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The Screaming Girl

R

R L Spencer

Gone But Not Forgotten
(ACCOUNT RETIRED)
Joined
Jul 17, 2015
Messages
7
Hello fellow Fort fans.

I have been a fan of Fortean Times for as long as I can remember and have been a member of this site for a while but as yet I have not contributed to this forum so I thought it was about time that I did.

I would like to recount to you something that happened to me around 1996 when I was about twelve years old. I realise that at that age it is easier for the mind to play tricks and that plausibility is shrouded leading to an overactive imagination but this is something that has stayed with me all these years.

So disclosure over let me begin.

At the time I was living in a semi detached terrace with my parents and younger sister in a small village about ten miles north of Derby. It was a beautiful place to live as it was surrounded by country side and we were privileged to have fields at the back of our house to play in. My room was at the back of the house overlooking the garden and the fields beyond and it was from here one summers night that the experience took place.
My mum was away at the time so my sister and I were being looked after by our father.
It was very quiet and I was the only person in the house who was still awake and as I lay there in my bed the silence was suddenly broken by the blood curdling scream of a young girl coming from outside. It did not seem that close so I took it to have come from the direction of the field.
As a defence mechanism my mind was trying to think of a plausible explanation for what I had heard and I plucked up the courage to open my curtains and look out side but it was too dark to see anything.
The only explanation I could think of at the time was that my neighbour, who was a couple of years older than me and whose room was adjacent to mine, could have been watching a scary film on a TV in his room. I opened the window to see if I could see if his bedroom light was on but I couldn't get my head far enough out too see his window and I didn't know if he had TV in his room or not.
So I closed the window and my curtains and went back to bed hoping not to hear that noise again. I lay down and within seconds it came again, louder than the last time and more bloodcurdling and I immediately jumped out of bed and ran into the hallway crying.
My dad and my sister woke up and came out of their rooms to see what was going on, I explained the situation to my dad but ended up being escorted back to my bedroom.
Luckily I didn't hear anymore screaming after that.

But the story does not end there!
 
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Fox screams can be very deceptive!

I once convinced myself the woman next door had left her baby outside on the patio, until I got out of bed and looked out of the window and realised it was foxes half a mile away, down by the river, and I've lived in the country all my life and am very familiar with foxes.
 
Foxes and badgers make the most awful noises. Also rabbits scream, were there local cats? If a cat grabs a rabbit then the rabbit's scream sounds pretty much like a young girl too. Hedgehogs can also be surprisingly loud.

Wildlife gets my vote.
 
catseye said:
Foxes and badgers make the most awful noises. Also rabbits scream, were there local cats? If a cat grabs a rabbit then the rabbit's scream sounds pretty much like a young girl too. Hedgehogs can also be surprisingly loud.

Wildlife gets my vote.
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And peacocks, probably not the culprits here, but peacocks can make the strangest noises. They can sound like a screaming woman, crying child, injured cat, or sound like they are being murdered - sometimes all at once. Wildlife can be odd!
 
The farm down from me had guinea fowl once and they were a set of noisy buggers too.

Went down the garden to hang out the washing and was nearly scared into my recently cleaned underwear, when an old man coughed on the other side of the hedge...of course it wasn't an old man, it was a sheep, but they sound exactly like an old bloke clearing his throat.

The countryside in the dark is just pooh waiting to happen, in so many ways.
 
Mystereaux1 said:
I was menaced by a wild boar out the back. It came around at night, snorting and growling and making an awful 'snuffling' sound I somehow equated with grave digging. VERY LOUD!!! I'll be concise, 'twas a hedgeyhog!
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I was walking the beat around the back of the cathedral one dark, lonely night when I realised that I was being stalked by an asthmatic psycho in nearby bushes. Aiming my 4-cell Maglite torch with sweaty hands, I tried not to go falsetto as I ordered my potential assailant: "Come out of there!"

Hedgehog. Not a career high point.

maximus otter

 
A few years back I used to have my computer near the back door, so was often on it in the evenings, or late at night, and could hear the foxes' weird noises as they ran between my neighbour's house and mine. It's worse when they have cubs with them. One night, I heard them - literally probably only a metre away from me - thought nothing of it, continued doing what I was doing. But they were unusually noisy and sounded like there were a lot of them.

We had left a bike propped against the wall there, that day and forgot to put it away.

Following morning, we go out, to find a fully grown, large but young looking dead hare, that had presumably died of fright when the fox stampede ran through. It must have been hiding behind the bike. (I've read the rabbits and hares can shut their heart down and literally 'die of fright' quite easily, if they feel very threatened). It collapsed in towards the wheel when it died and so by the time I found it, it had rigor mortis and was so threaded through the bike spokes that I couldn't easily disengage it, so I had to carry the bike - hare and all - out to the front and leave it a few hours til the rigour wore off, when could then gently unthread the hare from my bike wheel...

Also I couldn't leave it there as the dog would have ate it.
 
Ghost In The Machine said:
A few years back I used to have my computer near the back door, so was often on it in the evenings, or late at night, and could hear the foxes' weird noises as they ran between my neighbour's house and mine. It's worse when they have cubs with them. One night, I heard them - literally probably only a metre away from me - thought nothing of it, continued doing what I was doing. But they were unusually noisy and sounded like there were a lot of them.

We had left a bike propped against the wall there, that day and forgot to put it away.

Following morning, we go out, to find a fully grown, large but young looking dead hare, that had presumably died of fright when the fox stampede ran through. It must have been hiding behind the bike. (I've read the rabbits and hares can shut their heart down and literally 'die of fright' quite easily, if they feel very threatened). It collapsed in towards the wheel when it died and so by the time I found it, it had rigor mortis and was so threaded through the bike spokes that I couldn't easily disengage it, so I had to carry the bike - hare and all - out to the front and leave it a few hours til the rigour wore off, when could then gently unthread the hare from my bike wheel...

Also I couldn't leave it there as the dog would have ate it.
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Is that right about rabbits?
 
We get hedge'y pigs wandering round most nights one will take food from
your hand, we know what most of the wild life sounds like, then one night
there was this god awful screaming going on, in the end I got my kit on
and went out to remonstrate, got to the gate looking for something to
batter into silence when this Owl came swooping down from next doors
chimney, it passed just over my shoulder touching my neck with it's wing tip,
and buggered off down the st, but at least silence was restored for the
rest of the night.
 
Naughty_Felid said:
Is that right about rabbits?
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I dunno and I could have misremembered and it's not both hares and rabbits, but one or t'other... But I kept bunnies for years almost to a man/woman, they'd died suddenly with no warning, overnight. A breeder told me almost all her's were the same. They just seem to decide to go... This hare looked young to me, and perfectly healthy looking - wasn't some mangy, knackered old thing, which is what made me think maybe they do indeed just shut down if scared.
 
The explanation may be that they have a fast metabolism with a high heart rate, making them susceptible to heart attacks.
 
Mythopoeika said:
The explanation may be that they have a fast metabolism with a high heart rate, making them susceptible to heart attacks.
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I just accidentally Googled "Can hares and rabbis die of fright?" It gave me results for rabbits - no mention of rabbis...

Apparently they can seem healthy but not be, as prey animals don't always appear ill when they are. That said I just remembered about ten years ago, we had 2 perfectly healthy , young buns we found dead one morning. And again, there had been a lot of foxes around making a racket - although the buns were safe in a brick outhouse at night. But they would have heard the foxes. Both eating and acting normally the day before although as it says online, they can appear not to be ill when they are... But they certainly didn't die of any of the obvious known diseases, having no symptoms.
 
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