WITNESSED: IT HAPPENED TO ME

Fortean Times has been publishing first-hand accounts of strange phenomena since 1979. These “It Happened To Me” narratives have become one of the most popular elements of the magazine over the last 40 years. To celebrate our 400th issue, we offer a small selection of our favourite stories.

Fortean Times has been publishing first-hand accounts of strange phenomena since 1979. These “It Happened To Me” narratives have become one of the most popular elements of the magazine over the last 40 years, as well as performing a useful fortean function: many witnesses are reassured that they have not lost their marbles when others relate similar experiences. To celebrate our 400th issue, we offer a small selection of our favourite stories. All images by Etienne Gilfillan. IT’S NOT FOR YOO-HOO

I work for a government body in electronic engineering, specifically concerning equipment like fax machines. In 1989 I was paged over the building public address to go to my office as there was a call waiting. The conversation went as follows:

“Mr Haines?”

“Yes.”

“It’s about the order for teleprinter paper you placed at the exhibition.”

“No I didn’t. I wasn’t there.”

“That is Mr DA Haines, spelt HAINES?”

“Yes.”

“Well, it’s your name on the order.”

“It can’t be. I don’t deal with teleprinters, only fax machines.”

“Your telephone number is 708 2399 extension 35?”

“Yes, that’s my number alright.” “And you are Mr Dave Haines?” “No, it’s Dale, actually.”

“Well, it looks like Dave. Anyway that’s what it says here, 10 boxes of paper for British Telecom Stores.”

“I don’t work for BT, I work for

––– –––.”

“Oh! It says BT in the order, Birmingham depot.”

“Where?” “Birmingham.”

“What number did you dial?”

“021 708 2399 extension 35.” “You’ve got 01 708 2399 extension 35. This is south London, not Birmingham. You dropped the 2 from the number.”

“Oh, sorry. Goodbye.”

Click, buzz, whirr.

Dale Haines

Bromley, Kent 1992

CB SAVIOUR

In August 1987 I was living in St Louis, Missouri, and I had to make a trip to Indianapolis for my divorce hearing. I left right after work on a Thursday evening and was travelling eastbound on Highway 70 through Illinois and into Indianapolis, listening to the radio and singing out loud as I do when I’m driving alone. All of the sudden a very clear ‘voice’ in my head said, “Turn on the CB”.

I wasn’t in the mood to listen to the CB so I just thought, well, that was weird and shrugged it off. Not 15 seconds later the ‘voice’ said, “Turn on the CB!” with an air of urgency. Again, I ignored it. A few seconds later the ‘voice’ screamed in my head “TURN ON THE CB!!” Not sure what was causing it or what to do, I turned the CB on. The first and only thing I heard was a man’s voice saying: “We have a drunk with no headlights travelling westbound in the fast lane of eastbound Highway 70. He just passed mile marker 178.”

As this was said, I looked up and saw the mile marker 177 sign. I instantly moved to the far right lane, and not more than two seconds later the drunk flew past me, heading in the wrong direction, in the lane I had just been in. I have no doubt that the warning saved my life that night. Rhonda L Perry by email, 2002

SNAIL HAIL

“AS I LEFT THE PHONE BOX I SAW IT WAS COVERED WITH SNAILS”

The following incident happened when I was a student living in Walthamstow, east London. It was either in the autumn of 1985 or the spring of 1986. I was ringing my mother from an old phone box by the Shern Hall Methodist Church, on the junction of Shernhall Street and Oliver Road. It was early evening, and a light rain began to fall. Suddenly, I heard a knock on the phone box. Assuming it was somebody waiting to use the phone, I turned around, but couldn’t see anybody. A few moments later I again heard a knock, but again couldn’t see anybody. The knocks continued at intervals of five or 10 minutes, but I didn’t pay them much attention.

I was on the phone for about an hour. As I left the phone box I saw that it was covered with snails. I think they were common banded snails. As a life sciences student, I could have taken a specimen home to identify, but I was too unnerved by the whole experience to be thinking logically. There were also snails on the ground in a small area (about one metre in radius) around the phone box. It looked as if the snails had fallen onto the phone box and some had crawled away. I couldn’t see any other snails in the vicinity. I wonder if the metal phone box had somehow attracted the fall of snails.

Ms KJ Kimberly,

Dagenham, Essex, 1996

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 countrry 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 best not shared here). We only caught a brief glimpse 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 while from our brief observation it was hard to make an accurate estimate, he was clearly larger than he should have been, perspectivewise.

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 practicallyminded 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

RAPTURE OF THE DEEP

As well as being my birthday, 23 August had a special significance for me in 1971. I was serving with the Royal Air Force in Malta and most of my spare time was devoted to the excellent diving club, run strictly to British subaqua rules.

I was one of four instructors in the club of about 140 members and my immediate boss was an experienced diving officer called John, known affectionately as ‘the old man of the sea’. An expedition was planned for a six-week period to explore the coast around Gozo, a small island off the coast. One of the sites chosen was a small inlet in Xlendi Bay, searching for Punic and Roman wrecks.

“HIS CLOTHING APPEARED TO BE SHINY, ALMOST LIKE FOIL”

The initial dive on the site by myself and another instructor called Bob revealed that we would be diving at depths often in excess of 130ft (40m). As there was no decompression chamber on Gozo, strict diving procedures would have to be followed. We were testing out an Italian decompression meter that John thought was unreliable.

The descent to 130ft was uneventful and all was going to plan when Bob’s demand valve started acting up, restricting his intake of air. Against all the rules, he indicated to me to stay down while he surfaced and sent down the standby diver to keep me company. I swam around for a while looking for anything of interest on the rocky ocean floor. I saw a light ahead of me and was drawn to it both by curiosity and by what seemed to be an unknown force.

Over the next ridge and much further down, I saw a very beautiful young woman, tall and slim, with a lovely figure, standing at the entrance to a large cave. She was dressed in what looked like a white Indian sari; she wore sandals, her hair was plaited, and her wrists were adorned with various bracelets. It was as if the whole thing was stage-managed. The incandescence of the surrounding area added to the serenity and calm of the sight before me.

