Helpful Ghosts, Lurking Phantoms and Hauntings
"A naïve little idea of mine is that so many ghosts in white garments have been reported because persons, while asleep, have been teleported in their nightclothes."
Charles FortFT98:
Something extremely weird happened to me a few years ago. Strange weather conditions had prevailed for some hours, and by 3pm it had settled on being a bright, though cold, blustery spring day. I set off with our two dogs to collect my daughter from the local primary school. Part of my journey lay along the very top of a thinly-wooded valley. As I walked along the stony path that overlooked the valley, I idly scanned the grassy slope leading down to the lake. I saw a couple sitting on the ground, which must have been very wet and cold following the heavy rain not long before. The woman was wearing a blue summer frock. From their posture, they might have been lovers picnicking in an August heat-wave.Within 20 minutes I was back at the same spot, accompanied now by my daughter, her friend, her friend’s mother and two more dogs. I could still see the woman in the blue dress and I drew my companion’s attention to her, noticing as I did so that her Alsatian was also looking that way. Yet my companion saw nothing, and neither did I when I returned my gaze, having only averted my eyes for a few seconds. The slope was completely deserted.
We spent no time discussing it then, as the weather suddenly turned again as it had done so many times that day, and for the rest of our walk we were lashed by wind, cold rain and hailstones. Overhead the sky crashed with thunder and lightning and we hurried to get out of the wood. Minutes after reaching home, my companion on the walk came to my house in a state of agitation. When she had entered her house she saw an object passing the window. This she described as a UFO, a big thing in the air with people looking out of the windows. This "vehicle" had apparently hovered outside her window for a moment or two before going away. We were unable to find any rational explanation for it, or for the earlier happenings. One thing we both agreed on: it had been a very strange day. Sue Murray, Leeds, West Yorkshire.
FT99: In November 1963, I was driving from Cheltenham to Chipping Norton at about midnight. On a lonely part of the road which goes straight across the high Cotswold ridge, I was overtaken by a dark Morris Minor with its interior light switched on. The car seemed to be full of young people and, as the vehicle overtook me, they appeared to be moving about and laughing. It was a very strong impression. The car passed me at considerable speed, only to black out a few seconds later. I switched my lights to full-beam as I feared I would crash into them. Imagine my amazement when I saw a long empty road ahead of me. I tried to calculate whether they had been driving so fast that they were now out of sight, but this was impossible given the length of the road ahead and the duration of the overtaking. The next day I drove back along the route to see if there was any turn-off and discovered only the odd shut farm gate leading into a field. Florence Jenner, Hurst Green, Sussex.
FT102: As a sequel to Florence Jenner’s letter describing an encounter with a phantom Morris Minor [FT99:52], my brother-in-law had a similar experience driving home to Berinsfield, just south of Oxford. Like Ms Jenner he too was followed late at night by a car with its interior light switched on to reveal four occupants – although in this case they weren’t "moving about and laughing", but sitting bolt upright in their seats, staring straight ahead like statues. The car was black and seemed oddly old-fashioned, although he wasn’t able to tell the exact make or model.
It followed him in complete silence for several miles, accelerating and slowing down to ensure its speed matched his, finally overtaking at a junction only to vanish as suddenly and mysteriously as it had appeared. He still regards the experience as strange, disturbing and decidedly out of the ordinary. Since Berinsfield isn’t all that far from Chipping Norton where Ms Jenner’s strange experience took place, it doesn’t seem to unreasonable to suggest that he might have seen the same car. Dean James, Finningley, South Yorkshire.
FT102: Thirty years ago I went on a school trip to St Machar Cathedral in Aberdeen and I wandered away from the rest of our class with two friends. As we passed the bridal arch entrance to the Cathedral, I saw three very large purple fingers with long black finger nails appear from a gap in the door. I stood and watched as they popped in and out of the door several times. My friends walked up just when they disappeared again. I asked them if they had seen the fingers; they said no, but at that moment they popped out again. They were visibly shaken. I suggested that someone was behind the door with a fake and that I would go and kick it. Just as I got close, they popped in and out three or four more times and then protruded even more. We decided it was time to go – and ran so fast that Lindford Christie wouldn’t have kept up with us. We told our teacher what had happened, but as we were aged only 12 he didn’t believe us.
Later, we found out that William Wallace’s hand is buried in the Cathedral. At the time of the Braveheart film the local newspaper got hold of my story. I asked the public if anyone could shed any light on what had happened, but nobody replied. I asked the minister if he had heard of any strange goings-on, but he hadn’t. Steve Adams (by email).
