I walk under street lights...
...and they go out.

It happens regularly. I have friends who have witnessed this numerous times. It freaks my fiance out when we go for walks at night when 4 or 5 in a row go out as I walk underneath.

I fear I might be some sort of dormant electrical-force-channeling superbeing or a failed Army genetic experiment of some sort.

I used to be able to 'hear' police radars - it was a high-pitched rapid chirping, which proved very useful when driving, and would freak out friends when I said "Slow down, there's a radar trap ahead" - and there was.

Now the cops use laser-based speed traps it doesn't work.
(corinoco is waiting for the revolution., Fri 4 Jul 2008, 7:42, 5 replies)

Old Hotel
I used to rent a room high up in an old Hotel, The Majestic, in St.Kilda, Victoria. I bumped into a bloke who was renting the old caretaker's rooms out the back, and being a muso, and him a lightshow fella, we got along famously, and he asked me to move in. The rooms were groovily painted, and the shower was always luke-warm. The cottage must have been over a century old.
Months later he was out of town, and I had been smoking some weed, and had fallen asleep on my bed. I awoke some hours later, lights still on, no-one home, being dragged off the bed by the right arm, by a very strong nothing! I was literally pulled across the bed until I fell "clump" onto the floor. Scared shit out of me.
Another time I was driving at dusk along the Lakes Way up near Forster, NSW, doing about 70 km/h, and an Aboriginal girl in a floral dress walked out of the scrub on the left hand side of the road, stopped, stared at me as I drove toward her, then vanished as I got within 20 metres of her.
Goose bumps all over.
(mr locomotivator, Fri 4 Jul 2008, 7:39, 3 replies)

Car Key Spookiness
Once upon a time when I were a young Thanateros, I was overjoyed to find that I had scored a job interview at a rather nice-looking place. I went along to the initial interview, handed over the CV and sat back and proceeded to answer all the questions put to me by the board of interviewers.

A few weeks go past, and I get the precious callback that says I've made it to the second stage of the interview process. Result! thinks I, and happily hie me to the testing centre where I'm put in a room and made to do one of those stupid bloody 'role-playing' things - you know the sort, you have to pretend that you're all on a space ship off to colonise another planet, or you're picking survivors to get on the raft while the ship sinks . . . that sort of wankery. I managed to hold my own and apparently 'displayed leadership potential'. Bullshit, I know.

Anyways, more time passes, and I'm informed that I've scored the position! WOOHOO! Much happiness ensues. They've asked me to show up the next morning at 9am, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed with my game face on. No problems, I think, and go through all the rigmarole - making sure the suit is dry-cleaned and that the shirt matches the tie, etc. All this was done the night before.

Cue the alarm going the next morning. I'd set it nice and early so that I could allow myself plenty of time to get ready and drive into work.OK, so . . . showered? Check. Teeth brushed? Check. Hair in a neat ponytail? Check. Got the wallet, mobile phone, car keys? Che -- oh shit. Where the fuck are my car keys?

Cue the next three quarters of an hour searching every possible location in my house, frantically looking for the keys to my ride. Time is getting along, and I'm nearing my self-imposed deadline for leaving the house to get to work on time. I was becoming frantic with worry. Not only would I be late for my first day at work, but these were expensive keys - they were the integrated sort that not only has the central locker and engine immobiliser as part of the car key itself, but is specifically coded to the individual car - getting one replaced would take about 3 weeks and cost me about $160 - a trifle these days, but enough to cause a very real shiver of poverty-related fear to run through my goolies.

Finally, with all of two minutes to go, I lost my rag. I stood in the middle of my living room, raised my fists to the ceiling, and screamed at the top of my lungs, "WHERE THE FUCK ARE MY FUCKING CAR KEYYYYSSSSSS??!?!"

Just as the last syllable had left my lips, something hit the top of my left shoulder, slid off and hit the floor of the living room.