I thought that I must be suffering from ‘the narcs’, nitrogen narcosis, described in the early days of diving as ‘the rapture of the deep’, a feeling of euphoria, closely resembling drunkenness. As a very experienced instructor with more than 200 deep dives under my belt I realised that I was in deep trouble, deep being the operative word.

A look at my depth gauge revealed that I was 230ft (70m) down. The Italian decompression meter strapped to my wrist had long since given up, as it was full of water. Fascination at what I saw overruled my training and my immediate need for an ascent and decompression procedures.

Then she spoke. “Hello, I have been waiting for you, do not be afraid, I mean you no harm, with me you are safe”. I backed away, but she smiled, walked towards me and held out her hand. It felt warm, sensual and safe, and my fear disappeared.

“When you return to me I will be waiting for you, then you will stay with me forever. I have a gift for you”. She handed me a small jar about 5in (13cm) tail shaped like an amphora, which I took from her with my other hand. “Now you must go. You will always be safe for your return to me,” she said. As I ascended, I saw her waving as she slowly faded from view into the azure depth. After a very long decompression stop aided by a spare set of air cylinders it was explanation time: the

needle on the depth gauge registered 235ft (72m).

“Faulty gauge,” said John, “because if it isn’t you are in a lot of trouble, with that sort of depth on the clock you had better stay within camp area and keep someone with you in case of any bends problem.”

About one week later I was summoned by John, who told me that the depth gauge had been tested and was completely accurate and serviceable, making my dive the longest and deepest in club historry. Why I did not get the bends was a mystery to him. He also told me that Mr Mallia, the curator of the archæological section of the Malta national museum, had identified the jar I had retrieved as a Phoenician scent jar of about 2000 BC, used by the royal ladies of that time. The mystery was that its contents still smelled fresh, the potter’s stamp on the side of the handle was crystal clear and the jar was described in the report as being in mint condition. John was curious where I had got it. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” I said.

In September 1995, I revisited Xlendi Bay and swam out to the entrance of the bay for old time’s sake. The next day, on my return to England, I suffered a severe heart attack. I was very fortunate to survive.

Ian Skinner

Hull, Yorkshire, 1996

MEETING THE REAPER

In 1986, I was 17 and studying engineering at Brooklands technical college. One evening, I was walking along the path from the college to the train station. I had either left early or had been delayed. Normally, the footpath would have been heaving with students eager to get home, but I was alone. About a third of the way along the path, I decided to relieve myself against a tree. As I did so, I looked back to see if anyone was coming. It was twilight, but light enough to see. Someone was coming from over the brow of the hill, but too far to worry about, so I carried on.

I looked back again and noticed the figure had gained some 30odd yards (27m). Thinking that it must be someone on a bike to have travelled that distance so quickly, I took one last glance before finishing and the figure had gained a lot of ground again. I walked back to the path and picked up my bag. Taking a quick glance again (thinking I should have heard a chain, tyres, that sort of thing), instead I was confronted by what can only be described as “the Grim Reaper” without the scythe.

The figure was wearing a hessian-type cloak with a black hood over the face. The cloak reached the ground and was hung over the body in a triangular-shaped fashion. I then realised that every time I had seen the figure it had been motionless as it was now, standing just 10 yards (9m) from me. It was more than 8ft (2.4m) tall. I should have been scared, but instead found myself almost drawn to it and took a step forward. We faced each other for what seemed like a few minutes but was probably only 20 seconds. When I came to my senses, I turned and gingerly jogged away without looking back. I reached a gate where I waited for the figure, thinking I might have been involved in a wind-up, but nothing happened.

Mark Sidwells

By email, 2001

SCHOOL WITCH

When I was at primary school in Nottinghamshire in the 1970s I had a teacher who left an impression more vivid than most. It was a very small school with only two classes and this teacher, a young woman, came in to take charge of the lower class, which included me. The first thing she did was to tell us that our soft toys came alive in our bedrooms at night when we were sleeping, and they played and danced around our sleeping selves. We didn’t believe her straight away but she was quite adamant this was true and there was quite a serious discussion about it that left one or two of the kids quite awestruck.

Not much noteworthy about that, but this teacher definitely had something slightly spooky about her (besides always wearing head-to-toe black, as I recall) that filtered back to parents and gave at least one of my friends nightmares.

Her big impression came at Christmas time. Word went round beforehand that this teacher had something planned for the party. There was a partition between the classrooms that was opened up after lunch one day, and the entire school of about 30 sat on chairs arranged around the edge of the rooms. ‘Miss X’ sat on the edge of the circle where the classrooms met while the headmaster handed her a long pole that was used to open the catches on upper windows with a brass hook at one end. All the curtains were drawn shut, so the room was dim. The headmaster said that she was going to ‘catch’ spirits. Holding the pole at one end with both hands, she closed her eyes and went into a trance, then started slowly whirling the pole around, calling out to the spirits she was evidently trying to reach. As her ‘performance’ intensified, the pole hook was smashed against the floor on each quickening rotation, Miss X shouting and working up into a frenzy, seated all the while.

This scene of her, with her splayed legs covered by an ankle-length black skirt, rolling her head and calling out as the pole’s hooked end smashed against the floorboards is seared into my memory. Of course the kids – and probably the other teachers – had never seen anything like this before, and I can definitely say that I haven’t seen anything like it since! The kids were pretty shocked by what was going on, some might have cried, so after no more than a minute of this the headmaster stepped in. The pole was taken off Miss X, the curtains were drawn back, and normal festive games resumed.

Unsurprisingly, there was a parental fuss over the episode. Miss X left very soon after and things returned to normal, until the school closed within a few months and subsequently became a tearoom. I went there for lunch recently, and while finding the same floorboards on which our witch teacher smashed her ‘spirit hook’, wondered what inspired her to do such a thing and what became of her.

