Has anything genuinely creepy or unnerving ever happened to you?

DARKNESS. Utter total lack of light.

I wrote re what happened by the river once..

When I was new here and still had no electricity, I wanted to resume my long established habit of walking the dog early; very early. I wake around 4 am .. iT was in some years as the stray collie I took in was car chaser and few folk were out then. So I would stride happily across the fields.

(Reminds me of a relevant aside! One day as we were coming in I heard a yelp , then a THUD and could not find the second of my dogs. I had a torch and called and searched etc. There was at that house a crusty old man who used to threaten me and my dogs, and come on the land and do damage so I was scared lest that had happened..

After half an hour of searching and getting more and more scared. wee dog appeared, looking dazed, And she was after the cattle who had somehow got into my lovely garden,,, Apparently she had tackled the intruders and the yelp was her being kicked and the THUD her landing after flying through the air..some dogs have nine lives..)

Anyways, this day here,,..getting to the crossroads was fine. There are three single track tarmac lanes and my grassy drive,
No light from the dark house of course. I had put the candle out..

I stepped forwards, then realised how very very black it was,.... Just black and eyes straining t find anything,

Now I find my way via the various lighthouses and beacons at sea, but was too new for that.. and the cross of the roads is in a slight dip.

So I turned round and trod carefully on... but no grassy driveway, just tarmac and black, black and tarmac .. Panic started nibbling at me... I dared not move..

Stared hard and glimpsed a tiny blur of white; the small signpost for the loop walk by the driveway and I was saved ..

Deep darkness...

There was a second scare a few weeks later! The postbox is on the big gate at my end of the driveway and if I have post to go I leave a white cloth tied to the gate. So, I knew if i did not leave it out then, early and dark, i would forget...

As we neared the gate, my dog and I, she started growling, that growl that means her hackles would be up.
This was not her usual behaviour. She is a great watch and guard dog and has
a ferocious ear splitting bark,

I stopped in my tracks. My own hackles rising!
Heard.. footsteps.. still no barking just the terrible sinister growling...

THEN! Two large shapes emerged from the gloom... No? The cattle were all safe indoors?

And realised with huge relief that it was the pair from up the lane.. a tall Spanish pony with the loveliest tall ears and dark cross and his companion, a tiny black miniature pony who could hide under the pony

They had escaped and seen,, MY DAFFODILS! Comic relief.. Dog knew them but knew they should not be there..

Darkness; hides and distorts reality. A deceiver.. a false guide. but to be respected ..

I will admit it now, but the total darkness in deep rural outdoors has been the only thing in this life of mine that has rattled me on occasion. Been a couple of moments too when I have been in the bathroom , door open , light off, and one of the cats has pushed the door closed,. Makes us helpless, disempowered. .

The cottage was high in the Leitrim hills and had seen much better days. Much.... And strange things would, as happens in old places long empty in deep rural areas, occur..

One night, for example, I heard something in the main room.. I knew that thee had been an intruder as a fine pear I had been saving had morphed into pips and a stalk....

So, carefully, silently, I crept out of bed and tiptoed to the door, threw it open and snapped on the light in one fluid movement. GOTCHA! oh WOW!

There, eating an apple on my table, a large brown criitter with a long furry tail, and terrified eyes was in shock, then fled up the chimney dropping the apple....
A few minutes of google ides it as a pine marten and this was the happy beginning of a long friendship..

But not all events at that remote old cottage were so happy.

I was outside gardening one day and heard a scattering thud from inside the cottage, Checked and all the cats were with me... crept in and there were potatoes scattered at random around the room, far flung as if with force...I had left the bag ion the table near the fireplace...

Little by little then I learned the tragic tale of that house and of the young woman who had used to sit in that spot... disturbed, restlessly wandering the mountain tracks at night..no help from her sick mother or the brother i had already encountered who was mentally handicapped....

Until finally she drank bleach in town and died. Unhappy, and still her presence hovered there....