Brought to you by KeVkRaY 

Sharing the strangeness 

For 37 years now - ever since Bob Rickard launched a modest publication called The News, soon to become Fortean Times magazine, back in 1973 - we’ve been collecting accounts of the unusual, the intriguing and the anomalous; the sort of stories that, if they make it into the mainstream newspapers, tend to be sidelines rather than headlines. As the world’s foremost journal of strange phenomena, though, we can leave the workaday world of politics, gossip and sport to the others and concentrate on the far more interesting world of weird stuff; and over the decades we’ve followed the evolution of all kinds of oddities, from UFOs and crop circles to alien big cats and claims of psychic powers.

And through bringing these subjects to the fore, and talking about them in a rational way, we’ve also found that people are encouraged to come forward and share their own accounts of high strangeness. Now, you might not want to tell your friends, family or workmates that you’ve encountered an eight-foot tall tinfoil man or fled in terror from a pub loo because there was something evil lurking in the shadows - but you can tell Fortean Times.

And people continue to do just that, particularly since we introduced a dedicated ‘It Happened to Me’ section in the magazine and started an online forum where folks could share, compare and discuss their own strange experiences.

So, welcome to this third instalment in our ongoing overview of a very weird world; we hope you find plenty to make you reel in amazement, shiver in terror or just scratch you head in bafflement.

And, of course, if it’s happened to you, do tell us about it… 

David Sutton, Editor, Fortean Times 

Fortean Times: It Happened to Me - Volume 3

Edited and compiled by David Sutton and Paul Sieveking 

Photography and Design Etienne Gilfillan 

Editor in Chief David Sutton 

Cover image Etienne Gilfillan

Fortean Times: It Happened to Me Volume 3 is published by Dennis Publishing Ltd, 30 Cleveland Street, London W1T 4JD, a company registered in England number 1138891. Entire contents (c) 2010 Dennis Publishing Ltd licensed by Felden. This is an independent publication not affiliated with Apple Inc. or Adobe Systems Inc. All product logos and trademarks are the property of their respective third-party owners.

PERMISSIONS AND REPRINTS

Material in this ePub may not be reproduced in any form without the publisher's written permission. It is available for licensing overseas. For details about international licensing, contact Ornella Roccoletti at ornella_roccoletti@dennis.co.uk or call +44 (0) 20 7907 6134

DENNIS PUBLISHING LTD

MD of Advertising Julian Lloyd Evans

Commercial Director Martin Belson

Chief Operating Officer Brett Reynolds

Group Finance Director Ian Leggett

Chief Executive James Tye

Chairman Felix Dennis

ePub generated by Ovingo / www.ovingo.com

Uncanny Encounters

Some of the most unnerving letters we’ve received concern encounters with beings that appear to be not quite human. These aren’t the usual ghosts or spirits, more like interlopers from some other dimension or from our dreams and nightmares: a spooky harlequin, a salesman from another planet, a monster made of grass, or even the Victorian bogeyman Spring-heeled Jack.

Eerie Entities

MEETING SPRING-HEELED JACK

I was making my way to Farringdon train station after having spent an evening out with friends in the Clerkenwell area of London. Not knowing the place very well, I got a bit lost and ended up walking the streets, looking for someone to ask directions. 

London seemed strangely deserted that night and I freely admit I was starting to worry, about missing my train home more then anything else, but I also had the feeling of unease you only get if you are totally unfamiliar with your surroundings. If you were ever lost in a department store as a child, you will know what I mean. If you are acquainted with London, you will know that one minute you can be in the most modern metropolis then turn a corner and you are in a Dickensian cobbled alleyway. Well, it was down one of these alleys that my attention was drawn. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a darting figure and turned instinctively to look. The alley was lit sporadically by old-fashioned street lamps, and it was behind one of these lamps that I thought I could make out the shape of a figure trying to conceal himself. I pondered for a second on what it could be. I decided I would react to it in the traditional English manner - avert my gaze and pretend nothing was happening. As I was putting this plan into action, I heard a burst of shrill laughter. I turned to face the alleyway once more. Coming toward me in great lolloping movements was a tall, thin figure. It moved silently and was dressed in what looked like tight black leather. I could not make out its face, but I was transfixed by this apparition. It moved as if it were dancing in reverse, coming closer toward me, moving like a giant string puppet. Just as I gathered my wits enough to run, it issued another ear-piercing laugh, crouched on the ground, then shot off upwards out of my view. I did not try to see where it had leapt to - I ran as fast as I could until I found a main road. I followed the main road to the station and only just got the train home. 

I have no idea what it was - probably a practical joke of some kind. However, a search on the Internet the next day brought up the name ‘Spring-heeled Jack’, not seen in London since the Victorian era.

Kevin -- , London, 2003 

THE SHAPELESS ONE 

The following experience is hard to classify, and I have never heard anything quite like it, although the “Shapeless One” or “Boneless” (described in 

McEwan’s Mystery Animals of Britain and Ireland, 1986, p183) has some features in common. It happened around 11.30pm on 21 June 1975, when I was 19. I can pinpoint the location to the nearest yard, as I know the area extremely well. A friend and I were spending the night in a local nature reserve as part of a survey of a local badger population that we had begun at school, and after a fruitless examination of a sett which turned out to be abandoned, we laid out our sleeping bags on a dry spot and prepared to sleep. 

It was a warm, dry and starlit night, very dark under the trees as there was, I think, no moon at all, but the nearby lights of Birmingham made the open ground slightly less dark. I went for a short walk before going to sleep, and on emerging from the woods onto the edge of the adjoining golf course, I saw a white shape under an isolated tree about a 100 yards (90m) away. My first thought was that the golf club had erected a notice on the tree, and I walked towards it to investigate. The silhouettes of the trees were visible against the sky, but very little else could be seen, and although the white shape didn’t appear to be luminous it was surprisingly prominent. As I got closer, I could see the shape more clearly and, becoming uneasy, picked up a long stick and approached as quietly as possible. There seemed to be a very faint hissing from the direction of the object, but as I knew there was a waterfall a few hundred yards away to my right I couldn’t be sure that the white shape was really the source of the sound. 

The shape was by now clear, but it remained indescribable. All I could think of at the time was a spider under a blanket, for the surface was ridged as though by legs radiating out from a central shape, but the analogy was not exact. The ridge facing me was writhing as if what was underneath was more wormlike. The whole thing was about 4ft (1.2m) across and situated at the base of the tree as if stretched out on the ground. I advanced to within about 4ft of it, getting no reaction from it, and stood for a while trying to identify it with something I knew, including some sort of joke with human figures under a white sheet. Factors against this were the general shape, its almost complete silence (it occurred to me that I might have surprised a courting couple, but I could not reconcile this with what I saw) and the fact that its edges seemed blurred and indistinct, as if it faded out rather than just stopping. Having failed to account for it, I became nervous and retreated backwards, not taking my eyes off it until I was back in the woods. Altogether I must have watched it for five minutes, and apart from the writhing visible from close range it never moved.

I have been back to the site at night since, in an effort to identify something that could have caused the phenomenon, but have never seen anything similar again. 

Chris Peters, Erdington, Birmingham, 1988

THE HARLEQUIN

About 40 years ago, I lived near a very small city in upstate New York. For about two years, whenever I was on the main street of the city, I would see this person dressed like a harlequin. This was very strange for such a conservative city, although, to my recollection, no one else on the street showed any reaction. 

As a kid, I recall walking past this person (or whatever it was) and getting the most uncomfortable feeling from her - I think it was a ‘her’, since ‘she’ was dressed in dirty pink satin and stripes and wore filthy ballet slippers. Her face was also painted up like a harlequin. Her behavior was odd, too. She never blinked, but just stared vacantly into the distance. The other weird thing that used to frighten me was that I’d turn to get another look at her and she would suddenly be on the other side of the street. She was always dressed the same way, always behaving the same way, no matter what the weather. She acted strangely enough for me to be afraid that she would even look at me. I still get chills when I think of ‘her’ today.

Dave Tiger, by email, 2010

THE GRASS MONSTER

I asked a friend of mine if he had any ghost stories as he spent a few years working for British Rail in the UK. While nothing happened to him at that time, he had experienced two unaccountable incidents during his teens. This one is from October 1984, when he was 14. 

He was with about eight school friends one dusky autumn evening, walking along a grassy path that runs at the side of a park in Didsbury, Manchester. It is called Sandhurst Road and, although it is properly surfaced at either end, there is a grassy dirt path, lined with trees but no houses, for about 200 metres (660ft) in the centre section. My friend was lagging behind the others by about eight or 10 steps over a part of the path that rises over a long-disused railway line. He wandered off the path, but only by a step or two, into a minor grassy area, say 8ft by 3ft (2.4m by 90cm) alongside a fence. He says that he was dawdling a little. 

As he looked at the ground in front of his feet, he saw a series of normal, everyday, healthy grass stalks, about 10in (25cm) or 12in (30cm) long, only they were lying flat on the earth and not pointed upwards. As he watched, four of these stalks simultaneously “snapped” upright. They were so arranged that they formed the four corners of a square. He said they jerked upright but were arched slightly, bowed outwards. Then, in unison, they each bent at the middle and pointed inwards to join at what would have been the centre of the square. Without any kind of uprooting, the ‘thing’ started moving towards him. 

My friend turned on his heel and ran the way he had come, away from his friends. Being then tall and athletic, he ran the 70 or so metres back down the path at top speed. The whole time he was running he said he felt something “buzzing” at his feet, first the left (being the side he saw the “grass monster” on) then the right. He almost fell and came off the path at one point, but soon reached the road proper and a wall with a house behind it. The whole time he had been running, he dared not look at his feet. When he reached the wall/house, he had the impression that the thing was gone, perhaps off to one side of the path into the undergrowth. 

When he had calmed down, he checked his shoes and found that the laces on both of his shoes, at the knots, were unnaturally frayed in a way he had never seen laces frayed before, on what were practically new running shoes. He waited a moment and then ran back up the path, past the point where he had first seen the “grass monster” although without looking at the spot, and joined his friends, none of whom had seen anything. When asked what had happened he said that “a beast” had nearly got him. 

My friend is well balanced, if a little creative and with a vivid imagination. I have no doubt he was telling the truth. He says at the time it happened he was a happy, untroubled kid and there were no drugs involved. He’s open-minded enough to accept what occurred without questioning it too much. 

Henry da Massa, Manchester, 2008 

Mysterious meetings

THE IMMORTAL COUNT 

In 1972, shortly after I married a Dutchman and went to live in Holland, my mother visited me for a holiday. The day before she left, we were sitting in a small cafe on the edge of the red light district in Amsterdam. It was empty apart from a man sitting in a poorly lit corner. My mother was laughing and joking as usual. Suddenly, the man was standing next to our table. “Would you ladies mind if I joined you?” he asked in English with a slight French accent. My mother, in her usual friendly manner, said: “No, not at all. Please sit down.” By way of apology for the intrusion, he said: “Your laughter was more than I could resist.” 

So began a long conversation, lasting three hours or more, taking in Amsterdam and her history, art, flowers, gold and jewellery. He seemed to know a lot about paint mixing and said that he spoke many languages. He talked a lot about diamonds and said he used to work in a factory around the corner. He talked as though he could even make the things! 

When she could get a word in, my mother asked if he would like some coffee and cake. “No thank you, I don’t eat,” he replied. “I’ll just have some mineral water.” I noticed he was dressed all in black with small pieces of fancy white lace around his neck and wrists. 

It was only years later that I came across references to Count St Germain, named by Madam Blavatsky as one of the 11 adepts who are always present in the world at any one time. In one source he is described as “all in black with touches of white linen at neck and wrists”. He is said to have repaired a diamond for Louis XV, something unheard of. He worked in a diamond factory in Nieuwe Uilenburgerstraat - which happened to be just around the corner from the café where we met our ‘man in black’. The Count could converse in nine languages and only ever drank mineral water, allegedly having discovered the secret of the Philosopher’s Stone and eternal life. While he lived in Holland, he had a number of laboratories where he experimented with paint, improving the brightness of pigments and dyes. Had we really met the eternal Count? 

Pauline Barbieri, Eastbourne, East Sussex, 1999

AN ANGEL CALLS

I am now 24 years old and am referring to when I was approximately three or four. I was living in a small, 100-year-old terraced house in a small town called Alnwick in Northumberland. It’s strange, as to this day I still have relatively clear recollection of what happened... 

In the kitchen of the house I had a blackboard and had been drawing a picture of my house with my mother, father, my newly born sister and myself. It was a bright sunny day and I guess around noon. I remember turning round to find my mother to show her what I’d been doing and right there in front of me was an angel. Now I don’t know why I thought it was an angel, other than that’s what it told me it was. 

It was around the same size as me. It didn’t look like a person though, but like it was made up of clouds - there’s no other way to describe it. I remember chatting to it - no words were said back to me out loud, but I kind of knew what it was thinking. It asked me about what I’d been drawing and if I was happy. I must have stood there for a good few minutes with it, then for some reason I got really excited and started bouncing up and down (I was only three or so!) saying it had to meet my mother. The angel said it couldn’t do that, and quickly floated up and vanished. My mother came out from the front room only to be met with an over-excited kid trying to get upstairs to see where the angel went. 

I was chatting to my mother years later about it, and she remembered the incident, and said around the same time some strange things had happened. A few times she’d woken up in the night to see me standing by her bed, but when she turned on the light nothing was there. One night she told my dad. He seemingly woke up, looked at the small figure said something along the lines of “Have you had a nightmare, John?” and fell back to sleep. My mother put her arm out to touch the figure and it just disappeared. 

She likes a good story does my mam, but when she told me this she was deadly serious and, it seemed, quite reluctant to tell me. 

John Pickard, by email, 2001

PEANUS SALESMAN FROM URANUS

At about 7.30 pm on 26 January 1986 I was watching TV when the doorbell rang. It was a tall, deeply tanned man wearing an olive-brown suit and a homburg, who said “Hello, sir, I am a representative of the Uranus Peanut Company. Would you like to sample my wares?” I said yes, whereupon he opened a shiny black suitcase and produced a brown paper bag full of peanuts. I took some. “They are delicious, aren’t they?” he asked, smiling. I agreed and asked how much a bag was. “Two dollars forty-six,” he replied. I gave him three dollars and told him to keep the change. “Thank you. The Council will remember you favourably. Good night.”

He turned round and descended the stairs. After about five steps up the drive he seemed to vanish, because I couldn’t see him after that. After a few minutes of perplexity, I thought ‘he’ must have been a spectral Man in Black.

Paul Rebek, Epping, New South Wales, Australia, 1986

Horrible Housemates

RAGGEDY ANN

My wife and I, along with our five-year-old son and our new baby, shared a single bedroom and loft in San Francisco, near the beach. The bedroom opened directly to the living room, and had no door. One night, some time around 1995, I came home from work and walked through the living room towards the kitchen where my wife was cooking dinner. Our older son was in the backyard and the baby was asleep. As I passed the bedroom, I noticed a new addition to my wife’s collection of stuffed animals. A large (at least three foot tall) Raggedy Ann doll sitting on the bed, facing the bedroom entrance.

I walked to the kitchen, said hello to my wife, and made some small talk. After a moment or two, I asked where she had gotten the new Raggedy Ann doll. My wife looked at me blankly. She had no idea what I was talking about. She gave me a look as if there were large lobsters crawling out my ears. I repeated myself, but she still didn’t understand, so I dragged her to the bedroom doorway to show her the doll.

There was no doll. The hair on the back of my neck stood to attention. Less than five minutes earlier, a rather large Raggedy Ann doll had been there, and no one could have moved it, as they would have had to walk past me to get to the bedroom. The more I thought about it, the more freaky the whole scenario seemed. The doll had been looking right at me, with those big, black, empty Raggedy Ann button eyes, and smiling in the way for which that type of doll is famous.

I have no explanation for this occurrence. If I had hallucinated a stuffed animal, what on earth would have made me see that doll? Why not a bear, a cat, or any number of animals? Raggedy Ann dolls have a distinctive look, and are not easily mistaken for another doll. I have never been able to look at Raggedy Ann (or Andy) quite the same since then. These dolls now creep me out, and probably always will!

Dirk Pierce, Palm Harbor, Florida, 2010

THE MAN IN BLACK AND THE WOMAN IN WHITE

What follows is what happened to me as a boy. My parents divorced when I was six years old. My mother took us from our house in Melbourne, Australia, to a series of temporary accommodations in Brisbane, her (and our) place of birth. 

When I was seven, we finally moved into a house. It took my mother a long time to find a place both big enough for all of us and cheap enough for a single mother to afford. It was an old place, a timber ‘Queenslander’. I have no idea just how old it was, but there was an old coal burner kitchen that was blocked off from the ‘modern’ gas kitchen. This meant that the house must have been built a minimum of 50 years earlier, and could have been much older. 

As the youngest (I had three older sisters at the time), I got the smallest room - just big enough for a bed and not much else. 

From the beginning, I didn’t like the place. I don’t remember at what point I realised it was haunted, but I have early memories of closing my eyes before entering rooms, particularly at night. When alone in my room during the day, I saw shadows dancing around the corners of my vision. I got used to it in the end. I was too scared to try and talk to the ‘ghosts’ - I knew they weren’t friendly and were teasing and mocking me. At night, I would sleep with the sheets over my head, too terrified to open my eyes. Occasionally, I would feel them touching me with probing fingers. 

One day when I was nine years old, I was talking to my mother who was watching television, and I entered the hallway leading to my room without closing my eyes first. I looked directly into my room and saw something that burned into my consciousness and has stayed with me to this day. 

It was a man, dressed entirely in black. He was rather ordinary looking - balding, with a narrow strip of hair around the back of his head - but everything else about him was far from ordinary. He was draped in a transparent black veil that covered his whole body, under which he wore a black tank-top. He was bent over, and doing something with his hands on the wall. I saw him side-on. He heard me, and turned his head to face me. He stared at me for a whole second. His eyes were bright red, like a modern red LED. He had no expression, but unlike the other shadowy figures I would see during the day, he was completely solid and looked ‘human’. Abruptly, and without a sound, the man ran directly into the wall and vanished. I was left standing, speechless with terror. I told my mother what I had seen, and she just laughed at me. 

I moved from that room shortly after, when my eldest sister moved out, into the room on the other side of the hallway. I was very careful after the incident not to look towards my old room without showing myself first. I never saw the creature again, but the occasional ‘touching’ continued until we finally left the house in 1977 when I was 11 years old. As an adult, I have been back to look at the outside of the house, but even now I would not be game enough to go inside again. But the story doesn’t end there. 

We moved into another house, after my mother and I had lived in a flat for a year and my sisters had all left home. I reverted to my old habits of closing my eyes before entering a dark room and sleeping under the sheets. Then, after we had been in the new house for a few months, I had some friends around for a sleepover. We all slept together in the lounge. I woke in the middle of the night, and felt a peace unlike I had ever felt before in my short life. It was a calm that went completely through me. I opened my eyes, and saw a woman. 

She was standing in the doorway, and dressed in a long white dress that covered her feet, a lot like a bride on a cake. There was a pattern on the dress, but I couldn’t make it out. She stood about five feet (1.5m) tall and had curly, light brown hair. She was looking directly at me, and was smiling. I looked at her, and smiled back. She was lovely, and I have never felt like that before or since. And then, before my eyes, she slowly vanished. I looked at where she had been standing for a few minutes, and went back to sleep, feeling wonderful. 

To me it was obvious why the lady had appeared. I have always believed that she knew what I had gone through over five years in the other house and was telling me that I was safe in ‘her’ house. It changed my life, and I stopped being frightened. I never saw the lady again. 

Many people will dismiss my experience because of my age at the time. All I can say in reply is that I know that this is how it happened. I am not the sort (not now nor then) to imagine events and pass them off as real. I can’t explain the events, or the reason for the first house’s haunting. Neither my sisters nor my mother saw anything strange in the house, to my knowledge. 

Perhaps some of the events were simply the imaginings of a frightened little boy. Even the woman in white could have been a fragment of a dream (although I do not believe so). But the vision of the man in black was real, without the slightest doubt in my mind. I always believed it to be a demon, or perhaps a lost soul. I don’t know if I really want to know the answer.

Robert Euston, by email, 2002

THE SHADOW PEOPLE

When I was a girl I was brought up, until the age of 10, in a maisonette block in Southampton. I lived there with my mum, one older and one younger brother, and later a stepfather. I used to see ‘shadows’ quite often, especially walking up and down the stairs. I remember them being human-shaped, but like silhouettes and semi-transparent, and with very round heads. I asked my older brother a few years ago if he had ever seen anything there, and he described the figures to me perfectly. 

There were at least two other odd events connected to this place. Every night in bed I would hear a certain noise and got so used to it I’d wait to hear it before I dropped off to sleep. It was the sound of three ‘grandfather’ marbles (the really, really big ones) dropping one by one and making a sound as if they were rolling across a wooden floor. I was reminiscing with my mother in 1993, when I was 19, and told her about those noises. She was gobsmacked. She said that when I was very young, before my younger brother was born in 1978 (so I would have been three or four and my older brother four or five) the old lady that lived below us came up one day and angrily accused her of letting us play with marbles very late at night. My mother assured her that it wasn’t us, and as the family above us had children, set off to ask them. They claimed they had not heard the noise and it certainly wasn’t their children.  

The other incident concerned my younger brother, who was about three at the time. One night he woke my mother with the utmost urgency. He claimed he had seen a man and some pigs walk into the bathroom! Well, the maisonette was built on old farmland, and the dairy next door still existed and was in use!

Amanda-Jayne Sherwood, by email 2002

Weird Wildlife

The animal kingdom throws up constant surprises, from unusual behaviour we’d normally associate with humans - cats or birds holding what seem to be meetings and even courts - to creatures that flout the laws of nature, like gigantic rabbits and flying snakes. And then there are those curious critters that simply defy description and are perhaps best left to the cryptozoologists…

Creature Conventions

MAGPIE MENACE

On 4 October 1997, I was on board my boat moored on a sharp bend midway between New Bradwell and Great Linford on the Grand Union Canal. Hearing a sharp squawk that I took to be an alarm call, I saw three moorhens running swiftly along the ground and making no attempt to get airborne. I then saw that they were being menaced by a crescent of about 20 magpies, each about five or six yards from its neighbour. They advanced at a steady pace so that the ‘sweep’ extended the full width of the visible pasture. Despite the fact that the birds passed from view without a ‘kill’ being observed, I have no doubt that the magpies were engaged in an organised hunt for live prey. I don’t know if this was unusual, but I have never heard of such conduct before. 

IR Harrison, Ewhurst Cranleigh, 1998 

BIRD BRAWL

On Monday 20 April 2005, my wife and I were travelling into Dublin along the N11 dual carriageway. At the Stillorgan bypass section, we were approaching a set of lights when we noticed what we both believed to be a large black umbrella lying on the ground at the junction to our left. As we drew closer, the ‘umbrella’, which I assumed to be flapping in the breeze, revealed itself to be a mass of magpies and hooded crows physically attacking another hooded crow which was lying on its back, apparently fighting for its life. The magpies and crows (from previous observation, not the best of friends) were working in conjunction in their frantic assault. Our observation of the event only lasted perhaps 30 seconds, but left me with a sickened feeling, much as if I’d witnessed a street brawl. My wife, who is far more pragmatic than me, admitted that it was weird. 

Malcolm Blacow, Dun Laoghaire, Dublin, Ireland, 2005 

CROW THUGS

I live in the Cornish China Clay area and often use the country back roads. One Sunday evening towards the end of the summer of 2002, I decided to go to the cinema in town, and took my usual back route through the clay industrial area. It was a warm, muggy evening. I turned off at a junction and as I made my way towards the brow of a hill, I noticed a commotion up ahead. I saw three large black objects, which I took to be black bin-liners blowing around in the wind; but as I approached I saw they were three large crows trying to subdue a large rat. When they saw my van approaching, they abandoned their quarry and took off, with the rat scuttling into the hedgerow. I have often seen magpies scavenging rabbit road-kill, but this spectacle was really bizarre. 

James Sherriff, Fore St, Nanpean, Cornwall, 2006 

SCHOOL FOR BIRDS

One day in the early winter of 1998, I set off to work at around 6.30am. It was just about daybreak as I approached my local private hospital in Harrow. Near the car park, around 30 magpies were gathered together under the streetlights. They seemed unconcerned at my close proximity as I stood still to observe. All of the birds were quiet, apart from an occasional clucking sound, which appeared to be coming from the ‘senior’ magpie at some distance from the others. It seemed to be addressing the attentive and watching birds. I remember thinking the scene resembled a school assembly. As I had to be on duty, I couldn’t stay to watch what happened next. 

Bryan Fraser, Ealing, London, 2009

CAT CONVENTIONS

At the age of about 14, I was awakened in the small hours one morning by incessant noise from a number of cats nearby. Our back garden was enclosed by a high wall, and beyond one side was a road. The noise seemed to be coming from that direction, so I grabbed the top of the wall, hoisted my head above the brickwork and peered into the road, which was lit with street lamps. I was astonished to see a large circle of cats surrounding two cats who appeared to be facing each other off. The proceedings appeared to be under the authority of a large ginger tom sitting in the circle to one side of the other two, overseeing the confrontation. At my appearance over the wall all of the cats ran off, apart from the large ginger tom who looked at me for a few seconds, then slowly got up, very disdainfully turned his head away, and walked off slowly down the road with his tail erect. 

Patrick Foord, Bexhill on Sea, East Sussex, 2010

My half-Siamese cat fetched me from the house and took me down to shrubbery at the bottom of the garden. There I found five other cats in a rough semicircle. She took position facing the other cats and after a period of ‘cat talk’, where it was obvious I was being introduced, each cat took it in turn to caterwaul and receive response from each in turn. The vocal session lasted at least four or five minutes, after which the visiting cats dispersed and I was taken back to the house. It was obviously some kind of ritual and I was a privileged observer. I have discussed this event many times over the years, but never got any meaningful information. 

Don Parish, Brendon, North Devon, 2009

I am a police officer and routine night patrols are part of my regular duties. One quiet midweek night in early December 2009, my colleague and I were doing our usual local burglary prevention patrol. As we turned a corner into a well-known local estate at 2am, my colleague braked sharply. In front of us was a big fat white cat, with patches of tabby in various places, facing a semi-circle of smaller cats, all wearing collars. For a few seconds we just stared at them, then laughed as the big moggie in the centre, who appeared to be holding court, was not sitting in a normal position like the others, but in a relaxed manner almost on his tail with his legs spread apart. We joked that all he needed was a hat and cane and he would look like a pimp or gangster. None of the cats moved or even turned except the big white cat, which stared at us looking nonplussed, then opened his mouth. The engine noise didn’t allow us to hear if he made any sound, but at that moment all the other cats sauntered off in different directions. Mr Big waited, then lazily got up and swaggered off into the night. The whole incident lasted approximately 10-15 seconds. Had we disturbed a cat underworld meeting? Has Mr Big now put a contract out on us? I’ll await the fish-bone head on my doorstep.