FT104: I read the article "Spooky" in [F92:34] with great interest. I was in fact reminded of a haunting at my old home town. In Cumbernauld, there is apparently the ghost of a Viking warrior haunting the sports centre. The centre is called Tryst, and apparently the ghostly figure will appear at night, wrecking sports equipment and wandering up and down the corridors in full battle dress. I am guaranteed the story is true, and the Tryst no longer hires a night watchman because of the frightening encounters experienced by the last guard brought on by contact with a fully equipped Norse berserker. The exact reasons for the haunting are unknown, but it could be due to the Tryst being built on an old burial site (just under squash court 3). Craig Thomson, Heriot-Watt University (by email)
My grandmother came over for a visit sometime afterwards and my mother took her on a guided tour of the house. "Oh," my grandmother said as she went into one room full of boxes and clutter, "you never said you’d got a cat!"
"Of course you have. I can hear it purring."
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FT107: I’ve an interest in a bizarre and terrifying incident which happened at a Greek Army barracks in 1969. That night, a sergeant was woken by his dog, an Irish Setter, growling at the door. The dog started whimpering and he experienced a high-pitched humming in his head. Fearing a terrorist attack he got out of bed and looked outside. He was confronted with a glowing entity – just the head and shoulders with no body. It was humanoid, wide-eyed, with reddish-ginger hair and what appeared to be a tight fitting silver suit. The NCO watched transfixed as the creature slowly floated up the stairs, then rotated its head a full 360 degrees. He fled back into his room, slammed the door, grabbed his harpoon gun, loaded it and aimed it at the door, behind which he could hear a scratching sound which eventually faded away. The following morning, the quivering NCO and his terrified dog were discovered by colleagues. Gary Watson, Cramlington, Northumberland.
I was told to stare hard at a fence 20ft away, where I could instantly see movement. After a few minutes an apparition came plainly into view. It was humanoid, at least 7ft tall and wearing dark, heaving clothing. It had a white, pear-shaped head with two dark eye sockets as its only features. The head was topped by tight orange hair, flat on top, which gave the face the appearance of being an upside-down triangle. Its arms were very long, almost touching the ground, and it carried a black doctor’s bag in one of its gloved hands.
Despite its malignant appearance, I didn’t feel afraid and watched as it repeatedly took one step forward and then return to its previous position, like a projection. It faded after about ten minutes and my friends commented on how much clearer it was than when they had seen it the night before. One of them was terrified and suffered nightmares for weeks afterwards.
I returned several times, but despite feeling uneasy, I never saw it again. Has any reader seen something similar? Karl Thornley, Gorleston, Norfolk.
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FT108: 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 very 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 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 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 V A Martin, Peterborough, Cambridgeshire.
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I had been told rumours of strange sounds coming from the dense woodland surrounding the stone, and an untraceable "sweet" odour permeating the air near the tree-line, so last October while staying with my family I visited the grave with my sister. I heard nothing but the whispering wind, but as I was thinking of heading back to the car, a "sweet" odour caught my nostrils. I tried to trace its origin. I walked around and found a patch of funeral flowers which lay just at the fringe of the tree-line which I concluded was the origin of the smell.
The next day I returned to the grave to show my niece. I stepped into the smell again. This time I went to the flowers and inhaled deeply, but they had no scent. I stepped back into the realm of the odour, and it became clear that it was not coming from the flowers and I couldn’t trace its origin. It was strongest when I stood in the middle of the trail about 30ft from the gravesite. David Desimone (by email)
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On 8 August 1997, I was stargazing with two friends, Kevin Donnelly and James Davies, at Fossebridge near Bourton-on-the-Water in Gloucestershire. At about 1:30am we noticed some strange lights in a field to the west. Thinking it could possibly be some late night harvesting (as local farmers had been doing at that time), we drove off to investigate.
We turned off the main road onto a much smaller road. After a short distance a light appeared very suddenly in my rear view mirror. My two companions noted that it seemed to belong to an old-fashioned motorbike with a side car. Through the darkness (there were no streetlights) it also seemed that the rider was wearing no helmet. The bike (or whatever it was) followed us closely and we were all agreed that something strange was going on. After what must have been about four minutes we came to a junction and the vehicle vanished. There was no indication that it had turned around as no tail lights were visible. None of us saw the bike actually disappear – it was merely there one second and not there the next.
Somewhat perplexed, we eventually returned along the road to see if there was a simple explanation. As in Florence Jenner’s encounter, there was the odd closed farm gate leading into a field which could not have been opened, driven through and closed without us seeing it happen. Could we have seen a similar phenomenon to that described by Florence Jenner and Dean James, that we interpreted differently – or was it something completely different? Graham J Salisbury, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire.
