WEBVTT 00:10.151 --> 00:16.771 [SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to Encounters, our listeners true darkest moments. 00:21.131 --> 00:24.994 [SPEAKER_00]: Hello everyone and welcome to this week's edition of Encounters. 00:25.534 --> 00:31.259 [SPEAKER_00]: Now as you all know, we're jumping right into our stories like we used to when we first started the show. 00:31.839 --> 00:41.147 [SPEAKER_00]: So, other than one quick line from me to save your wish to join our Patreon, now is the perfect time to grab your free week at our highest tier in the show notes below. 00:41.727 --> 00:46.010 [SPEAKER_00]: We'll also find the link to submit your experience for the dark paranormal. 00:46.471 --> 00:50.154 [SPEAKER_00]: But right now, let's start this week's episode of Encounters. 00:51.006 --> 00:54.269 [SPEAKER_00]: and today's encounter comes to us from Martin in the UK. 00:55.329 --> 00:59.853 [SPEAKER_00]: Hi Keath, this is all about my house and I'll start this there. 01:00.654 --> 01:03.116 [SPEAKER_00]: It's a semi-on-the-edge of Nottingham in the UK. 01:04.076 --> 01:08.200 [SPEAKER_00]: The front door opens onto a small hallway and the stairs run upon the left. 01:08.921 --> 01:12.744 [SPEAKER_00]: There's a halfway turn, so you turn right, and that leads you onto the landing. 01:13.384 --> 01:21.370 [SPEAKER_00]: But if you stand on that square, where the rest of the stairs continue to the landing, you can see both the landing and the front door when you look back down. 01:22.051 --> 01:26.994 [SPEAKER_00]: My kitchen and dining room are through in the back, then knocked into one which was done years ago. 01:27.855 --> 01:32.418 [SPEAKER_00]: I've lived in this house on my own ever since my wife, Lorraine, died. 01:33.259 --> 01:34.940 [SPEAKER_00]: A little over two years ago now. 01:36.139 --> 01:39.940 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm 52, and you can use Martin for my name if you need any. 01:40.880 --> 01:43.901 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm writing because it's coming up to November again. 01:44.722 --> 01:53.084 [SPEAKER_00]: And last November, something started off in my house that I've never told anyone the whole story about. 01:54.064 --> 01:55.985 [SPEAKER_00]: The first thing was just noise. 01:56.906 --> 02:11.096 [SPEAKER_00]: early in the month, I'd gone up about half tenet night, and I'd been laying the ten minute or so, and downstairs I heard that distinct sound of a dining chair being scraped across the tile floor in the kitchen. 02:12.217 --> 02:17.700 [SPEAKER_00]: That drag that you would normally get if someone was to pull it out to sit on it, but slower. 02:19.101 --> 02:20.843 [SPEAKER_00]: I didn't think anything of it at the time. 02:21.770 --> 02:28.855 [SPEAKER_00]: The walls in this house are thin, and the couple next door while they keep late hours, so I put it down to them. 02:30.196 --> 02:33.938 [SPEAKER_00]: A bit later on, and there was the sound of a cupboard door closing. 02:34.779 --> 02:40.543 [SPEAKER_00]: The soft-click, nothing like a slam, and that's what I keep coming back to. 02:41.604 --> 02:48.448 [SPEAKER_00]: It never did sound like anyone in a hurry, and it definitely didn't sound like someone trying to disturb me. 02:51.116 --> 02:53.818 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, this carried on a few nights in a week. 02:54.899 --> 03:05.526 [SPEAKER_00]: Never anything dramatic, never a bang or a voice, and I kind of got used to it which I know sounds daft, but I kept telling myself it was next door through the wall. 03:06.827 --> 03:08.268 [SPEAKER_00]: Then came the tap. 03:09.369 --> 03:12.691 [SPEAKER_00]: It was about ten days in after hearing the first sound. 03:13.932 --> 03:18.215 [SPEAKER_00]: I was in my bedroom with the lights off, and I heard the kitchen tap running. 