Andy -- , by email, 2010

We’ve experienced a couple of ‘cat conventions’ in our own suburban back yard. As far as I can recall, this occurred in the summer of 2006 when our two female cats were about a year old. We like having our cats in at night and as the twilight was deepening and they were still out, I went out to look for them, figuring they would be hanging out in our yard. I discovered not only our two cats, Shadow and Dusty, but every cat at our end of the block: Prescott, Charlie (British shorthairs), and Mouse (American tortie) who belong to a British family across the street, and Pizza (calico barn cat) who lives on the street behind. These cats rarely get along under normal circumstances and it was unprecedented to find them all in the backyard grouped in a loose circle. It looked for all the world as if they were having a meeting, although I didn’t notice any cat particularly ‘in charge’. They were all relaxed - there was none of that body tension that is so apparent when cats are irritated by other cats. When I came suddenly into their presence, it seemed to break a spell and they started wandering off in different directions as I collected Shadow and Dusty. There was still no running or slinking or other startled cat behaviour. It was really weird. There were other evenings that summer when I would look out and see them all in the backyard, but I tried to leave them to get on with it. 

Tracey Serle, Alexandria, Virginia, 2009

I was walking home about 10.30 one dark night three years ago when I saw a gathering of about 15 cats sitting close together in a circle around a wild rabbit, about 100 yards (90m) from my house in Bridgend, South Wales. I stopped and watched them, and after a few minutes they slowly dispersed. 

Ron Brain, Bridgend, South Wales, 2009

Crypto Creatures

THE BIG BUNNY OF BANBURY

Last autumn, my family and I went with friends on a canal boat along the Napton-Banbury route. Heading north on 24 October, on the highest stretch of the canal we saw a huge creature on the sloping field to the right of us. I thought it was an adult deer with its legs tucked under, as they do. The colour and size were right, though the ears were rather big. My friend David and Mandy my wife both saw it through binoculars and got very excited as they described it as a giant rabbit. We saw it turn and hop/bound into a nearby hedge - too chubby and rounded to be a hare, not really like a wallaby or kangaroo… just like a domestic rabbit, only bigger.

Have you had any sightings of a reddish-gold lagomorph at least as big as an adult golden retriever? Local people seemed unmoved by our report.

Tim Hill, by email, 2007

With reference to The Big Bunny of Banbury: I too have seen this kind of animal while living in Wendlebury, 20 miles (32km) south of Banbury, in summer 2005. Driving home one evening around 5pm, I saw at the side of the road what can only be described as a giant rabbit, perhaps as big as a large dog, light brown, and with a rather pointed face. My brain seemed to refuse to process this image, and, as I drove by, it just sat on its haunches and looked at me. After a few seconds, I realised what I’d seen, stopped and reversed, but I didn’t see it again. I know what I saw, and - after much ridicule - I’m quite relieved to discover that other people have seen it too. 

Clive Parker, by email, 2007

KING HARE

In the hot summer of 1976, I set off with a pack-pony and greyhound from Stow-In-The-Wold. I was starting a long-distance trek as a sort of pilgrimage and also to explore ancient trackways. The journey took me through the Cotswolds, the Wiltshire Downs, west Dorset coastal areas and then ended in Butleigh, near Glastonbury. It took me a couple of months.

During early September, I was travelling through the hamlet of Uploders, near Bridport in Dorset. I had permission to put my pony in an orchard there and after erecting my tent, I decided to head off up into the neighbouring hills to see if my dog could catch a rabbit or hare for the pot. On a lonely track I met up with two gypsy men and their lurchers and we decided to combine forces. We walked in the evening sun, enjoying the views and we came across a valley. There we saw a group of around 10 hares, an unusual sight for the time of year, as they are solitary animals, only congregating in early Spring. With them seemed to be a roe deer, until we looked a little harder and saw that it was an enormous hare. We stood and watched, absolutely dumbfounded. We obviously didn’t loose the dogs and after a while we walked quietly away.

Louise Hodgson, by email, 2008

CAR PARK LIZARD

I have been interested in cryptozoology since I was 16 or 17, some 30 years ago, but have always considered myself an armchair cryptozoologist, one who read and researched the subject, but not a field investigator who might actually get to see a crypto-creature for himself. All this changed dramatically one hot summer day in 1984 in Miami, Florida. 

I was on vacation in Bal Harbour, near Miami, and decided to take a tourist bus to the Miami Seaquarium for the day. The Seaquarium has many fine attractions, including a shark channel stocked with big sharks and rays. I spent an enjoyable three or four hours looking at the porpoises, manatees and tropical fish, then headed out to the parking lot, where I expected to catch my bus for the return trip to my hotel. 

As I walked across an open area with a few bushes and trees, I saw an enormous lizard, 4ft (1.2m) long or more, walking towards me. It had huge jaws, a long tail and very impressive claws. My initial reaction was to wonder if the lizard might be an animal from the Seaquarium, but it hardly seemed likely that such a dangerous-looking animal would be allowed to wander around loose. Also, it was no longer inside the grounds of the Seaquarium. 

I happened to have a small Kodak Instamatic camera and took several pictures of the animal as it walked past me, paused briefly in the shade of a tree and disappeared into some high grass in the direction of a rubbish dump alongside a wire fence. Although I am no expert, it looked to me like a giant iguanid. In fact, it looked most like the now nearly extinct Rhinoceros Iguana. 

This odd experience changed my attitude towards people who report strange animals. When one has had such an experience, it is no longer possible to accept the derision of the sceptics at face value. It seems that unexpected sudden appearances are precisely the way most unknown or out-of-place animals are observed. People don’t expect to see them, and they can hardly believe it when they do. It will always be the bored driver on a lonely road at night who will be the one to see Bigfoot. What could be more unlikely than seeing a giant lizard in the middle of a huge city? It would be easy to doubt the truth of my experience, yet I know it happened and the photographs I took back me up. I didn’t imagine the lizard and I didn’t exaggerate its size. 

Cryptozoology relies for much of its validity on the credibility of witnesses. Yet only one who sees a strange animal can really appreciate the bizarre quality of the experience and be ready to listen with an open mind to the accounts of others. This need for a personal initiation before one can truly accept the possibility of the unknown is characteristic of all fortean phenomena. There will always be a gap between those who are interested but sceptical, and those who have seen for themselves. When I looked into the matter, I discovered that the Crandon Park Zoo, which formerly occupied Virginia Key, was rumoured to have ‘dumped out’ some snakes and lizards when it closed down. It’s hard to believe though that any zookeeper in his right mind would have let go a lizard as big as the one I saw in the middle of a city. And while some large lizards have turned up in southern Florida, they have been monitor lizards, not iguanids like the animal I saw. I suppose those inclined to psychic explanations might say that my intense interest in unknown animals conjured up for me my very own ‘monster’. 

Experiencing fortean phenomena alters one’s ability to believe in the experience of others. As Ivan T Sanderson wrote of poltergeists: “It is no use saying these things don’t happen, because they do.” The same is true of unknown animal sightings. Now I know that it is no use saying they don’t happen, because I know they do. 

Ronald Rosenblatt, New York, 1996 

FLYING ARROW

In 1960 or 1961, when I was 11 or 12, I was living near Acomb, Northumberland. I fancied myself as a painter (I’m not). One lovely sunny day in July, when my parents were out, I set up my easel and was painting away when I heard a kind of whistling and whooshing sound behind me. Turning, I saw something flying towards me. I remember thinking that someone had fired an arrow at me. I threw myself to the ground and whatever it was passed over my head. When I stood up, I saw that the ‘arrow’ had flown across the yard and stuck nose first into the front door. I went to investigate and when I got to within a couple of feet, the ‘arrow’ settled vertically beside the doorknocker, which it approximated in length (6in/15cm).

The thing had a black pointed head, with a frilly ruff around the short neck part. The body was black and very shiny, about as thick as my index finger. Hanging from the neck were about six very shiny red, ribbon-like ‘streamers’, about half an inch (12mm) wide at the end and tapering towards the neck to about a quarter-inch (6mm). There were similar black streamers underneath. To my extreme fright, the thing then moved and started whirling and spinning, making a whistling sound. I ran from the front door, jumped a 4ft (1.2m) dry stone wall with ease, with the thing whistling behind me and following me around the back of the house. I went inside, locked the door, and dragged a heavy dresser across the doorway. I hid in the pantry until my parents came home. Of course they laughed at me and said I had seen a dragonfly or a hornet; they just didn’t listen, so I stopped talking about it.

One day I delivered some eggs to an old guy in the village and we got talking. I told him what I had seen and he said: “I haven’t seen one of those things for over 50 years. They’re called flying arrows.” I don’t know whether or not he was just humouring me. I have looked in many insect books and have never seen this thing described or portrayed, and it has bothered me ever since. Can anyone suggest an identification?

Ruth Summersides, Qu’Appelle, Saskatchewan, 2007  

CORNISH CRITTER 

I currently live and work in Falmouth, Cornwall. Between 4pm and 5pm on 4 February, I went for a walk along the Maenporth coastal path from Swanpool after I’d finished work. Coming up the path round by the coast, I saw something moving in a bush ahead of me. I assumed it was a bird or maybe a dog being walked, but as I got nearer I realised it was neither. It was a little bigger than a dog and had a cat’s face with eyes that were glazed over and luminescent like a lion’s at night. When it saw me it walked away, apparently on two hind legs much like a kangaroo. It had a bushy tail like a fox. Has anyone seen anything similar? 

Sam Bradbury, by email, 2009

FLYING SNAKES 

I was about five years old in 1957, living with my family in Pikeville, eastern Tennessee. As I played alone near our house, a deafening rattling, clacking noise came up behind me, from above. I looked up and plainly saw a black snake, maybe 3ft (90cm) long, travelling in a side-to-side S motion, as if it were swimming in the air. It had small, dark wings near the front - bat-like and oddly rectangular. The snake quickly flew out of sight over our one-storey house. I didn’t see its head, or any patterns on its body. I was absolutely frightened out of my wits and I don’t know if I told anyone about it. 

My rational mind offers two suggestions. Maybe I saw a hawk fly off with a rattlesnake in its claws. As an adult, I witnessed a hawk carry off a squirrel, and the twisting of its long tail as the hawk flew away did remind me a bit of my childhood experience. My second idea is that a helicopter flew over me, which I’d never seen before. The sound, to my adult memory, almost seems loud enough to have been a helicopter (although more like a rattle), and I know one did take aerial photos of our town when I was a small child. But that leaves me wondering how and why my five-year-old mind would have turned a helicopter into a flying snake. 

A final note: I recently read a book on the mythology of the prehistoric Native American tribes who lived in what is now Tennessee and the surrounding area before the Cherokee; it was full of illustrations of the winged rattlesnakes which decorated their pottery and which were apparently sacred totem creatures. 

Julia Morgan Scott, Chattanooga, Tennessee, 2009

The accounts of flying snakes brought to mind a story told by my mother, Mrs Hazel Göksu, who is now 73. She lived in a village in the mountains of Bulgaria until 1950, when she emigrated to Turkey with her family at the age of 15. Her life in Bulgaria had not been easy. She had to leave school at 10 to support her motherless family of six. 

“When I was a little girl,” she said, “I used to go and fetch fresh water from the spring 200m (660ft) from our house. One lovely summer evening (when I was 12 years old), I picked up two buckets and started to walk towards the spring. After about 40 metres (130ft), I noticed what looked like branches on the path, but as I got closer I saw them moving. They were black, grey and white, thin and one or two metres (3ft 3in to 6ft 7in) long. I stopped, thinking they might be snakes, but they were moving in a straight line, not like snakes at all. 

“As I got closer, something alarmed them and they noticed me. They gave the weirdest cry I have ever heard before taking off and flying two or three metres (6ft 7in to 9ft 10in) above the ground, straight as arrows. They flew all the way to the spring about 150m (490ft) away and disappeared behind the trees. I don’t remember seeing any wings on them. Whenever I remember that cry, it makes the hair on my arms stand on end. I returned home and never went to the spring alone again.” 

As she told me this story, I clearly saw the hairs rising on her arms. She remembers that one of the snakes was longer than the others, which were probably juveniles. They flew stiffly but made crawling-like movements in the air. She has never seen such snakes again and hasn’t heard similar stories from anybody else. She is healthy and sane. The story is hard to believe but I think she is telling the truth. 

Izzet Göksu, Bursa, Turkey, 2009

Invisible Friends

Many of us, or our children, have experienced ‘imaginary childhood friends’ - those curious companions, usually invisible to adults, often said to be dreamt up by lonely kids with overactive imaginations. But what if these strange, surreal, and sometimes rather spooky, entities - which have been dubbed ‘Quasi-Corporeal Companions’ - are more than just childish fantasies?

Quasi-corporeal companions

LOST TWIN?

I had a sister three years my junior, so although I was a very shy child I was never consciously lonely. When I was seven, we shared a bedroom and I would make up stories until my sister went to sleep. I had a quasi-corporeal companion (QCC)called Doreen who was truly invisible. My mother always had to set an extra place at table for her, and she slept under my bed. I did see her sometimes in my mind’s eye - a little girl with auburn hair in plaits - my double, in fact! I only connect her with one house we lived in: it was in Enfield, north London, when I was about five to seven years old. 

I went to a very religious (Church of England) boarding school. Doreen didn’t follow me there, but I was conscious of ‘eyes’ looking at me from above and I used to lie in bed reaching up to these presences. Articles in an old book about Spiritualism in the school library set me on a path - and I do have some psychic ability. So was Doreen a manifestation of early psychic development, and the way my guardian spirit chose to manifest at that time? 

I have another theory, rather off-the-wall. According to Charles E Boklage (Laboratory of Behaviour and Development Genetics, East Carolina University): “One of every eight human conceptions begins as a twin conception, and for every twin pair born alive, 10 to 12 twin pregnancies that begin as twins result in a single birth.” (The missing fœtus is absorbed into the womb.) Spiritualists believe that such children grow up in the spirit realm even if not born on Earth. As Doreen seemed to be my double, was she a ‘lost’ twin? (I know this reads like an X-Files script.) 

Diana Lyons, Sheepscar, Leeds, West Yorkshire, 2009 

BASEMENT ELF

When I was a child, my family lived above the family business in a house with many rooms ranged over five floors. At the rear of the building there was a trap door set into the floor, which led to the basement. The stone steps were very old and worn and my parents considered them too dangerous for my younger sister or me to use. In any case, the trap door was too heavy for a four-year-old to lift, so we never went down there. 

I remember the first time I encountered my own QCC. I was sitting on the stairs about 6ft (1.8m) from the entrance to the basement when to my surprise the trap door began to open. There emerged from the basement an elflike creature, about as tall as I was at the time, dressed entirely in green and brown with a pointed hat. As soon as the trap door had begun to open, I was completely paralysed, able neither to move nor speak. The creature came over and sat next to me on the stairs. He spoke to me in a strange clicking and whistling language that I couldn’t understand, but somehow I knew his name was Frick Frick. After he had said all he had to say, he went back to the basement entrance and waved goodbye as he pulled down the trap door. The instant the trap door was shut, the paralysis left me and I was normal again. 

I met Frick Frick many times in the next three or four years, always in the same circumstances, always in the hall of the house. I was paralysed at each encounter, but no longer afraid - after all, Frick Frick only ever sat next to me and spoke softly, occasionally tapping me on the arm as he spoke his strange language. We moved out of that house about four years later when I was about eight, and I never saw Frick Frick again. 

In the years since then, I have spoken about Frick Frick to both my brother and sister. Neither of them remember being visited by Frick Frick, but my brother, who is two years older than me, remembers often seeing me sitting on the stairs by the trap door just staring into the distance as though in a trance. 

John Burke, London, 2009

JACK AT THE NORTH POLE

At the age of two, my eldest son Jack started to tell us all about his visits to the North Pole. Of course, he met Father Christmas there, but he also had a whole range of other friends, and there was a vague impression that Jack himself was in charge. He had a dog called Sally, a badger called Stocktaking (who taught the cuttlefish to climb trees, apparently), a strawberry farm that was very high up (so no one could steal the strawberries) and therefore a diplodocus that harvested the fruit (as no one else could reach). There were also two shops: The Dying Shop (we never really managed to clarify what went on there), and The North Pole Shop, which sold everything else you could want. There was a tap which, when turned on, poured out sweets instead of water. 

Jack used to talk about the North Pole and his friends there frequently - a dozen times a day we’d get updates on what was going on there. A bit like some kind of bizarre soap opera. The strangest conversation I ever had with him, when he picked up an odd-shaped container in the bath, went like this: 

Jack: “Oh! It looks a bit like a steedle pot!” 

Me: “What’s a steedle pot?” 

Jack: “We have them at the North Pole. When the sea starts running out of water, we all get our steedle pots and fill them with water at the tap. Then we all wade out into the sea and say ‘one two three go’ and tip them into the sea. Then we all go back again with no paddling.” 

Me: “And why are they called steedle pots?” 

Jack: “Because they’re covered in steedles.” 

Me: “And what is a steedle?” 

Jack: “Well, it’s a bit like a present, only not wrapped up.” 

Jack’s relationship with the North Pole continued for over six months, until he was almost three, when it was superseded by his farm, which became as fixed a part of his life. It wasn’t the most conventional of farms. It had a windmill and ducks and sheep, but it also contained, - among other things - a marble-making machine that could make marbles bigger than itself. This continued for another six to nine months, and then gradually faded out, perhaps because by then his younger brother was big enough to play with - or perhaps for some other reason… 

Roni Jay, Great Ambrook, Devon, 2009

MR NOBODY

I had my own QCC as a three-year-old in 1977. He was a snowman about 2ft (60cm) tall with a bright orange carrot nose, black coal eyes, coal buttons and black hat - but as far as I can remember there was never a scarf. He would never talk or play with me - I seemed to know that it was a he - but would just sit at an odd angle up near the ceiling or on top of the front room light shade (never on the floor), and just watch me play. I was never frightened of him, just accepting that he was there, and nothing out of the ordinary. 

A couple of times my mother had caught me talking to him out loud or just looking up at him. She would ask: “Who are you talking to?” or “You talking to Mr Nobody again?” The name stuck and I would refer to him as that. My parents divorced in 1981, and my mother, two sisters and I left the Barbican in central London and moved across the river to Lewisham in south-east London, and I never saw Mr Nobody again. 

Daniel McQueen, Whitstable, Kent, 2009 

GEE-GEE AND MONKEY

My son had two invisible friends, “Gee-Gee and Monkey”, and he was always talking to them and about them as soon as he could talk. We never found out if they were talking animals or people with strange names. We were on holiday when he was five and a half. The day before we were to return home, he said Gee-Gee and Monkey like living at the seaside so they are staying here. Apparently, they waved goodbye to us as we drove away and he never mentioned them for a whole year. 

The following year, our destination was some miles further on. As we drove along the road about a quarter of a mile (400m) from our previous holiday, he suddenly waved and said: “Look, there’s Gee-Gee and Monkey. They are still 

living here!” This was without any hint of where we were. This struck me as 

surprising, as a year is a very long time at that age. 

Incidentally, he was an only child until he was four and a half; but I don’t think that had any effect on the QCCs. 

Peter Millie, by email, 2009

CINDY AND JOJO

When I was three to five years old, I had two QCCs called Cindy and Jojo, who always accompanied one another. Cindy was a girl a bit older than me and Jojo was a dog that followed her around. I recall that Cindy had long black hair and wore a floor-length red sequin dress, and Jojo was sandy-coloured - a bit like Dougal from the Magic Roundabout. One event that my mother recalls is that I was helping her to dust a bedroom one day. We finished working in the room and left, and as she closed the door behind us I started crying. When she asked me why I was crying, I told her she had shut Cindy and Jojo in the room - she had to open the door and let them into the hallway with us. 

That was the first time my mum ever heard about Cindy and Jojo and she was quite shocked by what I told her, because about 10 years before I was born I had a cousin called Cindy who died when she was aged about five, and a couple of years before I was born my mum’s dog Jojo died. The thing is, neither of my QCCs actually looked like my cousin or my mum’s dog, yet they had used those two names out of all the names they could have used or I could have chosen. At such a young age I hadn’t known about Cindy or Jojo existing in my family and so when I was older and learnt about my CCQs I was quite shocked. 

Hayley Stevens, by email, 2009 

PLINK-A-PLONK

I had an imaginary friend called Plink-a-Plonk when I was about four. It was of no specific sex, so presumably mainly female. It accompanied me during a stay in a holiday cabin near Dymchurch, Kent. I liked to talk about My Little Friend to my parents, but I don’t remember that we played any specific games together. It was just a companion to be with. If I visualised it at all, I suppose it was something like me. I was an only child, and aware of a lack of siblings. It was a sort of practice friend and also part of an act I put on to amuse my parents, and myself. 

The way to the beach was across a lane or small road, then along the top of a bank to some smelly wooden (and fly-infested) steps down to the sand. There was a pothole in the path along the bank and The Cat and The Dog (also imaginary) would always fall into this and I would call everybody to a halt while I lifted them out. I think my mother was a bit charmed with my imaginary friend, and my father took a more active interest and would ask “Is Plink-a-Plonk coming with us?” I suppose he had had an imaginary friend of his own at some time, though he never said. 

Anne Hardwick, London, 2009 

‘LITTLE FEMALE BOTTOM’

When I was a small child growing up in Barcelona, my QCC was an extraordinarily fat woman in a bright floral dress with a big hat and a very small umbrella or parasol. She was blonde with long eyelashes and answered to the name of Culina (pronounced cool-eena, although the literal translation would be something like “little female bottom”). I can’t remember what we used to talk about, although I do recall that she had a very soft voice and was slightly taller than me. She only appeared when I was outside the house. I don’t recall much else about her, but it has been 32 years since I last saw her. When I was four, I suffered from Perthens disease, which effectively prevented me from walking for about three years until doctors managed to fit a steel bar to hold the head of the femur together. Culina would come to me before the disease, but not during or after it. 

Francisco Morral-Cardoner, by email, 2009

DEAD QCCS

My daughter’s two imaginary friends were called Soloney and Sparkle Woods, and they lived in the wooden playhouse at the bottom of the garden. Soloney was a ‘proper’ imaginary friend who used to come on holiday and trips out and things like that, but Sparkle Woods was ‘real’. She used to distinguish between the two of them from a very young age (about two years old) and always said that Soloney was imaginary but was different from Sparkle Woods as she was a real person but I just couldn’t see her. She is now seven and occasionally mentions Soloney, but Sparkle Woods has completely disappeared. 

When I spoke to a neighbour about them, she told me an amusing story about her nephew who had two imaginary friends for years and years whom he talked about constantly (Colin and Derek or something like that). One day when my neighbour asked about them, he said: “They are dead. They were hit by a bus,” and never mentioned them again. Obviously his way of moving on. I never had imaginary friends myself, but my sister as a child was constantly followed by ants on motorbikes and skateboards. 

Sam Stringer, by email, 2009 

INVISIBLE PENGUIN

At 42, I no longer have any recollection of my own imaginary friend. At about the age of 18 months, until I was two, I believed that I had an invisible penguin friend, though not invisible to me, I assume. My mother tells me she used to have to leave a place at the table for it. She wasn’t always able to sit right next to me on the sofa, as I required space between us for the penguin; and when she read bedtime stories she had to read them a second time for the penguin. She even had to tuck it into bed with me - although not every night. 

There is a story of the time a woman sat next to my mother and me on a bus and I screamed that she was sitting on my penguin. The woman got up and looked for a toy penguin that she might have sat on, leaving my mother to explain in whispers that it “wasn’t real”. 

Finally, around the time of my second birthday - my younger sister had just been born or was about to be born - I was given a knitted penguin toy. The hope, I think, was that I would bond with the toy and forget the imaginary one. Instead what happened was my invisible friend left, never to be heard of again, and I refused to accept the toy - often throwing it out of bed, and showed no interest in it whatsoever. 

Steve Gardiner, London, 2009

FRIENDLY LION

I had a QCC that visited me every night as soon as my mother turned out my bedroom light. I was well under 10, but cannot remember my exact age or how long this went on. The QCC took the form of a lion, but one with human-like characteristics. It communicated with me, but whether verbally or telepathically I can’t recall. I don’t remember if it had a name. As soon as my mother closed the door, the lion would appear, take me from my bed and ‘nurse’ me on its knee in a human ‘sitting-down’ posture. Later it would return me to bed, and I would go to sleep. I suppose I should have been terrified, but I wasn’t, although I can remember a sense of nervous anticipation as the light was turned off. My lion assured me of its friendliness and that it would always take care of me. 

I never told my parents about this, even in later life. I regarded the experience as an intimate secret, which I felt my parents would dismiss as childish nonsense or fantasy. Nearly 60 years later, I still wonder what it was all about. 

Henry Chester, Feltham, London 2009

Multiple Qccs

LEGION OF CHAPS

Between the ages of seven and about nine, I had a legion of ‘chaps’, as I called them. Numbering at least 1,000, they were approximately 5in (13cm) tall and looked like very basic stick men. My chaps accompanied me everywhere I went (except to school); they had cars, tanks, aircraft and ships, all of which - I don’t know why - were from World War I and the 1920s. Their aircraft would escort me if I was travelling anywhere by bus or train, flying slightly above and behind the vehicle in neat formations. When I went to the beach or local swimming pool, I would always have a flotilla of ‘pocket’ battleships sailing alongside me, crewed by my ever-attentive chaps. 

They were always very busy around the house, patrolling the kitchen in their vehicles, and I recall them covering every table, shelf, or work surface with ‘equipment’ to do their various ‘jobs’ and ‘maintenance’. My family found my chaps very amusing and imaginative, particularly my grandparents, who lived with us at the time. They gave me daily ‘progress reports’ on my chaps when I came home from school. 

This was all in the mid-to-late 1970s. I’m pretty sure my chaps were influenced by a character in the Beano or Dandy comics who had an army of radio-controlled toy soldiers with tanks, aircraft, etc. Do any readers remember this? 

Rhodri Lyndon Evans, Bridgend, South Wales, 2009

SUZIELAND

Ever since she could talk, my five-year-old daughter has had a lot of invisible friends - she calls them her “Suzies”. The ones I know of are: Suzie, Big Big Up to the Sky Suzie, Little Suzie, Baby Suzie, Uncle Suzie and Mother Suzie. They can all fly, though she has never said whether they have wings or not. Big Big Up to the Sky Suzie is regularly ill and has died at least once and come back. She only mentioned Mother Suzie a few days ago when there was mention of another Baby Suzie. They all go to Suzieland at night. She has also said they sometimes go away over there, gesturing to the ceiling. Sometimes she’ll tell them off for being naughty. I’m sure there are more of them than she lets on. 

Steve Hon, by email, 2010

THE INVISIBLE GANG

I was a bright, solitary child blessed with a vivid imagination. I lived in a small village and there were few children my own age. I spent much of my free time alone, playing in the garden or the wild area round the back of our house. 

My mother, a primary school teacher, has told me that she was aware that many children had invisible friends, but she was surprised that I seemed to have a multitude - at least a dozen! This group of quasi-corporeal companions seemed to be older children or possibly adults and all had slightly old-fashioned names such as Henry (I think he was my favourite), Peter and George. 

Although my own memory of this time is now rather hazy (it was around 35 years ago) mother has recounted to me many times two stories which demonstrate clearly the strength of feeling and close connection I felt with my QCCs. On the first occasion, my brother, who is 18 months older than me, was already attending school, so I must have been about three years old. Mother had a habit of taking me to Debenhams in Peterborough for tea before collecting my brother, Julian, from school. The Debenhams coffee bar had a semi-circular serving counter, around which were placed high stools fixed to the floor. Mother and I sat on two of these stools, and we were joined by my gang of QCCs while we ate our toasted teacakes and drank tea. Two teenage girls then entered and proceeded to seat themselves on top of my friends, which prompted a hysterical outburst. “You’re sitting on Henry! You’re sitting on George!” I screamed. Mother was forced to remove me and my friends, leaving our teatime treat unfinished. 

