My Paranormal Life - The Early Adult Years

So it would seem that I apparently, unintentionally, always leave many months between these posts haha! Though with the most wonderful time of the year here and the best date on the calendar only five days away, why not post it now?!
This is of course the next part in my paranormal stories mini-series and we are moving into my early adult years. As people get older most who may have had experiences as a child tend to 'grow out of it'. As I mentioned in the teen years post, things did start to slow down for me as I got older, though I had made an effort to consciously block out as much as possible due to people in my life being completely disbelieving of anything I experienced.
I did of course still have the odd unexplainable occurrence, particularly in specific areas and some of those are what I want to share today.

Check out the previous posts in this series below:
The Beginning / Childhood Experiences
The Teen Years

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At home things were quiet. Nothing special or particularly out of the ordinary often happened which I think could in part be due to the age of the houses I lived in and in part due to the non-believer also sharing the roof. 
However, there were rare occurrences surrounding my Granda's shepherd's crook. Every now and then an odd orb or two would show itself nearby and more often than not, Baker would stop what he was doing to stand and stare directly at it for seemingly no reason whatsoever.
My Granda was of course a shepherd and surrounded by dogs for the majority of his life. He always had Border Collies and at one point he also had a Lurcher. We got Baker not long after we lost Granda as he is a Border Collie Lurcher cross and saw it fitting. I like to think that Baker was visiting to meet Baker.

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In around 2015/16 I was working as a cleaner in a betting shop. My shift was early morning, I was completely alone and I obviously would lock myself in. Above the shop and to the left is a nightclub, though upon looking at images online I'm not quite sure if the nightclub comes right along the row of stores and if it is also directly above the bookmakers or not. 
Anyway, sporadically I would hear footsteps from above and not at times when anyone would still be in the nightclub. Not only that but they were few and far between - literally - as in there would be a handful of forceful foot thumps on the ceiling and then they would stop before returning a good 30 minutes plus later. It would seem that if it were a person they were walking about a meter or so, standing in that spot for quite a while and then walking back to their starting position. This would happen maybe once a month and on different days of the week at different times of the morning.

Another lone but much more strange experience while working here includes what could be assumed to be an almost full-bodied apparition. 
I was busy behind the desk dusting area and cleaning the computer and keyboards when I felt as if someone was standing at the counter waiting for attention. There couldn't be anyone there though, could there? Because I was alone, it was around 6am and the door was locked. As I slowly lifted my head I could see from my peripherals what seemed like a tall stocky but not large figure in a dark colour and once my face was up completely there was nothing there at all anymore...

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And then there was the care home. 
I started there as a cleaner during the day and also cleaned the home of the care home owners. 
After a short time, I was asked if I would like to progress on as a carer as I was so good with the residents and I trained to work night shift. 
Residential Care Home. Night Shift. Yep.
I wasn't afraid to begin with and to be fair I wasn't afraid so to say, even after the things I witnessed started to happen. From footsteps upstairs while all residents were asleep and the grandfather clock chiming once at random times despite working completely fine all day every day to weird fog-like 'apparitions' on the security camera screens, there were a whole manner of smaller occurrences that were obviously strange in themselves but nothing that I hadn't dealt with before. 
Then there would be a shout from above my head and I'd rush up to check on everyone only to find them fast asleep and not so much as a mumble under their breath. After that, I felt a weird chill in one of the upstairs corridors every time I had to walk along it and I hurried along rather than walked while doing my rounds. 
Finally, one night as I rounded the corner of the stairs approaching said corridor I saw a woman in a white nightgown heading toward me... I wondered what on Earth someone was doing out of their room at such a time of the night when in a blink they were gone. Although many of our residents were perfectly mobile, none of them could have disappeared so incredibly quickly!

We sadly lost three residents while I worked there, one of which I was rather close to.
The above happened before we lost the only person (the one I was closest to) that would have fit the appearance of the woman walking along the corridor. 

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Rounding out this post I should touch upon the point mentioned above, that I also cleaned the owners home too. This carried on while I was on night shift for a short while too. To tell the truth, I can't 100% remember everything that went on here and wish my notes had more information than just 'Margaret's House'!  It is a huge, beautiful old house of Grade II listed building and so obviously came with its own extensive history of which I would love to know but unfortunately I do not and cannot find out anything online.
Creeks on floorboards above my head, whispers and a very strange feeling in at the bottom of the stairs.
There was a door there under the stairs which I think led to a cellar, if it's the same as other houses in the area, that was always locked. Well I assume it was, I never tried the door...I just felt that it was lock and that I didn't like walking near it!

