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It Happened To Us: IHTM Incidents With Multiple Witnesses

Yes, about three foot IIRC. Dad told me the next day that he'd rebuilt the back of the house before I was born, and that room's floor level had changed by about the amount and in the direction, I'd described. I think that might be why he believed me. He knew I had no way of knowing that. It was actually the least spooky bedroom in the house precisely because it was 'modern' with a big, 1950s' picture window - the rest of the house was 18thC and 19thC. But as a kid, I don't think I understood that kind of thing. It just seemed like the 'nicest' bedroom and I had been quite excited that I was going to get to sleep in there.

I saw my stepsister recently - not seen eachother for years. And I couldn't bring myself to talk about this, but I did tell her I'd walked past the house recently and she said something like "Oh yes, the House of Horrors!"

ETA What you said about the image itself being chilling - resonates. Because I nearly crapped myself in the later 70s I think it was, when I first saw Stephen King's 'Salem's Lot' - the kid floating in the air outside the window - because that was the ghosty type image from the media, that most reminded me of what we saw. So much so it really unnerved me at the time. Although the man we saw was seated - we couldn't see the chair. So he appeared to be floating about a yard or so in the air, but seated... And I remember thinking he was made up of like pin pricks of light and in the days before we had a concept of pixellated, he reminded me most of an image from a comic, because he appeared made up of dots.

Ah ok. Maybe it made me think of the scene in The Wizard of Oz with Aunty Em in the tornado floating in her rocking chair. If you ever ask your step sister what she remembers that made her refer to it as the House of Horrors tell us what she says!
 
That reminds me of one my son (now 17) and his mate saw a few years back. I think they were maybe in Year 7 or 8. They both saw a dog which I would recognise as a classic 'barghest' (there is a Victorian account of one in this parish as well, which they weren't aware of). They were in our local churchyard only because it is a short cut from one side of the village to the other. There is a wrought iron gate thing, kept locked, at the front of the church porch so there is a sort of porch area, between the church door and this porch iron gate, that no-one can access when it's locked.

They walked past it one evening and saw a weirdly huge, black dog, inside the porch (fortunately behind the locked gate). No lights on in the church - it is on a circuit where one vicar 'does' several local churches so for much of the time no-one is there, and it is locked day and night. It's obvious if someone is there as you can see the lights are on. The kids thought no-one was there).

The dog was barking and jumping up at the gate and they skedaddled fast. Both of them thought it was weirdly large and what was a dog doing, in the church porch, and alone, and behind the locked gate? Son said they hardly spoke of it again til one day he just had to ask his friend if he'd been imagining it. Friend said no - he remembers it too.

They might be imagining it. It's also possible that the vicar or someone with a key, does indeed have say, a black Great Dane. But it's never been seen since.
Ah ok. Maybe it made me think of the scene in The Wizard of Oz with Aunty Em in the tornado floating in her rocking chair. If you ever ask your step sister what she remembers that made her refer to it as the House of Horrors tell us what she says!
Ah that was my dad's favourite film but I can't sit through it - those flying monkeys scare the crap outta me.
 
Post is from 2011 so don't know if AngelAlice is still posting but, were the feet at floor level? Your description sounds like someone in the throes of dying from hanging. Was there something there, a door or something, that could have been used by someone to hang theirselves from?

Yes, I am still here, though more of an infrequent reader now. So far as I recall the feet would have been roughy level with the floor. They certainly didn’t seem to give any impression of floating. They looked pretty regular, though maybe slightly translucent, or at least poorly defined.

It was quite close to a doorway, but not close enough to have been suspended in the doorway, though I get your thinking - the twitching could look like someone spasming while being hanged. My first feeling was some sort of dancing motion, though it looked a bit too spasmodic for that.
 
When I was at college, I came home one afternoon with my girlfriend, to find my mother's car on the driveway. This was unusual as she didn't usually get home until around 6pm and it was then only about 4pm.

We enetered the unlocked front door and I shouted something along the lines of "Hi Mam" and both I and my GF heard my mother shout back "Hiya". We both heard the sound come from upstairs. We left our shoes in the hall and went into the house. We too went upstairs to go into my room and I popped my head into my mother's room just to say Hi or what not. But she wasn't there.

She came home some time later. I can't really recall why the car was on the drive but I think she'd had car trouble in the morning and somebody from work had come to pick her up. The front door was usually left unlocked back then anyway so that wasn't strange.