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FT111: Are there any reports of ghosts moving with an unrelated family? Our London bedsit was haunted by the previous tenant, an old man who died in the flat and was left for several weeks before the body was discovered. When we moved from London to Bolton, the ghost came too and settled into the new house. Both my husband and I have seen him, a dim figure apparently wearing a dark overcoat and hat, usually just ducking around a corner or through a door. He sometimes stands just behind you, so you get the feeling of someone peering over your shoulder. During periods of upheaval, such as when we were packing up and preparing to move, or when I spent a week in hospital after an accident, he has banged hard on the furniture, especially the bed – hard enough to wake a sleeper. But if he was haunting the original flat because he died there, why come with us? Can any readers give suggestions? Roberta Davies, Bolton, Lancashire.
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FT116: Australia was colonised after the coming of the First Fleet in 1788. The colonists moved quickly inland from the Sydney area and up into the breadbasket of the Hawkesbury River. In 1974 I lived in the area between Sydney and the Hawkesbury Basin. I was a young teenager and went camping with a friend about two miles from my parents’ home. The area was thick bush with a number of streams in steep and narrow canyons. We decided to spend the night in a sandstone "wind cave" which had been used as a campsite by the Aboriginal people for thousands of years. It was along the side of one canyon above a convict-built dam on a nearby creek. As we made our way to the spot, we came across two other campers and agreed to camp together and share our food and fire.
At about 9pm the temperature was close to 29C and the smoke from the fire was whisping out of a hole in the roof of the cave. There was a lot of clattering along the opposite face of the canyon and lights among the thick eucalyptus trees. We saw an adventure in stalking the party of hikers we believed to be moving down the track beyond the trees, so we broke into two pairs each containing one person from each original group. The first pair headed west to move to the top of the far side of the canyon and come down behind the lights while my partner and I headed east to put ourselves in deep cover in front so that we could get a good look at them and see if they promised good sport. The position we finally chose was only about 50 yards from our cave but out of sight of it. There was a clearing sprinkled with convict masonry and we secreted ourselves in a shrub-covered ditch alongside.
Things happened very quickly. The clatter and ring of equipment came closer and the glow finally came to the edge of the clearing. A group of people came into the clearing and a couple carried lanterns. These did not give a lot of light and everything was in a slight haze, even though the night had been clear. They walked across the clearing. Much of the clatter came from the leg irons of the convicts. There were six or eight of them altogether and they were surrounded by a group of soldiers armed with muskets.
The bodies of the prisoners indicated great tension mingled with exhaustion while the soldiers seemed weary but alert and even angry. The prisoners’ heads were bowed and they seemed to carry weights in their hands against their chests. They dragged their feet. The soldiers appeared to be forcing the pace. Their faces and details were indistinct as though my mind did not want to see. I heard the sounds of their passing, heavy grunting, clunks and rattles, but no talking.
Early in the history of Europeans in Australia there had been a convict uprising. It ended horribly about ten miles from this spot and I have always felt that I had witnessed some unrecorded march of the doomed following that event. They moved noisily across the clearing. Their feet appeared to scuff the sand not more than a yard from the bloodless face of my fellow adventurer and no further from mine when the simply winked out.
The other boys raced into the clearing 30 seconds later. They had tried to get within visual range of the light, but had to cover a great distance first and had not been able to catch up. We were all jumping up and down, yelling at each other. I am not sure that the other boys were ever really convinced of what it was that we saw, but it was dawn before we stopped searching and chattering. Stephen Solomons, NSW, Australia.
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FT121: 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 dachshunds 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 noticably 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 affected 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 the 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 – 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 probably never know – unless there’s an aging veterinary surgeon who recalls mislaying half an hour of his life one November evening 37 years ago. Ida Pollock, Lanreath-by-Looe, Cornwall.
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FT122: I thought you might like an update on the events at my Welsh farmhouse and field [FT113:26]. Although no more visions have been reported in the field, it remains a haven of tranquillity, a place of healing both mental and physical. Most of the "paranormal" activity is occurring in our farmhouse.
We appear to be haunted by a friendly monk who is almost like one of the family. We have called him Brother Adolphus (Brother Dolly for short). I have seen him on three occasions: my adult daughter, Adrienne, once; and my 13-year-old Down’s Syndrome son Jean-Paul, claims to see him quite often. Even when he is not visible we are aware of his presence. Brother Dolly walks the landing and the staircase and most nights we hear his footsteps. Sometimes he lifts the latch on the bedroom door as if about to enter, then thinks better of it.
