Friday Fun: SpoOooOoky Halloween!

[Helen Griffiths {Capgemini}]

I've been in two minds about what I should do for my Halloween themed Friday Fun. I have a love for true crime (if you've seen any posts lately about 'things i'm reading' or similar, i've most likely commented (if you want books / podcast recommendations let me know!)) but one thing I don't necessarily like (because I just don't know) is the paranormal.

I never started my career in IT - far from it. When I finished college, I didn't know what I wanted to do when it came to my career and my Mom was pushing me to give up my weekend job in a local department store for full time work. After numerous interviews, I got a job at a local hotel as a receptionist. The hotel is called Madeley Court and dates back to the 16th Century, so as you can imagine you get asked questions of the sp🎃🎃ky kind. I’ll be honest, things happened. There are two occasions that spring to mind.

1.  I was delivering newspapers in the morning to the top floor of the old manor house. We’d had a wedding take place the previous evening, and according to the night porters most of the people staying had gone to bed in the early hours, so at 7am I never expected to see anyone around. As I went to pop a newspaper under the door of one of the rooms, there was a noise behind me that sounded like someone running up the corridor and as I turned it looked like a shadow moving to hide behind the doorframe. I went to look, there was no one there. I’ve never run down a 40+ stepped old wooden, wonky, uneven, spiral-staircase-with-a-rope-banister-that-felt-completely-useless-in-the-moment so fast in all my life. So I could keep my sanity, I consoled myself with the fact the pipework in the old building was old, and I mean OOOLD. It was that creaking. Yeah, that’s what it was. I never went to re-check.
2. We ran corporate events, and the one day we put on a ‘paranormal’ evening where we had a psychic come along. It was a small event, and the attendees moved through the hotel and over to the ‘Mill’ (where most events were held, including my Uncle’s wedding back in the 90’s) where the event would end. Again, it’s not my thing, so I decided to stay out of what they were doing and just milled about to guide them back to the main building once the event was over. I’d locked all the doors on my way up to the main room and as I was standing in the corner watching what was going on, the doors to the main room at the top of the staircase slammed. They were already shut. Again, for sanity’s sake, I consoled myself this time with the fact the building is old and the main door downstairs has a big gap underneath it that the wind could easily get under and cause the doors to open and shut. That’s my reasoning to what happened, and I’m sticking with it 🤣

Luckily, since moving into IT, nothing like the above has happened since. Interested to hear your sp👻👻ky happenings…and, Happy Halloweeeeeeeeeeen 👻🎃🧛🏻‍♂️🧛🏻‍♀️🧙🏻‍♂️🧙🏻‍♀️

[Flavien Gache]

/*Double post, could you delete this please ?

Thanks and sorry. */

[Esther Strom]

Eeeeeeeeeek. I really dislike spooky stuff. I don't like being scared, although I know some people do. Thankfully, I've never had a real paranormal encounter, just the standard creaky buildings. 

I do have kind of a fun story, though. I was a theater kid all through school, and the cast party of my high school's senior play ended up watching movies all night in someone's sunroom (glassed walls all around.) At about 2 AM, we were on The Shining. We were a big group, and no one noticed when Cara and Nikki (sisters, although not twins) left the room.

Y'all can guess where this is going, right?

Right at the "redrum" moment, the backyard floodlight flashed onto two lookalike girls standing right outside the window, and then immediately turned back off. 👭

It's a good thing the play was over at that point, because there was so much screaming I don't think any of us could talk the next day.

😱

[Brittany Joiner]

This is hilarious haha

[Helen Griffiths {Capgemini}]

LOVE THIS! Reminds me of the time I was around my friends house and it was the first time I watched Scream. You know at the very beginning when you first see him? My friends electricity cut out at that very moment. I ran faster then I could imagine outside and back to my house. Her parents thought it was hilarious, me? Not so much...

[Jack Brickey]

LOL...that would certainly cause one to jump out of their seats. That was one of my favorite scary movies for sure!

[Flavien Gache]

The first thing I was very afraid of was the place where my mom worked when I was young. It was a furniture company based on the third floor of a deserted eight-story building of the 1900s with 500 meter square floors with very high ceilings. When entering the floor, you were surrounded by dozens of couches, oak chairs, flowered sofas, cabinets, cupboards and mahogany wardrobes all around you. 

My mom used to took me with her on the Wednesday afternoon. As a young kid, when I walked through the door, I felt crushed both by the high ceiling and the furnitures in that giant room that looked more liked a mazed created by a crazy antique dealer than a furniture store. I used to grab my mom's hand a little stronger while walking through the exhibit to her office, on the other side of the building as I always feared something was about to jump on me from nowhere. I always felt some sort of presence in there.
Usually I would stay I the office the whole afternoon, drawing calmly or reading.

