eye_of_a_cat (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
eye_of_a_cat) wrote2007-08-11 05:31 pm
eye_of_a_cat) wrote2007-08-11 05:31 pm
Entry tags:
Spooky
Tell me your creepy stories. Ghosts, coincidences, things that went bump in the night that time you were completely alone in the house. Or your friend was, or whoever. I'm not interested in whittling them down to a rational explanation, and I promise not to judge you for whatever you do or don't believe; I just like the stories, and I need some distracting at the moment.
My favourites, not all of which happened to me:
1. My childhood best friend still swears she saw a UFO once. She was out with her mother, walking the dog in the hills behind their house, and her mother pointed out a 'firework' somewhere down in the fields below them. They watched it slow down, and then stop, mid-air, and then start spiralling in big, lazy circles, up and up and up into the sky. When it was entirely out of sight, her mother said "Let's go home," and they did. They haven't talked about it since.
2. That time - have I told you about this already? - I woke up in the night convinced someone was watching me, and the dog who used to sleep on the end of my bed woke up with me, stared into an empty corner, and snarled. I never saw that dog even raise her hackles before. I was ten, and couldn't sleep without a light on for weeks.
3. Still on the animals: Candy, the horse I had when I was fifteen, known affectionately as 'Daughter Of Satan' and afraid of nothing on this earth except lambs and miniature ponies (she broke a plastic window once by biting her reflection, and I swear I once saw her go for a tractor, but cute things were anathema), stopped in the middle of a track one day and would not go one inch further. Horses will often pretend to be scared of things when it suits them ("I'm bored, and I want to go home, and OHMYGOD AN EMPTY TWIX WRAPPER RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!"), but this was between us and home on a track we came along every other day, and she would not budge past a certain point. She'd happily turn around and go in any other direction; she'd even walk in the direction of the Unseen Scary Thing up to the point in question, looking incrasingly worried the whole way; but she'd go no further, and all her attention was fixed on the path immediately in front of her. We were there for about fifteen minutes, with her literally trembling with fear and me trying to calm her down (which I don't think she even noticed), and then whatever-it-was seemed to disappear. She snorted, looked around, and then tore off for home like a crazy thing. (She was back to biting tractors the next day.)
4. The time I missed my flight home and spent two days in a youth hostel, I was sharing a room with three other girls. The French girl who spent most of her time reading Agatha Christie on the balcony was, I already knew, only staying for one night; the Romanian girl in the bunk below her had had her own flight cancelled, and was killing a few days before heading home via Norway (I know, I know); and the Italian girl, in the bunk below me, we only met when she stumbled in drunk and tearful in the early hours of the morning asking if any of us knew any pre-emptive cures for a red wine hangover.
White wine hangovers, I can help with. Red wine hangovers, though - and she had drunk a <i>lot</i> of red wine - are best dealt with by medicinally induced comas, and even then you'll probably discover whole new levels of wishing you were dead. There was little to be done for her, but we brought her water anyway, and bread and butter, and tomatoes (which I'd never heard of as a hangover cure before, but the French girl swore by them). She crawled into her bed looking no better, and we sent off vague waves of pity and went back to trying to sleep in a south-of-France heatwave.
The French girl left the next morning, and the Romanian girl, who by then had been staying in the hostel long enough to have unpacked all her clothes and put up posters (Internet, I tell you truth), slept in. The Italian girl woke up, looked at her watch, groaned, and was dressed and gone in under ten minutes with her case spilling out clothes all over the floor. And I spent a day reading and sightseeing, and didn't get back until the early hours of the morning.
By general agreement, youth hostel etiquette forbids turning on the lights after dark. I could see well enough to get changed, though, and I could see that the French girl's former bed was still unoccupied. The Romanian girl seemed to be in bed already, from the huddled lump I could just make out under the sheets, but I couldn't see if the Italian girl had come back yet. I couldn't see her cases, but then, it was dark, and I couldn't see much; for all I knew she'd already left, but she'd talked as if she was going to be around a while longer, from what I could remember.
I was a little worried about her after the night before, so I tried to work out whether she was there or not by listening. It was too hot to sleep, really, anyway, and I had to get a flight early the next morning that I really didn't want to miss, and it was too noisy to get any real rest anyway. I'm a light sleeper, there was traffic outside, and even if the Italian girl hadn't come back, the Romanian girl in the bed opposite her was making enough noise for both of them: sighing, mumbling in her sleep, shifting the sheets and blankets around.
It was so hot I couldn't blame her, but I still couldn't tell if it was just her sleeping badly or whether the Italian girl was there too, and I ended up lying awake for the four hours until I needed to be up, trying to work out whether I could hear two other people in the room or just one.
