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Your IHTM Timeline

UnknownUnknown

UnknownUnknown

Gone But Not Forgotten
(ACCOUNT RETIRED)
Joined
Jan 10, 2016
Messages
260
I've noticed that some posters have experienced multiple IHTM Fortean events, sometimes stretching over a lifetime. Some people even have family trees of phenomena with stories of experiences that their parents or grandparents had.
I thought it would be interesting to try and sketch these events out in a brief timeline, to show maybe how they relate? Or what order they came in?

My own timeline is not really very interesting- I'm aware that many people have far more exciting examples, but thought I would start it off to show what I mean. I've linked to the stories that I've posted about here before. Please add your own versions! I'd be very curious.


Family history: great grandmother reported to have had a poltergeist when a young teenager. No idea about the date of this - sorry.

Born 1979
Circa 1981: brown-clad ghost / bird down chimney incident
http://forum.forteantimes.com/index...r-to-happen-to-you.38959/page-13#post-1697800
Circa 1983: haunted holiday
http://forum.forteantimes.com/index.php?threads/haunted-holiday.4597/#post-1703057
1985-1988: I lived in a back to back terraced house with a friendly ghost that sneezed on the upstairs landing.
1991-1998: poltergeist activity
http://forum.forteantimes.com/index.php?threads/poltergeists.20701/page-2#post-1558818
1995: lights in the woods http://forum.forteantimes.com/index.php?threads/lights-in-the-woods.60873/
1998-current: just minor strangeness.


Edit - can't get the links to work! I'll try and edit them in as and when I can.
 
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UnknownUnknown said:
Links now added. Awaiting more timelines...?
Click to expand...

Too busy reading yours!

It'll take me YEARS to compile a list of my own weird experiences. Where does it start? Some people's stories begin with family, before they're born!
 
escargot1 said:
Too busy reading yours!

It'll take me YEARS to compile a list of my own weird experiences. Where does it start? Some people's stories begin with family, before they're born!
Click to expand...

Ah, maybe it's asking too much of people? But you are exactly the type of poster I'd love to do a timeline Scarg!
 
I haven't been here very long so, most of my "stories" have never been posted. Do you just want referrals to previously posted timelines or, how would someone go about adding as they go along?
 
The weirdness has been running in my family for a long time, so I doubt if I can unearth everything relevant I've posted here. I'll do what I can, though. :)

Family history -
Wilhelmina, who would become my great-great grandmother, and her brother Karl immigrated from Germany appx 1880. Little is known about their lives in Germany, but they already appeared to be involved in some kinds of hedge-magic and healing work by the time they arrived.
I've written some things about them here:
Burying magic books in folklore
Witches
Witches

I don't remember the date Whilhelmina died, but Karl lived until the 1940's
Whilhelmina's daughter, Rosa, was also trained as a healer, along with several other family members. Rosa lived until the 1960's, I believe.
Rosa had three daughters, all born in the 1910's.
The eldest, my grandmother, I mention in one of the threads linked above. The middle daughter was known for her fearsome ability to hex people. The youngest, I mention more about here:
Spooky Happenings Afoot Last Night

1975 - my brother's alleged timeslip. Time or Dimensional Slips

70's, 80's early 90's -
Some of the posts linked above mention events in my own lifetime, from the 70's onward.
This thread covers the story of my grandparents house. My experiences there occurred all through the 1980's and early 90's. http://forum.forteantimes.com/index...tached-to-specific-people.61232/#post-1589291

Early 80's -
Panic: A Genuine Example in the Old Sense of the Word?
1980-1985 (for me, anyway, I'm sure these events preceded me and continue to this day)
Who Works In A Haunted Location?
Also, my issues with sleep paralysis began at this time.

Early 1990's
The Scariest Fortean Thing Ever To Happen To You
1996
Places That Inspire Fear
Appx 1997 - My brother, again
"Bang Bang Bang"
1997- 98 - my recurring sleep paralysis begins to shift into what I perceive as out-of-body experiences.
Out of Body Experiences

2003- the homemade Ouija board incident The Ideomotor Effect
2005- My Prophecy
2006- Quasi time or dimensional slip (or something) experienced with son Time or Dimensional Slips

2009 - the whackadoodle problem with sigil magic -
Weird Experience with Sigil Magic
This is actually what drove me to join the forum, TBH. I wondered if someone here might know what was going on. Luckily I figured it out - Weird Experience with Sigil Magic

2014 - Asking for "signs" during a difficult time and receiving them
Money From Out Of The Blue

2015-2016
http://forum.forteantimes.com/index.php?threads/spooky-happenings-afoot-last-night.58869/

There have been a few other odd and ends - for example, my youngest recently seeing his uncle (my brother) coming up our walkway when his uncle was out of town - but I don't know where I posted them now.

