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Palace Of Westminster

 

Being a serving police officer, I'm usually quiet sceptical when it comes to farfetched stories. But as this happened to me twice, I can't discount it as my imagination or being overtired.

After a long shift with on 7 hours before the next one started, I decided to stay over at work. We have a basement room with folding beds for occasions like this. By the way, work is the Palace of Westminster, better known as the Houses of Parliament. This building has been there since 1097, so there is a awful lot of history to the building and surrounding areas.

After settling down for the night, I had turned off the lights and drifted off to sleep. I recall waking up sometime later and feeling a presence in the room with me. At first I thought nothing of it until suddenly I felt this presence pressing down on my chest forcing me into the mattress. It felt like I was paralysed, unable to move my arms or legs and was physically unable to move any of my body away from the mattress. This seemed to last for about 30 seconds until I was able to regain my mobility. I put the lights on, opened the door and spent the rest of the night drifting in and out of sleep. In the morning I put this down to my active imagination.

Over the next few days I mentioned this to a few colleagues at work who also used the room and they too said they had felt a presence in the room, although nothing physical had happened to them. One of these would only sleep with the lights on and the door wide open. So much for big brave policemen. Apparently a contractor on the building had hung himself in a basement room and had only been found three days later. I have been unable to confirm if this was the same room.

A few weeks later, whilst again sleepover, the same events occurred. Only this time, with a little more knowledge, I was slightly better prepared with more calmness than I expected considering I was being forced into the mattress again. I said, "I know you are here, I do not want to harm you, I just want to rest before work." With this, the pressure was released and I have never been bothered by this presence since. Although I am still wary when sleeping there.

Whilst on about work there is one place I try to avoid on night duties the West Front Corridor in the House of Lords. Every time I walk down here I can again feel there is a presence in this area. The heavily wood paneled walls just seem to close in on you and I expect something to jump out on me at any point. Although this is in a newer part of the Palace built around 1840, it is only 10 metres away from Westminster Hall the oldest part of the Palace where Charles I and William Wallace (Braveheart) stood trial before execution. So there has been quiet a history of violence within its walls.

Is this type of physical pressure common?

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The following comments are submitted by users of this site and are not official positions by yourghoststories.com. Please read our guidelines and the previous posts before posting. The author, gjs1967, has the following expectation about your feedback: I will read the comments and participate in the discussion.

Aomni (1 stories) (19 posts)
+2
10 years ago (2014-01-06)
I'm not sure if I would say that feeling physical pressure from a spirit is common but clearly this is a building with a massive amount of history (a lot of it brutal) and I would assume this type of haunting were you can physically feel something is more common here.
glesgaboy (24 posts)
 
10 years ago (2014-01-06)
gis1967, quite the scary story!
I myself have had an experience in a place in Scotland called Culzean Castle.
It was not quite as personal as yours but it had me thinking that's for sure.
I was visiting the Castle back in 2005 just walking through different areas.
At one point I passed what I though was a staff member in what looked to me to be a costume from the early 1800s.
It was a fleeting moment, nothing said just passed by, no eye contact.
When I was leaving I mentioned to one of the folks who worked there that I had noticed one of the staff in costume and wondered if a play or something may have been due to be shown.
They said there were no staff members dressed as such and no plays were being shown and that they themselves had not seen anyone dressed in this fashion on that day but jokingly said "Oh we get the ghost sightings a lot around here".
Older places such as the Parliament Buildings you mentioned do tend to have some weird goings on in them with regards to documented reports.
Even after some research I found some other "haunting s" reported with regards to Culzean.
An interesting story, thanks.
GB.
H2olily (5 stories) (158 posts)
 
10 years ago (2014-01-04)
I sometimes nap in the basement break room of the EB building, where I work overnight on occasion. Many ghostly sightings have been reported by the staff of this psychiatric facility. Never really have seen anything too strange, but sure is creepy down there in the middle of the night!
Rich73 (1 stories) (67 posts)
+2
10 years ago (2014-01-02)
I've had this problem too. Sometimes the weight would be on my chest. Other times it would be on my groin if I happened to be on my back. The weight was immense, and should have made me retch because, you know, male anatomy 😉 When I would finally pull myself out of it, I wouldn't feel a thing. This led me to believe that the weight wasn't real, and that it was something that I was doing to myself.

I live with a friendly ghost. It is here in the house with me every day. At first, I was scared of it. That's when these attacks happened. I would come out of an attack screaming and very angry at the ghost for betraying me. But, there would be the ghost right next to me wondering what all the commotion was about. Somehow my fear was allowing me to perhaps draw energy from the ghost and make me do this to myself. Once I lost my fear, these attacks abruptly stopped. I'm starting to think that the ghost has a way of magnifying my fear which manifests as an attack.
Unexplained (2 stories) (122 posts)
+2
10 years ago (2014-01-01)
Hi 'gjs1967', experiences of this phenomenon are commonly reported on this site.

I have experienced it myself, just once, some years ago: paralysis, pressure on the chest making it difficult to breathe, the feeling of being touched while listening to what I can only describe as demonic voices.

I wrote a full account of it and explored the incident from various angles (both rational and irrational).

Scientific explanation has come a long way to explain what used to be predominantly ascribed to folklore, here's a Wiki entry if you haven't already checked it out:

Http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Old_Hag

I'm grateful that science is making some effort to explain a little about this for me, but it doesn't resolve it entirely (as I'm sure with your experience).

I try to keep an open mind with these experiences.

Don't be embarrassed about feeling afraid or a little disturbed by what happened. As extensive as I imagine it to be, I don't think police training would cover experiences with the paranormal. 😉

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