The second incident occurred when we were on holiday in Geneva, where we were staying in a rather grand hotel. Our family and my friends entered the lift, which was just big enough for us all, but just before the doors closed a couple of German guests slipped in too. Again I was inconsolable that my friends were being squashed, and as a result we were forced to take the stairs for the rest of our stay. 

I don’t remember when my QCCs stopped visiting me, but well into my teens I had other imaginary friends and pets, including two seagulls and a dragon. 

I am now a professional musician, academic and teacher, and am currently conducting doctoral research at City University, London. 

Rachel Hayward, by email, 2010

Invisible friends... or enemies?

BUGGY

Although I did have a QCC called Sister when I was young, it is my daughter Charlotte’s “friend” that I wish to tell you about. As soon as she was old enough to talk, she told us about her friend Buggy (my spelling). Buggy was not always around, but would tend to pop up from time to time. She never ate with us (I mean we never had to lay an extra place at the table) but would play with Charlotte or come out in the car with us. When Charlotte was about four, Buggy started to crop up more and more. I remembered my special imaginary friend and chatted to Charlotte about Buggy as though she were a real friend; I believe because of this my daughter felt comfortable speaking about Buggy. I would often hear her chatting in her room and pausing as though she were listening to another person. 

One day, she came downstairs while I was preparing dinner and informed me that from now on Buggy would be living with us. 

“OK darling,” I said, “why is that”? 

“Oh mummy, it’s very sad, all of Buggy’s family are dead, she has no one, so she is coming to live with us now.” 

“That’s so sad.” 

“Yes, one day some soldiers came to Buggy’s house and took all of Buggy’s family away, but Buggy hid and they didn’t find her, but her family were put in a big room and the air was bad and Buggy’s family all died.” 

My daughter was four; she was not old enough to know about such things and we certainly never allowed her to view any programmes except CBBC! 

About a week later, I was in my next-door neighbour’s house having a cup of tea and told her about the conversation with Charlotte. When I related the soldier story, my neighbour told me that the old lady who had lived in our house before us was a Polish Jew called Charlotte, and she thought that her family had perished in the war in a concentration camp. Apparently, my daughter looked rather like the old lady - dark wavy hair and olive-coloured skin. Another Jewish neighbour later on told me that there is a Hebrew word that sounds like Buggy and means “someone who cares for others” - and later we found out that Polish Charlotte had been a midwife or community nurse. My daughter is now nine and Buggy is still about, but not as much as before. 

I have witnessed some unexplained phenomena in our house over the past 11 years, which I always attribute to Buggy. Doors open by themselves and then, when I ask them to shut, they do! I often feel that I am not alone in a room. Just the other night, someone was holding my hand. And only recently, a tap was turned off for me - if it hadn’t been, the floor would have been flooded. I never feel nervous or worried when such things occur, especially when they are so helpful. 

Jo Alder, Clayhall, Essex, 2009 

DAVID OF THE DRAINS

I’m from a large family, and we all had the usual round of imaginary friends - cats, ponies, dragons, talking dogs. For a while I even insisted my mum and dad left room for imaginary Rhubarb and Custard (from the 1970s cartoon) on the seat next to me! But my youngest sister had something a bit different. At the time, we were living on a farm and every day on our way up to the field to fetch down the geese (hey, it was the 1970s) we went by the small reservoir that served the village, a large storage tank covered over with grass which collected water from a natural spring, lime-rich from the chalky soil (the overflow formed spectacular stalactites). 

It was here that my youngest sister met David, who was the sort of imaginary friend you don’t want your little sister to have. David was a young boy, a little older than her, and he lived in the reservoir. He kept telling her to hide from us, and trying to get her to go down the drains to visit him. She told us that he looked ordinary, but he was often angry, or very sad. He wore a grey coat and heavy shoes, and made her feel “crackly”. The drains were heavy, and the dangerous bits of the reservoir were tucked away, and anyway we didn’t like David, or his suggestions. 

After a bit of debate (and with some nervousness, in case she just laughed) my sister and I told our mum about David. She told us not to ask our little sister anything else about him, not to talk about him at all if possible, and also that we should not leave them alone together. We followed her advice, and made sure one of us was with “them” at all times, and after a while he came less and eventually started to avoid us. Years later, I asked Mum about this, wondering if there was any sort of hidden story going on. She remembered it distinctly, and described David as a “bad” imaginary friend, one that needed discouraging. Some imaginary friends, she said, are not good for the children who have them, and you have to help them get rid of them. 

Jeremy Dennis, by email, 2010 

AN OLD CHILD

When I was four or five, my parents turned the attic of our house in Virginia into a playroom for my sister and me. I vividly recall meeting a friend called Joey on the stairs up to the attic. He was definitely an adult, but seemed childish somehow. Now, I’d say he appeared brain-damaged. We would talk, but I can’t remember about what. I don’t think he appeared anywhere else. No one had to set a place for him at dinner, etc. I wasn’t frightened of him, but he was creepy. He seems even creepier now, as I look back on that long, uncomprehending face, with the short blonde hair on top. It may not even have been blonde, but grey. An old child. I have wondered if he was a ghost. I never saw him after we moved from that house. 

Debbie Pryor, by email, 2009 

“HER NAME IS SALLY, AND SHE IS DEAD”

When I was a small child, I insisted to my parents that I had died in a fire, and all my life I have maintained a vivid image of this fire and have overcome a powerful fear of large fires, such as campfires or bonfires. I remember my flesh being seared and glass shattering, cutting into my arms and face. I can’t imagine detail such as this being made up by a three-year-old, although I admit I can’t remember what I was thinking or feeling as I thought of the memory. My mother says that I thought at the time that it had happened in this life, and I asked her repeatedly, “Don’t you remember it? Remember that big fire?” I then told her about being burned and about the windows breaking and the glass cutting me. She asked me what happened next, and I shrugged my shoulders, sighing. “I died.” 

Throughout my life, whenever my mother has asked me about the fire, the same image has always leapt to my mind: I am in a red brick building, and I come into a room full of fire and smoke. I run toward the window, which shatters. I can feel my eyes burning, seared by the light and heat. This image has stayed with me all of these years and is still just as vivid today, at the age of 16. 

Even at 16, I can remember being five or six and having a sense of loss. I had few friends at that age, and I can remember desperately longing for an imaginary friend named Sally. I would pretend that she was there, but was saddened knowing she wasn’t really. When I was two or three, my mother recalls seeing me almost constantly talking. I would babble on and on about anything that leapt to my mind, seemingly to myself. I had a toy phone into which I would talk as well. However, when my mother asked me to whom I was speaking on the telephone, I replied, “Her name is Sally, she has long black hair, and she is dead.” That was all I would say about her. 

Greylyn Burk, Pleasureville, Kentucky, 2009

UFOs

Unidentified Flying Objects are just that: things seen in the sky that we can’t easily find a name or a cause for. Brilliant lights or fireballs that seem to display an almost conscious intelligence, weird-looking objects that don’t resemble any known aircraft or, as some people have claimed, technologically advanced vessels supposedly piloted by ‘aliens’ from other worlds.

Flying Triangles

STAR WARS MILK FLOAT

Back in the summer of 1987 or 1988, while I was washing my car in front of our house (in Solihull) under a clear blue sky, I heard a weird noise that sounded like a cross between a helicopter and an electric milk float. It got louder and louder until, after what seemed like ages, a triangular craft came into view over the row of trees about half a dozen gardens down the road. Within seconds it was overhead. It was not elongated like Concorde, more of an equilateral triangle, and plain silver underneath without any markings. The back edge was completely straight and there was no sign of any emissions coming from it. It was fairly large and seemed to be flying at about twice the height of the large oak tree at the top of the drive. The nearest thing I’ve ever seen that looked like it is either a space shuttle or something out of Star Wars. It was travelling easily as fast as a jet fighter, and was gone in seconds. Was it some sort of secret plane? I’ve never heard of any other reports of a UFO making a racket like that. My mother heard it, and agreed it sounded weird, but didn’t get out of the house in time to see it, and I never heard of any of the neighbours seeing or hearing it. 

Jon Chidwick, Shirley, West Midlands, 2008

TRIANGLE SPOTTED

I was interested to read Jon Chidwick’s report of a UFO sighting over Solihull, West Midlands, as I believe I saw the same object. I can’t confirm the date, but 1987/88 sounds about right. I was in Handsworth, Birmingham, when I saw a triangular aircraft fly over my house. It was apparently higher than when Jon saw it; the distance between Solihull and Handsworth would account for that if the craft were climbing, and it was travelling more or less from the direction of Solihull. 

The shape was the same equilateral triangle, with a straight back edge and no markings, though I registered mine as grey rather than silver. I also seem to remember a short ‘fuselage’ extending from the front end, with small, stubby stabiliser wings on it. I pointed it out to the person I was with, but she was occupied with a tangle of small children at the time, and has no memory of the incident. I have since come to think it was probably a secret military craft of some sort; I’ve seen pictures of Stealth aircraft that loosely resemble it. But I’m not investigating it too closely, as I prefer to have it remain a bit of a mystery. 

Hunt Emerson, Handsworth, Birmingham, 2008

PYLON LIGHT SHOW

During September or early October 1996, I was riding from London to Bradford on my motorbike, a journey I made quite regularly at the time. It was about 10pm, and almost dark. North of Grantham, I traversed the power lines that run down from the power stations of Lincolnshire. Since I had been photographing workers repairing these lines a few months earlier, using helicopters to access the live lines, I glanced up along the line of pylons and was surprised to see a large glowing red object apparently among the power lines some miles to the north. 

Continuing towards Newark, I was unable to see what the red object was, although I got occasional views of the pylons. Near Newark, the road curved and exited a small cutting, and to my right was a clear view of the power lines. Between two of the pylons was a glowing red shape, roughly oval and apparently connected to or tangled in the lines. Its height was as great as the distance between the highest and lowest lines on the pylons. I initially thought it might be a dirigible airship of the ‘Goodyear’ type, and wondered if the electricity could make helium glow red, but I almost immediately realised that it couldn’t be anything of the sort. I rummaged around for my camera, stored in the bottom of a bag on the motorbike, and when I next looked up, the oval had changed into a triangle of blue-white lights in a chevron formation as high as the pylons, which was moving south, silently along the line of the cables. The lights were very bright but small, similar to the effect from LEDs rather than conventional bulbs.

I was unable to tell whether there was a structure between the lights or whether they were merely flying in formation. They moved fairly slowly, passing pylons every few seconds, so I estimate a groundspeed of between 30 and 60mph (50-100km/h). I was certain this was not a conventional aircraft, and even if I had not seen the previous shape I would have immediately known that this was not flying in any conventional way. 

After watching the lights for a few moments, I resumed searching for my camera, finally reaching it as the triangle came back towards me. I hadn’t seen it turn around, but it was definitely the same object, simply reversed. It was still flying along the line of the power cables, the lowest lights just above the tops of the pylons. 

As it passed the point where I had first seen it as an orange glow, it flipped over sideways - or at least that is how it appeared - and dropped into the slight railway cutting running east from Newark. I had finally got my camera out, and cursed myself for being too late to get a photo. Then I saw a green light moving fast towards me, very low down, and thought that I’d be able to get a picture of whatever this was, presumably some sort of companion object… I readied the camera, and as the green light passed low overhead I got a photo - of a Tornado Interceptor! 

It was flying fast and extremely low, well below 1,000ft (300m), straight over the power lines and towards the centre of Newark - not at all conventional flying over a populated area at night. The green light had been the starboard navigation light. I was certain that the Tornado had been looking for what I’d been observing; it was obviously not flying any sort of ‘training mission’ or routine operation. 

I considered contacting the MoD or the National Grid company at the time (I had the latter’s PR contacts from earlier that year), but I presumed that all I would get for my troubles would be a denial, the usual “you tell us everything and we will tell you nothing”, and that I might suffer consequences as a result of being on record. I decided to say nothing, and simply told friends about it when I arrived in Bradford, my destination, later that night.

I drew a diagram of what I had seen at the time to keep it accurate in my memory, and ever since I have been interested in reports of ‘flying triangles’, as this seems to tally with the second half of what I saw, although I’m interested to note that no one else seems to have reported the shape-changing feature which I observed. 

Tony Taylor, by email, 2007 

METALLIC VOICE

In the summer of 1992 I lived in Great Barr, Birmingham, and my parents had gone away on holiday. I asked my friend Stace to stay over, as I thought it would be fun having girly nights in with wine and videos. We were both about 25 at the time. My house overlooked a field and nature reserve so there were no buildings apart from the houses either side of us. I can’t remember why, but we went out to the front lawn. Stace remembers it as the afternoon, but I think it was later. Our attention was suddenly drawn to a triangular object in the sky directly above us. It seemed metallic yet dark in appearance and at first we thought it was a hang glider, but it was stationary and seemed about 45ft (14m) above us. We stared at it for some time. I was a very amateur astronomer back then and ran in to get my telescope. As I set it up on the front lawn and adjusted the focus, the object moved swiftly to the side. I fixed the viewfinder on it again, but again it moved quickly out of shot. It was as if it didn’t want to be examined close up. I couldn’t focus on it at all. Then it moved extremely quickly to the right, changed to a cigar shape and flew off at an incredible speed. 

About two days later, Stace and I mentioned the incident in general conversation and what we remembered more than anything was that it was speaking to us, like someone shouting over the wind, but the voice was metallic and inaudible. We remembered trying desperately to hear what it was saying, but couldn’t understand the language. 

Steph Slater, Ryde, Isle of Wight, 2009

Strange lights on the road

DRIVING BLIND

It was a clear, late September night in 1999, and I had started off on my half-hour journey from my mother’s house to mine at 9 o’clock. Driving as I had every week from Alyth, Perthshire, Scotland, to the city of Dundee. I relaxed, turned on Radio 4, waved goodbye to my mother and set off. 

The road was quiet. I knew the route like the back of my hand and it was quite normal for me to make the journey almost on autopilot. You know that feeling when you drive somewhere and you’re surprised you’ve arrived as you can’t remember driving that far? This was a fairly common occurrence on these trips. But this night was different. I was about 20 minutes into the journey, listening to the drone of the radio, when I started to feel slightly odd. 

Quickly, I sat straight up in my seat and looked around the car. Nothing in my headlights, nothing behind, as I sped along at a steady 60mph (100km/h). I listened intently to see if the car had started making any odd noises. Nothing. It occurred to me that the radio was off. I glanced at it, turned it up full; no noise. I cursed slightly and stared at the road ahead. Bloody radio’s gone, I thought. The road at this part of the journey dropped downwards into a long left curve. And as I started my descent, something bizarre happened. 

An incredibly vibrant flash of white light engulfed the car, brilliantly white. It wasn’t a car coming in the other direction, or from a side street, or from behind. I wasn’t blinded by the flash, and I noticed that the car clock had reset itself. Then, the next shock: about 15 seconds later the radio screamed at me, as I had left it on with the volume turned full up. I can only assume it was some sort of electrical strike, but with the sky being clear... well, who knows?

Gordon -- , by email, 2001

FIRE IN THE SKY

In the latter part of summer 2001, my wife and I were travelling to a camp near the Saskatchewan-Alberta border, where we were going to meet some friends. We had been driving for about four hours, and were nearing the end of our trip. We were travelling on one of the long, straight stretches of road which Saskatchewan is noted for. It was about 11pm and a clear night before moonrise, but in summer at this latitude (almost 53 degrees) there’s generally a hint of the Sun’s position below the horizon, so it shouldn’t have been inky-dark. 

It was, however, inky dark - the headlights were illuminating the road ahead, but seemed to be having less than their usual effect to the sides. Whether this is connected to the main phenomenon, I can’t say, but it was somewhat unsettling. As the van rose out of a dip, we saw directly ahead, and slightly above our sightline, what can only be described as a ball of fire, equal in visual dimension to a fingernail at arm’s length. It looked very much like the burn-off plume one sees at oil-refineries and at some oil well heads. We assumed initially that this is what it was, joking that right in the middle of the road is a duff place for an oil well. 

Some three minutes later, at 60mph (100km/h), about 2.5 miles (4km), the object seemed no nearer, but remained directly ahead, at what seemed a comfortable distance, without any apparent movement either lateral or vertical. We again commented to each other on this, in the vein of “OK, just what is it, then?” 

The ball held its apparent position for another two or three minutes, when the van again descended into a dip (Saskatchewan, contrary to legend, is not flat, it’s slightly wrinkly). When we rose, there was no sign of the object. A bit less than 10 minutes of ruler-straight road later, we entered a town without any sign of anything which would produce such an effect; this would put us 6-8 miles (10-15km) from where it was last seen, and there wasn’t a lot of cover on either side of the road. Once we passed through the town, the oppressive nature of the darkness also abated. 

I didn’t investigate the matter at all, because the short version of this story is, in essence, “nothing much happened” - but it was a curious effect which I thought your readers might find interesting. It certainly fits Mr Fort’s thesis of something having sport with us monkeys.

Dirck de Lint, Saskatchewan, Canada, 2003

M11 SPOTLIGHT 

On 15 June 2007, my sister and I were driving from Leicester to visit our parents in Rayne near Braintree, Essex. At about 11:40pm we were travelling towards Stansted on the M11, near Audley End. The roads were fairly clear and although there had been heavy rain throughout the day the sky was mostly clear by this time. Sitting in the front passenger seat, I had a very good view of the road. I noticed a stationary, vertical, bright green beam of light about 20ft (6m) in front of us. The beam was coming down from the sky - I could see it up as far as windscreen would allow - and it hit the ground like a stage spotlight. As we were travelling at the speed limit, it all happened very fast. The car drove through the beam and I turned round to see that it was still visible behind us. 

What was doubly strange was that my sister, who was driving, hadn’t noticed it. Although it was late, I don’t think I was tired and imagined it, as I am a night owl and rarely go to bed before 1am. We discussed what the light might have been. Duxford Air Museum was very close, as was Stansted airport; however, the late hour made it unlikely that it was an aircraft from Duxford, and although I could see a plane in the distance preparing to land at Stansted, I couldn’t see any other aircraft in the sky at the time. The area of the M11 on which we were travelling has many ‘Works Unit Only’ signs and in the surrounding area there are several country lanes that don’t appear on any maps, along which one passes several secluded copses of trees that reveal glimpses of radar and other technical equipment. The area also includes local airbases and military bases. My sister also considered the idea that a new form of motorway monitoring was being tested. Can readers offer any explanation? 

Chante Sayers, Walsall, West Midlands, 2007

The Third Kind?

TINFOIL GIANT

A friend and I had an unusual experience in June 2003 in West Sussex. The time was approximately 10pm; almost dark, but with some twilight remaining. 

We were coming back from another friend’s house along a section of country road we have driven individually many times before. My friend was driving and I sat in the passenger seat. We slowed for a tight left-hand bend in the road and as we turned it, driving at this point at about 20mph (32km/h), the headlights caught someone moving amongst the trees on the outside of the bend. I was about to say “Did you see that?” but my friend had already confirmed he had (with an expletive I’d best not write here). We only caught a brief glance of the ‘person’, but it was one of the most bizarre things I’ve ever seen, for two reasons: first and foremost, the person’s size, which was staggering and, indeed, what initially made us catch our breath. The figure was at least 8ft (2.4m) tall, and whilst from our brief observation it was hard to make an accurate estimate, he was clearly larger than he should have been, perpectivewise. 

It was all too quick to notice any particular facial features; he was virtually facing us, but looking slightly down as the lights shone on him, and seemed to be stepping sideways over something in the undergrowth, as his right leg was moving upwards and sideways. The other very unusual aspect was that the headlights reflected a large glare off his clothing, which seemed to be shiny, almost like foil.

It all happened so fast, but there was no doubt what we’d seen was very strange. My friend and I confirmed to each other what we had both witnessed and, after a couple of moments of indecision, he reversed back to the bend and pointed the headlights into the trees approximately where we had seen the figure. All appeared normal. I even got out of the car and called (to my friend’s fervent objection; I’d had some Dutch courage that night, but he was sober!), but no one seemed to be moving about in the woods and there was no trace of anything. We talked excitedly about it on the way home, but it got forgotten as these things do. 

I don’t personally believe in extraterrestrials, so for my own part I’ve ruled out anything like that, and being a fairly practically-minded person I’ve come up with various explanations, such as kids mucking about. But the problem of size keeps coming back - I even checked the Internet the following week to see if 8ft-plus people were more common than I’d thought, rationalising that it was some weirdo in a foil suit. It certainly wasn’t any kind of model, because it was definitely animated. I’m still puzzling over it.

Name withheld, by email, 2003

THE MAN FROM THE SKY

In 1977, my family and I were living on a smallholding next to Beccles Common in Suffolk. One bright, sunny morning in February or March, I heard my twin daughters, Wanda and Rosemarie, aged three-and-a-half, crying and calling me. They had been playing outside near the stable block. As I rushed out of the back porch door, one of the twins ran towards the house in a very disturbed state. 

“Mummy, mummy, we’ve just seen a man jump from an aeroplane!” 

“Where is he?” 

“Walking up our drive.” 

By now her sister had reached me. Both were crying as I bustled them through the house. The other twin told the same story as her sister, adding that the man frightened her very much, and that he was tall with yellow hair. I washed their faces and when they had calmed down I questioned them again. They couldn’t give a satisfactory description of the “aeroplane”, except to say that it was wide. It must have been very quiet; otherwise I would have heard it. Just then, I heard the grating sound made by our side gate, when it is either being opened or shut. I ran out to investigate, but there was no one visible. I looked right round the house and even glanced in the cattle barns. 

A few days later, we went shopping in town. I took the pushchair, as it was a long way for the twins to walk, so if they felt tired they could have a ride. On the way back, we came through the little iron gate leading from the Avenue and I glanced up the path to our house in the distance. It was unusually quiet, and there weren’t even any golfers, though most mornings one or two were playing (part of the Common was used as a golf course). We crossed over the path leading to the golf house and started walking across the grass to join the track leading home. 

When I looked up the path again, I saw a man about 800 yards (730m) away, behaving oddly. He flopped about, then straightened up and started walking towards us. I noticed what looked like a long streak of lightning in the sky above the point where he had been falling about. This quickly disappeared and then I saw a little white circle, perfectly round, which moved very fast and was soon out of sight. The twins seemed full of energy and were running ahead, but as the strange man approached they turned tail, scampered back to me, and got into the pushchair. “That’s the man in the aeroplane,” they exclaimed. 

He was over 6ft (1.8m) tall and dressed in blue-grey protective clothing, like a boiler suit, tight at the ankles and wrists, and apparently of a lightweight material, like nylon. His boots seemed to be made from the same material, and he had grey gauntlet gloves. He had earphones on and as we drew level I could hear a sound similar to white noise from an untuned radio. Then I heard quite a loud foreign voice coming through the static. The strangest feature of all was his pinky-red eyes. He was staring into the middle distance all the time and didn’t look our way once. After he passed, I turned round for another look and noticed his magnificent shoulder-length hair, which shone a fantastic golden-red in the morning sunlight. 

We had now reached the top end of the track, roughly the spot where I had seen the man falling about. To our right, a herd of cows appeared to be going berserk, running round and round the field in a most disturbed fashion. I looked back again and found that the man had vanished. There were only a few sparse bushes, so where had he gone? I turned the pushchair round and retraced our steps all the way down to the car park, but there was no sign of the man anywhere. 

A few days later, the twins and I were collecting firewood on the Common. I glanced towards a golf green and saw what appeared to be a very small, dark grey caravan standing on two little legs. It was egg-shaped and had one wide window in the front, as far as I could tell. The land at that spot was very marshy, which would have made it extremely difficult to drive across, and I couldn’t see any tracks. The twins caught up with me and pulled my arm saying, “There’s the aeroplane, mum.” I told them it was a caravan, but they insisted it was the aeroplane they had seen earlier. Surprisingly, they wanted to have a closer look, but I dissuaded them as it was very muddy where the “caravan” was standing. We came to a small wooded area and through the trees I saw a very tall man dressed in a similar fashion to the one we had seen a few days earlier. I couldn’t see his face as he was turned away from us. Although it was a bright morning, it was rather dark among the trees and he was in shadow. 

Maureen Gaines, Lowestoft, Suffolk, 2007

The Unnatural World

The great outdoors, from rolling hills and forests to the high seas, is often where we go to forget our everyday cares and commune with nature. But strange things can happen there; the ancient woods and streams often appear to be the haunts of trickster-like spirits or the Green Man; and the secrets of the oceans can sometimes turn deadly, as in the case of a rare killer wave.

Spirits of Nature

WOODLAND EXCLUSION

I have lived all my life in Mountfield, a small village in East Sussex surrounded by ancient woodland. Until comparatively recently, the village was populated mostly by families who have lived there for generations. As small children after WWII, we were all aware that there were certain areas of woodland best avoided towards nightfall and others well known as blessed places where solace could be found in time of trouble.

One wood, known as Castle Wood because of the remains of ancient earthworks, is an area known for atmosphere. I walk it regularly and spend some time on the earthwork meditating, but on one occasion, in early October 1998, something very curious happened. 

It was a perfectly still, glorious autumn afternoon. I entered the woodland and immediately felt a heightened awareness. As I approached the main wood up a rutted cart track, the branches of the trees began to move, though I could feel no breeze at all. I slowed my pace, but the wind in the trees became very strong, and as I reached the edge of the earthworks, branches on either side of the path came down and barred my way. Inside the wood, I could just see a flock of large black birds, either rooks or crows, flapping around wildly, though they made no cawing noise.

I was brought up to acknowledge and respect the existence of earth spirits and elementals, and, though I was mystified and a little alarmed, I stood my ground and sent a psychic message in greeting to whatever was there, and I appreciated that I was not welcome that day. As I walked back down the track, the wind died down. At the bottom of the track I turned and looked back, and where I had just walked, brambles which had been in the hedgerow had fallen across the path, making it impossible for anyone else to walk into the wood.

On the way home, I called on the village tree warden and told him what had happened. He said that he too had not been ‘allowed’ into the woods for about three weeks. We were later informed that the Water Board was at that time proposing to make a road right through the wood to a reservoir that supplies Hastings with water. The surveyors encountered such obstacles, difficulties and local opposition that they abandoned the plan and our peaceful, gentle woodland remains untouched but for occasional coppicing.

Jacqueline L Spriggs, Mountfield, East Sussex, 2001

TRICKSTER SPIRITS

In 1996 or 1997, my fossil-collecting took me to a remote valley near Hay-on-Wye on the Welsh border. I followed a public right-of-way that ran parallel to a stream in the valley below. The path is little used, but occasionally you encounter visiting walkers. I know the owner of the surrounding land and have his permission to go there any time to collect fossils. 

The path turns up a side valley after about three quarters of a mile (1.2km) and eventually crosses a stream. It then heads steeply uphill to open ground. Just as the path turns into the side valley, another short path leads down to the stream. I followed this for a few yards until I came to an outcrop of rock, the target of my journey. The main path ran about 20-25ft (6-8m) above this outcrop. There were a few large rocks nearby and I decided to set about these with my hammer, conscious of the stream babbling away in the background. 