Jerry Glover

Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire, 2011

SPECTRAL SOCK SWIPER

In 1959 when I was 19 years old, I visited Alnwick in Northumberland to see a friend. One afternoon, at about 2pm, I was

waiting for a bus in verry bad weather with thick snow everywhere. Standing to my right was an elderly lady. She wore a long black dress and shawl around her shoulders, her hair pulled back in a bun, her face very thin with deep, tired and sunken eyes. She commented on the cold day and then asked me if she could have a couple of pairs of socks. It was only then that I noticed that her feet were bare. I took off my socks and handed them to her. She thanked me, put them on and as I stood there watching she simply vanished into thin air! Needless to say my socks went with her.

I presumed she had died in or near that spot and that other people had seen her; perhaps many pairs of socks were now in her spirit possession. I was glad to help this poor unfortunate lady and maybe ease the pain of this earthbound soul. Throughout the encounter, she looked as real and as solid as a living human being.

Mrs VA Martin Peterborough, Cambridgeshire, 1998

WELLINGTON RETURNS

I am a home-visiting private tutor of music. About seven years ago, I began teaching electronic organ to Ian, a retired police officer. His instrument was located in a small annex and was flush against a wall. During the lesson I would sit to his right and slightly behind him, about 3ft (1m) from, and facing, the same wall. Immediately in front of me was a door. To my right was an adjoining wall at right angles to the other wall. My chair was touching this.

In the course of the fifth weekly visit and while listening to Ian’s organ work, my attention was drawn to the door in front of me, which on this day was ajar by about 8in (20cm). A large white and tan cat was slowly walking through the gap. Somehow, I hadn’t noticed it pass my chair. Recalling that my pupil had previously said he owned a cat and that it was incontinent, I followed it immediately, at the same time explaining my actions to him. The room was, in fact, a tiny closet with toilet facilities. There was no other door, no sign of the cat and no way it could have doubled back past me. I came out from the closet.

My host had run from the room, but returned promptly, holding a black cat. “I thought you were mistaken,” he said. “I knew the cat was asleep in the other room”. “The cat I saw was white and tan”, I said, “not black”. His reaction to this observation was

“WHAT YOU SAW WAS MY OLD CAT WELLINGTON. HE DIED YEARS AGO”

startling. He dropped the cat, and clasped his hands together. “Thank God!” he positively shouted, “Now I know I’m not insane! What you saw was my old cat, Wellington. He died six years ago and is buried outside. Since he died, I have seen him and felt him brush against me on many occasions. My wife thinks I’m mad. My son thinks I’m mad. Oh, thank you so much!”

Roy C Cotterill

Orrell, Lancashire, 2003

EERIE HOUSE CALL

In 1962, I stayed for several months in one of the narrow Georgian houses on Bathwick Hill on the outskirts of Bath. My husband, my daughter and two rather noisy dachschunds were also in the house, but nevertheless I often felt uneasy.

One cold November morning soon after Guy Fawkes’ Night, my dog Rudi suffered a virulent stomach upset. His companion, Liese, was unaffected, but Rudi grew noticeably worse and I obtained the number of the nearest vet from Directory Enquiries. The vets’ receptionist told me that a number of dogs in the area were being effected by some form of epidemic, but though every surgery was jammed she thought it might be possible to arrange a visit.

It was 7.30 and very misty when the vet arrived – an extraordinarily pale young man, tall, slightly built and somewhat taciturn – indeed, curt to the point of rudeness. He placed Rudi on the table in the basement kitchen and the dog stopped whimpering almost immediately.

After a minute or two the vet lifted him down and taking a small box from his bag broke his silence to tell me that the tablets it contained were to be taken every four hours. He said that the dog had developed a particularly nasty form of gastric upset, and for 48 hours he must be given no solid food. He would, however, recover if he took all the tablets. Considerably relieved, I tried to make light conversation as we went back upstairs, but he offered no response. As he went out into the foggy night, he didn’t even say goodbye.

The tablets worked well, and within a matter of hours Rudi was himself again. The following morning, I rang the vet with the good news. The receptionist said the epidemic was very much worse; she was sorry no one had yet been able to look at my dog, but someone would be calling later in the day. I told her a vet had already been, but she insisted I must be mistaken. Their Mr X, Mr Y and Mr Z had all been occupied in other directions; but she promised to check. She soon called back to confirm that no one from the practice had called at a house on Bathwick Hill at any time in the previous week.

I contacted Directory Enquiries and by luck reached the same woman I had spoken to the day before. She remembered giving me the number – just that one number – but suggested that with such a mystery it would be worth checking other vets. She assembled a list of every vet for miles around, which I double-checked with a borrowed copy of Yellow Pages. I rang them all, and drew a blank.

Rudi made a full and speedy recovery. What the tablets were I never found out, but at least they were tangible and extraordinarily effective. The young man had left without mentioning payment and I assumed I would receive a bill, but while we remained in that house – for a further three months – no bill arrived.

Perhaps the vet was visiting from another dimension; or maybe he was one of those people, frequently medical practitioners, who are said sometimes to be whisked through space, without their knowledge, to render help where it’s needed. We’ll prob

ably never know – unless there’s an ageing veterinarry surgeon who recalls mislaying half an hour of his life one November evening 37 years ago.

Ida Pollock

Lanreath-by-Looe, Cornwall, 1999

TIME-LAPSE ENCOUNTER

In the summer of 1988 or 1989 when I was 18 or 19, I used to go out with a girl who lived about two miles away in the Greater Manchester area. There were two ways to get there, one through a semi-rural area, the other along a main road. As it was a pleasant summer’s evening, I decided to take the semi-rural route. Around seven o’clock, I passed a farmhouse and was approaching a bridge over a railway when walking towards me I noticed a man wearing plus-fours, a flat cap and pushing an old-fashioned wooden wheelbarrow. As he came nearer, we started to look at each other with a sense of puzzlement. As I had long hair, I was used to being looked at in a strange manner and for my part, he did look rather odd. Assuming he was from the farm, I carried on walking.

Then two women dressed in what I can only describe as lateVictorian/early Edwardian dresses and wide brimmed hats came walking towards me. Again, we regarded one another with a sense of bemusement without uttering a word and passed each other by.

After taking a few more steps, I turned around for another look, assuming by this stage I had happened upon some guests on their way to a fancy-dress party. They had disappeared.

