What is the creepiest thing to have ever happened to you?

[compositejoe]

Have you ever had something happened that gave you the creeps and you can't explain or perhaps read something or seen something on the television that gave you a shiver?

[Colibri]

Since the OP is asking about personal experiences, this is best suited for IMHO.

Colibri
General Questions Moderator

[compositejoe]

Originally Posted by Colibri

Since the OP is asking about personal experiences, this is best suited for IMHO.

Colibri
General Questions Moderator

Sorry, I am quite new to this forum and was quite unsure of where to post the thread!

[cynyc]

Where I grew up there were A LOT of huge cemeteries. We often poked around in them, especially Greenwood cemetery.

My friend, Bill Kunkel*, and I were walking through there in the dark. It's possible we were smoking a joint while just chatting and strolling, not that pot figures into this IMHO. We knew the place like the "backs of our hands."

Then there was this oddest sound--best I can describe it is that is was loud and clear and like iron grating against concrete. Like an iron mausoleum door with a bad hinge being opened, if I had to guess a possibility.

We looked at each other and Ran Like Hell to the only spot where we could get out of there which was the far side of our 'hood--the iron fence on Metropolitan Ave. There was a spot there where the iron bars were spread ever so slightly and one could get in or out by turning ones head sideways then shoulders etc. Thankfully it was a downhill run.

I think of it to this day and still think WTF? I spoke to Bill about it last year but it was one thing he didn't remember.

*Bill went on to become the first video game writer and reviewer then "The Game Doctor." He dropped dead less than a year ago. I miss him terribly. He was the only person on the planet who remembered me better than I remember me and even met my father and stuff. I love you Bill. I miss you terribly. RIP.

[Der Trihs]

Once in the middle of a hot summer night, my radio suddenly went off station. When I looked closely, the tuning knob was visible turning on its own. Now, intellectually I knew that there was a mechanical explanation*; but in the middle of the night as a teen it was pretty creepy.

* Probably something to do with the heat causing something to expand inside the radio; I opened the thing once and saw that the knobs were hooked up with string under tension, not purely electronic.

[Blackberry]

This isn't like a ghost kind of situation, but still creepy and I can't think of an explanation for it. Last year I was getting some texts from someone calling me "Sally" (my name is nothing like Sally) and telling me he missed me and wanted to see me and stuff like that. I said he had the wrong number, but for a few days he kept texting me with that stuff. No big deal, I figured it was just someone messing around.

Then, one day my daughter (then 10) told me she was getting texts from someone calling her Sally and "acting like I'm his girlfriend or something". I have NO IDEA who that could have been and how he got her number. She's not even on my cell plan, she's on my mom's, and she had just gotten her phone and VERY few people had the number. The only people who had both my number and hers were a few close family members and I know 100% for sure it wasn't them. Not even any of my friends had her number. No one could have looked in my phone, and even if they had, there would have been no indication that she was my daughter, as opposed to just some random person in my contacts. I still wonder WTF that was about.

[billfish678]

I got two. Not so much really creepy, but they did make me go "whoaa".

First, when the Cold War was still hot, not dead, and Reagan was prez. Was outside doing some basic car work. Beautiful, sunny, clear blue sky day in the deep south and had the local rock station on. RRRRNNNNTTT, RRRNNNNTTTT, RRRRNNNNT...THIS IS NOT A TEST OF THE EMERGENCY BROADCAST SYSTEM...REPEAT, THIS IS NOT A TEST OF THE EMERGENCY BROADCAST SYSTEM...PLEASE STAY TUNED FOR FURTHER INFORMATION...after some delay and more worrisome wording, they finally warn of some severe thunderstorms 50 miles away. Back then, despite having plenty of hurricanes, thunderstorms, tornados, flooding and all other assortment of "bad" things in the area, I had NEVER heard the EBS system ever used for any of these. So, for a few moments I was looking for some mushroom clouds on the horizion.

Touring a state park with caves. Touring the cave with myself and a couple other 18 year oldish also male friends of mine. At one point we stop in one of the larger rooms and the tour guide gives everyone the okay to wander around and take pictures. He then asks up three guys if we would like to see something cool. Sure! we say and he motions us to a corner of the room. He points out a stalactite and says "see that?". "Yeah" we said. "Look like a big pecker doesn't it?" he said. We nodded and went back the group. Was never sure whether that was an encounter with your standard dirty ole man or your really dirty ole man

[ralph124c]

When my grandfather's house was sold, the family got together for one last dinner in his dining room. We all remembered the good times spent there-the big family parties, etc.
The meal was over, we lingered to share memories-and them, the light went out (the bulb in the chandelier burned out).
My aunt recalled when she was a girl, when my grandfather wanted to end the evening..he would shut the lights off.