I immediately began to feel uncomfortable and lonely, and had a feeling of being watched, but I carried on. I was relieved to hear the sound of children playing, which seemed to come from the open ground across the side valley and beyond the trees. The sound appeared to be almost out of earshot. As I worked I expected to see a troupe of children appear, perhaps led by an adult or two, but the sounds disappeared and I felt another wave of loneliness sweep over me. 

There was a thud to my left and I looked to see a stone the size of a walnut roll down the bank. I had no doubt that this missile had been thrown or dropped from a height and was certain that someone was playing a trick on me. I could not see the path directly above me and in an instant I grabbed my tools and rucksack and ran up to investigate. There was no one to be seen. If the missile had come through the trees, it would have struck some foliage and I would have heard it earlier, so I concluded that it was dropped from a height.

Somewhat unnerved, I beat a hasty retreat back up the path the way I had originally come, hoping that I might catch up with the culprits, but I met no one. All this happened in early summer as there was no thick undergrowth as yet, although the trees were in leaf.

Roderick B Williams, Brecon, Powys, 2000

GREEN MAN ENCOUNTER

One summer afternoon in 2007 I was returning from central London and my train had spent a few too many minutes idling at the platform in New Malden station. Lost in thought, I had been looking out of the window at nothing in particular when I suddenly saw something that made me gasp out loud. At the far end of the London-bound platform is a thick bank of trees and shrubs behind a fence. I was astonished to see what appeared to be an enormous face made up of the surrounding foliage looming out at the opposite platform and looking very similar to the typical appearance of the ‘Green Man’, as seen in church carvings. The face was about 5ft (1.5m) in diameter and about 7ft (2m) or so from the ground. 

I was amazed how perfect the face seemed to be - though at the same time I knew it was just my brain demonstrating its knack for face recognition in random patterns. I probably gazed in wonder for 20-odd seconds before the most shocking thing happened. 

Suddenly, and with tremendous velocity, the entire face withdrew backwards into the vegetation, which caused the surrounding bushes and trees to sway violently. Most strikingly of all, a branch that must have been under the ‘face’ swung upwards with immense force - as if a huge weight had been lifted from it - before smacking into the surrounding greenery and, I suppose, reassuming its original position. This whole motion took about a second and the face had completely disappeared! I could accept that a fox or even a human might have been sitting on the branches and had jumped off, causing them to bounce back into position, but this would not easily account for the very distinct retraction of the face, as if it were wrenched backwards into a tunnel.

The face in no way looked constructed or man-made and seemed to consist of a natural, though utterly remarkable, arrangement. The features of the thing were clear to see and I was particularly struck by the grinning mouth and staring eyes. Quite how the verdant visage was sucked backwards I have no idea. I have often wondered how, or indeed why, anyone would have achieved this bizarre effect for bored South West Trains passengers. The train drew away and I sat back in my chair feeling strangely unnerved. On all of my subsequent journeys through the station I have never seen anything like this again.

Nick Skerten, Kingston upon Thames, London, 2009

CHTONIC HEARTBEAT

About three years ago (2001), my wife and I were walking in Wakerley Woods in Northamptonshire. It was a calm, sunny day and we were walking off the path in the shade of pine trees when my wife, who was about 10 metres (32ft) in front of me, stopped dead in her tracks. After a moment she turned and said “Can you hear that?” She appeared a little puzzled and also just a tiny bit spooked. I stopped, listened, but couldn’t hear anything. She insisted I listen again but I could still hear nothing. However, she was adamant there was a sound and described it as being very low, so much so as to be almost better apprehended as a sensation. I found that I was able to ‘tune in’ to a dull throb, best described as a kind of chthonic heartbeat. 

It was rhythmical and sensed in a rather unpleasantly visceral way; when you tuned in to it you had the sense of it being so massively dispersed that you were almost part of it. We were completely unable to determine what might be causing it. There are fairly large roads in the area but this would not account for the periodicity of the effect; nor did it seem that this could be the source as there was no traffic noise audible. There was the definite sensation that whatever was producing the vibration was massive, as it seemed to pervade the earth and the air. I lived in the area at the time and noticed no reports of anomalous seismic activity. 

Pete Wilson, by email, 2004

Strangeness at Sea

THE KILLER WAVE 

When I saw the killer wave from the bridge of the Cape Horn, I took it for a natural peril; it was only much later that I realised that I might be one of the very few people to have observed a rare marine phenomenon - a monster seiche wave - at close quarters... and survived.

The Cape Horn was the standard ‘three island’ ship of the period. When I joined her in 1930 she was almost a new ship. The man in charge, Captain ES Wilkie, had commanded the last active square-rigged ship on the British register. He and I were the only sailing ship men aboard, and for this reason he would talk to me occasionally.

The incident happened during a Force 9 or 10 gale in the Pacific, sometime between April and June 1935. We were about 10 or 12 days out of a Canadian or US west coast port taking sawn lumber to Shanghai. It was blowing hard with 25 feet (7.6m) seas running and the distance from crest to crest exceeded the ship’s length (425ft/130m). The phosphorescence given off by the breaking seas provided plenty of light to see by as I made my way over the deck-load towards the bridge.

It was 4am and my wheel. Ahead and to port one could see for a couple of miles, but the horizon was not clearly defined. The starboard window of the wheelhouse was constantly drenched by heavy spray and useless for observation. The temperature was around zero. I had the helm hard-a-starboard continually, but from time to time eased the wheel a few spokes, then slammed it down again. (It was a common seaman’s belief that if modern steering gear were held hard-over too long, a bubble of air would form within the cylinder or tubes and prevent movement of the rudder.) In a full gale I was taking no chances.

About 4:30am, I noticed a change in the regular run of the seas ahead. A larger wave was forming, to judge from the gaps of blue water between the crests. The Chief Mate, Mr McKenzie, had the watch and I drew his attention to it. “Here’s a ‘ninth wave’ bearing down, Mister.” He examined it with the glasses, took a bearing from the ship’s compass, checked the ship’s head, then moved back to the corner window.

A ‘ninth wave’ is a common expression, meaning a single wave larger than the others. As I kept my eyes on it, it slowly increased in size. Hoping the Mate would increase the engine revolutions to face up to this new threat, I said: “She’s nearly five points off and won’t answer.” He remained silent. Later, I added: “It’s not just one big wave, there are others behind it just as big. I can see their crests breaking here and there.” His left hand moved towards the engine telegraph, hesitated and drew back. 

By this time the wave had become so huge that I knew it would capsize the ship. No increase in speed would save us now. I was puzzled by the slowness of the advance of the sea; we seemed to be drifting together. Then I noticed that what I had initially taken for wave crests were actually widely spaced geysers, dancing on the upper surface. These geysers - or whatever they were - were rising to a height of about 20 feet (6m) and dropping to half that before rising again, sometimes curving against the wind. The upper surface of the sea appeared flat and endless, stretching towards the unseen horizon. By ‘flat’ I mean there was no defined wave motion; the surface boiled gently in whorls, exactly like the water filling a lock of the Panama Canal.

I knew beyond question that I was a dead man, but the idea didn’t seem to worry me unduly. Rather, there was an absence of feeling. Suddenly I was shocked back to the present. I could plainly hear the thumping and rattling of the rocker arms of the main engine and the noise of the big exhaust in the funnel. Then, like the slamming of a watertight door, the wind dropped from a full gale to a calm. I knew what was happening; the height of the sea had cut off the wind making a temporary lee for the ship. Glancing at the compass, I saw with surprise and delight that the ship’s head was coming up to windward. In fits and starts it moved in the right direction. I talked to her: “C’mon my sweet beauty, get up there. Hurry ’fore the bastard wind comes back. Do it for me lover...” stuff like that, but meaning every whispered word.

The bows were only about 30 feet (9m) off the far end of the ‘sea’ when she rammed it. Then all hell broke loose. I felt the shock as the fo’c’s’le head went in and the deck-load for’ard tore loose. There was another crunching thud beneath my feet as the sea demolished the lower bridge rail. I thought: “There’s the lifeboats gone for a burton.”

Just then, and with incredible speed, the whole face of the wave altered. A curtain of water rose from the sea and enclosed it. Where the existing face was deep and flat, this curtain appeared to be made of joined vertical columns about three feet (90cm) in diameter, uniform and crested, and sloping at the same angle as the great wave behind it. They looked exactly like huge steel pistons coated with oil. The crest passed the wheelhouse windows downwards in about three seconds.

I gripped the wheel harder. The for’ard windows were struck by a sea that I fully expected to demolish the whole front of the structure. This was strange; it acted like water but didn’t have the character of water with force behind it... no shattering explosion of glass, no rendering of woodwork... just a heavy thump. In that instant - as if a switch had been pressed - the three front windows turned pure white. This, again, was strange; there was none of the movements you’d expect from water on glass... no splayed runnels... no small bubbles... just the purest white I have ever seen, as if they had turned into three blocks of ice. In the blink of an eye it was gone, and you could see out of them again.

Then the big wave was gone. I looked for the Mate, but he was outside. As the vessel listed heavily to port, I saw a normally big sea pass by us as the water drained from the bridge. The Old Man arrived, much to my relief, and immediately rang the telegraph. He was barefooted in soaked pyjamas and his uniform cap, shivering, for the wind had returned. He had words with the Mate (beyond my hearing), who departed at great speed. Captain Wilkie glanced briefly at the compass and said: “All right Craig. What really happened?”

His question relieved me. It meant the Mate had not seen me alter course to windward without orders. If anything had happened to anyone down below, the sea would get the blame, not me. I answered: “She wouldn’t answer her helm, sir; not enough anyway. It was the biggest sea I’ve ever seen. I’ve seen some big’uns off the Horn, but nothing like this.” He nodded towards the binnacle: “Keep her at that while I dry off. If you want me, stamp on the deck.” After I struck the four bells at the end of the watch, I wanted a good look at the lower bridge. The stanchions on the fore part remained, but all the woodwork except the capping rail had gone. The boats were in perfect order, canvas covers intact. The afterdeck was untouched. I could hardly believe it, after taking onboard such a heavy sea.

Part of the deck-load was floating alongside still attached by a few wires; elsewhere the stacks of timber were intact but in disarray. The fo’c’s’le had been flooded to the level of the upper tier of bunks, but this was quite normal in this run in any sort of weather. Nobody made any more comments about it than usual; it seemed as if nobody but the Mate and me had seen what we went through. He never spoke about it afterwards - we never hit it off well, anyway - and neither did I.

I am left with my memory of those critical minutes, like a stretch of film with neither beginning nor end. Contrary to usual storm conditions, visibility was excellent. Wherever one looked, the air was charged with phosphorescence, and the water was alive with it. The prevailing colour of the solid water was a dark blue, with the breaking crests and ‘geysers’ showing a normal white. When the great wave had passed, the colour of the seas changed back to grey. The sky was gradually becoming lighter in colour, except directly over the ship, where it had assumed an arrowhead formation (the point facing the wind and the two sides clearly defined). The course of the enormous wave was directly towards the ship’s bow, yet the wind was on our quarter throughout. It made no leeway until the wind stopped and the ship reached to wind’ard and hit it. The wave appeared independent of the rest of the sea, while the ‘geysers’ seemed like a great pumping system, raising and lowering the water level within it. If there was any gas involved, it was imperceptible; there was no smell, and the oil lamp lighting the compass card burned steadily through the whole incident. 

So what was it? Where did it come from - and where did it go after it left us? Are there ‘holes’ in the sea as there are said to be ‘black holes’ in space? I’ve often wondered. My own conclusion is that it was hollow - a gigantic bubble.

Gavin Craig, 1980 

Weird Mists

THE HANGING BLANKET OF DARTMOOR 

In May 1994, my wife and I had a caravan holiday near Chagford on the edge of Dartmoor. We return to the same large farm field every year. The caravan is in a completely isolated ‘blind’ corner, with large hedges or banks about seven to nine feet (2-2.7m) high. The nearest building, Lower Shapley farmhouse, is 200 yards (180m) away at the top of our field, and beyond that is a lane leading to a no-through road onto the moors. There are no other caravans, campers or dwellings nearby. 

It was a clear, dry night, with little breeze and a moon brightly seen between a fair amount of cloud. Sometime between 2am and 4am, answering my usual nightly call of nature, I stepped out of the caravan and was confronted by a white, vertical, oblong blanket, phosphorescent, but giving off no light. It was clear of the ground, about 10 to 15ft (3-4.5m) long and 4 to 5 ft (1.2-1.5m) high. On the grass between it and me there were ‘scatterings’ (as if there had been a light snow fall) of similar white phosphorescent material. Whilst the blanket was ‘solid’, completely hiding the hedge about 20ft (6m) behind it, the surrounding hedge, bank below and landscape over it were clear of any mist. The grass could be seen through the ground ‘dusting’. There was no other white stuff to be seen in the vicinity. 

On my return after about two minutes, I warned my wife, whom I had disturbed as I left and who also wished to go out, that she should prepare for a shock. I didn’t tell her what I had seen, as I wanted her to be an independent witness. She confirmed what I had seen, so the phenomenon had lasted at 

least (say) five minutes. We lay and talked about it, but sadly didn’t think of 

going back out, taking a photograph or even looking out to see if it had moved 

or disappeared. I suppose we were in a state of shock, but we were not in any way fearful. 

There was nothing to be seen early the next day. Later recollections led me to believe that the top edge of the blanket was quite well defined, but not straight or level - though my wife believes it was straight and level. All was still, and the Moon appeared briefly from time to time between the clouds. I think the caravan shadow was missing when the Moon shone. The Moon couldn’t have cast a tree shadow near the ground dusting area. The dusting appeared to be in horseshoe patterns, facing predominantly in the same leftward direction. 

I discussed the matter with the farmer and his parents, who could offer no explanation. The Meteorological Office was also “unable to help”. I am 69 and my wife is 75 and teetotal. 

Norman James, Epsom, Surrey, 1995

ANOTHER ODD MIST? 

Concerning ‘The Hanging Blanket of Dartmoor’: about two years ago (1993) I saw an object that was similar but not identical. 

Part of my work involves a night inspection of some private land off a dead-end track beyond a gate. I unlocked the gate and returned to the car to drive through, but as I started to move off I noticed an object some 30ft (9m) beyond the gate. It was uneven, roughly butterfly-shaped, white, solid, flat and featureless with sharply defined edges about 3ft (90cm) high by 4ft (1.2m) wide and 4ft from the ground at its lowest point. There was no light emanating from the object itself; it appeared as a white object does at night and was completely still. As I watched, the object slowly faded away, not from any one point, but evenly all over until it was completely gone. I drove through where it had been and there was nothing there at all. Unlike the Dartmoor phenomenon there was no ‘snow’’. 

I suspect an optical illusion, as the object was vertical and square to my view. I have never seen anything like it before or since. I would be interested to know if any readers know what the object could have been. In passing, I have carried out these inspections weekly for many years and have twice seen bright lights in the sky resembling a shower of stars surrounded by a silver glowing cloud with a comet-like tail travelling very fast from horizon to horizon. I have always attributed these to space debris. 

Mr G Lester, Milton Keynes, 1995

Ugly Rumours

Urban legends are those far-fetched sounding stories (often with a cautionary twist) that usually reach us via a ‘friend of a friend’ (and, these days, the Internet). Although the source of these tales can never be traced, people persist in believing them to be true. Here are some classic examples in which schoolkids from across Britain got themselves into a panic over an imminent skinhead invasion!

Barbarian Invasions

SEVENTIES SKINHEAD PANICS

One day - I think in the spring of 1973, when I was nearly 13 - I arrived at school, Rivington Road Secondary, St Helens, Merseyside, to find the place awash with rumours of an impending skinhead invasion. Apparently, gangs of skinheads had been ambushing other teenagers and, so the story went, slashing them with razors. The classic line that the ‘skins’ were said to use was: “Does your mother sew? Well, get her to sew this!” (Slash!)

The tales increased all through the week, to include physical (but not sexual) assaults with umbrellas and milk bottles. By Thursday, anxious parents were meeting their offspring from school - this was in the days when most people walked or took buses to school, rather than being ferried about in cars. By Friday morning, the school was in a state of near-hysteria. We had been told ‘the skins’ rang up the targeted school five minutes before they came, and then up to 1,000 of them would descend, razors at the ready.

On Friday afternoon, we girls had needlework in a classroom opposite one of the deputy head-teacher’s rooms. Horror of horrors, at about ten to four, a telephone was heard ringing in her room. We all stopped work, went completely silent, and exchanged terrified looks. Then one of the two deputy teachers walked calmly into the classroom and announced in measured tones that there was absolutely no truth in the skinhead rumour. By the following Monday, we were all back to discussing T-Rex, Gary Glitter and David Cassidy, rumours forgotten.

Funnily enough, later that year I moved to a different school, also in St Helens, and met people from other schools in the town. Every one of them had heard the skinhead stories and in some schools the eldest boys organised the closing of the school gates at break and lunchtimes and patrolled the school perimeters.

To this day I wonder, now and then, where this tale came from. As I recall, there wasn’t a problem with skinheads in St Helens - not one that I was aware of anyway - and I doubt there were 1,000 skinheads in the whole of Merseyside. We were all very frightened and all accepted the stories as true. It didn’t occur to me to wonder how up to 1,000 skinheads descending on a school could be ignored by local people and the police, but there you are.

Why though, if parents had heard the tales, did the teaching staff apparently not know about them and why did it take until Friday afternoon to officially deny them? And why were the skinheads chosen as the aggressors, out of all the various gangs and groups? I’d love to know if similar tales circulated anywhere else, or if it was confined to St Helens.

Lois Stock, Haverhill, Suffolk, 1994 

In 1973 I was a second-year student at the now defunct Glamorgan College of Education, which used to overlook the seaside town of Barry, several miles west of Cardiff in Wales. One day, late in the afternoon, a rumour spread among the students that 200 skinheads were arriving by train from Brighton, intent on attacking the college. About 100 of us armed ourselves with cricket bats, chair legs and whatever else we could find, and ventured out towards the town to meet the expected onslaught. Nothing happened, and after a wait of some hours we dispersed. 

I heard no more of the skinheads. It was believed by many of us that they had got wind of our preparedness and had fled the area. At the time I, too, thought we had achieved a great feat of arms against a dangerous enemy, but I soon began to wonder: no one had encountered a skinhead face-to-face, and there was never any follow-up evidence that there had been any kind of invasion of the town.

Viv Hobbs, Blackwood, Gwent, 1994  

In 1970 or 1971, when I was a pupil at a very ‘respectable’ school in Merseyside, a rumour began to circulate about an impending attack by a gang of marauding truants from a notorious inner-city school. Eventually the rumour-mongers announced a specific date for the attack and several of us arrived at school that day carrying ‘offensive weapons’. I brought a length of rusty metal, which I had found in the garden shed. To this day, I have no idea what I intended to do with it in the event of being attacked. The staff at the school took the rumour seriously enough to keep us indoors at lunchtime and (after some soul-searching) to allow us to leave early. Needless to say, the threatened assault never took place. 

My younger brother remembers that the same rumour circulated around his school in another suburb of Liverpool. He also remembers a story about a youth being attacked by skinheads on his birthday, and having the words “Happy Birthday” carved on his body. The rumour about the marauding gang had racial overtones since most of the pupils at the school in question were black.

Kevin Mahoney, Sheffield, South Yorkshire, 1994

For a short while in the early 1970s, rumours of massed gangs of skinheads circulated at Bramley Broad Lane School in Leeds. It was said they inserted razor blades into bars of soap. 

Eddy Jenkinson, Eindhoven, Holland, 1994

An account by ex-Harrovian Simon Sebag Montefiore alleging an actual skinhead offensive on Harrow public school in the late 1970s appeared in the Evening Standard on 12 October 1995. 

Apparently, after much tension in the town between pupils and skins, it was one day announced that “the skins are attacking the school: hundreds of them! It’s a skinhead army!” Montefiore continues: “We laughed, but I ran out to see what was literally a solid phalanx of giant skinheads, probably at least 70 of them, running along the high street... wielding spanners a foot long.” He then maintains that “as far as the eye could see there were skinheads beating up boys and masters,” and it is at this point that the account sounds too much like fiction.

The cult book Boot Boys by ‘Richard Allen’ (James Moffatt) was a bestseller in the early 1970s and it could be that much consternation was fuelled by it, including the St Helens scare and Montefiore’s boastful narrative. Defined as: “The savage story of Britain’s newest teenage cult of violence”, Boot Boys centred on the anti-social exploits of Joe Hawkins, whom Allen described as “the epitome of society’s menace”. The skinhead stereotype can be seen as one form of a protean figure in contemporary folklore whose exaggerated anti-social tendencies are based on social or racial prejudice and glamorised depictions in pulp literature and films. 

Alistair Moffatt, London, 1995 

THE CHELSEA SMILERS

A panic similar to “The Great Skinhead Invasion” of 1973 swept through the large secondary school in south-east London where I worked in 1987. It was said that a gang of Chelsea Football Club supporters called “The Chelsea Smilers” would arrive in the area in a blue van with a smiley face painted on the side and accost children as they went home from school. “The Chelsea Smilers” would apparently ask the victim if they supported Chelsea. If the answer was negative they would slash the face of the victim with a knife (or razor) causing a smile-like wound to the face. According to one informant, it seems that if the victim did support Chelsea the Smilers would first slightly cut the victim’s wrist and then their own and perform some kind of ‘blood brothers’ ceremony.

Children spoke of attacks happening at neighbouring schools and over a few days tension increased as rumour spread that the Smilers were “heading our way”. By the end of the week, groups of children were in near hysteria over the imminent attack. Apparently, the blue van was “seen” parked near the school. Parents expressed concern and only an official denial by the deputy head teacher over the school’s Tannoy system seemed to calm things down. He pointed out in a masterly display of logic, which the children could not fault, that there was no reason on earth why the Smilers, if they did exist, which they didn’t, would come all the way to south-east London when there were plenty of people to slash in their own part of London. All rumour and panic ended by the following week.

Malcolm Stewart, London, 1994 

One morning in 1987, I arrived at my school in London to hear strong rumours of an imminent attack by “The Chelsea Smilers”. The members of this gang were said to drive around in blue vans and attack people with, of all things, credit cards. Their method was to slash each corner of their victim’s mouth with a credit card, thus leaving the unfortunate person with a permanent ‘smile’ on their face. Stories began to circulate about how somebody or other knew someone who had heard of a school where this gruesome event had occurred.

Towards the end of the week, we were told in assembly that the school had made enquiries with the police, who then assured the school that they had never heard of the Chelsea Smilers, that this rumour was rife in many schools throughout London, and that there really was nothing to worry about. As with the Skinhead Scare, by Monday the whole issue had more or less died out. 

Mr R Pohl, London, 1994 

LINGERING LEGENDS

The urban legends about mass skinhead attacks on schoolchildren are still percolating through the global meme-scape. At the millennial New Year (1999/2000), I attended a rave called ‘The Gathering’, held in the Takaka mountains near Nelson in the South Island of New Zealand, at which rumours quickly circulated that gangs of skinheads had planted caches of weapons in the woods months before in preparation for their own unique millennial celebrations at the expense of the innocent ravers. Needless to say, this mild hysteria was completely unfounded, with the only casualties from the weekend being E-freaks winched off the hilltop with hypothermia after forgetting that their urban clubbing garb was rather inadequate for withstanding the sub-alpine elements. 

Although pretty weak by the sensational standards of most mass hysteria outbreaks, the story did reveal some interesting psychosocial subtexts. The threat of destructive, pre-determined chaos was definitely in keeping with the millennial end-times paranoia, whilst the divisions between hippie/rave and skinhead cultures were much in evidence. Most of the ravers were middle-class kids from the North Island. The West Coast of the South Island, not far from where the event was staged and where the skinheads were said to be based, is nationally demonised as a provincial, ‘white trash’ backwater. 

The rumour also illustrates New Zealand’s perennial inferiority complex in relation to its colonial roots. A popular version of this ‘cultural cringe’ states that due to our relative geographical isolation from the rest of the world, social, cultural, and artistic trends from Europe and America eventually trickle down here about 10 years after their northern hemisphere peaks, which accounts for the fact that an urban legend from 1970s England is still doing the rounds down under almost 30 years later. 

Dean Ballinger, Hamilton, New Zealand, 2002

Regarding the rumours of invading skinhead armies: in 2001, the Anti-Nazi League (a branch of the Socialist Workers Party) warned of a planned National Front March through the centre of Aberdeen, and a big anti-Nazi demonstration was organised. On the day, no neo-Nazi march happened, although the ANL claimed that National Front leaflets were distributed in some housing estates on the outskirts of the city. The National Front has very little support north of the border. Apparently, this kind of thing happens quite often. Cynics note that the SWP get a lot of publicity at these “counter demonstrations” and lots of copies of the Socialist Worker get sold. 

Ian Sanders, Dalmellington, Ayrshire, 2002

Ghostly goings-on

Ghostly apparitions continue to be reported from all over the world, and not just from stately homes and historic castles. It would seem that hauntings are just as likely to occur in everyday settings such as modern council houses, and that they can happen in the workplace as well as the home - as our collection of chilling tales of haunted hospitals demonstrates.

Spectres in the home

AN ANGRY GHOST

Following my divorce, our two-year-old twins and I were obliged to go into rented accommodation. Having settled the girls at the local playgroup and started my self-employed new career in the Lincolnshire village, I was loath to go far and couldn’t believe my luck when a 19th-century farmworker’s cottage came up for rent next to the church. I could afford the rent and, although a little isolated, it was in a lovely position and clean and tidy. 

We moved in on a cold April day in 1991. I turned the heating up full and lit the fire in the sitting room as the place had quite a chill. I then set about unpacking in the kitchen looking out onto the beautiful west end of the church and graveyard. I could hear the girls chattering away to themselves and exploring the rooms. Eventually they joined me in the kitchen. 

“Do you like our new house?” I asked, keen to get their approval. 

They looked at one another, made a grave face and said very quietly: “We like the house, but we don’t like the lady on the stairs”. 

The hair on the back of my neck stood up. “What lady? There is no lady here, just us - this is our house now.” 

They looked unconvinced. “No, there is a lady, in a long brown dress with long brown hair pulled over her face, and she’s angry, she’s very angry, she doesn’t want us here!” 

I could see they were getting upset and so decided not to question them any further; I assumed they were unnerved by the change of surroundings and thought ‘the lady’ would go away. 

But she didn’t. Night after night they talked about her, where she was in the house, what she was doing and saying, and how she was getting more and more angry. I saw nothing, but several times when I went into a room I got the feeling someone had just left… also a fleeting smell of pipe tobacco smoke… strange for a lady. 

One night I had a friend visit. She needed to use the upstairs bathroom and I gave her directions. I couldn’t believe how quickly she returned, nor how pale she was. She said nothing to me until we left the house but then she told me she walked into a cold damp mist on the upstairs landing that took her breath away. 

The bedroom light switch was over near the door, so every time I went to bed, it was a quick glance round the room, switch off the light, dive into bed and pull the covers over my head, and hope the girls didn’t call for me in the night. One night, I had just performed this routine when I heard a rustling noise followed by a huge bang. My heart was pounding so much I thought it would explode, but I knew I had to get out of bed and switch the light on. I found a mirror had come off the wall and slid down behind the dressing table. I laughed with relief until some kind soul the next day told me that ghosts hate mirrors. 