I stopped, looked and bent down to pick up the object that had fallen on me. And fuck me backwards if it wasn't my keys. I stood there, utterly dumbfounded, wondering where the cunting fuck they had come from. All of a sudden, I remembered the time and dashed out the door, pausing only to look back and say "Whoever or whatever you are, thank you, but don't pull that bullshit on me ever again."

Later in the day, I sat and had a think about it, and simply could not explain it.

A few weeks later, I found out after a chat with my landlord that the house I was living in (a rental) had had a history of tenants complaining about weird things going missing and reappearing days later, strange bumps in the night, etc. With the hair standing up on the back of my neck, I asked if anyone had ever died in the house. The landlord looked at me and confirmed that a young boy had been left in there one day by his completely negligent bastard parents and had died in the house - they had left for the day to go off and do something (I never found out precise details), but had locked all the doors and the windows so that the kid couldn't get out and run away or something. And the kid, all of six years old, had died from heatstroke in the house while his waste-of-DNA parents were gone.

That really messed with my head for a while. Eventually, I sat down and talked to the kid, whether he was there or not, and told him I was sorry for cussing with him, I'm just a simple guy trying to get by in the world, and there was no reason we couldn't coexist in the house. It felt weird talking to something that I wasn't sure was a spirit of someone departed this life, or thin air, or my own insanity.

I still think about that every now and again.
(thanateros Does Not Play Well With Others, Fri 4 Jul 2008, 7:25, 5 replies)

shitty fccking bar in Sydney I used to work in
Every night I had to go up 3 flights of stairs to the main bar to sign off (we had to use our thumb print to sign on and off).

The main bar wasn't open by the time I went up and in winter it would already be dark.

The light switches were over the other side of the place near the main enterance, so I wasn't about to stumble around in the dark searching for them when the back staircase (that i used) came up next to the office (where I had to go).

Every night with out fail bar stools would move around, foot steps could be heard walking around you, feint voices mumbling in the background and the lights would flash.

When I complaied of this to my manager I was informed that about 100 years ago (which is a long time here in Oz), a man named Sam had been murdered in the bar. All you needed to do was say

"Hi Sam, it's just me."

and it would all stop. Instantly.

And lo and behold, it worked. Every time.



And before anyone suggests that jokes were being played on me by early staff members, we had motion sensors for the security system and no one was there, no one was moving.

Other times you could track someone moving around right in front of you, but there would be no one there. Once again if you greeted Sam, it would stop.

My theory is that he was just pissed as his eternal resting place played earsplitting house music, poor guy probably just wanted some decent music.

All true, and not edited as I'm supposed to have been at an appointment 5 mins ago, sorry if doesn't make much sense.
(misskitty reeks of sex and turpentine; laudanum afternoons, Fri 4 Jul 2008, 6:27, 1 reply)

Doubleness
Ok, my biggest disapointment was taking literally minutes to sign up to b3ta, to find i couldnt post my damn dissappointments for a week, by when id forgotten ¬¬

And for spookyness, inspired by this QOTW, ive been awake all night reading all manner or ghostlyness, and have become increasingly paranoid about the blackness behind my window, every few seconds looking up to it. I just know, that behind me, an alien/ghost/christian is watching me, behind the reflection. Come dawn, its finally light enough to see outside, and theres a patch of condensation outside the window exactly where i imagined this presence to be. I froze in panic, literally wimpering, and retrated to bed. I think im going to be afraid of the dark for the rest of my life.
(Doubtful origin, Fri 4 Jul 2008, 6:03, 1 reply)

I hate this QOTW
So far ive read everything and i cant sleep :O

i has teh fear!



sorry about the shortness, its dead cold here ;)
(Kuja335, Fri 4 Jul 2008, 5:09, Reply)

Bloody keys.
So my partner gets home, puts her stuff down and comes to say hello to me. A moment later she wonders aloud `I don't know where my keys are'.

`Don't worry' I say. `You literally just drove home, you obviously had them in the car'.

That was about four years ago. It was a big bunch of keys with a large keyring, and we have never seen it since. The only thing I can think of is that they fell off the counter into the bin.