[Mr. Accident]

Well, this one time, I went to this messageboard see. And this messageboard was full of smart, funny people, and one of them linked to a thread. I read the thread, and it was very vaguely creepy.

Anyhow, for one of my stories. Back in the mid 90s, I lived in this very old house. It had been built before power was even available in the area. From day 1 in that house, creepy things would happen. On the day we moved in, my whole family was in the master bedroom, setting things up. The windows weren't open, and the bedroom door was blocked by a boxspring. We got the bed frame set up, went to put the wooden slats onto the rails, and one of the slats was missing.

We're talking about a board that was 6' long, 6" wide, and about 2 inches thick. It was there before we started setting the bed up, but was gone when we went to get it. That board never did show back up.

Every night it sounded like someone would bang on the door at midnight, 1, 2, and 3. No one was ever at it. I even sat on the porch one night, heard the footsteps that accompany the knock, heard the knock, but never saw anyone.

One night my mom and I were woken up by what sounded like every glass, plate, and window in the house had shattered all at once. We got up and checked everywhere, and never found what caused the sound. The next day our neighbors said that around the time we heard the noise, the house had an eerie glow around it. They told us this before we ever mentioned the noise we heard.

I miss that house.

[SeldomSeen]

I lived for a time in a 200-year old farmhouse in Canton MA wherin a ghost would sometimes walk around noisily....clumping around the halls and up & down stairs. Yes, I heard it. Yes, several independant witnesses heard it, and yes, we all checked for alternative causes. It was a pretty popular spook, a number of people had experienced it and other than the initial creep-out no one worried about it too much. It wasn't dangerous, had never been known to bother anyone other than to annoy them with its incessant clumping about.
SS

[Alice The Goon]

17 years ago, I left my husband, and I had to sleep in my friend's basement for two weeks until my new house was ready to be moved into. There was a sliding glass door with no curtains or blinds that faced the bed that I and my two little boys were sleeping in. On the outside was a motion-detector light. One morning I woke up and remembered that in the middle of the night, I sat up in bed and I saw a man standing outside the sliding glass door, standing there watching us, but I thought it was a dream, so I went back to sleep. Then I went outside and took the cover off of the light bulb, and the bulb was broken. It was not broken and was working until that night. So since then I've never figured out if there was a guy standing there, and he saw me sit up and look at him with the light on, so he broke the light bulb so that I couldn't see him, or was that really a dream and the bulb broke by accident- if it was a real guy, was it just some random creeper, or did my husband's attorney send him to see what kind of conditions I had the kids in... or what? Creepy.

[Battle Pope]

This happened a few years ago. I had been on holidays for two weeks and on my first day back at work, got in early (7:30am – most of the place got there after 8:15) to go through emails, figure out my schedule for the week - all the usual post-holiday stuff. I had to walk through most of the office to get to my desk and as far as I could tell I was the only person on the floor.

So the place is nice & quiet (really quiet, about the only sound was my PC fan) about 15 minutes after I arrive I decide to get a cup of tea, swivel my chair around and there is this stranger sitting about two feet away just staring at me!

After an initial holy-crap-who-is-that-how-did-he-sneak-up-on-me-how-did-he-get-in-here-this-is-a-secure-building!?! Moment I spot his security tag (one question answered) and my brain pulls up an email about a new IT guy starting a week ago (two questions answered). No idea how he got up behind me without me knowing - did they hire Batman while I was away?

Me: Uh………hi?
Him: Hello.
Me: You must be the new IT guy. I’m Battle Pope, can I help you?
Him: Yes.
Me: (Oooooooookay). With what? (At this point I notice he doesn’t seem to blink enough and his eyes appear to be focused intently on my throat).
Him: How do you get to work?
Me: Drive
Him: From where?
Me: Down south (no way am I letting this guy know where I live! And for the love of dog man, BLINK!)
Him: OK, thanks. Let me know if you have any IT needs. *gets up & walks away*
Me:……………

Turns out he was the new IT guy but the poor bugger was (we later heard) bi-polar and in between getting hired and starting the job went off his medication.

After a series of escalating odd behaviours (including taking papers off desks to add to his ‘portfolio’ and calling a meeting with my section in which he outlined his plans to defeat the global neo-Nazi movement by placing symbolic crucifixes at strategic places around town, his contract was cancelled & he was let go. A follow-up a few weeks later by HR found he’d gone back into care.

