A room in an old hotel in a small town in Iowa.  Nothing notable about it; the furnishings are a little older than what you see in most budget accomodations, but not unreasonable.  

When walking out of the room to get a soda, you accidentally knock down a picture hanging on the wall.  The picture itself is nothing notable - just your standard hotel framed print of flowers or a landscape or whatever.  But behind where the picture was hanging, the word "THIEF" is written in six-inch greasy black letters on the wall.

Some friends and I had a house on the west side for a while.

At one point we got this great old grey cat, and not long after we took him home he developed a very strange habit.  He would sometimes just stop in the middle of the hallway, and set down facing the closet and just start meowing.  

We knew there had been a murder in the house before we moved in, but so far as we know, that happened in one of the back bedrooms, so it seemed odd that he'd pick that closet.

Sometime later, we kept noticing this date coming up, I forget exactly what the date was, I think this was in March or June.  It would come up in coversations, on calenders, events would somehow windup being set on that date.  It even showed up on the cover a book my friend had bought, it had a picture of a desk on it, and on the desk was one of those old tip-over style calaneder things, and this same date showed up in that picture.

Finally my friend pulled out some dictionary she had, and discovered that the date in question was apparently the date of an old Roman day for recognizing the dead.  She even did some digging and found an account of what was reportedly the standard ritual for cleansing a house of lingering spirits, that was usually performed on that day.  with the day actually not far off, it was decided that we'd actually perform this observance on the appointed day.

That night I was relaxing on the floor, and tried to meditate, relax and jsut see what I could feel without feleing, but it was like I had this shell around me, I couldn't feel outside myself.

My friend went through the ritual, and nothing especially odd happened really, but after that, the cat stopped his wierd behavior, and the house just felt lighter somehow.  

Very odd all around.

A well. With something moving at the bottom.

A city street with no one around. There is an empty car parked in the middle of the road that has one door open.

A public square filled with people. Everyone is walking in the same direction and in time with one another.

A mine shaft that goes straight up endlessly without breaking out of the ground.

Deleted because Pseudophedrine stole the thoughts from my head and used time manipulation to post them first.

A parking lot in front of a normal shopping center, but every time you exit the shopping center you car is always three spaces over from where you parked it.

A small store in which every time you enter, a figure quickly ducks into a back room and hurridly closes the door.

A beautiful summer day without a cloud in the sky and the sun bright overhead. A faint scent of rotting meat mixed with disenfectant catches your nose.

It's a funfair, which has been set up in a field just on the edge of town. Clowns, jugglers, rides, ghost trains, fortune tellers, the works.

If you peep outside the back of the tent with all the ageing coin-operated arcade and amusement machines in it, you'll see a little dark square formed by the backs of four tents, out of sight of the general public. And two of the carnival people are digging a hole there. They'll stop if they notice you looking, and will only start again if you go away. There seems to be a sack, or something like that, in the bottom of the hole.

A bookshelf, packed with books except for a single, open space in the middle of a row.

You check, but nothing is holding the books up on either side of it, though they don't lean at all.

_______

At the end of a hallway in your home where it branches to the left, you've started seeing a shadow off to the side, shaped like a person leaning against the wall.
You go and check, but there's nobody there. The shadow is gone. It comes back tomarrow.

_______

You're over at your best mate's house eating pizza and drinking beer. The phone begins to ring, but nobody but you can hear it.
Nobody is on the other line.
It begins to happen every time you're over.
Your friends are beginning to think you're odd.

This is a real one, it was creepy enough for me.

A small town in Iowa, literally a few minutes off of I-80.

10 a.m.

A small cluster of houses, peeling paint on their white walls.  In the center of town is a small general store with two empty rocking chairs (no shit!) next to a small folding table upon which is a half finished game of checkers.  There are no cars parked anywhere.

There is no movement in the town as you drive past these few buildings, but as you pass the "general store," looking down the road to your left is a small evangelical church with the sun shining directly onto its porch, and in that patch of sun that goes from the steeple to the middle of the street is about 500 sleeping cats.

All laying around, some aren't sleeping, but they are all fat and happy, sleeping in this patch of sun.

Something was really wrong about it.  We went back to to they highway and just peed next to the on-ramp.

Quote from: joewolzThis is a real one, it was creepy enough for me.

The middle one of mine actually happened to my father.

Quote from: Thanatos02The middle one of mine actually happened to my father.

All of mine are personal experiences, if a bit dramatized.  Sometimes truth really is stranger than fiction.

The roads here are really strange too.  they just don't seem to follow the normal lays of basic geometry.  

I've started walking down a road that looked to go straight and connect right to another street I was trying to get to, and then somehow in the dark it curves around and leaves me right back on the road I started from without ever seeming to hit a turn.

Normally I'm a pretty good natural navigator, but I still have trouble sometimes trying to pin down what the fastest route to any given place will be, and I've even been given bizarre routes in Google Maps and the like.

You go to pick up your child from preschool and when he runs to get his things from the cubby marked Stephen. Trouble is, you named him Jared after your father. When you tell him he got the wrong things, he reacts as if you're joking. If you press it, he insists his name is Stephen and starts to cry uncontrollably and fearfully.

I love threads like this. Good idea, Pundit.

The baby never cries.

Never.

Quote from: BrimshackThe baby never cries.

Never.

It just looks at everything.

Best thread evar!!
Keep it up ppl.

You're somewhere you have never been to, but somehow you get this strange sensation of dejavu, as if you've been there before, and yet you're completely sure this is your first time there.