These were the days of slam-door trains and compartmentalised carriages. Like many commuters, my mother had a preferred compartment, which she shared with her “train buddies” – an unlikely band of prim secretaries, wispy academics and well-fed city gents who scratched and farted behind their newspapers. Despite their disparate natures this was their compartment and they all loyally saved each others’ seats on both outbound and return journeys.

At the time my mother was a young liberal with a head full of ideas and a spirit entirely unbroken by years of office drudgery. She regularly worked long hours, skipping lunch then belting across London to catch the last train back to Sussex. Unsurprisingly, once she’d greeted her train buddies and kicked off her shoes, she was generally asleep before the train left Victoria Station.

One rainy night, on the train home from London, my mother had the oddest dream.

She dreamt she was in total darkness – upright but somehow dangling, with a fresh breeze on her skin and whispering all around her. She couldn’t move much, just hung there limply – for some reason this didn’t frighten her and she began to realise she was in motion.

The darkness ahead of her broke up into lighter patches and soon she found herself emerging from a thick line of trees into an open field under a rain-soaked sky – still hanging in the air, a couple of feet above the dewy grass, quietly becoming soggy with rain.

My mother looked around herself wondering, with that absent, semi-aware dream-sense, about how odd dreams were in general.

Then she heard a noise and fixed her gaze on the other end of the field. Which is when she saw the train.

Her train.

A long dark bar lit with carriages, shuttling from left to right, parallel to the line of trees form which she’d just emerged.

My mother thought something like, How curious. This must be an actual field I see every day from the train and I’ve never consciously realised it.

And with that thought, she started moving forwards at an increasing, impossible speed.

Her hair whipped out behind her and the grass slapped damply against her stockinged toes with a fast, memorable fapp-fapp-fapp noise. The side of the speeding train grew larger and larger in her field of vision, until she was sure she was going to be squished against it – and then she was somehow being delivered gently onto the train – she remembers very clearly landing daintily on the lip of an end-carriage door.

And then she was inside the train – in a corridor outside some compartments.

Some moments later, and then only after some fierce self-pinching, my mother realised three things:

1. She was awake.
2. She was soaking wet.
3. She was shoeless.

Sheepishly she found her usual compartment and sidled into it to find her compartment buddies gaping at her. Where have you been? They demanded. Apparently at some point during the journey, my shoeless, previously deep-asleep mother had disappeared from the snug compartment.

Without any of her six companions noticing.

Nominally my mother puts this all down to sleepwalking into the corridor and leaning out of the window. Once when she was a young teen she awoke, fully dressed in school uniform, outside her school gates at five in the morning.

“But,” she will tell you at any of her dinner parties to this day, “That doesn’t explain the wet grass on my feet.”

I have no idea if that last part is true or not. But I have met two of her erstwhile train buddies who swear up and down to the meat of this story.

*

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We had got past the drunken snog stage, I had stayed over at her a couple of nights (nothing terribly exciting had happened, but it was almost certainly going to be a matter of time), and just as we had moved into the ‘are you telling people we’re going out? Because I’m sort of telling people we’re going out’ sort of stage, I remembered I had to go back home to Cornwall for a week.

Now possibly I should have bothered to call, or this whole thing wouldn’t have happened, but I got distracted (let’s say I didn’t want to use the home phone with my parents high-fiving in the background) and didn’t. Anyway, it was only a week, and the first thing I did when I got back was call DG’s home, where one of her housemates picked up.

Hello! said housemate gaily, how was the cinema last night, did you enjoy The Crow/Batman Returns/Whatever It Was (bear in mind this was hundreds of years ago, and I was in a sort of indie/goth phase).

Erm, I said, I didn’t go to the cinema last night. Oh, said housemate, slightly confused. Anyway, your laryngitis sounds better.

? I said.

When I finally got hold of DB, it turned out she had been phoned every night I was away, by someone pretending to be me, and using laryngitis as an excuse for sounding not-quite-right. The phone calls had been long, and loving, and had covered a wide range of topics, and DG had loved hearing about the funny things I had got up to while I was home in Cornwall. Not that any of these things had sounded that funny later, but it was the way Fake Me had told them, apparently. When I came back, the phone calls ceased, and neither of use were ever able to work out who, in the Venn diagram of our mutual friends, was mentule enough to have done this.