A friend of mine tells a story where she, as a small child at the dinner table, threw her spoon backwards over her head. It was never seen again. Weird!
(Tomble Underground, overground, Tombling free., Fri 4 Jul 2008, 5:01, Reply)

Two of them actually ...
I have experienced two truely peculiar coincidences.

Long time lurker, first time poster. /waves

When I was 18 years of age, I used to like walking through graveyards. Not through any misery-gluttonous emo-hood or anything. I just found graveyards beautiful, peaceful places.

One afternoon, I found a four leaf clover in the graveyard. Score! On hallowed ground and all! That must be super duper lucky. So I trotted home and laminated the clover along with a small piece of paper with the date and location of the extraordinary find. I used this lovely thing as a bookmark for many years, and then packed it away when my adventures began.

Several years past, I travelled, found a great job, met the man of my dreams, had enough sense to realise it and marry him and had a pair of lovely kids.

One day, whilst looking for something else, I found the clover bookmark again.

When I proudly showed my beloved husband the clover, he boggled at the date displayed beside it. "Que? That was the date that I flew into the country for the first time."

How cool is that. The very day my future husband landed on the soil of my home country, the very same soil yielded a symbol of great luck.


wavy lines


And the second truely peculiar coincidence concerns our firstborn daughter, who has displayed extraordinary moments of (often uncomfortable) clairvoyance.

When bub no. 2 had been confirmed by that generally unpleasant poking, prodding and scanning of which obstetricians are so fond, we decided to break the news to the firstborn. The conversation went something like this.

"Firstborn?"
"Yes Mummy?"
"Would you like a baby brother or a sister?"

I was expecting (boom boom) a response of yes or no at this point. She mulled it over in her pretty little three year old head and said;

"Baby sister."

I was somewhat taken aback by this response and tried to explain that it could possibly be a little brother. But no no! She knew it was a baby sister and would not be dissuaded.

The peculiar thing is, the ultrasound technician lady who proved Firstborn right, said that older siblings are uncannily accurate at predicting the sex of unborn infants. With a much higher rate of success than mere chance.

Odd.
(Que?, Fri 4 Jul 2008, 4:55, 7 replies)

I'd like to know...
why, on the way home from work, in a certain part of Hampshire, stuck in farting awful traffic for an hour every night going 1 mile an hour, my car always rolls UP a certain part of dual carriageway. Used to think it was something to do with having an automatic but have had a manual for the past 7 months and it happens every night...

Suggestions??
(Senora Veranos cannot and will not so ner..., Fri 4 Jul 2008, 2:55, 6 replies)

I had quite an amusing conversation with my niece the other day..
We (me, my mother in law, my father in law, sister in law and niece) had been to a restaurant in Somerset for a rather splendid meal. My niece (H) is 8 years old and, although very well behaved, obvo gets bored with the usual grown up chat so we let her wander off into other parts of the old hotel restaurant we were in knowing she wouldn't a) annoy anyone and b) behave herself. Anyhoooo, whilst she was gone me and my MIL proceeded to start talking about spooky stuff and whether or not we believed in it. So I was v polite and did the usual 'mmmm', 'oh really - how very spooky' stuff and left it at that.

Roll on home time, about an hour later, and I am in the back of the car with H. We're still on the spooky theme and H comes out with 'Oh, don't be silly Auntie Natters - there is no such thing as ghosts'. So I says 'how do you know H? What about the spooky dudes in Scooby Doo, etc' and she comes back with - 'Well, if you'd come with me in the restaurant you would have listened to the lady I spoke to - she said there was no such thing'. Knowing that kids have a rather tall imagination and also that I had kept my eye on her all night and she hadn't spoken to anyone but herself by the fire I humoured her but gave her the 'one really shouldn't talk crap' line.

Got home and put H to bed and had a cup of tea with the outlaws... Turns out the reason the MIL had started talking about spooky stuff is that the restaurant was supposedly haunted by a lady who sat by the fire....

