It happened to Me...

“Its body was nothing like a dragonfly; it was the size of a rat”

A selection of accounts collected by Rob Gandy at this year’s Weird Weekend North (see p22).

Flying Fairy?

On 9 October 2016 around 6.20am, at the break of dawn, I saw something that looked like a dragonfly flying across a country lane, about 5ft (1.5m) off the ground and 10-20ft (3-6m) away from me. But its body was nothing like that of a dragonfly; it was about the size of a rat, but with wings. I drew a sketch of it and am happy that I got a good likeness. It is in flight, with the body hanging down and the wings out at the back; the black line shows the vertical position compared to how it flew (see sketch at right). It was the odd nature of the thing as it flew that interested me. I am familiar with the creatures you find around these parts in the morning, and it was definitely not a bird or a bat. It was something rather strange – perhaps it was some form of fairy. Jim D Warrington, Cheshire

Spock and Monty

One evening in 2008 I had gone to bed and had just switched off the light and was about to go to sleep. I stress that I had not fallen asleep by this point. I wondered where my 14-year-old black Burmese cat Spock was, given that he was often in the habit of coming into my room and jumping up on my bed. Sure enough, I soon heard a thud on the bed and felt the weight of him landing to my right-hand side, somewhere near my legs. “Where are you then?” I asked, reaching out to stroke him. However, my hand made no contact with a furry body as expected. I fumbled around in the dark and still couldn’t locate him. I was so perplexed that I switched the light on to reveal… no cat. About a minute later I heard the cat flap downstairs, and Spock came running upstairs into my room, and jumped on the bed in the same spot that the phantom or harbinger had just previously “landed”.

The same sequence of events happened again the following night, and then again a few nights later. finally the events were repeated one more time, approximately a year later; but sadly this time my cat Spock had died after an illness that came with old age. Seeing as he was alive during the first set of manifestations, I wondered if the “phantom” could have been some kind of future ghost or portent.

Another strange occurrence from 2010 also involved a cat. It was at my parents’ home in Pembrokeshire, Wales. My parents were around the front of the house talking to the neighbours and the family cat, a large tabby called Monty, was with them. Access to the house is not straightforward: there is no front door as such, the main entrance into the house being via the conservatory, which is at the back of the house, and leads into the living room. I was sitting in the living room, reading, when suddenly Monty came in via the conservatory, running and meowing excitedly. He ran straight into the kitchen, where there is a back door with a cat flap. A moment later my parents came in, and I asked: “What’s up with Monty? He just came running in here, seeming distressed.”

My dad answered that he couldn’t have done, as he had been out the front with them the whole time. He then went to the back door, into the garden, and called Monty, who then came from around the front where they said he had been.

Of course, Monty could have run into the house past me, and then out of the kitchen cat flap, and around the house back to my parents at the front; but my parents were adamant that he was with them the whole time. Also, such a circuit would have required him to have gone into the neighbours’ garden through the hedge, around the side of their house, up their driveway, through their front gate, and run back down the road to the front of our house to re-join my parents; and they certainly would have noticed if he’d been racing around like a lunatic (as he was a big cat and not known for dashing around). It was either that or it was a doppelgänger cat (which was unlikely). I prefer to think it was a case of feline bilocation. Gavin Pembrokeshire, Wales

Flying downstairs

One day in the mid-1950s when I was about five years old, I “flew” down the stairs of our house. There were two or three stairs and then a 90-degree turn with a flat area, before the main staircase of about 10 steps, with another turn just before the bottom. I walked down to the first turn, and then from the flat area I drifted above the straight part and landed at the bottom of the stairs. As far as I recall I was upright, with my arms by my side; I don’t recall any feeling of being lifted or rising up. It was a case of being at the top of the staircase and then being at the bottom without touching the stairs.

I remember thinking the experience was “different” and “interesting”, but being a child I just accepted it. I simply landed at the bottom, still upright, without the effort of walking down. I have no idea how long it took, but I have always assumed it was about the same length of time as if I had walked down. I recollect that there was a sloping ceiling above the stairs, so I sometimes wonder how I didn’t bump my head on it.

I then walked through the hall and into the kitchen where I informed my mum that I had just flown down the stairs. I don’t think she believed me, but she didn’t say I was making it up. It became a standing joke in the family: “Remember when Margaret flew downstairs?” I sometimes used to try and repeat it, but just stood at the top of the stairs without ever “taking off”, and I never experienced it again. Whenever it was mentioned I would quietly think, “Well I know it happened”.

