It Happened to Me...

Strange episodes

At the back of the houses where we lived in Flint, North Wales, there was a high wire fence between concrete posts, beyond which was a very overgrown embankment with the railway line on top. On a late autumn morning in 1964, when I was 12, I was in the back garden. Noticing that the wire had become free at the base of one of the posts, I decided to wriggle through and see what was on the other side. I must have walked for about 10 minutes going past the rear of neighbours’ and friends’ houses. I came to a clear patch and sat down. As I looked around I realised that the familiar was now the unfamiliar. It all seemed somehow “reversed”. My left hand was resting on the ground and I felt something smooth under the palm of my hand. Looking down there was something white just beneath the soil. I pushed my fingers in and brought out the skull of some creature no bigger than the palm of my hand. I looked again and saw another white shape. I brought this out and it was another skull.

Then from behind me I heard a woman’s voice say “You’ve found the little dragons”. Startled, I turned around and saw two women smiling down at me from the top of the embankment. My next recollection is arriving home feeling very tired. My mother had been very worried because I had been gone nearly five hours. As soon as I could I went to bed. I dreamt there was a huge dragon crashing through the trees at the bottom of the garden. In the morning when I went out onto the street I was surprised to see police cars and fire engines. Later I discovered that a freight carriage had come off the rails in the middle of the night. It had come to rest where the little dragons were buried.

• Between September 1966 and December 1967 Mr Adams taught at our school in Flint. He was a fantastic charismatic teacher and was much missed when he left. In July 1968, when I was 16, the summer holidays were about to start. Richard, a school friend, and I walked into the Year 5 classroom. I noticed Pam was sitting with some of her friends, looking very upset. She said that she had dreamed she was in her kitchen and her father came in, sat next to her and said “Mr Adams is dead, his body is still in the car.” Then her father pointed to the Scrappy, an abandoned scrap yard just outside the village. It was the sort of place our parents warned us never to go; advice of course we ignored.

We arranged to meet there that evening at 6pm. When I arrived, Richard was already there with Pam and two of her friends. A huge solid metal gate blocked our entry, but the hinge at the bottom of the gate was rusted away, so it was relatively easy to push your way inside. The yard was quite big, about half the size of a football field. Thousands of tons of metal lay around us. There were five derelict cars. The least derelict, which could have been a Ford, was to our left. It had windows and doors but no wheels. There was a partial registration that read ADM 5. We got within 10ft [3m] of this car and stopped. Through the front passenger window we could see something sitting in the driver’s seat. Richard suddenly dashed forward and flung open the front passenger door. In the driver’s seat was a black plastic bag, which was moving. Suddenly it fell over onto the passenger seat and a black rat jumped out of the car. It ran between us and disappeared under the scrap metal.

Then something changed. It was as if the yard was watching us. It became silent. There were three loud metallic “cracking” sounds, seeming to come from the back of the yard. We made our way back to the gate. Again, there were three loud cracking sounds, this time closer. I turned around and saw the front passenger door of the car was now shut. I heard Pam crying. When I looked I saw her nose was bleeding. A friend gave her a tissue. Another three loud cracking sounds, closer still. We got to the gate and Richard pushed at the rusted hinge. It wouldn’t open. We both pushed and it remained shut. Pam was now covered in blood. I picked up a metal bar lying a few feet away and we wedged it in the gate to try and lever it open. It wouldn’t move. Again three loud cracks but this time the sound seemed to be above us.

Richard never swore, but now he did and I looked where

Her father said: “Mr Adams is dead, his body is still in the car”

he was looking. Something was moving under the scrap metal. We saw it lift and undulate. We levered the gate again and this time it opened. The girls went through then Richard held it for me to go through. This I did and pushed at the gate to hold it open for Richard. As he came through I heard a snapping sound and Richard cried out in pain. There was a deep cut on the back of his leg. The next day I saw Richard. His mother had taken him to hospital and he had needed 12 stitches in his leg. While there he saw Pam with her parents. Pam had needed treatment to stop her nose bleeding.

