Spooky or Unexplained incidents

Oliver's Ale House, Hoyland. Lock-in after the Miner's Strike 85/86, can't quite remember. Me and a friend were propped up at the bar and in the next room was a pool table, nobody was playing. My mate looked across at the pool table and his lit *** fell out of his mouth. What's up we asked.... He said an old man and a young girl had just walked through the middle of the pool table as if it wasn't there. There were about 7 or 8 of us in the bar and none of us could force ourselves to go in to the pool table area, it was like a forcefield stopping us and it felt icy around there. We told the landlord and landlady (a young couple) who were round the other side of the bar and they went white. Just a minute they said and disappeared. They came back with a broken mirror they had picked off the floor in their flat above the pub a week previous and said there was an old photo behind it. They showed my mate the photo and the replacement *** he had lit fell out of his mouth. That's them he said, an old man with a beard and a young girl with long dark hair. I don't know any history behind it but the landlady said they often found barstools they had put onto tables after closing purposely put back down in the morning. They had two young kids and often suffered from deep fat fryer fires despite having thermostatic control and what not.

 

For 'ghostly' experience, the Governement place I worked in in Birkdale - Smedley Hydro - was the place I have felt most scared. I must have been the only person never to have actually seen anything, but the feeling I had being alone in the old building at 8am in dark winters, alone, was the most uneasy I have felt. The 3rd floor where I was is supposedly haunted by the Grey Lady, who took her own life by jumping from the staircase. Very spooky place.

For 'weird' ....... nothing beats my Edinburgh experience. 1998, after working for B&Q for a fair few years I was seconded to IT, given a car and told to look after all the Scottish stores as part of an IT project. There were many stores in those days, and from memory seven of them in the Edinburgh area. One of these was on Easter Road - a very small, original B&Q red shed. I knew all the stores well, great staff, always good banter. Problem with Easter Road was, no matter how many times I went I always took a wrong turn at a big roundabout just outside Edinburgh Centre, and instead of turning off on Easter Road, I turned off on Leith Walk in error, a busy road that ran parallel. "You numpty" I smiled to myself every week, "you have done it again" ...... and every week I ended up slowing down after quarter of a mile, looking down the rows of terraces that connected Leith Walk and Easter Road, and when I saw the Red Shed at the end of one of these streets - Iona Street, turned right and found my location. In fact, I parked on Iona Street as the B&Q car park was tiny.
Fast forward a few years, I started looking at some family history in detail - a couple on here, I think Dustani and Gravy Chips helped out with some of it. My Great Grandmother on my Dads side was born in Edinburgh slums before moving to Bradford as a teen where she met my Great Grandfather. She died when I was 3 - I have vague memories of her walking me to the park as a toddler. The place where she was born in the late 19th century, all those years before ............. Iona Street, Edinburgh.

 

The family story about my grandfather is that in the 1940s he joined Bomber Command and moved from South Wales to Lincolnshire and was based at Elsham Wold. One night he had a dream where he was marrying a strange woman in a church he'd never seen before. Not long after he went on leave and met that woman (my grandmother) and the church turned out to be the one near where she lived that they married in a few years later after the end of the war...

 

Brilliant ……..lol

 

Here’s a little one on family history searching, maybe just coincidence I know. My great aunt the oldest relative then alive told me that we had an ancestor with a gravestone in Darfield church yard. I decided to pick her up and take her for lunch and call in to look for it. My wife and daughter came with us and it was a nice day out for the old girl.
Anyway we met a bloke in the churchyard who said that his hobby was Darfield churchyard and it’s gravestones and he’d compiled a map (wonder whether he’s still there). We gave him the name our ancestor, which is different to mine and he consulted his map.
He sent me off in the direction of a pretty overgrown corner of the churchyard, where I discovered three gravestones that did carry my surname. I was overwhelmed, because it opened up a completely new line of research.
No sooner had I got there however, when I had a call from my wife telling me to come back. The bloke said he’d had the map upside down and I needed to be in a different area. It really spooked me out.