[ZPG Zealot]

1992, former Yugoslavia, I was with a group heading away from trouble. We were all rather scared out of our minds. We stopped at an abandoned facility that had been basically a holding pen, sorting center for people sent on to death camps during WWII. There hadn't been gas chambers there, but a lot of people had been murdered by mass firing squads and the conditions in the camp (disease and starvation). We stayed there a couple of days because the buildings were big enough to shelter us and the cars out of the rain and we thought because the locals obviously didn't use it, maybe we wouldn't encounter anybody else. It was an eerie feeling to find the names and addresses had been left in out of the way places. Sometimes during the nights I woke up and it felt like somebody was holding me and comforting me. I doozily thought at the time, it was future DH and he had managed to steal a few minutes away from watch to check up on me. Later I learned nope, that hadn't been the case and in fact everyone in our group reported experiencing something similiar: waking up at night and feeling someone comforting them in the darkness. Some people swore, later, of course, they heard whispers saying, "you'll be okay," A week later when it was safe enough to travel we found out from the nearby the villages that the locals considered the place haunted and the ghosts were nasty and vindicative.

[aruvqan]

Originally Posted by ZPG Zealot

1992, former Yugoslavia, I was with a group heading away from trouble. We were all rather scared out of our minds. We stopped at an abandoned facility that had been basically a holding pen, sorting center for people sent on to death camps during WWII. <snip> Later I learned nope, that hadn't been the case and in fact everyone in our group reported experiencing something similiar: waking up at night and feeling someone comforting them in the darkness. Some people swore, later, of course, they heard whispers saying, "you'll be okay," A week later when it was safe enough to travel we found out from the nearby the villages that the locals considered the place haunted and the ghosts were nasty and vindicative.

Perhaps it was some of the Rom who had been sent through the camp system. I could see them being vindictive to the locals.

[and yes I know it is foolish to believe in ghosts, but there is more shit that goes on with no other good explanation ...]

[grude]

There is an island near here with a abandoned leper colony, it looks like a old fashioned hospital in the jungle. It honestly looks like the staff and patients just dissapeared, all equipment, medication, beds, and records! were just left to rot in the jungle. Crazy and creepy place to explore.

[Rachellelogram]

The creepiest thing I can remember happened to me after staying up way too long in college (stupid all-nighter for a stupid project that I stupidly procrastinated doing). I think I was up to 33 hours awake when I started seeing my cat out of the corner of my eye. But I didn't own a cat, it was living at my mom's house 80 miles away! Anyway, I saw the cat out of the corner of my eye, turned my head and nothing was there. But it kept happening, and I kept looking. I went to bed shortly after, and conked out for a good 11 hours. Easy explanation for it, of course, but I've never experienced anything religious or mysterious that couldn't be explained. I'm lucky, I suppose, but also too cynical.

[Mosier]

Not supernaturally creepy, but "heart jump into your throat" creepy.

I used to work swing shift, and be home right about midnight. There's a huge window overlooking the driveway, and I didn't want to disturb the rest of my family with the headlights, so I would kill the headlights as I pulled into the driveway to keep the light from shining through.

My street is lit by a lonely lamp-post at least a hundred yards away, which isn't useful for much except casting creepy shadows. It's completely silent, there's almost no light, and I would try to get from the car to the door as quickly as possible.

One night, I pull up to the driveway in the creepy dark and silence, and jump out of the car preparing to hurry to the door, when I hear a little sound like a cat's footsteps near the trash can next to the driveway. I glance over, and see a strange looking shadow on the trash can. I was puzzled for a second, wondering just what the hell was casting that strange looking shadow, when I saw the goddamn thing move like an animal!

All at once, the silhouette of a huge, mean-looking stray dog came into focus. The dog was a dark color, which is why I originally mistook it for a shadow. I froze, facing the dog, with him facing back at me.

I didn't know what to do. We just stood like that, looking at each other for a few seconds. He didn't growl or do anything hostile, and was probably just trying to find a snack in the garbage can when I pulled up without my headlights on. After awhile, I found the courage to say "go!" and the demon-dog obediently walked away.

[Maiira]

This happened a few days ago. It's a dream, because I have a relatively uncreepy life, but it sure scared the hell out of me. This isn't the scariest dream I've ever had, but my reaction to it was.

I don't remember most of it, but the only thing that really matters is the ending. I dreamed that my boyfriend and I were lying in a bed in some hotel...thing...and the ceiling was made up of these gigantic, two-ton slabs of stone. They were actually pretty cool...until one of them came loose from its frame and started falling on top of us. My boyfriend and I (in the dream) were struggling to stop it from crushing us, and I was screaming because I truly and honestly thought we were going to die.

Then I heard my boyfriend shouting my name and felt him shaking me, and I woke up. At first I thought "huh, I guess the ceiling wasn't falling in after all," and then I realized that I had just started screaming blue murder out of bloody nowhere in the middle of the goddamned night. I dunno about you, but if I had been the one sleeping peacefully next to me, and I heard me screaming, I'd have been freaked the fuck out.

