Happy October! What equine related paranormal/unexplainable stories does everyone have?

[SharonA]

Not my story to tell, but it struck me at the time: Years ago, another COTH’er posted the story of moving into a new barn, and noticing a distinctive pony in one of the adjacent stalls. When the new boarder asked the BM about the pony, the BM apparently got a very strange look on her face, and reported that the pony had died in the none-too-recent past but that people reported seeing him whenever a new horse moved in. The BM felt that the pony’s ghost was just coming to check out the new arrival and help the new horse settle in.

I will say that sometimes, my current horse (chunky bay Morgan gelding, though he does have a gorgeous refined head) will appear to have my previous horse (refined, light-boned bay Arab mare, gorgeous refined head) almost transposed over him, and he will move in a way that is markedly similar to my previous horse, just for a few moments. If I’m in a vulnerable mood I just assume that is Fanny taking over Noble’s body to check in for a minute “From Beyond” to remind me that she will always be The Queen.

[Alex_and_Bodie_s_Mom]

I have one.

Many years ago, I lost my Arabian mare, Tasha. She colicked and there was nothing we could do.

For the next few days, her paddock-mate, Nikki, was not herself - didn’t want to eat, very low energy, just a bit out of it. I wasn’t ready to put another horse in with her yet, because she was difficult, but I was thinking about it.

One night, I went out to feed her and check her water. As I stood at the fence watching her, she suddenly jerked her head up and whirled to stare past me, ears up, nostrils flared, eyes huge. She wasn’t looking at me, but at something behind me. I turned - and there, not twenty feet away, stood Tasha. There was no mistaking her. I turned back to Nikki, who was still staring. She whinnied, once, and I turned back to Tasha - and she was gone.

After that, Nikki was fine. I put another horse in with her soon after, and they were paddock-mates until Nikki had to be put to sleep some years later. But I know Tasha was there with us that night, and I know we both saw her.

I have others, but that’s the only horse-related one.

[FEIPony]

Some years ago DH & I were on foal watch for one of our mares. We had cameras set up that we could watch from an RV in the parking lot. Every night around midnight we would hear hoofsteps that sounded just like a loose horse walking in the aisle. Every time we would run down to the barn thinking someone got out, but there was never anything out of place.

After a few nights of this we decided to camp out in the barn aisle & sure enough around midnight we could hear hoofsteps in the upper part of the barn. Ran to the hallway where the two aisles met & heard the hoofsteps getting closer, closer, until they were right up on us and then go right past us down the other aisle until they reached what sounded like the end of the aisle which was where the gate to the pastures were.

The next night the barn owner camped out with us & it happened with them there as a witness as well. The barn owner said they had several horses that had ended their days at the stable & were buried on the property. We like to think it was one of these old souls still hanging around & turning himself out in the pasture every night.

[Sleipnir]

Years ago, on a late November evening, I had completed putting the horses away for the night and was standing by the barn driveway, waiting for my lift home. I had my back against the barn, when I suddenly felt the muzzle of a horse touching my hand and blowing warm breath into it softly. There was also the sound of a horse clearing his nostrils. Shocked that a horse might have gotten out, I spun around to find that…there’s nothing there and I’m all alone.

I told it to the BO next day and he revealed that he had actually buried one of his mares that had passed away some years ago, right by the spot where I was standing that night.

[Spudsmyguy]

Years ago when I worked at a pretty well known barn in Connecticut for a very well known rider / trainer, I was walking through the barn in the evening and suddenly it’s like the air grew heavy and kind of hazyish like it wasn’t really all there. The hair on the back of my neck literally stood up and I heard a whispered sound behind me, sounded sort of like “hush.” I turned and didn’t see anything and the hazy went away. I swear there was a ghost. This was a old stone barn so who knows, if those walls could talk. The horses didn’t seem to think anything was out of the ordinary and continued eating their hay. Weird.

[HPFarmette]

@cayuse

This is probably not paranormal, but how does my mini know when I am looking at him on the security camera? He will walk over to the side of the stall it is aimed at and look RIGHT UP INTO the camera and stare back at me. Who’s spying on who :eek:? I could get paranoid.

Read “The Sense of Being Stared At” by Rupert Sheldrake.

[Foxglove]

Posted previously . . .The cast of characters --first, the handsome man who loved to hunt, more because he loved coming to the hunt with his sister and riding out on one of her fabulous horses! But horseman, he was not. One comment I heard as I saddled in the hunt club stable, was the handsome man asking his sister, “Which is the bridle and which is the girth?” But he was handsome, and witty, if not a horseman. Off we went on the hunt --did I say it was Halloween? Oh, yes --and a bit warm for October so there was fog, dense, dense fog. Through the fog we could hear the hounds and the huntsman’s horn. About an hour, maybe two into the hunt, the handsome man separate from his sister’s fine chestnut mare. He fell and slid through mud, covering his hands, arms and much of his face.