There wasn’t time for them to have reached the farmhouse, which was the nearest building. Unless they had darted into a field and hid behind a wall, there was no way they could have disappeared from view so quickly.

Feeling a bit shaken, I hurried on to my girlfriend’s, where my tale was greeted with a certain degree of mockery. The area where I lived was not up for historical re-enactments and this style of clothing was certainly not

de rigeur in late 1980s Greater Manchester.

Lee Stansfield

Stockport, 2003

THAILAND TWIN

I studied travel industry management at a small US mountain college from 1990 to 1995. There was an exchange programme with a university in Thailand, and in my last year of study I went to Chiang Mai in northern Thailand for a resort internship and then spent another week with a friend in Bangkok. Since graduating and returning from Thailand, I lost contact with many of my former friends until recently.

I received an indignant email a few months ago from my friend in Bangkok asking me why I hadn’t informed him that I was visiting his city. He said he was stuck in a traffic jam on Sukhumvit Road – Bangkok’s most important road and cosmopolitan area – when I had walked directly beside his car a few feet from him, which afforded him a face-to-face, close-up view. He rolled down his window and waved and spoke to me, but I was totally unresponsive and kept walking.

This was someone whom I knew very well over a period of many years and he would easily recognise my Anglo-Welsh face anywhere, but especially amongst a crowd of Thais where I would have stood out. My doppelgänger was dressed in my manner, had the same type of haircut and mannerisms, and my distinctive walk. I emailed him back assuring him that I was in the USA at the time of this sighting and had not been anywhere near Bangkok for over eight years; but to this day he insists that it was, in his words, “a hundred per cent you”.

This is only the most recent example of my doppelgänger making an appearance. About two years ago I was having blood drawn for routine medical tests when the attending nurses welcomed me back into the laboratory and asked me to please be more co-operative this time while being stuck with a syringe. I asked what they meant. It seems that I had been in just a bit earlier that same morning and had put up quite a fight while having my blood drawn, which is totally out of character for me. The nurses both insisted that not only did the earlier patient look and talk exactly like me but had on the exact same clothes as I was wearing. I assured them that it wasn’t me because I was in my GP’s office during that time; to which they replied that I must then have an identical twin in town who shopped in the same clothing stores as I did.

Alex Jones

Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 2003

AN OFFAL EXPERIENCE

Here is a report of a very strange night in the early autumn of 1989. At about 1:30am we were driving along a country highway between Montevallo and Alabaster in Alabama. It was overcast and there was an oppressive feeling to the air. We both became uneasy, but chalked it up to nerves. As we continued to drive, the impression that something wasn’t as it should be increased, and I drove faster, eager to get out of the country stretch of the road and into a lit-up area. I was a student at the University of Montevallo at the time and I had driven that road hundreds of times, but that night it felt different.

When we got to the intersection of Highway 31 with I-59, we smelled a horrible stench and I began to lose traction on the road, which seemed wet, although it had not rained recently. Slowing to turn into the Coosa Mart, I noticed that the road was covered in offal. There was an area about 400 yards (366m) long covered in animal parts, organs and viscera (at least I hope they weren’t human). They smelled bad, but not really rotten. It was a strange smell like ozone and sulphur mixed with fæces and, well, meat.

We pulled into the Coosa Mart and asked if the clerk had noticed anything. We thought maybe a truck from a meatpacking plant had crashed, but all the clerk said was he thought he had heard it raining very hard, but when he had looked out, the parking lot was dry. Soon after, a truck driver came in and also remarked on the offal in the road. We called the local police to see if someone could clean up the mess. As my friend and I had to get into Birmingham and were already running late, we left before the police showed up.

The next day I went by to ask about what happened and there was no evidence at all that there had been anything odd. They said the clerk had quit. I mentioned it sometime later to one of the Alabaster police officers and he

said he didn’t know anything about it, and suggested I not go bothering anyone else about it or they might think I was crazy and “lock me up”.

As I was driving back to Montevallo, I noticed what seemed to be deep holes in a pattern resembling footprints crossing a field and then crossing Highway 115. The holes in the field were surrounded by churned earth, but on the road they seemed melted into the asphalt. A road crew was already busy filling them in. Whatever it was had a stride of about 8ft (2.4m) and left “footprints” about 16in (41cm) across. For several years the pattern of footprints in the road was visible as the patches were darker than the surrounding road. Then they repaved the entire road. I asked around school and all anyone could tell me was they had heard there had been a one-car crash there the night we saw the offal, and that the car had burned. Mark Warner

Ooltewah, Tennessee, 2000

AN ANGRY GHOST

Following my divorce, our twoyear-old twins and I were obliged to go into rented accommodation. Having settled the girls at the local playgroup and started my selfemployed new career in the Lincolnshire village, I was loath to go far and couldn’t believe my luck when a 19th-centurry 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 talk

“SHE’S ANGRY, SHE’S VERY ANGRY, AND SHE DOESN’T WANT US HERE”

ed 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 storywhere 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

LOST ON GROUNDHOG DAY

About five years ago, my exgirlfriend was working in a bar in the centre of Dublin. She usually worked until the bar closed and would then walk about a mile home to the flat she was sharing on the outskirts of the city. One night as she was walking home, a car pulled up slowly behind her, the driver rolled down the window and asked her for the directions to a nearby hotel. She gave the man directions, walked home and went to bed. The following night, at exactly the same time, in exactly the same place, the same man, wearing the same clothes asked her for the same directions and headed off that way once again. Needless to say, it freaked the hell out of her as it did me. Jamie Davis

Dalkey, Co. Dublin, 2003

ID CARD ODDITY

Yesterday [4 August 2005] I went to put some rubbish in the bin outside my block of flats. The dustmen had emptied the bin the previous day and at the bottom of the bin I observed an ID card and three discs. The card belonged to Ian Graham, who worked for Huntingdon Council. I had last seen him 25 years previously when I was in a punk band called The Destructors. I was going to phone a friend who knew Ian to tell him I’d found his card, but my pay-as-you-go phone had run out of credit, so I put off the task until I could top up my phone the next day.