When it was light enough to get up, and I climbed down from the top bunk, the Italian girl's bed was empty. So was the Romanian girl's. So was the rest of the room - all luggage gone, all posters taken down. I've never packed and cleared out of a room that fast in my life, I can tell you.
So, anyway. Those are some of my stories. What've you got?
My favourites, not all of which happened to me:
1. My childhood best friend still swears she saw a UFO once. She was out with her mother, walking the dog in the hills behind their house, and her mother pointed out a 'firework' somewhere down in the fields below them. They watched it slow down, and then stop, mid-air, and then start spiralling in big, lazy circles, up and up and up into the sky. When it was entirely out of sight, her mother said "Let's go home," and they did. They haven't talked about it since.
2. That time - have I told you about this already? - I woke up in the night convinced someone was watching me, and the dog who used to sleep on the end of my bed woke up with me, stared into an empty corner, and snarled. I never saw that dog even raise her hackles before. I was ten, and couldn't sleep without a light on for weeks.
3. Still on the animals: Candy, the horse I had when I was fifteen, known affectionately as 'Daughter Of Satan' and afraid of nothing on this earth except lambs and miniature ponies (she broke a plastic window once by biting her reflection, and I swear I once saw her go for a tractor, but cute things were anathema), stopped in the middle of a track one day and would not go one inch further. Horses will often pretend to be scared of things when it suits them ("I'm bored, and I want to go home, and OHMYGOD AN EMPTY TWIX WRAPPER RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!"), but this was between us and home on a track we came along every other day, and she would not budge past a certain point. She'd happily turn around and go in any other direction; she'd even walk in the direction of the Unseen Scary Thing up to the point in question, looking incrasingly worried the whole way; but she'd go no further, and all her attention was fixed on the path immediately in front of her. We were there for about fifteen minutes, with her literally trembling with fear and me trying to calm her down (which I don't think she even noticed), and then whatever-it-was seemed to disappear. She snorted, looked around, and then tore off for home like a crazy thing. (She was back to biting tractors the next day.)
4. The time I missed my flight home and spent two days in a youth hostel, I was sharing a room with three other girls. The French girl who spent most of her time reading Agatha Christie on the balcony was, I already knew, only staying for one night; the Romanian girl in the bunk below her had had her own flight cancelled, and was killing a few days before heading home via Norway (I know, I know); and the Italian girl, in the bunk below me, we only met when she stumbled in drunk and tearful in the early hours of the morning asking if any of us knew any pre-emptive cures for a red wine hangover.
White wine hangovers, I can help with. Red wine hangovers, though - and she had drunk a <i>lot</i> of red wine - are best dealt with by medicinally induced comas, and even then you'll probably discover whole new levels of wishing you were dead. There was little to be done for her, but we brought her water anyway, and bread and butter, and tomatoes (which I'd never heard of as a hangover cure before, but the French girl swore by them). She crawled into her bed looking no better, and we sent off vague waves of pity and went back to trying to sleep in a south-of-France heatwave.
The French girl left the next morning, and the Romanian girl, who by then had been staying in the hostel long enough to have unpacked all her clothes and put up posters (Internet, I tell you truth), slept in. The Italian girl woke up, looked at her watch, groaned, and was dressed and gone in under ten minutes with her case spilling out clothes all over the floor. And I spent a day reading and sightseeing, and didn't get back until the early hours of the morning.
By general agreement, youth hostel etiquette forbids turning on the lights after dark. I could see well enough to get changed, though, and I could see that the French girl's former bed was still unoccupied. The Romanian girl seemed to be in bed already, from the huddled lump I could just make out under the sheets, but I couldn't see if the Italian girl had come back yet. I couldn't see her cases, but then, it was dark, and I couldn't see much; for all I knew she'd already left, but she'd talked as if she was going to be around a while longer, from what I could remember.
I was a little worried about her after the night before, so I tried to work out whether she was there or not by listening. It was too hot to sleep, really, anyway, and I had to get a flight early the next morning that I really didn't want to miss, and it was too noisy to get any real rest anyway. I'm a light sleeper, there was traffic outside, and even if the Italian girl hadn't come back, the Romanian girl in the bed opposite her was making enough noise for both of them: sighing, mumbling in her sleep, shifting the sheets and blankets around.
It was so hot I couldn't blame her, but I still couldn't tell if it was just her sleeping badly or whether the Italian girl was there too, and I ended up lying awake for the four hours until I needed to be up, trying to work out whether I could hear two other people in the room or just one.
When it was light enough to get up, and I climbed down from the top bunk, the Italian girl's bed was empty. So was the Romanian girl's. So was the rest of the room - all luggage gone, all posters taken down. I've never packed and cleared out of a room that fast in my life, I can tell you.
So, anyway. Those are some of my stories. What've you got?