One day, I was reading a comic when I felt the urge to go to the bathroom. One problem : the bathroom was on the opposite side of the building. I needed to cross the whole exhibit to go there. I would normally beg my mom to escort me there but that day she was on the phone and looked quite busy. So I decided to go alone.

I managed to rush to the toilets without many problems, maybe because I was more focused on my urges than on the shadows moving around me. The blue light of november was filtering through the dirty windows as I was walking between the flowered couches and rattan chairs. It was late so the lights were out and the other vendors who would normally walk around with clients were gone (of course...).

When I had to go back to the office however, I had nothing to focus on now other than my fear of the dark and the bizarre noises. As I said before it was a very old building so you can imagine the plumbing was not in a very good condition. The combination of the noises (water running through rotten pipes) and shadows moving through the high windows made me believe I was not alone on the floor and my heart began to pump a little faster.

I started to walk really fast to reach the other side of the building, but as the clumsy little kid I was, i tripped on a carpet and sprawled across the floor. I think some sort of cushion fell on me which caused me to panic a little bit more. As I heard another freaky pipe noise starting again, I stood up yelling and started to run across the floor. The echo of both my steps and my voice made me freak even more : it gave me the impression somebody was running behind me through the exhibit.

Aaaaanyway I reached my mother's office yelling a bit and I think i never ever ever ever went to the toilets when the exhibit was empty and the lights were out.

I think there is no mystery other than a coward kid in that story. Although I always kept the impression that this huge room never was empty to begin with.

In my memory it feel like this :

[Helen Griffiths {Capgemini}]

As I was reading your story (which is excellently written!) I imagined it would look like that, with some small office off one of the corridors. Places of nightmares!

[Esther Strom]

Yes, @Flavien Gache , your writing is very evocative! I'm now seriously creeped out!

[Jack Brickey]

i'm not going near that place. a big nope.

[Flavien Gache]

It would be hard to go there : to add to the legend, the place burned down about twenty years ago.

Nothing was build in its place. It is still today only ruins of the old building with trees and vegetation growing chaotically.

[Veronique DUFOUR]

@Flavien Gache What is the name of this place?

[Flavien Gache]

Well I can give you the Gmaps location here. But you can't see anything since the store/factory was inside this giant building at the end of this dead end.

I tried to look from another location, across the river on top of a road overhanging here.

Behind the truck you can see on the right part the ruins of the old building (which remains quite spooky even though it's only gmap ahah). On the left, at one point, there was this giant building but now you can only encounter vegetation.

[Dave Liao]

I used to hit up this one McDonald's late nights (think 3am) for post-party bites. This particular McDonald's was inside an old building, probably built in the early 1900's.

A staffer told me that the building used to be a funeral home, and that staff occasionally heard strange noises in the basement, where their freezers are. Once someone heard speaking/voices, yet they were alone on the floor.

Anyways, that's my fast food Halloween story! That McDonald's closed about 10 years ago, FYI.

[Helen Griffiths {Capgemini}]

Voices?! Oh no. Would not eat at that McD's if you paid me (when it was open of course!)

[Monique vdB]

@Dave Liao I went to graduate school in a building that used to be a funeral home. In the back, instead of stairs, there was a giant two-story ramp that a casket on wheels could fit on. And one of the rooms had a sloped floor with a drain in the center.

Spooky!

[Brittany Joiner]

These are great. I don't really have any specific stories, but if I just say "2020", doesn't that give you enough chills?

[Helen Griffiths {Capgemini}]

The worst, and it continues. There's no getting away from it. 

The clocks went back an hour in the UK last weekend, who wants an extra hour of 2020?! Not me...!

[Monique vdB]

Tempted by this shirt....

[Veronique DUFOUR]

Yes !!!

[Sharon Helms]

2020, ugh yes... a spooky story in itself. This is US-centric, but my Halloween costume this year (for a Zoom party) was "Rejected Ballot" -- another scary story...

[Dean de Tongre]

Hahaha... too funny 

[Daniel Ebers]

Long time ago we had one encounter that comes to my mind but it is not as exciting as yours, unfortunately.

In a very dark and foggy night (we literally could not see the house next to ours!) we noticed somebody whistle. First it was some kind of a rather quiet noise but then it got louder.
After some time you even could notice it in the backyard.
Things got creepy as the whistle finally came out of the cellar.

