Welfy,
Please come to my house.
It’s aliiive!
Halloween seems to be a good time to bring this back to life…
racinchikki - Please tell me about this weird cow, I was crackling up at my desk with visions of driving home at night, getting out of my car at my building and having this huge cow rush up to me.
This being Halloween, time to post to this thread:
One day I definitively turn down the offer of a job. It was a good offer, but the place where I was working at that time counteroffered, and so I stayed.
Leaving work for home on the day I turned down the offer, all the elevators are shut down. I have to walk 31 flights to the lobby. The only time in 5 years of working at that building that that happened.
Then, my legs hurting, I just miss the train when I get to the station, 'cause I can’t run.
Connecting to the bus later, I find it’s really full and I have no choice but to stand all the way home on my aching legs. The bus (at that time, anyway) was rarely that full.
Get the feeling someone was mad at my not taking that job? I’ve always wondered…
So I’m sitting at my desk, getting over the flu,reading this thread, when I reach for a tissue from the box on my desk. Five minutes ago, these were white tissues, now they’re Martha Stewart beige/yellow. Same box and everything. Did someone change my tissues without my knowing? Are my eyes going weird from too much Cold-Eez? Gnomes? VVC.
This really creeped me out.
A week ago, me and the guy I am dating were going through my photo albums looking at vacation pictures. He is going to Europe with me and the kiddies and we had just ordered our tickets so we were in vacation-mode. There, tucked in my Washington D.C. photo album were a couple of pictures of me and some friends back in junior high school. How they got in there, I have no idea. I look at one picture and comment that I haven’t seen this particular girl since we were 14 years old (24 years ago) and I wondered how she was doing.
Guess who I run into at Wal-Mart last night?
Well, I’m not a great storyteller, but here we go.
I live in farm country; the nearest farm to my house is probably a half mile, with the intervening land being cornfields. One of the cows at said farm has a penchant for fence-leaping; we’ll often find her grazing across the road from her pasture, occasionally glancing over to her still-confined stablemates with what I’d assume to be some silent version of “I told you so! (moo)” Lately she’s been making her way cross-lots to our yard, but at the time I got charged she’d only been near her own land.
On the night in question, I was driving home down the Big Scary Death Road which I mentioned in a post a little ways up in this thread. As I turned off the Big Scary Death Road, about a mile from the farm (a mile and a half from home), my headlights swung across the road and the field opposite to illuminate, for one fleeting second, a cow.
The image didn’t consciously register in my mind for a moment; then I realized I’d just seen a cow in the road where no cow usually is seen. Checking my mirrors, there seemed to be no sign of bovine life, so I cautiously sped up to head home, when out of the blue –
COW!
Somehow the cow had maneuvered herself to be alongside my car, and CHARGED my Cavalier. Just as I was starting to think she’d hit me, she changed direction and ran parallel to my car. I figured she wanted to make it a race, so I slowed down to pace her. We ran side-by-side for a while (15 mph, by the way) and then I suppose she realized I was going to beat her in my big Man-Machine Of Noise, so she turned sideways again and headed into the road towards me. I slammed it and went the rest of the way home nervously, afraid the Death-Cow was still after me.
VVC incident #1:
When I was a little girl my friend and I were running across the street to her house (a quiet small town neighborhood). A car pulls up and the old guy tells us to get in. We freeze. At that moment, the friend’s father realizes that we are taking too long to get across the street and looks out the window and sees what is going on (two little girls standing frozen in front of an open car door). He runs out screaming and chases him off. What is really creepy is that I have no recollection of this and was told several years later about it by the same friend who just barely remembers it.
VVC incident #2:
When I was twelve we moved across town (5 min. trip) and moved down the road from this guy. This is part of the reason I don’t think #1 happened. I can’t see my parents putting me there with him down the street. Anyway, he was the grumpy old man that no one liked - always calling the cops on our block parties and yelling at kids from his porch. When he finally moved out we saw that he had a woman with him (wife?) in a wheelchair. She either was as mean as him or just couldn’t get away. After they were gone we peeked in the windows and saw cases and cases of vodka (empty) and poo on the walls. Ewwww.
The little girl that plays the young Jenny on Forrest Gump looks exactly like I did when I was little. I brace myself whenever I see it but everytime it really strikes me.
Part two:
When I was sixteen I got pregnant and did not have it (no, I don’t want to discuss it or debate it, but it is relevant to the story). I was working at Little Caesar’s at eighteen and had a customer come in that looked exactly like me except she had a kid that was the same age mine would have been. She was even wearing clothes that I actually had and was wearing a pair of glasses just like mine. I freaked out!