Of course, the residual fear was still there, so I was shaking and terrified, but I also felt so fucking STUPID for waking my boyfriend up over nothing. I was wide awake for awhile after that, but eventually I was able to nod off.

To add insult to injury (or vice versa), my throat hurt the next day from all the screaming.

[Alice The Goon]

At least you can scream in your dreams- when I try to scream in my dreams, nothing comes out! I often wonder if it would be that way in real life, or if I would actually be able to scream.

[AClockworkMelon]

Originally Posted by Alice The Goon

At least you can scream in your dreams

At least you guys can remember your dreams! Whenever I have a nightmare (or what I imagine to be one) I wake up terrified but unable to remember what I'd been dreaming about.

[tellyworth]

Originally Posted by AClockworkMelon

Whenever I have a nightmare (or what I imagine to be one) I wake up terrified but unable to remember what I'd been dreaming about.

A few years ago I woke with a big jolt, my heart racing, and sitting slumped on the floor in the middle of the room. I felt like I'd just been hit by something big, and had a faint foggy memory of recently being scared, but no terror, just bewilderment. I felt very much like I'd just dropped out of the sky and landed there.

My wife, who was still up after a late shift, ran into the room in a panic, asking what all the screaming was about. As best as I can tell, I'd screamed bloody murder, leapt out of bed, and landed on my backside four feet from the end of the bed. All without any memory of a nightmare, and just a faint sensation of having been scared of something.

[Clothahump]

I saw a UFO once.

Way back when, I was a deputy sheriff. One night about 0200, I needed to whiz. I was way out in the boonies, no one around, so I pulled over to water the drainage ditch. As I was, I noticed a very bright red light in the sky, moving incredibly fast towards me. It got nearly overhead, then suddenly made an almost 180 degree and headed back in pretty much the same direction it went.

From in sight over the horizon to back out of sight again, maybe 10 seconds. No aircraft flies that fast, nor can one make that sharp a turn.

I got the shivers thinking....they really are out there.

[Southern Yankee]

I lived in a fraternity house in college (late 80s.) One day I got a lot of envelopes in my mailbox. I don't recall the exact number but it was more than 20. Each one had my name and address hand-written. Each one had a stamp and a postmark from my hometown (which was about an hour or so away from the college.) Inside each envelope was a single index card with a letter of the alphabet. On the back of each card was a number. When I put the cards in numerical order it spelled out a message: I AM WATCHING YOU! YOU KNOW WHY.

Well, I most certainly did not know why. Somebody went through an awful lot of trouble to write and send those cards and to this day I have no idea who did it or why. I spent quite a bit of time trying to figure it out and the best explanation I have is it was just an elaborate prank. It had to be someone who knew where I lived at college, which wasn't too many people.

[Ellen Cherry]

Originally Posted by Alice The Goon

At least you can scream in your dreams- when I try to scream in my dreams, nothing comes out! I often wonder if it would be that way in real life, or if I would actually be able to scream.

I was so scared once I tried to talk and/or scream and nothing came out. I think I've told this story on here somewhere before, but one night during college I awoke and the sounds from the adjoining room informed me that my then-boyfriend (later husband) was peeing in the bathroom. It was way deep into the dark, dark night, like 3 or 4 am. I got up and walked in thinking I would just chat with him or something while he finished up and go myself. But what happened was, I ended up scaring the everliving shit out of him. He was half asleep and I just walked into the dimly lit bathroom and he started screaming.

He was looking straight at me and staring at me, unable to comprehend it was me (as he later explained) and was so terrified he started yelling. This in turn terrified me, and I opened my mouth to speak and I was so sure that I had, in the night, turned into some hideous creature out of Twilight Zone that I couldn't speak. I turned to look in the mirror, scared shitless at what I must appear like, to cause him to shriek so. I kept moving my mouth to say "It's me!" and nothing came out but "yuh yuh yuh" which further scared him, and me even more.

Heh. I guess we were both young and easily spooked.

[carnivorousplant]

Originally Posted by ralph124c

My aunt recalled when she was a girl, when my grandfather wanted to end the evening..he would shut the lights off.

Cool.

[Lanzy]

I was mopping a club I owned in Tennessee back in 1988. I put a cd on of the Eagles while I mopped away. After one of the songs there was a kinda skip sound and the next song was Hotel California, then the CD stopped and I went to get another one. I remembered that song way earlier in the CD but figured I must have hit random songs or something. When I checked the CD, this one DID NOT HAVE Hotel California on it at all!!! That CD was still in the rack.

The only logical explanation I ever came up with was the music system somehow changed to FM and that song just happened to be playing. Still can't determine how all music stopped at the end of that song though.

My nephew came in later to help out and I told him what happened. He looked scared and said, "The Devil is here!" I guess he was joking but at that exact moment a 12' foot light fixture fell on him. Big cut and bruise on his back and he refused to come back for weeks.

