Decemystery (2024) 26: The Ghost Who Took a Pair of Socks

 

Here’s an odd story: I was looking through my Google documents to see if there would be an easy case to cover. As I’ve made explicitly clear a multitude of times throughout this month, I’ve been strapped for time—and this has been no more apparent than right now. I’m writing this on Christmas Eve; it’ll likely be finished tomorrow, the day before it goes up.

Anyway, while looking through old documents, I came across this one. I barely remembered, and I can’t even recall why it wasn’t deleted.

I’m serious; I have no recollection of this story outside of it briefly being considered for last year’s Decemystery duology. It isn’t on sustained_disgust’s Obscure Unsolved Mysteries Iceberg. I don’t recall telling any of my friends about it. It’s just here, in a document, with one sentence that was written on November 30, 2023. It reads as follows:

Okay, so I had no plans to cover another story from “It Happened To Me,” but I found one mere minutes ago that was way too good to pass up.

Well, a year later, I guess the story wasn’t as good as my younger self thought it to be.

Or maybe it is, and I didn’t give it a fair chance. Today, I want to find out with you, dear reader. This month has been filled with a lot of twists and turns, but none will be more unique than exploring a remnant from last year’s Decemystery duology that even I, the writer of these articles, forgot the origin of.

So, I invite you to accompany me over to the United Kingdom as we investigate a weird ghost story that sounds closer to a comedy short. This is the case of The Ghost Who Took a Pair of Socks. I’d tell you to hold onto your socks, but I don’t want to attract the specter we’re looking into.

Hey, where’d my socks go?

Mittens For Your Feet

Today’s tale was evidently discovered in an archived version of the Fortean Times: It Happened to Me - Volume 2, which was published in 2010. The titular case we’re covering is on page 133; I’ll have to go through more of the book because it looks like there are a ton of cases that I’ve forgotten that warrant a look-see.

This story was submitted by “Mrs VA Martin,” who was from Peterborough, Cambridgeshire, back in 1998. However, the incident took place in 1959—a whopping 39 years prior, when Mrs. Martin was 19 years old. That put her at 58 when she sent this in. Keep that in mind for when we get to the theories.

Anyway, Victoria (as I’ll call Mrs. Martin; I love Victorian-era history) entitled her story “Spectral Sock Swiper.” If it wasn’t her, it was the Fortean Times. I wish my titles were this clever. What school do I need to attend to learn how to think of good names for articles and headlines?

One day, in 1959, Victoria “visited Alnwick in Northumberland to see a friend.” For reasons that weren’t explained, there was one afternoon when she was waiting for a bus. She didn’t specify if she was headed home or somewhere else, but I digress.

Victoria described the weather as “very bad,” saying there was “thick snow everywhere.” She said it was around 2:00 p.m. and that “an elderly lady” was standing to the right of her. Victoria said the woman was wearing “a long black dress and shawl around her shoulders.” She had “her hair pulled back in a bun,” and her face was “very thin.” Topping things off, the lady had eyes that were “deep, tired, and sunken.”

If it feels like this write-up is moving remarkably fast, that’s because Victoria’s report is paced that way. I’m not glossing over anything. I’m just conveying the story as it’s presented. Truth be told, it’s rare that I see someone practically trip over themselves while writing the first paragraph of their paranormal experience.

As the two women stood outside in the frigid cold, the elderly lady “commented on the cold day” and asked Victoria “if she could have a couple of pairs of socks.” I don’t think words can do justice to how bizarre of a request that is in my eyes. She didn’t ask for a pair of socks. She asked for a couple of them.

You know what? Sure, okay, whatever. I’m not going to question it. I’ve done that enough this month.

Upon being asked for some socks, Victoria realized that the elderly woman had no socks on. I don’t know if she was standing barefoot in the freezing cold or if she had shoes on but lacked socks. If it’s the former, that makes this next piece of information all the more baffling to me.

Noticing that her elderly companion had no feet-warming mittens, Victoria took her socks off and gave them to the other woman. This prompted her to thank Victoria, put them on, and disappeared.