Yep - nice to be told something doesn't exist by someone a third my age who'd spent the night by the fire with something she doesn't believe in...
(Senora Veranos cannot and will not so ner..., Fri 4 Jul 2008, 2:28, 2 replies)

My Granddad, the portent of the apocalypse?
Unfortunately I never knew him as he passed away when I was a little over six weeks old, but it's bizarre, but anyone who was close to him during his life always seems him when close to deaths door. There have been three examples so far, the first of which was my Grandma, when in hospital the nurse told us that 20 minutes before she passed away she had regained from her frail state and was sat in bed chatting with seemingly no-one. When asked, she said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world that she was chatting with her husband.

Secondly, after my Grandma had passed away my brother moved into her old house. The neighbours were a lovely elderly couple who had lived there for a number of years and were great friends with my granddad. They both either had sight of him or held conversations with him in the moments before passing away also. The strangest was the elderly lady who lived there, who was stood looking out the window and said quite cheerily "Oh look, Les is coming round!" Her husband was sat watching TV at the time and saw nothing strange in this as her eyesight was poor and her mental capacity had started to dwindle, that and my brother does hold an uncanny resemblance to him, but on the basis that he was around two-hundred miles away at the time it was not a possibility. Within 20 minutes she had also passed away.

When joking about this with my mum a few years later she told me that he himself was beckoning across the room to his long deceased pet dog Rex shortly before passing away.

It always makes me smile to think that he may be there watching over me, except when I've been wanking.

Then it's just wrong.
( Muns, Fri 4 Jul 2008, 2:23, Reply)

B3TA PARTY
I have never been to a b3ta party. Mainly because i live in Thailand. I would love to go to one and meet such legendary figures as legless, Chickenlady, Rachelswipe, Frank spencer etc (Apologies for anyone i have missed). But the thought has occured to me wouldnt it be cool to have an international B3TA Party in Thailand. I can set it up. Let me know what you think and if anyone would be interested.

My ex misses once threw a coffee cup at me.
(The Sitmpwa, Fri 4 Jul 2008, 2:13, 2 replies)

Weird chase.
Repetitive dream.

For a number of years, on and off, I’ve had this repetitive dream.
Not every week or month but on and off over the years at sort of random intervals.

Although vivid, I don’t see it in colour, rather a sort of scratched, washed-out sepia as though on a movie from the 1920s; a whiff of cigar smoke in the salty air.


Here is how it goes:-

“I’m standing in a street in New York the date is 1984 waiting for a bus, somehow everything is blurred, no, not blurred, indistinct.

There are people running past, away from something, I don’t recognise any of them, yet four seem familiar in overalls. They carry some sort of weapon each, held out in front of them and run the other way.

Then I see it, or rather, part of it.
A bloated whiteness, so large it fills the spaces between the buildings and the sky.

Running toward the careering bus, the doors opening as I jump.
Closing behind me, just.
Desperately looking about, there is no-one here, nobody even driving the strange old bus. So I make for the steps to the upper deck, there must be somebody here?

To my horror the steps go on and on, never ending.
Shattered by now, I clamber onward until I finally run out of puff. Looking up, I see it, written before me on the whiteness STAY PUFT”


And that’s how it usually ends,
my ghost-bus-stairs nightmare.


/runs off cackling
( FeralCatMan Unusual disease collector., Fri 4 Jul 2008, 1:21, Reply)

Opera...
why oh why the strange tabs now... I really can't understand that at all... truely unexplainable
(feedingtimeatthezoo day 1 of his bikini diet started, Fri 4 Jul 2008, 1:19, 1 reply)

healthily sceptical
except at night time, half fuddled with sleep and quite drunk.

there's nothing like waking up, turning over and seeing the dark figure in front of your window, freaking out, hiding under the duvet then remembering as you whimper into your pillow that this is not some axe murderer who has crawled through the window or a mysterious phantom but your SODDING COMPUTER CHAIR.

everytime. every bloody time.
(ladyintheradiator, Fri 4 Jul 2008, 1:17, Reply)

House of the Mysterious
I've never been particularly superstitious, etc. but..