[Lanzy]

Originally Posted by Clothahump

I saw a UFO once.

Way back when, I was a deputy sheriff. One night about 0200, I needed to whiz. I was way out in the boonies, no one around, so I pulled over to water the drainage ditch. As I was, I noticed a very bright red light in the sky, moving incredibly fast towards me. It got nearly overhead, then suddenly made an almost 180 degree and headed back in pretty much the same direction it went.

From in sight over the horizon to back out of sight again, maybe 10 seconds. No aircraft flies that fast, nor can one make that sharp a turn.

I got the shivers thinking....they really are out there.

UFOs seem to prefer lone people in the boonies, don't know why.

[control-z]

Originally Posted by Southern Yankee

(snip)On the back of each card was a number. When I put the cards in numerical order it spelled out a message: I AM WATCHING YOU! YOU KNOW WHY.(snip)

So did you actually think you were being watched and did you try to discover the watcher?

[Scubaqueen]

I was lying in bed one night still awake, listening to the tv in the living room, when I felt one of the cats get up on the bed. As any cat owner will tell you, there's no mistaking a cat getting up on the bed. I felt the weight of it as it jumped up, even the sensation and sound of it walking up the bedclothes to where I lay.

I reached out to pet, expecting to feel fur under my fingers - and there was nothing. I sat up, looked around, still nothing. Nothing under the bed, in the closet or the bathroom. I hotfooted it out to the living room where the Divemaster was sitting on the couch. All four of our cats were either on the couch or in his lap, snoozing away, comfy, motionless lumps of fur.

He did a doubletake when he took in my odd expression. I bet my face was a study. I asked him if any of the cats had been out of his sight since I went to bed and none had. In fact, none had left the couch.

I quizzed him some more and he answered all of my admittedly peculiar questions then asked me what was wrong. I told him he wouldn't believe it and went back to bed.

Provided he wasn't mistaken or pulling a joke on me (which I highly doubt. he doesn't have that kind of a sense of humor), I have always had a strong suspicion that my visitor was my recently-deceased little gray cat Peggy, who just stopped in to say goodbye.

[DMark]

When I was 16, my high school choir took a bus trip from Illinois to California and back in the summer. We stopped in towns and cities, staying with families, performing concerts. Along the way, the bus stopped at famous/interesting locations.

We stopped in Taos, New Mexico - a quaint little place at the time (still?) with Old West flavor and charm, including wooden sidewalks, etc.
I went with my friends to walk around and in about 10 minutes I just had this horrible feeling of fear and dread, as if I was being told to get the hell out of there.
I went back to the bus on my own.
Inside the bus was another girl from my choir (we were not particularly good friends) and she looked upset and said, "Did you get that feeling that too?"
We both sat in silence until everyone came back and we left, but of all the places I have ever visited in my life, Taos was severely creepy.

One slightly similar occurrence was my first big trip through Europe. With some friends I met along the way, we took a short cut through a small cemetery in Vienna. We paused to respectfully look at a few of the graves and ornate stones/monuments at the graves. I got to one and I don't remember the name or anything about it, but chills just ran down my body. I left and went to wait on the sidewalk for my friends to come shortly afterwards. The odd thing is that I still feel like that grave must have been somehow important/relevant to me as every once in awhile, that moment just pops up in my mind - as if I am remembering someone from my past, although to the best of my knowledge, nobody in either side of our family ever lived or died in Austria.

[FairyChatMom]

When we still lived in Jacksonville, I was assigned to a project that required me to work occasionally at night. To set the scene, this was at Naval Air Station, Jacksonville, and the engineering building (since razed) was originally the chow hall, built in 1940, and it was across the street from the hangar where the regular night shift was working. I was all alone, futzing with some engineering drawings, praying for my shift to be over.

All of a sudden, I got a whiff of cinnamon buns. The building was dark except for the row of lights over my corner of the cubicle farm. It was quiet - not even the HVAC was running. My logical mind was melting down - yeah, I know this was the chow hall 50+ years ago, but there's no way anyone or anything is in here baking cinnamon buns. It really creeped me out.

Until I figured out it was the cinnamon gum in my sightly ajar center desk drawer. Yet another reason I hated working nights...

[Scumpup]

When I was a teenager, we had some inexplicable "poltergeist-style" activity in our home. We heard stuff happen and saw the aftermath, but never saw the actual incidents take place. Some shelves full of books emptied themselves all over a room. Some over-sized puzzles that one stuck directly to a wall to make a poster "blew off" the wall and were scattered everywhere. Some cupboards would open themselves. This was a new house that had been built in what had been agricultural land; sometimes a cornfield, sometimes a pasture. It continued, on and off, for a few months after we moved in and then stopped completely. I don't know what it was, but I see no compelling reason to assume ghosts, haints, boogers, or other paranormal entities.

