Over a few days in this week there have been THOUSANDS of small, grey-blue butterflies flying about our school. They did it throughout the entire day, flying very fast, and low to the ground (only about 2cm off the ground) in a way that they appeared to be ‘hopping’ frantically. They were on EVERY surface at ground level - including bare dirt, grass, fallen tree blossoms and even cement and there was no way to walk anywhere between about half of the school yard without going through them. They did not appear to be mating or eating - they took no notice of each other and never landed for more than a fraction of a second on anything. It was just plain CREEPY. It has rained over the last two days; and I guess that might be what drove the butterflies insane; however it has rained before without any mass crazy butterfly behaviour; and I really don’t know why this should be different. It was quite disturbing. I don’t know wether they’ve stopped doing it yet (it’s Saturday) but it was mighty creepy.
Summer of 1990. Living with my parents in a house; on the other side of the fence is a drive-in movie theater. (They let me in with just a lawn chair, no car, as long as I paid. Saw a lot of movies that way, including Die Hard 1 and 2 back-to-back. But I digress.) Used to go over there when I had the afternoon off, sit on the swing set and smoke.
One afternoon, I’m sitting there, idly rocking in the swing, when a German shepherd (Alsatian, for European Dopers) emerges from the wooded area on the other side of the lot. S/he heads for me, with that menacing look Gs’s have.
Then another Gs slinks out of the woods, from a spot about ten yards to the side of where the first one appeared.
Then another one, from a few yards to the right of the first one. Three German shepherds, all headed for me, and I’ve never before seen a dog in this neighborhood apart from Mrs. NextDoor’s black Lab. While I’m processing this, the group increases to five.
I have an uncle who was a postal worker and started out as a route carrier. He told me when I was a little one that if I felt menaced by a dog, I should walk away briskly, not running and not looking back.
This I do. But not before noticing that there are now ten German shepherds zeroing in on me. And the first three are pretty darn close. Reached the fence, got through the gate and dead-bolted it. Asked Mrs. NextDoor what that might have been about, but she had no clue. Neither did my parents.
I was never crazy about German shepherds even prior to this, on account of them being cop dogs and Nazi dogs. This clinched it; now I just won’t get near them. Not afraid of dog dogs, just Gs’s.
May I strongly suggest you check out the horror film Session 9? It goes absolutely to shit in the last ten minutes, so I’m not recommending it as “good,” per se, but up until then, you will find it disturbingly similar to the experience you relate above.
Cervaise I think you were dreaming, if the keys had been crushed when you woke up I think it would have been strange.
Same goes for Ratty’s story from Japan, if noone else heard it it could have been a dream.
They may not have been dogs.
Have you considered coyotes?
They’ve been known to attack lone hikers, if they’re hungry, & can get a good sized pack together. You may have been in real danger.
I went to my favorite restaurant one sunday morning in august 2001, to find nobody was there. The doors were open, the stoves burning with food on the grills. The entire staff of the restaurant just got in their cars and left. There was no story in the paper, nothing. No police report. The restaurant is still abandoned.
Later I saw that the name of the owners of the restaurant was the name of one of the sep. 11 hijackers. (Hijaz). I don’t know, never found out if there was any connection.
b.
The fact that the magazines were coverless makes me think they might have been “stripped”–booksellers can get credit from their distributors for unsold magazines, but in order to do so they have show the distributor proof that the magazines were not sold. They do this by tearing off the front cover, where the barcode is, and mailing that back–the rest of the magazine goes in the trash (or gets recycled, or dumped in an abandoned truck…?)
I was 9 or 10 when this happened:
Back when I lived in North Carolina, I went on a walk one day to a friend’s house not far from mine. My dad was out of town, and my mom couldn’t drive, so I decided to just walk home, and felt safe doing so, as the town I lived in was a small one with virtually no crime. Around 7 PM, I began walking home. While I was walking along a road with a woods on the right side of it where I was walking, houses on the left side, a intersection both behind and in front of me. Behind me was a small street, like the one I was walking on, and in front of me, the main street in the town I lived in. Also in front of me and to my right, there was a hotel with a clearing behind it for the back porches. While I was walking down this stretch of road, it began to get dark. No problem I think. So I keep walking. Then, I see a black SUV drive down the road behind me rather slowly. Then, it went in reverse up to the intersection, and drove down the road I was on, going toward me. I went into the woods and laid down, being thankful it was getting dark. The SUV drove past my hiding place, and stopped right next to the hotel. Then some (don’t know if it was the driver or a passenger) guy got out and started running down the path behind the hotel. From the SUV’s view when it was coming toward me, I ran down the hotel path, not into the woods. I then walked down the woods away from the hotel. I crossed the street where it met the road that the SUV was driving down before it turned to the one I was on, and walked up the next street over and got home safely. I never told anyone, parents included until a few weeks ago.
I never heard any more about that, and to this day, I have no clue what the guy(s) in the SUV wanted, or why they were after me, or even if they were.