Part three:
I stole this one from my grandfather. My g-daddy is very ill and has been for some time. He has died a few times and come back. Luckily for everyone, he has a wicked sense of humor and can actually laugh about it. He did say that the last time, though, he was dreaming that he was running through a field (something he could not physically do in real life) towards a gate. His mother, father, and brother were there (all deceased). They told him to go back because they weren’t ready for him yet. He turned around and went back over the hill. When he woke up the Doc was standing there, along with the family. He had just died and the family had been brought in to say our last goodbyes when he “came back”!
This occurred in early September, 2 years ago IIRC.
My [now ex-]boyfriend and I were going to Chicago from St. Louis for the weekend. I decided to go for a walk through my neighborhood to get some exercise, since I wasn’t going to get any up there.
Anyway, I’m walking about 2 blocks past the gas station, and a white utility van (no windows on the sides) pulls up to me. Now, I was 27 at the time and not an idiot, so I didn’t get too close to the van, instead I stood on the other side of the sidewalk, away from the street. This pudgy guy in his late 30s rolls down the window and says “I saw you walking from the gas station. I’m a photographer. Would you like to do some modeling?”
Okay, I’m reasonably pretty I suppose, but far from modeling material and I know that’s not the way it’s done and I could see from my angle that there was no photography material in the van, just lumber and some building supplies, so of course I said no and walked on. A couple of seconds later I realized who this guy might be (wait till the end) and thought I should get his license plate, but he was gone.
About a week later they finally arrested the South Side Rapist, who’d raped 20 or more women in 10 years at knife- or gunpoint. He’s a pudgy guy in his late 30s who had been driving a white utility van. He worked as a construction worker.
And, oh yeah, he’d started his career in my neighborhood.
Happy ending–he plead guilty and was sentenced to something like 9 consecutive life terms. He’s learning all about rape in Potosi right now.
…and I don’t know whether that’s fortunate or not. A good friend of mine grew up in North Elmore County, on land that was pretty much the heart of an old plantation. These old places just exude a low-grade miasma of evil, when you stop to think about just how all that land was farmed for so long.
Anyway, he told me these stories, and they never fail to creep me the hell out.
- Before the Civil War, in the Weokahatchee area of northern Elmore County, there was a slaveowning family that lived on a typical sort of plantation. Their name was Holtzclaw, and they had a youngish, maybe 16-year-old daughter. For one reason or another, one day the rest of the family was away, and the daughter was left at home. During this time, she was raped and beaten nearly to death by one of the slaves who had been treated harshly by the overseer of the slaves. Well, when the rest of the Holtzclaws got back home and found out about the incident, their revenge was terrible. They burned the slave alive. They allowed the daughter to carry the child that was conceived during the rape to term. After the baby was born, they took it outside, suffocated it, and buried it in a shallow grave. This is all a matter of public record. I don’t know if the Holtzclaws were punished for this, but considering the nature of antebellum Alabama society, I suspect the worst. I also know that the baby was never disinterred.
Creepy and disturbing enough? That was just the background material.
My friend grew up on land that was encompassed by the old Holtzclaw plantation. He was walking in the woods near the old home site of the Holtzclaw’s (the house itself was moved some time ago to a site in Montgomery proper, as part of a historical district renovation,) and he happened upon a very, very old shanty, covered in vines, and mostly fallen in. As he got near the structure to investigate, he swears that it got very cold, and he heard two things in rapid succession: the sound of a baby wailing, and a voice that seemed to whisper right in his ear that said, “Somebody kill that g*ddamned baby.”
Brrrrrr…
Incidentally, I meant to post one more, but I’ll do it later. I’m very short on time right now.
I think the whole wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald was extremely creepy. None of the 29 men were ever found.
Shhh zzzz, where do you live? evil laugh
Seriously though, I’m obsessed with everything being clean and in order except for my own room. Even when I go to my boyfriend’s house I spend a good amount of time cleaning, him watching and wishing I wasn’t so odd. He finds me vaguely creepy.
It’s not you. Some brands make the last 15 or so tissues a different color so you know it’s time to get a new box handy. Kimberly-Clark industrial tissues are like this.
ObTopic:
It’s VVC when I’ve woken up from a deep sleep on a Saturday morning, with the smell of Mom’s breakfast cooking in the air, when I realized I didn’t live at home anymore… and I lived by myself… and I could still smell breakfast even after I completely woke up…
Background info: I live in an extremely small town that experienced an oil boom in the late 1890’s. During that time, the town expanded with several oil barrons building huge, monstrous houses, churches, and a hotel. I worked- briefly- at this hotel a few years ago and am still on good terms with the current owner. This year, he asked me to help lead Halloween tours (this past weekend) of the joint. I, stupidly, agreed.