As you can see, I was born into a family that was already a bit peculiar, possibly sensitive to such things and accepting of it, and I haven't made much too effort to shut it out. Frankly I don't think I could. Certain relatives have tried to shut it out, but they've just ended up as angry people who avoid thinking deeply about anything. Perhaps I've made things even more peculiar by trying to understand and work with it, but shutting it out hasn't really been possible for me. At least it's encouraged me to think deeply about such things.
 
Ulalume said:
The weirdness has been running in my family for a long time, so I doubt if I can unearth everything relevant I've posted here. I'll do what I can, though. :)

Family history -
Wilhelmina, who would become my great-great grandmother, and her brother Karl immigrated from Germany appx 1880. Little is known about their lives in Germany, but they already appeared to be involved in some kinds of hedge-magic and healing work by the time they arrived.
I've written some things about them here:
Burying magic books in folklore
Witches
Witches

I don't remember the date Whilhelmina died, but Karl lived until the 1940's
Whilhelmina's daughter, Rosa, was also trained as a healer, along with several other family members. Rosa lived until the 1960's, I believe.
Rosa had three daughters, all born in the 1910's.
The eldest, my grandmother, I mention in one of the threads linked above. The middle daughter was known for her fearsome ability to hex people. The youngest, I mention more about here:
Spooky Happenings Afoot Last Night

1975 - my brother's alleged timeslip. Time or Dimensional Slips

70's, 80's early 90's -
Some of the posts linked above mention events in my own lifetime, from the 70's onward.
This thread covers the story of my grandparents house. My experiences there occurred all through the 1980's and early 90's. http://forum.forteantimes.com/index...tached-to-specific-people.61232/#post-1589291

Early 80's -
Panic: A Genuine Example in the Old Sense of the Word?
1980-1985 (for me, anyway, I'm sure these events preceded me and continue to this day)
Who Works In A Haunted Location?
Also, my issues with sleep paralysis began at this time.

Early 1990's
The Scariest Fortean Thing Ever To Happen To You
1996
Places That Inspire Fear
Appx 1997 - My brother, again
"Bang Bang Bang"
1997- 98 - my recurring sleep paralysis begins to shift into what I perceive as out-of-body experiences.
Out of Body Experiences

2003- the homemade Ouija board incident The Ideomotor Effect
2005- My Prophecy
2006- Quasi time or dimensional slip (or something) experienced with son Time or Dimensional Slips

2009 - the whackadoodle problem with sigil magic -
Weird Experience with Sigil Magic
This is actually what drove me to join the forum, TBH. I wondered if someone here might know what was going on. Luckily I figured it out - Weird Experience with Sigil Magic

2014 - Asking for "signs" during a difficult time and receiving them
Money From Out Of The Blue

2015-2016
http://forum.forteantimes.com/index.php?threads/spooky-happenings-afoot-last-night.58869/

There have been a few other odd and ends - for example, my youngest recently seeing his uncle (my brother) coming up our walkway when his uncle was out of town - but I don't know where I posted them now.

As you can see, I was born into a family that was already a bit peculiar, possibly sensitive to such things and accepting of it, and I haven't made much too effort to shut it out. Frankly I don't think I could. Certain relatives have tried to shut it out, but they've just ended up as angry people who avoid thinking deeply about anything. Perhaps I've made things even more peculiar by trying to understand and work with it, but shutting it out hasn't really been possible for me. At least it's encouraged me to think deeply about such things.
Click to expand...


This is amazing!!!
It's fantastic to see how one family 'attracts' experiences over generations.


@michael59 please do post if you can. The links were just to avoid duplicating by posting the same story twice, if there was somewhere else we could read it already.

For me it's fantastic to see events like this laid out chronologically in the context of a life. Sometimes when I read individual stories it's hard to get them in context and see how they make a wider pattern of experience.

It's good for the board as well I think. Sort of like a way to cross reference. Thanks again @Ulalume!
:clap:
 
true weirdness only came into my life during one spell about 15 years ago, i believe was either due to the woman i was with or the place we lived ... before and since then its only really been a case of making sense of lifes minor strangeness, which if you look at it hard enough forms a continuum
 
Oooh good idea.


