Strange experiences

[BobClay]

◄----- orders more popcorn from Amazon.

 

[rvf400]

Don't know about utilities, but my house had subsidence. To inspect, the insurers sent a constructional engineer, who asked where my drains ran. I had no idea, so he asked for a wire coat hanger, which he cut in two and constructed a pair of rods. He found the run of drains in no time, confirmed by access hatches I didn't know about as they were covered by earth. I had a go - I had seen him work and therefore was biased, but I could feel the rods move!

The problem with this is that he was looking for something he knew was already there. He could have just took a blind guess and the chances where high of him being correct. Maybe subconsciously he felt the ground was firmer underfoot where the access hatch was?? 1 of many possible outcomes, could have been pure luck, his previous experience of where they are likely to be drew him to that spot.

 

[PhilR]

It's the living that you need to watch out for

That's exactly what went through my mind when, as a teenager, I decided to walk through Ford cemetery, in Plymouth, one night. Halfway through, in pitch darkness, I started getting anxious over the idea of some nutcase possibly being there. Fear of the dark is a primitive instinct, designed to make you alert in dark places, where there may be some animal that would find you edible.

 

[Sarah Waldock]

That's exactly what went through my mind when, as a teenager, I decided to walk through Ford cemetery, in Plymouth, one night. Halfway through, in pitch darkness, I started getting anxious over the idea of some nutcase possibly being there. Fear of the dark is a primitive instinct, designed to make you alert in dark places, where there may be some animal that would find you edible.

Ok, now we need Iron Maiden 'Fear of the Dark' as the theme music...

 

[PhilR]

Mainly due to lack of warmth to keep our the damp and maintenance to keep out the weather ....oh and dicks smashing stuff up

Give it a year, and there'll be millions of homes like that.

 

[john1975]

Don't know about utilities, but my house had subsidence. To inspect, the insurers sent a constructional engineer, who asked where my drains ran. I had no idea, so he asked for a wire coat hanger, which he cut in two and constructed a pair of rods. He found the run of drains in no time, confirmed by access hatches I didn't know about as they were covered by earth. I had a go - I had seen him work and therefore was biased, but I could feel the rods move!

They were taking the piss out of you.. Any surveyor or half decent builder will tell you where the drains run, as there are set locations for them set out in the building regs etc

 

[Hayman]

They were taking the piss out of you.. Any surveyor or half decent builder will tell you where the drains run, as there are set locations for them set out in the building regs etc

I think "should run" is nearer the truth. Building regulations are relatively new in the time scale of house building. Next door to where I lived in west London, utility workmen were trying to find a pipe using the modern version of dowsing rods - which is what the coat hanger here represented - an electronic detector. They thought they had found the pipe, but it was the wrong one. They dug either side and still did not find the one they were looking for. In fact, it was immediately under the one they had already uncovered - but not on any plans.

 

[Hayman]

The problem with this is that he was looking for something he knew was already there. He could have just took a blind guess and the chances where high of him being correct. Maybe subconsciously he felt the ground was firmer underfoot where the access hatch was?? 1 of many possible outcomes, could have been pure luck, his previous experience of where they are likely to be drew him to that spot.

Yes, the rods did move for you. They will for most if not all people - if they let them. I've done it scores of times to show others it works. Try walking diagonally over a buried drain pipe, and the rods will swing towards each other, and stop in line with the pipe.

 

[Hayman]

That's exactly what went through my mind when, as a teenager, I decided to walk through Ford cemetery, in Plymouth, one night. Halfway through, in pitch darkness, I started getting anxious over the idea of some nutcase possibly being there. Fear of the dark is a primitive instinct, designed to make you alert in dark places, where there may be some animal that would find you edible.

That is why, in Lesotho, there is a very ordinary looking hill called Thaba Bosiu - it means Mountain of the Night. It got its name from when it was used as a refuge from attack and it was supposed to grow into a mountain at night time and be impregnable. Also in Lesotho Tsela Tseou is a farewell to travellers, wishing them a good journey. Literally it means White Road, white to mean good since it represents the light of day as opposed to the dark or black of night.

 

[john1975]

I think "should run" is nearer the truth. Building regulations are relatively new in the time scale of house building. Next door to where I lived in west London, utility workmen were trying to find a pipe using the modern version of dowsing rods - which is what the coat hanger here represented - an electronic detector. They thought they had found the pipe, but it was the wrong one. They dug either side and still did not find the one they were looking for. In fact, it was immediately under the one they had already uncovered - but not on any plans.