When I was very young, about 6 or 7 we lived in a house near Lincoln - only for a couple of years - where all the supernatural-type experiences of my childhood took place.

I can clearly remember a cloud in the perfect image of a crocodile which - at least in my tiny child mind - stayed stationary in the sky outside my bedroom window for days, even weeks on end.

Also in my bedroom, I have just as vivid a recollection of a human-shaped shadow which would glide around the walls of my room during the course of the night, with faintly glowing red eyes.

I believed I saw a flying saucer hovering above a field behind the house on one occasion, though that one could very well just be wild childish imagination.

Certainly, we had a door which would swing open during the night, without the aid of a leaning house/any wind, even if it was tightly closed. The bathroom always had a strong smell of perfume too, though scent was rarely used in there.

Oddly, we never felt uncomfortable there, and never experienced anything similar in other houses despite moving around extensively throughout my childhood.
(pinefresh, Fri 4 Jul 2008, 1:09, 1 reply)

I'm Waiting
.
For someone to write a story about terrifying ghosts they, and a lot of others, saw in Northeast England the late 70's. 'Cos I have the explanation.

It was me.

As a bored teenager I frequently used to look for ways to amuse myself and one day hit on the idea of scaring drunks. Let me explain.

The route from one of the local pubs to our housing estate went past one of the old churchyards. It was a narrow path with the school on one side and the graveyard on the other. It was fairly well lit (well, it was until a .22 air rifle came out to play...) and it was the route of choice of pissed up blokes from the pub.

So one Friday night me and a mate headed for the graveyard at about 10pm. Pubs shut at 10.30 in those days and our first victims would be along soon. We stationed ourselves in the undergrowth, where we had a good view of the path and waited.

First victim staggers into view.

We waited until he was about 15 yards away and then..

snick.. A lighter bursts into flame hidden behind a headstone and we lit the methylated spirit that was now dripping down the moss covered stone. A quick scamper and...

snick.. The second stone quietly bursts into flames.

Within about a minute we had 7 or 8 gravestones quietly burning with an eerie blue flame.

Bloody drunk didn't notice a thing. He was quietly weaving his way up the path intent on getting home before falling over.

Then another group hoves into view. 4 of them and a bit more alert than the first one.

"John - what the fuck is *that*" comes from one of the group

"I don't fucking know and I don't want to find out..."

Well this noise attracted our first drunk who looked back blearily and finally noticed the graveyard, alight with an spooky blue flames..

"AHHHHH MOTHER........."

And he took off up the path like Lynford Christie on speed.

While we pissed ourselves behind a wall.


Well you had to make your own fun in those days....

Cheers
( Legless Mister Stabby - shanks for the memory, Fri 4 Jul 2008, 0:57, 1 reply)

I just got
De ja vu.
(Ellytots Last thought of chocolate on, Fri 4 Jul 2008, 0:51, 1 reply)

Spooky
My dad lives alone in a little bungalow on an ex-council housing estate. The close he lives on is for over 60s, and the previous tenant of his bungalow left in a box.

A number of odd things have happened over the years. A few times the dog would jump up and start growling, at the same part of the room, which would be icy cold. Things would go missing - my dad would be using a pencil, or a screwdriver, put it down for a second, and it would vanish. One day he shouted 'RIGHT - I've had enough - BRING IT BACK' (when his comb went missing). Nothing happened. Later, he opened the pantry cupboard and found all of the missing pencils, pens, screwdrivers and his comb in a bag of potatoes. No-one else had been in the house. There would also be regular hammering on the door, when no-one was there.

The worst bit (well for me) is when I stayed over at Christmas few years ago. I woke up to the hammering sound and tried to get up and go into the lounge (I am a scaredy cat girl). I couldn't move. It felt like I had hands of ice around my throat and I couldn't move a muscle. I opened my mouth and couldn't cry out. I must have stayed like that, paralysed, for only a minute, but I was petrified. I never told my dad because I didn't want him to worry, but I never stayed in the room again, choosing to sleep on the sofa.