03:19.664 --> 03:26.909 [SPEAKER_00]: my kitchen is directly underneath my bedroom, and that tap has a very distinct sound of its own. 03:27.910 --> 03:30.032 [SPEAKER_00]: The pipes kind of knock a bit when it's on full. 03:31.473 --> 03:35.816 [SPEAKER_00]: Next door's kitchen is on the other side of their house, so I knew this was mine. 03:36.697 --> 03:45.363 [SPEAKER_00]: I lay there longer than I'd like to admit, and then I finally plugged up the courage to go downstairs with my phone towards on. 03:46.604 --> 03:48.045 [SPEAKER_00]: Only to find the tap was off, 03:49.638 --> 03:54.801 [SPEAKER_00]: I think at the time I may have been rather relieved until I noticed there was water in the sink. 03:55.702 --> 03:57.123 [SPEAKER_00]: All beaded around the plug hole. 03:58.324 --> 04:03.687 [SPEAKER_00]: And then I noticed a bead of water coming from the tea towel that I had left folded on the oven door. 04:04.808 --> 04:06.109 [SPEAKER_00]: It was no longer on the oven door. 04:06.569 --> 04:08.631 [SPEAKER_00]: It was scrunched in a ball on the worktop. 04:09.271 --> 04:10.032 [SPEAKER_00]: Wet, through. 04:11.092 --> 04:16.256 [SPEAKER_00]: All of the windows were short and the back door was locked and bolted as I remembered when I went to bed. 04:17.384 --> 04:23.927 [SPEAKER_00]: Now what I do remember most of all is just how quiet the house was, not empty quiet. 04:24.788 --> 04:28.409 [SPEAKER_00]: The quiet you get when people stop talking because you've walked in. 04:29.950 --> 04:32.992 [SPEAKER_00]: After that I would start to find small things being moved. 04:33.812 --> 04:39.635 [SPEAKER_00]: The salt grinder at the wrong end of the worktop, the fruit bowl on the dining table instead of on the side. 04:40.705 --> 04:50.711 [SPEAKER_00]: Nothing you would ring anyone about, nothing you couldn't rule out yourself doing, maybe to find something else or to move something out of the way and forgetting to put it back. 04:51.792 --> 05:00.157 [SPEAKER_00]: However, I've lived alone long enough at that point to know where everything is, and none of it would be where I'd left it. 05:01.418 --> 05:03.039 [SPEAKER_00]: And then came the mug. 05:04.260 --> 05:07.342 [SPEAKER_00]: The mug was Lorraine's, my deceased wife's. 05:08.448 --> 05:12.171 [SPEAKER_00]: White, with a green band around the rim, and a chip in the handle. 05:12.951 --> 05:17.094 [SPEAKER_00]: She'd been given that mug as a leaving gift from one of her jobs when she left. 05:18.075 --> 05:21.917 [SPEAKER_00]: And she wouldn't drink out of anything else in the house other than this mug. 05:23.298 --> 05:29.223 [SPEAKER_00]: After she died, I simply couldn't have it on the drainer, but I also couldn't throw it out. 05:30.169 --> 05:38.812 [SPEAKER_00]: So I put it at the very back of the cupboard, over where the kettle is, behind all this baking equipment, so you'd have to move everything to reach it. 05:39.772 --> 05:44.494 [SPEAKER_00]: And I hadn't touched it, since putting it there 12 months previously. 05:45.574 --> 05:51.556 [SPEAKER_00]: The very first time I found it, it was just sat there on the dining table, dead center. 05:52.877 --> 05:55.557 [SPEAKER_00]: I thought I must have gotten it out myself. 06:00.648 --> 06:02.969 [SPEAKER_00]: so I just placed it back behind the tints. 06:04.130 --> 06:06.571 [SPEAKER_00]: The very next morning it was on the table. 06:07.511 --> 06:08.452 [SPEAKER_00]: Again I put it back. 06:09.192 --> 06:11.173 [SPEAKER_00]: Two days later on the table. 06:12.033 --> 06:13.894 [SPEAKER_00]: I stopped putting it back after that. 06:14.254 --> 06:17.556 [SPEAKER_00]: I simply placed it on the window ledge with the wording facing the table. 06:18.476 --> 06:24.399 [SPEAKER_00]: However when I'd come down each morning, the handle of the cup will be facing where I sit at the dining table. 06:25.179 --> 06:26.660 [SPEAKER_00]: And there will be no writing visible. 