Staying safe on your own at night (possible incident?)

S

shockblue

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Oct 8, 2009
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www.ponytailsjewellery.co.uk
I hate it now that it's completely dark when I go to see maya after work. She's in a field on a B road that gets a fair amount of traffic but there are no houses nearby at all and it's very dark!

I always get those creepy feelings that I'm being watched, but always tell myself I'm being silly but after tonight I'm seriously creeped out! :frown:

Her field is down the road from the main yard so I park my car at the gate. She was taking ages to eat her feed and I'd been and checked around the entire field, checked water, taken hay out, so I decided to go and sit in my car.

I had the door open and I looked down and something immediately caught my eye. It was really out of place despite the numerous amounts of crisp packets and McDonald's that normally turns up at the road side.

It was a neatly folded bit of paper near the gate and I immediately knew what it was! :frown: Because I'd seen it before (well not in that way! :giggle:), it was a page from a certain type of magazine left strategically at the gate.

About 5 years ago when my mum and a few friends had horses we were in a different field on the same yard and road and the same thing happened numerous times. We had to keep handing them into the police because of the children on the yard. Back then the pages were left neatly folded under the padlock when we'd go and turn the horses back out after a ride. Apparently it had happened before to someone else on the yard who walks the greyhounds up and down the road. The pages were left for her to find in the mornings during her routine.

We left the yard due to grazing issues and I returned on my own a year ago on my own after my mums horse died and friends left (but maya was on the main yard until this year).

I'm treating this incident as a one off and letting YO now as there are kiddies about. If it happens again I'll be collecting evidence :nerd: for the police.

I'm just a bit freaked out that someone HAS been watching me and knows that I use that gate now. In the summer I would park at the yard and take maya down to the yard to ride etc first using the back route through the fields.

How do you guys stay safe alone in the country side at night? :nerd:
 
Luckily I have my horses at home. My yard is visible from the back windows of my house and is around 80 m from my house, however, I still hate going over to the yard at night. Behind the yard is our back drive. We lock the gate to the back drive but we have been burgled this year.. apparently they came in from our bottom field up the back drive.

I really get freaked at night. I take my dog but he is a golden retriever who is terrified of his own shadow!

I hear footsteps but just tell myself it's deer. I put all the yard lights on and carry a heavy torch too (usable as a weapon). I also have knives in my store room for cutting baler twine etc which I would use if needed lol.

I don't suppose anyone is there watching me but our minds do go into overdrive.

If someone approached me I would jump in the paddock with the pony as she is a guard dog in her own right!!

I think the chances of someone being there who shouldn't be are very very slim but as I say our minds go into overdrive and we think allsorts!!

My main worry is an alien popping up out of nowhere lol. It's not really humans that scare me it's the unknown!!
 
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I wouldn't like it. We have alot of fields around our yard about 10 atleast, that are used for making hay etc and i wouldn't go up there at night. Our fields are far away from the yard aswell so i get someone to bring in poppet on my days if i wont be down til later. We have about about 50 horses on our yard at the moment and eventhough we have lighting etc. If you are ever there by yourself it is scary/
 
Having kept my hoprses on DIY for the most of the last 15 years (she's now on full livery) i am used to being on the yard at silly o'clock on winter mornings by myself - walking my old mare up a narrow, rough, muddy track between fileds to the wnter field too far from anywhere for anyone to hear me if anyone got me! :help: I always had my dog with me and though she wasn't the bravest of animals any weirdo hanging around wouldn't know that. then having to reverse the procedure 12 hours later. I always had a heavy, powerful torch with me and just had to get on with it - why should a nutter be hanging around in a cold, dark field just hoping they'd be able to get me?

I still go down to the yard every evening to check Dors now and am usually on my own and hear all sorts of noises even though we're on the side of a busy-ish road. And i don't have my old dog anymore to keep me company!

Maybe I read too many psycho-murder books for my own good!!

I do get into the car and off the yard as quickly as possible once I've turned off the stable light!

Scary places, horse yards, on a winters night.
 
Oh no, poor you!! That would totally freak me out!

I'm also lucky enough to have the horses at home and am very close to the house, but I still totally freak myself out walking around in the dark!

I absolutely :poop: myself a few days ago, was merrily doing haynets and I hear what genuinely sounded like someone walking around outside the barn. The next morning, I was doing the feeds at about 5am (keep my feet bins in the corner of the barn) and heard the same noise.....and it started to move round the side of the barn. It was a flipping HEDGEHOG!!!!!!!!!! Loud little blighter must have been rummaging round the fallen leaves, it looks as though he has a little nest under the pallets that the hay is on. Seem him most mornings now!

We've also got security lights at the back of the barn.

It could be worth reporting your case to the police anyway, you never know when something that can seem small when it's isolated actually could be useful when taking other pieces of info into account.
 
That's well creepy! How odd! What are the pages - are they from the same type of mag? Are they following a similar theme? Are they trying to say something with them? I'd be mega freaked out tbh...
 
