shelf would be found on the floor , but
not in disarray, they would be neatly stacked on each other !
When we tried to ignore it the activity would go up some , such as a strong slapinng sound against the wall just above our heads.
A tapping sound near a closet that would wake us , sometimes followed by the contents of the closet being flung across the floor.
I always checked for animals in the house but found none to be blamed for any of this. The only animal in the house was
my dog who would often sit and growl at an area where nothing could be seen by me.
I never knew when these things would happen , and we had no video equipment, we were more interested in moving out than taking pictures.
You get very distraught under such circumstances and don't always think clearly.
 
No amount of camera security will eliminate suspicion that a poltergeist vid is faked. To not take a report seriously simply because it consists of reports without no physical evidence is to apply an unrealistically strict standard that removes the possibility of ever learning anything from an unusual phenomenon.

I for one am happy to hear any stories anyone is willing to tell and to accept, provisionally, that the stories are as true and accurate as the teller knows how to make them, in the absence of evidence of their bad faith.
 
Not the scariest thing thats ever happened to me and not the strangest thing either. However, it is the most recent.

Last week whilst getting re-dressed (not sure what word to use there lol) in a work toilet cubicle I felt someone poke me quite hard on the side of my shoulder. As it took me so much by surprise I instantly jumped / turned around to see who it was. Then of course I realised I was alone in a toilet cubicle with the door closed :oops:
I dont know what could have caused the sensation. It felt like a bony finger with a sharpish nail jabbing me just once, very strange.
 
Similar to MsQkxyz - while on holiday this year in a cottage in Lincolnshire I bent over to get something out of the fridge and something poked me on my bottom! It wasn't hard, just a gentle tap.

I assumed it was my daughter (age 4) tapping me to get my attention but when I turned round she wasn't there (she was in another room), I asked my partner if she had done it & run off but he said she hadn't been near me.

Then while tidying up the cottage to leave a couple of days later I bent over to tidy some books on a low shelf and the same thing happened again as I straightened up I said "It just happened again", then a man's voice replied "I know what it will be".

My partner was just in the next room with the door open & so I went in & looked at him expecting him to elaborate but he just looked at me. I said "What? What will it be?"


He said that he hadn't said anything & didn't even hear me say it had happened again.
 
Riding home from work on my bike a week or so ago around midnight, I got seriously spooked. Going past a hedge, I heard the loudest rustling and shaking. Guess it was just a fox or something, but boy, did I panic!
 
TEELA said:
my partner if she had done it & run off but he said she hadn't been near me.

My partner was just in the next room with the door open & so I went in & looked at him expecting him to elaborate but he just looked at me. I said "What? What will it be?"

The gender of the partner switches half way through the story - what's going on with this? :lol:
 
Threw me for a second, too, but it's just a little confusion of antecedents. The three people in the household are Teela, male partner, female child; Teela was asking the partner if the female child had goosed her.
 
Oh, sorry, now I get it - I'm a little slow today, sorry! :(
 
coaly said:
shame neither of you had the foresight to use video to record any of the occurances. id love something truly strange to happen to me so i could leave a running camera on. locked off on a tripod with everything in frame. thats the only way these things can be taken seriously im afraid.
if an electrical alarm clock went off unplugged and with no batteries in, then i wouldn't shove it under a pillow, but thats just me. id have searched for the source of the electrical charge (which would have to have been specifically intended for this purpose, not more, not less.)

An impoverished teenager living in a slum apartment under dire circumstances...yes, it's a shame I didn't have the foresight to bring video equipment, but I was traveling rather light in those days.
Disregarding the fact that it was 5:15 in the morning and I had been awakened from an exhausted sleep. I did actually dismantle the alarm clock in an effort to make it stop. It didn't.
 
Very spooky reading Lance and Bunny!

A friend of mine once ran a pub (this was about two years ago) that no other landlord would take over. Apparently only a few weeks previously the landlord had murdered his wife and stashed her body in the ladies loo while he quietly had a breakdown and waited for the police to arrive.

Apparently he had wrapped her in one of the curtains from the lounge(and there was only one still hanging up when my friend moved in)

My thoughts at the time were "so what - it doesn't have to affect your experience of the place"

Anyway, my friend stayed for about two months then moved on. They didn't actually see anything oddand maybe even quite enjoyed the notoriety, but I think in the end it was just knowing that something horrifying had happened there.

The place just felt wrong
 
A friend of mine was about to close the sale on a lovely Peak District house when she discovered that it had been the site of a gory wife-killing in the 1970s.

She backed out, on the grounds that the house'd be unsellable in years to come.

Whaaat, I said, are you mad?