About 20 years ago, I read in The Encyclopaedia of the World’s Greatest Unsolved Mysteries by John and Anne Spencer of someone having something very similar happen

to them: Lorraine Parry flew downstairs when she was five years old. She flew above her body, which she could see below her, walking downstairs holding onto the banister, and felt a slight jolt as she reconnected with it. The book categorised this as an out-of-body experience, but at last I had found confirmation that these sorts of things do happen – although I can’t say I remember looking down on myself or reconnecting afterwards, I thought that the description was so similar it was uncanny. Margaret Irlam, Greater Manchester

Sounds and visions

I have experienced several unexplained incidents at my parents’ three-bedroom house on the edge of Irlam, Salford. It is the middle of a row of three and was probably built in the 1980s or 1990s. The first incident occurred when we moved into the house in 2004. I was 11 and my younger sibling was five. One night when we went to bed we both noticed a strange glow above the closed bedroom door. The glow was greeny-white and triangular, about the size of a hand. It was definitely inside the room, above the doorframe, and glowed against the dark paint. We turned on the lights to see if there was anything on the wall that would account for the glow (such as a glow-inthe-dark sticker), but there was nothing there. Because we had just moved into the house we didn’t have curtains up at the windows, but the glow could not have been due to moonlight or streetlight, because of the colour and shape. Eventually we fell asleep, but in the morning we checked the area of wall again; there was nothing there that could explain the glow. As far as I recall it never appeared again.

In October 2011 I was staying at my parents’ house while they were away on holiday. I was alone in the house, and I recall it was around 11pm when I suddenly heard noises coming from upstairs. It sounded like a group of children running on bare wood in the top hallway. The hallway and the bedrooms were all carpeted and didn’t make much noise when walked on; and the sounds were very different from those you hear when a house is settling. On the same night I also heard chairs moving in the kitchen, even though no one else was in the house. I decided to stay at a friend’s for the rest of the weekend! Rixie Salford, Greater Manchester

Meeting the devil

In early November 2001 I was staying at the Ayre Hotel in kirkwall, Orkney. I was on my own, and having eaten I decided to go for an evening walk, despite it being a wild and stormy night. I was walking along Albert Street (pictured above) towards St Magnus Cathedral, before it becomes Broad Street. It is one of Orkney’s old flagstone roads where people and cars mingle. As I walked along the street there were a number of shops with their doorways lit up by both the streetlights and the shop displays. It was then that I glanced across the road and spotted a devil in one of the doorways. I was surprised to see anyone outside that night.

Its appearance was that of a red man, less than six feet in height, with dark hair in a widow’s peak. It was dressed in red and black, but I am not sure if it wore a cloak or similar. There were definitely no horns. I looked down at the feet and noticed there were hooves instead of shoes at the bottom of the trousers. This reminded me of the old tale of St Dunstan and the Devil in which the Devil appears to the saint in the image of a girl, but gives away his identity when her skirt rises to show cloven hooves.

At the time I was sure I had just seen a devil and can remember thinking: “Well, it doesn’t look like it’s after me!” So I gave it no further thought and carried on walking. Jim D Warrington, Cheshire

a haunted house?

In 2009/10 my wife and I lived in the end terrace of a block of four houses in Rixton, and at the time we were the only people living in the block. The four appeared to be built around the shell of a much older building: while the outside was believed to be victorian, early brickwork exposed in the lofts suggested a georgian date.

One evening, I was stir-frying on the oven hob and looking towards the kitchen door, which led to the lit living room, no more than 5ft (1.5m) away. I watched the door-latch lift and the door open, and naturally assumed it was my wife, because we were the only two people in the house. But it wasn’t her: she was upstairs and also heard the door-latch lifting and the door opening. She thought it was me opening the door.

Now, the door latch was stiff and if fastened could only be opened with your hand. for example, if you tried to open it by pushing the latch down with your elbow it would not open. I actually saw the latch lift, which is why I thought my wife was about to walk in. I subsequently tried to balance the latch to see if it could move, but short of pushing the door it would never move.

Later that year we heard birdsong in the living room around 9.00pm in the dead of winter. It sound like the birds were actually in the room! The birdsong sounded most like that of a pet bird, such as a budgie, but we could not say for certain. The sound just appeared in the room and carried on for less than a minute. Of course, we had a look around the house trying to find the source, but we only heard it in the living room, and nowhere else or even outside.

We might be forgiven for wondering if the house was “haunted”, whatever that might mean. Certainly my wife didn’t like being in the house alone. But, thanks to the nature of village life, we know a man who lived in the same house for decades and he insisted there had not had any similar experiences for over 60 years. (Neither had there been in the other houses in the block).

We later moved into the adjacent house which seemed a much more welcoming place. Jim D Warrington, Cheshire