Three different things:

Out of body astral projection - I shot up into outer space at warp speed and then snapped back in an instant.

And...

Saved my buddy's house from burning down one night. Something told me to go outside... like an urgent need to go outside.. when I went outside I immediately noticed his back deck on fire... hot coals from the wood stove had been dumped into a plastic trash can a couple days earlier and it had smoldered and caught on fire just minutes before something urged me to go outside.... weird.


And...

I was in bed one night in my teens and I was sobbing uncontrollably over a girl that was my first love and she had moved away with her parents. I was inconsolable - completely devastated and felt like the end of the world when all of a sudden I saw an incredibly bright light in the corner of my bedroom... it didn't hurt to look at the light. I felt a euphoric cleansing sensation all throughout my body. My tears of sadness miraculously turned into tears of joy. It seemed like divine intervention... angelic, spiritual in nature. A mind-blowing experience.

When I was 11, my grandfather passed away unexpectedly while staying in our house (around age 57...heart disease and recent surgery, but still very unexpected). My mom (his daughter) woke up early morning the morning he passed away, around 1 a.m., because my younger sister who was 2 at the time was running a spontaneous very high fever. She went downstairs to get medicine and another thermometer to double check when she found my grandfather awake and pacing. She startled upon seeing him awake and he said "you can't sleep either, huh?", to which she explained my sister's fever. When the parted ways, he affectionately hugged her, kissed her on the forehead and told her he loved her (which was the kind of display he never engaged in, if you knew the man). The next morning he was dead.

After this event, which rocked our family to the core, especially me at the time, as my grandpa had been gruff with me the night before he died, we had gone to his funeral and had several sympathy balloons floating around our house. I was having a particularly hard day with a lot of random crying (which is saying a lot for me, I've always been tough and I rarely cry, even back then). One of the balloons was losing its helium and had started to traverse the area between the ceiling and the floor, but had always maintained its position in the room where grandpa had passed away downstairs. On this day I remember praying desparately in my head for a sign that he was okay and with God. I remember being troubled by whether or not I would see my grandpa in heaven that day. I went upstairs to fix my hair for something, and 10 minutes later, the balloon drifted into the bathroom I was in, (up the stairs that had a 90 degree turn, down the hallway, through a bedroom door, and through a sharp left into a bathroom door), and bumped into my head. The words it was inscribed with were "Thinking of you, praying for you, and for a rapid healing from your loss".

The fact that the balloon drifted in with those words was inspiring, and I thought about it the whole time I was fixing my hair. I moved on down the hallway, not speedily but the lazy gait of a 12 year old, when the balloon again drifted out of the bathroom, down the hall, and made a sharp right into the bedroom, smacking into my face after circling my body. "OK, I get it," I thought, and kept getting ready for my evening. The balloon remained.

Eventually, I went downstairs and wound up in anotherh room...you can fill in the blanks, 10 minutes later, the balloon was there. I started playing a game at this point...taking the most indirect routes to my next destinations only to find that the balloon would take the MOST direct route and bump into my head or face 3 or 4 more times after this, only to stop when I left the house and never to do so again. I have had manyy mylar balloons in my home, even ones that start to hang between the ceiling and the floor, and nothing similar has ever occurred. To this day I really believe that God realized my pain and allowed my grandpa to visit with me for a little while. I even remember showing my mom what was going on and she cried at seeing it.

Fast forward to a little over a year ago, I was pregnant with my first son. My grandfather died 14 years ago and I don't think of him daily anymore, but one night I had the most vivid dream I have ever had. I arrived at this house that I knew did not belong to anybody I knew, even in this dream world. In my dream I could tell it was some sort of meeting place, it was a very large and cozy house in the middle of a wooded area. I turned a corner and saw my grandpa sitting on a porch swing. I knew he was dead and I was elated to see him. I ran up to him while crying "grandpa!", and sat down next to him, holding him close while we swung. He had the most peaceful, joyous appearance, and he said, "I can't stay, but I want you to know I am SO PROUD of you and I love your son so much."

Crying, I hugged him and thanked him, but understood he couldn't stay because he had to go back to where he came from. He also said "I've been told to tell you to journal more." When I questioned him on this he simply said "It's a message", and I understood it wasn't from him. I held him close for a little while longer, and then I blinked, and he was gone from that place, and then I woke up.