In October 1998 a stain in the shape of a cross materialised over the mantelpiece in our sitting room. On 2 January 1999, after a few days’ holiday, we came home to discover writing on the wall of the sitting room. The word is tangnefedd, which we have discovered is an Old Welsh word for peace. It is usually used in a religious context and is seldom heard today.
As you can imagine, we find all this activity intriguing. Our pet monk’s presence is totally benign and the farmhouse exudes a warm friendly atmosphere. Rose-Mary Gower, Mold, Flintshire.
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FT125: I find myself becoming more and more intrigued by the phenomenon of animal ghosts since I encountered one myself. When my wife Jackie and I were moving into our current home, I saw a black cat watching us from the main hallway.
What was unusual (apart from the cat being in our house when there was no means of entry) was the way it seemed apart from its surroundings. The effect was similar to what would be achieved if you cut a picture of a cat out and stuck it over a picture of our hall, taking no regard of lighting and shadows. I watched the cat for a moment, and then it was gone, though I cannot recall it actually vanishing.
My wife and I own cats, and one of the first jobs I had to do in our new home was to install a cat flap in the back door. The previous owners had not owned cats, so I was a little surprised to find the hole for a cat flap had already been cut in the door and then boarded over. I was slightly more surprised to find clumps of old black fur caught around the edges.
Since then, both Jackie and I have seen our "house guest" frequently, though I seem to see him with more clarity and regularity. His presence doesn’t appear to bother our living cats, but may go some way to explaining why they have taken to wandering the house yowling oddly, something they never used to do. Chris Halliday (by email).
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FT127: The letter from Rob Stock regarding spirit visitors to the dying reminded me of an incident that occurred in 1951 when I was three years old. Three adult-sized figures glided, rather than walked, down the hallway and through the closed and locked front door, during the night when it was dark. All three glowed softly. The centre one seemed weak, being helped and supported by the person on either side. How was I able to see them clearly while my body was asleep upstairs in a cot? Why did they all ignore me, standing only a few feet away? How did they get through the door?
Next morning my mother explained that my uncle, in whose home we were staying, had died in his sleep. Years later I learned that he had had a massive heart attack. I tried to explain to the shocked and grieving adults who gathered for the funeral that I had seen uncle with two "helpers", but my vocabulary was sorely deficient. Who would listen to a child? Most of those unheeding folks have since died.
Were the figures I saw "angels" coming to fetch my uncle’s soul? If it was just a dream, why have I remembered it so vividly for more than 40 years? Valerie Riddell, Turriff, Aberdeenshire.
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FT127: In 1985, there was a girl at the junior school in Flixton, near Manchester, which I attended as an 11-year-old, who had an interest in strange and paranormal occurrences. She claimed the house she lived in was haunted and would casually mention the activities of her live-in phantom – a young girl in white robes with long blonde hair. She told me that she was once woken by the sound of running water and found the apparition floating above the bath next to the flowing taps. They had a short conversation, though I don’t know what about – rising water rates?
Once she brought to school a pretty conch shell, white and about 5in (12cm) long. I asked if you could hear the sea if you held it up to your ear and she told me it was better than that and asked if I wanted to listen. I heard the sound of crashing waves, followed by other noises, like the creaking and groaning of a ship’s rigging. I told this to my best friend and he pressed his ear to the shell and said he could hear it too. Then there were drums, faint at first, but growing steadily louder, then chanting (similar to a tribal chant, but more menacing). All these sounds were very clear and well defined. Muffled voices and scuffling sounds were followed by a piercing scream, so loud that people 10ft (3m) away turned to look. I whipped the shell from my ear and turned to look at my friends. I didn’t need to ask if they had heard it; their faces were ashen.
The girl said that the shell always did this, the noises sometimes lasted from several seconds to several minutes, but always very clear. She told us that from what she had heard over several "listenings", she had the idea that the story was of a crew shipwrecked on an island inhabited by cannibals and the fate of the sailors was gruesome and gastronomic.
We spent the rest of the lunchtime telling each other that we had not heard anything out of the ordinary, that it was just our imaginations. But really we knew it was definitely not a normal event or a normal shell. Jake Willott, Urmston, Manchester.
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FT128: One day some 20-odd years ago, when I was about 10 or 11 years old, I was bicycling in Sheffield along Ecclesfield Road, known locally as "The Woodbottom". It winds along for about a mile and a half between Wincobank and Shiregreen, with no turnoffs. On one side of the road is a wooded hillside (Wooley Woods) and on the other a line of trees behind which is a railway line and, further back, some industrial units. It was Saturday afternoon at around 4:30 when the incident occurred. I can confirm this as when I got home the football results were on the telly.