In a vain attempt to catch the girls out, I questioned them separately to see if the lady was a twin imaginary friend, but they always had exactly the same story - where she was and what she said. After four months in the cottage, I couldn’t stand it any longer and decided to forfeit the remaining three months’ rent and move to a modern property nearer the centre of the village. I was apprehensive that the lady would come with us… but she didn’t, and the twins never mentioned her again. 

For weeks, I tried to fathom the mystery. I asked the locals and did research on the area. No one had experienced anything unusual in the cottage before; however, I did discover it was built on the site of the old monastic priory. 

Di Ablewhite, Long Bennington, Nottinghamshire, 2010

THE OLD COUPLE 

When I was young, I lived with my parents and brother and sister in a small four-bedroom council house called “Freeways” in Cheverly, near Newbury in Berkshire. About 23 years ago, when I was five, we spent a few days with my granddad around the first anniversary of grandma’s passing away. Not long after our return, mum ran into an old friend, who said she had called round; an old lady had answered our front door and said there was no Sue or Pete (my mum and dad) living at that address. 

Mum then questioned our neighbours, who had been feeding our animals while we were away, and asked if they had seen or heard anything. They said that a few times there had been an empty milk bottle on the front doorstep, and once they had found the front door open, but as nothing appeared to have been moved or taken, they just assumed they had forgotten to lock it. Then a few people said they had seen a caravan parked in our drive and others had seen an elderly couple going in and out of the house. The funny thing was that only half the street had seen anything. My parents were really worried and called the police, but as nothing had happened to us directly, they were unable to do anything. 

Then one Sunday evening, as we were sitting in the front room watching Antiques Roadshow on television, mum noticed a very strong smell of bleach; she felt it burning the inside of her nose. The rest of us couldn’t smell anything. Later, I remember feeling really cold sitting next to an open log fire and then a coathanger hanging on the bird cage that was suspended from the ceiling started to swing really violently, which made our bird go mad. This is all I can remember of that night. 

Not long after, as my sister was getting out of the bath, she heard some very heavy breathing and dragging feet coming towards the bathroom. The rest of the family was in the garden. Scared, she ran out of the bathroom onto the landing and collided with someone or something and heard it fall against the wall, but she didn’t stop to look back. My parents didn’t find anything apart from what looked like a pattern on the carpet of something dragging its feet. 

As for the elderly couple, nothing was found out about them and they were never seen again. To this day, the families that move into that house don’t seem to live there for longer than a year - or so I’ve been told. Our local newspaper found out about our haunting. It has now become a well-known ghost story for the locality. 

Victoria Price, by email, 2007

THE FACE IN THE PLASTER

In 1993, my family and I were living in an old house in Dewlish, Dorset. The house had an annex occupied by our elder daughter. It served as a self-contained flat with its own bedroom, lounge and bathroom. One day she mentioned feeling a ‘presence’ in there, combined with a distinctive smell - not unpleasant, but one that she was unable to describe as she had never experienced anything like it before. At first we dismissed this as just a figment of a teenager’s wild imagination; but then she asked my wife if she’d been cleaning in her bedroom. When my wife said she hadn’t, my daughter said that was strange, because some items on her dressing table had definitely been moved around - notably a razor blade that she kept to sharpen her eyebrow pencil.

We started to take her more seriously after this and our anxiety increased considerably when she said that one night, to make sure that she wasn’t imagining things, she had placed the razor blade into a powder compact. The next morning she found the blade back on her dressing table. 

One day she came rushing out of her room, as white as a sheet, saying that she had felt the ‘presence’ very strongly and the curtains in her room had suddenly billowed, despite the fact that her windows were closed. We immediately went in to check, but everything appeared to be normal.

My daughter said that sometimes, during the night, she felt as if someone were standing by her bed looking down at her. She felt quite calm because this ‘person’ wasn’t giving off any threatening or aggressive vibes. It just seemed happy to stand and observe her.

There was another peculiar development when we decided to have her flat re-decorated. The men employed to do the job came and asked us if we knew about the trapdoor they had uncovered under the carpet in the lounge. We didn’t. Underneath were steps down into a brick-lined cellar, on one side of which was a tunnel leading off in the direction of the village church and cemetery across from our house. 

Perhaps we were being over-cautious, but none of us felt inclined to explore further. We asked people in the village and at the church if they had heard of anything strange about our house. Some of the old-timers told us that the house ‘had a history’, but they wouldn’t elaborate however hard we pressed.

The workmen peeled off a number of layers of old wallpaper in the lounge in preparation for re-decorating. After removing the final layer of paper on one wall, they exposed a sketch of a man’s face drawn on the plaster. He had piercing deep-set eyes, and an expression of utter despair. When they showed it to us, our daughter said: “That’s him. He’s giving off the same vibes. I’m certain that’s him.” 

Due to its condition, the plaster had to be completely removed. Once the ‘face’ had been destroyed, my daughter never again felt the ‘presence’ or experienced the smell she had talked about. She said that the flat had taken on a completely different atmosphere. 

Martin Baynes, Oliva, Valencia, Spain, 2006 

ELUSIVE LAUGHTER

One winter afternoon in about 2001, I was busy in the lounge when I heard a young girl’s giggles. I smiled to myself. There’s nothing sweeter than hearing my children’s laughter. I carried on with what I was doing. The giggles started again. Curious, I crept into the hallway and poked my head around the corner, hoping to have the last laugh and make my girls jump. To my surprise there was no one there, yet I could still hear faint giggles. 

I went upstairs to see where my daughters (aged nine and seven) were, thinking they were probably playing a trick on me. When I looked in their room, one was asleep; the other was engrossed in a book. I asked my daughter what she had been laughing at but she said that she hadn’t been laughing. I thought it a little strange, but shrugged it off. 

Days later, my husband mentioned hearing children’s laughter in the hallway, but when he looked for the girls they weren’t there. A shiver ran down my spine and goosebumps covered my arms as I remembered the giggles I had heard a few days previously. His words made me feel relieved I wasn’t imagining things. 

A few weeks later, before going to bed in the early hours, I went upstairs to the bathroom. As I got to the door, I noticed my daughter wearing a long white nightie, her hair trailing half way down her back. I remember wondering why she was wearing one of those long petticoats to bed. They were only to be worn under her St David’s Day costume. She stood with her back towards me just inside her bedroom. I thought she might have been sleepwalking and turned to tell her to get back into bed because it was late. 

Before I had a chance to say anything, I watched the young girl fade into the darkness of the bedroom. I stood silently in shock for a few seconds, before checking on my two daughters, who were sleeping soundly in bed. 

On a different night in the same week, I checked on my children before I went to bed. There in the doorway of my daughters’ bedroom stood the young girl again, just as before. She wore the same nightdress, but this time her long dark hair flowed beneath a frilly cap. In her right hand she held an old-fashioned lamp, the shape of a gravy boat, which held a single lit candle. 

I held my breath and stood as still as stone as I watched her take several steps into the room. Halfway across the floor, she began to fade and disappeared into the darkness once more. 

I often wonder who she was and why she’d visited that night. Was she the young child who I’d heard giggling in my hallway? The house, incidentally, dates from the 1940s or 50s, if that has any bearing on the phenomena. 

Lisa Plowman, Upper Church Village, Mid Glamorgan, 2009

GHOST DOG

In 1983, my brother Peter and I and a friend, Rod, had just moved into a share household in the Sydney suburb of Enmore. Peter and I were in a small upstairs room that we had chosen for a sound studio. We were discussing the positioning of our gear when from inside the room (almost in one of the walls) we both heard the distinct sound of a dog panting. There was no dog in the room. 

A few weeks later, I was home and alone, and just about to come out of the upstairs bathroom when I heard the sound of a dog running up the stairs and along the corridor. It stopped outside the bathroom door. At that time, I had quite a fear of dogs, so I waited a short while to see if it was going to leave. I gradually opened the door and there was nothing there. I cautiously checked the house. All the doors and windows were closed and there was no sign of any dog. 

A few weeks later, Peter had been home alone for most of the morning. He was just about to go to work and grabbed his keys and bag from the dining room table. He walked along the corridor towards the front door, past a makeshift cupboard under the stairs. From inside this cupboard he heard the scratching and clawing of what sounded like a medium-sized dog. It was a kind of frantic scratching and freaked him out so much that he turned round and left by the back door, up the side alley, and over a locked gate. He told the story that evening. 

About a month after this, Rod met a new girl, Kim. We were having an introductory meal and retired to the lounge. The mood was calm and mellow. We were burning a few candles and having another glass of cheap student wine. None of us was at all drunk. We were chatting, listening to music, facing inwards. Kim was facing the door to the corridor. There was a lull in the convers-ation broken by Kim, who said, “I didn’t know you guys had a dog”. 

Peter said, “That’s because we don’t!” 

“But I just saw one!” 

All the doors downstairs were closed. Kim said that she had just seen a small black and white spaniel-like dog walk past the bottom of the stairs. No one had mentioned anything about our phantom dog to Kim. 

Steph Miller, Sydney, Australia, 2009

THE MONK, THE SOLDIER AND THE WITCHES

In 1999, my mum bought a 19th-century house in Ludlow, Shropshire, built over the old city walls. As soon as she moved in, she and my grandmother noticed strange things happening: objects that changed position, slamming doors, taps that turned on by themselves. They managed to ignore the phenomena, until my mum woke up one day and saw what appeared to be a mediæval monk in the corner of her room. At first, she thought she must still be dreaming, but the monk was still there after she blinked. He stared at her for a while, and then vanished completely. She tried to be rational about the experience, but couldn’t help finding it unsettling. 

A few nights after her first encounter with the monk, she woke up again shivering in the middle of the night. She said that the room was icy cold. When she opened her eyes, she saw a figure hovering over her in the attire of a World War I soldier. She was so terrified that she jumped out of bed and ran out of the house, still in her dressing gown. From that moment on, she decided she wouldn’t spend another night on her own in the house, and called an exorcist. She was told that the house was haunted by two different entities: the monk was protecting her, but the soldier had malevolent intentions. As well as these two different entities, there were poltergeist-like phenomena apparently connected to some mortal remains buried under the back door - the most sinister spot of the house. These, at least according to the exorcist, were related to witchcraft ceremonies conducted outside of the city walls. My mum ended up selling the house. 

Toby R, Bristol, 2010 

Haunted Hospitals

HOSPITAL GHOSTS

In 1977, I was a 27-year-old staff nurse working nights at a community hospital for the care of the elderly in north-east Wales. It had been built around 1902 as an isolation centre for infectious diseases and had a gloomy atmosphere with droopy curtains and ancient iron beds. The hospital was demolished in 2004. 

I was the youngest member of staff and had worked at the hospital just nine months. One dry autumn night in 1977, at 1am, I walked into a darkened ward housing 12 sleeping patients and saw a man standing at the bottom end of one of the beds. He was a good 6ft (1.8m) tall, with an upright authoritative bearing. He had grey hair and was wearing a uniform of thick, black material, including a double-breasted jacket glinting with large silver buttons. Was he a soldier, or perhaps a sea captain? He looked solid enough. I remember his skin, rough in the dull window light. I viewed him sideways on for just a few seconds, but long enough to recognise him if I ever saw him again. 

Shocked, I walked quickly away and scurried into the kitchen, where staff members were sitting, and told them in detail what I had just witnessed. To my great relief, they said the man often ‘visited’ and that patients frequently reported a uniformed soldier stationed during the night at the end of the bed. The staff, too, had eyeballed the military spectre in the same area of the ward. He’d come and go. It wasn’t a rare event! They said there used to be a tall man in the very bed I had identified. 

That hospital was ridden with ghosts. One time, we nurses went for our rest period in an old dining room outside of the main building. We were trying to catnap and I couldn’t sleep because I could hear children playing, laughing and yelling, but there were no children anywhere nearby. I told the staff and the others said that this was often heard. 

Another day, as I rested in the staff office with my eyes shut, something touched my face. It felt like a hand. I flinched at the clammy cold touch and opened my eyes, but nobody was in sight. One night I noticed some curtains move, and I mentioned it to the ward sister. “Oh, there’s a ghost following me,” she said. “It’s my friend.” She then addressed it: “Go on, get away.” Another time, the nurses were talking about a particular patient during a night shift and all of a sudden a portrait of that person, a Christmas photograph, came flying off the wall and smashed behind a chair. 

Jane Murray (not her real name), by email, 2008

ZIMMER ZELDA

Having read of Jane Murray’s experiences of hospital ghosts, I feel moved to recount one of my own. In spring 1994, I started working nightshifts for a nursing agency at Donisthorpe Hall, an old people’s home in north Leeds, looking after a retired textiles worker who lived alone in an otherwise empty ward owing to behavioural issues. One night, while my patient was sound asleep, I repaired to the adjacent day room for a cigarette (still permissible in those days). Suddenly, the extractor fan switched on. It had no automatic controls, just a mains switch and an on-switch, which also opened the shutters covering the fan blades and took a good thumb-push to operate. 

I thought little of it until it happened again three nights later as I sat only feet away. There was no one else on the ward apart from my patient. I didn’t mention it at the time, but not long afterwards, between 3 and 4am, I became aware of the sound of a zimmer frame clattering down the ward corridor - no footsteps, just the zimmer. This started happening night after night and eventually I told one of the regular staff, who disclosed that the ward was haunted by a lady called Zelda who used a zimmer, wore orthotic slippers (hence no footsteps) and didn’t like smoking! She had been irascible and difficult, and had once appeared to the (very psychic) staff nurse, who promptly told the shade that seeing as Zelda didn’t like her when she was alive she could p*** off now she was dead! 

Zelda’s visits to her old ward continued throughout my six months there. One night, I awoke from my rest period nap to find the hairs on the back of my neck standing up and the feeling I wasn’t alone. I went to the staff rest area, which overlooked my ward, only to be asked why I was there when the patient was awake and standing in the bay window. In fact, he was sound asleep! 

Other regulars told of a thick mist which descended on the convalescent ward every night, but was only visible to anyone on the ward looking out, and how when the hospital was being built - on the site of an old Quaker burial ground - some workers had fled the site in terror after a man dressed in old-fashioned Puritan garb had appeared, glowering down into their trench. They never went back. 

Old folk’s homes and hospitals usually abound with ghosts, but one built over an old cemetery seems the work of a Stephen King fan. And my patient? He would try winding me up with talk of “the spirits of the dead” and slept soundly through it all. 

John Coates, Leeds, West Yorkshire, 2009

HORROR HOSPITAL

I work in a special needs hospital where weird things happen regularly. We often say that the hospital is haunted, and no one really likes to do night shifts there. There are monitors in the children’s rooms so that we can hear them crying even if we’re not anywhere near them. On many occasions, we have heard sighs and cries coming from empty rooms, and one of the older children regularly talks to a woman who isn’t there at all. 

Recently I was doing a morning shift when another nurse and I heard screams and bumps coming from a room we thought was empty at the time. Worried about the girl who usually occupies that room (and who we believed had been taken out for a walk), we opened the door and discovered that there was nobody there. We had to report the incident to the nurse in chief. She told us that she had the feeling that something was going to happen, as the previous night the atmosphere had been very agitated. Apparently a portrait had fallen off the wall of the same room for no apparent reason - the broken glass had almost hit the girl who slept in the bed. The portrait was of a boy who used to sleep in the room before and had who died exactly a year before the incident. 

Although I was scared, I had to continue doing my shift. While changing the nappies of two children, I heard the door of the bathroom shutting behind me, and the click of the lock. I tried to open it but it seemed that somebody had locked it from outside. I still can’t explain who might have done it, as neither my colleagues nor any of the children would have played a practical joke about something like that. My colleagues finally arrived and opened the door for us. By this time, all I wanted was to finish my shift and go home. 

Lucy L, Ireland, 2010

THE PHANTOM BEHIND

When I was working in a Staffordshire hospital I was told several ghost stories by the actual witnesses. One ward had a central nurses’ station where staff could sit for the all-important brew while safely observing all comings and goings. In the corner of this ward was a bedspace whose bed had been removed so that excess equipment could be stored there. Wheelchairs, walking frames, dismantled beds and odd furniture had been ingeniously stacked up to totally fill the space and the curtain had then been drawn around it: there was absolutely no room for anyone to move inside the curtain. 

Well, in the dead of night, a nurse saw the curtain lift and bulge outward, exactly as if moved by a nurse’s behind as she bent over the bed! The nurse rubbed her eyes, looked again and nudged her mate with a ‘Do you see what I see?’’ Her mate certainly did and both girls watched the behind move busily around the bed - which wasn’t there, remember! 

They watched, spellbound, for a couple of minutes as the movement continued on around the bed to the other side. Eventually they tiptoed over and pulled the curtain back - nothing but a pile of scrap, and nowhere for anyone to hide or get past them! 

Carla R, by email, 2002

Ghosts of the Underground

PUSHY SPECTRE

I am a police officer with the British Transport Police, working on the London Underground. One night some years ago, I had to go to King’s Cross station after the last trains had run and the station had been closed to all but the night staff and engineering workers. As I went into the booking hall, I noticed that two of the ‘exit barriers’ were flipping open of their own accord quite violently. Having completed what I had to do, I walked past the memorial clock in the booking hall above the ticket machines and noticed that it was dedicated to those who died in the fire on 18 November 1987. I paid little heed to this until a colleague pointed out that it happened to be the eighth anniversary of the fire. 

About a year after this, I had to go to Tottenham Court Road station, again at night when it was closed. To get to the lower part of the station requires travelling down a fairly long escalator. Again, after completing my particular errand, I left. As I went back up the escalator, I was holding onto the handrail when I was shoved violently from behind, causing me to stumble forward and lose my grip on the handrail. I turned around to remonstrate with whoever had done this, but found myself alone, yet with a sore spot between my shoulder blades. This did unnerve me. 

Barry Harding, by email, 2002

HEADLESS PASSENGER 

Once, when visiting London in 1991, I had a very singular experience at Tottenham Court Road tube station. I’d tried my hand at busking, with limited success; the sheer volume of people, the noise and a creeping sense of claustrophobia had got the better of me. I was on my way back to Brighton, where I lived at the time, which involved getting to Victoria station. As I approached the tube exit, everything appeared to go into slow motion. I attributed this to the general feeling of unreality I get in tube stations - of being disengaged from my surroundings. This was heightened by a sense of all city sound receding suddenly. The noise of traffic and bustling crowds was suddenly replaced by one sound: high heels, click-clacking down the exit steps towards me. I looked to my right, and there, amidst the crowd, was a woman in a purple chiffon dress. She was quite tall, appeared to be in a hurry… and headless.

At the time, I was preoccupied with getting out of there, back to the relative tranquillity of Brighton. Later, on the train back to the coast, I tried to remember the headless woman. I got the strong impression that she was of the 1940s, in her late-thirties, well dressed. I remembered the sound of her heels most clearly, and was impressed by the way nothing else seemed to exist in that moment. Why was she headless? Of course I’ll never know - perhaps she was one of the many Londoners who’d sought refuge during the Blitz; or perhaps she was still on her way to a secret ‘assignation’, her presence unknown to all but me at that moment.

Niall Stone, Tregarth, Gwynedd, 2008

Paranormal Powers

Scientists remain sceptical, but many people believe they possess unusual powers beyond those of the five senses. Some seem to be able to catch glimpses of the future, often through dreams, while others appear to be able to move objects without physically touching them. And then there are the ‘SLIders’ - those who, often unwittingly, cause ‘Street Lamp Interference’.

Seeing into the future

9/11 PREVIEW

For those who experience them, precognitive dreams are proof of the paranormal, something beyond consensus reality. Of course, they can be explained away as coincidence; but JW Dunne in An Experiment with Time (1927) set up criteria to handle that possibility in evaluating many apparent precogs. Some of these were also described in Fate magazine many years ago, in an article describing reported dream premonitions of the Titanic disaster. So why haven’t there been any precognitive dreams reported for 9/11? 

There was at least one, my own, and probably many others. Of course, planes flying into buildings, even two at once, could be called coincidence. But my dream was more cryptic than that and memorably strange. The scene was a Manhattan apartment. The wall of one room was painted with a mural of the Manhattan skyline. Two men stood in front, and one of them pointed at the wall a gun with a wide, aluminium-coloured barrel. The other man raised a hand with index finger extended, then dropped it sharply while saying “fire”. The first man did so and part of the mural was erased. The same sequence was repeated, and another part of the picture erased. This was about two years before the attacks, and unusual enough to stick in my mind until they happened.  Maybe that was just coincidence, but there’s more. One day in 2003, I was reading the paper in a Denver coffee shop in a bank building while two men were installing a metal roll-up divider to be closed after hours and separate the store area from the lobby. They were driving a pair of bolts into the floor to hold the catch-plate, and one of them warned that the air gun would make a loud noise, of which he would warn patrons of the coffee shop by saying “fire”. This happened, and something prompted me to remember the dream, and then, check the date on the newspaper. It was September 11. 

What are the odds of all that? Broad enough (like one in a quadrillion) to fit the parameters of probability that mathematicians tell us can account for many amazing incidents? Or was the reason “queerer than we can suppose?” 

Richard Porter, Denver, Colorado, 2009

PRECOGNITIVE TALENT

I seem to have a precognitive talent. I often know who is calling when the phone rings and sometimes know exactly what they want. I often dream something quite random and the next day it comes true. For instance, I once dreamed that my family had won a hoover. The next day I woke to find a piece of junk mail telling us that we had won a hoover. Once I heard the phone ring very early in the morning and sat straight up in bed on the first ring, something I would never usually do. I knew instinctively that the call was to tell my family that my beloved grandmother had passed away. Unfortunately, it was true. 

Amy Harrison, Bishop Auckland, Co. Durham, 2009

THE GREEN BLANKET

When I still lived with my parents in the north of England, our local airport was about a 40-minute drive away. My parents had been on holiday and I was due to collect them from the airport the following day. That night, I had the most awful dream, with a strong feeling that something terrible was going to happen the next day. In my dream there was a body on the ground covered with a green blanket. 

The next day, I drove to the airport to collect my parents as arranged, all the way feeling increasingly nervous. By the time I got there, I was in quite a state and once I’d found my parents my father decided he would drive us home. When we were some 10 minutes from the airport, the traffic began to slow. I noticed a build-up of traffic on the opposite side of the road. As we passed the end of the jam we could see there had been a motorbike accident. On the ground next to the bike lay a body covered in the paramedics’ green blanket. I told my parents, who thought I’d lost the plot, but considering the state I was in when I met them at the airport I think they gradually came to believe me. 

Suzy -- , London, 2009

DREAM OF A RING

In 2008, I had a very vivid dream that my family was burying my grandmother and my uncle, her younger son, took her wedding ring. I saw this as symbolic of his greedy nature and I told my best friend and my mother about how silly it was. About six weeks later, my mother telephoned to say that my grandmother had been found dead. The funeral arrangements were quickly made as my father (whose mother she was) had a holiday in Scotland planned. It was agreed that my father should handle the funeral directors (because my side of the family are atheists and don’t like to get involved with Catholic ceremonies). On the day of the funeral, it transpired that my uncle had gone behind our backs to the funeral directors and requested that my grandmother’s wedding ring be taken and given to his wife as she had apparently promised it before passing away. The first we knew of this was when my father had to sign for it before driving to the church. 

There are a few things that make this ring business a bit odd. In 17 years of widowhood, my grandmother had never removed the ring, and she died without a legal will. Furthermore, as I am her closest female descendent, it would have come to me, not a daughter-in-law she had hardly met (as my uncle met, married and lived with her in Malaysia). I have to hope that eventually the part of my dream where I united the ring with my grandmother’s body may yet come true. 

Cez Connolly, by email, 2009

FURNACE PAINTING

I have a close friend, M, who lived around the corner from me from the age of six. We pretty much grew up in each other’s houses. I had always been fascinated by her grandfather’s paintings that adorned the walls of almost every room in the house. Her grandfather had been an Austrian painter of some note during the 1920s and 1930s, but had been somewhat overlooked in the postwar period. He favoured rather grim industrial scenes in his work, though he also painted impressive still lifes and portraits. 

In my twenties I returned to visit M’s parents. Her father was busily preparing for a major exhibition of the grandfather’s work, the first in my lifetime. 

I was very excited about it, and particularly asked after my favourite painting, a dark scene of a man feeding a furnace, surrounded by steam and water. M’s father looked at me with some astonishment, and replied that no such painting existed. I was very taken aback as my memory of it was clear as day. Not two days later M herself phoned me, and during the course of the conversation mentioned having exactly the same discussion with her father. We agreed that he must have missed a painting in the cataloguing process. 

M’s father returned from the exhibition slightly perturbed. The painting does, indeed, exist. It had been in a private collection overseas, and had never been reproduced or exhibited since it was originally bought. There was simply no way either M or myself could have seen it. 

Kate Brett, Exeter, South Australia, 2003

CHIP PAN FIRE FORETOLD

My husband and I were enjoying a quiet cup of coffee early one Friday evening. Suddenly I thought I could smell smoke. I rushed out to the kitchen and it seemed to be full of smoke. I could no longer smell it and the ‘smoke’ vanished very quickly. When I told my husband he didn’t believe me. 

The following day was my son’s birthday and we were taking him to Blackpool to see the lights as a treat. Just before we left the house I noticed a smell of burning. When I went out to the kitchen the chip pan was smoking. If I hadn’t noticed the smell there would have been a fire whilst we were out. Somebody was warning me the previous day. Whoever they were I thank them.

Pamela Nowell, Upton, Wirral, 2008

NEIGHBOUR’S GOODBYE

During the late 1990s, I used to live in a block of 44 flats in Malaga, Spain. The 44 families shared three lifts, so it was very common to meet other neighbours while waiting for the lift. 

One night, I dreamed I met one of the neighbours in the entrance to the block. He was a kind, elderly gentleman who I hadn’t seen in a few days. In my dream I asked him how he was. He explained to me that he had been very ill and had needed to stay at home for a while, but that today he was finally feeling much better and had decided to go for a walk. 

The following morning I left my flat, as usual, and froze as soon as I entered the lift. There was a note stuck in the mirror informing the community that 

this elderly gentleman had passed away the night before - just before I dreamed of him. 

MJ, Bristol, 2010

Street Lamp Interference

WINKING OUT 

I have experienced SLI - Street Lamp Interference - on several occasions. One time in college I was walking across campus to meet my girlfriend when three street lamps went out one after the other as I walked past. When I got to my girlfriend’s, I told her about this but her reaction was scornful. We then went into the living room to watch some TV, but all four bulbs in the room blew as soon as she turned on the switch. She’s going out with someone else now. 

A more useful variant on the phenomenon is Pedestrian Crossing Interference (PCI), or even Traffic Light Interference (TLI), although obviously you have to be a bit more responsible about them. If you get PCI going, you’ll never have to wait for that little green man again; he’ll see you coming and ease your way. 

Jim Mannix, by email, 2000 

For 15 years now I have been the recipient of a strange sort of attention from above - streetlights go out over my head with astonishing regularity. Since I started keeping actual track of the numbers, I have visually spotted 78 in the last six years. I estimate the total to be close to 200. Several friends have only witnessed it while in my presence, in the car or on foot. 