I have no doubt what these events mean or when/where I will see him again, but I most definitely think it's not a thing to keep silent on. As a Christian, these topics do not usually come up, but I know what I experienced and I know my grandpa is waiting on me in heaven!

Finally finished reading all 45 pages, and am now too tired to write any of the stories I recalled of my own experiences during the reading of the thread. So for now, I'll snag one I wrote some months ago for a different ATS thread and paste it here. Later, after I get some sleep, I will come back and add the others I thought of.

---

The Painting

A friend of mine assisted his blind grandmother in locating and purchasing a house. The place was around fifty years old, in excellent condition, and had a long list of previous owners. We never could find if there was a single reason for so much turnover of ownership, but people rarely seemed to live there long. If the place was "haunted" it was of a benign variety, I admit the house was overly noisy at night and there were frequent odd drafts or puffs of air that were noticeably different in temperature(both hot and cold) than the surrounding still air, but given the house's age those things were easy to discount in theory, if not in practice.
There was, however, this painting in the attic. My friend told me about it one night when we stayed over after dinner and were watching a movie on the TV in the room set aside for him by his grandmother. I commented on the various soft noises coming from the ceiling, saying we should set some traps or get some poison or otherwise dispose of what sounded like a rodent infestation in the attic; an old blind lady could not possibly be at ease in a house full of rats or mice that she can hear but not see. After a brief silence, my friend stated flatly that there was nothing "of concern" in the attic.
The way his face and voice went to MIB Neutral when saying this naturally peaked my interest. I bugged him about it for a few minutes, finally he told me that shortly after purchasing the place, he had checked the attic space to see if it would be suitable for long term storage of stuff his grandmother didn't necessarily use but didn't want to throw away. When he went up there, he found a large, cavernous space, dry and unremarkable, very much suited to long term storage. It was completely empty except for one thing: leaning against a vertical support and just out of arm's reach from the trapdoor entry, there was a mid-sized painting of the head and upper torso of a young girl.
The painting was in no way sinister or otherwise "creepy looking." My friend said he remembered thinking it was a little strange; mainly because it was just so unexpected. People abandon boxes of junk in attics, not paintings of pretty young girls. Only later did it occur to him that, seeing as how the attic was totally empty aside from the painting, either a)The painting had been the only thing stored up there, which is strange, or b)There had been other stuff stored up there and subsequently removed, and the painting had been purposefully left behind, because it could hardly be missed by accident, which is also strange.
When he told his grandmother of his find, she immediately recommended they get rid of it. He told me she said "Little girls ought not be left in the dark," but neither should they keep something so intimately personal as a hand-painted portrait that had been abandoned for unknown reasons. My friend, reluctant to actually personally destroy the painting, put it out on the curb next to the trash, leaning up and set face-out, hoping maybe some passerby would take it instead of the guys in the smelly truck. Either way, trash day came and went, and several weeks went by and he forgot all about the painting.
Until one day his grandmother told him there were several boxes in her room that she had made ready for storage in the attic. When he brought the first of them up the ladder and through the trapdoor, he saw the painting leaning in its spot against the upright, facing him.
I'm sure you all saw that coming. I did too when he was telling me the story. I was still fascinated, however, and I asked him what he did then, and where was the painting now?
"I tried a couple more times to get rid of it. The last time, I took it to the park, folded it into one of the little BBQ grills they have there, and set it on fire. I watched it burn to ash. The next time I went up there for grandma, it was there again." He paused, then said, "Now, when she asks me to get something from the attic, or put something there, the place I actually go is the little shed in the back yard."
A bit more Q&A revealed that nothing actually scary or menacing or potentially dangerous had occurred; despite being repeatedly thrown away and even burned, whatever was behind this phenomenon had not turned mean. My friend's fear or aversion was based purely on the weird-factor; paintings that don't stay thrown away are to be avoided. I pointed this out to him and thereby convinced him to let me go up there and have a look at it myself. (continues in next post)

(The Painting continues...)

The painting was there, as described. It was a small to midsized portrait, say 18x24 inches (46x61cm), done by a fairly talented amature, on a hard, stiff media, somewhat like very dense cardboard and with a surface texture like rough canvas. It was of a girl in her preteens, say between nine and twelve years of age, smiling slightly and very pretty, with blond hair and a blue dress in styles somewhat old-fashioned, like you would expect in some of the earlier color photographs. There was no background, as though maybe the painting was incomplete...there was only a hint of shading around her in an oval shape, to give contrast to the mostly light colors used to paint her. Outside of that oval, the canvas board was its original off-white. That was really the only visually odd thing about the painting; the effect made it look as though she were sort of floating in a white void.