The next day it turned out it was the neighbour - an old lovely lady searching for her cat. I have never noticed her calling her cats by a whistle, but why not!
To be honest - today I believe the strange sound was only caused (or at least supported) by the weather conditions that night.
👻

[Helen Griffiths {Capgemini}]

What was your neighbour doing in your cellar?! How did she get in there?! 😄

[Daniel Ebers]

Back then she lived upstairs and we shared one cellar. So it was okay she walked around there accompanied by a Dolby Surround whistle ... but strange! 

[John Funk]

When I was in high school my parents owned a florist, and I often worked there delivering flowers.

Part of the job was delivering flowers to funeral homes, of course. But most of the funeral homes didn't want you bringing in the flowers through the front door. Sometimes you left them inside a side door or in a spare room in the back. 

At one funeral home, you brought them in through a side door in the garage. You had to weave your way around the hearses and leave the flowers by the back door going into the funeral home. Also, coffins were stacked on end across the back wall that you had to walk in front of. 

Bringing flowers in by yourself was little fun. But when you had to deliver at night or after dark, it was NO FUN at all.  My head was always on a swivel going in and out of there!!  :-)

[Helen Griffiths {Capgemini}]

Oh gosh! It's definitely worse when your mind is playing tricks on you and you're more sensitive to ANY noise. I'm like that when i'm in the house by myself. Any sort of noise and i've got to find the source - whether I like the consequences or not 🕵🏻‍♀️

[Veronique DUFOUR]

It's not scary, but when I was in elementary school, I rented the film Creepshow scripted by Stephen King and watched it with a friend of mine in the basement of my parents' house. It scared me a lot because I avoided the basement for about a month. My mother likes to remind me of this, more than 30 years after this event.
A few years later during high school, I read my first Stephen King book, Different Seasons and since then I still haven't tired of reading his books. My interest in this author is not linked to the film, I only discovered much later, after reading Different Seasons that it was he who scripted this film.

[Helen Griffiths {Capgemini}]

My friend used to think it was hilarious to make me watch horror films when I was a teenager. Jeepers creepers still gives me the creeps. My sister lives about 20 miles from me and depending on which way I come home, there are fields. I kid you not, I do not look into the fields. I'm 33. This is nearly 20 years of torture. Walking somewhere in the dark? I'm scooting on as fast as I can without trying to make it look too obvious. Apparently he comes every 23 years...it's nearly time 🏃🏻‍♀️💨

[Esther Strom]

It doesn't matter how old you get, things like that stick with you. I'm 48, and to this day I've never rewatched The Shining.

[Veronique DUFOUR]

REDRUM

[Matt Doar]

I've had a few moments where for one reason or another I could feel the hair on the back of my neck standing up. A very strange feeling indeed!

[Jack Brickey]

yep, ghosts in the room for sure.

[Liam Green]

I've never really been a Halloween fan. My birthday is the day before (so today!) and I've always thought that it should be about me, not others 🤣 ...nothing to do with me being scared by any film scarier than Hocus Pocus honestly!!

What was that noise...😂🎃🎃🧙‍♀️

[Esther Strom]

Happy Birthday!

[Monique vdB]

Happy birthday @Liam Green!!! 

[Dave Liao]

Happy birthday Liam! wooooo

[Helen Griffiths {Capgemini}]

Happy belated birthday for Friday! 

[Alexander Pappert]

Happy Halloween

[Sven Cipido]

So in my early years (more then 20 years ago :-)) I read a lot about tarrot, fortune telling and more stuff like that. I even had a few decks of tarrot cards.

So at a certain moment we had a weekend around end of October with the Scouts and I took one deck with me and during the evening we decide to play with it. Me as the fortune teller. So I went to another room and everyone came in one by one. We laid the cards and I just told them something that I supposed to read in the cards (I was already a good story teller)

At certain moment our leader came in, we did like everyone else. While telling my story, I told him within a year you going to marry your girlfriend. He went silent, a little white and was stunned.
After a few minutes he told me he had proposed her, and indeed the week before they had set a date for their wedding in more or less 7 months from that weekend on. They didn't told everyone as they where going to tell their parents about it the next week. He asked me to keep it silent.
He said I was good at it, while I just told it for fun, because I knew they where already together for I think it was 6 years. So was it just luck or could I really read the cards? Who knows :-D

[Ollie Guan]

Happy Halloween and Happy Birthday!

[Veronique DUFOUR]

Nice !

[Brant Schroeder]

You know what is really scary is how much candy my kids got and how much we have left over.  

[Esther Strom]

It's scary how much candy I ate last weekend, and I don't even have kids 😅