On one occasion I got quite aggravated and demanded out loud that some proof be forthcoming. Three more streetlights then self-extinguished before I had gone another three miles! I have made inquiries with the municipal agency in charge of streetlights, who stated that they do not cycle on and off regularly (the theory always proposed by the sceptical). If everyone saw as many go out as I do, practically all of them would be out!

Leo Scarpelli, Olympia, Washington State, 2000

On 17 September 2000, as I walked home down a busy main road, three lights winked out just as I passed under each one. I didn’t think anything about the first one cutting out, but the second going as I walked under it caught my attention. Not long after I passed by, it lit up again, and for the several minutes it was in sight it didn’t cut out. The third light, on the other side of the road, went as I got parallel with it. 

David Patrick, by email, 2000 

I was a teenager living in a small Yorkshire village, and there were many occasions when street lights would go out as I approached them; usually at a distance of about 10 yards (9m). The phenomenon would usually occur when I was alone, although several times when accompanied, my companions also witnessed the event. Most found this interesting, yet none were ever frightened - but rather intrigued. My various employments have taken me to every part of the British Isles and on uncountable occasions I have experienced streetlights going out as I approached. There were many times when I knew it was going to happen. 

One time when I was driving home in the early hours of the morning along the M62, a whole row of motorway lights suddenly went out as I approached at 70mph (112km/h). I must admit that was a bit scary. On another occasion, as I pulled into a pub car park on the A19 near York, the illuminated pub sign went out. I sat in my car for about five minutes waiting to see what would happen. Nothing did until I got out of the car, when the sign lit up again. 

I just took the phenomenon for granted. Although such events are now quite rare - happening only about once a year - I am still intrigued and mystified why I appear to have this ability. 

Michael Barwell, by email, 2009  

Since 1992, I have noticed my ability to disrupt several types of city lighting by simply walking or driving slowly by them. This doesn’t happen with every light, but a small, consistent percentage continue to go out. In 1999, I began videotaping these events. I discovered that these types of lighting are routinely equipped with photo-sensitive cells that respond to changing light, going on and off automatically. Once I’ve disrupted them, they don’t simply go off, but begin to cycle on and off in intervals of a minute or more. For all practical purposes, they are broken and must be replaced. 

All this is on videotape. I can do this in any city because the lights used are universal as far as I can tell. 

Janusz Kozikowski, by email, 2009

SLIDERS

The mystery of Street Lamp Interference (SLI) remains unexplained, but with more than 200 cases on record we can at least define the problem. It happens spontaneously, generally (though not invariably) when the subject is in an unusual state of mind (anxious, happy, angry, relaxed - you name it!). Since a physical action is involved - the operation of the switch - some physical force is required: but this seems to come from the mind of the subject, which is something that conventional science would rather not contemplate. No SLIder can do it to order, but a few have on occasion deliberately caused it to occur. 

Many SLIders also affect other appliances, ranging from digital watches to supermarket checkouts, domestic lights to railway crossings. Some do it rarely, some over a limited period then never again, others periodically over many years, even a lifetime. Why this power is directed specifically at street lamps is another intriguing aspect of the enigma. 

For more about this phenomenon, see my new book Sliders (Anomalist Books, San Antonio & New York, 2010).

Hilary Evans, London, 2010

Psychokinesis

CONQUERING TIME

When my father was young, he could never wear a wristwatch because as soon as he put it on, it stopped. If someone else put the same watch on, it worked. When I was two years old, I wouldn’t stay in my bedroom at night and used to vault out of my cot and run downstairs. One night, I was extremely disturbed and wouldn’t stay in the room, so my parents made the living room safe for me and went to bed, absolutely exhausted. I was found the following morning, peacefully asleep and every clock in the house had stopped at 2.30am. They weren’t electric clocks, so a power cut couldn’t account for it.

Around Easter 1999, I was waiting for my (now ex-) boyfriend to arrive. He was late. I was very angry. He eventually turned up, then left after a while. Later on, I was talking to my mother and she noticed that the carriage clock on the mantelpiece had stopped. When I looked at it, I realised that it was the exact same time on the clock that I had decided to kill my boyfriend. My mother asked me to start the clock again, so I did - without touching the clock at all.

My father has a theory: A clock is a device that can communicate with another dimension (albeit crudely). After all, it measures something that we don’t understand, something which it is argued may not even exist; and yet it measures it to a high degree of accuracy that rules our lives completely.

Gillian Neuhauser, by email, 1999

THE BOLT

During the 1980s, I lived alone in an old three-storey house in a storm-battered fishing village on the rugged coast of north-east England. In common with many properties in the village, my house had no back door. A sturdy wooden four-panel front door gave access into a flagged courtyard around which other houses were tightly grouped. Because of the sloping ground, the windows in the back of my house overlooked the rooftops of buildings at the rear.

For a few years in the 1980s I held an unsatisfactory job in adult education in a nearby town. One day was so unpleasant that I announced dramatically: “I’m going to pretend that today never happened. I’m going to pretend I never even left home this morning.” On arriving home, I inserted the Yale key in the lock. Although the key turned, the door wouldn’t open. A neighbour used a ladder to gain access through a bedroom window. He found the front door firmly bolted. 

So the question is, how had I managed to leave home that morning? As there was no back door and the downstairs windows were locked, I could only have unbolted the front door in order to get out. It is highly unlikely that, during the day, someone brought a ladder, climbed in the bedroom window, bolted the front door, and then left by the window and ladder. They would have been seen by some of the numerous neighbours. Nothing was disturbed in the house. Had my wish to have remained at home caused the bolt to slide across? Was this an example of psychokinesis?

Gloria Wilson, Yorkshire, 2004

THE WAY OF ZEN

When I was young in the early 1950s, I used to watch my father move a needle that he would float on the surface tension in a half glass of water. Getting the darn needle to float was hard enough for me, but then he’d stand back across the room and call that he was going to make it spin clockwise or counter-clockwise. And he would. He could start it in one direction, stop it and start it going the other direction. I never managed more than a slight bob that just made the needle sink to the bottom. My father always told me that the way to do it was by “not-trying” - a wonderfully Zen explanation from someone who had most probably never heard of, much less studied, Zen practice or thought. 

Marilyn Zavitz, Toronto, Canada, 2005

Strange Sounds

From the entrancing songs of the Sirens luring sailors to their deaths, to the wail of the Banshee announcing an impending death, the world of sounds has always had its spooky side. From phantom choirs, screaming spirits and voices from nowhere to a veritable symphony of mysterious taps, bangs, ticks, rattles and clicks, we present a selection of aural oddities from our files.

Disembodied Voices

SCREAMING SPIRIT

In 1986, I was 16 years old and living in the seaside town of Wollongong in New South Wales, Australia. I was dating a young lass who lived six to nine miles (10-15 km) away, about halfway up the escarpment of Mount Keira. I would ride my pushbike to her house about three times a week to hang out and hopefully steal a kiss or two. Beside Mount Keira is a smaller mountain known locally as Devil’s Mountain. From the Mount Keira lookout, on a clear day, you could see three large sixes cleared in the bushland of Devil’s Mountain. These were said to be the work of Satanists, designed to provide a place for their rituals. 

One midweek evening around 9pm, I started for home. The return ride was always easier, being downhill most of the way. I had travelled a few streets and was just nearing the crest of my first hill when, from behind and above me in the darkness, I heard a spine-tingling, unnatural scream that sounded neither human nor animal. As I thundered downhill, I did my best to turn and look up to see where and what was tailing me. It sounded close to my shoulders. I could see nothing but was struck with fear and pedalled for my life. 

Some miles further on, I heard the wailing night spirit again. I turned and peered into the darkness, as it seemed close enough to swoop down and claw at my head; but once again I could see nothing. Terrified, I soldiered on until I had reached my own street and was climbing the hill steadily in low gear. Just as I mounted the crest and was tearing down the other side, the scream returned and followed me down the hill, but departed as I reached the bottom. I threw my bike on the grass and bolted up the stairs, closing the front door quickly behind me. I made my way to the bathroom to relieve myself. As I looked up from splashing water on my face, I peered out of the little window that opened onto the backyard and heard the screech again. I promptly retreated to my bedroom and hid under the covers. 

Chris Lethbridge, by email, 2009

HEAVENLY CHOIR PRACTICE

When I was about 15 (around 1989) I went away with a youth group, of which I was a member, to a Bible camp at a showground in the east of England. The girl I had been sharing a tent with had been taken into hospital suddenly so I was staying there alone. It was late summer and very warm. One morning, I was woken by the Sun coming through the thin canvas of the tent. As I awoke, I became aware of some exquisite choral singing, getting steadily louder. I assumed that this was some choir practice going on in one of the halls and lay back to listen. The singing was awesome. It was very simple, consisting of only three or four words and cyclical, going round and round and round... 

Eventually, I sat up and put my head outside the tent and abruptly the singing stopped. I estimate it was only around seven or eight o’clock in the morning and there was no one around except for a couple of my mates, four or five tents away, having a cup of tea and talking softly so as not to wake anyone. I called over to them and asked if they’d heard any choirs singing and they said no, looking very puzzled. Sure that I’d imagined it, I lay down in my tent again. As soon as I closed my eyes again the singing began - so many voices, joyful, soaring and pure. I got up and put my head out again - nothing but quiet!

Later in the day, one of the pastors approached me and said that one of the boys had told him I’d heard singing in my tent and told me I’d heard angels singing in a very matter-of-fact kind of way. I was stunned. I can’t explain what happened and I don’t believe someone played a trick on me. Whilst not really a follower of the traditional Christian church anymore, I’ve found this very comforting, and if proof were needed, suggestive of something else beyond our lives. It’s also left me with a strange tendency for bursting into spontaneous tears against my will when I hear certain kinds of choral singing...

Portia --, by email, 2003

BAND PRACTICE CHATTERERS

I was in a band for a while a couple of years ago, and we used to practise in a large room on the top floor of an old woollen mill in Bradford. As we were all young, the novelty of sheer volume had not yet worn off, so we used to practise obscenely loudly. 

While playing, I would often hear the sound of a loud, but very indistinct, conversation over the music. Concerned about upsetting the neighbours, I would sometimes call a halt to the music, only to hear the voices hush as the music stopped, or sometimes slightly after. Other members of the band began to notice the ‘chat’, to my great relief, as I was beginning to doubt my sanity. There were no people nearby to make the noise, as the room was quite isolated in an otherwise disused building complex.

The other strange aspect is that the ‘chat’ wasn’t there all the time, but only occasionally, usually around 6pm. Sometimes, when the noise was at its most noticeable, there would be a strong and unmistakable scent of pipe tobacco. I had initially put this down to overload on my amplifier, but on one occasion I actually did destroy the output stage of my amp and the burning smell that generated was quite different. 

Daniel B Wood, by email, 2004

MYSTERY MOBILE CALL

We’d stayed overnight for New Year at some close friends’ place, a semi-detached villa that’s been in one of the couple’s family for years. We got back to the house at about 3am after leaving a party. I awoke before my friends and went downstairs to make a coffee. I had been pottering about for about 45 minutes before they both came down to seek hangover remedies. 

On entering the kitchen, my friends asked me who I had been speaking to on my mobile phone at 5am and why had I walked up and down their landing whilst making the call, disturbing them as they were trying to sleep. Now there was no one else apart from us in the house; their children were with family overnight and their other relatives who own the adjoining house were away for New Year, so there would be no noise to carry through the building from next door. 

Being a bit groggy still, I explained that I hadn’t got out of bed until 45mins before they did, and I hadn’t received or made any calls on my mobile as I had left it in their lounge when we had got back from the party. 

I asked if they had been able to hear what ‘I’ had apparently been saying, but they both said that it had been indistinct; their landing is quite long and their door had been closed. They both assured me that the voice had become louder and then quieter, as if somebody was walking towards and then away from their door. They even heard the tread of floorboards. 

Now I know that we had celebrated New Year with a few drinks, but we were not exceptionally drunk and I most certainly wasn’t in a state where I could not remember what I was doing. I was also on a different floor to them, so wouldn’t have any reason to go up to their room. I had to show my friends the received and dialled numbers on my phone before they believed that I had not drunkenly got up when they thought I had. 

I myself did not hear anything and I asked if it could have been noise from outside the house that they had heard, but they were adamant that it was a different sound to what they would recognise as passers-by or noise from the adjoining house (one of them even went next door to check, and there had been no one there). 

My friends are both rational adults, parents to two children and firm sceptics. They laughed and joked about it, although my female friend became a bit distressed later as all the theories we could think of to explain the ‘voice’ they had heard were dashed.

TheQuixote, by email, 2004

Knock, Knock - who’s there?

THE BLACK SHADOW

It was around 1970 or 1971, and I was about 12-13 years old. Our family, in rural Northwest Ohio, consisted of two parents and five boys (with me the third oldest), and had not long ago moved to a newly-built house two lots down from our old one. Some construction details remained to be finished. 

A few years earlier, as a smaller child, I had been terrified every night of monsters when going to bed, pulling the covers up over my head and trying not to move so they couldn’t see me or tell I was there. It wasn’t helped by the fact that, in the old house, the door to the attic was right at the foot of my top bunk bed. But by the time of this account, such childish fears were no longer an influence.

On this particular (school) night, I went to bed in my room, the last of two upstairs on the right side of the hallway. Drifting off to sleep with the door closed (others were still awake downstairs), I was awakened by a loud, normal-sounding knocking on the bedroom door, as if someone was requesting entrance to see me. But going to the door, no one was there. 

Thinking I was mistaken, I went back to bed. This time, I wasn’t even drifting off when the knocking came again, a very normal ‘let-me-in-I-want-to-see-you’ knock, maybe five raps on the door. Opening it again, I found no one there. Having older brothers fond of playing jokes on younger siblings, I also checked the next couple of rooms, the closet, and under the bed, thinking maybe one of them was hiding and having a little fun at my expense. But no one was in evidence anywhere I checked. 

Well, by now, being suspicious of brothers’ potential pranks, I walked downstairs and asked who wanted me. No one, brothers or parents, indicated they had come up to see me in my bedroom. Not satisfied with the answers, but getting no information, I shut my door and went back to bed, determined not to be caught ‘sleeping’ again. 

I lay awake, waiting for the knock I was sure was coming (I didn’t trust my older brothers as far as I could throw them). Sure enough, shortly the very normal-sounding knocking sounded clearly, and clearly it was coming from the door. But when I went to open it again, no one was there, and no one was nearby in a position to hide after knocking on the door. 

Enough was enough. I left the door ajar, and lay awake, waiting to catch the dastardly brother so intent on spoiling my sleep. And very soon after that, the knocking sounded again. Except this time, awake, I could clearly see a black shape or shadow hitting itself against the door’s hallway side. It wasn’t recognisable as anything - not an animal, not an object - just a velvety black shape. The knocking stopped, and it was gone. It hadn’t gone ‘away’ in any direction - it was just gone. 

I might not have been scared of monsters anymore, but I was a little ‘tweaked’ by what I saw. I checked around for a bird, an animal, a bat - anything that could have gotten in the house and banged against my door. I didn’t find anything that night, or the next day, and neither did anyone else. It sure wasn’t my brothers or my parents. I can’t call it a ghost, but what it was, I never found out, and I spent more than a few uneasy nights in the room until the immediacy of the experience faded. The incident never repeated itself.

T Miller, by email, 2001

HIDE AND SEEK

When I was about 12 -13 years old I lived with my family in an old Victorian house in Withington, Manchester. With some school friends we had experimented with table- tilting in our front cellar, with some success, but each of us accused the others of cheating. 

Some time later I began to hear knocking sounds from the attic, which at one time would have been the servants’ bedrooms. It sounded as if the furniture was being sharply rapped by someone’s knuckles and was quite loud. I would go and investigate, not being scared at that time by such things. As soon as I entered the room and switched on the light, the knocking would stop, and there was never anything to see. It would then start up in a different room with the same results, and it became a sort of game of hide and seek, but without the finding! 

The sounds were sporadic and sometimes did not happen for weeks. My stepmother refused to go into the cellar to fetch coal after she swore something pinched her bottom ascending the steps one night. My father thought this hilarious, but I remember she was very upset at the time. Eventually the knockings just stopped. Other members of the family heard them, and my aunt and stepmother said we had caused them by “mucking about” calling up spirits. 

Brian Ellwood, by email, 2001

Tapping, ticking and clicking

TICKED OFF

Since childhood, I have experienced an unusual phenomenon - a rapping or ticking noise that seems inexplicable in that it has no fixed speed, loudness or point of origin. It is mobile and in many ways random; it does, however, nearly always seem to sound as if it is coming from a point within the wall. I can only recall one occasion when it did not, when, in front of two friends, it moved from a wall to under the floorboards and then died away. 

The noise itself was stronger and more akin to a tapping when I was younger. Now I’m in my late twenties, and it sounds more like a loud clock ticking. It possesses no obvious pattern, regularity or duration, and I have not been in possession of one constant electrical item from childhood until now, and certainly not one that can ‘throw’ the sounds of its internal mechanisms. One of the more unusual aspects of it is that it appears to lose me temporarily when I move house. I have moved about eight times in the past 10 years and it has ended up taking about a fortnight to start up (catch up?) again. When I made the biggest move - from Wales to England - it took approximately two years to occur. Hence this letter, because the other day it started again. 

I also seem to have some level of interaction with it. One night, annoyed at its particular speed and audibility, I punched the wall where it was. It proceeded to move about a foot to the right and start again. This process was repeated several more times that night. It is not really frightening and for years I haven’t questioned it; it was just there. It only occurs when I am at home and, as far as I know, has not been noticed by anyone in my absence. 

It has manifested in front of witnesses, though in general it is loath to do so. It seems to be louder at night; this may be because it is more audible in the quieter environment. I have awoken to hear it ticking merrily away in a far corner of a room and then awoken again later with it still doing so, but from a point to my left. Such behaviour seems to me to preclude the most obvious explanations. 

Martin Einon, Montpelier, Bristol, 1998

PHANTOM CLOCK?

I grew up listening to a very similar phenomenon to that of Martin Einon. I would hear a noise almost identical to the “tick-tock” of a clock, except that it had a tendency to slow down on occasion after being audible for a minute or two. 

As with Mr Einon’s sound, it was heard mostly at night, but in my case I could never pinpoint its location. Our house had no clocks that audibly ticked and the fuse box was ruled out as it didn’t appear to make any noise. My sister also heard the sound during the time we had to share the room, convincing me that I wasn’t just ‘hearing things’. (We joked about a ghost with a watch.) 

Since then, I’ve lived in that room several times on and off and have never heard it again. I don’t think I heard it since the extensive building work my father carried out some years ago. 

Causes I suspected at the time included insects, ‘clicking’ bats, electrical transformer and nearby high-tension power lines. Whatever the cause, the sound was rhythmic and perfectly timed, sounding just like a clock. It would rise and fall in volume but was always only just on the edge of hearing. 

Simon Robbins, Ottawa, Ontario, 1999

THE TICKING

From the age of about 14, I began hearing a sound that seems identical to that reported by Simon Robbins. It sounded mechanical, like a fast ticking, tended to slow before it stopped, and to shift location from near the walls to the centre of the room. I and my brother and sister (who was a lot younger) all heard it separately and together, and like Mr Robbins we also used to joke that it was ‘a ghost with a stop-watch’!

Although mysterious, the sound never seemed spooky, but my sister was frightened when she first heard it - she ran downstairs crying that there was ‘a rattlesnake’ in her bedroom. We assumed this was a bad dream until I also heard the sound in her room, and reassured her that it was only ‘the Ticking’. We lived in an old cottage with no central heating and no obvious source for the sound.

Many years later, with my own young children, I heard ‘the Ticking’ again - in an old cottage, as before. My son used to hear it quite loudly; to me it was fainter, but absolutely recognisable. My husband doesn’t remember hearing it at all. As always, if one of us mentioned it, it would stop immediately - but often resumed after a few moments. It usually occurred in the afternoons or early evening, when the house was quiet.

However, it isn’t confined to old buildings, nor even to buildings at all. I have occasionally heard it even in our present house, a 1920s semi, and most remarkably in an outdoor location, on the shores on Lyn y Fan Fach, a lake near the Brecon Beacons. This was a still summer’s dusk. Both my children heard it as well. It may be significant that just before it started, I had been thinking of a friend of ours who’d recently been killed in a tragic accident; I was imagining how much she would have loved this lake. So maybe there’s a ‘ghostly’ aspect after all. 

That was 19 years ago; my children are now 29 and 30, but they still remember the phenomenon vividly. Until now, we believed it was some weird happening unique to our family - it’s a relief to discover that others have heard it too! Personally, it seems linked in my life to times of unhappiness and trauma, though it was strangely reassuring to hear it at the time. 

Hilary Llewellyn-Williams, Llanelli, Carmarthenshire, 1999

NOISES OFF 

Around the late 1980s, when I was in my mid-30s, I lived for a while in a pleasant rented, furnished, 19th-century cottage on the outskirts of the picturesque Surrey village of Pirbright with my wife Val (now deceased). We sometimes read books of mutual interest together, with me reading out loud. One evening, we’d been enjoying Michael Bentine’s paranormally flavoured autobiography The Door Marked Summer, which talked (amongst other things) about his and his father’s experiments with spirit “table rapping”. 

At around midnight, we settled into our double bed upstairs and were soon both deeply asleep. Then something woke me. I glanced at the electric clock on the bedside table to my left. It was 2am. The room was dark and still. I could hear a faint but distinct sound, seemingly coming from the parcel shelf in the old, small built-in wardrobe in the left corner of the room. At first I thought it was the scratching of a rodent’s claws. I fancied that a mouse or rat had somehow gained entry. Moments later, it resolved itself into the sound wood makes when being slowly twisted or crushed. It was only just audible - which made it seem all the more threatening in the heavy silence. 

I pondered on this for a few seconds, feeling increasingly uneasy as I stared in the direction of the wardrobe - and the next moment, from the opposite side of the room, where an old wooden chest of drawers stood against the wall, an ear-shattering KRRRAKKK! of splitting wood rent the air. It was so loud and unexpected my heart nearly stopped. Val woke in an instant and sat up, screaming “OhmyGod! What is it?” I reached down my side of the bed and, when I eventually fumbled the light on, the room looked completely normal. The sound in the wardrobe had ceased. All that could be heard now was our frantic breathing, Val’s frightened whimpers - and my curses. 

It took me a minute to regain my composure and venture out of bed to the old chest of drawers. I carefully dragged it away from the wall, to discover that the slightly warped plywood back panel had a split running from top to bottom. We couldn’t say whether that split had already been there - we’d never previously checked its overall condition - and closer examination in the light of day yielded no further clues. (We asked our landlord about it some days later, but he didn’t know whether it had been there previously.) There was also nothing untoward to be found in the wardrobe. 

The following night - against all the odds, you’d think - it happened again. There was no precursory sound from the wardrobe, but I awoke a few seconds before hearing the same crack of splitting wood, though much less ferocious, from the chest of drawers. It struck me as being a rather half-hearted attempt this time. Val stirred, but didn’t come fully awake. Without bothering to turn on the light, I muttered into my pillow words to the effect of: “All right, you’ve made your point, thank you,” speaking to the ‘spirit’ - as I imagined Michael Bentine would have done in this situation - and went back to sleep. That was the last of it. 

Did we charge our environment with our own psychic energy, causing the wood to split? Or was a visiting spirit giving us a spectacular example of “table-rapping” in action, as if to underline the reality of the phenomenon we’d been reading about? 

Bob Kingsley, Banwell, Somerset, 2008 

Now You See It...

We expect the world to be a solid, predictable sort of place in which things are either there, or they’re not. In fact, puddles and drips of water can appear from nowhere, while precious objects can vanish without trace and reappear just as mysteriously. Are the pixies behind it? And, if we ask them nicely, might they be kind enough to give us back our missing stuff?

Weird Water

MYSTERY SPILLS

In the early hours of 25 June 1998, I was woken by a loud crackling noise. It seemed to be coming from the side of the bed where the electric clock radio was. I discovered that the noise was indeed coming from the clock. The cloth on which it was standing on the bedside cabinet was soaked with water, which had entered the clock, creating the crackling sound. The carpet beneath the cabinet was also saturated. I don’t have a glass of water at night, nor is there a radiator, only an electric storage heater. There were no roof leaks or damp walls; in fact, the night was warm and dry. The cloth on the cabinet was so wet through that I had to wring it out and I soaked up the moisture on the carpet below with lots of newspaper. I dried out the clock on the heater and it began to work again. I am completely baffled. 

Elaine Dobson, Rotherham, South Yorkshire, 1998 

On 8 March 2006, we discovered a patch of water on an inside windowsill (the window is between two rooms, not on an outside wall). It was as if a glass of water had been spilt. There were no drips or splashes and the wall, ceiling and top of the frame were all completely dry. I mopped it up, and have kept an eye on it since, but it has not returned. We have no idea where it originated.

Pam Thornton, Llandegla, Clwyd, 2006

At 1pm on 17 May 2006, I stepped out my back door to find a sizeable patch of water on the paving at the rear of my house where, moments earlier, I had noticed nothing unusual. May was an unusually wet month in the UK, and although there were grey clouds in the sky that day, no amount of rain could have produced this water which was splashed around in an area approximately 5ft (1.5m) by 3ft (90cm). There must have been about three or four pints worth which, from the splash pattern, could only have fallen from the air. 

Moments later, I found I was having a nosebleed, something that hasn’t happened to me for years. The water was unusual enough for me to photograph it – but not so pictorially interesting to prevent me from later erasing the picture. I cannot definitely say that the appearance of the water and my nosebleed were connected, but it is intriguing to correlate them. 

Jerry Glover, by email, 2006 

PHANTOM DRIPS

I wonder whether any other readers have experienced what I can only describe as a ‘phantom drip’. Several times recently I have entered a room (not always the same one) at home, only to have my attention caught by what appears to be a drip from the door jamb. I also ‘hear’ a sound as it would be due to hit the floor. Inspection of the floor reveals no wet patch, nor any other evidence that the drip ever existed! My wife also claims to have seen it, but is less clear about the sound. 

Ian Lawes, Brighton, East Sussex, 1996

My husband and I have been experiencing the ‘phantom drip’ for about a year now, and have had more than a dozen events in all, in both our bathroom and kitchen. You might think these are obvious places for just such a drip, but in each case there is no evidence at all of condensation or the slightest moisture anywhere in the ceiling to account for it. The drip is ice cold, and usually manages to land squarely on top of the head, leaving behind a patch of coldness that can only be described as water without the wetness. On one occasion while standing in our kitchen feeding the cat, both the cat and I watched ‘something’ drip from the ceiling (although I didn’t see it emerge) and land on the tiled floor about 4in (10cm) from the cat’s head with a loud spat. I inspected the whole area for the wet mark a drip like this should have made, but found absolutely nothing. 

Helen Harling, Bristol, Avon, 1997

Three or four times a year, always in my own home, a single large drop will hit my bald patch. I am a tall man and when this happens I immediately reach up to feel the ceiling. There is never a hint of moisture there. 

Viv Hobbs, Blackwood, Gwent, 1999 

My family have experienced the ‘phantom drip’, in our present house and in our last one. It fell in a steady procession, in various shades of blue, continually beside our old front door, where only the eldest girl could see it, and would dodge around an outstretched hand. In our present home it falls from the ceiling in the kitchen, looking like cloudy egg white. Ectoplasm? 

