Low-Level Weirdness

[gabriel]

As a newbie I thought I'd relate a few inexplicable occurrences I've had over my 50+ years. As a pragmatic kind of guy some probably have mundane explanations, others are more compelling. Here's one and if anyone's interested I'll post more.

Back in the 80s I was in a relationship with a girl and in the evenings we'd sit around and play a 'guess the card' game. It wasn't planned, just a way of passing time as the long winter nights drew in. In the beginning we'd sit in the dark and try to guess which suit and number the other was thinking of and the results were no more than chance but one particular evening we had a run of 'guesses' that freaked us both out a little.
Let me say I'm skeptical (or sceptical as us Brits say) of odds when deciding chance. Someone will say hearts, so next time the other person will pick a different suit, lowering the odds and if, say, a deuce has been chosen, the next is likely to be a high card, lowering them further.

Anyhow we'd worked out all the tricks by this time and weren't going to fall for any obvious choices. We had a run of four cards exactly the same and both of us were a little 'wow' about it but nothing out of the ordinary but the guesses just kept coming and being spot on around three times out of four, even when sometimes picking the same card to fool the other person. As she sat next to me and I said what she was thinking once more I could feel her body stiffen and eventually she pulled a cushion over her face and said 'I want to stop now'. I was happy to.

Guessing games are always prone to cheating but I certainly wasn't teasing her and from her reaction I could tell she was most unlikely to be hoaxing. We played again a few days later and the results were way above chance though less spectacular and on subsequent occasions the effect seemed to lessen back to the results anyone might expect. The relationship was not a long one and we went our separate ways and like many such extraordinary events, its impact fades and it's stored in the mind's 'cause unknown' folder.

The house was a weird one generally. A few weeks before I moved in I was plagued by vivid dreams of cowled monks and something unpleasant buried under the floorboards which would cause me to wake in a sweat, but I put it down to nervousness of buying my first house. The place was on the edge of open farmland and a mile in the distance was the ruin of a medieval castle on a hill.
The monk dreams continued on and off and I was alone in the house most nights, sometimes the dream figures would still be there when I opened my eyes before fading. I even told the secretary at work about them when she said I looked 'rough' one morning but she suggested I'd been over-working.

A few years ago, and many years after I'd left the house and the area entirely, an archaeological TV programme were excavating the castle site and noted the grounds where I lived were worked by monks from a local abbey, something I was totally unaware of. I've no idea what any of it means, if anything, but it was a very, very odd house.

[OC68]

Originally Posted by gabriel

As a newbie I thought I'd relate a few inexplicable occurrences I've had over my 50+ years. As a pragmatic kind of guy some probably have mundane explanations, others are more compelling. Here's one and if anyone's interested I'll post more.

Back in the 80s I was in a relationship with a girl and in the evenings we'd sit around and play a 'guess the card' game. It wasn't planned, just a way of passing time as the long winter nights drew in. In the beginning we'd sit in the dark and try to guess which suit and number the other was thinking of and the results were no more than chance but one particular evening we had a run of 'guesses' that freaked us both out a little.
Let me say I'm skeptical (or sceptical as us Brits say) of odds when deciding chance. Someone will say hearts, so next time the other person will pick a different suit, lowering the odds and if, say, a deuce has been chosen, the next is likely to be a high card, lowering them further.

Anyhow we'd worked out all the tricks by this time and weren't going to fall for any obvious choices. We had a run of four cards exactly the same and both of us were a little 'wow' about it but nothing out of the ordinary but the guesses just kept coming and being spot on around three times out of four, even when sometimes picking the same card to fool the other person. As she sat next to me and I said what she was thinking once more I could feel her body stiffen and eventually she pulled a cushion over her face and said 'I want to stop now'. I was happy to.

Guessing games are always prone to cheating but I certainly wasn't teasing her and from her reaction I could tell she was most unlikely to be hoaxing. We played again a few days later and the results were way above chance though less spectacular and on subsequent occasions the effect seemed to lessen back to the results anyone might expect. The relationship was not a long one and we went our separate ways and like many such extraordinary events, its impact fades and it's stored in the mind's 'cause unknown' folder.

The house was a weird one generally. A few weeks before I moved in I was plagued by vivid dreams of cowled monks and something unpleasant buried under the floorboards which would cause me to wake in a sweat, but I put it down to nervousness of buying my first house. The place was on the edge of open farmland and a mile in the distance was the ruin of a medieval castle on a hill.
The monk dreams continued on and off and I was alone in the house most nights, sometimes the dream figures would still be there when I opened my eyes before fading. I even told the secretary at work about them when she said I looked 'rough' one morning but she suggested I'd been over-working.

A few years ago, and many years after I'd left the house and the area entirely, an archaeological TV programme were excavating the castle site and noted the grounds where I lived were worked by monks from a local abbey, something I was totally unaware of. I've no idea what any of it means, if anything, but it was a very, very odd house.

Hi gabriel. Thanks for sharing these interesting experiences. Anything else about the house?

[gabriel]

Originally Posted by OC68

Hi gabriel. Thanks for sharing these interesting experiences. Anything else about the house?

Technical objects would fail but most noticeable was a prevailing mood of depression. Such things are very difficult to quantify but it never felt 'happy', visitors became skittish and I too was always glad to get out, even if just to go to work. It was the kind of house you'd feel for a light switch before entering a room.

There was often a sense of being watched, not continually but frequently enough to be disturbing. When I lived there in the late 80s/early 90s the house would be around 80 years old and I've lived in houses as old and much older and never felt the same effect. My wife (then girlfriend) simply hated the place and refused to stay there on her own.