That night, I worked until 2am at the Metropolitan Club in Peterborough and as a result I overslept and missed my lift to work in Huntingdon on Friday morning, so I caught the train. A man leaving the station in front

of me looked familiar, so I walked up to him and asked if he was Ian Graham – and it was. I told him about the ID card. It turned out that he had thrown out a lot of stuff and his card had gone with the rubbish. The card had obviously been to the rubbish dump. There are 10 dustbins outside my block of flats; so what are the chances that it would end up in my bin, I would know the owner, and the next day run into him on a train I rarely catch? Alan Adams

Peterborough, Cambridgeshire, 2005

PRAM TURNS A CORNER

A friend and I witnessed the following bizarre event when we were in Marland Hill Primarry School in Rochdale, Lancashire, in the early 1990s. The main entrance was surrounded by a concrete football pitch and a descending grass verge – which, after a wooden fence, led onto Roch Mills Crescent. The day and time escape me – presumably sometime in the afternoon after lunch – but I do remember that both of us were standing on the edge of the football pitch by the grass verge overlooking the Crescent. I can’t recall what we were discussing, but it must have been important to me as despite my friend’s desperation to have me look across the road I wouldn’t stop talking and do so until he swore at me. While the event didn’t last very long I remember time seeming to drag as I tried to make sense of it.

When I turned to look at Roch Mills Crescent I saw an old fashioned blue pram, the material ripped and worn, its hood raised, moving rapidly down the middle of the road. My first instinct was to look for the mother who was presumably chasing after it, but there was no one on the road, leaving me worried that the pram and its presumed occupant would crash into the curb at the end of the road, causing a nasty injury. However, as the pram reached the end of the road, it quite smoothly turned the corner and carried on out of sight.

This ludicrous and surreal event left us strangely unnerved and played on our minds for some time. What now seems odd, aside from the obvious, is that no one else on the football pitch appeared to have seen it. Secondly, the tattered nature of the pram makes me think that it was a vintage one and unlikely to be in use in about 1994. Lastly, it was the stillness of the street that gave the whole incident an eerie feeling since, as I said, no one was around on the street to have either pushed or chased after it.

My friend and I have had irregular contact in subsequent years, but each time we meet the story is mentioned by one of us just as a way of validating that we did see this and that one of us hasn’t made it up.

I did think for a while that it might have been a prank, a remote-control pram as it were, but this seems as fantastical as something paranormal. I mean, why go to so much trouble to rig a pram with a remote control only to try it out on a quiet road with only schoolchildren to act as gullible rubes? I would love to hear of any other “paranormal pram” stories if they’re out there!

Michael Byrne

London, 2011

MARKING TIME

Back in 1985, a business I was I running was in a very bad way financially. I managed to conceal my problems from my parents, being determined to battle through on my own and not cause them concern.

My mother called me one Sunday morning, offering me some cash totally out of the blue. I declined the offer, but she said “I want to give it to you before I die,” which was a very strange statement to come from my perfectly healthy mother. I went to my parents’ home that afternoon to find my mother reminiscing over the “old days”, which was another strange shift in her outlook. I left the house at 2.30pm and precisely an hour later, my mother rose from her chair, collapsed and died from a heart attack. At the inquest, it was declared that she had been perfectly fit, with no evidence of any previous heart trouble.

After the funeral 10 days later, I went back to my parents’ house for the wake. On the mantelpiece sat a carriage clock driven by four revolving bearings. I remember that as a young lad of four I had been mesmerised by the to-and-fro action of the clock’s mechanism. It had never broken down or stopped in the 40 years that it had been on the mantelpiece - until the day of the funeral. It stopped at 3.30pm, the time of the funeral and the exact time my mother had died.

It remained stuck at 3.30 for five years until one afternoon, sitting with my father, I noticed that it was now showing 10.30. I mentioned this to my father who said that he’d cleaned it that morning and must have freed the jammed mechanism. However, it moved no more. The next morning, my father went shopping, fell down and died from a heart attack at 10.30am. The clock now sits in my house and has never moved since that time. CN Satterthwaite

Sollhull, West Midlands, 1997

TEDDY BOY TIME-SLIP

Back in 1979, when I was about 10 years old, my parents took my sister and me for a day trip to the Essex countryside. On the way home we passed through a small village. My dad drove down a one-way street and came to a T-junction, which was obstructed by a large, American car. It was a hideous ‘psychedelic’ purplish colour (almost like the rainbow effect you see on the back of a CD) but obviously well looked after, judging by the acres of highly polished chrome. I have never seen a car with such an unusual paint job, before or since.

The driver, a middle-aged man with the most absurd boot-polish black DA haircut and his partner, with an equally out-of-place beehive hairdo, were standing outside the car. He was wearing a yellow ‘teddy boy’ outfit and she a 1950s-style skirt and blouse. They had spread a tablecloth over the roof of their vehicle and had assembled a pretty large picnic on it. I remember plates and plates of exotic-looking food – much, much more than you would imagine for just two people, not just cheese and pickle sarnies – and a bottle of champagne in a cooler. These guys were just eating their dinner in the middle of the road without a care in the world.

There were parked cars down both sides of the street and this car was blocking the whole road. There was no way around them. My dad leant out the window and asked them what they thought they were doing. The guy responded that his car had broken down and that “we have called in the army”, which struck us all as a bit odd and was probably why my dad left it at that. So we backed the car up about 50 feet (15m) and turned into another road. We were passing the intersection less than 30 seconds later, fully expecting to see the

car and its owners enjoying their picnic – but car, picnic and owners had completely disappeared.