This has become much longer than I originally anticipated, so to cut a long story short: I took the painting with me and stashed it in my closet at my house. Originally I had planned to keep it out somewhere but eventually had to put it away for the simple reason that I kept finding myself staring at it, and in order to do things like study or read or fold clothes, I had to keep it out of sight. And yes, eventually it turned back up in the attic, whereupon I checked my closet and it was gone from there. I wanted to do some more experimenting, a LOT more actually, but my friend said no because the noises from the attic had increased a lot when I had the picture and his grandmother had asked him if he would set some rat traps in the attic. He had never told her anything about the painting coming back, as far as she was concerned it had been taken care of the day she told him to get rid of it, and he did not want to disabuse her of this notion. Rat traps wouldn't work for the noises, which would lead to questions he didn't want to answer; that was the end of that. As far as I know, it's still up there.

---

There. Hope you guys enjoy that one. I will return and write others later.
Cheers.

Once, my wife and I were at a traffic light, and I looked in my rear view mirror, and saw a man and woman in the car behind us wearing the same clothes as us...and they both looked exactly like us in our car. Sunglasses, clothing, hairstyles etc (it was a bright sunny day).

1st of course I thought it was a reflection...or maybe a doopleganger of us both or something...until a large dog stuck its head out their back window. We didnt have a dog.

They were an exact replica of us, mannerisms and all. When they turned at the light, I just stared in amazement...as they too...were staring ...right back at me.

I have many experiences in my life so far, i'm excited to have somewhere to write what has happened to me. My family moved house around 11 years ago now, I was only 8 at the time. The house was a complete dump, it had been left abandoned for 9 years according to the neighbours. We moved in straight away without decorating the house properly as the area we lived in was bad and getting worser, it was a good house and a good area and my parents planned to decorate it themselves over the coming months. As previously said the house was a mess, who ever lived there had painted all the upstairs rooms in black and left all the funiture and what looked like everything they owned behind. When we got to the house my dad went round putting light bulbs into every room as there were none for some reason. We must have been in the house for a few short hours when the first strange thing happened, the whole family had gathered in the living room, my dad had gone out for food as there was no way of cooking anything yet. We all ate together and eventually went back to taking boxes and whatever where it needed to go. When we went upstairs we noticed that all the light bulbs had been taken down and what looked like just placed on the floor, they were not smashed, marked or dirtied and no one had heard a thing. One of the bulbs had even been placed on a window sil. The back yard was one of the worst parts of the house, it's fairly small but there was 33 very large trees packed in there, it was like a small forest or something, me and my younger sister were not aloud out there, but I remember staring down at the garden from my bedroom window, it looked very scary. My parents started pulling and cutting the trees in the garden down. Right in the middle of all the trees they found a head stone, it was large and shaped like a cross, my parents just pulled it out of the ground and left it to be taken to the dump or whatever. I remember seeing it, it said RIP, that was the only thing on it. We do not know if someone is buried there or if it was just there as some kind of rememberance. Anyway so after we settled in we all had experiences, your things going missing for a week or so and turning up in obvious places where you would have seen it. We all saw dark shadows and were touched by nothing. I was never a scared child, I was brave and kinda crazy, but i couldn't sleep, I would lay awake for hours, which was something i had never had before. I felt someone watching me and it felt like I couldnt close my eyes, I was always on watch. I remember laying awake one night, my bed facing towards the door that always left open, in the hallway I could see a large cruifix my mother had hung there. That thing alone scared the the crap out of me. I just remember hearing this loud crack, a huge bang, it hurt my ears it was so loud, it was like a gun shot or something. It sounded like it came from the hallway. I was certain that would wake all in the house. but there was just silence. I don't understand how I was the only person to hear it. That was the second scariest thing to happen to me, after that i did what any 8 year old would do, i got into my sisters bed with her (we slept in the same room), away from the door and eventually fell asleep. The strangest thing though, it must have been a couple years later, the room was switched around, the bed no longer facing toward the door. I woke up because I could hear a familiar creaking. I had this old rocking chair at the end of my bed and it always creaked loudly when you sat on it. I am a very short sighted person, been wearing glasses since i was three. I looked over to the rocking chair and just remember a kind of grey shape, looked like a very small person, a child maybe but they were rocking in the chair. Whatever it was scared me to death and I covered my head with the blanket and must have just fallen back to sleep. This was not a dream, it definately happened. My brother is disabled, stays downstairs, he cannot walk and what would have been a dining room was made into a room for him. Every night he would hear someone knocking on his window, he got so scared that our older brother spent some time sleeping on the floor in his room. My mother is his carer and would look after him during the day, just them alone in the house. Everyday she would hear someone walking around upstairs when no one was there, sometimes even my dad would come home and hear it, think there was someone in the house and proceed up the stairs with a large walking stick, to find the intruder, of course there was no one. Once me and my sister were alone in the house and she had left her stereo blaring out upstairs, she was watching tv with me in the room directly below hers and we both heard someone walk into her room, the stereo suddenly switch off and then the person walk out of her room. We still live in the house now, things seemed to have calmed down a bit. I have many more stories to tell about this strange house.