I have also posted here (but it may be long gone now) about the time I saw my mother's legs and feet walking up the stairs. Again, I came home and moved from the hall into the dining room. From there you get a side on view of the staircase, going upwards from right from to left. I saw my mother's legs (with dark tights) and feet (with black high heel shoes) walking up the stairs. Almost as soon as I had seen them, the legs reached the bit where the stairs meet the ceiling and they went out of view. Needless to say, she wasn't home then either.
 
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That reminds me of one my son (now 17) and his mate saw a few years back. I think they were maybe in Year 7 or 8. They both saw a dog which I would recognise as a classic 'barghest' (there is a Victorian account of one in this parish as well, which they weren't aware of). They were in our local churchyard only because it is a short cut from one side of the village to the other ..

Where's your local church yard ? .. was this in Black Shuck county ?
 
Where's your local church yard ? .. was this in Black Shuck county ?
Not sure what the dialect name for them was, precisely here - but we are near-ish York (don't wanna out myself too much!) I know Leeds also has a fair few gytrash stories but again forget what they're called there.
 
Not sure what the dialect name for them was, precisely here - but we are near-ish York (don't wanna out myself too much!) I know Leeds also has a fair few gytrash stories but again forget what they're called there.
Fair enough and I'd never even heard of the descriptive word gytrash before, cheers for that! :)

Gytrash- English legend: a benevolent creature that haunts lonely roads awaiting lost travelers. It guides them to the right road. They can take the form of a horse or a mule, but usually of a black dog. Though they are helpful, they are still feared.

Sounds like NaughtyFelid to me ..
 
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As I think it's relevant to the subject of this thread, I'm quoting an entire post of Dick Turpin's here - originally situated in Anyone Seen a Ghost? (post#868).

I’m 100% certain I saw a ghost (for want of a better word) in my friends parent’s house back in the mid 1990’s. I wasn’t the only one to experience this so I thought I’d post the experience, and perhaps people can tell me what they reckon.

It's a bit long I’m afraid, but I want to try to explain it as best I can.

Back in the spring of 1997 a mate of mine split up with his long term girlfriend, and as a stopgap decided to go back to his Mum and Dad’s for a few months to decide what his next move would be. One evening I popped round there to see him, and his Mum invited me to stay for dinner.

After dinner we were sitting in the living room half chatting and half watching the TV - from where I was sitting in the living room, I could see the kitchen (or part of) through a set of French double doors.

As I was sitting there, I caught sight of something on my periphery, so looked around and thought I could see a figure of a young girl standing in the kitchen by the dining table. The figure was slightly obscured by one of the doors being half closed, but I could definitely see it, and by judging her by the size of my own kids, I would say she was around 7 or 8 years of age, and had shoulder length blonde hair.

At first I thought it was some sort of weird reflection of something, and at that time I did not think I was seeing anything paranormal, so I continued to look at the figure wondering what on earth it was, when the bloody thing moved. It turned slightly to its right, stood still for a moment, then walked into a part of the kitchen that I couldn’t see (because of the dividing wall with the living room)

Obviously I was open mouthed at this, and my mates dad who was sitting in an armchair opposite me, asked if I was okay, to which I nodded, but I didn’t say anything as I couldn’t believe what I had just seen.

I was still thinking about it a few moments later, when my mates sister (who was also visiting ) announced she was making a cup of tea, and walked into the kitchen.

She was in there for a few seconds or so when there was a piercing scream, she then came running back in to the living room (empty tea cup in hand) screaming OMG OMG over and over.

Her parents calmed her down to the extent that she was able to tell them what had happened.

She said that she got a tea cup out of the cupboard, and was just about switch the kettle on, when she noticed something in the corner of her eye, turned and standing directly in front of her was a small blonde girl, who was standing quite still just staring at her.

At first the sister was a little confused as to what a random little girl was doing in her parents’ kitchen, when the little girl “just disappeared” that’s how the sister described it “she just disappeared”

I didn’t say a word to what I’d seen, it was like I didn’t want to add any more drama to the situation, plus there was a younger brother who was also in the room and I didn’t want to scare him, as looked scared enough.

Later on that evening I drove the sister home, and asked her to tell me again exactly what she saw, but she told me in no uncertain terms that she didn’t want to talk about it.

All this happened over 20 years ago, and to this day I have never spoken to my mate or his family about what I saw that evening – so hope none of them are members of this forum lol.

