My father-in-law Roy died at home on the morning of Dec. 27th, after a short and relatively hopeless battle with liver cancer. It should have been a long and possibly successful battle, but that's not how he rolled... he never told anyone he was sick until it was too late. Among other things he was a musician, which may or may not have any bearing... but he was an accomplished guitarist who loved playing and singing. He was 64.
A lot of strange things happened on the day of his death, including each of us losing something important (keys, shoes, dog, purse, wallet) that kept us stuck together in the house where he died until late in the day, when after hours of searching the objects were all found within 20 minutes of each other. It was like a veil being lifted, and all of them were right out in the open. So that was odd, but chalk it up to grief...
For Christmas, he'd gotten his wife Jeanna a laptop, and over the month after his death Jeanna built up a Pandora playlist of all his favorite tunes, the songs he played a lot, and she'd listen to them until it was too much, and then pause Pandora and do other things.
A month after he died, my wife and I went over to the house to see how Jeanna was holding up. We sat around, the house utterly silent except for our chatting in the next room. They cried, talked about Roy, about all sorts of things surrounding his death... a couple hours went by with us talking in the quiet, and then Roy's phone rang. Jeanna grabbed the phone, shaken by hearing his ringer... the caller ID didn't attach a name to the number, so she answered it. Hello? Nothing but dead air over the line. She hung up.
We speculated on who it might've been for a minute, and then she took out her own phone and dialed the number. A woman answered!
"Hello?"
"Hi - you just called my husband's number, who is this?"
"Charlotte... who is this?". Holy crap - Charlotte is Roy's ex-wife, from 25 years ago.
"This is Jeanna..."
Silence.
"Hello?"
Line goes dead.
Jeanna was pretty upset... I remember this very distinctly, because what happened next I have no explanation for whatsoever. Jeanna says "AUGH! Why would that woman even call here, she knows he's gone! It really pisses me off that she would..."
From across the house, out of nowhere, something blasts music at full volume. Just a line, a single stupid line from a stupid song by Journey: "Don't stop believing, hold on to that feeling..."
Then silence.
I jumped up, ran into the other room, where I hear the fan on the laptop spinning. I go over to it - screen is black. I touch the trackpad to wake up the screen... instead, the fan spins down, power light turns off. Laptop is shut down. Now, I've been in IT for going on 16 years now, and I haven't the first clue what happened. I woke it up from sleep, and sure enough there is Pandora, paused on that song... but why would the machine wake up after hours of inactivity, play one line on a song, pause itself again, and go back to sleep?
I can only assume that Roy has opinions on how his widow ought to feel about the ex.
I had a bout of what I suppose was sleep paralysis just a few days ago. I get up pretty early for work sometimes, at points where it still feels like night, and on these mornings my fiancee may still have left before me due to her odd hours. I was sleeping in the house alone, and started to wake up. As I was waking up, I realized that my right arm was hanging over the bed, and it was behind held pretty tightly. I sleep on the right side of the bed, so there's just empty room to my right, pitch black due to the blackout curtains we use in the bedroom.
So I'm groggily waking up, and realize that there is no way my right hand is being held, because there is no person that would be there. But I feel it, I feel my right hand being gripped tightly. As I think about it, I feel the hand gripping mine squeeze it a few times, almost in the way you would to reassure someone you were still holding their hand. This wasn't reassuring though, it was terrifying, and as I felt the squeezing I became fully convinced that it was a corpse holding my hand. I struggled to move, but I couldn't, my brain seemed to be awake, but I was completely and totally unable to move. I just lay there, feeling something gripping my hand, something I was completely sure was a corpse, for several minutes. The most terrifying part was the fact that I couldn't move. I wanted so badly to cry out, or get up, or at least turn my head to look at what was holding my hand, but I couldn't.
Eventually, my mind shut back off and I apparently dropped out of consciousness again for a few minutes, before waking up in a full-fledged panic, during which I ran through the house throwing on every single light possible.
Darkewolfe on
What is this I don't even.
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KayWhat we need...Is a little bit of PANIC.Registered Userregular
You were a reeeeeal big and beefy fourteen year old!
3DS FCode: 1993-7512-8991
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ShadowfireVermont, in the middle of nowhereRegistered Userregular
WOO! I love this thread! And I have something to add to it!
Last winter we had a bit of a frightening occurrence at the X household. My wife was sleeping on the couch due to my snoring, and woke up at 2 in the morning to find that the front door was open.