I had a few drinks a few Christmasses later and admitted to my dad why I wouldn't sleep in the room. I thought he'd call me daft.

He said 'that happened to me, once, last Christmas. I never told you because I didn't want to scare you'.

Turns out the old guy had died in that very room, the bed was in the same place, and it was the same night - Christmas night.

I gave my dad a minidisc recorder and a room mic to record each night for a week, so we could hear the bangs. Each night, my dad would switch on the minidisc recorder and go to bed. He would snore continually, then something would walk up to the minidisc recorder and turn it off. Every night for seven nights.

He was so frightened, he hung a cross on the wall. There have been no hauntings since.
(Northern Lovely, Fri 4 Jul 2008, 0:37, 3 replies)

Blue Glow
Wake up, middle of the night. Yes I'm awake not dreaming. Left arm is straight up in the air instead of laying snug under the duvet. So what?

Well the what was that the arm from fingertips to elbow was glowing a sort of spooky blue.

Fuck that. St Elmo's fire? I just went back to sleep. Weird or what?
(Ronnie Spleen MMMMNEURRGH I AM A GAY SPAZ AND I LOVE IT UP MY BU, Fri 4 Jul 2008, 0:32, 1 reply)

In Southern England.
Some watery tart threw a sword at me and told me I had supreme executive power.

Stupid moistened bint.



Bindun?
(Harleif Skankhammer II was killing time at, Fri 4 Jul 2008, 0:31, Reply)

Ghosts, Energy, and Derek Acorah.
Firstly, my Dad's ghost story. My Dad use to be go and set up telephone lines, and stuff for big companies. On one job he was at a Cathedral, and was walking through a little passageway. He heard footsteps behind him, and he called out "hello" (didn't look back). Someone replied to him, and they had a really good talk apparently (How old the cathedral was, and random stuff), as they got to the end of the passage. My Dad turned around to thank the person that had being talking about the Cathedral...but no-one was there.

After the last 2 year, I've been learning how to sense people's Aura's and stuff. The person who has teached me the most of what to do. There whole family seems to be quite well adpated to the spirits. Father died, Mother constantally talking to ghost and talking to her children about them. Even his sister use to be able to see them. He's told me lots of his experiences, but this is my fav....

He use to work in Cambridge as a chef, and he use to cycle from middle of the city to one of the outskirts streets (I forget where). Anyway, cycling along he feels a huge aura ahead of him. He looks about, but can't see anything. It hits him again, but with huge anger and hate in it. In his mind he askes for the spirit to leave him alone. He cycles past it, but he feels it following behind him. He rushes home, gets in and rushes upstairs. Puts the light on in the bedroom and breathes a sigh of relief. He can't feel it, goes to bed, as soon as he turns the light off, it's at the end of the bed. Turns light on, disappears. Off, and it's back. So turns the light on, and asks it to leave. Off, still there. On, He cries out for someone to help him, and he feels another aura rush beside him (he described it as a flash of light). Off, the bad aura had gone, he believes the good aura to have been his dad.

And now, Derek Acorah, I've met him. This was before I started my energy work, and stuff. I tried shouting my name in my head too see if he could pick up my name (even called out to Sam to see if he could pass it on to him). He started walking over to our workplace so I step outside to greet him. Did he know my name....did he F***.

Length? To the spirit world and back.
(Dante licked your nipple on, Fri 4 Jul 2008, 0:24, 2 replies)

mentioned this in talk
not really expecting a response but here goes.

the cigarette i'm smoking at the moment tastes like macaroni and cheese. why is this? O.o

i haven't been in contact with macaroni or cheese in months.
(panda_sam, Fri 4 Jul 2008, 0:17, 3 replies)

Apparently I was in the car when this happened,
though I genuinely don't remember it happening. I'm spending this QOTW listening to the happiest, fluffiest music imaginable to try and offset the spooky.