I mean that, literally.

Yes, that’s right. This elderly woman  “vanished into thin air,” as Victoria put it in her report. That included Victoria’s socks. I can only hope that Victoria wasn’t standing outside barefoot because if she was, I’m deeply concerned that she may have gotten frostbite.

Victoria’s account continues with her speculating that the elderly lady “had died in or near that spot” and that others had seen her. She also theorizes that “many pairs of socks” were in the woman’s possession. I swear that I am not making any of this up; Victoria genuinely pondered if this ghost had taken a great many pairs of socks.

I’ve said this before, but I shall say it again: I love the topics I write about so much.

Despite now being down a pair of socks, Victoria was “glad” that she was able to help the elderly woman. She also hoped that she was able to “ease the pain” the woman might have felt. I find it kind of odd that Victoria posits this after speculating that the woman had been given socks before. That elderly lady isn’t leaving until she can make a throne out of socks in the afterlife, Victoria; the Sock Queen shall reign supreme across time and space!

Victoria ends her report by saying that the elderly lady “looked as real” and corporeal as a normal human. I’ve heard stories of ghosts that appear like this, so I can’t say I’m all that surprised by this information. However, I am quite baffled by her ability to take a pair of socks with her when she vanished.

With that, this story—over a year in the making—comes to an end. Truthfully, I don’t regret waiting to cover it; this was yet another much-needed instance of something short, sweet, and, above all else, wickedly fun. This was like a reminder of why I chose to start covering Fortean mysteries; it was unadulterated strangeness in all the right ways.

That said, I don’t want to reminisce and get all sentimental with you when there are theories for us to go over. Well, the few that there are. I’m not going to lie by saying there’s a lot for us to go over; this is a very cut-and-dry case. But don’t take my word for it. Let’s dive into the next section and see what the truth behind Victoria’s experience may be!

Theories

1. A ghost

The first and most obvious explanation is that the woman was a ghost—like the spirit of an elderly person who froze to death in the general vicinity or was the victim of a fatal accident. I lean toward the former due to her wanting some socks.

This theory will vary drastically based on whether or not you believe in ghosts. As someone who does, I can safely say that, yes, I think this theory is likely (assuming Victoria isn’t lying—more on that later). The story reads like a classic encounter with a deceased person who couldn’t move on due to an untimely death.

However, there’s no verifiable evidence to suggest that this happened for a few reasons. The first is that I don’t know how to find out if anyone in the area died of such causes. Outside of lacking the proper time to check, I don’t know if there would be any public records of an elderly woman who froze to death in Alnwick (if that’s even how she perished).

On top of that, Alnwick was founded in 600 AD. There’s a staggering 1,300 years of death I would need to comb through. I don’t have enough patience to do such an arduous task.

Second of all, there were no other eyewitnesses—not as far as I can tell. Granted, I don’t know what Alnwick is like, nor do I know if it was snowing. If it was, then the reduced visibility could explain why no one saw the woman disappear. Or if they did, they may have assumed she walked off.

If there were others who saw her, it’s really strange that nobody told Victoria about the specter. I can’t fathom leaving a 19-year-old lady to live out her days not knowing the local ghost of an old woman who takes socks.

Last but not least, this is the word of an unvetted stranger. While she may have sent the report to a magazine, that doesn’t make it more valid than a story from About, Reddit, or 4chan. Victoria is still as prone to lying as anyone else. Unless I or someone else could interview her, her word needs to be taken with a grain of salt.

That said, I won’t deny that this story aligns with legends of those who have died and vanished along with objects. In fact, it reminds me of an old urban legend about a ghostly hitchhiker (usually a woman) who died in an accident. They’re cold, so the driver (typically a man who’s driving home from a party) offers the passenger their coat.

During the drive, the hitchhiker either warns the driver about a dangerous turn or vanishes upon arriving at the destination. If it’s the latter, the parent (often the mom) says that their passenger was their child who died in an accident.