I'd have bought it.

(Was going to say 'like a shot', but thaat may be inappropriate. :lol: )
 
:D

I really couldn't see what the problem was either. All they needed was a new curtain!
 
From an early age I have experienced strange things on a regular basis but I think my scarest was when I was about 15 and staying at a friend's house one weekend. The house was just a bog standard council house from the fifties, it had neither central heating nor double glazing so when it was cold in there it was bloody cold. I had been given her brother's room as he was off at university and her parents being old fashioned the bed was made up with sheets and blankets. I remember not sleeping well because the bed was so cold, it wouldn't warm up no matter how much i tried to stretch out. The cold kept me awake for most of the night and I ended up going downstairs when it got light. I sat in the living room with my back to the door reading magazines. All of a sudden I was aware that there was someone standing right behind me. I was so scared that I couldn't turn around and I must have sat there trying to pretend it wasn't happening for at least half an hour. When I told my friend and her mother what had happened they just laughed and didn't take it seriously at all.

I've often wondered who or what I would have seem if I'd have turned around.

My second scariest was when I was about 22. I was living in a bedsit in a large Victorian house, along with a friend whom I worked with, I shall call her M. We both got into doing the ouija board. Everything was fine for a few weeks but then things got seriously weird. Whoever we was talking to started to threaten M and she got really freaked out. We decided that it was best if we left it alone. From that time on she was plagued by mild poltergeistal activity, which I and others witnessed. I heard knocking, the flapping of large wings and something that sounded like a large poster falling off a wall. Windows would open on their own even though we had shut them several times. Things moved about and we sat and watched magnets moving on the door of a fridge. They spread outwards, so gravity wasn't pulling them down. I also saw large dark shadows and the face on a picture in my room seemed to change (although the last one could be just my imagination). What really freaked me out was that my then boyfriend was sleeping in my room and I was sleeping in the same bed as M because she was so terrified. He dreamt that he was standing at the end of the bed and could see us on the bed and in between us was a man who was trying to cover his face.
 
WabbitHunter said:
He dreamt that he was standing at the end of the bed and could see us on the bed and in between us was a man who was trying to cover his face.

Trying to cover your boyfriend's face or the man's own face? Either way, very creepy. Thanks for writing this up.
 
Hi, this is my first post. I really like this site. I’ve been lurking around quietly for years and look forward to the new posts, (I also hoped, I suppose, that someone would describe something similar to my experience and I could jump in with, “Yes, I saw that too!” , but they didn’t , so I’ll have to be brave). This isn’t quite the scariest thing that has happened to me, but it comes close and it’s certainly the weirdest.
It happened in 1974. I was married with a three year old and a young baby. My husband was starting a new job in the merchant navy the following day. It had been very hectic, getting everything ready and I felt shattered. I left my husband doing one last check on his luggage, and went to bed.
I fell into an uneasy sleep almost immediately, jumping up twice with vivid disturbing dreams, but eventually I fell into a deep sleep.
It must have been a while later when something made me open my eyes and look up. There seemed to be a wriggling spider dangling near my face. Before I could react, it shot quickly upwards, now looking more like a moving tangle of black thread, which seemed to be getting bigger.
It reached the ceiling and formed itself into a black blob, which started to pulsate, like a slow heartbeat. At each beat it was growing larger. It was also becoming transparent, like a jellyfish, with black lines radiating out from the centre (similar to an orange that has been cut in half). In the middle, where the lines met, geometric patterns were forming. It was also giving off a soft glow, which was illuminating the bedroom ceiling.
All the time this was happening I was screwing my eyes up tight and blinking hard, expecting it to disappear. I was thinking “I have to be dreaming. I feel I’m awake, because I’m dreaming I’m awake. This is the most bizarre dream yet”.
By now it was well over six feet across. Then I heard my husband stir next to me, I hadn’t even realised he was there. He gave a gasp of astonishment and shot up on one elbow, with his back to me, staring up at this thing. (If I hadn’t been lying down, I think I would have fainted at that moment, as I realised he could see it too).
It reacted to the sudden noise and movement by stopping still and dimming slightly, and then it continued to pulse, but with each pulse it was getting smaller. Over the next few minutes it shrank away in pulses becoming dimmer and dimmer, until it finally disappeared.
After it had gone, we both stayed staring into the darkness, until my husband muttered to himself, lay back down and immediately back to sleep. This broke the spell. I leapt up and shook him, asking him what he’d seen. “Big spider, no crab”, he mumbled, then waking up properly he sat bolt upright, “What the hell was that thing?” (He had thought he was dreaming and was unaware I was watching it too). He described it exactly as I had seen it, right down to the strange patterns on it.
Apart from my mother who said she had seen something similar (but only up to the black blob stage); I have never met anyone who has seen anything like this. I was very fortunate to have had a witness; otherwise I would have thought it was a dream.
I often wonder what would have happened if it hadn’t been disturbed.
Has anyone else seen this phenomenon?
 