On the ground floor of the hotel, from the kitchen back to the cook’s office, leads a very long hallway. When i worked there, that hallway always gave me the creeps. I can’t explain why, just a feeling that someone was behind whether or not anyone actually was.
It was also rumored the hotel was haunted by several ghosts: one the original owner of the Hotel “Ephram”, another a woman who committed suicide on the third and topmost floor, and one who fell down the elevator shaft. No news accounts exist of the last two, but Ephram’s exploits have been reported on.
Enough background. So, this weekend I’m leading a tour of the hotel when I take a group of 10 from the third floor, down to the second, then to the ground floor and through the formal dining room. We then go through the kitchen, and of course, the long hallway. As I’m telling them the history of the building, the one and only light in the hallway suddenly goes dark, leaving us all in complete blackness. VVC
VVC #2–Same weekend. I take a different group down (basement of hotel) to the bar for their complimentary cordials and the elevator makes three trips up to the third floor and back to the basement. With absolutely no one on it! I asked the front desk. They never saw anyone—the elevator automatically stops at the ground level whenever the elevator is engaged. Very creepy.
VVC #3–Same weekend and worst yet. Although much of Ephram’s life and family history is well-known, we’ve never found a photograph or drawing of him. Until this weekend. The owner had a restoration crew in the attic of the hotel to do some repairs and they happened across a portrait in a gilt-edged frame. The painting was so covered in dirt and grime (and no lights in the attic except the flashlights carried by the workers) they brought the painting down to us standing at the front desk. After cleaning it up, guess who’s likeness stared out from that portrait. Spitting image of the current owner, who incidentally hails from Texas and is not related to the original owner’s family. The painting was dated 1910 and get this- Ephram was wearing a grey suit with a black tie in front of a gold background. The current owner was wearing a grey suit with a black tie and standing in front of gold flocked wallpaper when we cleaned the portrait.
I’m not ever going back.
After having a large splinter surgically removed from my head, how it got there is a long story to be reserved for another time (or if you really want to know, e-mail me). I was taking a shower, at the suggestion of the doctor, to get the blood out of my hair. The next thing i know, my head starts hurting again, and there’s blood everywhere. I mean, this is like out of a hitchcock movie, I’m standing in the shower, with blood running down my arms and face. That was the scariest single moment in my life. It turns out that somehow, one of the stitches popped out (the doctor must not have tied the end right) and the cut opened up.
On my way back from the movie theatre after seing “What lies beneath” (as if my shower incident didn’t already scare me enough about showers/baths), I sat next to a girl who had one green eye and one blue eye. (BTW, you will only know what i’m talking about if you saw the movie)
Want a balloon, kid? We all float down here…
Okay, ever since I read Dire Wolf’s post yesterday about the upstairs apartment I have been a little creeped out. So today I decide to read some more VVC stories. So anyway, keep in mind that the above mentioned story is on page 1 of 2 pages of posts. I just finished reading up the second page, minimized my browser and go away from the computer for a bit. When I come back I maximize my browser, and, not only is it now on page 1 - but it has that creepy aforementioned post centered right on the screen. No one had been at my computer b/c I was near my desk the whole time. Yikes!!
I’m a skeptic, but our family has kind of a history of ghost sightings.
My aunt swears that when I was three years old I carried on a conversation with her (dead) father, my would-be grandfather. She says she walked in on me finishing up the conversation, and described her father when she asked who I was talking to.
Old war story: One of my ancestors died in a Civil War POW camp. Supposedly, at the moment of his death, his wife and two kids were all in the same bed when her son said he saw their father at the foot of the bed.
One of my cousins died last year. Two different people claim to have seen a vision of him. They don’t know each other, apparently had the visions around the time of his death, but neither of them came forward to talk about it until they finally each told my aunt separately, on the same day, exactly three months after his death. (Different aunt, by the way.)
And some completely different (true) stories:
My grandmother, as a child, once walked in on her mother beating herself in the head, attempting to kill herself. They were poor, and she thought they would have more food and/or money if she wasn’t around.
My grandmother spent part of her childhood in an orphanage with her brothers, because their father had them taken away from their mother (he’d cheated on her, and left her). All but one, the youngest, whom whe wouldn’t let go of when people came to take them away.
There wasn’t enough room in the girl’s dorm room for my grandmother, so she slept in a cot outside the window on a balcony. In winter. She remembers the snow drifts on her blanket.