Curious, the good Samaritan driver decides to pay a visit to the local graveyard. When they find the tombstone of their passenger, they also discover their coat neatly folded atop it.

Some have claimed to have real-life encounters like this urban legend, and I’d be lying if I said my inner believer didn’t think that it offered some credence to the story. What can I say? Even I have my biases!

Anyway, while I may think that this tidbit offers up a bit of credibility, it doesn’t mean the story is outright true. No, there is the other side of the coin, the one that suggests this case is all a fabrication. So, come along; let’s discuss what points to this story being nothing but a hoax.

2. A hoax

The theory that I’m sure many skeptics will reasonably subscribe to, this is a staple of practically every write-up I do nowadays that isn’t tied to true crime. You can’t approach the Fortean—or anything like it—without a healthy dose of skepticism. To me, doing that is a ridiculously brazen thing to do.

That said, this theory has one really peculiar flaw—in my eyes, anyway—that I feel obligated to make a note of. Yes, I’m going to single it out before discussing what works in its favor first. Why? Because it sticks out to me like a sore thumb.

During the story, I told you to keep Victoria’s age in mind. The reason for that is I have no idea why a 58-year-old woman would fabricate a story like this. I understand that hoaxers aren’t limited to teenagers and young adults, but there’s something about this that doesn’t sit right with me.

When it comes to a hoax, there’s an incentive, a motivation to perpetrate it. Money, publicity, and proving a point are the three primary reasons that I go to. In this case, the third one is plausible. The other two aren’t unless someone recognized Victoria’s age (which is possible if she didn’t use an alias).

Now, as a disclaimer, I implore you not to go to see if she’s still alive. If, by some chance, Victoria is, she would be 84 years old today. I do not want anyone to try to find an elderly woman and harass her about a story she sent 26 years ago. I understand the desire to have answers for this case, but that doesn’t mean I believe it’s acceptable to hound someone who may not even recall submitting the report.

With that said, I’ll acknowledge that it isn’t out of the realm of possibility for someone around Victoria’s age to want to partake in a bit of pranking. There’s no rule or law that dictates someone who’s of a certain age or demographic can’t enjoy messing with others. If that were the case, then schools would be a lot duller because most, if not all, teachers would effectively be robots, and grandparents wouldn’t be fun to visit.

As such, it’s possible that Victoria wanted to mess with Fortean enthusiasts by making up a story to see if she could get it submitted to the Fortean Times. If this were the case, she might’ve shared her achievement with her younger relatives to try and impress them. Is this far-fetched? Not entirely. There are some adults who yearn to be seen as “cool” and “hip,” and the 1990s were a time when adults tried in vain to appear rebellious to youth.

This is still prevalent nowadays, with corporations trying to constantly appeal to those who are a part of Generation Z and Generation Alpha. They tend to fail miserably at it because they fail to understand the mindset of young people. This is also why I tend to treat my attempts at “being cool” in a tongue-in-cheek manner since I loathe the idea of appealing to a specific demographic; I prefer my writing to reflect me as a person and not a vain attempt at being marketable.

At the same time, I think it’s woefully unlikely for someone to have done this. I’ll concede that I don’t know that many examples of hoaxes, but most of them always had some ulterior motive—usually financial or publicity-related in nature (like the Balloon Boy hoax from 2009). As far as I can tell, Victoria had nothing to gain from it outside of something personal.

If that were the case, one would think that someone would’ve tried to oust her publicly unless they were like-minded. Even then, it seems incredibly bizarre to take this route and not try to get featured on a television show. Surely, the United Kingdom has its own ghost-themed programs that she could have tried to get on. Going about it this way is myopic. Then again, I don’t know if magazines reached more eyes than televisions back in 1998.

Then again, it’s always possible that Victoria was thinking long-term. Perhaps she yearned for someone like me to one day cover her story and spend many hours on Christmas Day writing about it. If that were the case, then well played. You succeeded, dear hoaxer.

Anyway, that’s the main flaw; that’s what’s going against this theory. What does it have going for it? Well, that’s actually very simple—and surprisingly strong. People make stuff up all the time.