06:27.592 --> 06:41.904 [SPEAKER_00]: The writing side of the cup would be facing out into the garden, but there was a slight law in the activity I came down one morning and found the cup with the wording facing inwards as I left it, and for a short while everything seemed to be okay. 06:43.205 --> 06:53.234 [SPEAKER_00]: However, about two weeks just before Christmas, I heard that chair scrape again, and it was ten past one in the morning, I checked on my phone. 06:54.277 --> 07:03.645 [SPEAKER_00]: Ever since I found that wet tea towel, I'd gone down every time I heard something, but that particular night I just couldn't make myself get out of bed. 07:04.686 --> 07:08.449 [SPEAKER_00]: I'd like to say it was a mental decision, but it wasn't. 07:09.309 --> 07:10.730 [SPEAKER_00]: My body just wouldn't. 07:11.771 --> 07:18.116 [SPEAKER_00]: So I lay back on my bed with my do-they up to my chin like a child and I listened hard. 07:22.958 --> 07:24.379 [SPEAKER_00]: and then the stairs. 07:26.019 --> 07:28.681 [SPEAKER_00]: I had somebody slowly walking up our stairs. 07:29.421 --> 07:31.102 [SPEAKER_00]: It was solid and it was definite. 07:31.962 --> 07:35.584 [SPEAKER_00]: Bonstep then the next, slow and even one at a time. 07:36.585 --> 07:44.088 [SPEAKER_00]: I genuinely thought I'd have a heart attack as I had them reached the landing and turned towards my room, before stopping 07:53.243 --> 07:56.325 [SPEAKER_00]: But you can tell when someone is stood on the other side of a door. 07:57.526 --> 08:00.347 [SPEAKER_00]: And then my bedroom door handle moved. 08:01.588 --> 08:06.311 [SPEAKER_00]: It's an old latch handle, and it makes a small metal sound when it goes down. 08:07.272 --> 08:11.734 [SPEAKER_00]: And I heard it go down all the way, I heard the latch lift. 08:12.675 --> 08:14.376 [SPEAKER_00]: Put the door, it didn't open. 08:15.497 --> 08:20.580 [SPEAKER_00]: The handle just was held there, pressed down, for what felt like a full minute. 08:21.492 --> 08:23.453 [SPEAKER_00]: There was no pushing, there was no rattling. 08:24.473 --> 08:27.654 [SPEAKER_00]: Then it ever so slowly was released. 08:28.415 --> 08:32.356 [SPEAKER_00]: The way you'd release a handle if you were trying not to wake someone. 08:33.136 --> 08:40.519 [SPEAKER_00]: I have wondered many times since why it, whatever it was, or is, didn't just come in. 08:41.319 --> 08:46.221 [SPEAKER_00]: The door sticks when it's damp, and you have to put your shoulder really into it to open. 08:51.525 --> 08:59.487 [SPEAKER_00]: Just to be clear, I don't mean that was the reason for what I heard, because damp can swallow door, but it can't grip and pull down a handle. 09:00.147 --> 09:03.968 [SPEAKER_00]: On him brackets, last time I checked at least, closed brackets. 09:04.948 --> 09:10.609 [SPEAKER_00]: So I lay that in bed waiting to hear the stirs again for this thing to go downstairs. 09:11.510 --> 09:13.090 [SPEAKER_00]: But that sound never came. 09:14.378 --> 09:20.881 [SPEAKER_00]: But at some point I must have still dropped off somehow, because I remember waking up in it being light. 09:21.642 --> 09:24.203 [SPEAKER_00]: I still can't tell you how I managed to fall asleep. 09:24.864 --> 09:28.946 [SPEAKER_00]: Even I would think this was a ridiculous story how I heard that sentence. 09:29.726 --> 09:30.807 [SPEAKER_00]: But I somehow did. 09:31.767 --> 09:35.889 [SPEAKER_00]: I think I must have just got passed what a man can stay awake for. 09:36.450 --> 09:39.511 [SPEAKER_00]: And with the light of day for a split second I felt fine. 09:40.292 --> 09:42.213 [SPEAKER_00]: And then it all came back at once. 09:43.722 --> 09:49.527 [SPEAKER_00]: I got up and I stood at the door with my hand on that handle, and I quickly opened it. 09:50.327 --> 09:53.069 [SPEAKER_00]: Half-expecting defined someone standing right there. 09:54.230 --> 09:56.132 [SPEAKER_00]: Thankfully the landing was empty. 09:56.912 --> 10:01.816 [SPEAKER_00]: Sun was coming through the window at the end, and I actually laughed out loud in relief. 10:02.774 --> 10:07.156 [SPEAKER_00]: A grown man hiding under his duvet from a bloody draft, I thought. 