This thread compelled me to create an account here, and I thought I'd share a few things. I'm a believer in the paranormal, but I have personally never believed that I have that sixth sense. Now, however, I do believe I have some sensitivity.

One summer a couple years back, I was working in an opera house. The building dates back to 1918, but I'm told a handful of other things were once there; a brothel (which would fit, the saloon across the street is still in business), a mercantile store... People have endless theories. I'd also rehearsed a show there earlier in the year when my director said "I think Ellen likes you, you're avenging your son's death in this show."

Backstory: Ellen is the name given to a woman we believe to be our top ghost. It's suspected that her young son died in a flu epidemic in the lat 19th century and she haunts the Opera House still waiting for him to return to her.

Paranormal investigators have visited numerous times and have confirmed the possibility of three existing entities. Ellen, who runs the show, another man who seems more passive and is possibly the ghost of a man who played piano for over 600 of the shows performed there, and an aggressive male entity in the basement who I can only refer to as the Gentleman.

Now, Ellen likes to play her little tricks; turning the lights on once everything is locked up, stealing props from the actors. It's harmless fun. The only people she targets are those who claim she doesn't exist. I considered us to be allies. The Gentleman, however, is another story.

One day I needed to get to the basement to replace the paper towels in the bathroom--which I had just replaced 20 minutes before. We were NOT that busy. I said "Ellen, I swear... You know I hate this basement..." So begrudgingly I grabbed my keys and went to the basement door. This basement looks like an old torture chamber with cobwebs and a potbelly stove, limestone walls. It's cold and damp and musty and I hate it there. I put my key in the door and twisted it the way I was supposed to and grabbed for the handle, turned it. The knob reverted to its normal place so fast it made my hand sting. Irritated, because a large crowd was coming in behind me, I twisted the knob again and gave the door a shove. It opened a crack and slammed back at me. I tried a third time and was again denied access, I thought "Fine, no paper towels." And as I was walking away back to the office, I heard the hinges creak and looked behind to see a gap in the door and a chill blew over me. This was a hot summer day and the feeling I got was like being shoved into arctic waters. I grabbed my paper towels, locked the door and refused to ever go near it again.

That same summer I was also in a show that was to open in July. I had gotten to work two hours early on accident (sometimes I'm very bad at reading clocks with hands) so I took out my script and went to work memorizing. Might as well make use of the time, right? Well, eventually that got boring, so I put it aside and went around the house tidying up and I paused at the plaque on the fireplace mantle recognizing the old piano player. I stared at his picture and he back at me and went back to my work, loudly singing "You are My Sunshine" which had been selected as a finale song for my show. There was a loud bang of the piano keys from the other end of the room and the lid snapped shut. I heard heavy footsteps up above me, then something fell over and hit the floor. The walls in this place are paper thin. I could hear something race down the back stairs and I was positive it was coming after me. I ran for the office and grabbed the building keys. I locked the front doors behind me and sat outside until someone came for the show that night.

I was picked up from work one night and went to a friends house. While there he was watching the NBA playoffs, me not being into sports zoned out. For some reason I was staring at the shadow being cast by the bench press and was thinking "that is the only shadow in this room, nothing else can cast a shadow". Right after that I heard a faint voice of a little girl speaking spanish. I didnt think anything of it since the neighbors spoke spanish, but it was 11 at night. Strange i thought then I heard the giggle. thats when I saw a shadow of a little girl take up the whole wall of where I was staring and run puast until it faded into the window. It didnt frighten me just surprised me.