ETA: Sorry didn't link to stories on here because it would take me longer than typing. (Fast typer).

My late mum, who died in the 1970s, told me countless ghost stories supposedly 'true' that happened to her family. Sadly, I can hardly remember any of them. But there were more.

1899
Grandad born with a caul. Mariners used to buy them to keep them safe at sea. No idea if his was sold. He loved boats and the sea all his life. 90 yearslater my eldest son also born with a caul. He gets seasick.

1890s - 1900s
Paternal Great Grandma "read the cards". Disapproved of her frenemy, another relative, who read a crystal ball. She also scryed in the fire, according to my late dad.

1917
Great Grandma 'saw' her son dying at Passchendaele - images in the flames of her coal fire. October 1917 he was reported MIA. Turned out his body was in a collapsed foxhole and not found til the early 1920s. Despite 'seeing' his death she refused to believe he was dead and always left the kitchen light on in case he came home in the middle of the night. She died long before I was born but she told my dad this, when he was a kid in the 1920s/30s.

1920s (?)
Paternal grandad - tough old sod and survived the entire WW1 - supposedly saw something he thought was a 'devil' in a guinnel in Leeds! (Probably drunk).
Maternal grandad (farmer) had several ghostly encounters on the country lanes round here. My cousin told me one I'd forgotten about seeing something at a pond, near here. Forget what it was but early morning fishing. He legged it. He had quite a few others one of which involving a classic Victorian 'sheet with eye holes' ghost complete with Dickensian clanking chains. (Probably also booze fuelled, that one).

I know my mum, born in the 1920s, had many paranormal encounters but then farmers in this area are very superstitious. She used to amuse me endlessly with her ghost stories and I can remember loving them and asking to be re-told over and over. But she died young and I can't recall any of the actual stories except for one about her staying in a friend's spooky farmhouse and opening a wardrobe and bats flying out. (More lax housekeeping than anything else).

Mr GIT - he has had a few.
Mid 1960s
His grandma had just died and his parents thought going on a trip with the Scouts might be a distraction. They were walking by a canal. (Not a very shallow one). He couldn't yet swim. Somehow, he lagged further behind everyone else then distracted by summat (he has dyspraxia so is clumsy and daydreamy) fell in. Just as he was going under, he felt a hand grasp him by the wrist, and firmly pull him out to the point his hands were on the side. No-one there. No bushes they could vanish behind. Nothing.
Mid 1970s
Walking through centre of Leicester. Saw a soldier in blue fatigues (not usual uniform - he only just recently re-told me this story and I'd forgot that touch) in city centre. Knew something not quite right. He was lounging in the recessed doorway and I'm told "There may have been others". Got to pub where he was headed and told friend who was a bit of a local historian. Friend says "Well that building used to be a barracks around/just after WW1."
Late-ish 1970s?
Re-enacting at Sudeley Castle. Going through woods in the grounds for a wee at night. He sees a woman in a cloak like the Scottish Widows ad, he used to say. You'd think nothing of that at a re-enactment, right? Only she was stood still, staring right at him and something compelled him to look at her, he felt really scared and realised... she had no face.
Early 1980s
Again, re-enacting. This time up at Sedgefield. We were just approaching the town and saw this strange looking man trudging along by the road. His clothing? Pure 19thC labourer/miner. (We were re-enacting 17thC so it wasn't one of us).
1994
With me in Scarborough when a man dressed as a Victorian prisoner walked within inches of him on a narrow stairway coming up out of Peasholme Park. He didn't see a thing. I asked him "Did you just see that? And how come that man didn't stink to high heaven?" (It was the filthiest looking human being, even counting the tramps at Leeds Station in the 60s, I had ever seen). He was present for that but didn't see a thing. Man brushed past him in a very confined space.
2010s
Forget when this happened, but maybe five years back or more. Driving home from work, still broad daylight. He sees a woman in late 1940s/early 50s clothing. She is stood on the edge of a field, looking like she is looking for something on the ground in the field - very, very distressed. Lonely stretch of road (no bus stop, no car nearby, no village) and he decided not to stop and ask if she needed help as she might have been scared - woman alone, etc etc.
Maybe 2014-ish
Again I forget when precisely but the same stretch of road, maybe a field or two away from where the last one happened. We're driving back in heavy fog with fog lights maybe midnight or after. We see a shadow move across the road with nothing attached to it. Size and shape of cat. It turns into a (transparent, FFS) cat when it gets to the grass verge. It passes into the woods. He sees vegetation round it that is not there, and wrong for the time of year. Me, I just see the cat. This is our most ridiculous experience. My kids still refuse to believe us. I have even sworn on my mother's grave. They still say we're lying.