I was cycling back from Shiregreen towards Wincobank where I lived. The Woodbottom was empty of traffic, which in retrospect seemed odd for that time on a Saturday. As I pedalled along something made me look round. As I did, a car came around the bend behind me. The car drew up alongside and kept pace with me. It was black, with all the windows blacked out or heavily tinted. I had no interest in cars and could not identify a make or model. It looked a little like a taxicab without the taxi light. However, the strangest thing about the vehicle was what sounded like a cacophony of shouting voices coming from inside it.
As the car kept pace and began to get nearer to me, I began to panic. My front wheel jammed against the kerb and as I tried to turn the handlebars I was catapulted over them, landing on a grass verge, dazed and frightened. I lifted my head to see the car shoot off towards Wincobank.
Some moments later, as I lay on the grass, I heard the sound of an engine, and saw a man on a moped coming along the road from Wincobank. He looked straight at me, turned in the road and pulled up alongside. I was still very shaken but felt no fear as the man dismounted and knelt down next to me. Without saying a word he checked me for broken bones, stood my bike up and put the chain back on.
Eventually he asked me what had happened. I mumbled something but it probably wasn’t coherent. He was in his mid-forties, with greying hair and a grey beard. When I had finished my rambling explanation he nodded his head but made no comment. He asked me if I would be all right and I assured him I would as I was almost home anyway. Then – and this is what disturbs me the most – the man rode off towards Wincobank, the direction he had come from.
I cannot shake my conviction that the man on the moped expected to find me there. Not only that, but I believe his sole purpose was to see that I was okay. What is difficult to convey in words is how bloody strange the whole scenario felt, right from the moment I first saw the car. And there really should have been plenty of traffic on the road, but I saw no other vehicles (or pedestrians) between Shiregreen and Wincobank. Darren S, Sheffield.
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FT128: There has been some extraordinary activity in our house since I wrote the update on our haunting [FT122:50]. The first word to appear on the wall was tangnefedd (peace). This was followed at regular intervals by about 20 other words, all in Welsh and mostly of a religious nature. None is threatening. The words appear as a brown stain, slightly darker than the paintwork. Some have almost appeared before our eyes; one minute they were definitely not there, the next they were. Others have materialised slowly over days or weeks.
Brother Doli (he prefers the Welsh spelling to "Dolly") is very much in evidence. We have his self-portrait on a stone at the top of our staircase with the word mynach (monk) carved on it. The figured appeared one day and the carving several days later. However, the lettering does not look new, but seems worn as if it had been there for years. A cross over our mantelpiece appeared last October, but comes and goes at intervals. Recently, it has been joined by four other crosses and a stain resembling a ninth century Celtic chalice. These also appear as brown marks on the stonework. A Christian symbol – a P running through an X – appeared in a couple of places on the wall and fireplace in June 1999.
John-Paul, our 14-year-old Down’s syndrome son, says he sees Doli all the time in his bedroom and is trying to teach him to play Nintendo. After a recent short holiday, John-Paul went straight upstairs to play Nintendo and was decidedly put out when Doli stood in front of the TV screen so he couldn’t see what he was doing. We came to the conclusion that this was our monk’s way of saying welcome home. When he was acknowledged, Doli went back to his usual place by John-Paul’s bed and normal play resumed.
On two occasions I have felt someone sit on the end of the bed and shuffle around until comfortable. It was light enough to see that there was no one there. I assumed it was Doli.
He is a sensitive soul. If a joke is made about his presence, he responds very quickly with another word or cross! This seems to be done in a slightly reproachful tone. After making a disparaging comment about our spook, my husband David woke up one morning to find himself in a pair of underpants different from the ones he was wearing when he got into bed. We eventually found his boxer shorts neatly laundered and back in his underwear drawer. We also found the word mynach embossed on some papers he was working on.
In March 1999 we were visited by a Welsh sensitive who claimed to be able to communicate with Doli. He said a mounted soldier killed our monk with a sword on the nearby river bank in 1613. Doli thought he was too young to die and wanted to do some good in the world. He felt our family would be receptive towards him and that is why we experienced the phenomena in our field [see FT113:26] and now the writing on the wall. The sensitive said that Doli has feelings of affection and goodwill towards us, in particular to John-Paul.
The sensitive did an automatic drawing of the event on the river bank where Doli is supposed to have met his end. The gentleman’s hand appeared to travel over the paper at tremendous speed as he sketched the scene. Naturally, we remain a little sceptical about his analysis of our haunting.
