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What's the spookiest/creepiest unexplained thing that's ever happened to you?
I saw an AskReddit thread on this recently and I thought us Tilders (is that what we're calling ourselves?) could do our own. The spooky season is approaching and I thought this might be something fun to do.
Tilders does fine.
For me, predicting my dad's upcoming disabling stroke down to the week. There was an argument with my elder parents about their needing to seek a single-level house and get rid of hoarding clutter. The joke was always that I was the family Cassandra, but it was really just a matter of tuning into not-very-subtle patterns and probabilities, like the tiny droop around one of Dad's eyes, and his age.
My unexplained thing isn't spooky or creepy. It's just... unexplained.
Back when I started high school, all us first-year students were told that we would be attending an orientation camp a few weeks into the first term. We would be split into two groups; one group would go to the camp Monday to Wednesday, and the other group would go Wednesday to Friday. I was in the second group.
On the Tuesday night (more like early Wednesday morning) prior to going to the camp, I had a dream. I was standing in a large group of students at some venue out in the bush. We were all looking at a wooden building which had a raised verandah at the front. Some teachers were standing on the verandah. Around us were lots of trees and bushland. It was a place I'd never seen before.
I got up that Wednesday morning, and went to school, from where we would be taken to the camp. The camp was way out in the bush. When we got off the buses, we were told to gather out in front of the main hall, where the teachers would tell us what would happen over the next couple of days. So, I stood in a large group of students at some venue out in the bush, looking at a wooden building which had a raised verandah at the front, with some teachers standing on it... yep. I was in the exact situation I had dreamed about a few hours earlier. It was identical: the trees, the hall, the group of students, my line of sight.
I've never been able to explain that. To be honest, I've never tried. I was only 12 years old at the time. It was strange, but not puzzling.
Occasionally since then, I've had strong moments of déjà vu, which might remind me of a dream I had days or weeks prior to the moment itself. Those moments have become less and less frequent as the years have gone by (they weren't frequent to start with).
That level of deja vu is freaky. It happened to me just recently (a couple weeks ago, maybe?). I was just sitting on the bus--one I ordinarily don't take, mind you--when I suddenly realized that the people getting on, the order they got on, what they were wearing, their movements, absolutely everything down to the letter seemed like an exact replay. It wasn't the ordinary vague sort of deja vu, but basically a frame-by-frame copy-paste, a clear and crisp overlay of past and present.
Never experienced that before. Glad I'm not the only one!
I remember when I was a kid my dad wanted to paint the walls, but the paint was toxic, so he made me and my mom crash at my aunt's house for a few days, so we wouldn't inhale that fumes. So before he started we left, and on the second day at my aunt's house I was really REALLY bored. That house was not in a very good neighborhood, so my mom wouldn't let me to just go outside, and since I've been locked inside with nothing but the TV I just stared into the window for the longest time as it was getting dark. And at some point I've noticed that clouds to the right of me started glowing, like something lit them up from above, and that glow started moving. I called my aunt to the window, and she saw that too - the glow was slowly moving to the left, then it started going away from us, then towards us, making squares on the sky. These days I think it was a helicopter with a searchlight, but there were no sounds at all, and helicopters are really loud. And it was not a projector from the ground, since there was only forest in front of us, and the projector would've been really big in order to illuminate sky that much, and in darkness we saw no light shafts or anything that would've hinted at a projector. That thing had been going for hours, and we all went to sleep, it was repeating the same square motion all the time, so we got bored. Nor me nor my aunt tired to explain it in any way.
Tildenizens? Tildeans? Tildespacitos?
There's been no shortage of discussions.
No consensus, and there probably never will be, short of a proclamation from the BDFL. I'm actually a fan of having multiple demonyms, without any one "official" term.
I also hope that we never have an official one. I am technically a "Michigander," but I dislike the term, which sets me apart even though I like being a Michigan citizen (for the most part). My favorite Tildes demonym so far is "Tilderinos," but it's more fun to let people choose whichever one they like best. I'd rather read lots of different fun ideas than be told which one I'm supposed to use.
Tildesians is my preferred demonym. It includes the full Tildes name, which was pointed out to me as a matter of some importance. It follows a typical naming convention for places ending in s (either in actual spelling, or in pronunciation), although there's no real consensus there, either.
Does that rhyme with Rhodesians? (I think that's what people from Rhodesia would have been called?)
I like Waves. Like how a ~ looks like a wave.
An older thread, in case you wanted to see some prior submissions.
I had a girlfriend who claimed she was a psychic. I was an atheist at the time, but slowly converting to Spiritism. One day she suddenly went to sleep and woke up after a few seconds. The spirit (take that as you will) said it was going to kill her and shit. I wasn't scared by that point. But, when I started praying in silent, and without giving any external signs of what I was thinking (like closing my eyes or changing my posture), the "thing" said to me: "Stop calling for help, it won't do any good". My blood froze because, at that precise moment, I was silently calling for the help of any good spirits whose name I could remember. So I started saying the Lord's Prayer out loud (I used to be Catholic). She went to sleep again and woke as herself, without any memory of what had just happened.