10:07.956 --> 10:10.977 [SPEAKER_00]: I felt so foolish that I just did everything normally. 10:11.697 --> 10:18.360 [SPEAKER_00]: I had a shower, found a clean shirt, got myself dressed, and then I started off down the landing and down the stairs. 10:19.320 --> 10:23.922 [SPEAKER_00]: When I reached the bend, with the front door in view, I saw it. 10:25.212 --> 10:33.734 [SPEAKER_00]: My dining room chair was at the bottom of the stairs, pushed up against the first step, facing me, square on. 10:34.674 --> 10:38.715 [SPEAKER_00]: I moved down about maybe three or four steps, staring at the front door. 10:39.415 --> 10:40.775 [SPEAKER_00]: The chain was still on. 10:41.615 --> 10:43.656 [SPEAKER_00]: Nothing else in that hall had been touched. 10:44.776 --> 10:49.657 [SPEAKER_00]: I stood near the bend with my hand on the banister, trying to work out the order of it. 10:50.700 --> 10:57.345 [SPEAKER_00]: Whatever had come up those stairs, and tried my door, had also had to go back down those stairs surely. 10:58.446 --> 11:00.207 [SPEAKER_00]: How did it go past that chair? 11:01.208 --> 11:11.955 [SPEAKER_00]: I'd have to move it to get down these stairs now, so had it gone down and then placed the chair there, but I had the chair scratch before I had something come up the stairs. 11:12.996 --> 11:17.660 [SPEAKER_00]: All of this borderline insane logic ran through my head as I stared at that chair. 11:18.672 --> 11:26.896 [SPEAKER_00]: It must have made the sound of the chair, came upstairs, tried my handle, went back down, picked up the chair and placed it at the bottom of the stairs. 11:28.037 --> 11:31.018 [SPEAKER_00]: And then I heard how ridiculous I sounded even to myself. 11:32.019 --> 11:34.540 [SPEAKER_00]: And I just slumped onto the stairs where I stood. 11:35.721 --> 11:38.442 [SPEAKER_00]: And that's where I remained for 20 minutes or so. 11:39.577 --> 11:49.883 [SPEAKER_00]: Of course, the only way out of my house was to go past that chair, and when I did go, I kind of moved it very gently as if it was some sort of Faberge egg. 11:51.044 --> 11:58.208 [SPEAKER_00]: I put the chair back under the table, and then noticed that that centre of that table was Lorraine's mug. 11:59.349 --> 12:03.732 [SPEAKER_00]: Plenty of people have told me what they think it was. 12:09.175 --> 12:13.018 [SPEAKER_00]: That, perhaps, it was Lorraine trying to reach me. 12:13.978 --> 12:17.481 [SPEAKER_00]: My brother said something similar, and I can understand why. 12:18.281 --> 12:23.045 [SPEAKER_00]: A widow are living alone, his wife's mug, that that's the story people want. 12:23.985 --> 12:29.669 [SPEAKER_00]: The sad old widowed man who's just forever crying, grief holding his wife's favorite mug. 12:30.410 --> 12:32.792 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, I'm sorry, I'm not that cliché. 12:33.788 --> 12:36.730 [SPEAKER_00]: I know Lorraine would want me to live a full life, and I do. 12:37.550 --> 12:43.113 [SPEAKER_00]: I have a very active social life, I'm in no way isolated, in fact I'm out more than I'm in. 12:43.694 --> 12:45.535 [SPEAKER_00]: So please don't hold that picture of me. 12:46.455 --> 12:50.817 [SPEAKER_00]: Also Lorraine loved me more than anything in this world, and I have. 12:51.558 --> 12:54.259 [SPEAKER_00]: She wouldn't frighten me like this in a million years. 12:54.940 --> 12:56.661 [SPEAKER_00]: She'd have called up the stairs if anything. 12:57.421 --> 13:02.484 [SPEAKER_00]: She'd have never stood outside a door, held the handle down, knowing what it would do to me. 13:03.520 --> 13:15.605 [SPEAKER_00]: But no, whatever it was, or is, found the simplest thing, knowing how I would feel when I looked at it, and it placed it where I'd have to walk past, where I'd have to see it. 13:16.665 --> 13:22.568 [SPEAKER_00]: That isn't love, I've no idea what that was, or is. 13:23.828 --> 13:25.689 [SPEAKER_00]: It carried on for a few weeks after that. 13:26.650 --> 13:29.191 [SPEAKER_00]: The chair mainly, and the tap twice more. 13:32.740 --> 13:36.001 [SPEAKER_00]: and the chair never physically moved out of the kitchen ever again. 