GITm
I will forget loads.
1960s
Brother and I hear the voice of a sweary old man screaming abuse, in the afternoons, upstairs in the front bedrooms of our house. Never hear it anywhere else and never at night, just afternoons. I have a vague memory of brother actually catching it on audiotape - my dad being an early adopter of gadgets like a casette player. He wasn't trying to tape it, IIRC, it just turned up on a tape. We probably taped the Top Thirty over it, not long after, as tapes were hard to come by - sweary ghost, not so much. (Yes I know, I know). I asked bro about this recently but he said he has no memory of it. He hates talking about ghosts though cos he lived in a badly haunted flat in Liverpool, once.
Around 1972
At a friend's house. House totally unspooky and felt 'new' compared to mine (1950s). One afternoon, friend and I enter hallway. A large cardboard box full of groceries her mum had left on one of the lower steps levitates vertically couple of foot into air then sets itself down. We both see it. We are probably in the last year of primary school. We never mention it to eachother ever again til one day in the 6th form I ask her "Am I imagining that or did it actually happen?" She says no I wasn't. It did. Years later I find out her dad was abusing her and that seemingly happy, nice house was in fact a den of misery. And my mum had just died so I think there is something in that thing about angsty girls hitting puberty being associated with this kinda phenomenon?
Around 1974
I see a full body apparition when we have a house full of guests so I temporarily move into what was usually my dad's room and share it with one of the guests. I now think it was a late 19thC farmer or labourer. Dressed like that. 15 years later she describes something she didn't tell me at the time - she saw precisely the same thing. I was asleep when she saw it and she was asleep when I saw it. He was sat down floating on a chair that wasn't visible three foot in the air. For many years I convinced myself it was all a dream, even though I turned away so suddenly I bruised myself on the bed head (and still had the bruise the next day). Sort of always knew it wasn't a dream.
1970s-80s
No longer hearing Mr Sweary but things occasionally happen like all the clocks in the house stopping at the same time. Something like quarter to three, or quarter past. Every clock in every room on all three floors.
19th Dec, 1981
I'm woken up in the middle of the night by a terrifying dream. I'm in the water (sea). I can see xmas lights along the shore. I think I'm drowning but a middle aged man in the water too tells me to hold on to something. He tries to help the folk in the water. I wake up screaming and feeling round the walls of our new (unfamiliar) flat to find the light switch. I tell my boyfriend the whole dream, in detail. I dont see the news as I go out that day but when I return see it on the evening news -the Penlee lifeboat tragedy. Xmas lights along shore. I'm willing to accept that statistically, this is more than likely that every tragedy that happens, somewhere somewhere has had a dream that fits it. Codicil being that 30 years later doing genealogy I discover an ancestor who was one of only three survivors of a boat accident when he was a middle aged man. Because he held onto something.
1983
We have student xmas party and one of my friends despite the icy roads wants to drive home. He is stone cold sober. Seat belt laws just came in a week or two earlier. Earlier, the friend refuses to drive us to the pub til we do up our seat belts. He is on orange juice all night. I am the last person to speak to him. I try to persuade him to stay but he refuses. He is doing an MA and wants to get back to London to get on with his work. Last year someone on FB who knew us all, said there was someone else at the party trying to persuade our mate to stay and sleep on the sofa for the night who also failed. And he too has been haunted by guilt about it, to this day. I thought I was the only one. That gave me some comfort, finally realising I wasn't alone in trying to persuade lovely X, to stay. Friend drove home, skid on ice a few metres from his parents' house, and died of whiplash - from seatbelt. The paranormal thing being that night a silver ring I had worn for years just spontaneously broke. As did my watch.
1985 ish
We have an end terrace house in Brum. Next to an alleyway. One day I hear these hobnailed or similar boots clattering down the alley. Almost never used by anyone so I go to look (living room on first floor so can see right down into alley). Proper, old fashioned sailor with a bag shaped like a big canvas sausage thing, strapped across his back. I don't know owt about uniforms so have no idea if they don't still dress like that til I tell my husband, and he says it sounds wartime, what I'm describing. Elderly man down the street who was born there and lived there all his days, gets chatting - he was a sailor in WW2. At the time I only thought it as odd because you don't often see sailors so far from the sea!