What I think is really interesting here is that although this could be described as a multiple witness event, the sightings are not precisely concurrent. Whereas many sightings consist of a single relatively brief event – like people watching a snippet of film – the fact that, although taking place over a relatively compact period of time, there is a delay in experience, and a shift in the precise focus, and locus, of the event, suggests that in the case the movie is running even when we are not looking at it. (Actually, that’s may be a slightly confusing metaphor – it is just a metaphor, I’m not suggesting any kind of stone tape situation.)

Although this doesn't at first sound overly worthy of remark, I'm wondering, on reflection, whether it might not actually be quite unusual. The idea that a ghost might haunt a place and be witnessed by different individuals in different situations over a period of time is not at all unusual. However, it seems to me that ghosts often simply open doors, walk across landings, stand on the stairs, stomp across bare attic floorboards, but they seem to do so in individual events; often those events connect, but the narrative, just as often, is sporadic. In this case what you seem to have is more like a shy girl at a party - one who does not simply appear in the kitchen, but gives you an inkling that she is actually in it, almost in the sense that a living person would be. There is a feeling, in stories like this, that the thing we think of as dead is somehow alive - a ghost bumbling around the house, in more or less the same way we do.

I don’t think I’ve explained that at all well. I may revisit the idea after another coffee. At which point it may look like complete gibberish.

Anyway, a great story from Dick Turpin – and well worth pasting up here, I think.
 
The following is a cut and paste of my own multiple witness event - originally posted on the Eerie East London thread:

I know I was going to relate the following some time back, but I don't think I ever did - possibly because, for a ghost story, it seems a totally mundane and utterly undramatic one (in a way, I suppose that's partly why it's stayed with me). Anyway, as it has a certain relevance to this thread, here it is.

I was working in a friend's workshop on an industrial estate in Stratford, very close to the Pudding Mill Lane DLR station. It was a sunny Saturday afternoon and we were the only unit occupied. There were three of us: me, the guy I was working with and Andy, the owner, sitting in his little office about five metres from us. Me and the other guy are working on different ends of the same piece, maybe three metres apart and we're doing so directly in front of the open security shutters from where we can see the entire yard entrance including the security guard - who constitutes the only other living being in the entire complex on that particular afternoon - sitting in his little office on the other side.

Anyway, both me and the guy I'm working with hear a shuffling sound and then a voice coming from the area of the unshuttered entrance say, very clearly, 'Ullo', in what is almost a parody of a cockney accent a la Arthur Mullard (for those who remember him). In less than a second we've looked at each other, looked out of the shutters and I'm up and out the door and checking out the yard. Just as I get back and am asking my oppo if he really heard what I heard Andy pops his head out the office door and asks who it was just said hello.

There's really a kind of prologue to the event. Anyone who has worked in a workshop or large industrial building knows that they can at times be quite unnerving - chains clank, stuff falls off benches, shutters creak in the wind etc. Also they will be familiar with the tendency for stuff to go missing - which common-sense tells us is the result of having used dozens of tools while working in the clutter of a busy workshop, but which is often blamed on a 'shop 'ghost' (normally so you can deny the otherwise ready suspicion that you are an untidy sod, or you're going mad).

Anyway, we christened our scape-ghost 'George' in memory of the cheery cockney geezer who had run a courier company we used at the time and who had been shot dead one morning by persons unknown when opening up his yard. (I'm not making this up - rumour has it something to do with someone tidying loose ends long after most of us have forgotten about the Brinks Mat robbery way back in the 80's). Needless to say, the voice that said 'Ullo' was a ringer for the real George.

Sorry, I know that's a long post for a one word haunting. I've had more unnerving experiences but I'm a borderline sceptic (although I'd say I was open to suggestions rather than hardline) and as such I am not so convinced of the infallibility of my own senses as to believe that those experiences might not be explicable in perfectly logical ways. But, undramatic as it is, this is the only time I simply cannot explain away what happened.
 
The following is a cut and paste of my own multiple witness event - originally posted on the Eerie East London thread:

I know I was going to relate the following some time back, but I don't think I ever did - possibly because, for a ghost story, it seems a totally mundane and utterly undramatic one (in a way, I suppose that's partly why it's stayed with me). Anyway, as it has a certain relevance to this thread, here it is.

I was working in a friend's workshop on an industrial estate in Stratford, very close to the Pudding Mill Lane DLR station. It was a sunny Saturday afternoon and we were the only unit occupied. There were three of us: me, the guy I was working with and Andy, the owner, sitting in his little office about five metres from us. Me and the other guy are working on different ends of the same piece, maybe three metres apart and we're doing so directly in front of the open security shutters from where we can see the entire yard entrance including the security guard - who constitutes the only other living being in the entire complex on that particular afternoon - sitting in his little office on the other side.