That is a strange story ormus. Never read of anything like that before.
 
I have a vague feeling that I've read a few similar stories over the years, usually in those second hand 'True Ghost Stories' that all Forteans buy at the jumble sale as kids. I don't have any to hand right now, but rest assured, that you aren't alone. Also, my sister once watched a huge luminous blob traverse her bedroom one night...
 
Ormus, in the last year I have had 2 what I would call "hynagogic" incidents where I have been asleep and then woken to see something hanging from the ceiling coming down towards me. The first time it was like a large spider and after a few seconds it seemed to disappear. The second time I saw something similar only more like a awkwardly shaped jellyfish with tentacles and lots of 'bits' hanging down around it. Your story reminded me of what I saw. I have never had hypnagogic experiences before this year and both times I have woken my OH because I am not sure if they are real or not. He didn't see anything.
 
if somebody dares give the "search" facility a try, there's an IHTM story about a "spikey" or "Spiiky" thing that's not very different from ormus' story. IIRC, of course.
 
Thanks for the replies everyone, its good to know that I’m not alone in experiencing this sort of thing.
Rasputin, when you woke your OH, could you still see this thing when he couldn’t, or had it disappeared by then?
I have this plan that if I, or my OH, sees something, we will very softly put a hand over the others mouth, to wake them and warn them not to make a sound. Sadly this never quite works out, usually with me leaping up, shouting some expletive and trampling over him across the bed to hit the light switch, nearly giving him a heart attack, causing him some sort of minor injury and half blinding him, all at the same time.
He says he’s almost getting used to it now.
Diabolical Masterspy, I shall look out for those True ghost Stories next time I’m on the boot sale. I’ve a huge amount of fortean books, (as most people on here probably do), but obviously the wrong ones, in this case. Interesting about your sister’s experience.
Ginoide I tried that link, but I couldn’t get it to work.
 
ormus,

I agree with other people here that there is at least one more posting about a black blob somewhere in these formus.

Makes me think that the "spider" had come down to you for a close-up, and the pulsating was indication of recording happening. But that's just pondering: I have no real clue what was happening to you all.

Best to you and your family.
 
Ormus, both my visions faded a few seconds after I woke up. I do think they were hypnagogic images although these in themselves are quite freaky. I was trying to remember the second incident and thinking about it in detail I remembered that the thing I saw (the jellyfish) was sort of made of what looked like textured tubes and mechanical bits and pieces. It was such a strange shape and kept changing. This past year I have also had one incidence of sleep paralysis and all these things are very new to me.

I just remember the first hypnagogic experience was very very scary and I literally saw this huge black spider hovering down above my head in bed. Then it sort of faded away.

Both times my husband didn't see anything, just thought I was mad or having waking nightmares etc.

Can't imagine how scary and weird your experience must have been. Makes you think about the nature of reality and perception though.
 
Hi every one, sorry, I’ve read my post back and I’ve not described what happened,very clearly. It went from being a black blob, about a foot across, to becoming gradually see-through, rather like a huge jellyfish with black lines and patterns on it.
Our bedroom ceiling, at this time, was covered with bright orange polystyrene tiles (I know, but it was the seventies, I was young. what can I say?)
This huge transparent black patterned object was lighting up the tiles behind it, causing an orange glow to shine through, silhouetting the black designs and making it look like a massive spider or crab.
(The black lines radiating out, looked like the legs and the geometric patterns in the middle, looked like its body).
When I first wrote this letter, I felt uncomfortable about mentioning the patterns, but we’d both seen them, so I thought I should.
Just as I hit the ‘submit’ button, I heard a voice on the TV, which was on in the background say, “However uncomfortably it sits with people in the west, there is no escaping the fact that geometric designs and the spirit world, are linked very closely.”
It turned out, it was a man called Graham Hancock, who had been in South America studying Shamanism.
Strange coincidence.
Hi SHARSABE, thanks for the reply, all suggestions are welcome, I’m at a loss to know what it was, (Greetings to you and your family too).
HI Rasputin, thanks for replying. It does sound sort of similar doesn’t it? You couldn’t make it up, it’s so weird.
I’ve never had sleep paralysis, but a couple of members of my family have. Quite scary. Luckily there seems to be lots of useful information of how people have dealt with it, on the sleep paralysis thread. Good luck and keep us posted
 
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