I have another Fortean thing concerning this house. I lived there for 9 years was very happy and have always regretted leaving that, our first home together. When we lived there I got into genealogy. One brick wall I could never get past in my family tree was on my paternal grandad's line - my family all come from Yorkshire as far back as records go on almost every line. But something made this line untraceable - I could never find a birth or a census entry for my great grandad til he was an adult. In 2011, the 1911 census came available and we found a tiny clue there that led us to the truth. Grt grandad's dad had died young, and mother remarried. He was on the censuses all along - but using his stepdad's surname for years. So I would never have been able to find him.

I trace stepdad. He is a Brummie. I find him on the first census I can - 1841, when he is a child. Guess where he lives? In the precise house I lived for 9 years in the 1980s-90s. Well, an earlier house on that spot. The very end house on a terrace on that spot. When I had first realised my own surname was untraceable it was when I lived in that house on the same spot as my step grt grt grandad had been born and lived as a child in the 1840s. In a city of a couple of million people - what are the odds?
1985
Here we go again. I dream I'm on a cruise liner (nightmare in my case) below decks being held hostage. This time I pay attention to the news because of my last experience. Nothing happens. A couple of weeks later, on the news - the Achille Lauro story breaks. When the hostages are welcomed home, I recognise one of the people on the news, meeting a relative who was a hostage - as a lad I went to school with.
No more maritime disaster dreams, luckily. But in 1993, I go to a place in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains that I recognise from a recurrent dream when I was a child.
Some experiences as above.
Around 2010
We are having a sewing bee, upstairs in a local museum's library, after hours as several of us work there and have the keys and permission to use it at night. We like the big tables for cutting out costumes. Late-ish, I decide to go downstairs for a wee. I go on my own and everyone else stays upstairs in the library. Am sitting on the bog and I hear the distinct sound of someone moving about in the empty cafe next to the loos. Sounds like someone whistling. Very jolly and upbeat whistling. I wish I'd paid attention to the tune. But I thought it was my husband or one of my mates, so I wasn't bothering. Go back up and they are all still there, sewing. I realise wtf... ask if any of them were just downstairs in the cafe. No-one was. But one of the others says "I bet that was that volunteer that died - who loved this place. He was Big In Corn Dollies." Ever since, they whistle at me when I go to the toilet or walk in a room, and anyone we admire is Big In Corn Dollies.
 
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I think GITM's time line would be hard to beat, so I won't try. I don't think there is any doubt that some people are more sensitive than others for genetic reasons, but there are also environmental factors as well -- a family that accepts such things and doesn't criticise children for reporting them, the cultural background, geophysical factors, and so on. It should be quite uncommon for someone to experience one strange thing alone during their lifetime -- I wonder if anyone can volunteer such one-off stories? These are the kinds of basic research that should have been done decades ago!
 
Carl Grove said:
I think GITM's time line would be hard to beat, so I won't try. I don't think there is any doubt that some people are more sensitive than others for genetic reasons, but there are also environmental factors as well -- a family that accepts such things and doesn't criticise children for reporting them, the cultural background, geophysical factors, and so on. It should be quite uncommon for someone to experience one strange thing alone during their lifetime -- I wonder if anyone can volunteer such one-off stories? These are the kinds of basic research that should have been done decades ago!
Click to expand...

It looks worse because I typed it all out. :wink2:


I don't think of myself as 'prone' to it - think the earlier experiences were pure geographical location. Find it hard to believe anyone in that house wouldn't have picked up on something! It was very active. Husband is same as me - he feels he is hardwired as a sceptic so doesn't understand why he has had so many unaccountable experiences. There's no doubt my dad was a factor in that he was usually very vocally agnostic, very thoughtful and not one to be easily fooled (ex para) but the fact he seemed to totally believe me the first time I told him I'd seen summat, helped.

If it's genetic I got it from my mum who loved a good ghost story and I wish I could remember them, now! (I'll never know if she saw or heard owt in the house although she was certainly there every time we heard something, upstairs).

My stepsister - who also saw the ghost - had a VERY different background and upbringing to me. We couldn't be more different in terms of our personalities and the way our brains work (I'm arty, she's a logical maths-brain; I was middle class, she was working class; I grew up in a houseful of books, and people spouting ideas - she didn't). We both went on to uni, left there and never returned. Those cultural aspects would be interesting to know more about.

I'm with you, though, it would be more interesting in a way to hear from people with a single, but unambiguous experience that was utterly out of the blue.
 