As the sister was whipping-in, and the hounds were on a line, the somewhat disoriented handsome, now mud covered fox hunter was asked to sit down and rest while a staff member went to the hunt club to alert the hounds-man to bring the hound trailer and truck to give him a ride home. The horse was pony-ed to the hunt club by the staff member. The young handsome fox hunter waited awhile, then, thinking he heard the truck stood up, only to fall over a headstone. He’d been seated leaning against a marker in the middle of an old cemetery that is near the road. Because of the fog, he hadn’t noticed until then. He walked toward the road, now limping a bit, moving this way and that and flapping his arms --one of which held his stock-tie to flag down the hounds-man in the truck pulling the hound trailer.

The hounds-man is from New Orleans --and you must imagine his accent as he recounted, “Just as a came to the cemetery, a haint (haunt?) appeared weaving back and forth and it had a shredded shroud (stock-tie?) -I didn’t wait but I floored that truck before that haint could catch me!” Eventually, the staff member riding with the hounds-man convinced him to go back, that the haint was actually the member. Even so the hounds-man asked the staff member to seat the muddy fox hunter in the back of the pick up truck pulling the hound trailer.

And that is the tale of the Fox Hunter Who Came Back from the Grave --one can only imagine the wailing of the hounds though the dense fog, the mournful horn, the disembodied sound of horses in the heavy covert and the whispers of the riders --and then, the shadowy form of a fox hunter staggering out of a graveyard . . .

The handsome fox hunter still rides out and just last season saved another rider from certain death (she was being dragged by a run-away horse when he leaped on the horse’s head and stopped it in its tracks) --come to think of it, that handsome fox hunter is the basis of many of our bar stories . . .

[danceronice]

I always love seeing COTH haunted-horse-story threads! No good ones, despite having one horse buried on our property (my OTTB from when I was a kid) and all the other horses who used to run on the land before we owned it being long gone, too.

I sometimes kind of wonder if my dog Bailey is one of my previous dogs, though. I don’t think she’s QUITE young enough to be Tucker reincarnated, but Maggie (my Corgi) picked her out at PetSmart, they get along great (except over food), and Bailey pretty much immediately latched on to me.

[SuzieQNutter]

I don’t know if this fits in but this happened to me.

I was having a lovely competition day. I went to a local ponyclub for a combined training competition day instead of going to my own ponyclub Gymkhana competition.

I was well known there and they were teasing me all day for being there. It was a great day with old friends.

I met a new friend. She was from another zone. We got on famously and she beat me.

They decided to put on a Top Score. Competition. That means you pick your own course. You get a time limit. You can jump each fence twice if you want. You add a zero to the fence number and they add up the score of what you have jumped, so you get 100 points for jumping fence 10.

I have a great mind for puzzles and keeping inside rules. I could see the best course, but it meant going over 10, over 3 foot high, doing a 90 degree turn to the right and one stride, going over 9, again over 3 foot and a 90 degree turn to the left and one stride to 8 that was 3 foot. Then work down over 7, 6, 5. At five roll back and jump it the other way and then start again at 10, if more time after going over 6 do 4, 3 2 and 1, then 4 3, 2 and 1.

I also thought I would cry if Pepper managed the 90 degree turns and one stride jumps. It wasn’t how they were jumped in the course and it was difficult.

Do it. He did it so easily. He could have done it with one hoof tied behind his back! Over 10, over 9, over 8, over 7, over 6 and then suddenly my mind left my body. I was no longer Showjumping on Pepper’s back. I was at an indoor arena that I used to have lessons at before I bought Pepoer a few years ago.

It was just for a second, but Pepper knew I was not there and he stopped in front of number 5. Suddenly I was back in the saddle. I reached down and patted him on the neck. I said, “I am so sorry Peppy,” I went around fence 5 and came back over it and started again at 10.

I slowed to a walk after going through the finish flags and went to walk out and this old biddy called me over. I did not want to go over. I know I would have been in trouble if my Mum had seen that. This lady looked hard and no nonsense and I didn’t want to be told off.

But I went over in the ring and halted Pepper near her. She looked me right in the eye.

She said, “You are riding in a snaffle bit, you have no whip. You have no spur and when your horse refused you apologized to him. I just want you to know that you are my hero.”

With that she turned and walked through the crowd. I watched her go and I never saw her again.

I also never saw the new friend again. She was in a car accident the next week and never rode again.

I would have won that Top Score if we had gone over it. I had the better course. I think the Universe stepped in to give her the win because of what was going to happen to her. She was given a great day. I was sent that lady as an apology for taking the win.

[jvanrens]

There are a bunch of similar threads on COTH, unfortunately I’m not terribly proficient at searching here, but hopefully someone who is can share some of the links for our reading entertainment.