Okay i was told to come here and make a post regarding what i been experiencing. Let me tell you about myself 1st. I do not believe in ghosts. I am highly scientific. But the # i have seen, and others with me that have seen it at the same time, proves i am not hallucinating and is intriguing to me that there may possibly be truth to ghosts. At any rate, when i 1st moved into this house in Redford Michigan in early 2001, everything was pretty cool. it was my 1st house. Only 2 other people had ever owned this house since the 1950's when it was built. The original owner i have no idea who they were or anything about them. The second owner was a couple that were previously married and they got married. She already had 3 daughters so he was their step dad. After i bought the house they moved and ended up divorcing. The daughters all said to one of the neighbors here that he was a real asshole and no one wanted anything to do with him. Okay so i Lived here about a year and met a old school sweetheart. She moved in and then she got pregnant, we got married. She has 2 daughters from her previous marriage and we have a son together, 3 kids. One night, i am in my kitchen looking through the fridge for something to eat. Out of my left eye in my perhipheral vision i see an object a woman fraile in black and white ruffled dress. Rennissance like almost. Goes into my kids room righ thru the door or at least thats what i thought because the door was closed. to make a long story short, a toy starts goin off in the room, i go retireve it. it was far away from my sons crib and he was fast asleep. even if he was awake, he could of not reached the toy. So i immediately grabbed it and tried to shut it off. I could not. So i got my screwdriver out (i am a electronics graduate and a Information Technology Engineer so i know wtf is up with electricity) and as soon as i opened the toy, it stops making noise, however THERE WERE NO FRIGGEN BATTERIES IN IT! I took the whole thing apart looking for any other sources of power like a backup battery (a toy would not have a backup battery usually) and or a capacitor that might of held a charge to explain how this device was working without a power source. There were no backup batteries or capacitors or any other kind of device or component that could store energy. To this day i still have zero explanation. Often my ex when she was my wife back then, would ask me, did you come into the bedroom last night and sit on the edge of the bed lean up close to me and then lean back get up and walk out of the room? i said no i was in my computer lab all night. I had the same experience when i lived in this house. When we separated, it stopped all together for me because i left the house and lived elsewhere for about 2 years. My wife however told me it kept happening. When she moved out she told me it stopped. Has not happened since Sept 2011 for her. the night i moved back here and went to sleep in this house, it happened again to me. Was laying there, could feel something sit on the edge of the bed. Then all of a sudden i was overcome by petrifying fear and it felt like someone was leaning in the dark up close to my face. Most friggen eerie thing i have ever experienced. I was not asleep. i finally got the courage to grab the lamp and turn it on it was difficult in retrospect gaining the energy to move my body. Unexplainable to say the least. In the last week, i saw another ghost, this one was a streak of white smoke that ran from me down a stairwell into my furnace room. I popped my head around the corner just in time to see it. I ran because i had been hearing noises and i wanted to see what it was, so i ran top speed to my kitchen and popped my head around the corner looked down it was dark, saw that puff of smoke streaking away went right through the furnace room door. I at 1st thought perhaps there was a fire so i flipped the light on and everything was fine i went down everything was fine. I went into every single room in the basement, its a finished basement, i left the doors shut when i left. Later i hear a door slam in the basement, at this point i am like angry and just went down there not expecting to find anything..... this time all the doors i shut and checked to make sure they were securely shut, were all open a crack every one of them. WTF? There is no-one in my house this i am totally sure of. I was told to get a ghost whisperer here but i do not know of any around here google was no help. I am out of ideas. Am i crazy? or is this # real? seems real enough to me, Hallucinations? no way others with me saw the same things, my ex wife for instance. I know shes not crazy. Any ideas anyone?

Chris

Hello all, thank you for sharing your experiences with me.

What I would, with your permission, like to relate to you did not happen to me, but to a colleague who I have not seen or heard from in over six years, so I am unable to clarify the finer points. For the sake of his privacy, and to include a human element, I shall refer to him by his initials; R.B.

I think of this incident whenever I see or contemplate death.

R.B. once told me that he was "not scared of dying, just a little worried about the pain that may be associated by the means of death" for he had, as a child, died.

