IT HAPPENED TO ME...

First-hand accounts from FT readers and browsers of www.forteantimes.com

Columbo returns

I was interested to read in Ghostwatch about the paranormal activity at Wentworth Woodhouse mansion in South Yorkshire [ FT355:19]. A year or so ago, my wife bought me a “ghost hunting” expedition at the mansion and we, along with a number of what appeared to me to be somewhat suggestible and excitable other people, turned up to investigate the allegedly spooky goings-on there. Whilst many other people reported seeing mysterious shadows and hearing strange noises (Fellow ghost hunter: “OMG!!! Did you see that figure walk past the window just now?” My wife and I: “No”), we did witness, as Mr Murdie referenced in his article, the phenomenon of a chair “unexpectedly appearing”, to wit the lights being switched off in a room leaving it pitch black and then being switched back on a minute later to reveal that a chair had materialised behind someone.

However, the most perplexing manifestation occurred during a Ouija board session in the main entrance hall. After a bit of tabletipping, the entity in contact with us started to spell out somewhat random letter sequences until eventually a coherent word started to form: F... A... L... K... At this point, I blurted out “Are you Columbo”? The glass immediately zoomed across the table to the YES card. No one else round the table seemed to think it was remarkable that the shade of Hollywood actor Peter Falk had chosen to make contact with this earthly realm in a mansion in South Yorkshire. I like to think, however, that even from beyond the grave, Mr Falk in his guise as LAPD detective Columbo had just one more thing he wanted to share with us. Chris Owen Doncaster, South Yorkshire

Clerical saviour

I live on the southern borders of Wiltshire and before the M4 was built I frequently used to visit my old home in Pembrokeshire on a 100cc motorbike, travelling north until I hit the A40. The journey took many hours. Returning once in the autumn in about 1964, I had reached the bleak, thinly populated plateau above Gloucester when the bike broke down. No traffic and no habitation. I just pushed it along in the failing light, cursing my luck.

Presently, a large lorry drew up, driven by a parson. He asked me what was wrong and said he often got a feeling when something was wrong and drove out to investigate. We loaded the bike onto the lorry, went to his vicarage to have some soup and then he drove me all the way home. His wife seemed resigned. I have always been lucky, but this was pushing the edge of reality too far. Patrick F James Salisbury, Wiltshire

Ghost motorbike

One clear summer’s evening in the late 1990s, I was driving with my partner on the M62 from Manchester Airport to Hull. It was about 10.30pm and still slightly light when we left the airport. By the time we got past Junction 34, the traffic was very light and I was driving in the inside lane. At one point, I could see the single headlight of what I presumed to be a motorbike in the middle lane behind me. It was travelling faster than me and getting closer and I assumed it was going to overtake. The next time I looked in the rear-view mirror it was no longer there. I could see the headlights of several vehicles about a quarter of a mile behind me, but no sign of the bike or a single headlight. I thought it was unusual for a motorbike rider to decide to slow down and drop back, but dismissed my slight unease.

I continued in the inside lane for another five to 10 minutes until I saw a slower-moving van ahead and needed to pull out to overtake. When I looked in the rear-view mirror before signalling, the single light of ‘that bike’ was there again in the middle lane. I muttered something along the lines of “Hurry up and get past, I want to pull out”, which prompted my partner to look in the passenger side mirror to see what I was talking about. Just before the bike caught me up, the light disappeared again and all I could see in the orange flashing light from my indicator was an empty road... My partner confirmed that he too had seen the light just disappear. We were both quite spooked and discussed possible explanations, but came to no conclusion. We agreed that even if the bike’s lights had cut out suddenly due to an electrical fault and the driver had quickly pulled over on to the hard shoulder we would still have seen the physical shape of the bike reflected in my indicator or rear lights. There was just nothing there. Gina Culling By email

Copycat

We had an experience very similar to that of Gavin of Pembrokeshire [ FT355:76]. A few years ago my wife Mandy opened the front door at the behest of our beautiful Maine Coon, Mumbycat, who wanted out. She carefully ensured his magnificent brush of a tail was well clear before closing the door behind him. She then turned round and walked the dozen or so steps back into the kitchen… only to find Mumby sitting by his food dish, and looking up at her, calm as you like! Mandy’s care in watching him leave precludes any possibility of his having suddenly doubled back unseen. As in Gavin’s account, there was no direct access from the front of the house to the back door with its cat flap. Mumbycat would have had to nip out to the road, down the length of the neighbour’s front and back gardens, jumped up on to, and then down from, the high fence at the bottom (the dividing hedge and fence between the gardens being virtually catproof), then back down our back garden, some 50ft (15m), and in through the flap with a crash. No chance.

Bilocation? One thing’s for sure: “Cats is fairy” all right! Roger Wyld Dorchester, Dorset