[demidq]

FatDinah- we had a spooky corner in our arena as well, and then one day the groundhog tunnel there caved in! Fortunately we were only walking when horsie stepped in it.

[StormyDay]

I have a few.
One is a neighbor of mine who runs a retirement barn. She has quite a few horses buried on the property. I was riding in her arena and my pony kept spooking at one side of it when she casually mentioned that there were like 10 dead horses buried over where he was spooking.

Another one was that about twice a year when I lived in Florida, the horses would have one night where they would absolutely flip out. Even the ones who would eat through just about anything. We figured out that it was because there was a Florida cougar that migrated through the area 2x a year.

One of those nights that the horses were loosing their minds, my dog got out and ran through the park we backed up to. I had to walk through that park… alone… in the dark. The whole time I had a feeling I was being watched and like maybe I was what was on the menu. Both me and my dog did not end up cougar dinner though :lol:

[eightpondfarm]

i was at home and i heard in my head my horse going: “Mm-Mm-Mm-MMMMM” over and over and over again. i felt panic in his voice. So, i drove to the stable and my horse, who was in the end stall was the ONLY horse in the bank of horses in that section of stalls. And at the other end, a construction crew was jackhammering the floor of the first stall. I was furious that they’d left my horse in there, and also furious that they have given us no heads-up there would be construction. Of course i moved my boy out to a turnout area immediately, and he was quite upset.

[DaddysJoy]

@SuzieQNutter

I don’t know if this fits in but this happened to me.

I was having a lovely competition day. I went to a local ponyclub for a combined training competition day instead of going to my own ponyclub Gymkhana competition.

I was well known there and they were teasing me all day for being there. It was a great day with old friends.

I met a new friend. She was from another zone. We got on famously and she beat me.

They decided to put on a Top Score. Competition. That means you pick your own course. You get a time limit. You can jump each fence twice if you want. You add a zero to the fence number and they add up the score of what you have jumped, so you get 100 points for jumping fence 10.

I have a great mind for puzzles and keeping inside rules. I could see the best course, but it meant going over 10, over 3 foot high, doing a 90 degree turn to the right and one stride, going over 9, again over 3 foot and a 90 degree turn to the left and one stride to 8 that was 3 foot. Then work down over 7, 6, 5. At five roll back and jump it the other way and then start again at 10, if more time after going over 6 do 4, 3 2 and 1, then 4 3, 2 and 1.

I also thought I would cry if Pepper managed the 90 degree turns and one stride jumps. It wasn’t how they were jumped in the course and it was difficult.

Do it. He did it so easily. He could have done it with one hoof tied behind his back! Over 10, over 9, over 8, over 7, over 6 and then suddenly my mind left my body. I was no longer Showjumping on Pepper’s back. I was at an indoor arena that I used to have lessons at before I bought Pepoer a few years ago.

It was just for a second, but Pepper knew I was not there and he stopped in front of number 5. Suddenly I was back in the saddle. I reached down and patted him on the neck. I said, “I am so sorry Peppy,” I went around fence 5 and came back over it and started again at 10.

I slowed to a walk after going through the finish flags and went to walk out and this old biddy called me over. I did not want to go over. I know I would have been in trouble if my Mum had seen that. This lady looked hard and no nonsense and I didn’t want to be told off.

But I went over in the ring and halted Pepper near her. She looked me right in the eye.

She said, “You are riding in a snaffle bit, you have no whip. You have no spur and when your horse refused you apologized to him. I just want you to know that you are my hero.”

With that she turned and walked through the crowd. I watched her go and I never saw her again.

I also never saw the new friend again. She was in a car accident the next week and never rode again.

I would have won that Top Score if we had gone over it. I had the better course. I think the Universe stepped in to give her the win because of what was going to happen to her. She was given a great day. I was sent that lady as an apology for taking the win.

Your post totally counts and fits! Thank you for sharing!

[DaddysJoy]

@jvanrens

There are a bunch of similar threads on COTH, unfortunately I’m not terribly proficient at searching here, but hopefully someone who is can share some of the links for our reading entertainment.

That would be lovely!

[Sunflower]

This happened some years ago. It was a cold winter evening, in the middle of the week, and I had driven after work to ride my horse in the covered, enclosed indoor arena. It attached to the main aisle of the barn via sliding doors. The barn aisle was poured concrete. I was alone, riding, when I heard the sound of a stall door open, the distinct sound of shod hooves on cement, and then the water tap turn on in the wash stall at the end of the barn. All normal enough sounds so at first I did not react, until I was like, hang on, its the middle of winter! No one would be washing their horse in the middle of winter! And I had not heard anyone come into the barn, no car drive up into the gravel parking lot, nothing. So then I started to feel very freaked out. There was no way out of the indoor except through the barn, and that is where the sounds were coming from. So I just kept riding. I heard the water turn off, hooves back down the aisle, stall door shut.