13:37.001 --> 13:48.444 [SPEAKER_00]: A few weeks later it all stopped, and it's been quiet since, nothing in this house has done anything that it shouldn't, but the reason I'm writing is that the nights have drawn in a game. 13:49.244 --> 13:53.345 [SPEAKER_00]: There's no sensible reason to think it'll start all over, of course, I know that. 13:54.067 --> 14:02.791 [SPEAKER_00]: However, last week, just after the clocks moved, I found myself laying awake with the radio off, and I realised I was listening. 14:04.092 --> 14:08.995 [SPEAKER_00]: Not for the footsteps, not for the handle, just for that chair. 14:09.935 --> 14:12.376 [SPEAKER_00]: Just for that once scraped on the kitchen floor. 14:13.417 --> 14:21.821 [SPEAKER_00]: Although I thoroughly checked that all four are pushed right under the table every night, tonight included, and I know I'll do it again tomorrow. 14:24.462 --> 14:27.668 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, thank you so much Martin for sharing your encounter today. 14:28.469 --> 14:37.645 [SPEAKER_00]: It's very interesting how you, like other submitters, describe, knowing it's not the spirit of a loved one, when other people have suggested it. 14:38.306 --> 14:44.952 [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm sure we all know that feeling of knowing something absolutely, without having anything tangible to back it up. 14:45.493 --> 14:54.381 [SPEAKER_00]: And from the way you've told your story Martin, I can tell, and I sort of get now why someone would be reticent to tell somebody they know about this tale. 14:55.282 --> 15:02.749 [SPEAKER_00]: If you're fully aware what you're going to get back, in terms of theories, etc, will be just, is it your dead wife? 15:03.632 --> 15:12.558 [SPEAKER_00]: I know you describe yourself as not the atypical widow, but everyone must have their point where they don't want to kind of be reminded of what they've lost. 15:13.379 --> 15:20.084 [SPEAKER_00]: However Martin, I do, on behalf of everyone listening, want to thank you so much for submitting your encounter for us today. 15:21.061 --> 15:30.094 [SPEAKER_00]: And to everyone, if you have your own encounter that you want to share with the show, in the show note, you'll find a link to submit your experience for the Dark Paranormal. 15:30.574 --> 15:35.361 [SPEAKER_00]: Or you can go direct to the darkparanormal.com forward slash, so a bit my experience. 15:36.093 --> 15:39.035 [SPEAKER_00]: Within those show notes is also the link to our Patreon team. 15:39.795 --> 15:46.960 [SPEAKER_00]: Now, sincerely, our Patreon team, for me, are the best online society to do with the paranormal anywhere. 15:47.380 --> 15:57.707 [SPEAKER_00]: And believe me, ever since we first got the internet, although saying that in and of itself kind of dates me, I do know that I don't know nothing but try to join these forums, etc. 15:58.067 --> 16:01.470 [SPEAKER_00]: And they all became very toxic with hierarchy structures, etc. 16:02.661 --> 16:11.029 [SPEAKER_00]: or Patreon team are some of the kind of people who are fans of this topic that I've ever known, and I can't take the credit for that, they've done that themselves. 16:11.810 --> 16:17.795 [SPEAKER_00]: But as Patrons, they also receive all of these free-feed shows, both early and add free. 16:18.723 --> 16:25.429 [SPEAKER_00]: and they can also gain full access to the entire back catalogue of all weekly Patreon only show dark bites. 16:26.189 --> 16:40.722 [SPEAKER_00]: It's a 30 minute show for Patreon's only of the shorter experiences that we receive and it never takes a week off, it runs 52 weeks a year and it's coming in over 300 hours of back catalogue episodes for you to go and binge. 16:41.583 --> 16:43.584 [SPEAKER_00]: And as I mentioned earlier, there is a free week 16:47.151 --> 16:51.495 [SPEAKER_00]: but for everyone, until next time, stay safe and take care.