It is also interesting to delve into the psychology of scepticism. I knew one person who was outwardly and insistently sceptical ("I'm sure there's a logical explanation..") and eventually admitted that her own house was haunted and reported a very bizarre experience which I feel I must have posted somewhere here (exploding light bulb, fragments swept into waste bin, a little later bulb in the bin apparently unharmed). Maybe one reason why sceptical types are given so many unaccountable experiences, as you say, is that their thinking requires correction, whereas many "believers" bemoan the fact that they never experience anything themselves? I don't think personality comes into the actual perceptive side. But again, there's a lot of research needed to clarify these things.
 
The first unusual happening was when I was 15 months old and a voice told me my Father was coming home from the war and where to find a photo of him.
My mother was upset by this so when I had further episodes as I grew I learned to be quiet about them.
I was always interested in unusual things and when I was about 4 ran off about a kilometre when I heard the church bells ringing and joined in a kinder class so it was arranged that I go with a neighbour's girl.
However I wanted to know more so would attach myself to an old lady and go into the main church after the children's session finished.
That was until my mother found out.
I still had dreams and unusual things happen after that but kept them to myself.
At about 18 I would have dreams of astral travel and about my future husband.
After I had my children I seemed to have less experiences except in dreams, but later seemed to have things come back with a rush after a lecturer counted back and told us to think off space.
Now I just accept when things happen. My Father's Mother had been psychic he told me, and he said that if there was reincarnation he thought it might be her come back, although I did say that I had no memory of that.
 
What a wonderful idea for a thread! Unfortunately I've lost access to my old account, although I hadn't posted many incidents anyway. Here's a timeline of the most interesting moments in my family history.

1910s
My maternal great grandmother has a dream in which she sees her son, who is fighting in the Great War, drowning and is convinced he has died. Although she ends up losing another son at the Somme, this one actually survives by swimming from a prisoner of war camp. - Only family hearsay although I've definitely found references to him being MIA and then being held captive.

1920/30s
In his youth my maternal grandfather is shown a photograph of a child. There is an apparition in the top corner clearly showing the face of a corpse with his jaw tied ala Jacob Marley, it really affects my grandfather. An old woman predicts that the child needs to be closely watched as the appearance of this corpse predicts death. Whilst still very young the child drowns in an outdoor washtub.

1950s
My dad and grandmother see a large cigar-shaped object in the sky over Sheffield, UK. It lights up the entire room but my dad says they oddly never mention it again.

1970s
Mum driving home from work in the dark in Sheffield sees a cloaked and hooded figure float across the road in front of her. Although it's far enough in front that she doesn't need to brake she tells me she somehow knew that she would pass straight through it. This was near the ruins of Manor Castle and apparently the area has had a few ghost sightings, although she didn't know it at the time.

1983?
(Including my boyfriend's experience here as it's better than anything else I have!) It's the early 1980s and he's very ill with flu and running a high fever. His mother and grandmother are both watching over him. He suddenly sits up and is very agitated. He's looking for something and they try to calm him. He tells them he's disembarking and has lost something from his kit bag, if he doesn't find it they'll fine him a joey. He's very small at the time and these just aren't words he would use. No one has any idea what a joey is but after some research they discover it's a slang term for a silver sixpence or threepence. On our first date, thirty years after this, I give him a silver sixpence dating from 1916 to redress any kind of imbalance in his spiritual bank account!

1987?
23szotd.jpg

(Haha, only including this one for the chance to show this contemporary report from my school book!) My mum sees an unexplained large orange/yellow light in the sky over the fields at the back of our house. It turns oddly, at a right angle and continues on its way. By the time my dad and I get to the back door the light is gone. We look the next night and see it, it follows the same path along the field. The third night my dad is prepared with his binoculars but we never see the light again.

1990s
Around nine years old, I'm standing up on a chair in my living room that I shouldn't be climbing on and I see a figure reflected in the glass of a painting on the wall. He is sat in a chair, hands resting on the arms of it. I know he isn't solid, he's almost made of blue-ish light, not emitting it, but simply formed from it, like a torch on smoke. Stockily built and balding and in smart clothes. I remember everything about that moment, what was on the television, what my parents were eating in the kitchen. I can't remember if the chair he was sitting in was actually physically in our living room, I'm inclined to think not. As an adult I've found out that an older man who lived there before us was killed in the village when a reversing lorry knocked him from his bicycle but I have yet to find a photograph of him.

Around the same time we frequently hear a cat meowing and my mum often feels it circling her legs in the kitchen. We affectionately call it our ghost cat. When my childhood dog is put to sleep in '98 we notice that the cat is no longer around. We sentimentally like to think that she took the cat with her when she went.

