Strange coincidences, premonitions, weird dreams and spooky experiences

When I was about 10 years old I was invited to a sleepover round a friend's house. A few weeks earlier, this friend had been talking about strange flashing lights and noises in her house, but I didn't really believe her because she often used to say funny things to tease me. For example, my friend said that one night when she was in her bedroom on her own, the light switch kept clicking on and off. When her mother came in to wish her good night, the light switch stopped clicking, only to start up again when her mother left. Another story she told me was that one evening she was standing in the hallway when she saw some flashing blue and green lights that she couldn't explain. I wasn't too scared about the sleepover though because I wasn't sure whether or not to believe my friend; I thought she might just be winding me up!

One of our other mutual friends came along to the sleepover, so there were 3 of us in total. On the night of the sleepover, we all ended up sleeping in the lounge, as the home was a bungalow and there weren't enough bedrooms. We slept on matresses on the lounge floor. In the morning, one of my friends got up to go to the toilet, and I was still laying down on my matress and I'd just woken up a few minutes earlier. While she was out, I thought I saw a dark figure walk through the lounge door towards me, but it disappeared about 3 metres from me. Before it disappeared, I thought it was my friend returning from the bathroom! But she had been in the bathroom the whole time.

I told my friends but they didn't seem to care that much about it. After that I wasn't really too bothered, as I thought it was just my mind playing tricks. I felt tired that morning as we'd gone to sleep so late the night before, so I thought that it might have been a hallucination.

Ever since I left primary school, I lost contact with these 2 friends. Our lives have gone separate ways now. So I will never know for sure whether what I saw was a ghost. The bungalow is not really that old, although there is a church just around the corner. I don't think I've ever had any hallucinations at any other time in my life, so maybe what I saw was indeed a ghost.

I had a precongnitive dream about 5 years ago when I applied for a promotion at work. I was interviewed for the job at the start of the week and I was due to be told the outcome on the Thursday of that same week. On the Wednesday night, I was in an anxious mood and I found it more difficult to get to sleep than usual. However, I dreamt that I was in the manager's office and he told me that I had been offered the job, although it was slightly different from the one advertised. Then I dreamt that I was on the beach and all these green and pink slips of paper were floating around me. (Just as an aside, when I was at high school in the late 90s there was a merit system whereby students were given green slips if they had achieved something exceptionally good, and pink slips if they had been naughty, which would be sent to their parents).

Then when I got to work the next morning - the day I was due to be told whether I'd got the new job - I found that there were several green and pink slips of paper scattered on the ground outside the office. They were blank on both sides, and they were there for no apparent reason. I had never seen anything like that before, in all my months of working there, and I thought it was spooky I had seen them in my dream the previous night.

In some ways it reassured me - if that part of my dream was true - then maybe the dream about me getting the job would be true too. And so it was - even though I wasn't offered the job at the rank I had applied for, I was offered the same type of job but at a different rank. It was really spooky, but I was just so glad that I'd got the job!

In that same year (2005), I had several other weird dreams where I predicted the future. For me, it seems to be an ability that comes and goes. I'll have several precognitive dreams in the space of a few weeks, and then it all goes quiet for several months. Another precognitive dream I had in 2005 involved seeing a woman tear some money in half - and then the next day when we were out at a restaurant to celebrate my grandmother's birthday, my sister joked to my 2 nieces that she would tear a £10 note in half and give them £5 each! That was the first time I had ever heard someone make such a joke or comment, so it seemed like such a strange coincidence that I'd dreamed about it the night before.

When I was at high school in the late 90s, in a geography class, the teacher left the room briefly to collect something. While he was gone the classroom suddenly started shaking. The floor was vibrating and I could hear a faint rumbling noise. It stopped for a few seconds and then it started up again. Everyone in the room felt it, but no one knew what was causing it. At the time I thought it could be an earthquake, but we hardly ever get earthquakes here in the UK and there was nothing on the news that evening to suggest that there had been an earthquake. When we asked people in other classes whether they had felt the shaking, they didn't know what we were talking about. It was very weird.

I overheard someone asking one of their friends (who was in a class in another part of the school at the time) whether they had felt anything. They said no. It seemed to be just the geography classroom that was affected. To this very day, I still don't know what caused that vibrating sensation. One of my theories was that maybe it was workmen doing some work on the school building, but from what I could see, there were no workmen on the school site that day.

My grandfather (on my mother's side of the family) died of a heart attack back in 1991, when I was only 7 years old. Ever since then, my grandmother has lived on her own. My grandfather was a smoker, but my grandmother has never smoked at all. About 10 years ago when I was visiting my grandmother's house, I sat in the lounge while my mum and grandmother were in the kitchen cooking lunch. I was sitting on the sofa looking at a magazine. All of a sudden I noticed this strange wisp of smoke (at least it looked like smoke) just to the left of the sofa and it gradually floated down until it vanished.

