Your own personal mysteries.

[MeeLee]

When I was about 12 years old, I stayed over night at a friends house. There were three of us there. We were alone, and we kept getting phone calls every hour on the hour all night long until 5 in the morning.All we could hear was heavy breathing. We thought it may have been one of our friends but all of them denied it. Anyways, about a week later, I was home alone, and I got calls every hour on the hour. Same thing, heavy breathing. I thought my friends from the sleepover ere doing it, but that was impossible since both of them were away, and cell phones weren't really around then. The next weekend, my friend got the phone calls, and then the week after that my last friend got the phone calls. Both were home alone, and none of us did it. After the call to my second friend, the calls stopped. I still have no idea who that was, and if they knew we were home alone.

Oh, that sounds like a creepy teen horror book!

You know what? I wasn't afraid at all. I was more annoyed. My parents just thought someone was goofing with us. If that happened now, I'd have a heart attack haha.

[blue2000]

What happened to divide our entire family during the Great Depression? Apparently our family was very large and quite wealthy. During the Depression my side of the family did something that resulted in us basically being given the cut direct....to this day! No one in my family knows what happened and the other side refuses to allow contact.

A customer with my last name came in to work a couple of years ago. He was very friendly and interested to hear we had the same name, until i told him what part of Australia my father and his parents are from. The smile vanished, he snatched his credit card back off me and walked out without another word.   I just want to know what we're supposed to have done! And whatever it was, it isn't my fault! I wasn't born!

It doesn't matter to some people.

My grandfather (Dad's father) was from Scotland. Apparently he was a bit of a rebel as a teen and was kicked out of the family. He went on to fight in WW1 and then came to Canada and started a family of his own.

Dad has mentioned some things that he apparently did, but none of them were very terrible. And yet the relatives back in Scotland are still cold as icebergs to us. Go figure.

On the flip side, my other grandfather was... not a nice person. If someone knew him and didn't know me, I would understand why they would be cautious about meeting me, or decline altogether.

Also, What Was That Smell?

I have this one listed in the Ghost Story thread.  Basically, I came home from work one winter day and put my things in my bedroom.  Which reeeeeeeeked of Eau de Very Cheap Perfume.  It was nauseating.  I started hunting around the room, thinking a bottle or something spilled.  Nothing was found.  I went to apologize to my roommates for the stench and discovered you could only smell it in my room.  The very next day, the smell was completely gone.  I found this weird because my sister broke a bottle of perfume in my dorm bathroom and though I scrubbed the tile down about 90,569,023,252 times, the smell was extremely overpowering for a couple of weeks and you could smell it all the way down the hall.  We did ask my landlord who lived below us but he knew nothing about it.

It could have been coming from him, or outside. My kitchen reeked of paint for a week at one point. Couldn't figure it out for the life of me - I searched everything, I opened the windows, I cleaned out the garbage, I did all I could to find it and get rid of it and it wouldn't go!

I finally realized it was coming from under the sink. There is a hole in the wall where the pipes come through. I live in an apartment so I figured they were painting (or possibly spraying for bugs) and the chemical was coming up through the wall. I blocked it and the smell stopped, although if you stick you head under the sink, you can still smell it very faintly (and it has been several months!).

Right now I have a horrible stench of ammonia (or something) that I can't get rid of, and I'm going to see if I can find and block every other opening.

[MrsJWine]

Also, What Was That Smell?

I have this one listed in the Ghost Story thread.  Basically, I came home from work one winter day and put my things in my bedroom.  Which reeeeeeeeked of Eau de Very Cheap Perfume.  It was nauseating.  I started hunting around the room, thinking a bottle or something spilled.  Nothing was found.  I went to apologize to my roommates for the stench and discovered you could only smell it in my room.  The very next day, the smell was completely gone.  I found this weird because my sister broke a bottle of perfume in my dorm bathroom and though I scrubbed the tile down about 90,569,023,252 times, the smell was extremely overpowering for a couple of weeks and you could smell it all the way down the hall.  We did ask my landlord who lived below us but he knew nothing about it.

Smells are weird.  Whatever I make for dinner smells the most strongly in the corner of our stairs (the ones going to the upstairs).  No idea why, especially since the ceiling is really high there; I'd think they'd go up more.  When I use the crock pot for dinner, it'll smell like roast/casserole/whatever for the whole next day right in that corner.  And my bathroom towels always smell like onions within a couple days of getting them out.  Only the ones hanging on one wall.  Not the other towel rack or the ones folded on the shelves.

[ica171]

Also, What Was That Smell?

