Has anything genuinely creepy or unnerving ever happened to you?

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gary glitter ?

Stayed in this hotel in Cork once but didn't experience anything weird. It is said that guests have reported seeing the ghost of a woman who is believed to have died while giving birth back when the hotel was an infirmary, while broken mirrors and equipment have terrified guests and staff alike. Rumour has it that in between rooms 318 and 319 there is a closed off room, 325, which cannot be accessed on its own!

eviltwin wrote: »

Some of the people working in the shops nearby bless themselves when you tell there where you work which is a bit disconcerting.

eviltwin......is this the carlow town shopping centre you work in by any chance?

I don't believe in anything supernatural but this encounter gives me the shivers when I think about it.

I used to walk my dogs in the woods surrounding a site of historical interest near when I lived at the time. Most people parked their cars and went right, up towards the site of interest. I always went left, through the woods and along a track that went the long way around, and ended approaching the carpark from the other direction. I usually went at night, because I work during the day and because I just loved the woods at night. I had a headtorch but I rarely used it. I have good night vision and I knew the woods so well that could almost always get all the way around my moonlight. I still prefer to do my dogwalking at night, it becomes habit.

The track was very rough, in parts almost not a track. It was muddy in places, brambley in places, and there were places where somebody over my height (About 5'3") would have to stoop under branches. There were long sections of it where I think mine were the only footsteps that travelled it. This is wild woodland, not carefully managed forestry.

One wet night at about 10:00pm I was about 30 minutes into my walk, stomping happily along under the trees, with one dog snoffling along ahead of me and one guarding the rear. It was a very uneven part of the track that ran along a rocky slope. The lady ahead of me suddenly froze and dipped her head in the way dogs do when they're not happy. She took two steps backwards towards me and threw me a look to tell me to do the same. The man behind me growled. About 20 feet ahead in a pool of darkness I saw something small and pale move upwards in an arc. I reached up to my torch and flicked it on and lit up a man, standing to one side of the track. He was wearing a dark top and pale jeans and runners, not clothes suitable for wandering in the woods at night in the rain. He didn't appear to have a torch or a light of any sort.

The small pale thing I had seen moving upwards must have been his hand, because he was standing at a slight angle to me with both his hands over his face.

I thought I must have given him a fright so like an eejit I said "Hello!" as cheerily as I could manage. He didn't move, just stood there with his hands covering his face. A few seconds passed. It suddenly was very clear to me that I had not encountered a fellow crepuscular nemophilist, there was no good reason for a man to be waiting in the dark hiding his face. He hadn't been moving, the dogs would have heard him much earlier if he had been walking. He had just been standing there, in the rain, miles from a road.

The dog behind me, usually a harmless friendly chap, turned his low growl into a snarl. The lady in front took another slow step backwards and also snarled. I lost my nerve, turned off my torch and ran back towards the carpark, sticking to my little-used track. For a few moments I heard him crashing about behind me, but because I didn't have a torch on and he didn't appear to have one at all, he must have lost me fairly quickly. When I stopped to catch my breath a few minutes later I heard nothing at all. As soon as I could see the carpark I grabbed the dogs and hunkered down in a thicket, watching to see if anybody was moving near my van. I must have stayed there for an hour, freezing cold, before I was sure it was safe to go out into the open. There wasn't a peep out of the dogs though, they were fully aware that their cooperation was required.

I told a friend the next day what had happened and she said to go to the guards. I called in a couple of days later but when I started to tell the nice guard the story it came out like I was the weird one, frightening people in the woods at night. Nothing came of it.

I had other encounters while walking the woods in the dark, but that one was the only one that left me feeling creeped out.

I've left a detail out of the story because it's so unbelievable that if I included it you would dismiss the whole thing as a work fiction.

beveragelady wrote: »

I've left a detail out of the story because it's so unbelievable that if I included it you would dismiss the whole thing as a work fiction.

We won't, we promise!!

Ok, but you're going to think I'm taking the piff.

The dog who was out in front is a collie mix and an uncertifed genius. She's 12 and a half now and she still does things that amaze me. I could bore you all night with implausible tales of her feats of intelligence. She had a very bad start in life though and that, combined with her brains, has made her very odd. People always remark that she seems to look at them very intensely and they don't always mean it as a compliment. She's working things out all the time.