[Southern Yankee]

Originally Posted by control-z

So did you actually think you were being watched and did you try to discover the watcher?

I have to admit I spent a day or two looking over my shoulder when I went in and out if buildings, yeah. I really thought it was a friend playing a practical joke, but no one ever confessed or mentioned it to me.

[bartleby]

I was getting some stuff out of my front seat, Some of it had dropped under the seat, so I was hunched down to get it.

So I see a movement out of the corner of my eye, and I look over, and there's a HAND reaching out at me!

My heart stopped, and it took me a second or two to realize that since my rear-view mirror fell off, I've been storing it under the arm rest in the middle of the bench seat...

that was creepy.

[Maiira]

Originally Posted by Alice The Goon

At least you can scream in your dreams- when I try to scream in my dreams, nothing comes out! I often wonder if it would be that way in real life, or if I would actually be able to scream.

See, this is what normally happens! Which is why the screaming episode was so weird. The only other time that's ever happened was when I was five years old and I dreamed that I was being chased by a giant lizard.

But now that I think about it, my sleep pattern is never very consistent. Sometimes I won't be able to move at all (not really sleep paralysis, per se, I just find myself moving really sluggishly in the dream), other times I'll be flailing like a squirmy toddler. How my poor boyfriend puts up with it I'll never know.

Another scary dream, while I'm here:

When I was in high school, I watched a lot of forensic science documentaries. They were fascinating to me, but they had the tendency to give me really horrible nightmares. This one was in the format of one such show, with a really brutal serial killer stalking, raping, torturing, killing, and cannibalizing women. As per usual for one of these shows, they were interviewing the investigators involved in that particular case, though they were talking about the killings in really graphic detail, more graphic than is usually disclosed in the actual shows.

I woke up then, thinking "wow, that was pretty creepy." I was a bit shaken, but not particularly frightened. Then I went back to sleep.

In the second part of the dream, the interview style had gone...and this same serial killer was now after ME. This wasn't explicitly explained in the dream, but I knew it was the same guy. He was sitting in his car across the street from my house, watching me. I could see him there, and I knew he was watching me, and I think he knew that I knew he was watching me. And I also knew there wasn't anything I could do about it.

The dream then went off in a completely different direction, but I woke up with my fight-or-flight reaction tightened like a coiled spring. Just when I thought I couldn't get any more terrified, a car drove really slowly past my house . (Now I'm fairly certain it was the paper delivery person, but hindsight, 20/20, etc.)

Needless to say I spent the rest of the night with the lights on.

[Soylent Juicy]

When I was 14 I was on a bus tour with my mom and her then-boyfriend and we stopped at a buffet restaurant for dinner, I think it was around the Windsor/Detroit area. As soon as the bus pulled into the parking lot I got this really creeped-out feeling - like I'd been there before - I knew I hadn't - and I was scared. There was a fountain out front that I "recognized" and I remember the Rembrandt painting "The Man in the Helmet" on the wall. The whole decor of the place (very dark and medieval, I guess) for some reason scared the bejeezus out of me.

[Docta G]

Fell in love with a woman with an attachment disorder.

[Mrs. Cake]

This happened about a year ago. I like to walk after dark - its a safe suburban neighborhood in central Iowa, so no big deal. A few blocks from my house near an empty lot I encountered my semi-feral cat, a big bruiser of a (former) tom, the sort of cat who chases dogs for fun. He is being very affectionate as he normally is when encountering me in his territory.

Suddenly he freezes up. I bend done to ask him what's wrong, and he makes this flying leap onto my shoulder, digging in his claws and shaking like a leaf. I look over at where his eyes are fixated and see some sort of animal, large and dog-like, but thin as a rail with legs way too long for a dog and no tail. It paused briefly and looked at us. My cat lost it even more and crapped & peed down my back. I was deeply freaked out by this mutant dog-thing, but it just turned and moved off into the shadows after a few seconds.

As soon as it moved out of sight, my cat relaxed, jumped down, and followed me home like nothing had happened. I've never seen it since, but if I were a person who believed in woo I would have sworn it was a werewolf, or chupacabra or something. It certainly felt unnatural, and the cat has never remotely reacted like that before or since.

[MaxTheVool]

A month or so ago I was sitting having breakfast, holding the television remote control when suddenly, with no warning, I dropped the remote. That seemed a bit weird, and when I tried to pick it up, my fingers didn't respond right, and then they started twitching, totally out of my control. This may not sound too creepy, as there are plenty of people who are paralyzed or have various diseases which make this all too commonplace, but if it's something you're not expecting, it is VERY freaky. It went away after a minute or so, and I spent all day worried that I was developing Parkinson's (or something along those lines), but the next day I noticed that I had a tendency to sit with that arm pressed up against the coffee table in a way that compressed the nerves in my arm, which is almost certainly what caused it (and it hasn't happened since). It's still very odd to me that it resulted in twitching rather than the normal pins-and-needles "falling asleep" that I'm used to, but I see no reason to suspect anything other than the obvious cause.