To provide some context, the house is quite old for the area, about 65 years old, but is well kept and not at all creaky or creepy. The front door is on the right side of the house with the living room to the immediate left upon entry, which explains how my wife was able to see that the door was open when she woke.
So my wife got up to have a look. Two of our three cats were looking out of the door into the cold night, the third wasn't aware that the door was open, which was lucky because she probably would have gotten out. My wife could see no sign of force, so she closed the door, locked it, and set our heavy cat tree in front of it. I changed the lock and knob the next evening.
I figure that the door hadn't latched properly and opened on it's own - the lock on the door was old and upon inspection it was evident that the internals were damaged - but it was still pretty creepy.
Your sig pic is worthy of this thread even without your story.
I don't have much in storytelling-way, even though I've been through the standard being startled by my own shadow, chased by my own crunching footsteps in the snow, sleep-paralysis et c.
I've had a complicated relationship with those paranoias, though, since I can still be creeped out even though I know what's making "that noise" or whatever. I lift a foot. I put it down. I walk a little. It's very clearly my own footsteps. It sounds the same whether I'm looking behind me or not. For example.
I was a stubborn child, too. I'm probably still pretty stubborn, but my hindsight is excellent. If I think somethings messing with me, yanking my chain, sneaking around or equivalent, I get angry. Grumpy.
I want to punch the monster in the snout for lurking so long. It's an obnoxious way to be dangerous.
In my pre-teen years I used to wake up in the middle of the night with what felt like a large figure on top of me, pushing a fishing wire through my throat. The wire never cut all the way through and stopped just short of my spine, but it was a very distinct and precise sensation. It didn't hurt, but I felt the pressure move inch by inch through my throat.
Sometimes this figure started at my feet and worked its way up, sometimes it was already slicing my throat, sometimes I watched it sliding against the wall towards me. It happened so often that the fear eventually went away and I started to challenge this thing when it came. I would will myself to move. A little flick of a finger, a stretch of toe, a flop of my shoulder, anything, before the figure completely enveloped me because as soon as I moved just a tiny bit, the thing disappeared.
In my pre-teen years I used to wake up in the middle of the night with what felt like a large figure on top of me, pushing a fishing wire through my throat. The wire never cut all the way through and stopped just short of my spine, but it was a very distinct and precise sensation. It didn't hurt, but I felt the pressure move inch by inch through my throat.
Sometimes this figure started at my feet and worked its way up, sometimes it was already slicing my throat, sometimes I watched it sliding against the wall towards me. It happened so often that the fear eventually went away and I started to challenge this thing when it came. I would will myself to move. A little flick of a finger, a stretch of toe, a flop of my shoulder, anything, before the figure completely enveloped me because as soon as I moved just a tiny bit, the thing disappeared
Sleep paralysis is a fucker. Godamned over active imaginations.
I did once have a friend tell me he had a sleep paralysis episode in which his brain had decided that Danny DeVito was crushing him with a whale.
I'd take that over the aliens and monsters my mind conjures any day.
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-Loki-Don't pee in my mouth and tell me it's raining.Registered Userregular
I finally have something to add!
About 6 months ago, I was working at a different place. Where I sat in IT, was basically a big room with two small rooms off it (small lunch room and managers office), a corridor leading out, and another door with stairs leading down into another part of the building. The stairs leading down, as far as I knew, had no other exit. If you want down, you left via the same stairs. I saw with my back to that door.
Since we used to alternate finish times due to needing someone in IT later in the day, I was given Fridays to finish at 6pm. This Friday night, while usually others would be back until 6pm with me anyway, I was alone, because everyone just said fuck it and went to the pub. So I was sitting there, finishing up my work, and no one else in the building.
Then I heard one of the doors down that stairwell slam shut. Not close, but slam, like someone pissed off had thrown it shut as hard as they could. I glanced over, and it was all dark down there. No one was down there. I shrugged, thinking wind had blown it shut. Went back to working. It was 5:45pm, I still had 15 minutes, but didn't want to leave because they tracked start and finish times.
Then I heard footsteps. Not faint, like someone was walking up those stairs. After enough footsteps to bring them to the door, I glanced over... and it was still dark, and no one was there.
I swicthed my PC off and left. On the way out, still upstairs, there was actually a manager and customer service person still there chatting. Neither of them had been downstairs.