My husband Graham, a hard-headed science-teaching sceptic, was amazed to see it time after time, often climbing up to feel the ceiling or grovelling on the floor after it, to no avail. One day, in broad daylight, I happened to be looking his way when a very large blob landed with an audible splat! on his balding pate. He gasped in shock and slapped his hand on his head, but found nothing: the ceiling was dry. I saw and heard it and Graham heard and felt it: it was deathly cold, he said. We’re at a loss. What the, er, devil is it? 

Carla R, by email, 2001

Lost and Found

A TELEPORTED TALE

In 1968, when I was 16, I was in the habit of reading in bed, and was halfway through a second reading of a superb book by Eric Frank Russell, whose title I can no longer remember, but whose theme was – appropriately enough for these paranoid days -– a lone man’s struggle to reveal the truth about a US government’s cover-up of a failed, or never really attempted, space mission to Mars. I put the book down on my bedside table one night and went to sleep. 

The next night the book was nowhere to be found. My parents disclaimed any knowledge of moving it, as did my younger sister. I took the room apart, checked drawers, desk and dismantled the bed. The book was quite definitely not in that room. Over the next few months I gradually gave up hope of ever seeing it again, but one night about six months after its disappearance, I slid my hand between the bed frame and the mattress and felt the distinctive shape of a paperback. It was the book, in a place which had been searched months earlier and which in any case had seen numerous changes of bed linen over the intervening time. The book had disappeared and had returned. 

I recall that 1968 was the year in which policemen in Essex chased fiery crosses for miles, an event widely reported at the time; there were also numerous UFO sightings in the news about then. It was against this background that my book went and came back. I think it returned about the time the Apollo 8 astronauts returned from their circumnavigation of the Moon. Many eyes and minds were turned skywards and outwards in those days and I got it into my head that my book had been abducted by mischievous aliens who read it, passed it on to their friends and eventually returned it. Total nonsense, of course, but the idea that my bedroom might be some kind of sub-space transportation focus (Star Trek and 2001 were looming large at the time too) made going to sleep a pretty nerve-racking experience for a while: if a book could go, why not me? 

I finished reading the book and it eventually disappeared permanently by the more conventional method of being lent to someone who never returned it. I would be interested to hear if anyone else has experienced such cavalier and inexplicable treatment of their libraries. I would also be interested to hear from anyone who could provide me with the title of the book from the brief thematic synopsis above. Eric Frank Russell was a superbly witty and wry writer of excellent science fiction. Whoever abducted the book had good taste. 

Tony Purcell, Chelmsford, Essex, 1997

POPCORN SURPRISE

I want to tell you about what is, to date, my only brush with the unexplained – an experience as trivial as it is astounding. I can’t prove a word of it, of course, but your readers may agree that no one would bother making up a tale so peculiar.

At around the age of nine or so, I found a jar of dried corn kernels, and one Saturday afternoon in 1980 I attempted to make popcorn by placing these kernels onto a teaspoon and sticking this into the grate of a gas fire. My parents had gone out, otherwise I wouldn’t have attempted such a dangerous venture. It got me little further than producing two singed corn kernels, and heating the spoon to such a degree that I burnt my hand. I flung the spoon down, and as I did so, heard my father’s car in the driveway. As the car doors slammed, all my attention was devoted to finding and concealing the evidence. The spoon and one of the singed corn kernels were easily located and disposed of, but the other burnt kernel eluded me. I searched high and low, not just on that occasion, but for several days thereafter, but never found it.

Several months later, I went into a joke shop with a friend, where we purchased, amongst other items, a pair of fake cigarettes. These were simply white plastic tubes with a red painted end, and if you blew on them, a small cloud of flour or talcum powder was emitted to give the impression of smoke. We walked along the street puffing on our ‘cigarettes’ until I noticed an awkward lump in the mouth-end of my own. I asked my friend if there was something similar in his cigarette, but he said not. I pushed this hard, intractable lump, eventually squeezing it out of the end of the cigarette, where it revealed itself to be a corn kernel, singed at one end. Have any readers ever found a singed corn kernel in the end of a fake cigarette, I wonder, or was this some strange example of my sins finding me out?

Matt Baylis, London, 2010

RECOVERED TIME

My cousin Jessica’s godmother gave her a pretty gold wristwatch with a dainty chain strap for her birthday. She wore it constantly and often stopped to admire it. One night, after a visit to the cinema, she slipped away to a patch of waste ground behind the picture house for a few stolen kisses with her boyfriend. I waited for them at the local chip shop, but when they didn’t turn up I went searching for them and found them on their hands and knees among the weeds looking for her watch. As it was rapidly getting dark, I suggested we come back and look in daylight. We searched in vain the next morning. No watch had been handed in at the cinema or the local police station. 

Five years later, Jessica was engaged to another young man. She had been to the bingo (the cinema had been converted) with some friends and had arranged to meet her fiancé afterwards. The ardour of passionate young love led them to seek out a quiet spot for a kissing session in the same patch of waste ground where the watch had been lost. 

Jessica stumbled over a Cadbury’s Roses carton, picked it up to make sure it was empty and to her utter amazement found her watch inside. There was no doubt it was the same watch. After five years of British weather it was miraculously undamaged and when she wound it up it kept perfect time. Had it really lain there unnoticed all these years? And why, of all the people in the world, had the finder been the original owner? 

Alexandria Martin, Aldershot, Hampshire, 1996  

THE MISSING CHARM

One Saturday in May 2005, a friend and I took the bus to the ‘Witchfest’ at Fairfield Halls in Croydon, Surrey. While perusing the general paraphernalia and jewellery on sale, a themed charm bracelet in silver caught my eye, and I treated myself to it. Arriving home that night, again by bus, I placed the bracelet safely in a ceramic dish on a table to one side of one of my two sofas. There it remained until the following Saturday, when my friends Sheila and Paul came round for the evening. I hadn’t worn the bracelet during this time, as the six charms were not yet soldered on (although the jump rings by which the charms were attached were fully closed and quite robust). During the evening, I showed the bracelet to Sheila, who commented that she particularly liked the cat-on-a-broomstick charm. Afterwards, I put it back in the dish on the table next to the sofa (that I was sitting on). The sofa Sheila and Paul were sitting on was at right angles to mine, about 4ft (1.2m) away, on the same side as the table with the dish on it. 

There it stayed until the next day, when I decided I’d like another look at it with the intention of removing the charms and replacing them in a more pleasing arrangement. I’d already removed several of them when I realised that there were now only five, and the missing one was the cat on the broomstick. Of course, my first thought was that it had fallen off, but it wasn’t in the dish or on the floor. Even though the jump ring was fully closed, it could have caught on something, I reasoned, and was probably to be found on the second sofa, (which is actually a sofa bed), where Sheila and Paul had been sitting. I had a thorough look, and in spite of the fact a throw was covering it, and therefore it was impossible for anything to have slipped down the sides or the back of the seat cushions, I removed the throw and checked anyway – no sign of it. 

I then pulled the bed out: still no sign of it. I moved the sofa away from the wall it backed onto and even removed the cushion covers, but still no luck. I carried on searching, even in places I knew it wasn’t likely to be, and eventually gave up. It had seemingly just disappeared into thin air; but logically, I thought, perhaps it had come off and caught on Sheila’s clothing, and then fallen off when they were on their way home. Yes, that must be what happened, I concluded, even though it wouldn’t be that easy to open a fully closed jump ring without the aid of pliers, and not one of the three of us there that evening noticed it fall off the bracelet, or indeed catch on anyone’s clothing. Sheila later confirmed that she hadn’t seen it since that night. 

In time, I replaced the missing charm with a duplicate from the same company and collected a few more besides. Then, one Saturday evening in May 2007, I drove to see my mother in Crawley, Sussex. I arrived back home at about 10.00 – 10.30pm. As I opened the car door, the key and fob slipped from my hand and dropped to the garage floor. There is no electricity supply to my garage, and I couldn’t see a thing when I looked down to find it. Fortunately, I reached down and put my hand straight on it, and as I picked it up, noticed something directly underneath, faintly glinting in the sparse light provided by the car park beyond. I picked up the mystery object and took it to the front of the garage where the lamplight was stronger and, after a few seconds of initial bewilderment, realised I was looking at my long-lost charm! 

The jump ring was not in evidence. It was late at night, I was on my own and had just found an item that had reappeared as strangely as it had disappeared. At no point had the charm or the bracelet ever been anywhere near my garage, and Sheila and Paul don’t have a key to it; besides which, they aren’t given to such pranks. I don’t think it could’ve been there all that time; it looked a bit scuffed, but not as much as you might expect had it been driven over and trodden on for two years – and surely I would’ve noticed it before? Even odder that I should drop my key precisely over the charm and then discover it in pitch blackness, when I’d used my car numerous times in daylight during the two years it had been missing. It’s almost as if our friends from the hidden realms had engineered it that way. 

Sue Gardner, Sutton, Surrey, 2008

Just Ask

PIXIE POWER

From time to time, Fortean Times has carried letters from people who have successfully asked the pixies to find lost objects for them. 

Here’s a photo (above) of a heavy mediæval silver ring that I often wear. A few months ago, while putting out hay for my sheep, it slipped off my finger. It could have been anywhere, in deep straw, in a farm shed 40ft (12m) long and 35ft (11m) wide. My partner and I searched long and hard for it, but eventually we gave up. Just before Christmas, however, we went back to the job armed with a powerful metal detector. In the interim, much straw and hay had been put out, and hundreds of sheep had trampled through the shed. Talk about a needle in a haystack! 

We went over the whole building, unearthing several rummy agricultural bits of metal buried deep in the earth floor – but the ring was not among them. Eventually I cried in desperation: “Pixies, please help me!” Instantly – literally instantly – the headphones buzzed. The detector coil was right over a pile of hay-dust I’d scanned several times already. I scrabbled in the dust, and the ring fell out. 

This is not the first time I’ve appealed to the pixies since reading about other people’s experiences, nor the first time they’ve helped. In fact, they haven’t failed me yet. But this result was so immediate, so striking, so utterly obliging, that I fell to wondering how to repay these charming little elementals. I could put a small ad in the Daily Telegraph, I suppose, like those one often sees thanking St Jude for services rendered. I suspect that pixies don’t read the Telegraph, but they might read Fortean Times, so a letter to you seemed somehow more appropriate. 

Thank you pixies. How on earth do you do it? 

Ali Barnes, Poundstock, Cornwall, 2009

SUCCESSFUL APPEAL

One day in February 2008, I was rather stressed out because I had a radio interview the following day about some books I’d published, and one of the main titles I wanted to take along was missing. I looked everywhere I could think of, without success. I began musing about other things in my life that have gone missing over the years. I remembered reading in letters in FT from people claiming to have found missing items by politely requesting aloud for their return from the gremlins or whatever entities had taken them. So, not really expecting any success, I said aloud: “According to Fortean Times, this should work. Would the elves, færies, gremlins, gnomes, or whatever took my book please return it in time for my interview tomorrow.” The idea immediately popped into my mind that the book was in an old, antique humpback trunk full of comic books in my front parlour. I went and looked – and there it was ! 

Alan Lance Andersen, Roland, Iowa, 2008 

PIXELLATED REMOTE

I recently bought a new laptop computer (Dell XPS M1530), which came with a rather nifty remote control which plugs into a slot on the right-hand side of the machine. Two weeks ago, the remote suddenly disappeared. I turned my flat inside-out trying to find it, but to no avail. After a week of searching, I gave up and tried the tactic of asking out loud for it to be returned, as various people writing to FT said this gave positive results. I didn’t really hold my breath! Tonight I switched on the laptop and was amazed to find the remote inserted back in its slot in the laptop. My hair stood on end! 

Danny Cogdon, by email, 2009

THANKS TO ST ANTHONY

I first noticed my wallet was missing on a Tuesday and couldn’t clearly place its whereabouts since the preceding Saturday. So started the seemingly endless round of phone calls to pubs, police, and friends. No one had seen it, and so started the second round to banks, post-offices, utility companies and so on. I’d had the wallet over 20 years and with its long, heavy metal chain, which attached to any belt, it had seemed impervious to loss or theft. By the end of the week I’d pretty much given up hope, while my kittens looked on sagely and I wondered whether they could have stashed it somewhere with the rest of the treasures and trinkets that had mysteriously vanished since they came to stay.

My new FT plopped through the letterbox and I was reminded of the story about directly petitioning some saint or other for the return of lost items. Picking a historical dictionary off the shelf, I quickly located Saint Anthony and, with a mixture of embarrassment and nervousness, loudly announced to my front room: “Please Saint Anthony, can I have my wallet back, it’s really important.” I then walked to the kitchen to put the kettle on.

When I returned to the front room, the wallet was sitting on the floor in plain view. It sat, openly, between two piles of books I stare at every day. The chain trailed on the ground and I must have practically been standing on it when looking at the book of saints. For added incredulity, it was inches from where my flatmate sits every night and was in front of a mirror, so also giving its reflection. Could it have been sitting there for nearly a week in plain view?

The cats were sleeping in different rooms and while they could have stolen it, its return would have required a nigh-on impossible mix of stealth and timing. Is it any more ludicrous to entertain the possibility of spiritual intervention than super-intelligent (and possibly belligerent) cats? Well, perhaps; but it had happened exactly as other FT readers had testified it would, and among the few Catholic friends I have it seems common knowledge that this will work. 

Saint Anthony has been described as the Billy Graham of his day; but his strident zeal was apparently tempered with mercy. I hope it was that sense of mercy that remedied my situation. 

Tim Weinberg, Brighton, East Sussex, 2010

Night Terrors

There are few things as terrifying as waking up in the small hours and sensing a strange presence in your bedroom… especially if you then find that it has glowing red eyes, gives off an aura of pure evil and is sitting on your chest! Many of these disconcerting experiences are down to sleep paralysis or waking dreams… but what if some of these nightmares are something more solid?

Waking Dreams

GOTHIC NIGHT TERROR

One night, when I was about 16, I awoke at about 1am after sleeping for an hour. I found I couldn’t move properly; there was a tightness in my chest and I had no power over my arms or legs, although I could move my head. Then I became aware of something sitting on my chest, facing me, looking at me. There was very little light in the room, just enough to make out the shape that was pressing on top of me. From what I could make out, it was some kind of animal, like a monkey in shape, brown and hairy. In my terror, I was distinctly aware that the thing was alive; I had the impression it had been waiting for me to wake up.

The next two minutes or so are among the most terrifying I have experienced. The thing just sat there exuding a very evil aura, growling and making a mouth-clearing sound. As I tried to move, it moved closer to my face. It had a malevolent face with red eyes, somewhat monkey-like only more demonic – very much like the creature in Henry Fuseli’s painting The Nightmare, except that mine was closer to an animal than his chubby, ogreish thing with its pensive, amused expression. What Fuseli captured very well in relation to what I was seeing was the creature’s semi-visibility, the colour of the skin, and the eyes. 

The thing must have ‘known’ that I was awake because then it started to speak to me, in English. I don’t recall exactly what it said, only that it was decidedly unfriendly. It was cruel and taunting and it wanted me to know how pathetic it held me to be. It knew I was powerless at that time and relished my helplessness. It spoke mockingly in a rasping, inhuman voice that was horrible to hear.

I managed to speak, asking it, somewhat absurdly, what it was and what it was doing, but when it started to speak I was unable to respond except in whimpers as it was restricting my ability to breathe properly. Part of me wanted to continue the experience, but the sense of its malevolence coupled with my helplessness and uncertainty over what was going to happen next was just too much. It wanted to see me harmed, that I knew, so I made a huge effort to recover my power of movement, breathing and speech so as to keep it away from my neck and face. As I did, forcing myself to overcome the awful force this thing was having, it slowly melted away, taking about a minute to vanish. All trace of it was finally banished when I switched on the light beside me.

The whole experience had lasted no more than five minutes. With the thing gone, I lay there trying to make sense of what I’d experienced. I am positive it was not a dream. Yet, was it something from my own mind and personality, something I had manifested or imagined, or something separate from my consciousness, separate even from ordinary reality? If someone had entered my room when the experience was underway, would they have seen and heard it too? When later I found a small picture of Fuseli’s The Nightmare in a magazine, I instantly knew this is what had happened to me. I retained this picture for years afterwards so as not to forget and as ‘proof’ that such things are possible…

To put perspective on my state of mind at the time, I was due to travel to London the next morning for an interview and was feeling very stressed about the prospect, as I also was about my first serious relationship with a girl. These pressures certainly contributed to producing the thing, perhaps somehow ‘nourishing’ it into becoming manifest. Fuseli was recovering from an unhappy love affair and a portrait of the woman was discovered on the reverse of the canvas of The Nightmare. I consider this to have been an important aspect of the circumstances of the painting’s creation.

Jerry Glover, by email, 2006

RED-EYED SPIRIT

When I was 10 years old, I awoke one night in my bedroom at around 3am. I decided to get up and use the loo. I was fully awake and definitely not dreaming at the time.  Being young, I always found getting up in the middle of the night rather creepy and really didn’t like venturing out of my bedroom. It was not that I felt that there was anything malevolent or supernatural lurking, I really just did not like walking around the house in the dark.

Upon leaving the bathroom, I thought that I would seek some reassurance from my parents, just to ease my fears a little bit. I just wanted them to tell me that there was nothing to be scared of, and to go back to sleep. However, when I opened the door of their dark bedroom something caught my eye underneath the dressing table, which was positioned directly below the window that looked straight onto where I was standing. This table had an arch on the underside for a chair to slide in.

When I looked, I saw something extremely weird that I cannot explain to this day – it’s even hard to try and put it into words. It was a spirit of some sort, crouched in the arch of the dressing table and it was glowing white. It had its arms wrapped around its legs. Its body was facing to the right, whilst its head was turned facing me. This ‘thing’ was looking directly at me and had glowing red eyes, which looked demonic; this is what captured my attention in the first place. What scared me most about it was the fact that it looked human; this might sound ridiculous, but it looked the spitting image of my mum, only really angry and malevolent.

I looked at this spirit for around 10 seconds, but it seemed like much longer. It did not move at all. I could not believe what I was seeing. I thought to myself, what is my mum doing under there? However, I quickly realised that it wasn’t her. She was lying fast asleep in bed. I felt as if the fiery red eyes were staring into my soul as the thing continued to stare at me. Coming to my senses quickly, I screamed at full volume, waking my parents, and then ran to switch on the light.

As soon as I turned on the light, whatever was there had disappeared. I was frantic and told my parents what had happened. They dismissed it as me being half asleep and still dreaming, but I know for a fact that I wasn’t. I fully recall everything that I had done prior to visiting the room (walking through the living room and hall and going to the bathroom) and was awake for 5-10 minutes before the incident.

Since this happened to me, nobody else in my house has seen anything of the same nature. I have never seen the thing again, thankfully, as it really scared me – and does now, even thinking about it!  Nonetheless, since seeing this spirit I have been curious as to what it actually was. I am not convinced that it was a ghost due to the fact that it looked the double of my very-much-alive mum and the fact that its eyes were glowing red.

In the past few months I have been more eager than ever to find out what this was and came across a book that discussed elementals. This seemed like the most plausible explanation, as what I read coincided with my experience of the crouching and the glowing eyes. I also read that these spirits are only really found outdoors in natural settings, but my encounter happened in the bedroom of a bog-standard four in a blockhouse in the suburbs of Glasgow.

Laura-Anne Leddie, by email, 2010

THE FLY

I had an extremely vivid hypnopompic dream around June 1997. I was a fashion student in London, living in a hall of residence. My room had two windows, and during the afternoon and evening, the sun blazed in. One afternoon, I fell asleep on my bed for a couple of hours, and was awoken by the light as it moved across the room and fell upon me. But this was not the usual dozy woken state I was used to. Instead, I became aware of my surroundings; I even remember that my eyes were open, and my conscious mind was working as normal. 

I then saw an enormous fly, about six inches (15cm) long, buzzing around the room. It was a black, lumpy mass, with stiff bristles sprouting from its body, and small clear wings on its back. It reminded me of the strange, misshapen creatures of Bosch or Breughel. 

The thought suddenly came to me that this thing was going to land on my face, and that my body was completely paralysed. My limbs felt like dead objects, all power of movement denied me. A terror seized me, although no worse than I had experienced in childhood nightmares. After only a few seconds, my conscious mind asserted itself and I began to think as if I were awake and lucid as normal. I said to myself: “What are you doing? This is just a lucid dream, the fly is nothing, and the paralysis is just that which your brain exerts upon your body as part of your normal sleep pattern.” The fly immediately disappeared and movement was restored. 

While I realise that this was all just a strange manifestation of my mind, the reality of it has remained with me ever since as a reminder of the strange powers the mind can exert upon us. 

Esma Pearcey, by email, 2008

THE APPLE HAG

Falling asleep one night, I had a hypnagogic vision of a hag. She leaned right up to my face and breathed: “Remember me”. The vision was accompanied by a great deal of fear. On waking, I stumbled to the bathroom and found four apple stalks, all the same length, lined up on the sink. There were no apples in the house at the time. I then went to the kitchen, where I found all four gas taps on the oven turned on. It must have happened the moment I walked in, as there was no smell of gas. 

Shaun Petrie, by email, 2008

Bedroom visitors

THEY CAME BY NIGHT

I’d like to relate two instances of unwelcome bedroom visitors. The first was when I was about eight and sleeping in the bedroom of a bungalow belonging to family friends. I awoke to see a strange phosphorescent creature standing near the bed, something like a child’s drawing of a skeleton, but just in outline without bones or other details. The closest comparison I can think of is the pin-man drawing in The Saint books, which I was then too young to have read. Its head was oval, not round, and as far as I can remember, it had eyes but no other features. As I watched, paralysed with fright, it began to jump up and down as if on springs. At this point, I screamed the place down and adults came running to see what was going on, assuming I’d had a nightmare. To this day, I’m sure I hadn’t, and of course they found nothing, but I was always nervous of sleeping in that room again. 

The second incident happened in 2004 in the back bedroom of the house here in Derby where I lived till quite recently. In the small hours, I awoke as I heard and felt something trying to jump onto the bed. “Get off!” I shouted, thinking it was one of our cats escaped from the kitchen. I gave it a push, then suddenly realised it was much bigger and heavier than any cat. It fell off the bed, then had another go, and I could hear its claws scratching at the bedclothes and wooden bed-frame. I saw something resembling a small bear with a long nose and very thick curly fur. It also had long claws, which it dug into my hand quite painfully. Years ago, there was a cartoon character called ‘Flook’ in a daily newspaper, and my mystery visitor rather resembled a malevolent version of it. On hearing my description, my daughter said it sounded like an anteater with an afro, which summed it up very well. 

I was paralysed with fright at some point during the encounter, but I also remember pushing the thing off the bed and hearing it thud onto the floor. After the third successful attempt to dislodge it, I came to my senses and put the light on. There was nothing there, of course, and later investigation proved both our cats to be still shut in the kitchen. However – and here comes the interesting bit – in the morning I found I had some hefty scratches on my right hand and several fingernails were broken, with one jagged bit of nail twisted round, sticking into my skin. So – was there really something there and did it scratch me, or did I hit the edge of the bed or side of the dressing table first (and if so, why?), then dream up the creature to explain it? I suffer from migraine, but didn’t have it on this occasion. 

Years earlier, another daughter saw an apparition (which seemed to be the ghost of an old gardener) in the same bedroom, but her visitor seemed quite benevolent. The house was built on a former market garden. 

Brenda Ray, Mickleover, Derby, 2008

BESTIAL GROAN

About 15 years ago, I was staying over at an old friend’s flat above his small shop in Oxhey Village, Hertfordshire. We spent the evening as we usually did back then, drinking a few beers and listening to music from his rather vast collection. Around 1am, we decided to crash out, and settled down in our separate beds in the same room, listening to the gentle strains of Nick Drake in candlelight. 

Several tracks into the CD, the suitably crepuscular strains of his song ‘Black Eyed Dog’ began. As the track progressed, a dark atmosphere seemed to fill the room, and as it reached the lyric “black eyed dog came to my door” the music began to slow down, as if being played on vinyl with a finger impeding the rotation, and over what I guess must have been a few seconds ground to what I can only describe as a demonic halt. Now, we are all familiar with scratched CDs: they judder and skip, not grind to a halt as in this case. The moment the music stopped, the air inside the room became thick, rather like peering through a fog or being underwater. This may sound unbelievable, but the candles began to flicker as if starved of oxygen, and from below the upstairs room we were in came the most unearthly and truly hideous sound I have ever heard – and believe me, working as a professional musician and sound engineer for many years, I’ve heard some pretty grim frequencies! Imagine the grating of something very heavy being dragged across concrete, coupled with the scraping of fingernails on a blackboard, and what for some reason suggested to me a hippopotamus in agonised death throes. Whatever it was, it was a hideously bestial groan that I can only describe as ‘not of this world’. 

This ‘night terror’, both of us fully conscious, lasted perhaps 10 seconds. The strange indoor miasma cleared, and the stereo remained silent. Needless to say, we were both somewhat freaked, indeed it is one of the very few times in my life, being an atheist, I have actually crossed myself and experienced some ‘fear of God’. I stress that we were both relatively sober, not overly tired, and shared the same experience. Was the iconic Black Dog evoking some troubled suicidal spirit present in the house?

To this day, both of us still find the entire incident inexplicable, but it was not without precedent as far as the location is concerned. My friend, while living there for several years with his girlfriend, experienced several other ghostly apparitions and poltergeist-like activity, including a workman being physically pushed from a stepladder across the room. His mother, a Christian, was so concerned that she called a priest to exorcise the place, after which all activity seemingly stopped. My friend no longer lives above the shop, but continues to run it as a business with no further disturbance. 

Jules Landau, by email, 2009

NIGHT VISITOR 

Here is a painting (above) of a creature I saw one night in September 1996 when my friend Neil and I were sharing a room in a Guildford hotel the night before a friend’s wedding. 

During the night, I saw the face of another friend who was unable to attend the wedding, so close that he was almost on top of me. The image was clear and real against a brilliant white background. I remember thinking or saying to him, “Rob, what are you doing?” 

When I opened my eyes, the room was black apart from a crack of light from the street lamp outside the curtains. I noticed someone at the end of my bed. At first I thought Neil, who has a medical condition, was having an attack and crawling towards me for help – but he was still asleep. 

The figure appeared to be light grey all over; it was either kneeling or very short – about 4ft (1.2m) high. It seemed to be carrying some kind of light or instrument in its left hand. Its right arm seemed lumpy in comparison with the rest of the body. I could make out a bald head, skeletal teeth and a hooked nose; its eyes were in shadow. 

The oddest thing of all was that another disembodied human arm seemed to be reaching over its right shoulder and pointing frantically at my friend’s bed. It seemed to be looking for something; as it turned towards Neil’s bed, I decided that it was time for action. But as soon as my foot moved towards the floor, the creature receded into the mirror on the far wall like the image on a TV screen shrinking to a white dot. It was as if it had been recalled as soon as my wakefulness had been noticed. I was fascinated rather than frightened by the peculiar events. 

Paul Carey, South Ockenden, Essex, 1998 

SHADOW DANCER

I was staying at my friend Tom’s place in Brighton, part of an old Georgian building which had once been a hotel. The apartment was on the ground floor in what used to be the dining area. My friend’s landlady was away and so we decided to take over her massive double bed, which certainly beat the crappy sofa I was sleeping on and Tom’s mattress on the floor. He had previously joked that the apartment was haunted, but I just put this down to his overactive imagination. 