Our relationship bimbled on for a few months, then eventually petered out, due at least partially to the fact that I was a bit rubbish at stuff like, you know, actually phoning to express some kind of affection while I was away. The really sad thing about it, however, was that whole time I had the suspicion Fake Me was just a little bit better as a boyfriend than Real Me.

I never did find out who it was who had called her while I was away, although after we broke up, she did start going out with someone who, now I think about it, was a mutual friend. He was a nice chap though, and they seemed very happy, so if it was him, it probably all worked out for the best. Maybe they even got a slightly odd blogpost out of it.

*

This creepy tale is from that James chap of Blue Cat infamy. He also done wrote a PROPER CURIOUS BOOK called The Cabinet of Curiosities – you should read it, it’s right spookles, and very, very good.

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Brrring. Brrrring.

Figuring out how to book tickets for Inception on the Odeon website was a harrowing, mystifying experience. Come back, Accessible Odeon, we miss you.

Shame on you, Odeon, for taking legal action against an accessible version of your site, then pledging to improve your user experience. Ten years ago. We’re still waiting.

I protested but, after my mum pretty much wrote a job application for me and took me to the interview, I decided that there was no way out. I totally wasted the time of those poor people at Sainsbury’s that day but decided then and there that, if I had to get a job, it would be somewhere I actually wanted to work. After that, I ended up with a shelf-stacking/till trainee job at WH Smith and a rather nice 25% staff discount. I tell you, my CD and video collection rather spiralled out of control over the next few years.

I stayed in that job throughout many years of further and higher education, and learned how to do pretty much every task in the store. I have many fond memories of the place and the people I met there. The uniform may have been crappy, but fun times were had and I obtained some interesting tales to tell. Some stories stand out more than others though, and my encounter with a minor celebrity one day has stayed with me ever since.

It was the early 1990s. I forget which year, but I was probably doing an art foundation course, or back home for the holidays during my first year at university. Either way, I was working upstairs in the stationery department in WH Smith on a quiet weekday morning when, all of a sudden, the assistant manager rushed up to me and said there was something urgent he needed my help with.

We raced down the stairs and he kept far enough ahead of me that I was unable to ask what this was all about. Covering for someone on the front tills who needed a break perhaps? Why would it be this urgent?

We reached the front doors of the shop and then he hit me with it:

“This is Peter Duncan. He needs to throw you over his shoulder for a photo/”

Er, what?

In front of me stood the ex-Blue Peter presenter, dressed as a viking, looking just as perturbed by the situation as I was. Duncan is not a tall chap and, despite being short myself, I am (and was) not the lightest of women. How on earth was this going to work and, more to the point, why? I didn’t get a chance to ask questions, and the rest of the incident is now a bit of a blur to me. Suffice to say
that it went as badly as both of us feared it would.

Afterwards I found out that Duncan was appearing in Erik The Viking at the local theatre. I also found out that I was the only young female member of staff in the store that morning, hence my selection for the task.

After the shame subsided, I told my friends about what happened and shared the story of meeting someone who I’d watched on television nearly every week in the early 1980s.

Sadly, they didn’t believe me as the local rag never printed the photograph. I always wondered just how bad it was.

*

This disturbing account was submitted by Lori Smith who does various impressive things, including writing for Bitchbuzz but – spookily – rarely wears lipstick.

Brr.

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Watch out for false Vikings.

Women eh?

{Via}

To get to the field, you had to walk along a path then through a bit of woodland, but because we lived in a Nice Area and it was the 1990s, this was deemed perfectly safe.

I can’t remember how long we’d been out, but at some point we noticed a man in a silver car loitering at the far side of the field (which was deserted apart from us) and I began to feel a bit uneasy; when I asked my sister about the event whilst writing this post she said I’d thought the man had been looking at me. We thought it best to go home at this point, so headed back towards the opening in the woodland.

As we were walking back, the car started to move in our direction, and by the time we were half way back through the woods it had pulled up across the opening.

So we ran.

That’s as far as my memory goes, but apparently our mother had said we’d done the right thing by legging it, and she was probably right. Back then, I didn’t know anything about the sinister world of child molesters; to me, all kidnappers wanted was to hold the child captive until their parents came up with the ransom money.