By the way, Mr Adams was not dead. We found out he had got married and was teaching in London.

• The upturned boat had been lying on the sand and shingle in Wrexham, North Wales, for as long as I could remember. It had no name. It was the size of a single deck bus bleached white by the sun and salt air. In the summer of 1977 I was 25, waiting on the quayside for my girlfriend, and looking out onto a wide expanse of sand and sea. An elderly man and his dog came to stand a few feet away. The dog ambled over and I bent down to scratch its head. When I looked up there were three children playing in the surf – a girl of about five or six who appeared to have rags tied in her hair, and two older boys who were running in the sea with their trousers rolled up. The girl looking intently at the sand, then reached down and picked something up. She showed it to the boys who came running over to get a better look. Then they ran around the girl obscuring her for a second. Then I watched the girl looking intently at the sand, reach down and picked something up, and show it to the boys who came over to get a better look. Then they ran around the girl obscuring her for a second. Then I watched… I realised the scene was repeating and repeating. I turned to look at the man next to me. “They’re always there,” he said, indicating the upturned boat. “That’s where they’re from.” He walked off with his dog. When I looked again the children had gone. My girlfriend arrived and I said, “I’ve just seen something really weird!” to which she replied, “You are really weird. Let’s go for a drink.”

• We had a dog, very much a part of the family. She was 17 years old when she died in 1985. Many years later, I had parked the car and was walking to work in Mold, North Wales. It was a bright sharp spring morning and my mind completely blank. Suddenly she was with me. I could see her, I could feel her, I could smell the musk of her coat. Then she was gone. Maybe she just came to say “Hello”…

• It was February 2016 and I was driving to work in Barrow, Cumbria. I went onto the dual carriageway, which was about five miles [8km] from my destination. Up ahead I saw a cyclist. He was wearing a very distinct bright yellow cape with an Aztec design and a bright orange helmet. I was gaining on him very quickly so I kept him in view. Then he disappeared. I slowed down in case he had fallen off his bike, but he was nowhere to be seen. Minutes later I was driving up the main road into town. There he was again. Same cape and helmet! Feeling a little uneasy as I drew close, I moved my car to the extreme right of my carriageway. Inexplicably, he moved his bike to the space in the road where my car would have been. Had I not moved my car to the right he would have been under it.

Stephen Roberts

Levens, Cumbria

Silent flashes

I live in the middle of Richmond, Virginia, a small city in the USA. This house faces east-west, within about two degrees. To the west, behind the house, is a large cemetery on the other side of an unpaved alley. Within an eight-block radius, I have about 67,000 neighbours, 64,000 of whom are dead. The truly odd thing about the cemetery is that there are very few ghost stories arising from it, even though it has been in place since the middle of the 19th century.

One evening at about 11, the cat and I got into bed and I started reading Dr John E Mack’s Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens. At about 11.30 I turned the lights off. I can see the cemetery and the alley behind the house through the one bedroom window on the west wall. I noticed a small white light in the cemetery. That’s usually the light of the security service car that will investigate reports that someone is in the cemetery after hours. A few seconds later the white light – really just a white disc; it didn’t radiate light – was visible, moving in the alley. There’s no way to get from the cemetery to the alley in a few seconds.

A few seconds later, there was a huge flash outside the house, which I assumed was distant lightning. At 11.46 I saw an intense spot of light, about five inches [13cm] in diameter, on the top of the bookcase on the west wall, which lasted for about a second. Another such spot appeared for a second or so in the corner of the room on the same wall. The cat reacted to the lights, so it wasn’t just me (she left the room). One way to create this event is to have a very bright light that would be precisely aimed through the one bedroom window to reflect off the mirror. I saw nothing like that outside the house. For lights to appear in those places, the source could have been at the door to the bedroom, but nothing was there. I went downstairs and looked through the entire house. When I got back to the bedroom, another spot of light appeared at the ceiling plate of the chandelier, mere inches away from me. I touched the place and felt no warmth or electricity.

