It Happened to Me...

Readers write in with their own accounts of strange phenomena [FT442:64]

A bent fork

On the evening of 10 October 2023, my son and daughter and I were eating dinner in a local Mexican restaurant in Tucson, Arizona. We were eating soft food with the usual restaurant utensils. I told my son the anecdote about how Uri Geller got a woman pregnant via TV without being sued for child support. You know, the IUD incident.

I was very wrong to tell this story because my daughter’s attitude toward Geller is just like Amazing Randi’s, and I had promised not to mention Geller in her hearing, ever. “We agreed,” she reminded me sternly, “not to speak Uri Geller’s name.” She inserted the fork she had been using all evening into her squishy fried beans. The fork came out bent over a third of its length.

“Lousy inferior metal,” she murmured, staring at it. My son and I said nothing. I am sure Randi would have examined the fork, compared it to my son’s and mine (which weren’t bent) and quizzed the restaurant staff about how often their forks ‘melted’ in refried beans. Strangely, my daughter didn’t.

I think that’s just as well. John Keel believed there are cosmic tricksters that never really die and devote themselves to making everybody miserable. And what did the Indrid Cold gang really do to him? Got him expensive arguments with the telephone company, that’s all. If Geller is one of them, he’s much higher class. He’s had a very entertaining life of fame, adulation and controversy, not to mention money, and he could keep everybody stirred up without torturing them. He worked miracles, helped people learn about their psychic powers, advanced scientific knowledge, met outer space aliens, charmed ladies, modestly admitted he wasn’t perfect, and tricked innocent people out of their money by outrageous con games – depending on whom you ask! Never a dull moment, no peace!

He must be preparing for his next incarnation now. If he plays a good-natured prank on a critic’s fork, why complain? What I really

I had promised not to mention Uri Geller in her hearing, ever

can’t believe is that, until I wrote this letter, I didn’t think of stealing that fork. Guess I was just too well brought up.

Leslie Vinson Tucson, Arizona

my This is house

Ms Levack’s letter about her late mother’s habitual concern that she wasn’t wearing her coat and the stranger who approached her to ask the same thing reminded me of a weird incident that occurred when my estranged uncle died (about six years ago).

The day before the funeral I was at home alone and happened to glance out the window. A stranger, a young man of about 20, came walking along the footpath outside our gate at a fast pace, turned quickly into our driveway, and rapped on the front door. I answered and immediately he began babbling incoherently about this being his house and demanding to come in.

I had never seen him before, and had lived in the house for years, it having been left to my mother when my grandfather died. I calmed him down, told him that he must be mistaken and he seemed to come to his senses. With a baffled and slightly embarrassed look he retraced his steps and I never saw him again. I pondered the strange incident for some days afterwards. It was rather disconcerting.

My late uncle had been in a dispute with my mother over the house and always maintained that it should have been his. He probably went to his grave feeling cheated out of what he believed was his rightful inheritance.

Ms Levack’s deceased mother seemingly inspired a complete stranger to ask her where her coat was; was this another example of the same kind of thing? MGS (name and address on file) Ireland

A French fairy

When my brother retired from his job as an electrical engineer on Sealink Ferries, he and his wife Pat bought a house in the tiny village of Sistels in southwest France, the nearest city being Agen. The building was a tumbledown ruin and in need of a lot of renovation. They bought a caravan as a temporary home and set about restoring the house. I would go and stay with him for a week or so, every now and then, helping with all the work that needed doing. At the end of the working day, while dinner was cooking, we would cycle to Dunes, the next village, and have a couple of drinks in the bar in the centre of town in the Place des Martyrs (Martyrs’ Square). This was named after the 12 men executed by the Germans, who were advancing northwards to oppose the D Day landings. The French Resistance had harassed the German Army ever since they left their southern base and because of this, a unit of SS soldiers marched into the village, selected 12 men and hanged them from a balcony in the square. Oradour-sur-Glane was their next stop.

One evening in the bar, as we were enjoying our beers, bathed in wonderful warm evening sunshine, all of a sudden out of the corner of my eye I saw what I can only describe as a fairy, drifting through the air. She was about 2ft (60cm) tall and a beautiful golden colour, with silky wings and a lithe female body. She moved slowly towards the shutters of the bar windows that were pushed back against the wall. She glided towards the shutter, disappeared behind it and was gone.

Well, I thought this was a track of the light, my imagination running wild – but then my brother exclaimed, “What the hell was that?” For my brother to react like this was very unusual. He was not given to flights of fancy. I shot up and looked behind the shutter: nothing, absolutely nothing. We sat there looking at each other and then in unison said, “Did you see that?” We asked each other what we had seen. I described the figure, but my brother would only admit that it was something very strange.

Stuart Smith

Walmer, Kent

Phone call from beyond

This is a story that I have carried around with me for nearly 50 years. At the time I was employed as a clerical officer for the Department of Health and Social Security in Great Oaks House in Basildon, Essex. The office in Great Oaks in the mid-1970s when this incident happened was spread over a number of floors with the rest of the building being occupied by other Government departments. The analogue telephone system was typical for its time in that there were very

few direct lines in to the building. Most desks had a telephone which could be rung internally from another telephone in the building, but which could only be connected to a member of the public ringing from outside via the manually operated switchboard.

Each person claiming benefit had a case-paper wallet within which was stored all claims that person had made both current and dormant. When the case was current and being worked on, it would be kept on the desk of the staff member who was working on the case; if it was current but not being worked on, it would be filed alphabetically in what was called a ‘Live Run’. If the case was dormant, it would be filed alphabetically behind a pink index card, this time in what was called the ‘Dormant Run’. The claims themselves, and all work undertaken on them, were paper-based.