This was what I thought every time we had to watch a video in school about not ever going home with strangers – I had literally no idea that paedophiles existed, let alone that they were a real and palpable danger (incidentally, I was always slightly in awe of how the kidnappers seemed to know the child‘s name, e.g. “Ria, your mum can‘t pick you up today so she‘s asked me to take you home instead“ – well, ok, if you know my name you must be legit).

I don’t think it’s like that anymore, and this is based on one particular anecdote told to my ex-boyfriend by his boss following a weekend spent with his extended family. He and his nephew (who I believe was about seven years old) were having a conversation during which he suggested that kids today don’t know how easy they’ve got it. His nephew strongly disagreed with this statement, which surprised my ex’s boss.

“But you’re seven,” said ex’s boss. “What have you possibly got to worry about?” And with a face as serious as death itself, the nephew replied: “Paedophiles.”

Some people might think this knowledge at such a young age is a sign of Broken Britain, but I think it’s a good thing. If I’d have known exactly what could have been in store for my sister and me that day in the field, I’d have run a lot fucking faster.

*

This worrying anecdote was brought to you by the fabulous Ria Blagburn, who writes about nice, wholesome things at the blog About Your Dress.

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Don’t talk to strangers.

About five years ago I was working in a pub back home. It’s a converted church and was rumoured to be haunted. Behind the top bar – which was rarely visited by people – and in front of the stained glass window was a fairly nondescript-looking wooden cross. It was the cross that was meant to be haunted and we were told we weren’t to move it. That was until we got some cocky relief managers in from Manchester.

They decided to put the cross to where other people could see it. I didn’t touch the cross. I only saw them do it.

The next day I was due to work again at 6pm. That morning I woke up gradually, vaguely aware of a persistent pain in my wrists. I attempted to ignore it but eventually woke myself up enough to try and figure out why I hurt so much. I assumed I’d slept funny.

But how can you sleep funny on both wrists and both ankles? When I got out of bed I discovered I could barely walk. I could also barely lift. My ankles and wrists were nothing but pain. I hobbled down the stairs and called my mother, a nurse, at work in a panic. She was baffled. I was freaked.

Hours later and the pain had barely subsided. Luckily a friend who also worked at the pub had happened to call and she offered to cover my shift for me – useful seeing as I didn’t much fancy trying to explain to my manager what had happened. The pain slowly faded over the course of the day and it’s never happened again. There’s probably a reason. I just don’t know it.

*

This disquieting account was related by the pale and interesting Catherine Gee who, when she’s not writing for most of the papers you read, immerses herself in musics, films, retro funtimes, weird stuff and geekery. You should follow her on Twitter.

OR ELSE.

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Sweet dreams.

We’d recline on the grass drinking cheap scrumpy, eating baguettes dipped in hummus, and responsibly enjoying modest amounts of marijuana. Sometimes we’d stare glassily at the lights and wheels of the funfair that visited in the summer. Or we’d stumble across the river to The Old Trout, erstwhile venue for such legends as Pop Will Eat Itself and Half-Man-Half-Biscuit (before our time, however).

One particular evening a couple of us enjoyed ourselves a little too much, and awoke – cold, hayfevery and in total darkness – still in the Brocas.

It was 2am.

We didn’t live nearby, or drive, and the last trains home were long gone. Stiffly we got to our feet and decided to persuade our friend Dermot, who lived in Windsor proper, to put us up in exchange for our last joint.

Eton Bridge was wreathed in mist, with tightly-packed moored yachts and boats bumping sleepily against each other on the river. Not a soul was in sight and all was silence. Hunched against the cold we made our way through town in the eerie stillness without seeing another soul.

We were almost at Dermot’s front door when I realised I didn’t have the dope on me. I must have dropped it in the Brocas.

This was disastrous – we’d already hit up Dermot for impromptu accommodation a couple of times this month. He was grumpy at the best of times and there was no way he’d oblige without at least the promise of a joint.

So we walked back to the Brocas. A couple of times on the way down we thought we heard following footsteps, but couldn’t see anyone. We crossed the bridge and saw the moored boats again. By the time we got back to the meadow we were dismayed to find it was actually darker now. I couldn’t even make out the bank of the river, never mind locate where we’d been sitting.