So, one of the useful things I teach the dogs is 'back, back, back.' It means "Come back and walk along quietly behind me, no dashing forward." If I say it in a whisper it means all that and also, "I'm not messing, this is not a drill, we have to be careful and quiet."

The minute she spotted the stranger in the woods she took a step back and checked to make sure I was doing the same. She often did this, sometimes if she saw a fern blowing in the wind in a way she found unacceptable she'd try to back me away from it.

This time though, and I swear I'm not making this up, she gave three sharp hissed breaths. She's a talker; she barks, she'll yowl at me if she's feeling under-appreciated, she makes funny chattery noises when she's glad to see me, she blows raspberries at me in the mornings. She has never made this breathy sound before or since. I'm completely convinced she was saying 'Back, back, back' in a whisper as clearly as she could.

RE:beveragelady - maybe it was some homeless guy or crusty living in the woods?

beveragelady wrote: »

Ok, but you're going to think I'm taking the piff.

The dog who was out in front is a collie mix and an uncertifed genius. She's 12 and a half now and she still does things that amaze me. I could bore you all night with implausible tales of her feats of intelligence. She had a very bad start in life though and that, combined with her brains, has made her very odd. People always remark that she seems to look at them very intensely and they don't always mean it as a compliment. She's working things out all the time.

So, one of the useful things I teach the dogs is 'back, back, back.' It means "Come back and walk along quietly behind me, no dashing forward." If I say it in a whisper it means all that and also, "I'm not messing, this is not a drill, we have to be careful and quiet."

The minute she spotted the stranger in the woods she took a step back and checked to make sure I was doing the same. She often did this, sometimes if she saw a fern blowing in the wind in a way she found unacceptable she'd try to back me away from it.

This time though, and I swear I'm not making this up, she gave three sharp hissed breaths. She's a talker; she barks, she'll yowl at me if she's feeling under-appreciated, she makes funny chattery noises when she's glad to see me, she blows raspberries at me in the mornings. She has never made this breathy sound before or since. I'm completely convinced she was saying 'Back, back, back' in a whisper as clearly as she could.

I had a collie, an uncanny one, and can well believe this.

I like night walking but if it was me, there is no way I'd have returned to the same place I'd had to run from a creepy man inthe dark. Have to agree with the liathroidi commenf!

beveragelady wrote: »

the woods took a hammering from Ophelia and fallen trees have made it completely impassible in places so I have to invent detours through the undergrowth.

If you have never tried it, you should. Take a walk at night, turn off your torch and stand for a while until your eyes adjust. Then start walking.

ya sure, i will

beveragelady wrote: »

Ok, but you're going to think I'm taking the piff.

The dog who was out in front is a collie mix and an uncertifed genius. She's 12 and a half now and she still does things that amaze me. I could bore you all night with implausible tales of her feats of intelligence. She had a very bad start in life though and that, combined with her brains, has made her very odd. People always remark that she seems to look at them very intensely and they don't always mean it as a compliment. She's working things out all the time.

So, one of the useful things I teach the dogs is 'back, back, back.' It means "Come back and walk along quietly behind me, no dashing forward." If I say it in a whisper it means all that and also, "I'm not messing, this is not a drill, we have to be careful and quiet."

The minute she spotted the stranger in the woods she took a step back and checked to make sure I was doing the same. She often did this, sometimes if she saw a fern blowing in the wind in a way she found unacceptable she'd try to back me away from it.

This time though, and I swear I'm not making this up, she gave three sharp hissed breaths. She's a talker; she barks, she'll yowl at me if she's feeling under-appreciated, she makes funny chattery noises when she's glad to see me, she blows raspberries at me in the mornings. She has never made this breathy sound before or since. I'm completely convinced she was saying 'Back, back, back' in a whisper as clearly as she could.

While theres nothing paranormal or ghoulish about your story I do believe you are a very lucky lady and had you (and your dogs) not been so alert I dont believe you would alive today.

That guy meant you harm. He knew your movements. He knew you were coming along that track. He was crouched down by the track in order to pounce on you as you passed. He covered his face so that he couldn't be recognised again or even worse he was known to you.