Even if their car had been working properly, I fail to see how they could have packed up their massive picnic and driven off in the verry short period of time it took for us to take our detour. My dad was incredulous and for a moment we thought we had come out on a different road, but we recognised the antique and bike shops on the corner. We drove around for a bit but couldn’t see any sign of the car or its strange occupants. It’s a mystery that has puzzled us to this day. Anonymous

Fortean Times Message Board, 2004

THE GUARDIANS OF THE CHURCHYARD

It was a sunny morning in the Summer of 1994 when my wife and I and our old friend Tony were visiting St Anne’s Church, Limehouse. We had become intrigued by the architecture of Nicholas Hawksmoor on account of its occult significance, and were ‘collecting’ his churches one by one. Even before entering the churchyard, Tony and I noted striding towards us along the pavement around the perimeter of the Church, a malevolent scowl on his face, a male dwarf dressed in black, who in the light of what unfolded later impressed us retrospectively as being a ‘Guardian’ of the place. Once inside the churchyard, we were especially fascinated by the Masonic symbolism of the tombstones and were wondering around reading the inscriptions when a strange sight met our eyes, although as is often the case with out-of-the-commonplace occurrences, it all seemed perfectly natural at the time. Grouped around a large obelisk on what was obviously the resting place of a wealthy individual were three figures. One was a young girl of about nine or 10 with long blonde hair tied back with a ribbon; she was wearing a calf-length flowered dress, white socks and shoes, and was playing peek-a-boo around the obelisk with her two companions – a pair of what might best be described as ‘old school’ male tramps. One wore a hat and a long black coat, the other a dark coloured shirt, waistcoat and trousers. All three turned to regard us solemnly for a moment, then their game recommenced.

We all later commented on the strange stillness which had descended on the churchyard; although a busy main road was just beyond the wall, no cars could be heard and the birds were silent. It felt as if a moment in time was frozen. We continued to look at the gravestones but when we glanced over to the tomb where the trio were playing there was no one to be seen; we were quite alone.

When we discussed the girl and her strange playmates we all felt that we had been in the presence of the Guardians of that place and that they were definitely from another time

“A MALEVOLENT SCOWL ON HIS FACE... A DWARF DRESSED IN BLACK”

and/or parallel dimension to which they had returned in almost the blink of an eye.

Guy Reid-Brown

Tunbridge Wells, Kent, 2012

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 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 verry 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

NO WIFE, NO FIRE

One day in the year 2000, I was alone in my New York apartment with my cat Polly when the telephone rang. An unfamiliar voice told me that “my wife” had just called to report that there was a “fire in my oven”. I told the “doorman” that I had no wife and there was no fire in my oven. (Spookily, however, there had been a fire in my electric oven a week previously.)

Shortly after he hung up, there was a knock at my door. It was two white men in their thirties.

They were in plain clothes and didn’t offer any identification.

They said they were from building security, even though I knew that all building security guards wear uniform. One of the men was very calm as he told me that “my wife” had called in to report a fire in my oven. I explained once again that I had no wife and no fire in my oven.

The other man seemed to be in a violent rage and told the calm man that he was “going in”, no matter what. His rage was very frightening.

Suddenly, Polly jumped up on a chair in plain view of the doorway.

As soon as the calm one saw the cat, he grabbed the angry one by the shoulder and pulled him away. There was no question that seeing my cat had some sort of effect on the calm one. A few moments later, an authentic building security guard, with uniform and badge, appeared at my door, once again saying that “my wife” had called to report “the fire” in my oven.

I denied both wife and fire, he shrugged his shoulders and left.

Who were these two men, one so relaxed, the other so furious? What was it about seeing the cat that caused them to retreat so suddenly? Who was the woman pretending to be my wife? Ronald Rosenblatt

NewYork, 2002

SPOOKY TOY MEGAPHONE

We lived for over 20 years in a house in suburban Melbourne. It was built in the mid 1950s and several families had lived there before us. There was always a peculiar vibe about the place; initially we put it down to the previous occupants. We’d met them once when we’d looked at the place while searching for a home to buy; after that, we always privately called them the Addams Family. When they’d moved out and before we moved in, we had to give the place a major clean. The previous owners had left the house in a filthy state

– one bedroom in particular had streaks of blood across the walls.

As soon as we moved in, odd things would happen: small objects such as jewellery and keys would go missing, only to reappear sometime later in strange places, for example between the sheets at the foot of a bed, or between dinner plates in a cupboard. Occasionally my wife and kids would glimpse a little blonde-haired girl in different rooms and my wife would regularly feel someone stroke her hair as she lay in bed at night when there was no one actually there. These and other things that happened never made us uneasy; we thought of the presence as just part of the house. Although this story isn’t really about the occurrences in the house, I think that somehow the vibe of the place played a part in it.

Our youngest son had been given a voicechanging megaphone toy as a present at my office Christmas party. It had three or four voice settings; one of the voices that could be chosen to alter the speaker’s was that of a child. Initially, the toy worked as it said on the box; but one day as I played with the kids an odd thing happened. As I spoke into the megaphone, my words were altered; not just my voice, but the words themselves. The sentence still made sense, but it plainly wasn’t what I’d said. In addition, the ‘child’ voice had taken on a weird impish quality, taunting and sneering at the same time. The first time it happened I thought that maybe it was because I’d misheard the voice from the megaphone, or maybe the batteries were going flat and altering the sound being reproduced in some strange way.

I replaced the batteries and tried again. The voice was stranger when I tried it again, but only when the ‘child’ voice was selected. Each time something was said, more words would be changed, the ‘child’ voice becoming creepier and more demonic. I clearly recall my statement “I’m going to tickle you” being reproduced in the ‘child’ voice as “I’m going to suffocate you”. I took the batteries out of the thing and put it well out of reach of the kids.

Sometime later, my brother-in-law and I were swapping spooky stories and I thought of the weird toy. He didn’t believe what I told him, so I got the megaphone down from its hiding place and had him try it out for himself. The first few things he said were reproduced in the ‘child’ voice just as he’d spoken them. Then the impish demon voice was back, twisting his words as it’d done to mine. But, not only did the words change, a horrible devilish giggle that made our skin crawl came from the megaphone. My brother-in-law looked at me with horror and dropped the megaphone as if it had sprung to life and had tried to bite him.

After that I took the batteries out of the thing again and put it up out of reach on top of a high wardrobe. I didn’t think about it for years and when we moved out, the megaphone wasn’t one of ‘lost’ things that always turn up when you move house.