That may sound like it’s contradicting what I just went over, but hear me out here. While I stand by what I said about the manner in which Victoria may have gone about things being unlikely in my eyes, there’s nothing dictating that she couldn’t have done it. As I said, there is no rule, law, or anything of that sort mandating she can’t fake something like this.

There’s also the matter of how we don’t know if Victoria really was 58 when she sent in her account. There’s always the possibility a teenager or young adult made it up. It isn’t like the Fortean Times demanded you send in your ID with your letter. I’m pretty sure it’s like any other magazine; you write (or type) it and mail it to a post office.

That is, without a doubt, the biggest point in the theory’s favor. There is no way to prove that Victoria is who she claimed she was. Because of that, we’re left having to do one thing I loathe doing when it comes to these write-ups: trusting her word at face value.

Ultimately, that leaves me in a very strange situation. On the one hand, believing a stranger’s word without any way to verify it is reckless and likely to leave me with a whole lot of crow to eat. On the other hand, the factor of Victoria’s age doesn’t sit right with me; I simply cannot get myself to believe someone her age would really pull something like this for no apparent reason.

But, hey, I could be overthinking things. I’m heavily prone to doing that, so I won’t pretend that I’m intellectually superior to anyone. In fact, I’d appreciate it if someone criticized my line of thinking with this theory so I could do better in the future, should anything like this arise.

That said, it’s time for us to move on to the final theory, and it’s one that’s certainly a whole lot different than this one, at least in terms of plausibility. Come along, dear reader, as we leap into even more familiar territory.

3. A false memory

I was tempted to exclude this theory, but I figured I’d include it due to Victoria’s age.

At 58 years old, I have to imagine that your memory capabilities become considerably weaker. That isn’t to say you’ll be forgetting everything that happened a few moments prior, but recalling events from 38 years ago would be a challenge. Heck, I struggle to remember things that happened a week ago. I cannot fathom I’ll be easily remembering stuff clearly when I’m Victoria’s age.

As a result, there’s a possibility that the elderly woman was real and merely walked off. Decades later, when thinking back on it, Victoria incorrectly remembered the events and thought she disappeared into thin air.

At first glance, this sounds extremely plausible. In fact, it sounds like it’d be a perfect fit for this case. After all, human memory is imperfect (I’ve gone over this numerous times this month), and the enormous gap in time between when this happened and when it was reported offers enough time for the event to become distorted. So, what could possibly be going against it?

Well, that’s simple: Why would the woman walk off with Victoria’s socks?

I want you to think about this detail for a moment, dear reader. If Victoria wasn’t lying, and if this wasn’t a ghost, a person asked Victoria for “a couple of pairs of socks.” This would presumably mean four socks in total, but I digress; I don’t want to get hung up on that detail just yet.

First of all, asking a stranger for some socks is bizarre. I have no idea who would do that; the law of probability dictates that someone would do it, but I can’t fathom it being done at a bus stop when the weather was visibly bad.

That brings me to the second issue: This woman would have had to have gone out without socks when it was frigid… so she could ask for socks. I want you to reread that so you can fully grasp just how ridiculous that sounds. We’re not talking about someone asking for money or something valuable. They’re socks. Unless Victoria was wearing some late-1950s designer socks that were worth a pretty penny, I doubt they’re worth stealing.

The third and final issue I’ll bring up is one that I forgot. No, I’m not kidding. While writing this, I actually forgot what I intended to put here. I was at a Christmas get-together while writing this, got up to grab a drink, and forgot what I was going to put here.

I really need to invest in a notepad. They’re, what, $13.00? Maybe less? Why don’t I own one? Eugh, I’m a dolt sometimes.

Anyway, the only way I can see this working is if the elderly woman’s desire stemmed from a fetish, but even that seems highly unlikely. Why not wait until the weather is better? Why risk getting frostbite to satisfy a primal desire? Maybe I don’t know enough about things like that; I’m uneducated when it comes to things like that.