So, off to bed we went – the super-duper-deluxe-high-level-comfort bed. Later that night, I was awakened by Tom shaking me. Before he even said anything I noticed how incredibly cold the room had become and that I was covered in goose-bumps. Tom then said: “It’s here – the ghost!” I collected my senses and stared out across the mammoth bed to the corner of the room, now illuminated by moonlight except for a ‘blacker-than-black’ three-dimensional ‘shadow’ of what appeared to be a young girl dancing. I remember thinking how amazing this was at the time and, surprisingly, I felt little fear. I said to Tom, “Am I really seeing what I think I’m seeing?” and he replied, “Yeah, it looks like it’s dancing.”

We both stared at the thing for what must have been at least a minute, totally absorbed by the strange, black, shadow-like quality of the entity. Then, suddenly, it started to move closer towards the bed, at which point I began to panic. “I don’t think I can stay in here tonight,” I declared, before running out of the room, closely followed by Tom. We decided to spend the rest of the weekend back in his room. Even this didn’t entirely help; while we didn’t see the entity again, there were various further incidents such as objects like ashtrays suddenly dropping off shelves and occasional strange giggling noises.

Christopher Davies, Stockholm, 2010

The Twilight Zone

When we’ve gathered together the ghost stories and catalogued the crypto-creatures, we’re still left with a large pile of bizarre tales that simply resist easy categorisation: strange hooded figures seen on a lonely road; a mirror that reflects back someone else’s face; weird lights hovering round a television, or an everyday scene frozen into slow-motion: welcome to the Twilight Zone…

On The Road

SPOOKY CYCLIST

In 2003, I was visiting my brother in the Scottish Highlands. One night at about 7pm, we drove to a friend’s house, with Stuart driving and me in the passenger seat. The journey took us along many winding, dark, deserted roads often flanked by tall trees. As we were making our way along the B9512 near Kingussie, I noticed a tall figure on the left-hand side of the road that seemed to be human, and appeared to be illuminated by a great number of Christmas tree-style lights. My initial feeling was that it was a humorously decorated mannequin advertising a nearby business. I laughed and asked Stuart what it was, but he had no idea, and in fact sounded a little disturbed. As we got closer, I saw that the figure had its back to us, was seated on a bicycle, and was completely still and perfectly balanced despite being ‘mid-cycle’. I got quite a shiver as we went by, and the strange sight stuck in my mind throughout our visit to the friend. 

On the homeward journey, I asked Stuart to slow down as we approached the spot of the earlier sighting so that we could discover what the figure was advertising, or his general purpose. As we approached, my stomach sank as I realised the figure was now on the opposite side of the road! “He” seemed to be wearing a luminous green workman’s tunic, though in truth I had such shivers (I couldn’t say why really, other than the strangeness of the scene) that I couldn’t bear to look for too long. My brother was nonplussed, and we were both quite unnerved by the figure. I would be delighted to hear from anyone who knows of any similar sightings in the area, and perhaps their origins.

Scott Taylor, Bristol, 2005

BIZARRE CAR

When I was about seven years old, my mother would pick my father up after work from our local railway station in Bracknell, Berkshire, at about 8pm. One night when we were driving to the station, there was a car driving in front of us, moving at about 30mph (48km/h), without any lights on and, from what we could see, nobody driving. I can remember my mum saying, “What is this idiot doing?” That was weird, but what was weirder was that in an instant the car was no longer in front of us but was parked at the side of the road. It did not slow down or pull over – it was as if it had never even been moving. It was almost as if we had missed a few seconds in time. “Wasn’t that car in front of us just now?” I asked my mother. “Yes it was,” she said, looking shocked. When I asked more questions, she said that we must have imagined it. The whole thing was very strange.

SW, Sydney, Australia, 2005

THE HOLY COMPANY

Late one night, about 20 years ago, I was driving to the small village in the mountains of Asturias, in the north west of Spain, where some of my family live. The small narrow road forces you to drive slowly, especially when it’s dark, so I was being particularly careful. I saw something shining by the trees, quite close to the road, and quickly realised it was a fire. With a shiver, I noticed that there were several hooded figures standing around the flames, all of them dressed in dark colours. Feeling superstitious, I didn’t want to stare at them, so I kept driving as fast as I possibly could, forgetting my previous caution. 

I arrived at the village feeling rather nervous, although I didn’t want to admit it. I’ve heard many old tales about the Holy Company – a procession of souls in torment that wander around rural areas and are considered to be a harbinger of death. The following morning we found out that there had been a car crash on that very road the day before. I can’t say for sure that it happened at exactly on the same spot I’d seen the hooded figures, but I found it deeply disturbing. 

AD, Asturias, Spain, 2010

NOCTURNAL ILLUSION

I am a musician so I am used to late nights (and strange happenings!). For several nights in 2004, my colleagues and I returned from Maidstone in Kent along the M25 westbound towards Gatwick. After passing Clackett Lane service station, the road turns slowly right up a long hill. As we reached about three-quarters of the way up the hill in the battered old Transit, a man ran across the road in front of us from the central reservation. As I was in the passenger seat, I could see him run directly at us. I shouted at the driver, but he had seen nothing – there was no thump and we continued up the hill, with me in a cold sweat. 

On the next trip and subsequent trip I watched carefully and saw the same phenomenon again and again but was slowly able to piece together the apparition. Close to the top of the hill a triangular road sign had been left in the central reservation facing eastbound traffic, so there was no reflective side facing us. The ‘man’ was in fact the shadow of this sign thrown by the headlights of oncoming cars on the other carriageway and its movement was caused by the motion of these lights. I have often wondered if this is the reason for the large number of accidents at Clackett Lane! 

Richard Barden, by email, 2006

WHACKY WHITE VANS 

In June 2000, I was driving into my nearest town which is about 40 miles (64km) away, when I had to yield at an intersection to let a brand new, white, window van go by. Through the passenger window I could see a mesh grill behind the seat and apart from the front windows the rest of the windows were tinted black. In the front sat the driver and passenger who could have been twins, as both had on white shirts with red ties and both had dark hair in a brush cut. Both wore the same type of sunglasses and looked neither left nor right as they passed by the intersection. 

The van had no names or logos on it, nor did it have a licence plate; certainly nothing too strange about that, but this white van was followed by nine more evenly spaced, identical vans. Not only did the vans look like clones but so did the passengers and drivers. I had the impression I was watching a film in a loop, and there was a funny feeling in the air, as the air feels just before a thunderstorm, only the sky was perfectly clear and dry. I couldn’t see the next van until it was there and past me. I live on the rural prairies and believe me you can see 20 or 30 miles (32-48km) in any direction at any given time and I couldn’t see those vans until they were almost on top of me. They drove down an old dirt road and I lost sight of them. 

In the small town where I live, one brand new van with strangers in it would be the subject of conversation and interest, let alone 10 of them. However, when I mentioned the incident and made a few inquiries, I drew a blank. It appears that I was the only one who saw them. There have been a lot of strange aerial sightings here, and crop circles have appeared in a very remote area, so we have our share of ‘strangeness’. 

Ruth Summersides, Saskatchewan, Canada, 2001

Around noon on 1 October 2003, I was sitting at a traffic light in the left-turn lane waiting for the green arrow. I was first in line and there was a lot of lunchtime traffic flowing in both directions across the intersection in front of me. I was staring straight ahead, but I kept an eye on the traffic flowing from left to right as I waited for the left-turn signal. I noticed a white SUV crossing the intersection at about 30-40mph (48-64km/h) – and then it ‘jumped back’ about 10ft (3m) and went across again.

I didn’t see it jump back, it was just going across – then it was going across again. It definitely wasn’t two different cars of the same type. There was a continuous line of traffic moving across at the time. The scene simply repeated itself. Had I blinked, changed the radio station, looked away or up at the light and then back at the traffic, I would have missed it.

It seemed as if a dimension overlapped or possibly a time warp occurred. It didn’t feel like déjà vu – but that’s exactly what it was, only in the physical. It reminded me of the scene in the first Matrix movie when the cat walks across the doorway, and then repeats itself – the glitch in the Matrix. 

Anna Webb, Cincinnati, Ohio, 2004

In 1990, when I was about 10, I was walking down the street past my friend’s house. Ahead of me, a white van pulled into the driveway of a house. I remember the sound of the engine, then the engine stopping. As I walked past the house, I saw four people get out, walk inside and shut the door. I continued walking and I heard the sound of an engine behind me. I looked backward and saw the same white van pulling into the same driveway. It pulled up, and the same four people got out, walked inside, and shut the door. You could say this was all just a matter of delayed cognition – though I don’t know how, as it was all from a different perspective.

Ryan Egesdahl, Houston, Texas, 2004

Mirror, mirror...

HAUNTED MIRROR

My friend Anna was working as an English teacher in Budapest between 1992 and 1994. She had a flat in an oldish (perhaps 1930s) apartment block. The furniture, apparently, looked like it had been there since the place was built – all very solid wooden stuff. In her dining room, there was a large antique mirror, and it was this that was the spooky thing. Anna swears blind that at certain times of the day, usually between 2 and 4 in the afternoon, anyone looking in it would see not just themselves, but a group of six or seven soldiers in the room with them! The soldiers were wearing, according to her, “First World War-type uniforms” and had old rifles. The mirror always showed the same thing: The men were relaxing around a table, eating and chatting, while one of them looked anxiously out of the window. And that was it. 

Sadly, the mirror got broken by a visitor to the flat who got freaked out by what he saw. Bugger.

Paul Gallantry, by email, 2004

WOMAN IN THE MIRROR

When I was about 17, my mates and I did a Ouija session for a laugh. It may be that what followed was directly caused by this, or possibly just prompted by our very spooked state of mind. 

Two of us had identical dreams the following night! We thought this to be a curious enough phenomenon, but the real twist was the content. Both of us dreamed that we woke up in the night, sat up in bed and looked in the mirror on the wall directly opposite the bed (which my mate really had in his room, but I didn’t). 

In the mirror, each of us saw our own face, and standing behind, as if looking over my shoulder into the mirror, a woman dressed in an exquisite silk kimono, but with a horribly burned face. 

In reality, it would have been impossible for anyone to stand behind us like this, with each of us sitting up in bed – a bed with its head against the wall in the usual way. 

The next morning I took all mirrors out of my room. After that I was rather uneasy about mirrors in bedrooms for about 10 years.

Seversm, 2004

TOILET TERROR

We often used to go to a Thameside pub in Windsor called the Donkey House. It was originally called the Kings Arms, and had been there for, well, donkey’s years. When we were children, my sister and I used to go there with our father for a lemonade after fishing trips. The pub is still there, but the name and management have changed.

One day in 2005, my sister Lesley and I had been shopping and wandering about the town and needed a drink. It was a normal Saturday afternoon in late spring and throngs of tourists were beginning to arrive.

We sat inside, to the left of the long dark bar and away from the people eating, as we were smoking. We ordered a couple of pints of cider and, as usual, I needed to use the bathroom – it’s a combination of my sister making me laugh and a weak bladder. As it was my round, I said I’d pop to the ladies first, then get the drinks in; so I rushed to the loo.

It was up a steep, narrow staircase at the opposite end of the bar. I went up the stairs, through a door, up another smaller set of steps that had a huge mirror overhanging them, through another fire door and into the loo. There were three or four cubicles. It was a really normal looking set-up, if a little out of date, pinkish and floral. All the doors were closed so I had to push them to see if they were locked or not, but it soon became evident that I was the only person in there.

In the cubicle I was still laughing a little – laughing out loud in fact! All of a sudden I felt the need to stop, as if someone didn’t approve of my laughter, or I’d subconsciously been scolded. The atmosphere changed instantly – it felt electrified. My skin bristled, and I felt disturbed. I can only describe the feeling as being like the fear you might experience when faced with a huge growling dog or a crazed, drunken lunatic. I was shaking with adrenalin, experiencing confusing smells and images, and a sense of primal fear.

I had to get out, fast. I fumbled with the lock, tore open the cubicle, still rearranging my clothes. I didn’t dare stay to wash my hands. I grabbed the door handle – and came face to face with the full-length mirror hanging over the steps. My  face. But it didn’t look like me. The face was terrified; there was confusion and a blur of movement behind me. I flew down the steps. There was another door to contend with, then the last furlong back to safety. My feet didn’t touch the ground; if I’d fallen I wouldn’t have felt any pain. I was in the midst of fight or flight and I was fleeing for my life.

I smashed through the last door and into the bar, back to the warmth and the light and the living. People turned to see what the commotion was. I rushed to the bar and steadied myself. My sister called out, and when I  failed to answer her she came over, looking perplexed. 

“Christ, what’s the problem with you? You look AWFUL!”

“I don’t know what just happened,” I said, clearly shaken.

The barman came over. He’d sussed out the situation. 

“You alright love? Same again? You look like you’ve seen a ghost”.

“I – er, I don’t know what just happened – upstairs,” I said. My mouth was dry, my face was white. I looked into the mirror behind the bar and saw wide, staring frightened eyes.

“Oh, upstairs, the toilets. Yes, sorry about that. Are you alright?”

 Then he went on: “Listen, next time you need the loo, use the disabled one down here. You don’t have to go upstairs again. We’ve lost a few customers due to that, upstairs, in the ladies. Sorry about that. Want a brandy?”

My sister wanted the whole story, but I really didn’t know what to tell her, apart from what I have described here. So we badgered the barman to tell us more. Some women had seen a man upstairs, others had felt the presence of a young woman and child. But that wasn’t all.

The staff had regularly seen a man sitting in the farthest corner, after last orders were called, only to look over again to see that no one was there. This apparition had also appeared after the door was locked and the staff were cleaning up. During cashing up one night, a pint of beer had been thrown across the bar, and other ‘happenings’ had been reported by staff.

I haven’t been back. But I bet the new management have relocated the ladies.

Ann Shenton, Windsor, 2010

Strange Visions

KELVINGROVE TIME SLIP

During 1985–6, I was a post-graduate student of marketing at Strathclyde University. A couple of nights a week, I’d stay over at a friend’s flat in Kerseland Street in the West End. If the weather was good, I’d often walk from Cathedral Street (just up from Queen Street Station) all the way out along Dumbarton Road to the West End. This provided plenty of time for (mainly prosaic) reflection… sometimes accompanied by a specially prepared Walkman soundtrack. 

One particular evening – I have no recollection of the time of year but suspect it was before the clocks went back, or after they went forward again, so early autumn or late spring – I was walking past Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, heading west towards the bridge over the River Kelvin (grid reference NS 86368213). I believe I saw, for a split second, this view as it would have been in the late 19th century: horse-drawn carriages, lots of people on foot, men in top hats, women in bustles, parasols or umbrellas. Strangely, despite my interest in architecture, it was the movement and the people that struck me most. I have little or no memory of the buildings or whether the scene was markedly different from how it looked in 1985. I’m not sure if I was actually there or seeing it at one remove, as if on film. As quickly as this moving image appeared it vanished, leaving me slightly breathless, slightly chilled and puzzled. 

Was it simply the remembrance of a photo I’d once seen? I may have been reflecting on my own family: I’ve done occasional bits of genealogy and knew that my great grandfather was born in Great George Street, also in the West End, and he and his family must have walked where I was walking now. Or had I caught a glimpse of the past? Was it my memory, or a sort of shared memory? I have no idea. I’m not prone to visions or delusions. I’m profoundly unmystical, although that is not to say I’m not fascinated by what happened that evening. I’ve never experienced anything similar since then. 

Anna Kelvin, (not her real name), Glasgow, 2008

STILL LIFE

On Saturday, 9 June, my wife and I were first out of St Joseph’s parish church in Worksop (Nottinghamshire) because we were in a terrific rush. Mass started at 6pm and finished at 7, but my wife, a nurse, starts work at 8. In the intervening hour, we have to cook and eat, take the dogs for a walk, get changed and (in her case) drive to work. 

It was hot and oppressive. In our haste, we failed to acknowledge various friends (who, on reflection, were staring at us dumbly), but no problem, we would see them the following week. It struck me that everyone was a bit, well, slow… or was it me who was in such a rush? We got into the car, I fired up, and turned into Wessex Road to do a U-turn in the mouth of the road. Halfway through my ‘U’, some fellow turned up and stopped at the junction. I waited for him to move on. And waited… and waited. Why didn’t he move? No one was coming, the road was clear. I looked at him. He was frozen with his mouth open. Everyone else was frozen too! 

A man with a black Labrador stood ramrod straight; his dog, also frozen, had a stick clamped in its jaws. Everyone and everything was motionless – except my wife and me. I just whipped round everything and drove away. “What’s up with people?” my wife remarked. “They’d move fast enough if they had to be at work in half an hour.” I looked in my mirror and everyone was moving again. 

It was uncomfortably hot – and quiet. I don’t even recall birds singing – nothing – it all seemed kind of muffled, distant. I’m not claiming that time stood still – but I do know that for well over a minute everyone in the vicinity looked as if they’d been deep frozen, then snapped out of it and carried on with whatever they were doing. I had this horrible sensation that only I knew what was going on; as if a ‘freeze ray’ had beamed down on everyone, but missed me. I’m glad my wife commented, as this showed it wasn’t a ‘solus’ hallucination, heatstroke, or whatever; it’s never happened before. 

Jack Romano, Worksop, Nottinghamshire, 2008

ALTERNATIVE BIRMINGHAM

I live in Birmingham and often cross St Phillip’s Churchyard as I return from shopping in the city centre. This churchyard has largely had its tombstones removed. It is a pleasant open space with paths and benches and plenty of grass. Loads of youths congregate there to chat each other up, snog on the few remaining tombstones, dance and generally hang out. Colloquially it is known as Pigeon Park.

About two years ago, I was crossing the churchyard when something strange happened. It was drizzling and I had my umbrella up. There weren’t that many people about, as it was a miserable Friday afternoon too early for the Goths and Emos to have got back from school and changed into their other uniform. I stopped and put my umbrella down in the centre of the space to see if my bus was about to appear and I’d need to run for it – but I was confronted by an entirely different view to the one I was expecting. I presumed that I’d somehow veered off in the wrong direction, so stopped and turned round through 360 degrees. But no, all the railings in Colmore Row were missing as – more importantly – were the bus stops! These are very noticeable, being of the bus shelter type, and fill up the whole length of this side of the churchyard. I was not amused. This meant a trek across several streets to get to the nearest 103 bus stop. By checking ‘landmarks’ such as an idiosyncratic shoe shop, I was now totally convinced that I was not simply looking in the wrong direction.

The whole scenario was both strange and also terribly prosaic. I was just cross. Then I realised that my hearing was a bit peculiar – exactly as if I’d got my fingers in my ears. This was no flickering illusion, however, as I stomped about a bit, undecided as to which direction to go in. I set back off towards Colmore Row in order to pick up my bus around Margaret Street, but as I emerged through the corner gateway my ears ‘cleared’ and everything was back in place: railings, bus stops etc.

What actually happened I’ve no idea. I sometimes think I slipped into an alternative version of Birmingham (I know, it doesn’t bear thinking about, does it?) for about four or five minutes. My watch was working and I had no impression of having lost (or gained) any time. No one in the other place looked any different; there was no trace of being in the past or the future. It seemed just like a different ‘now’ in some way. I’ve known this place for years and my alternative version was in no way like any of the other stages I’ve observed. So this suggests that I wasn’t slipping into a remembered vision of the place. Reflecting on the experience on my way home on the bus, I did feel that while I was in ‘the place where the bus stops were absent”, things were going a bit ‘slowly’ – as well as being hushed in some way. 

I often cross this space – on my way to the same bus stop – and avoid walking over a section of slabs where the experience seemed to start as I have found it makes me feel lightheaded and giddy.

I do wonder if the ‘sonic devices’ used to disperse large congregations of young people might play some part in this. I’m far too old to hear them but perhaps, as rumoured, the council has installed them around St Phillips and somehow I’m picking up on them and getting my brain scrambled. I’d be really intrigued to know if any other Birmingham folk have had a similar experience. 

Mary Worrall, by email, 2008

Weird Lights

THE BLUE LIGHT

I was living in Delaware, near Newark, when in the late fall of 1996 I was putting clothes away in my son’s room. It was between 8-9 pm, and as I walked to his dresser I saw a light outside his window near the house... 

It was near the base of the house to the bottom left, out of my immediate viewing range. It grew in size and sounded like arc-welding or some kind of electrical discharge. It was very bright, blue-white, and noisy. I was taken by surprise, and knew that our propane tank was on that side of the house, so I left the room quickly and yelled at my son to get out of the tub. I was afraid that the house might be on fire. I went back into my son’s room to get his robe, and noticed that the light and noise was gone. I grabbed a flashlight and went outside to inspect the damage. There wasn’t any! 

My father used to weld, so I know that kind of light means high temperatures. There were dry leaves lying in the vicinity of the light show, but none were singed or even disturbed. The light was right against our house, but the brick and siding had no marks on them. The propane tank, just a few feet away, also bore no evidence of any arcing, burning or other electrical damage. 

It was a clear night, no clouds, no storm activity. I thought about ball-lightning, but there was absolutely no evidence that anything had happened. I called the propane company out the next morning and they told me that the tank was not leaking or damaged in any way. The whole event lasted probably 5-10 seconds and has eluded any explanation. I wasn’t dreaming, or on any kind of drugs or medication, and I hadn’t been drinking either. Has this ever happened to 

anyone else?

Mike Philips, by email, 2001

BLUE PLASMA

One stormy night in the late Eighties, I was watching TV in the living room and doing some ironing when a loud bang and flash came from the TV. A blue ball of something that seemed to be like plasma floated out of the front of the TV screen (which had gone off) and travelled about 3ft (90cm) across the room until it hit the hot plate of the iron. A loud bang came from the iron and the blue ball disappeared. Neither the TV nor the iron had any marks on them, but neither worked again.

Angie Mcquade, by email, 2010

LIGHTS OF COMFORT

Twelve years ago, tragedy struck our family: our 21-month-old son died in a house fire. We were absolutely devastated and beside ourselves with grief and guilt that we couldn’t save him. It was horrendous. I can’t begin to describe the pain and suffering we went through, and still do.

Two months later, with only three months left in my pregnancy, we moved away from the area with our two daughters and started a new life in a new house. This one, unlike the last, had a good feeling about it. I knew as soon as I walked in. I gave birth in October 1998 to our fourth child, our second son. 

I found it difficult to sleep at night because of what had happened. Most nights I would just lie awake in bed until my eyes got so heavy I could no longer fight going to sleep. One night was the same as any other. My husband slept and I spent it wide-awake looking through the window and then glancing around the room. In the corner was our TV, which was switched off, but surrounding it were several balls of light in different sizes. They were flashing on and off like disco lights and I was fascinated and mesmerised. I didn’t know what they could possibly be. I wasn’t scared, just calm and relaxed. It lasted for five minutes before they went out one by one. I wanted to tell my husband the next day, but thought better of it in case he thought I’d gone round the twist. 

The following night it happened again. I felt so at ease; they were so beautiful. I didn’t want them to leave. I wanted to watch them all night, but after five minutes they went, leaving me with an inner peace. On the third consecutive night it happened again. This time my husband was awake. I watched, but didn’t say a word to him. When it was over, he said to me: “Did you see that?” 

 “Did I see what?”

“The lights by the TV.” 

“You mean you’ve seen them too?” He nodded and smiled. I was thrilled because I thought maybe I had imagined it. It was the last time we saw them in that house. 

We moved again several months later to the house that we now occupy. Two months after we moved in, I saw the lights for the last time on my landing. I wondered if it was our son, who had passed over, coming to let us know that he was all right. Maybe it was his way of trying to ease our grief – and for those few minutes it did.

Lisa Plowman, Pontypridd, Mid Glamorgan, 2010

Thanks

Fortean Times would like to thank all those who have written to us, emailed, or posted on the ‘It Happened to Me’ forum at the FT website, to share their experiences over the past 37 years. A particular thank you goes to those whose stories appear in this volume:

Andy--, Gordon--, Kevin--, Portia--, Suzy--, TheQuixote, Seversm, Di Ablewhite, Jo Alder, Alan Lance Andersen, Pauline Barbieri, Richard Barden, Dean Ballinger, Ali Barnes, Michael Barwell, Matt Baylis, Martin Baynes, Malcom Blacow, Sam Bradbury, Kate Brett, Greylyn Burk, John Burke, Paul Carey, Henry Chester, Jon Chidwick, John Coates, Danny Cogdon, Cez Connolly, Gavin Craig, AD, Christopher Davies, Jeremy Dennis, Elaine Dobson, Ryan Egesdahl, Martin Einon, Brian Ellwood, Hunt Emerson, Robert Euston, Hilary Evans, Rhodri Lyndon Evans, Patrick Foord, Bryan Fraser, Maureen Gaines, Paul Gallantry, Steve Gardiner, Sue Gardner, Jerry Glover, Izzet Gösku, Barry Harding, Anne Hardwick, Helen Harling, Amy Harrison, IR Harrison, Rachel Hayward, Tim Hill, Viv Hobbs, Louise Hodgson, Steve Hon, MJ, Norman James, Roni Jay, Eddy Jenkinson, Anna Kelvin, Bob Kingsley, Janusz Kozikowski, Lucy L, Jules Landau, Ian Lawes, Laura-Anne Leddie, Mr G Lester, Chris Lethbridge, Hilary Llewllyn-Williams, Dirck de Lint, Diana Lyons, Kevin Mahoney, Jim Mannix, Alexandria Martin, Henry da Massa, Angie Mcquade, Daniel McQueen, Steph Miller, Mr T Miller, Peter Millie, Alistair Moffatt, Francisco Morra-Cardoner, Jane Murray, Gillian Neuhauser, Pamela Nowell, Clive Parker, Don Parish, David Patrick, Laura-Esma Pearcey, Chris Peters, Shaun Petrie, Mike Philips, John Pickard, Dirk Pierce, Lisa Plowman, Mr R Pohl, Richard Porter, Victoria Price, Debbie Pryor, Tony Purcell, Carla R, Toby R, Brenda Ray, Paul Rebek, Simon Robbins, Jack Romano, Ronald Rosenblatt, Ian Sanders, Chante Sayers, Leo Scarpelli, Julia Morgan Scott, Ann Shenton, James Sherriff, Amanda-Jayne Sherwood, Nick Skerten, Steph Slater, Jacqueline L Spriggs, Hayley Stevens, Malcom Stewart, Lois Stock, Niall Stone, Sam Stringer, Ruth Summersides, Scott Taylor, Tony Taylor, Pam Thornton, Dave Tiger, SW, Tim Weinberg, Roderick B Williams, Gloria Wilson, Pete Wilson, Daniel B Wood, Mary Worall, Marilyn Zavitz

Thank you to those who helped make the pictures in this volume happen: Capucine, Alix Fox, Gareth, David Newton, Jen Ogilvie, Pippa, Joe and Duke, Vicki Reeve, Ruby, Mike and Sian, Martin Sekera, Denise Stanborough.

For more real-life stories of the unexplained, sign up to the Fortean Times message board at www.forteantimes.com/forum and visit the ‘It Happened to Me!’ forum.

If you have your own bizarre stories to tell and would like to share them with us, then send your letters to:

PO Box 2409, London NW5 4NP, United Kingdom,

Or email sieveking@forteantimes.com