I don’t know what happened to it; my wife and kids don’t know where it went either. I’d love to have it here now, in our new home. I’d love to try it again and see if the creepy little voice was just another aspect of the presence in the old house. It still gives me the creeps when I think about it, in particular that horrible little giggle that came from the thing the last time anyone touched it. Of the many peculiar things that we witnessed in that house and in another we lived in for a short time, the megaphone

was the only one that seemed sinister. The rest of the experiences appeared to be benign, even playful at times. The ‘child’ voice from the megaphone was neither benign nor playful.

Gary Smith

Victoria, Australia, 2012

BEWARE THE HANTU! AWAS PONTIANAK!

I recently spent 16 months living and working in Malaysia, where I was given a spacious, partially furnished flat in an apartment block for workers of my government employer. The flat overlooked a large grassy field and a neat bank of palm and banana trees. I was told by one of my neighbours that the land on which the houses had been built had once been the gruesome location where civilian prisoners had been executed during the Japanese occupation in WWII.

At night this area was silent and unlit – the perfect atmosphere for hearing and seeing what we might otherwise miss in a loud, bright and busy environment. I had no distractions – no loud music, no TV, no noisy neighbours or traffic outside. My senses therefore picked up on any eerie sound or unexpected movement.

However, I think what made this housing block a ghost hunter’s paradise was that the entire top floor was uninhabited and had effectively been sealed off for years. The previous occupants, before moving out, had apparently complained about their repeated encounters with Hantus – mischievous spirits that shift furniture around and hide valuable items such as wallets and purses for days on end. I myself was a victim of the Hantu infestation in the building as I would often wake in the morning to find things out of place, moved or missing. I was always annoyed when the Hantu would hide the front door keys.

Sometimes a chair or another item would be placed in a part of the house where I would never have placed it myself. I was especially uncomfortable with the sudden appearance of a chicken bone on the floor beside my bed one morning. I tried to reason away its presence, and I assumed that it had fallen off a dinner plate and had somehow been kicked into the bedroom, unnoticed and previously unseen. This theorry was shattered when the bone moved to the top of my bedside cabinet while I was taking a shower.

When I questioned my neighbours, they all had a similar story to tell about things that go bump in the night. Indeed, Malaysia has to be one of the most superstitious countries on Earth, having a huge assortment of ghosts and demons to chose from in popular folklore. Despite the country being Islamic, religious

“THERE WERE BAD SMELLS AND CHAIRS MOVING BY THEMSELVES”

leaders have not managed to completely dispel the ancient beliefs of the people, and stories of village, forest, graveside and animal ghosts remain. Belief in supernatural entities has also been reinforced by other ethnic minorities in Malaysia, such at the Chinese and Sri Lankan communities, who have brought their own occult practices and mythology to the country.

As the months passed, my apartment was visited by the Hantu on numerous occasions, all of which resulted in a generally unpleasant atmosphere. There were bad smells, extreme insect infestations, and the house itself was prone to being struck by lightning, one strike resulting in my computer being completely destroyed by a power surge. None of these things is remarkable in a tropical country – but how about chairs moving by themselves?

One quiet evening, as I stood on my balcony getting a breath of fresh air, I happened to glance back into my living room, through the glass patio doors. What I saw made me freeze with sudden shock. The wooden chair on which I had just been sitting was now rocking gently as if I were still sitting on it (I have a habit of rocking a chair on only its two back legs). The movement only lasted a moment, but it was unmistakable – the chair had been in an unexplained state of motion.

The vista from my balcony also awarded me a site – this time of a Pontianak, a banshee-like relative of the Langsuir, or female vampire. Traditionally, the Pontianak manifests as a woman dressed in a green or white robe, and is said to be the tortured soul of a woman who died in childbirth. The malevolent vampire is thus said to enact its revenge on young men and pregnant women. Malaysians are very fond of Pontianak horror movies, but hardly any of them would ever believe someone who said they actually saw a Pontianak.

But that is indeed what I believe happened to me. On the night in question I was reasonably alert and reminiscing about all the things I had done and seen in Malaysia. I was listening to the sounds of the night and trying to work out just what plant or flower was causing the unusually sweet fragrance in the atmosphere. As I stood on my balcony watching small bats chasing moths around the building, I was suddenly alerted to a very large creature flying up to the top branches of a palm tree directly in front of me. It was very big – far bigger than a bird or monkey. It seemed to be human-like, to have four limbs, a head and a long body. I also heard it screech like an angry eagle.

It was too dark to get a good look at the creature. I was tired and not wearing my glasses. So yes, I admit it could have been a local animal or giant bird that I wasn’t familiar with. However, from the pictures and horror films that I’ve seen which portray the Pontianak, there was a striking resemblance.

Why didn’t I grab a camera and get some photographic proof of the event? Why didn’t I run outside and try to grab the monster before it flew away? Why didn’t I shout wildly in the hope of attracting the attention of other people who could act as witnesses? The simple answer is that it all happened so fast that I didn’t get a chance to do anything other than question what I was seeing in total amazement. I mean, what would your reaction be to a flying female vampire directly outside your window?

After seeing the Pontianak, the last few months in Malaysia became rather trying to say the least. I became ill and fatigued all the time. I lost weight and I often awoke from a restless sleep with unexplained bruising and scratches on my arms and neck. Logically, rather than being the result of a Pontianak’s nightly attacks, perhaps the bruising and illness were more likely caused by my constant battle with mosquitoes. Perhaps I was hitting

the insects so hard when they landed on my body that I was inflicting those weird injuries upon myself. But I cannot explain the final two encounters, which I suppose convinced me that I was not imagining the presence of either the Pontianak or Hantu ghost in my house.

About one month before I was due to leave Malaysia, I was in the kitchen making a cup of tea after a hard day’s work. I was tired and completely off guard. As I opened the fridge to get some milk, something tapped my shoulder and let out a blood-curdling scream right behind me. It wasn’t loud, but it sounded as if it was played backwards; as if someone had recorded the scream and then rewound the cassette tape. Not a pleasant noise to hear I can assure you. Of course, when I spun around, expecting to be confronted by a fang- toothed demon or the dead girl from the Japanese movie Ringu, I found nothing. Simply the dried-out floor mop leaning against the kitchen wall, and a bundle of small rubbish bags attracting a convoy of red ants.