When I brought it up on the Monday, my team leader had a similar experience. She used to get to work about an hour before anyone else, and while sitting there working, heard someone knocking on the glass windows of the lunch room. Every time she turned around, it stopped. Every time she went back to working, it started. The other IT team leader said he was back till about 9pm one knight, and from one corner of the room heard really loud wailing. Apparently the building had a rather well known ghost they named Toby.
The building was on a rather large block with a small park. I initially didn't think much of the fact there were headstones in the park. Turns out, after reading a sign, the whole block was a colonial era graveyard, which was since used as an industrial area, and some headstones were kept as reminders, the rest ground up and used as the pathways.
My brain woke me up once, insisting the sound I heard in the apartment was that of an intruder, and promptly gave me a huge surge of adrenaline. Problem was, I was still half asleep, so now my heart was pounding, but my body was not completely responsive to my demands that I get up NOW! So, I began to yell out things like "HOLY SHIT!" and "FUCKING HELL!". I noticed that the sounds at the front door stopped suddenly. I clumsily rolled myself out of bed and lurched to the bedroom door, leaning heavily on one arm against the wall to keep upright. I slammed open the bedroom door and came out with a fist ready.
The moment I stepped out into the hallway, I saw the face of my wife staring at me in shock. She had just gotten home from a late shift. I tried to tell her that I had thought that she was an intruder, but I was not able to form coherent sentences, so I just leaned up inside the door frame, feeling very dizzy. She took me by the arm and put me back to bed.
It seems that in the past few years, my response to waking in fear has changed. It used to be that I would come to and see a ghostly figure floating above my face, or drifting from the door to the side of my bed, and I could do nothing more that sit up & stare at it until it went away after what feels like several minutes. Then I'd lie awake in terror. These days, I come to and, without hesitation, punch them. My fist goes right through them, of course, but they disappear right away. Then I mutter "fuck off" and go right back to sleep.
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MalReynoldsThe Hunter S Thompson of incredibly mild medicinesRegistered Userregular
The other night I was walking to my car when a bat flew into my face and then flew off.
Then another.
And then a third.
It was less creepy and more strange, but man. I hate getting divebombed by bats.
"A new take on the epic fantasy genre... Darkly comic, relatable characters... twisted storyline."
"Readers who prefer tension and romance, Maledictions: The Offering, delivers... As serious YA fiction, I’ll give it five stars out of five. As a novel? Four and a half." - Liz Ellor My new novel: Maledictions: The Offering. Now in Paperback!
The other night I was walking to my car when a bat flew into my face and then flew off.
Then another.
And then a third.
It was less creepy and more strange, but man. I hate getting divebombed by bats.
When it happened, were you trying to decide on a symbol to terrorize criminals?
You'd think, but I'm not particularly scared of bats so much as I'm scared of getting hit in the face with things out of nowhere at night when I'm walking to my car.
"A new take on the epic fantasy genre... Darkly comic, relatable characters... twisted storyline."
"Readers who prefer tension and romance, Maledictions: The Offering, delivers... As serious YA fiction, I’ll give it five stars out of five. As a novel? Four and a half." - Liz Ellor My new novel: Maledictions: The Offering. Now in Paperback!
The other night I was walking to my car when a bat flew into my face and then flew off.
Then another.
And then a third.
It was less creepy and more strange, but man. I hate getting divebombed by bats.
When it happened, were you trying to decide on a symbol to terrorize criminals?
You'd think, but I'm not particularly scared of bats so much as I'm scared of getting hit in the face with things out of nowhere at night when I'm walking to my car.
Feeling any odd thirsts today? Any aversion to bright lights?
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MalReynoldsThe Hunter S Thompson of incredibly mild medicinesRegistered Userregular
The other night I was walking to my car when a bat flew into my face and then flew off.
Then another.
And then a third.
It was less creepy and more strange, but man. I hate getting divebombed by bats.
When it happened, were you trying to decide on a symbol to terrorize criminals?
You'd think, but I'm not particularly scared of bats so much as I'm scared of getting hit in the face with things out of nowhere at night when I'm walking to my car.
Feeling any odd thirsts today? Any aversion to bright lights?
Yeah, but that's just the hangover.
"A new take on the epic fantasy genre... Darkly comic, relatable characters... twisted storyline."
"Readers who prefer tension and romance, Maledictions: The Offering, delivers... As serious YA fiction, I’ll give it five stars out of five. As a novel? Four and a half." - Liz Ellor My new novel: Maledictions: The Offering. Now in Paperback!