2005ish
Driving with my parents through Lincolnshire. The sky is incredibly stormy, absolutely purple. My mum and I both see a silver shape in the sky but dismiss it as the head of a streetlamp and neither mention it aloud. As the horizon changes we both realise that it can't possibly be a streetlight as it is now higher in the sky. The shape turns, or we do, and we see that it is cigar shaped with black markings on the side that almost look like windows. The metal it seems to be made of shows up clearly against the dark sky and it flies slowly off, straight into the heart of the storm.

2013-2015
After various experiences and unexplained memories/dreams I try self-regression. Despite only expecting memories of home life during WWI (I had previously confirmed a name on the 1911 census) I instead get details of a life and death in medieval France. Also fragments of one in Scotland and one in India (I manage to come up with names I thought I had invented which all proved to be Hindi.)

Not much to report since I moved out of the family home though!

Willing to expand on any of these on the appropriate threads, of course!
 
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Really impressive. What is especially interesting is that the variety of experiences include both ghostly/haunting type phenomena and UFO sightings, despite one's assumption that UFOs are more "nuts and bolts" phenomena.
 
Ulalume said:
The weirdness has been running in my family for a long time, so I doubt if I can unearth everything relevant I've posted here. I'll do what I can, though. :)

Family history -
Wilhelmina, who would become my great-great grandmother, and her brother Karl immigrated from Germany appx 1880. Little is known about their lives in Germany, but they already appeared to be involved in some kinds of hedge-magic and healing work by the time they arrived.
I've written some things about them here:
Burying magic books in folklore
Witches
Witches

I don't remember the date Whilhelmina died, but Karl lived until the 1940's
Whilhelmina's daughter, Rosa, was also trained as a healer, along with several other family members. Rosa lived until the 1960's, I believe.
Rosa had three daughters, all born in the 1910's.
The eldest, my grandmother, I mention in one of the threads linked above. The middle daughter was known for her fearsome ability to hex people. The youngest, I mention more about here:
Spooky Happenings Afoot Last Night

1975 - my brother's alleged timeslip. Time or Dimensional Slips

70's, 80's early 90's -
Some of the posts linked above mention events in my own lifetime, from the 70's onward.
This thread covers the story of my grandparents house. My experiences there occurred all through the 1980's and early 90's. http://forum.forteantimes.com/index...tached-to-specific-people.61232/#post-1589291

Early 80's -
Panic: A Genuine Example in the Old Sense of the Word?
1980-1985 (for me, anyway, I'm sure these events preceded me and continue to this day)
Who Works In A Haunted Location?
Also, my issues with sleep paralysis began at this time.

Early 1990's
The Scariest Fortean Thing Ever To Happen To You
1996
Places That Inspire Fear
Appx 1997 - My brother, again
"Bang Bang Bang"
1997- 98 - my recurring sleep paralysis begins to shift into what I perceive as out-of-body experiences.
Out of Body Experiences

2003- the homemade Ouija board incident The Ideomotor Effect
2005- My Prophecy
2006- Quasi time or dimensional slip (or something) experienced with son Time or Dimensional Slips

2009 - the whackadoodle problem with sigil magic -
Weird Experience with Sigil Magic
This is actually what drove me to join the forum, TBH. I wondered if someone here might know what was going on. Luckily I figured it out - Weird Experience with Sigil Magic

2014 - Asking for "signs" during a difficult time and receiving them
Money From Out Of The Blue

2015-2016
http://forum.forteantimes.com/index.php?threads/spooky-happenings-afoot-last-night.58869/

There have been a few other odd and ends - for example, my youngest recently seeing his uncle (my brother) coming up our walkway when his uncle was out of town - but I don't know where I posted them now.

As you can see, I was born into a family that was already a bit peculiar, possibly sensitive to such things and accepting of it, and I haven't made much too effort to shut it out. Frankly I don't think I could. Certain relatives have tried to shut it out, but they've just ended up as angry people who avoid thinking deeply about anything. Perhaps I've made things even more peculiar by trying to understand and work with it, but shutting it out hasn't really been possible for me. At least it's encouraged me to think deeply about such things.
Click to expand...

How did you find all your own posts? I'd like to do this but have no idea how to go about it.
Anyway, most of my stories start with 'Some years ago...'
 
Rabbit Will Run said:
2013-2015
After various experiences and unexplained memories/dreams I try self-regression. Despite only expecting memories of home life during WWI (I had previously confirmed a name on the 1911 census) I instead get details of a life and death in medieval France. Also fragments of one in Scotland and one in India (I manage to come up with names I thought I had invented which all proved to be Hindi.)
Click to expand...