Researchers have discovered that it is quite likely that our house is on a pilgrim route to St Winifred’s Well at Holywell in Flintshire. The monks could have come from Shrewsbury or Valle Crucis Abbey in Llangollen. This ties in with some recent words on the wall: pererindod (pilgrimage) and Amwythig (Shrewsbury) with an arrow pointing towards Treffynnon (Holywell).
Providing Doli’s haunting stays as friendly and benign as it is at present, he is a welcome part of our family. Rose-Mary Gower, Mold, Flintshire.
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FT130: When I was eight, I awoke one night to see a figure of a woman standing by my bed. She was bathed in a blue light and, although this is now 41 years ago, I still remember it vividly. I did not feel threatened, just enthralled.
Until recently I dismissed it as a childish fantasy. However, it came up for the first time in conversation with my mother how is now 80. We started talking about strange happenings and I was amazed to hear her say "Well of course, I remember the blue lady you saw". It seems – and all this was said with no prompting by me – that my shouts woke her up. She came along the landing and saw a blue light coming from under the door. Despite her concern, she said she simply could not enter the room and stood outside it calling for me to come out. I replied "Mummy there’s a blue lady in here. She’s beautiful."
Finally responding to her calls, I got out of bed and left the room. She says that the glow was intense when the door opened, but due to the angle she was at she saw nothing. The rest of the night was spent in her bed, as my father was working nights on the railway.
The amazing thing is this had never been mentioned between us until this chance remark. Keith Harland, Chadderton, Greater Manchester.
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FT131: Chris Halliday’s encounter with something he believes to be a feline ghost [FT125:52] is almost identical to an experience I had myself some 10 years ago. He describes the thing that he saw as looking as if "you cut a picture of a cat out and stuck it over a picture of our hall, taking no regard of lighting and shadows". I would have described the mysterious black cat that I saw as looking distinctly two dimensional and sharply trigonical. Another arresting feature that I remember noticing were the thing’s eyes – cut-out, or almond-shaped, holes through which I could see the scene directly behind the creature (in this case, coincidentally enough, a hallway wall) and wonder if Mr Halliday might recall a similar detail. Furthermore, he mentions that he cannot really remember the creature vanishing, and I had the same impression. I remember the strange kind of out-of-body/timeless dissociation that I had with my immediate surroundings at the time of my viewing. The other two people with me just seemed suddenly to fade away into peripheral non-importance the instant I locked eyes with the thing.
Interestingly, this encounter also took place at about the time that I had either just gotten, or was planning to get, my first cat. Some years later, I had an encounter with a ghostly white cat while stepping out of the shower at my university residence, and other people living with me at the time also claimed to have seen it. Unlike Mr Halliday, though, I only saw the black cat once but my own cat used constantly to see, and start at, things that were invisible to me – could it have been this mysterious "black cat" that he was somehow sensing? I don’t know. Trever Ouellette, North Bay, Ontario.
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FT132: When we lived at our previous address, three silver sixpences appeared in random places around the house over the course of a few weeks. My husband and I didn’t possess any when we moved in some six years earlier and they ceased to be legal tender before we were born. The only connection we could make with the number three was that I became pregnant three times whilst living there, although one resulted in a miscarriage.
If pressed, my sceptical husband will confess to seeing an old lady at the foot of our bed on more than one occasion. We have since moved but have kept the sixpences, for luck perhaps? Any input on this would be really welcome. Annie McEwan (by email).
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FT133: In 1933, when I was eight, I lived at 52 Bromwich Road, Woodseats, Sheffield, with my parents, three sisters and a cat. I was pestering my father for a dog. I shared a double bed with my two younger sisters, aged 19 and 16; the eldest, aged 20, had a small bedroom to herself.
Every night a large dog walked from the door, round the bed to a certain spot. I don’t know what happened then, as I shot under the hot and stuffy bedclothes as far as I could go. I knew the dog was large by the sound of its step on the lino and I had no doubt that it was black. Wanting to own a dog was one thing, but this creature frightened me. We hadn’t got a dog!
When my eldest sister left home, I was put into the small bedroom. One morning, my mother asked me if I had heard the hullabaloo from my sisters’ room in the night; "they were screaming blue murder…they said there was a horrible noise coming out of the picture". This was a sketch of Colyton Church in Devon by my 19-year-old sister. I told her I had heard nothing. She asked if I had ever heard anything when I slept there; and to my lasting shame, I said "No" and left the room swiftly. I feared being laughed at if I had mentioned the dog. Sheila Clark, Wraysbury, Berkshire.