Anyway, both me and the guy I'm working with hear a shuffling sound and then a voice coming from the area of the unshuttered entrance say, very clearly, 'Ullo', in what is almost a parody of a cockney accent a la Arthur Mullard (for those who remember him). In less than a second we've looked at each other, looked out of the shutters and I'm up and out the door and checking out the yard. Just as I get back and am asking my oppo if he really heard what I heard Andy pops his head out the office door and asks who it was just said hello.

There's really a kind of prologue to the event. Anyone who has worked in a workshop or large industrial building knows that they can at times be quite unnerving - chains clank, stuff falls off benches, shutters creak in the wind etc. Also they will be familiar with the tendency for stuff to go missing - which common-sense tells us is the result of having used dozens of tools while working in the clutter of a busy workshop, but which is often blamed on a 'shop 'ghost' (normally so you can deny the otherwise ready suspicion that you are an untidy sod, or you're going mad).

Anyway, we christened our scape-ghost 'George' in memory of the cheery cockney geezer who had run a courier company we used at the time and who had been shot dead one morning by persons unknown when opening up his yard. (I'm not making this up - rumour has it something to do with someone tidying loose ends long after most of us have forgotten about the Brinks Mat robbery way back in the 80's). Needless to say, the voice that said 'Ullo' was a ringer for the real George.

Sorry, I know that's a long post for a one word haunting. I've had more unnerving experiences but I'm a borderline sceptic (although I'd say I was open to suggestions rather than hardline) and as such I am not so convinced of the infallibility of my own senses as to believe that those experiences might not be explicable in perfectly logical ways. But, undramatic as it is, this is the only time I simply cannot explain away what happened.

There’s an Eerie east London thread Spook..? I didn’t know that - I know what I’m doing for the 2 hours then. :)

I grew up on the Boundary Street estate in Shoreditch, which was a very spooky place to grow up, given its history of poverty, crime, misery and degradation.
 
There’s an Eerie east London thread Spook..? I didn’t know that - I know what I’m doing for the 2 hours then...

There is indeed - and it needs some new blood. So get busy.

...I grew up on the Boundary Street estate in Shoreditch, which was a very spooky place to grow up, given its history of poverty, crime, misery and degradation.

Now that there is some heritage. Part of Old Nichol, if I recall correctly. And with a Hawksmoor on your doorstep, I think. Back in the day I had the odd pint or two in a pub which was either in, or on the edge of, the Boundary - but I don't recall its name.
 
There is indeed - and it needs some new blood. So get busy.



Now that there is some heritage. Part of Old Nichol, if I recall correctly. And with a Hawksmoor on your doorstep, I think. Back in the day I had the odd pint or two in a pub which was either in, or on the edge of, the Boundary - but I don't recall its name.


Plenty of tales to tell Spook. Some fortean, some non fortean, and many that could probably be put into the strange people thread (as you can imagine)

I’ll get me thinking cap on.
Cheers.
 
My daughter and I both saw someone looking in the window at the same time.

She was about 9 years old at the time, we were in the kitchen of a house we'd moved to the previous year, ex-authority 50s terrace.

I thought I saw a blonde boy staring in, and looked away, thinking I was just imagining it. Turned to see her also looking quickly away, and then she described exactly what I'd seen- blonde boy who looked like her older brother (but was not him), peering in the window, then gone.

The garden was enclosed, no way for anyone to get in or out so fast and we'd have heard the gate, and seen them leave as the door was glass next to the window. I always used to think a tall man was following me around when we lived there, I'd see someone I assumed was my husband walk in the room, start to speak, look at him directly and no one was there.

My youngest (born approx. 9 months after we moved from there) used to say when a toddler, that before he was born he followed us a long time to find us again. There was other things that happened there, not least that the upstairs was always freezing. But we were really happy there, even though when I was alone except for sleeping children in the house I used to make the dogs follow me upstairs.
 
My youngest (born approx. 9 months after we moved from there) used to say when a toddler, that before he was born he followed us a long time to find us again.

That's about the creepiest thing little kids ever say, that they can remember a time before their own birth. We may have a thread on it.
 