It freaked me out a bit - I'd never seen anything like that before, even though I'd been round my grandmother's house many times previously. I couldn't work out where this wisp of smoke had come from. I decided to go into the kitchen with the others so that I wasn't on my own, but I haven't seen anything like that since then.

My parents split up when I was very young, and when I was about 6 years old my Dad moved into his own flat and I used to visit every weekend. The block of flats was newly built, but it was only a few years ago that I found out that they had been built very close to the part of Norwich where heretics and witches were burnt at the stake in medieval times. I wasn't aware of that at the time when I was staying at the flat (when I was about 12 years old, my Dad moved to another flat in another part of the city anyway). However, now that I think about it years later, there were a few times when I felt scared in that flat.

For example, I often felt uncomfortable being in the flat on my own, but I wasn't sure exactly why. Even if my Dad just wanted to go to the launderette (which was only a minute's walk away) I was too scared to be on my own so I usually went with him. I was quite young at the time anyway, but it wasn't until I was about 10 or 11 years old that I felt safe on my own for a few minutes.

One night when I was about 7 or 8 years old I woke up crying, but I wasn't sure why. Sometimes when the lights were off, I could see strange patterns floating around in the bedroom. I often used to think it was my eyes playing tricks on me, but I never saw anything like that in my own bedroom at home. Another night, I had a bad dream which involved seeing some dangling chains, and it scared me so I had to leave the bedroom and stand in the hallway for a minute until I'd taken my mind off it.

It could well be that all those things were coincidences, but in some ways I think that as I was very young at the time, maybe I was more sensitive to the negative energy of the area.

A few years ago, someone was murdered in one of the Norwich city centre branches of McDonald's. A fight broke out between 2 groups of customers and one young man ended up getting killed. I often used to eat in that particular branch of McDonald's - I used to go there about once a week during my lunch-hour.

One lunch-time a couple of years ago, I ordered a milkshake, fries and chicken nuggets as usual. They didn't give me a tray like they usually do; instead they put the fries and chicken nuggets in a paper bag. I headed over to the condiments area to get some tomato ketchup: you have to pick up one of these little paper cases and then pump the sauce into it yourself. As I didn't have a tray, I decided to put the paper case on top of the lid of my milkshake and then head over to the nearest empty table. Even though I was holding the milkshake steady, the paper case containing the tomato ketchup flew off the top and fell to the floor.

I stood there horrified as I saw the ketchup splat all over the floor and some of it even landed on a nearby table! I was really scared that some of it might have landed on someone's clothes or in someone's hair, but luckily that wasn't the case. I picked up the paper case (which still had some ketchup left in it) and I told a nearby member of staff what had happened and apologised for the mess. The really embarrassing bit was that just after I'd finished speaking to the member of staff, the same thing happened again, although luckily it wasn't so bad the second time as there was less ketchup left in the case. The man laughed and said "You're a nightmare, you are!" I was so embarrassed and freaked out that I ended up walking out and eating my lunch outside, even though it was a fairly cold, damp day.

What really freaked me out about all of this was that the tomato ketchup was sliding off the lid even though I was holding it completely straight. Then I remembered the murder case which happened a few months earlier. I was thinking that the murder could well have happened in this part of the restaurant.

Of course, I have no way of knowing for sure whether a ghost was moving the tomato ketchup - maybe it was just bad luck - but it certainly made me think.

Ever since that incident, I've never been back to that branch of McDonald's. Nowadays I always go to the one in a nearby shopping mall instead.

In summer 2005 I went to a works party held at an old hotel in Norfolk, which many people believe to be haunted. Our party was held in a big marquee on the grass outside, so we didn't stay in the main hotel for too long (other than to buy drinks). I never saw anything unusual while I was there.

After the party, I arrived home at midnight, and I was getting ready for bed. Just before I got into bed, I switched off my mobile phone, put it back in my handbag and turned off the bedroom light. But the very second I switched the light off, the most scary music started playing. I had never heard it before, but I knew it must be my mobile phone, so I switched my light back on and fetched it out of my handbag. It was still blaring out this tune really loudly, even though I had pressed the off-button five seconds earlier! I was so confused! I frantically kept pressing the off button, but whatever I pressed, it simply would not stop. The screen was completely white, and none of the usual icons were visible. I flipped the lid closed, and the tune stopped for a couple of seconds, but then it started blaring out again. At this point, I felt quite scared and I went and showed the phone to my parents as I knew they'd be wondering what the noise was!

My step-dad said "That sounds like devil music!". When he said that, I felt even more freaked out. I glanced up at Mum, and she looked concerned, although it turned out that she was mostly worried about the loudness of the music more than anything else. She said, "We will have to take it to a mobile phone shop. You won't be able to take it to work tomorrow if it keeps doing this!" In the end, my step-dad removed the battery and sim card, and we could finally enjoy a silent night's sleep. As I was laying in bed, I kept laughing to myself about the tune and how awfully creepy it sounded, although I soon managed to get to sleep.