So no one held out much hope when I shuffled blindly into what I hoped was the field with my hands held out in front of me.

I walked straight on. Then turned vaguely left. Then walked some more. Then spread my hands, bent down and ran them through the grass.

And found the dope.

This was incredible luck. But somehow, in our sleepy, post-stoned minds, rather than encourage us, it creeped us out. A feeling that intensified when we crossed the bridge we’d left just minutes before, and saw that all of the boats – twenty or thirty at least – had been released from their moorings and were floating downriver, bobbing and crashing together all the way.

Seized by the willies we ran to Dermot’s. We scuttled through the streets which, having been utterly still minutes before, were now buffeted by a series of sudden breezes that sent clumps of mist scudding across our paths, obscuring our vision.

By the time we arrived at Dermot’s we were wild-eyed and gibbering about being chased by unnameable Lovecraftian terrors. Dermot accepted the joint in bad grace and left us to sleep on the linoleum of his kitchen floor, with aprons and tea towels as blankets.

Lovecraftian terrors? Unlikely. Mild dope-induced psychosis? Probably. Some prankster unmooring boats in the middle of the night? Almost certainly.

But what about my apparent bat-like in-built sonar for dope? Well, that’s not for me to say.

Either way, we never stayed at Dermot’s again. I wish I could say that we’d learnt our lesson about staying in Windsor after hours, but that’s another story for another time.

*

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Don’t bogart that joint, now.

I say it was in the south of France, which may conjure up images of sun-baked terraces, chirruping cicadas and fields of lavender.

This house wasn’t like that.

It was quite high up in the hills, but that didn’t really fully explain why it was so cold inside and so misty outside. Its grounds stretched away to the front, punctuated with ornamental lakes, one of which had its own artificial island. Behind the house ran an ancient trackway, part of the Way of St James, the pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela.

I was working in England at the time, but I’d sporadically had the impression from my parents that they weren’t enjoying their stay there much. A rambling house with ornamental lakes sounded fabulously romantic to me, though, so I made arrangements to join my Mum and Dad – along with my brother – there for the last night of house-sitting, before they returned to their own home a few miles away.

Going to bed that evening, I began to understand why my parents hadn’t been so keen on the place. The stone walls in the bedroom were very damp, and the damp soaked into the pillow, so I had to move the bed away from the wall. Then later, after I’d put the light out, the thudding started. Regular thuds coming from the middle of the room, like books being dropped from a height. I put the light on, but there was nothing there. When the light went off, the thudding started again.

I must have mentioned this at breakfast the next morning, because my brother, who’d been sleeping in the next room, said he’d had a strange experience too. He’d woken up during the night with a strong sensation that the ceiling was just above his face. Of course when he put the light on, the ceiling was just where it had been when he went to bed.

After breakfast I went back upstairs to brush my teeth at the basin in the bedroom. While thus occupied, I had a feeling that someone else was there in the room. Looking round I was mildly surprised – although not at all scared, bizarrely – to see a pair of feet standing quite close by, with black shoes, grey socks and the bottom inch or two of a pair of trousers. Nothing else.

Later that day we left and went back to our parents’ house. Dad had been quite interested in the thudding and the ceiling and the feet, and eventually told us about a lot of other strange things that had happened while he and Mum had been staying at the house. A detachment of soldiers inexplicably marching past the front door. A car advancing slowly up the drive one night, its headlights off, only to turn round in front of the house and drive away again. Lights glowing on the artificial island. A young man knocking on the door and asking for ‘Emmanuel’, although no one called Emmanuel had lived there in recent memory.

All these things probably had some rational explanation, but which combined with the cold and the mist and the isolated location, just seemed a little bit weird. The previous owner, my Dad said, had died in the room where my brother had been sleeping. He’d been old and bedridden and probably hadn’t been out of the room for months.

I’ve never had the occasion to go back there since, and I can’t say I’m really sorry.

*

This tale of unease was brought to you by the eerily brilliant Fiona Campbell-Howes, who writes the LOLsome blog Quadrireme, and maintains a spookily follow-worthy Twitter account under the eldritch name Patroclus.

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Sleep tight.

I shall frame it and love it and keep it for my very own.