The final encounter came only a week before I left the countrry. I was in the living room, busily typing away on my computer, sending emails to family and friends far away. There was a bad smell in the house, but I didn’t think much about it, as there were often unpleasant aromas in the building, caused by blocked storm drains and sewage overspills.

I was leaning over my computer when a black shape filled my peripheral vision. It was the size and shape of a person – the shape of someone standing directly beside me. I jumped up from my seat and adopted a martial art stance that I had learned in my youth. All common sense and reason had now disappeared – as had the black spectre! I shouted at the walls of my empty house. I shouted and swore at all the Hantus and Pontianaks of Malaysia. I was fuming with anger and shaking with fear. I had not imagined the black ghost beside me – the vision was far too real. Something nasty had stood right next to me, but had vanished in the blink of an eye.

I got no sleep that night, and told everyone in work about it the next day. My colleagues sympathised with me and told me various ways to banish Hantus – salt in the corners of the room, candles around the bed, lucky charms, prayers and spells. But I don’t think anyone really believed my story. I didn’t care about that; I only cared about leaving that haunted apartment and getting a good night’s sleep – something I hadn’t been granted for most of my ghost-tortured stay in Malaysia.

As a rational person, I could put all the hauntings down to sleep deprivation, mosquitoes, insecticide, too much coffee, overwork and being 10,000 miles from home. But another part of me truly believes that I actually saw a Hantu, or a Pontianak, or both.

I made a sign for the front door of the apartment on the day of my leaving. I just wanted to alert the next tenant that all may not be well, and that caution should be taken when dismissing stories of ghosts in the building. “Beware the Hantu! Awas Pontianak!”

Devlin Ferris

By email, 2011

THROUGH THE DOOR

In 1958 I was enjoying my annual summer holiday with a handful of other children on a vast Kenyan cattle farm at Machakos, 40 miles (64km) from Nairobi, owned by a young English family. The eldest at 12, I had my own room, unlike the others who shared “dormitories”. It was a small dressing room reached via the bathroom. The door between the bathroom and dressing room was the only way in and out, and the single window to the dressing room was heavily barred to prevent intruders. The farmhouse formed a large U-shaped bungalow around a central lawned courtyard. At that time there was no electricity on the farm, and lighting was by kerosene lamps.

One evening we sat playing cards and telling ghost stories to frighten each other and ourselves, which we did. I went to bed slightly jumpy, but after locking myself into the dressing room with the heavy 6in (15cm) long key, I soon fell asleep.

I awoke suddenly to see at the foot of the bed a figure, about 8ft (2.4m) tall, apparently draped in a beige sheet. It slowly and silently raised its arms upwards from its sides, and in terror I leapt up and rushed from the room, yelling, my heart beating so hard and fast that it felt it would burst. As I raced across the courtyard, some adults charged out, the men with guns, the women shouting excitedly.

Breathlessly I explained that there was a huge ghost in my room. This caused great amusement, and I was shepherded into the house, filled with cocoa and biscuits and a little tot of brandy, and assured that I’d had a nightmare. About an hour later I had calmed down sufficiently and two of the women took me back to my room. The dressing room door was locked.

“Where’s the key?” they asked.

“I haven’t got it,” I replied.

“Well you must have, because the door is locked.”

“I didn’t come out of that door,” I answered, “I went through the other one.”

“There isn’t another door. You must have come through this one. Now what have you done with the key? Do you think you dropped it?”

I kept explaining that I hadn’t stopped to unlock the door, and had run through the other door, but of course I knew there wasn’t another door. By the light of the kerosene lamp we searched high and low in the courtyard for the missing key, without success. The men were summoned, and using a piece of metal found the key still in the lock, inside the dressing room. It was carefully pushed out through the keyhole onto a sheet of cardboard and retrieved through the gap beneath the door.

We stood staring at the key, the adults amused and impressed by what they thought was a clever trick. I continued insisting that I had not come through the door, and soon their amusement turned to irritation. I couldn’t have climbed through the window, because it was barred.

As we could all quite clearly see, the place where I said I had run from the room was occupied by a large wardrobe standing in front of a thick stone wall. For several days the event was discussed with equal measures of amusement and irritation, as there was no rational explanation, and eventually the subject was dropped and faded. I have never since had any similar experience.

Susie Hiscock

St Romain en Charroux, France, 1997

BALD MAN MYSTERY

In my mid-20s I worked in the maintenance department of a factory and we had an electric clock system operated from one central clock in the reception area. One day all the clocks in the factory stopped at 12.10pm. My supervisor tried in vain to restart the main clock. At this point – and I really can’t explain this – I knew I had to see my girlfriend. She lived in a small village a good 10 miles (16km) away from the factory and I couldn’t drive back then. Somehow, I managed to convince my boss that I had to leave work straight away, but assured him I would make the time up the following day. I walked to the outskirts of town and then took a country road leading to where my girlfriend lived.

A short distance along the road, a car pulled over and the driver asked if I needed a lift. Perhaps he knew the buses weren’t very regular at this time of day, or maybe he was just a Good Samaritan. The journey didn’t take very long and he soon dropped me at the flat my girlfriend was renting. I knocked on her front door several times and when she finally opened it she seemed confused, and had a nasty red burn on her left forearm. I asked if she was OK, but she just stumbled back into the living room and collapsed on the sofa.

After a short while, she’d recovered sufficiently to tell me that she’d been ironing in the living room when she had an eerie sensation that someone was in the flat with her. At that point, she accidentally caught her arm with the iron and fell back in shock. That’s when she saw an overweight, bald, middle-aged man, sitting in the corner of the room staring at her. Within seconds he disappeared. I reassured her it was probably caused by the shock of the burn. I stayed with her that night, but I didn’t dare mention to her that the man who gave me the lift was overweight, bald, and middle-aged. Of course, it could have been sheer coincidence that the descriptions matched, but what I couldn’t explain was that, other than asking if I wanted a lift, there was no conversation between us during the journey. Then I realised that I hadn’t even told him where to drop me off. He already knew.

Mark Braybrook,

Hampshire, 2013

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