The following events took place in the mid-1970s, on a Friday afternoon just after 5pm. At that period the office was open to the public from 9am to 5pm, Monday to Thursday, and 9am to 4:30pm on Friday. On this Friday as per usual, with the office having closed at 4:30pm, most staff had left. I was on the floor that had the public waiting area on it, which by this time was locked. The staff side of the public waiting area opened on to an open plan area part of the office through one door. The office side of the public waiting area had two desks, both with telephones on them. As I was walking past the door to the staff side of the public waiting area I heard a telephone ring. Had I not been near the door even in a deserted office, it is highly unlikely I would have heard it. What struck me was why would anyone be ringing that phone after that part of the office had been closed for over half an hour? What really threw me was the fact that these telephones had two ringing tones by which you could tell if the call was internal or external, and the tone told me that the call was external.

My first thought was how can this phone be ringing with an external call if the switchboard itself had been closed for over half an hour? I picked up the phone and could hear the voice of what I took to be a very old woman who sounded as if she was miles away, since I could barely hear her and make out what she was saying. I kept asking her to speak up, but all I managed to ascertain before the line went dead was her name and the fact that she had not eaten for four days. I put the phone down and as I walked out of the public area a work colleague called Joyce approached me. I told her what had happened when the phone rang again, again with the ringing tone of an outside call. I asked Joyce if she would take the call while I went up to the switchboard to see what an earth they were doing putting calls through at this hour. When I got to the switchboard the room was in darkness and it was quite apparent that no one had been there for some time.

I went back downstairs and Joyce told me the conversation she had on the phone, which exactly mirrored mine, before the line again went dead on her. As before, the woman sounded miles away and had just stated her name and the fact that she had not eaten for four days. We both went over to the ‘Live Run’, but could find no case paper wallet there and in the ‘Dormant Run’ we found an index card for the person, but again no casepaper wallet behind it. It was now near 6pm, so we decided there was really nothing we could do even if we found the case-paper wallet, so we decided to leave it until Monday when we were back in the office.

Monday morning came and I was sitting at my desk when I saw Joyce approaching me looking as white as a sheet. She said she knew why we could not find the woman’s case-paper and why she had not eaten for four days: the case-paper was filed within the ‘Dormant Run’ within which is a ‘Dead Run’, where cases are filed when the case goes dormant due to death. The woman had died on the Tuesday, three days before the Friday phone calls.

Geoff Tuffnell

Acomb, North Yorkshire

Editor’s note: For more on this phenomenon, see ‘Phone calls from the dead’ by Theo Paijmans [FT405:30-35], and FT246:8, 289:18-19.

RIP

I had a similar experience to SD Tucker’s account of his dream of Kirsty MacColl at the time of her passing [‘Not Waving, But Drowning’, FT442:65].

Back in the 1990s I would stay at a friend’s house on a Saturday and he would drive me home the following day. On one such stay in 1998 I had a rather mundane – for me – dream which was memorable only for its context. The whole dream was just a casual discussion between me and my friend over whether they would continue making Father Ted now that the actor who played the titular character was dead. This was odd because, as far as I knew, the actor was very much still alive. During the drive back to my home on the Sunday I told my friend about this dream and we had a bit of a laugh over how random it was.

Later in the day I headed down to my living room just as the early evening news was finishing to be greeted by my mother declaiming, “You’ll never believe what’s happened!” She then told me that Dermot Morgan, Father Ted himself, had died suddenly of a heart attack the previous night. I instantly called my friend so we could both be baffled by this turn of events.

Back in the mid- to late 1990s I used to usually to go to sleep listening to a radio, most often tuned in 5 Live or Radio 4. I didn’t, however, take my radio with me on a Saturday night and would instead sometimes listen to my friend’s CD Walkman with the headphones pointing towards me, on repeat. So there was no chance I had heard this piece of news on the radio while I slept and it had worked itself into my dream. I also believe the news of his death had not been released until the Sunday afternoon.

Like SD Tucker’s dream this wasn’t a precognitive dream but somehow knowledge of something I couldn’t possibly know or wasn’t party to, happening at the same time. No lottery number premonitions for me then!

Stu Ferrol

Hexham, Northumberland

Raining Stones

Reading the poltergeist stonethrowing feature [FT442:30-35] made me think of an incident that happened to me in 1992. I was waiting for a 101 bus at North Woolwich in London on a quiet Sunday afternoon on my way back from my then girlfriend’s place in Abbey Wood. It was early spring, slightly cloudy but there was no sign of rain. The bus pulled up at the stop and I waited for the driver to condescend to let me on board.

Gradually at first, I became aware of little stones pitter-pattering around me. My first thought was “Bastard kids again!” But no, it wasn’t very developed around there in those days and quite open. There was nowhere they could’ve been. This was a steady rain of yellowy brown stones and pebbles, similar to the type found in sand and gravel pits, and getting heavier. I put my leather jacket over my head for protection. The stones hit the side of the bus and actually smashed one of the side windows. The stones stopped after about 30 seconds.

As it was only me at the stop, I was expecting the bus driver to get out and have a go at me, but he just started the engine and drove off. I stood there thinking that maybe that sort of thing happened round there all the time and waited for the next bus. It’s something that’s always puzzled me.

Kevin Birnie

London

She said Dermot Morgan had died suddenly of a heart attack