And then… silence. No one leaving, no car in the parking lot, no foot steps. Nothing. So I finally got brave enough to look into the aisle and there was nothing there. So I got off, untacked, put my horse away as fast as I could and left. And, oh, there was no soaking wet washed horse in the first stall, just its usual occupant in a few layers of winter blankets.

I said something to the BO a day or so later and they got a strange look on their face. It turns out this was not the first time someone had told them something like this (although I had never heard any stories). The sad story went that a few years before (before I was at the barn) a teen age girl had died when driving home from the barn when killed by a drunk driver. She had kept her horse in the front stall where I had heard the door open and shut.

So, you tell me! I definitely heard those sounds when I was riding. I did not imagine them. No one was actually there washing their horse. I felt it was tragic and sad but if there was something there, it was benevolent.

Edited to add

I have more stories not equine related. With a lot of spooky stories, there is no one else there to confirm what happened, so I am going to relate a story where there was-- not equine related–but hope you don’t mind. A friend and I had gone skiing near Gettysburg, and our drive home (friend was driving) took us on a road that cut through or bordered (I don’t remember which) the battlefield. All of a sudden, the car was filled with the most ghastly awful feeling–just-- horrible. I don’t know how to describe it. Just something very awful. I looked over at my friend who was driving, and he had the car floored, to like over a hundred miles an hour. I started to say something, and he just shook his head at me to be silent, and pointed to his arm, where all of the hairs were stood up right. So whatever it was in the car, he felt it too. He drove really fast for a few minutes and we just sat in the most rigid silence. And then the awful feeling was gone, and he slowed down to a normal speed, and we were both like, “what in the world was that?” We had both felt the same horrible presence. I have no idea what it was, and to be honest, I really do not want to know-- in my mind, it is some kind of something bad related to the horrors of Gettysburg and the battlefield. Another time, I was driving home in the evening after visiting a friend who lived out in the countryside, and I took an old country road home that cut through a Civil War battlefield. As I was driving, something came straight at my windshield, like a softball sized ball of light. Like straight towards it, at speed. So much so that I ducked as I was driving. Tnen it was gone. I have no idea what it was. It was something. Again, I thought it might be something spooky related to the battlefield and really did not want to know any more about it. I do not discount the possibility of the paranormal, but its not something I seek out, and the experiences I have are unsettling.

[jvanrens]

Okay, I found some old threads!

Not all are just 🐎 related though. 🎃 Happy reading! 👀 👻 👻

https://www.chronofhorse.com/forum/forum/off-topic/off-topic-aa/284557-can-we-tell-ghost-stories-again

https://www.chronofhorse.com/forum/forum/off-topic/off-topic-aa/314102-for-halloween-tell-us-your-true-life-ghost-stories

https://www.chronofhorse.com/forum/forum/off-topic/off-topic-aa/306090-who-s-seen-a-ghost

https://www.chronofhorse.com/forum/forum/off-topic/off-topic-aa/260319-who-has-ghost-pets

https://www.chronofhorse.com/forum/forum/off-topic/off-topic-aa/211168-where-s-our-ghost-stories-its-halloween

https://www.chronofhorse.com/forum/forum/discussion-forums/off-course/205098-ghost-in-the-barn

https://www.chronofhorse.com/forum/forum/discussion-forums/off-course/24049-happy-horsey-halloween-~-ghost-stories

https://www.chronofhorse.com/forum/forum/discussion-forums/off-course/64599-share-barn-related-ghost-stories

https://www.chronofhorse.com/forum/forum/off-topic/off-topic-aa/115958-hauntings-signs?t=280523

[jvanrens]

Okay, I found some old threads!

Not all are just 🐎 related though. 🎃 Happy reading! 👀 👻 👻

https://www.chronofhorse.com/forum/f…-stories-again

https://www.chronofhorse.com/forum/f…-ghost-stories

https://www.chronofhorse.com/forum/f…s-seen-a-ghost

https://www.chronofhorse.com/forum/f…has-ghost-pets

https://www.chronofhorse.com/forum/f…-its-halloween

https://www.chronofhorse.com/forum/f…st-in-the-barn

https://www.chronofhorse.com/forum/f…-ghost-stories

https://www.chronofhorse.com/forum/f…-ghost-stories

https://www.chronofhorse.com/forum/f…signs?t=280523

[jvanrens]

Okay, I just posted a bunch of links to old threads that I’d found sharing ghost & haunting stories on COTH, of course it’s unapproved. :winkgrin:

@Moderator 1 could you please free it?

[SuzieQNutter]

It is probably a known glitch. Edit unapproved post. Copy and go down and paste. If okay post and go up and delete the unapproved post.