[John DiFool]

Originally Posted by Mrs. Cake

This happened about a year ago. I like to walk after dark - its a safe suburban neighborhood in central Iowa, so no big deal. A few blocks from my house near an empty lot I encountered my semi-feral cat, a big bruiser of a (former) tom, the sort of cat who chases dogs for fun. He is being very affectionate as he normally is when encountering me in his territory.

Suddenly he freezes up. I bend done to ask him what's wrong, and he makes this flying leap onto my shoulder, digging in his claws and shaking like a leaf. I look over at where his eyes are fixated and see some sort of animal, large and dog-like, but thin as a rail with legs way too long for a dog and no tail. It paused briefly and looked at us. My cat lost it even more and crapped & peed down my back. I was deeply freaked out by this mutant dog-thing, but it just turned and moved off into the shadows after a few seconds.

As soon as it moved out of sight, my cat relaxed, jumped down, and followed me home like nothing had happened. I've never seen it since, but if I were a person who believed in woo I would have sworn it was a werewolf, or chupacabra or something. It certainly felt unnatural, and the cat has never remotely reacted like that before or since.

Maned Wolf? Would have to be an escapee for you to have seen it in North America, but it fits your description.

[Battle Pope]

Creepy black dogs, Black Shuck perhaps?

I was camping on a friends farm and went out to shoot a few bunnies for dinner. When I came over the top of the hill near the rabbit warren I came face to face with a big feral dog about 10m from me. Not sure of the breed but at that range it looked lke a cross between a German Shepherd and a horse .

My friend had been losing sheep to dog attacks & I wouldn't be suprised if this was one of the culprits. As I only had a .22 I figured that if I shot him I would probably just annoy him so we looked at each other for a few minutes and he turned around, walked away and disappered behind some rocks and didn't come out the other side!

No idea where that dog went as I could see both side of the rock pile clearly. I figure he went behind the rocks and then turned and walked directly away from me to a gully about 30m away.

Weirded me out & I carried heavier calibre stuff when I went out that way the next day. Never did see him again.

[cynyc]

I mentioned "my best fiend" in the Asperger NJ thread. He is The Poster Boy for High IQ Asperger's.

He predicted the attacks 0f 9-11. The day prior he told his mother, "Something is going to happen tomorrow. SOmething big--like Pearl Harbor." I was like no way and when I next spoke to his mother she confirmed that it happened. I'm not sure what a logarithm is but he's the type of guy that has little else going on his mind.

He's a very conservative military raised kind of guy.

WHile, under-educated for my potential I'm kinda smart and I asked him if he saw any patterns that lead to his assumption and he said no. A few weeks ago I was reading "Girl With a Dragon Tattoo" and there was a line in there that popped out at me and which I'll never forget. Something like 'Maybe she has Aspergers. Sees patterns where regular people only get white noise." I think I have a touch of that myself.

Ba da boom.

Dog howling--I'll have to tell the other later.

[cynyc]

I don't recall if it was the actual day my mother died in the hospital or the next but I think the former. I did not live with my mother I had an apartment of my own. I had a jolly shepard mix. I was on the toilet taking a pee when Theodore (said dog) ran in and positioned himself between my calves and the toilet. He seemed frightened like a little kid hiding behind his mother's skirts. Never happened prior and never happened since.

[Shagnasty]

Two years ago, my grandmother who I was very close to came down with terminal cancer. I was 2000 miles away from her home in Arkansas and I wanted to see her again but my father said it wasn't even worth it because the degeneration was so fast that it wouldn't do anyone any good. I argued with my family about coming anyway for a week but we never arranged it partly because I had just started a new job and didn't have any time off whatsoever. I woke up on a Tuesday morning and called my new boss telling him that I couldn't come to work because my grandmother just passed away. I had no idea why I did that. I just knew I had to. Then I sat by the phone and waited for the next 30 minutes until the call came. I just answered it with 'I'm sorry, I already know' to my father. It was like it was scripted. The time of death was exactly when I woke up.

[aruvqan]

Originally Posted by Alice The Goon

At least you can scream in your dreams- when I try to scream in my dreams, nothing comes out! I often wonder if it would be that way in real life, or if I would actually be able to scream.

I can't scream in my nightmares either. In addition, frequently I have trouble running and dialing phones.