When I awoke in the morning, I put the battery and sim card back in the phone, and it was behaving normally, as if nothing had ever happened. What's even more spooky though, is that I looked through my directory of ringtones and listened to each one individually, yet I simply could not find the one which had been blaring out. I could not even find one which sounded anything like it. I have no idea what could have caused the music to start playing, and my phone had never done anything like that in the past. It never happened again either. Could it have been some kind of security mechanism to deter someone from stealing the phone, which I activated by mistake when switching off the phone? However, it just seems like too much of a coincidence that it happened after visiting a haunted location.

In August 2008, I went on holiday to North Yorkshire with my Mum and step-dad. About a day or two into the holiday, I started to get this weird sense of foreboding, that something bad would happen at home while we were away. I couldn't think exactly what this bad thing would be, except that I just had a feeling that we would return home to find that something had gone wrong. I tried to put these feelings to the back of my mind, and I was fairly successful. I tried to tell myself that maybe I was just feeling a little homesick and that it's unlikely anything bad would happen at home while I was away. After all, nothing bad had happened while I was on holiday in previous years, but I didn't have these strange feelings then either. I didn't want to spoil my holiday by worrying, and I didn't tell anyone else about my feelings as I didn't want to spoil things for them either. I don't usually have these feelings when I go on holiday, but fortunately I did manage to put them to the back of my mind and I hardly thought about them for the rest of the holiday. I was able to enjoy the holiday and I had a really good time.

However, when we were in the car driving home after the holiday, my Mum received a phonecall from my sister, and I could tell by the tone of Mum's voice that something bad had happened. I began to panic as I couldn't work out what they were talking about (I could only hear Mum's side of the conversation). Mum then told me that my sister's boyfriend (they've since got married) had a bad motorbike accident and had to go to hospital. I don't think he had to stay in hospital for too long, and it was mainly his foot which was injured. It could have been worse though, as he was knocked off his motorbike by a car.

I did find it a bit spooky considering the strange sense of foreboding that I had at the beginning of the holiday.

In August 2009, we had another holiday, staying in a holiday cottage in the Lake District. This time, I went with my Mum, step-dad, my sister, her husband and my 2 nieces. One day during the holiday, my Mum bought some birdseeds from the shop as there was a birdtable in the cottage's front garden. She put the bag of birdseeds on the widowsill in the lounge (although I didn't notice this at the time). One morning we awoke to find that birdseeds had been scattered into our walking boots.

At first we thought that maybe someone did this as a joke or prank, but no-one owned up. Usually if someone plays a prank in our family, they can't keep it a secret for long as they start to blush or even start laughing, but this didn't happen this time. Even if someone doesn't own up straight away, they normally do so within a day or two. However, everyone was adamant that it wasn't them.

Then we started to think that maybe one of us sleepwalked during the night and put the nuts in the shoes while they were still asleep, so they didn't realise it. I personally never sleepwalk, so I knew it couldn't have been me. Neither does my Mum or step-dad. My sister occasionally used to sleepwalk when she was a child, but it was unlikely that it was her as she had to climb a ladder to get to her bedroom in the cottage, and I don't think it's likely someone would be able to concentrate on that while they're sleeping. That just leaves my 2 nieces, but they couldn't remember doing this.

I still think it could have been someone sleepwalking, but there's also a possibility it could've been something supernatural. We will probably never know!

Back in 2002, when I was 18, my Mum and step-dad thought about moving house. They found a property that they liked about a mile away, so they called the estate agent to show us around the house. I went with them to have a look at the house. I remember thinking the gardens were nice, but the inside of the house had a really eerie feel. I just couldn't put my finger on why I felt that way. The previous owners weren't there at the time, so it was just the estate agent showing us round. As we walked through the hallway on the ground floor, it felt really cold and as if something wasn't quite right. It was May or June, so I couldn't understand why it was so cold, as it was fairly warm outside. I felt uncomfortable in the house, particularly in the hallway area.

Then we went upstairs, and I saw what would be my bedroom. It was a bit bigger than my own bedroom back home, but I remember thinking to myself that I couldn't imagine feeling comfortable being on my own in this new house. It's not that often that I have such strong feelings about a place. I didn't tell anyone at the time as my Mum and step-dad really liked the house and I was worried they would think I was being silly (it was only a few months earlier that my Mum had met my step-dad, so I was still getting to know him). They didn't seem to notice anything strange about it. However, I did secretly have a feeling that the house might be haunted. My Mum and step-dad did put in an offer for the house a while later, but it turned out that they were too late anyway. If I recall correctly, someone else had already put an offer in just before them. In a way, I was relieved! In the end, we decided to completely forget about moving house and stay where we are.

Years later, I was in a taxi going home one evening, and we drove past that house. As we were going past, my fellow passenger (one of my aunt's friends, who I hadn't met before), said that she feels sad whenever she has to go down that road, as her husband died when they were living there together. I don't know if she was talking about the exact same house, as there are several houses on that road which look fairly similar from the outside, but it certainly made me think.

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