I was about 4 or so, maybe three, and it is one of my oldest memories…
It was night, and I was ready to go to bed, and I was over the staircase, looking down, and I saw a black shape. I still have no idea what it looked like, all I remember is this sort of black, formless void that I can not ascribe a shape to. The wierd thing is, the stair light was on. It was nice and bright, except at the foot of the stair, where this thing was. Because of the way the staircase was, it was darker there, But I still remember how this thing was pitch black, much blacker than the surroundings. I remember looking at it. I remember how it appeared to sway, sort of drunkenly, yet how it remained perfectly still. Then I remember how it sort of lurched up the staircase, at me, with a thump, very suddenly, as if it had lunged feebly and tripped, though it was already in a sort of (had it been a person) all-fours position. I may have said, “hello!” or something before this happened, but I can’t really remember. This was too much for me, and I ran away and hid in my room.
To this day I have no idea who it was. My father was, I believe, away on business, my mother and sisters were in their rooms, no one was visiting, and no one else heard or noticed anything. It still frightens me sometimes, how it moved, how it had a form, but no shape.
[QUOTE]
*We have a high percentage of elderly folks living in our blue-collar working-class neighborhood, and just about every time we hear fire engines come screaming through our neighborhood, we know we’re probably gonna see them park outside an Elderly Person’s house, the firemen will go inside, the firemen will come back out after a few minutes, and they will all drive away.
It’s quite fascinating, actually, to speculate on what it was This Time.*
I spent some time in a Volunteer Fire Dept. Most of the time, it’s either a) the smoke alarm went off because they were cooking, b) they were lonely, or c) the CO detector went off, for no apparant reason.
The worst were the commercial stores, that you could count on to set off the alarm 50 times a day, and yes, the whole department had to respond because, even though the last 49 alarms were false, this time it may actually be for real.
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm…! Perhaps. Maybe I thought “German shepherd” when I was seeing them from a distance, because I already associated Gs’s with menace.
FTR, this was eastern Pennsylvania.
This isn’t particularly creepy like some of the other posts, but I would like an explanation if anyone has an idea.
About this time last year, I was out with some friends after seeing a movie. Being in the armpit of the nation where everything closes at 9 pm, we had nothing to do and were just driving around to kill every last minute possible before curfew. We ended up on a major highway, probably a half hour outside of town. There aren’t normally many lights along the road, but we saw a patch of very brightly lit pavement to the left, which turned out to be a cluster of those greenish-white streetlights around some sort of a little complex. We turned into the concrete driveway, and took the curve to the right until the lane straightened out. There were tall, metal panels evenly spaced on either side, almost perpendicular to us but set off a few degrees. I really can’t remember if they had any identifying marks; I hadn’t even thought of this until a few weeks ago when I was on a similar stretch of highway. After maybe 30 yards, the lane turned to the left, but out of a fear of getting in trouble for trespassing, and a healthy aversion to the local police who have a reputation for being somewhat lacking in integrity, we turned around and went home.
I thought for awhile that I’d dreamed it, but I mentioned the ‘dream’ to a friend who remembered being there, so at least I know it happened. Unfortunately, all of the highways here look the same so it would take quite awhile to pursue all possible routes we might’ve taken to the place.
So, great Doper brains - any ideas?
Where is this place, exactly?
I must say that I have enjoyed this thread more than any other on this, the SDMB, or any other message board I have encountered in my many years of internet surfing.
Now, let me tell you about the strange occurrences I have experienced in the house I came of age in…
Occurrence #1: My family is unpacking our belongings - we’ve just moved in, and this is our first day in the house. My pappy is in the basement, and my sister is at the top of the basement steps. My sister turns, to look at the foyer doorway, and my father is preoccupied with his tool set. They both hear a ball bouncing down the basement stairs - bounce, pause, bounce, pause, bounch, pause, bounch, tap tap tap taptaptap stop. Both assume a loose ball has escaped a box and simply rolled down the stairs. That’s when they both realize that we don’t have a ball anymore - we’re turning into big kids, mind you, and don’t trouble ourselves with such childish things. They both investigage, and find nothing.
Occurrence #2: My father and a friend of his are sitting on the couch in our living room, playing on our new Nintendo Entertainment System - Mario/Duck Hunt, of all things. They’re having a great time, when suddenly they hear our front door open and close, followed by footsteps as someone enters our foyer. The foyer floor is VERY creaky - you can’t sneak through it without making noise - and the door sound is unmistakable. They ask who’s there, get no response. From the living room, you can reach the foyer by going north, through a sitting room, which then hooks to the foyer, or east, through the kitchen, and into the foyer. According to the lack of further noise, they know the intruder must still be in the foyer. So, they each decide to take the opposite paths and surround whoever has entered. They do so. They meet up in the foyer. No one is there. They lock the door, search the house - find nothing.
Occurrence #3: My mother and all of us kiddies are upstairs, finishing up with bath time and getting ready for bed. We hear the front door open and close, and foot steps again. My mother calls out my father’s name - gets no response. She looks at the clock, and realizes he’s not due home for a couple of hours. The foot steps continue. She ushers each of us into our bedrooms, grabs my father’s shotgun, loads up, and sits at the foot of the staircase until my father comes home. Freakin’ creepy.