That is because they did not know what they were doing.. You clearly do not have a clue as to how "modern detectors" as you put it, work..

Go get your dowsing rods and try to plot out the electric cable to your house, and then, separately the drains and the gas and water supplies, see how far you get with that... Have fun..

 

[Hayman]

That is because they did not know what they were doing.. You clearly do not have a clue as to how "modern detectors" as you put it, work..

Go get your dowsing rods and try to plot out the electric cable to your house, and then, separately the drains and the gas and water supplies, see how far you get with that... Have fun..

I was talking about pipes and not electricity cables. Their detector picked up the metal from the upper pipe which was masking the presence of the lower one. At the time the pipes that teed off from the mains running the length of the road were black iron or lead.

Where I now live - Bournemouth - a firm was installing optic fibre in my road, using an electronic detector to locate pipes and cables buried in the pavement. One of the workmen hit a live electricity cable with his pneumatic drill. He said he thought the cable should have been deeper than it was.

Incidentally, how do electronic stud detectors work when they are picking up woodwork, and neither metal pipes nor electricity cables?

 

[Anarresti]

I'm just going to throw this one out as a random post but has anyone had any strange or spooky experience's while out exploring these old derelict locations, I know from my own wanders around properties the feeling of not being alone or being watched it always there, and while sometimes we do come across drug users and homeless or kids id like to hear accounts from members if you have had anything happen.

To start off, I don't do LSD or other drugs (maybe, sometimes, alcohol, but rarely) when exploring and I often have my best friend, my dog, with me.

There's a lot of supposedly haunted places in Auld Reekie, where I'm from but I have been in the Edinburgh Vaults and, as mentioned before, Mary King's Close and other 'haunted' places but the only time I got a very eerie vibe was at the old Bonnyrigg library/council house. That might have been due to the late hours and the vast amount of boxed offices, cupboards and shadows... some bits definitely felt off while most were normal/ok. The back where the maps are/were (it was over 7 yrs back) was very peaceful and warm feeling, kind of occupied, although it was not, but the second floor to the left of the entrance was very, very unsettling, although the room was completely empty.

I felt very strange in the Greyfriars though... even my old and now dead doggo, who's was usually a happy big boy, was hackles up and anxious when we came near the place where bloody McKenzie kept his lads out in the cold like they were enemies, to die of exposure... lots of suffering there. Maybe it's just the historical fact that played my mind and my dog, as they do, picked it up as well... I definitely want to go again after nearly 10 years and see how I feel being 10 years older

 

[Hayman]

To start off, I don't do LSD or other drugs (maybe, sometimes, alcohol, but rarely) when exploring and I often have my best friend, my dog, with me.

There's a lot of supposedly haunted places in Auld Reekie, where I'm from but I have been in the Edinburgh Vaults and, as mentioned before, Mary King's Close and other 'haunted' places but the only time I got a very eerie vibe was at the old Bonnyrigg library/council house. That might have been due to the late hours and the vast amount of boxed offices, cupboards and shadows... some bits definitely felt off while most were normal/ok. The back where the maps are/were (it was over 7 yrs back) was very peaceful and warm feeling, kind of occupied, although it was not, but the second floor to the left of the entrance was very, very unsettling, although the room was completely empty.

I felt very strange in the Greyfriars though... even my old and now dead doggo, who's was usually a happy big boy, was hackles up and anxious when we came near the place where bloody McKenzie kept his lads out in the cold like they were enemies, to die of exposure... lots of suffering there. Maybe it's just the historical fact that played my mind and my dog, as they do, picked it up as well... I definitely want to go again after nearly 10 years and see how I feel being 10 years older

I recall, when house-hunting in west London, my wife refused to go into a place the estate agent gave us the key to. She had a 'bad feeling' about it. Inside, the walls were painted red or black, the conventional doors had been replaced with Western saloon swing doors, and a crude bunk bed in rough timber had been built in the bedroom. We did not take it!

When I visited the Wharncliffe Viaduct - one of Brunel's great railway bridges - I was unaware it was one of his structures. Had I been - as I was on seeing the Royal Albert Bridge at Saltash, and the Clifton Suspension Bridge - would I have given myself the sort of feelings I thought I should have had?

Did you pass on to your dog - through your pheromones - some type of anxiety when at Greyfriars?