The other night I was walking to my car when a bat flew into my face and then flew off.
Then another.
And then a third.
It was less creepy and more strange, but man. I hate getting divebombed by bats.
When it happened, were you trying to decide on a symbol to terrorize criminals?
You'd think, but I'm not particularly scared of bats so much as I'm scared of getting hit in the face with things out of nowhere at night when I'm walking to my car.
Feeling any odd thirsts today? Any aversion to bright lights?
Yeah, but that's just the hangover.
You know, I hear garlic is great for hangovers.
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valhalla13013 Dark Shield Perceives the GodsRegistered Userregular
Posts
A lot of strange things happened on the day of his death, including each of us losing something important (keys, shoes, dog, purse, wallet) that kept us stuck together in the house where he died until late in the day, when after hours of searching the objects were all found within 20 minutes of each other. It was like a veil being lifted, and all of them were right out in the open. So that was odd, but chalk it up to grief...
For Christmas, he'd gotten his wife Jeanna a laptop, and over the month after his death Jeanna built up a Pandora playlist of all his favorite tunes, the songs he played a lot, and she'd listen to them until it was too much, and then pause Pandora and do other things.
A month after he died, my wife and I went over to the house to see how Jeanna was holding up. We sat around, the house utterly silent except for our chatting in the next room. They cried, talked about Roy, about all sorts of things surrounding his death... a couple hours went by with us talking in the quiet, and then Roy's phone rang. Jeanna grabbed the phone, shaken by hearing his ringer... the caller ID didn't attach a name to the number, so she answered it. Hello? Nothing but dead air over the line. She hung up.
We speculated on who it might've been for a minute, and then she took out her own phone and dialed the number. A woman answered!
"Hello?"
"Hi - you just called my husband's number, who is this?"
"Charlotte... who is this?". Holy crap - Charlotte is Roy's ex-wife, from 25 years ago.
"This is Jeanna..."
Silence.
"Hello?"
Line goes dead.
Jeanna was pretty upset... I remember this very distinctly, because what happened next I have no explanation for whatsoever. Jeanna says "AUGH! Why would that woman even call here, she knows he's gone! It really pisses me off that she would..."
From across the house, out of nowhere, something blasts music at full volume. Just a line, a single stupid line from a stupid song by Journey: "Don't stop believing, hold on to that feeling..."
Then silence.
I jumped up, ran into the other room, where I hear the fan on the laptop spinning. I go over to it - screen is black. I touch the trackpad to wake up the screen... instead, the fan spins down, power light turns off. Laptop is shut down. Now, I've been in IT for going on 16 years now, and I haven't the first clue what happened. I woke it up from sleep, and sure enough there is Pandora, paused on that song... but why would the machine wake up after hours of inactivity, play one line on a song, pause itself again, and go back to sleep?
I can only assume that Roy has opinions on how his widow ought to feel about the ex.
So I'm groggily waking up, and realize that there is no way my right hand is being held, because there is no person that would be there. But I feel it, I feel my right hand being gripped tightly. As I think about it, I feel the hand gripping mine squeeze it a few times, almost in the way you would to reassure someone you were still holding their hand. This wasn't reassuring though, it was terrifying, and as I felt the squeezing I became fully convinced that it was a corpse holding my hand. I struggled to move, but I couldn't, my brain seemed to be awake, but I was completely and totally unable to move. I just lay there, feeling something gripping my hand, something I was completely sure was a corpse, for several minutes. The most terrifying part was the fact that I couldn't move. I wanted so badly to cry out, or get up, or at least turn my head to look at what was holding my hand, but I couldn't.
Eventually, my mind shut back off and I apparently dropped out of consciousness again for a few minutes, before waking up in a full-fledged panic, during which I ran through the house throwing on every single light possible.
3DS FCode: 1993-7512-8991
Your sig pic is worthy of this thread even without your story.
I've had a complicated relationship with those paranoias, though, since I can still be creeped out even though I know what's making "that noise" or whatever. I lift a foot. I put it down. I walk a little. It's very clearly my own footsteps. It sounds the same whether I'm looking behind me or not. For example.
I was a stubborn child, too. I'm probably still pretty stubborn, but my hindsight is excellent. If I think somethings messing with me, yanking my chain, sneaking around or equivalent, I get angry. Grumpy.
I want to punch the monster in the snout for lurking so long. It's an obnoxious way to be dangerous.