I have this one listed in the Ghost Story thread.  Basically, I came home from work one winter day and put my things in my bedroom.  Which reeeeeeeeked of Eau de Very Cheap Perfume.  It was nauseating.  I started hunting around the room, thinking a bottle or something spilled.  Nothing was found.  I went to apologize to my roommates for the stench and discovered you could only smell it in my room.  The very next day, the smell was completely gone.  I found this weird because my sister broke a bottle of perfume in my dorm bathroom and though I scrubbed the tile down about 90,569,023,252 times, the smell was extremely overpowering for a couple of weeks and you could smell it all the way down the hall.  We did ask my landlord who lived below us but he knew nothing about it.

I'm pretty sure this is also posted in the ghost story thread, but I've had similar experiences.  One was in the house my great-grandfather built, which is sadly gone now.  I lived there alone for a while and besides hearing things and feeling something touch me, I once smelled a very strong pine smell.  Not like pine cleaner, but like a real pine tree--my family owned a nursery for 80-some years so it was perfectly at home there, but the trees were pretty far away from my kitchen.  I wondered if it might be pine needles in the vents, but I only smelled it once or twice and it wasn't when the heat was on. 

After my grandfather died (I was living in the same house) I would smell a very strong scent of vanilla pipe tobacco.  He was on oxygen for the last few years of his life so he hadn't smoked in a long time and this wasn't stale tobacco smell, this was a freshly lit pipe.  Sometimes I smelled it in that house, but sometimes I smelled it outside or in houses that I lived in.  I was always the only one that smelled it and it was a very strong unmistakable scent.  I smell it less and less now; I wish it came more often because whether it's Grandpa or not it makes me feel better.

[sbtier]

Also, What Was That Smell?

I have this one listed in the Ghost Story thread.  Basically, I came home from work one winter day and put my things in my bedroom.  Which reeeeeeeeked of Eau de Very Cheap Perfume.  It was nauseating.  I started hunting around the room, thinking a bottle or something spilled.  Nothing was found.  I went to apologize to my roommates for the stench and discovered you could only smell it in my room.  The very next day, the smell was completely gone.  I found this weird because my sister broke a bottle of perfume in my dorm bathroom and though I scrubbed the tile down about 90,569,023,252 times, the smell was extremely overpowering for a couple of weeks and you could smell it all the way down the hall.  We did ask my landlord who lived below us but he knew nothing about it.

Do you get migraines?  They can cause you to smell things that aren't there.  Mine are chlorine and smoke.  People in my migraine support group report a wide variety of different phantom smells.

[Brentwood]

Well...this was in 1980, and my parents lived in the house until 1992, so I suspect that someone would have noticed them by then.

Also, I don't know how they would have gotten outside. I specifically set them on the porch railing, and the porch was entirely screened in on 3 sides and attached to the house on the other.

My guess would be that a bird took them, what do you think about that? Magpies like shiny things (were they metal?) so could have seen it and flown in - unless you faced that side from the pool 100% of the time?

There would have been no way to for a bird to get into the porch without tearing the screen. (To answer your question, the glasses were plastic-framed.)

[ica171]

Well...this was in 1980, and my parents lived in the house until 1992, so I suspect that someone would have noticed them by then.

Also, I don't know how they would have gotten outside. I specifically set them on the porch railing, and the porch was entirely screened in on 3 sides and attached to the house on the other.

My guess would be that a bird took them, what do you think about that? Magpies like shiny things (were they metal?) so could have seen it and flown in - unless you faced that side from the pool 100% of the time?

There would have been no way to for a bird to get into the porch without tearing the screen. (To answer your question, the glasses were plastic-framed.)

I would say that if they were really really tiny they could have fallen between a crack in the flooring, but I'm going to guess that plastic-framed glasses from 1980 weren't that small.

[blue2000]

Also, What Was That Smell?

I have this one listed in the Ghost Story thread.  Basically, I came home from work one winter day and put my things in my bedroom.  Which reeeeeeeeked of Eau de Very Cheap Perfume.  It was nauseating.  I started hunting around the room, thinking a bottle or something spilled.  Nothing was found.  I went to apologize to my roommates for the stench and discovered you could only smell it in my room.  The very next day, the smell was completely gone.  I found this weird because my sister broke a bottle of perfume in my dorm bathroom and though I scrubbed the tile down about 90,569,023,252 times, the smell was extremely overpowering for a couple of weeks and you could smell it all the way down the hall.  We did ask my landlord who lived below us but he knew nothing about it.

Do you get migraines?  They can cause you to smell things that aren't there.  Mine are chlorine and smoke.  People in my migraine support group report a wide variety of different phantom smells.

Really?? I didn't know that!

That may explain why I smell perfume sometimes. I'm allergic to some scents, so I don't have much of anything like that in the house.

[Brentwood]

Well...this was in 1980, and my parents lived in the house until 1992, so I suspect that someone would have noticed them by then.

Also, I don't know how they would have gotten outside. I specifically set them on the porch railing, and the porch was entirely screened in on 3 sides and attached to the house on the other.

My guess would be that a bird took them, what do you think about that? Magpies like shiny things (were they metal?) so could have seen it and flown in - unless you faced that side from the pool 100% of the time?