I decided to wait in bed for whatever might be next. I felt my skin crawl, as described in horror stories. The bed ‘buzzed’. It vibrated rapidly, probably about the same as the 60Hz power in the house, although the bed is not connected to any power line. I’ve felt the bed vibrate from the effects of distant earthquakes, but this was not like any earthquake. Next was a spot of light on the wall opposite the one on which the first lights appeared. It looked like a physical thing, a yellow shaft coming from the very back of the house, through the bathroom window, through the dressing room, and into the bedroom where it struck the east wall. I don’t know how that happened because, while there’s a direct line from the window on the back of the house, there was a closed door between the window and the wall. After this, there were flashes outside – bigger than a camera flash. Nothing more happened. I fell asleep but woke at 3.30am shouting about something.

There was no wind and no branches had fallen during the night. There is a power line behind the house, parallel to the cemetery fence. That circuit is connected to the cemetery only, but no one who lives on the circuit ( in the old cemetery-keeper’s cottage) has complained about interruption to their power. That night, thunderstorms were forecast all night, but they never arrived where I live. I can see lightning if it’s within about 12 miles [19km] to the west and about five miles [8km] to the south. Nothing was visible. In spite of this, I assume that what I saw was ball lightning.

A most curious aspect of that night is that there were no outside noises. Normally in an American city, there are sirens frequently, traffifific noises, the sounds of voices, boom boxes in cars, and loud motorcycles. But this night, there was none of that. This event remains unexplained. Explanations are hereby solicited.

Michael Holt

Richmond, Virginia

It became clear this was not related in any way to a fair, scientifically based challenge, not even to a spirit of fairness or curiosity, only to publicly debunk a subject. The more militant brand of scepticism was only interested in closing subjects down. ‘Scepticism’ had become a kind of religion with entertaining characters like Randi and other prominent debunkers as the church leaders. Paradoxically from this experience I discovered a community of British sceptics via attending a number of talks organised by Chris French at Goldsmiths University and made some great friends and had many great discussions.

I have mixed feelings about all this. I know Randi did some good things and exposed some undesirable characters, and many good people hold him in high esteem.

However, I came to see him as an articulate charismatic showman who in so many ways mirrored the people he chased. It was certainly entertaining at times but very little to do with science (and sometimes cruel).

John Roberts

Romford, London

Did I like James Randi? No. He was a condescending old fart whose ‘challenge’ may have been as harmful as helpful (dangling a million dollars might take care of the frauds, the crackpots, the scientifically illiterate... but for those of us that know better, who are of the opinion that whatever ‘actual’ paranormal phenomena are, they are too weak and fleeting to be of any use other than as a subjective experience, the offer of that much money is insulting.

Did I respect the man? God and Goddess, Yes. Because of him, fake faith healers, evange

lists, spiritualists, etc. received permanent damage to their reputations and careers. While many have rebounded and are again fleecing the gullible, they know we’re onto them. They will never again have quite the power they once enjoyed. Kevin Alan McDougall Victoria, British Columbia

Salt sprinkler

Regarding war ghosts [ FT405:76]: many years ago, my then motherin-law related a strange experience she had during WWII. She was in the Women’s Royal Naval Service, and she and her colleagues were allocated accommodation in the spacious attic of an old country house. She recalled being woken up in the night – on more than one occasion, I think – by a shadowy black monk-like figure sprinkling something over her that seemed to be salt. The extraordinary circumstances of

the time, when so many people were being moved around the country and needed to be accommodated, must have meant that many an owner of an historic house did their bit for the war effort by opening up rooms that had been vacant for years or decades... if not for centuries. Julie Speedie

York

London wildlife

A retired friend of mine used to work for Thames Water and had to go down into London’s sewer networks, where he often saw turtles and crocodiles swimming – presumably abandoned pets that had been simply flushed down lavatories. He was adamant about this, echoing the classic New York urban legend of alligators in the sewers. Have any other readers heard of this London parallel? Phil Brand

London