Three days before Christmas in 2017, my wife and I were halfway through the 15 minute drive home after working back late. It was approximately 10.30 p.m and was a warm and mostly clear night.
There was little traffic on the road at that time of night and as we were driving towards the village of Sutton Forest I looked towards my wife (she was driving) and saw in the sky a large amber coloured sphere, perfectly circular, at around a 45 degree in the sky, slowly moving in the opposite direction to us.
I pointed it out and asked her to pull over which she did. Whilst parked, no other cars passed us and the object made no noise. It didn't move erratically but in a smooth motion and as the moon was visible elsewhere in the sky, we immediately ruled that out.
There were trees to the right of us as we stopped, so we drove a little further forward to find a spot to get a clearer look at the object.
Imagine a traffic light in the sky, this is what this looked like.
Pulling over again, the object appeared to be lower in the sky but still gliding in a smooth trajectory. It really was odd. We did a u-turn and tried to follow it, though turning a corner to try to gain pace on it, we lost sight of it behind some cloud. We waited for another 10 minutes or so to see if it re-appeared, but it didn't.
I have no explanation. It was too large to be a balloon or Chinese lantern, definitely not an aircraft or helicopter, certainly not the moon, Venus a start or meteor.
We still discuss it from time to time pondering just what it was we saw. We have no idea.
 
That's about the creepiest thing little kids ever say, that they can remember a time before their own birth. We may have a thread on it.

My daughter told me tonight that she had a nightmare in which I had gone to the local shop to buy beer and she wanted to come and join me, but there were 'blueberry men' (clarification sought: giant blueberries with legs) running around outside, pooing on (clarification: blue poo) on anybody who ventured out of their home and into the street.

She told me that in the dream she was watching it all happen from inside the glass doors downstairs and it was really scary.
 
Although this doesn't at first sound overly worthy of remark, I'm wondering, on reflection, whether it might not actually be quite unusual. The idea that a ghost might haunt a place and be witnessed by different individuals in different situations over a period of time is not at all unusual. However, it seems to me that ghosts often simply open doors, walk across landings, stand on the stairs, stomp across bare attic floorboards, but they seem to do so in individual events; often those events connect, but the narrative, just as often, is sporadic. In this case what you seem to have is more like a shy girl at a party - one who does not simply appear in the kitchen, but gives you an inkling that she is actually in it, almost in the sense that a living person would be. There is a feeling, in stories like this, that the thing we think of as dead is somehow alive - a ghost bumbling around the house, in more or less the same way we do.

I don’t think I’ve explained that at all well. I may revisit the idea after another coffee. At which point it may look like complete gibberish.
Not gibberish at all! Thanks for pointing out an interesting and perhaps significant distinction between simutaneous shared perceptions and sequential shared perceptions! :cheer:
 
What was the full story regarding the multiple (reliable) witness reports associated with an alleged apparition seen hovering over a town clock (I think?) in a US town? Some kind of an imp-like entity, I can't remember the details....but am trying to. Very odd tale.

Any recognition from fellow forum members?
 
My youngest (born approx. 9 months after we moved from there) used to say when a toddler, that before he was born he followed us a long time to find us again.
I have heard similar and my kids as toddlers used to come out with strange things like this. I came to the conclusion that these comments related to toddlers actually dreaming these things and are unable to put the dreams into context as such, thinking the dreamed events were actual experiences. Or is there something much more Fortean going on?
 
Did her mother see the adverts ?

I was wondering if this information could be passed via the umbilical cord.

That would be odd.

But, no, she didn't.
 
My daughter and I both saw someone looking in the window at the same time.

She was about 9 years old at the time, we were in the kitchen of a house we'd moved to the previous year, ex-authority 50s terrace.

I thought I saw a blonde boy staring in, and looked away, thinking I was just imagining it. Turned to see her also looking quickly away, and then she described exactly what I'd seen- blonde boy who looked like her older brother (but was not him), peering in the window, then gone.

The garden was enclosed, no way for anyone to get in or out so fast and we'd have heard the gate, and seen them leave as the door was glass next to the window. I always used to think a tall man was following me around when we lived there, I'd see someone I assumed was my husband walk in the room, start to speak, look at him directly and no one was there.

My youngest (born approx. 9 months after we moved from there) used to say when a toddler, that before he was born he followed us a long time to find us again. There was other things that happened there, not least that the upstairs was always freezing. But we were really happy there, even though when I was alone except for sleeping children in the house I used to make the dogs follow me upstairs.
I am fascinated by things like this - did your son say anything else about before he was born or where/how he followed you?
 
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