There would have been no way to for a bird to get into the porch without tearing the screen. (To answer your question, the glasses were plastic-framed.)

I would say that if they were really really tiny they could have fallen between a crack in the flooring, but I'm going to guess that plastic-framed glasses from 1980 weren't that small.

They weren't huge, but no, the cracks were too close together for that - though I DID drop my confirmation ring down there and my dad had to lift a floor board to get it out.

[TychaBrahe]

Where do my salad forks go to?  And why do I have so many butter knives?  Are the forks converting to butter knives in secret?

Well, the paperclip-clothes hanger thing was too well known, so they evolved new camouflage.

[TychaBrahe]

I was relaying this story in the company of my mother and she said that she remembers me insisting that there was a man in my room reading a book, but that she thought I was dreaming or something about it.

It could have been sleep paralysis, where your body turns off before your brain does and it causes some strong hallucinations. Of course, usually during this you can't speak or move.

I've experienced sleep paralysis and it, literally, is the scariest thing I have ever experienced.  I get a little freaked out thinking about it.  I don't know if this is unique to me or if it's a more common experience.  If it's the former though, she would not have peacefully returned to sleep.

I had that once.  I was staying at college over the summer, and staying in an apartment intended for four people.  My roommate and I had lucked out, as we were the only two staying, so we each got our own room.  Then she got very depressed and committed herself, so I was alone.

One night I "woke up" aware that there was a man in the apartment.  I couldn't move or open my eyes, but I knew he was coming into my room.  There was nothing I could do, and I was terrified.  Although I realize now that it was a combination of hallucination and sleep paralysis, it remains one of my most frightening experiences.

[Brentwood]

I was relaying this story in the company of my mother and she said that she remembers me insisting that there was a man in my room reading a book, but that she thought I was dreaming or something about it.

It could have been sleep paralysis, where your body turns off before your brain does and it causes some strong hallucinations. Of course, usually during this you can't speak or move.

I've experienced sleep paralysis and it, literally, is the scariest thing I have ever experienced.  I get a little freaked out thinking about it.  I don't know if this is unique to me or if it's a more common experience.  If it's the former though, she would not have peacefully returned to sleep.

I had that once.  I was staying at college over the summer, and staying in an apartment intended for four people.  My roommate and I had lucked out, as we were the only two staying, so we each got our own room.  Then she got very depressed and committed herself, so I was alone.

One night I "woke up" aware that there was a man in the apartment.  I couldn't move or open my eyes, but I knew he was coming into my room.  There was nothing I could do, and I was terrified.  Although I realize now that it was a combination of hallucination and sleep paralysis, it remains one of my most frightening experiences.

I have experienced sleep paralysis several times myself. I agree - it is one of the scariest experiences ever.

[Maggie]

I wanna know who my yellow eyed man was.

When I was little (maybe 7 or 8?) I was sitting on the curb in front of our house, basically just people watching. I was just plain bored. There was a man in a long brown coat walking up and down the street, looking confused, and he eventually came over to me and crouched down (to my eye level). He had yellow eyes... Not the white part, the iris was kinda a dark yellow color. I've never seen anyone else with that shade of eyes. I remember wondering if I should go inside to my parents, but there were lots of people around, so I didn't. First he asked me where my coat was, and why I wasn't wearing one. I told him I wasn't cold and he nodded. then he asked me where Miss Tammie lived (name changed of course) and I pointed the house out. He smiled and patted me on the head and gave me a sucker, then stood up and walked into Miss Tammie's house, without knocking or unlocking the door. he just opened it. We did NOT live in an area that people kept their doors unlocked either. I went back to watching the street, and didn't bother to eat the sucker.

I don't know how it happened, but somehow the ambulance came to the house, and they brought Miss Tammie out all covered up. (which I later realized must have meant she was dead, but it didn't occur to me at the time.) And that darned man walked out of the house, past the paramedics without anyone acknowledging him, waved at me and walked off down the street. I didn't think much of it, but later asked a bunch of neighbors if they knew who he was. Despite all of them having been gathered to watch Miss Tammie come out of the house (because that was a nosy neighborhood) NO ONE saw the man. And they claimed no one had come over to talk to me, because if they had, they 9the neighbors) would have run him off for talking to a little girl alone.

I still wonder who the heck that was... I ought o add this experience to a book, it was really weird.

The yellow-eyed demon from Supernatural?

[NutMeg]

I'm the only person I've ever heard of who has experienced non-terrifying sleep paralysis. It's probably happened five times, and each time I was not afraid. Just couldn't move.

[M-theory]

I'm the only person I've ever heard of who has experienced non-terrifying sleep paralysis. It's probably happened five times, and each time I was not afraid. Just couldn't move.

*raises hand* As I said in the recent thread on the subject, mine isn't scary, just seriously annoying.