Occurrence #4: This is the most bizarre. We’re on Christmas Break, it’s winter, and we’ve received a good six inches of snow the night before. My brother casually glances outside, and notices something odd. Footprints in the snow. Unmistakeable human footprints. The odd part is this - the prints cut through the middle of the yard - only through the middle. They suddenly stop a good eight feet before reaching any of the surrounding fences, or the gates through which the yard can be accessed. We all look out through the upstairs windows to get a better vantage point. Sure enough, there are no other footprints that would indicate how the trespasser could have gotten into or out of the yard. Holy f*ing st, were we freaked out.
When I was a young teenager I used to climb trees in my neighborhood after it got dark out, like about 10PM or so. One of the trees I would climb was a willow opposite the long driveway of an abandoned house. During the daytime I’d explored the abandoned house, it was a tiny three room shack with one wall collapsed, broken glass on the floor, and a water-stained mattress and porno mags lying about. There was a flat concrete area next to the house and an empty silo. Behind the house was a cornfield, and on either side was an overgrown meadow, with grasses about 3’ tall.
So anyway, I am up in the tree one night, about 15’ up, and I see a truck drive slowly down the road and turn into the driveway of the abandoned house. About halfway up the driveway it turns to the left into the meadow and drives around in circles several times and then stops. After a little while it pulls back into the driveway and drives up to where the driveway meets the road. The driveway, as I mentioned, was directly opposite my tree, so the headlights from the truck are shining directly on me. The truck stays at the end of the driveway for some time while I remain frozen in the tree, certain I must be clearly illuminated by the lights and the the driver of the truck was going to come murder me for witnessing whatever nefarious deeds s/he had been up to. After an eternity, the truck slowly pulls out and drives away.
I went back to the abandoned house the next day, and in the meadow I could see the tracks of where the truck had driven around and around. Thickly scattered in the meadow were dozens of white supremacy pamplets, not yet weathered or waterstained.
Roosevelt Blvd. It’s the huge, abandoned asylum right in the middle of a major residential- it’s about 200 acres, (I think) part of it is covered with some sparse woods. You can’t miss it.
Sorry for the double post, but I have to caution anyone who might be thinking of taking a trip to Byberry- security has been increased due to trespassers, and they will call the PPD, who will arrest you and/or fine you. Heavily. Also, the structure itself is in a high-crime neighborhood, is a condemned building filled with falling plaster, holes in the floors, and other architectural problems. Although the police periodically clear the place out, it’s usually filled with homeless squatters, many of them mentally ill and/or drug addicts. It is not a safe place to go- don’t EVER go there alone.
If you want to know more about it, though, Weird New Jersey did an article on it a few issues ago: www.weirdnj.com.
My wife and I were on vacation and visted Monhegen Island in Maine. We went hiking along a trail that went overland, then down a hill along the coast. At the point that the trail started down the hill, I noticed an older woman walking up the trail a couple of switchbacks below us. She looked up and smiled briefly, and I took her to be a local out for a stroll. There were no side trails between the two points, but we never came upon her on the trail. When we got down to the beach where there was a wrecked ship on the beach, I asked my wife if she had seen the woman, and she said yes, but thought she must have imagined it since we never met up with her. Our descriptions matched perfectly. At the point from which I saw her, before going around the side of the hill to make the next turn, she was only 50 feet or so from me, so it isn’t like she was a long way off to begin with.
Also when i was in 7th grade, me and some friends liked to sneak out for michief late at night. Once we were out, and all of a sudden these orange lights and green lights started shooting over at high speed. The looked to be just above the treetops, but who knows. They made no sound. We were scared, but we all saw them and they were real.
Yes, and I lost six classmates in high school to the “suicide fad” of the late seventies and early eighties…
But, back to the OP - Roughly a year and a half ago, maybe two, there was a red van that kept parking accross the street in front of a neighbor’s house. The driver would never get out, nobody from the house would ever come out to the van, and nobody else in the neighbothood would approach the van. This van had been appearing this way for a couple of weeks when I decided, while out doing yard work one day, that I would go ask the driver what he was doing. As soon as I started to cross the street, the driver started the engine and calmly drove off - coincidence maybe.
This kept up for a while longer before I finally called the police just to see if they’d sent an officer around to check this guy out. No police ever came and the van left about 20 minutes after my call. It never came back - it hasn’t been back since.
All of the neighbors know each other in this neighborhood, and everyone saw the van - a couple even had called the cops, same as me. As for the neighbor whose house was being (watched? cased? ???!) he never mentioned it and as far as we know, he’s not involved in any kind of crime, skulduggery or anything other than making stained glass and walking his dogs.
Now the even more bizzare one was the one time in my life that I witnessed what I’m convinced now was St Elmo’s Fire coming out of the electrical outlets in the house (in concentric rings, no less) back in the sixties during a thunderstorm in Massachusetts. But that’s another story.
I’m bumping this thread because it’s one of the best ones on here.