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FT133: About 12 months ago we had our cat put down after a long illness. He was a major character and well-loved by many people. After a few days, I began to see him around the house again, coming into rooms as I arrived home. This then reached the pitch that he would come in through the cat flap while I was having breakfast, with the cat flap moving as he came in. There was no mistaking this cat – there cannot be many of his colour with one eye and a plastic hip.
A number of years ago, I was cycling down a sunken lane after leaving a friend’s house near the Stiperstones in Shropshire in the early hours. A large white pony came over the hedge from my right, landed on the road and just disappeared. It was as if there was a screen half way across the road; the animal vanished slowly from head to tail. This was incredibly vivid and real; I was used to working with horses at the time. Phillip Evans (by email).
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FT134: One day in the summer of 1940, when I was 12 years old, I was scrumping apples up a tall apple tree in the grounds of Belmont House, West Bridgford, Nottingham, which had been empty for years. The tree had a wooden seat built around it and while I was up the tree, two old ladies in Victorian dress came and sat there and chatted. After half an hour they rose, went up the path to the house, and vanished. Kenneth Jackson, Sheringham, Norfolk.
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FT135: In the 1920s in the East Park area of Wolverhampton a young sailor by the name of Harry Parks Temple was drowned along with two young boys as he attempted to rescue them from a pool. He had died a hero despite his failed rescue attempt.
Some time in the late 1960s, my mother and her family were living in a terraced house in East Park. One night, while my mother and her older sister were talking before going to bed, they noticed a figure standing on the landing dressed in a sailor’s uniform. They initially thought the figure to be their father, as he had served in the Navy during the war, but soon realised it was not. The sailor walked towards the bathroom and disappeared.
That was the only time that this particular figure was seen, although, on subsequent occasions, adult-sized hand prints and child-sized shoeprints appeared spontaneously on the walls and ceilings in different rooms of the house. These prints were painted over but mysteriously re-appeared and only disappeared when covered with wallpaper and ceiling tiles.
I can recall actually seeing these prints on the walls of the front bedroom when the house was stripped when the remainder of the family moved from the house in the mid-eighties. On another occasion, my mother’s younger sister claims to have felt the presence of a young child brush past her in the hallway.
No contact has been made with the family that currently resides in the house to enquire whether the phenomena still occur, but I feel that Harry Parks Temple may still be making a rescue attempt which actually ended so tragically nearly 80 years ago. Ian Deakin, Wolverhampton, West Midlands.
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FT135: One night in 1990 I awoke aware of my mother’s "entity" hovering above me. I woke my wife Jan and told her "Mutti has just died", which she greeted with irritation and disbelief. Five days later the Bristol General Hospital almoner phoned to say that my mother had suffered a stroke; a neighbour had called an ambulance, and she had passed her last days in hospital, happily reading her bible. Not knowing she had any relatives, the almoner arranged her interment before the neighbour gave her my phone number.
The date and time of my mother’s death was exactly when I had woken Jan. When I contacted my father (who had left her 40 years before), his wife said: "The same day as your mother’s stroke, your father had a stroke too; he’s paralysed all down one side and it’s left him, you know, silly in the head".
He never recovered. I present no explanations: these things happened to me exactly as I have written, for I made notes immediately after each occurred. Ken Lake, Loughton, Essex.
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FT136: In 1983 or 1984 I was on holiday with my parents and brother, staying in a caravan park near Colwyn Bay in North Wales, near the village of Llysfaen. Dad and I were in the garden of the caravan when we both spotted what looked like a World War II bomber flying slowly and very low. It seemed to be making some erratic movements on its way inland. The memory is very vivid: I recall the sun glinting off the plane, but no sound.
Eventually the plane dived and disappeared out of sight over a hill on the other side of Llysfaen. The angle of descent was so acute that it would have been very difficult to pull out of the dive; besides, I doubt that people would carry out stunts in such a plane.
We waited in vain for it to reappear; there was no sound or indication of an explosion, which Dad and I both feel we would have heard from our position. After waiting a couple of minutes, Dad ushered me into the car and we drove towards the place where the plane disappeared, but we couldn’t find anything. My hunch is that it was a ghostly re-enactment of some disaster. Can anyone provide any information or clues? Danny Litherland, Horwich, Lancashire.
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FT140: During the 1970s I was living in the Ealing area of west London. Ealing is the western terminus of the Central Line and my habit was to board the front carriage so as to have only a short walk to the station exit. Around lunchtime one warm spring day, the train pulled into the penultimate station on the line, West Acton. There was only myself and one other man in the carriage, both of us facing the same way. A young woman of about 18 got on and asked if the train was going to Ealing. The other man said it was.