I love dreams. I can walk and climb trees and stuff that I can't do when I am awake. I had a lovely dream last night where we were hiking in Letchworth State Park.

[Ellen Cherry]

Originally Posted by John DiFool

Maned Wolf? Would have to be an escapee for you to have seen it in North America, but it fits your description.

Oh man! I just saw one of these at the zoo yesterday and was going to suggest it .... and then here you are bringing up an animal I had never heard of until 3 pm yesterday. I was struck by how long-legged they were, but as you say, they're native of South America and wouldn't be roaming wild here unless it was a zoo escapee.

[Ferret Herder]

The guy at a club who assumed I was pretty much passing out, propped against the wall at a table, and decided to get me to come to the back of the club with him. I was actually exhausted and falling asleep (yes, with pounding dance music) and from the build of the guy saying something inaudible near my ear, thought it was my husband. (My hair was blocking my peripheral vision, and I was looking straight ahead after opening my eyes.) He grabbed my hand and guided me through the crowd ahead of him.

I was still tired and not thinking straight, then I realized with a start all at once something like: 'He's not being very gentle, I'm kind of getting bumped into people/OMG this is NOT my husband!' Yup, I woke up enough to realize my husband wouldn't half-push me through a crowd with my arm behind my back, and in sheer panic I had the element of surprise to break away (some self-defense training didn't hurt) and jet off at an angle through the crowd. I didn't even stop to look, so all I knew was that his build and hair color were similar to my husband, and that's not an unusual combo. So I found my husband and tell him I want to go, and only once we're outside did I tell him what happened - if I did right away, he'd have wanted to beat someone up, and I couldn't have ID'd the guy if you paid me.

Oh, and I saw some lights in the sky once. They were small and red and far away, and some other people at the party were all 'omg UFO!' and I was saying yeah, that is unidentified by us, but I highly doubt we're talking aliens. It's goddamned hard to judge distance/direction of travel of anything in the sky, especially at night, but apparently other people posted about it because you can find it in some "UFO" database online. Not creepy. Just lights that weren't obvious as to their origin from that part of the Chicago suburbs.

[pullin]

Nothing supernatural, but an odd occurrence on a lonely backroad.

For reasons I can't remember, I was traveling on a little-used but very long dirt road waaay out in the sticks (think banjo music). I came upon a car traveling a little slower, and soon noticed that it was obviously in distress with lots of smoke and steam. It failed soon and pulled to the side of the road. Since it was miles to civilization I stopped and offered the two guys inside a ride. They were friendly but really backwoods types, and after getting settled in my car, the guy in back suddenly remembered they had some "stuff" in the trunk, and asked if they could load it in my trunk. I agreed and scampered around to open my trunk. When I looked up they were carrying armloads of guns. All of various types and none in a case. They made two trips each and loaded over twenty long guns into my trunk. At this point I figured I didn't have any choice but to go along and hope for the best. Oddly, they never attempted to bring one of the guns into the car, and were content to leave them in the trunk. I followed a set of directions along dirt roads and tracks, and let them off at a little shack. They unloaded their arsenal, thanked me, and went inside. They never offered an explanation for the weapons, and I didn't ask.

Nothing happened, and they were fairly friendly... but it was creepy at the time.

[FairyChatMom]

Originally Posted by Soylent Juicy

When I was 14 I was on a bus tour with my mom and her then-boyfriend and we stopped at a buffet restaurant for dinner, I think it was around the Windsor/Detroit area. As soon as the bus pulled into the parking lot I got this really creeped-out feeling - like I'd been there before - I knew I hadn't - and I was scared. There was a fountain out front that I "recognized" and I remember the Rembrandt painting "The Man in the Helmet" on the wall. The whole decor of the place (very dark and medieval, I guess) for some reason scared the bejeezus out of me.

Well, let's make this even creepier. I'd never been to Detroit in my life, altho my husband spend his teen years there. In 1998-ish, he and I were able to go there together for work, and during our downtime, he drove me around to see where he'd lived, where he went to school, where he'd worked - things like that.

We stopped to eat at a restaurant that gave me a serious deja-vu vibe, and honest-to-goodness, it sounds just like the place you described!

[olivesmarch4th]

Originally Posted by aruvqan

I can't scream in my nightmares either. In addition, frequently I have trouble running and dialing phones.

I actually went through a phase very recently where I would wake myself up screaming once or twice a night. It wasn't just incoherent yelling - one time I let loose a tirade of expletives. I felt bad for waking my husband up. It was literally like, "Damn you to hell! Sorry. I'm sorry." The nightmares that prompted this screaming were pretty awful - hyperbolic versions of traumatic events from my past. A few times my husband woke me up deliberately because he could tell from my vocalizations that I was having a nightmare. It lasted for a couple of months and then after I finally found a job, it went away.