Everything in your timeline is fascinating but I'd especially like to hear more about medieval France.
 
escargot said:
How did you find all your own posts? I'd like to do this but have no idea how to go about it. ...
Click to expand...

There's not a straightforward way to get all your past postings in one dump.

If you click on your own username in a post (e.g., your #18 above) you'll be taken to your 'homepage' within the Members section (the 3rd-party view on you). You can click the Postings tab to get a single-page listing of your most recent posts.

Scroll to the bottom of that listing and click on the 'Find all content by *******' link. This will bring up a longer listing of past posts, but it's capped at a certain number of posts, pages, or timespan. I don't seem to get more than 190 - 200 listed at a time.

If you go to the bottom of the last page of this listing there's a link for 'Find older messages'. Clicking on it brings up another (capped; limited) batch of posts extending retroactively from the current listing.

You'd probably be better off drafting your timeline and then using Google to find the relevant posts / threads, so you can use keywords to vector in on precisely the right one(s).
 
I think I forgot my most humiliating paranormal encounter - the ghost cat.

Still can't get over it, as if you're going to see a ghost see something proper, not a stupid cat. (Am more of a dog person).

Not sure when it was but thinking about it, son 3 still lived at home so must be around or prior to about 4 years ago.
 
I hope you have some solid evidence to support your claim (i.e. that cats are stupid).
 
Ghost In The Machine said:
My last one was intelligent (in an evil kind of way):wink2: but I assumed she wasn't typical.
Click to expand...
I know this is a bit off topic, but cats are pretty smart. Once our cat, apparently fast asleep in front of the fire, managed to remove two slices of ham from my plate without disturbing anything else, polished them off, and then resumed exactly the same pose in the same place on the rug, all within a minute or less. Either that, or the ham vanished by itself (which judging by other events I've experienced, isn't that unlikely). I realise dogs might well steal your dinner, but are they clever enough to try to cover their tracks in this way?
 
Carl Grove said:
I know this is a bit off topic, but cats are pretty smart. Once our cat, apparently fast asleep in front of the fire, managed to remove two slices of ham from my plate without disturbing anything else, polished them off, and then resumed exactly the same pose in the same place on the rug, all within a minute or less. Either that, or the ham vanished by itself (which judging by other events I've experienced, isn't that unlikely). I realise dogs might well steal your dinner, but are they clever enough to try to cover their tracks in this way?
Click to expand...

:rollingw:

Brilliant! Cats are CERTAINLY that clever.
Or else your cat stole and ate the ham and then fell back asleep with a clear conscience because cats don't care.
 
Although this is about dogs it made me chuckle. A friend was concerned that her Staffy was perhaps distressed when she went out, so she decided to use her recorder on the laptop to see what he was like when she went out.

Upon returning she replayed the video. She exits and the door can be heard closing. The dog looks around and then jumps onto her chair (that he is never allowed to sit on). After a while a key can be heard in the front door. at the same time, the dog jumps off the chair and resumes his place on the floor, acting like nothing had happened. :)
 
Carl Grove said:
I know this is a bit off topic, but cats are pretty smart. Once our cat, apparently fast asleep in front of the fire, managed to remove two slices of ham from my plate without disturbing anything else, polished them off, and then resumed exactly the same pose in the same place on the rug, all within a minute or less. Either that, or the ham vanished by itself (which judging by other events I've experienced, isn't that unlikely). I realise dogs might well steal your dinner, but are they clever enough to try to cover their tracks in this way?
Click to expand...
Cats can teleport. It's a small leap of the imagination to think that they could also teleport 2 slices of ham into their mouths.
 
I once had a dog who might as well have been named Houdini. He could get out of his pen with ease but mostly just stayed in it when he was outside. He once swam up to a small boat I was in and somehow hopped in. Never did figure that one out, even though I saw him do it. The funniest thing I recall him doing was stealing a sandwich one night. I made myself a peanut butter sandwich and took it in to my favorite chair in front of the TV. Then I remembered I had not gotten anything to drink. I went into the kitchen and got something out of the fridge, and went right back into the living room. The plate on the table next to my chair was empty, and Houdini was in his usual spot, looking as innocent as could be. I didn't hear a thing, and dogs usually have quite a time getting all the peanut butter off their tongues. I asked him what happened to my sandwich, and he just sat there as if nothing happened.
 
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