It is often said a horse rider transmits his or her confidence - or lack of it - to the mount.

 

[PhilR]

To start off, I don't do LSD or other drugs (maybe, sometimes, alcohol, but rarely) when exploring and I often have my best friend, my dog, with me.

There's a lot of supposedly haunted places in Auld Reekie, where I'm from but I have been in the Edinburgh Vaults and, as mentioned before, Mary King's Close and other 'haunted' places but the only time I got a very eerie vibe was at the old Bonnyrigg library/council house. That might have been due to the late hours and the vast amount of boxed offices, cupboards and shadows... some bits definitely felt off while most were normal/ok. The back where the maps are/were (it was over 7 yrs back) was very peaceful and warm feeling, kind of occupied, although it was not, but the second floor to the left of the entrance was very, very unsettling, although the room was completely empty.

I felt very strange in the Greyfriars though... even my old and now dead doggo, who's was usually a happy big boy, was hackles up and anxious when we came near the place where bloody McKenzie kept his lads out in the cold like they were enemies, to die of exposure... lots of suffering there. Maybe it's just the historical fact that played my mind and my dog, as they do, picked it up as well... I definitely want to go again after nearly 10 years and see how I feel being 10 years older

A couple of years after moving into my first home, I was awoken in the middle of the night by a feeling that I was being watched. I searched the house top to bottom, but I didn't find a thing. The feeling wasn't due to a nightmare, nor did it ever happen again, but it was only the second time in my life that I have had such a feeling of fear.

 

[night crawler]

A couple of years after moving into my first home, I was awoken in the middle of the night by a feeling that I was being watched. I searched the house top to bottom, but I didn't find a thing. The feeling wasn't due to a nightmare, nor did it ever happen again, but it was only the second time in my life that I have had such a feeling of fear.

I put that down to imagination, face this was your first home and the place was unkown to you

 

[Hayman]

I put that down to imagination, face this was your first home and the place was unkown to you

Or whatever was doing the 'watching' accepted the new occupant as a 'friend'. After all, dogs and cats treat humans - and other four legged animals - as 'friends' or 'foes'.

 

[PhilR]

As I had said, I had been in the house for a couple of years at least, so it wasn't a strange house to me. I've moved many times with the MOD, and never experienced this in any other house. Besides, I don't believe in ghosts. In scientific terms, if you replicate the same conditions, and can't repeat the same result, then you can discount novelty and imagination as the cause. I have visited a hangman's scaffold (c/w noose)in an old ropery, in Devonport Naval Base, several times, which was reputed to be haunted, and worked late into the night for weeks in Central Office Block 3, where there was a temporary morgue in WWII, and not felt strange. Nor have I imagined anything, many things can be due to sound transference, or thermal shock, so I look for logical explanations, not fantasy. This last building scared a few MOD policemen, but I never found anything to cause anyone any concern.

I put that down to imagination, face this was your first home and the place was unkown to you

 

[Hayman]

As I had said, I had been in the house for a couple of years at least, so it wasn't a strange house to me. I've moved many times with the MOD, and never experienced this in any other house. Besides, I don't believe in ghosts. In scientific terms, if you replicate the same conditions, and can't repeat the same result, then you can discount novelty and imagination as the cause. I have visited a hangman's scaffold (c/w noose)in an old ropery, in Devonport Naval Base, several times, which was reputed to be haunted, and worked late into the night for weeks in Central Office Block 3, where there was a temporary morgue in WWII, and not felt strange. Nor have I imagined anything, many things can be due to sound transference, or thermal shock, so I look for logical explanations, not fantasy. This last building scared a few MOD policemen, but I never found anything to cause anyone any concern.

I find it one of life's 'unknown unknowns' as to whether ghosts, etc are real or are all products of the human mind. It has often been reported that animals - dogs, mainly - have shown fear for no logical reason when in certain places. Are they reacting to the people with them, or to something else?

 

[Anarresti]

That's exactly what went through my mind when, as a teenager, I decided to walk through Ford cemetery, in Plymouth, one night. Halfway through, in pitch darkness, I started getting anxious over the idea of some nutcase possibly being there. Fear of the dark is a primitive instinct, designed to make you alert in dark places, where there may be some animal that would find you edible.

I think even animals are harmless compared to what humans can do. We're the apex predators atm. But you're right, we have this instinct for a reason. Adrenaline hightens your senses as well