The only other plausible explanation I can think of is that Victoria incorrectly remembered the weather (which is possible). Even then, this seems way too silly for my liking. Stealing a pair of socks from a random stranger is just about the most comical thing ever.

But, hey, maybe that was the point. What do I know? I’m not a thief. I’m some guy who writes about weird stuff because he likes to do it.

Anyway, that was the last theory. Let’s move on to the meme theories—yes, there are two today. Why? I’m writing this on Christmas Day; I want to be generous. Also, I had two ideas that I yearn to use.

4. An interdimensional sock stealer

Even socks aren’t safe from my terrible ideas; now they’re being associated with jokes I’ve run into the ground all month. This is almost as bad as the time I was on Family Guy.

Cue the cutaway gag that adds nothing to the plot.

Wait, haven’t I used that joke before?

4. Or it was someone who was obsessed with sock puppets and stole them

Somewhere in the United Kingdom, there’s an elderly woman who’s buried in a mausoleum with thousands upon thousands of socks. Well, maybe. You can’t disprove that, dear reader; I’ll just pull the interdimensional card on you if you do!

My Take

I think there’s a strong argument to be made in favor of this being a hoax. Alas, as someone who’s a staunch believer in the paranormal, I’m going to let my bias win today and say that I believe this was a ghost.

Yes, while there is reason to suspect that this was a hoax or a false memory, I’m inclined to suspect that this was the spirit of someone who, unfortunately, passed away—possibly due to harsh weather or some other tragic accident. Why? Because it strikes me as a classic setup for a paranormal encounter.

There are countless cases from around the world of restless spirits who died violent deaths or met an early demise. They’re often associated with murder, maltreatment in mental hospitals from times of yore, or people who were tortured during medieval times. The woman Victoria saw is, in my eyes, a classic case of someone who couldn’t move on because she didn’t believe it was her time.

Now, if I’m to set aside that bias, I do think there’s a very strong argument to be made for the theory that this was a case of a false memory. My main reason is that we don’t know what the weather was like in stronger detail. We just know it was “very bad.”

Having been born and raised in New York, I’m accustomed to aggressive winters; I’ve experienced wind chills as low as -15 Fahrenheit (-26 Celsius) and blizzards that resulted in snow drifts that had to have been over five feet (152 centimeters) deep. While they’re hardly the worst out there, I’d like to say that I know what bad weather is like.

If Victoria were waiting outside in a blizzard, it’d make sense for this elderly lady to have “vanished.” Visibility would’ve been poor, and upon reflection, years (or decades) down the road, I wouldn’t doubt she’d think the woman had vanished into thin air. That would’ve led to the metaphorical birth of this case.

I will concede a great deal of ground in this regard, and I’ll even admit that blind belief that this story did happen—despite everything I said earlier—is hypocritical of me. However, this is my take, and I want to believe Victoria helped a restless spirit finally find peace. Why? Well, I’d like a bittersweet ending—even if she lost her socks in the process.

That does lead me to wonder how she explained her lack of socks when she arrived at her destination. Eh, I’m sure she thought of a good excuse.

Conclusion

As I said earlier, this was a great deal of fun to write—even if it took me longer than I care to admit. Still, if all goes well, I’ll revisit “It Happened to Me” a lot more in 2025. It’d be a nice change of pace from About, which I’m pretty sure I’ve milked to the point that my blog’s going to become nothing more than a recounting of every story from there.

You guys are so lucky I didn’t cover all of the stories I originally had planned to cover from there. I think it might’ve become quite tiresome!

Anyway, enough about that. As per the norm, I’d love to know what you, dear reader, think the truth behind this case is: Did Victoria truly encounter a ghost? Or was it a hoax? Or perhaps a false memory? Or do you think there’s a fourth possibility that I overlooked due to Father Time dangling a pocket watch in front of me like a jerk? Let me know in the comments, and, as always, stay happy, stay healthy, and thank you for reading!

Oh, hey, I found my socks. It turns out they got lost in the dryer.