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?
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! :smack:
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.
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.
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.
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 
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.
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. 
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
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.
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.
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.
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 …]
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.
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.
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.
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. 
:mad:
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.
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.