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Phew! That was a wordier-than-expected post. This summarizes the 'paranormal' experiences that stood out in my memory from my early adulthood - that is pretty much my early to mid-twenties.

Things haven't slowed down and I have many more stories to tell in the next post...

I'm guessing those reading this aren't judgemental or super skeptics but just in case you are, I am well aware that many things can be explained, and if I also mentioned every occurrence that had any chance of an explanation we'd be here for years. That's to say the things mentioned above had no obvious explanation. Don't be fooled, though I believe I also stay semi-skeptical and try to rationalize things as much as possible so I'm not spinning tales out of crumbs.

Until next time...

My Paranormal Life - The Teen Years

Oooh, apparently it's been since a full four months since I published the first part of this series of stories! I didn't mean to leave it this long between posts, but I suppose it's quite fitting to be talking about these next parts of my paranormal experiences as we approach Halloween.
To read about where it all started, pop on over to this post > My Paranormal Life - The Beginning / Childhood Experiences.

As the title suggests, this next part follows on to my pre-teen and teenage years when there were a few more different occurrences throughout the years. However, as I approached my late teens and early adulthood things seemed to slow down. At that time the people in my life were disbelieving of me when I'd talk about any odd experiences and so I assume I repressed it and actively avoided any situations where anything could happen.

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So this could have been not long before I officially became a teenager, but it was a while after the experiences I shared in my previous post so thought I'd talk about it in this one.

I grew up in Berwick Upon Tweed but my Dad's family mostly lived in Newcastle. My parents have never driven so it was always a train journey to come down, then a bus out to their house and so it often involved an overnight stay rather than a quick rush visit to return home the same day. At my Grandparents, there were 3 rooms, one a guest room and my grandparents had a room each and as a child, I'd stay with my Grandma. I guess this visit in particular I'd decided I was too old to share a room so was allowed to sleep downstairs on the sofa as long as I turned the TV and lights off before I fell asleep, as Granda had said.

While laying on the sofa watching TV I noticed a flash out of the corner of my eye! I looked up and saw what most people would describe as 'orbs' moving in a weird spiral type motion from the top of the curtains and it looked like they were accending up through the ceiling into what was my Grandma's Room. Because I got a shock, I turned the TV off and pulled my head under the covers. Remembering the light, I reached back to the lamp (one of those touch lights) and touched it to turn it off...then the 'big light' came on! Again, I got such a shock I jumped up, ran to the light switch and clicked it off when I was replied to by the radio blasting a static noise at me from the other side of the room.

I wasn't putting up with funny goings-on any longer so bolted up the stairs and slept laying on the floor of the guest room with my Mam and Dad haha!

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Moving on some years, to me being about 14/15 and I was on a day out up in Edinburgh with my friend. We weren't the biggest shoppers and I prefer to do experiences, so this ended up being my first ever visit to the famous Mary Kings Close. Having grown up interested in the paranormal and watching Most Haunted, I definitely knew the basic history of Mary Kings Close, though wasn't exactly expecting anything (being a believer who looks at most things sceptically to try and explain them first) to happen, especially not as much as what did.

The first thing happened before we were even fully down on the Close! While descending the stairs, my friend and I were first in line behind the guide, I burst out crying. Yes, I do cry a lot but I swear I had no idea how or why, it just came over me and blurted out. The guide asked if I was okay and said that there was an apparent spirit lady 'who liked to do that'...

We went through a big chunk of the tour without any more interruptions until we were in the room where the cattle and livestock used to live. Stood in a semi-circle facing the guide I was at the far right side of the group as she told us the story of the room. I was on some part of uneven floor and snapped my head around to the right when I felt a firm hand resting on my right shoulder just as the guide was pointing out the drain for animal blood below my feet. Obviously, there was no one there and I whispered to my friend to ask if was her...however, her hand was resting against my left the whole time and no one else within the group was in reach of me. I always took that as a resident spirit comforting me sensing my discomfort with animal slaughter etc.