Before I grew up and left home, my parents and I used to travel to Wales from Leicestershire to visit my grandparents every so often, usually to coincide with school holidays. One particular return trip, my mum, who at the time wasn't very used to motorway driving (she used to let my dad do it all until he was misdiagnosed with epilepsy and had to send his licence back) and she was feeling sort of jittery.

Somewhere on the M6, mum is in the middle lane, and my dad is backseat driving, something not unusual for his nature (he does it to me, too). Suddenly, he says to her "Why aren't you overtaking?"

Mummy Maladicta looks in her rearview mirror and says "I'm just waiting for this motorbike to get out of my way, he's indicating so I'd better let him go first."

Just as she does so, a Merc zips down the outside, way over the limit. Had she pulled out, it would have gone straight into the back of the car (and by extension, probably sent me through the windscreen).

Daddy Maladicta looks round: "What motorbike?", to which Mummy Maladicta adds "A bloke on a really old-looking bike, he was all done up in an old-fashioned helmet and leathers."

Then she looks in the mirror again. No motorbike.

She then goes deathly silent and stays that way most of the way home.

Why? Well here's where the really spooky bit comes in: my mum's Uncle Teddy had died a few years before I was born, and he was an old-school biker type, with leathers and an old Triumph bike. Mummy Maladicta is convinced he was watching over her and this story gives me the creeps every time she tells it.
( Maladicta, Fri 4 Jul 2008, 0:17, 2 replies)

My Biggest Disappointment
My biggest disppointment is that finally having the perfect response to the question I find I'm 36 hours late with my experience!

Still, a similar enough one will come around eventually that you'll all hear the story in the end.

Night everyone,

Bill
(bill, Fri 4 Jul 2008, 0:01, 1 reply)

Oooh, this has to be my dad
When my dad died, things went on in our house. Namely, the clocks stopped. At the time he died. Every night.

Clocks, fair enough, could have been somebody playing tricks, but the watches on our wrists would stop for ten minutes, too! It scared us shitless.

This was 16 years ago, so it's not some big witchcraft with digital watches.

It was only when my mum shouted (apparently) 'Stuart, I love you, but if you don't stop, I'm gonna move!'.

Spooky, but true.
( Methylene Blue - electrohead, Thu 3 Jul 2008, 23:48, Reply)

Old Bomb Shelters
Want a piece of advice - if there's an old, boarded up hole in the ground, surrounded by reinforced concrete - leave it alone...

Many moons ago, I was a slave to the IT God - I worked long hours and suffered the many woes of a contractor doing Support roles and Admin work. After a while, my 'agency' (i.e. a bloke with a PO BOX address in the West End who ran the company out of his car) sent me to help a new setup in West London. Old shop was fitted out as an office for w*nky estate agent types and the cupboard under the stairs was where they wanted to keep the servers/panels/router.etc. "Not Feckin' likely!" was my reply (seeing as I'd be spending the majority of the next 6 months in there). "What's the basement like?"
"No idea" came the reply - "there's a lock on the door"

So it came to pass that one of the builders who were still working on the flat above lent me a crowbar, and we 'unearthed' the basement.

Only it wasn't a basement - it was a WW2 bomb shelter. I was in my element - my own bunker - I was the next bond villian! It was nice and cool, suprisingly damp free and after a visit to B&Q, had a nifty code lock on the now repaired door. The IT guy had a lair! (Not a spacious lair, not quite the hollowed out volcano, but it was all mine!).

Very quickly I discovered that being down in 'the bunker' wasn't the funtime it was supposed to be. During office hours, I might pop down to check on something, and there was always this air of 'oppression' down there - like someone was watching me. No matter how I set it, nor how many replacement batteries I 'obtained' the UPS nearest the door would never work and there was often this 'smell' which I could never quite describe other than it was 'nasty'.