If you cant take someone with you then definately let someone know when you are going to the field. One of those personal alarms are good, if someone does threaten you pull the plug thing and it lets out an ear piercing noise enough to frighten off anyone.
 
I didn't see the pages years ago so can't compare and I didn't want to spend to long looking at other ladies errm... Parts!

I would feel a bit sill if it was just something blown off the road. So am going to wait and see if anything else happens.

I have just got hold of a head torch. And my mum has just gotten over an MS relapse and has offered to see to maya two days of the week to help me out so I don't have to go up as much in the dark.

Does anyone else sometimes feel more vulnerable with a torch? If I'm down the field sometimes I feel like having the light makes me more visible.
 
I am often at my field alone in the dark, no lights, just my head torch, I probably look quite scary tbh :ninja:

After the first couple of dark nights, I am not really bothered.
I actually love it on a clear night if there is a full moon.

The only time I get the Heebie-Jeebies is the odd time my daughter is with me...think we trigger each other off. :giggle:
We have a mad race for the car, when the horses are done.
I am such a bad mother...its every man for themselves:eek::redface:
 
I don't like torches, I feel like a beacon to all things scary :-/
At least if you aren't lit up like a lighthouse it goes some way to minimise the 'baddies' advantage ;)

Ps OH! I didn't realise you meant those kind of mags...!
 
I like to tell myself that the horses behaviour would let me know if someone was hanging about, haven't figured out how that knowledge would save me from a mad axe man though. :help:
 
Update - just spoke to YO and she says that is not a one off as its still happening and to other yards in other villages including the local riding school.

She's got some gloves to give to me and she's letting the police know. I've got to collect anything else i find for DNA and fingerprints.

Freaky!
 
Oooh I remember this problem you were having from when you've spoken about it before. Thats horrible SB. Very creepy. When you started your thread saying your field is set away from the rest of the yard, on a relatively busy b class road but without any houses as such around you, that sounds exactly the set up I have here. There's a track that goes past our field which is part of a bigger walking route and so its not completely deserted but in winter we hardly see anyone.
I cope ok, I'm not scared of the dark. Its so peaceful around there and doesn't feel scary, I just tend to switch my torch off and stand in the field quietly, look at the stars and think of nothing. But then the only presents we get left at our gate are bags of carrots or homemade rosettes gifted to us by four year olds.
I hope your YO is on the case and this gets sorted once and for all. Its an undermining influence, subtle, but very very menacing.
 
We have a very active gay and dogging meeting spot on our local bridleway, which seems to have leaked into the woods that back onto my fields where I walk my dogs, so I am always finding interesting magazines, and a note the other day. It's not nice to stumble upon (I once found a bra in a tree and witnessed something I would have rather not!) but for someone to actually leave them for you is a bit odd. Although if I noticed them at my field I wold probably write a little note saying thank you for the pics but I'm not interested :giggle:
I did have to call the police earlier this year though because people were pooing in my field and using socks to clean themselves up :poop:
 
No_Angel said:
We have a very active gay and dogging meeting spot on our local bridleway, which seems to have leaked into the woods that back onto my fields where I walk my dogs, so I am always finding interesting magazines, and a note the other day. It's not nice to stumble upon (I once found a bra in a tree and witnessed something I would have rather not!) but for someone to actually leave them for you is a bit odd. Although if I noticed them at my field I wold probably write a little note saying thank you for the pics but I'm not interested :giggle:
I did have to call the police earlier this year though because people were pooing in my field and using socks to clean themselves up :poop:
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Wow - all that in sleepy Shropshire.....?? :wink:

I'm probably safer with a yard on the edge of the city then - plenty of street lights.

I would be seriously freaked out if I found notes/pics/mag pages on the gate though - I'd def have to take the OH with me!! If it's happening to other yards/riding schools in the area the more evidence you can collect the better - there's some seriously weird folk out there.
 
We have similar goings on as u tash around our bridleways! The other day there was a thong hanging from a tree at the entrance to the bridleway! I've not seen stuff myself but others have witnessed stuff they would rather not see!
 
Eek! That's really freaky SB! I would be petrified!

Our field is about a 5-10 min walk away from the yard, far enough away that even if there were people on the yard they wouldn't hear me if something went wrong. It's also isolated enough that nobody would hear me, but we are surrounded by 2 golf courses, walker routes and MoD land, with the bypass along the bottom of the fields, so people know we are there. Any sick person around would know that there are likely to be ladies walking around in the dark on their own, so that worries me a bit.

I like to think if the worst happened I could vault onto the horse and gallop away....however my plan is flawed slightly by the fact I think I would struggle vaulting onto Harv, and he isn't scared of anything, it would be a struggle getting him to gallop up a stone track! Plus it doesn't quite work for me walking back down the lane with no horse! :giggle:

Soozy that is actually a very good idea, I used to have one of those when I went to uni. Might ask for that as a useful stocking filler. A scream might not be heard, but an alarm would possibly be heard by the nearby village.
 
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