As the tour neared its end our group was split in two to visit a smaller area. If you have heard of Mary Kings Close, you will probably know about the child spirit Annie and her room with all the toys people leave as gifts for her. Without previously knowing anything about this room, my friend and I entered and turned to each other to discuss in whispers how very cold it was in there considering it being a much smaller space than everywhere else we had been and so you would assume it would be if anything, warmer. It was uncomfortably cold though not too many other people seemed bothered. At the end of the guides talk, he explained that one of the things that people had experienced in there was a sharp drop in temperature.

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Those were my main stand out experiences from my teenage years. There were many other odd things that happened over those years from hearing bumps and bangs to seeing shadows and lights though none were more than that in each moment. 
My next post about my paranormal life gets a little more interesting as the activity gets more intense.

Thank you for reading, I'd love to hear what you have paranormally seen, heard and felt before. 
Until next time...

My Paranormal Life - The Beginning / Childhood Experiences

 

Something that I rarely discuss with anyone is my 'connection' to the paranormal. I know it's an opinionated area for many, hence the reason for not ever really saying much about it, so if you think it's a load of hooey then you can skip this post. 
I have had many experiences throughout my life and in this post, I want to share three main experiences that I can remember from my early years and childhood.

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To get into it all we may as well start at the beginning which I sadly cannot remember - but my Mam does. She remembers specifically me having conversations with someone in the corner of my bedroom. Of course, my parents couldn't see anything and didn't think it was something like an 'imaginary friend' or whatnot. When asked I replied that it was a little boy I was talking to! I think my Mam said she was a little freaked out at first, but I was evidently not phased by him and so was left to my little friendship. 

At some point, I was bought a china doll named Daniella (the closest to Danielle you can get I suppose) but I did not like her and told my Mam that her eyes scared me. According to Mam, I would hide her away in the cupboard where the little boy usually was and every time that my Mam returned her to the shelf, I would put her back there. Maybe the little boy was keeping me safe from her freaky-ness haha!

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The next experience I'm going to talk about is actually the first I can fully remember from my own mind. I would have been 6 as this happened in November of 1996 and I know that because it was the night before a particular family event. 

As some pretext, my Mam's Aunty, Aunt Lena, had been very poorly with cancer for a long while. As my Mam helped with her care, I often went too and so saw a lot of her. On the night in question, I was laying in bed getting ready to go to sleep when I was startled by the sight of my Aunt Lena. She appeared by the wall that was from the exterior of the house, walked straight past the bottom of my bed looking forward and disappeared through the adjoining wall which led into my parent's room. She was wearing her usual long white nightgown and her signature big, grey, short, curly wig and holding a red dog lead in her hand - the lead of her beloved dog Toby. After a short few moments, I remember burying my head under the covers and eventually falling asleep.

However, in the morning I came downstairs to find my Mam crying on the phone. When she came off I found out it had been the call to let us know that Aunt Lena had passed the previous night. 

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Lastly, or at least for this post anyway, was a strange sighting while out on a bike ride in the country with my friend. I'm not sure on age, but I'd hazard a guess at around 10-12 as it was during Middle School (Our Middle Schools were age Years 5-8). I'd been on a sleepover with my friend who lived further out of town in a small village and we were bike riding on the country roads during a warm summer day. We stopped at the side of the road where there was a small layby shaped area, home to some locked metal gates that led onto a stretch of trees on either side, to have a drink of juice from our flasks when I spotted an old man. He was leaning his back and one foot up against one of the trees on the left, a pipe in hand and a dog at his feet. He raised his hand to wave and seeing as my friend lived out this way I asked her, 'Do you know him?'. When I turned back to look again he had gone...though there was nowhere he could have gone so quickly as everything was open and in sight. 

Back at her house, her Dad explained he had also experienced a very similar thing in the same spot years previously.


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That brings us to the end of the first part of this series. I am well aware the majority of people out there won't believe me, will have explanations for everything or might even think I'm crazy. You are more than entitled to those opinions, but please respect that these moments in this post and the posts to come are all very real to me and you cannot imagine what other people see, hear, feel or believe. 
The people who matter believe my experiences to be real and have also had their own. Feel free to leave your own stories in the comments if you have too...
Until next time!