Sometimes this figure started at my feet and worked its way up, sometimes it was already slicing my throat, sometimes I watched it sliding against the wall towards me. It happened so often that the fear eventually went away and I started to challenge this thing when it came. I would will myself to move. A little flick of a finger, a stretch of toe, a flop of my shoulder, anything, before the figure completely enveloped me because as soon as I moved just a tiny bit, the thing disappeared.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_paralysis
Terrifying humanity since the dawn of sentience!
I did once have a friend tell me he had a sleep paralysis episode in which his brain had decided that Danny DeVito was crushing him with a whale.
I'd take that over the aliens and monsters my mind conjures any day.
About 6 months ago, I was working at a different place. Where I sat in IT, was basically a big room with two small rooms off it (small lunch room and managers office), a corridor leading out, and another door with stairs leading down into another part of the building. The stairs leading down, as far as I knew, had no other exit. If you want down, you left via the same stairs. I saw with my back to that door.
Since we used to alternate finish times due to needing someone in IT later in the day, I was given Fridays to finish at 6pm. This Friday night, while usually others would be back until 6pm with me anyway, I was alone, because everyone just said fuck it and went to the pub. So I was sitting there, finishing up my work, and no one else in the building.
Then I heard one of the doors down that stairwell slam shut. Not close, but slam, like someone pissed off had thrown it shut as hard as they could. I glanced over, and it was all dark down there. No one was down there. I shrugged, thinking wind had blown it shut. Went back to working. It was 5:45pm, I still had 15 minutes, but didn't want to leave because they tracked start and finish times.
Then I heard footsteps. Not faint, like someone was walking up those stairs. After enough footsteps to bring them to the door, I glanced over... and it was still dark, and no one was there.
I swicthed my PC off and left. On the way out, still upstairs, there was actually a manager and customer service person still there chatting. Neither of them had been downstairs.
When I brought it up on the Monday, my team leader had a similar experience. She used to get to work about an hour before anyone else, and while sitting there working, heard someone knocking on the glass windows of the lunch room. Every time she turned around, it stopped. Every time she went back to working, it started. The other IT team leader said he was back till about 9pm one knight, and from one corner of the room heard really loud wailing. Apparently the building had a rather well known ghost they named Toby.
The building was on a rather large block with a small park. I initially didn't think much of the fact there were headstones in the park. Turns out, after reading a sign, the whole block was a colonial era graveyard, which was since used as an industrial area, and some headstones were kept as reminders, the rest ground up and used as the pathways.
The moment I stepped out into the hallway, I saw the face of my wife staring at me in shock. She had just gotten home from a late shift. I tried to tell her that I had thought that she was an intruder, but I was not able to form coherent sentences, so I just leaned up inside the door frame, feeling very dizzy. She took me by the arm and put me back to bed.
It seems that in the past few years, my response to waking in fear has changed. It used to be that I would come to and see a ghostly figure floating above my face, or drifting from the door to the side of my bed, and I could do nothing more that sit up & stare at it until it went away after what feels like several minutes. Then I'd lie awake in terror. These days, I come to and, without hesitation, punch them. My fist goes right through them, of course, but they disappear right away. Then I mutter "fuck off" and go right back to sleep.
Then another.
And then a third.
It was less creepy and more strange, but man. I hate getting divebombed by bats.
"Readers who prefer tension and romance, Maledictions: The Offering, delivers... As serious YA fiction, I’ll give it five stars out of five. As a novel? Four and a half." - Liz Ellor
My new novel: Maledictions: The Offering. Now in Paperback!
When it happened, were you trying to decide on a symbol to terrorize criminals?
You'd think, but I'm not particularly scared of bats so much as I'm scared of getting hit in the face with things out of nowhere at night when I'm walking to my car.
"Readers who prefer tension and romance, Maledictions: The Offering, delivers... As serious YA fiction, I’ll give it five stars out of five. As a novel? Four and a half." - Liz Ellor
My new novel: Maledictions: The Offering. Now in Paperback!
Feeling any odd thirsts today? Any aversion to bright lights?
Yeah, but that's just the hangover.
"Readers who prefer tension and romance, Maledictions: The Offering, delivers... As serious YA fiction, I’ll give it five stars out of five. As a novel? Four and a half." - Liz Ellor
My new novel: Maledictions: The Offering. Now in Paperback!
You know, I hear garlic is great for hangovers.