Then one weekend, I had to work overnight to update all the desktops and install bits and pieces. "Don't worry" they said "charge it as out of hours and it's double time."
Sitting in a bomb shelter at 2am watching Service Pack after Service Pack install is boring, but add the chilled air, the sense that someone is watching you and the distant sounds of someone screaming... at one point I'm sure I heard the whistle of a falling bomb and the resulting explosion.
Suffice to say that the planned updates only got half done and the request to be moved to a new project was completed on Monday morning.

I'm guessing alot of it was my imagination, but something else was down there, it just wasn't... right.

A while later I did pop in to the office to say 'Hi' in passing - the servers were installed in the managers office and a very big padlock was bolted to the door that led down to the shelter. "No f*cker wants to go down there" was the MD's answer to my unasked question.

So I wasn't the only one to whimp out....
( HSDriver was probably still at work on, Thu 3 Jul 2008, 23:36, 1 reply)

Don't usually go for this sort of thing...
... but thought I may share a few experiences.

Nearly 11 years ago, my brother was run over and killed. I know in this sort of situation, you cling on to anything you can to keep your spirits up, but two incidents stay in my mind. Anyone else know about the theory/phenomenon of butterflies appearing at funerals? I hadn't until it happened at my brothers and a family friend excitedly told me about it. There is a school of thought that suggests that the soul (or whatever) is transported away in the form of a butterfly. Nice theory, and a calming one. But even a sceptic like myself was surprised to see a very large Peacock butterfly sitting on the pulpit in the church for the majority of the funeral service. Which was in October (not normally butterfly weather).

Days after the funeral, my father came in and pulled me to one side. Not wanting my mother to hear, he explained to me how he had just seen both my grandfathers - his dad and my mother's dad - whilst he was out driving. Both had been dead for years. Maybe not spooky, but dad didn't know either of the gents (or indeed recognise the cars) who both appeared to nod "hello", and so concluded that my grandfathers were letting dad know that my recently passed brother was ok - where ever he was.

Third incident involves the family pet. My paternal grandmother died on the sea front at west bay (south coast) of a huge heart attack (she was actually laughing at a paraglider whose engine was noisily falling apart when it struck). Old folk die that way all the time I guess, but my parents Labrador wouldn't leave my grandmother's side the whole day before she died.

Not funny, just thought I'd share. I guess these things happen all the time though
(animal252 last activated his kitten hammer on, Thu 3 Jul 2008, 23:20, 2 replies)

A more serious one...
July 2001 was not a happy time for me. I'd just split up with my girlfriend, and a friend of mine from uni (Gavin) was dying of motor neurone disease. I got the phone call from his girlfriend quite early on Wednesday the 11th, a lovely sunny morning, as I was wandering around the flat with a coffee and planning the day's work.

The funeral was that weekend. Went (slight pearoast, this was the thunderstorm/"give a kid a new toy" story) and came back, and, well, got on with things.

A couple of days later after a night of odd dreams which I may go into at some point, I woke up and there was a distinct smell of patchouli in the room. Now my ex *hated* patchouli, wouldn't have it in the house. Gavin on the other hand slathered it on his bike jacket by the pint, the greasy old prog rocker that he was. For the next couple of days I could smell it - only in the flat, not in the hallway - and then it went again.
(gordonjcp, Thu 3 Jul 2008, 23:13, Reply)

Remote distress signal.
Years ago, when my Dad was dying, we went out to a Bonfire night party. Now, at this point I knew Dad had not long to go, but I knew nothing of what had happened this particular day. When we got home, I was chatting to a friend, and suddenly I knew, without being told, that I had to phone home. I also knew that the phone would be engaged.

It was. After redialling a few times, I got through to my Mum. She'd just had a call that Dad had collapsed, and she'd just been ringing a taxi to take her to the hospital.

Dad died early the next morning.

Yesterday I took Mum into hospital for what will probably be the last time.

When she needs me, she'll let me know, just like last time. Should be sometime in the next 6 weeks.

Feel free to send hugs.
(all my scars face forward possesses 2.5% of a hyperalloy combat chassis, Thu 3 Jul 2008, 22:53, 15 replies)