This incident occured near Bendigo in rural Victoria, Australia in the early 1970's, R.B. would have been under 10 years of age and was living with his family on a fair sized property that his grandfather had founded, you can imagine the type, large main house, outbuildings, garage, workshop, stables, sheds etc. During the school holidays the children from the next property had come and they and R.B. were playing hide and seek, it was his turn to hide. On a trailer, amongst other refuse, waiting to be taken to the "Tip" (Local rubbish dump) was an old refridgerator, the heavy type with a self locking latch handle...yes, R.B. opened the door and climbed inside, as he said to me, he knew the gravity of danger he was in as soon as the door closed behind him.

In the darkness of his confinement he could see one miniscule spot of light coming through a rust hole which he put his lips to and sucked for air, it was not enough. He become hotter and hotter, sweating, I imagine, not just from the heat but from the fear and anxiety of being trapped in such a terrifying position. R.B. could not later judge how long he remained in this state but it was long enough for the other children to become bored with the hunt and they left, returning to their home. It was also long enough to raise his father's concern for his whereabouts.

I watched R.B.'s eyes very closely as he told me what happened next, he said that he felt "warm", no longer hot, just beautifully "warm", a feeling of bliss swept over him as he basked in this warmth and slowly rose, looking down on the refridgerator below him, all pain had left his body and he felt glorious as he continued to slowly rise, he could see the top of the buildings on the property as he looked down, he could see a perspective of the property unseen by him prior, he could see his father, frantic, searching for him, he tried to call to his father, he wanted to tell him not to worry, that everything was wonderfull, he watched his father near the 'fridge, he wanted to stop his father, but could not. He watched his father open the 'fridge door and take his wet body in his fathers arms, he distincly remembered how his body looked wet, his hair, his shirt, his pants. He could see all of this as he rose, he also saw, on the roof of one of the outbuildings, an old deflated leather football amongst the decomposing leaves built up in the corner guttering.

"Pain" was the word that R.B. used to describe how he felt next as he was suddenly aware of being rushed, in his father's arms, to the main house, he was taken inside and after some time, made a near full recovery. I say "near full", because with all due respect to the man, and through his own admission, he was what one could call "a little slow
sometimes" for all the years after the incident.

Some days later, R.B. took a ladder and climbed to roof of the (I do not recall which, garage/stable/shed) roof and took down the deflated football that he had remembered seeing as he rose, he showed it to his father, it had been his father's football (a Sherrin) that he had played with, and lost, decades before.

I am not a religious man, so I can not and will not swear to "God" that this story is true, however, I can and will swear on the flag and coat of arms of my beloved country that I do truly believe what R.B. told me, he was not a man prone to exaggeration and, I can assure you, his eyes confirmed his words.

I too fear the pain and suffering that may accompany my death, I only hope that I may experience the intense joy that R.B. felt when my moment comes, indeed Ladies and Gentlemen, well may we all.

My kind regards to you.

Brendan.

Earlier this year I was walking home from a friends house at about 4 in the morning and there were a lot of cops out driving and shining their torches around which I thought was weird and while I was walking I looked to at this house and saw an old guy in hospital looking clothes sitting out on the deck rocking. Sent flippin chills down my spine and I blinked and looked again to see if I was seeing things but he was still there then he stopped and just stared at me. My theory is he had maybe escaped a mental hospital or something and that's who the cops were looking for? I never found out what he was doing there but was still creepy

This is mostly to bump this fun old thread that totally deserves to be read by new members, I think. :-)
But I would like to advise any new posters to refrain from writing "walls of text", with no paragraphs.
You may not believe it, but many people simply don't read such posts, and certainly they take a lot more time and effort to read.

Thank you.

After reading what others have posted, my experience seems kind of silly.

When I was little (must have been 8 or 9) I was sent to retrieve the key from the street door. The key had a shoelace tied through the hole on the tip, so we could see it when it was dark, etc. When I got to the door, I grabbed the lace and pulled but the key was stuck.

I pulled harder and harder until I ended up with the lace in my hand, but the key was still in the lock. I forced it out and examined it. The key was fine. Then I examined the shoelace, every centimeter of it. It was not ripped, it was still tied up on the edges, completely untouched.

I remember thinking that somehow the shoelace had gone through the key, because if none of them was broken, if the knot was still there, there was no rip in the lace or crack in the key, how did it come off?

I'm pretty sure there's a reasonable explanation, but it was quite scary at the time.