The woman sat down opposite me and I noticed that she seemed very pale and agitated. She kept raising a clenched fist to her mouth and rocking slightly backwards and forwards. She also seemed overdressed for the mild weather, in a thick, purple overcoat. Also, her long dark hair appeared to be either very greasy or wet from rain, although it had not rained all day. All in all, there seemed something vaguely out of place about her.
Eventually, the train doors started to close prior to the train moving off. Before they were fully shut, the woman jumped up, left the train and ran along the platform towards the front of the engine. Almost simultaneously, the train moved off – and the woman was nowhere to be seen. There was a pause while I and my travelling companion gradually realised that something odd had happened. Then he said: "Excuse me, but you did see her, didn’t you?" I replied that I had and we began trying to think of an explanation. Had she got into the driver’s cabin? Possible, but unusual – and we would see her when the train go to Ealing.
Had she jumped on to the track? Was her apparent distress the prelude to a suicide attempt? If she had, the driver would almost certainly have seen her and stopped; if he hadn’t there would soon be publicity about the incident. Finally, had she climbed over the fence bordering the platform? If she had, the train moved off so soon after she got off we would have seen her and, as I confirmed when next travelling the same route, the fence was such that it would have made this course of action difficult to achieve quickly.
We continued speculating until we got to the last stop and both got off the train as rapidly as possible and ran to look in the driver’s cabin. All that this resulted in was a belligerent look from the solitary driver. There was no subsequent publicity about a suicide on the line. I do not know where she went, or perhaps where she came from. Colin Field, London.
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FT141: My 88-year-old grandfather died in May 2000, exactly a month after his birthday. A few days later, my mother was typing out the hymns to be sung at his funeral – hymns that had been his favourites. She was using her decrepit PC with MSWord 95, and was in the middle of "How Great Thou Art" when something odd happened. On typing the lyrics "And when He comes with shout of exclamation/What joy shall fill my heart", the room grew very cold and filled with the smell of my grandfather’s aftershave; my mother became aware of his presence, as if he were standing behind her. The aforementioned lyrics suddenly turned bold and appeared with a bullet-point.
Now, anyone who has used Word 95 will know that it is impossible for bullet-points to appear on the screen without being formatted, unless you have already used bullets elsewhere in the document, which my mother had not. Although she is a ridiculously fast touch-typist – and very accurate too, which would rule out her accidentally pressing the control key – she doesn’t have the faintest idea how to set up bullets. My mother tried to use the backspace and delete to remove the bullet and bold, but without success.
I cannot explain this rationally at all; the only apparent explanation is that my grandfather was leaving a message, telling us that he was happy. It certainly gave my mother great comfort. My grandfather was very religious and had been a lay preacher, and before he died he said he looked forward to going to Heaven. One of his aunts was a medium; I have heard that this ability can run in families. My mother, my younger brother and myself have all seen, heard, felt and smelt ghosts. H Leigh, Birmingham.
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FT141: I had forgotten about the following episode until I read the letter from Utah about large black cars outside an airforce base [FT139:52]. In the summer of 1985 I as living in rural Suffolk and spent my university vacations working at a hotel near Woodbridge. At 11:30 on night in August or September, I was cycling the seven miles (11km) home through a very heavy mist with visibility down to about 20 yards (18m).
On the main Hollesley road just before the front gate to the American airforce base, the USAF Woodbridge, I suddenly saw, parked in the road in front of me, a large American car, dark in colour and with distinctive fins on the bodywork. The windows were either tinted dark or screened on the inside. It was so close that all I could do was brace myself for the impact and try to slow down so that, at best, I’d get away with a buckled front wheel.
Next moment, the car had gone and I was cycling on open road, still bracing myself for a collision. I cycled back towards Woodbridge for a couple of hundred yards, but there was nothing: no car, no turnoffs, and no gate access to the airbase apart from the main entrance. There was no "missing time"; I checked the time when I got home and my journey had taken me the usual time, about half an hour.
Had I slipped into microsleep on the ride home after a long day’s work and experienced hypnagogic imagery in the mist? Had I called into being the situation I most dreaded? Or was it some sort of "objectification" of fears about the nuclear threat? It was at the height of the Cruise missile furore and local rumour had it that USAF Woodbridge was storing undeclared nukes. Paul Catlow, Stockport, Greater Manchester.
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FT143: In the late 1970s I shared an office with Rod, a straightfoward, no-nonsense man, the last person to admit a belief in such things as ghosts. However, he told me that one sunny morning he was driving his Morris Minor from Banbury to Warwick or Leamington Spa. With him were his mother and (I think) his brother and one other person. As the road went into a cutting, with steep grass banks topped with hedges, he caught sight of movement on the right-and bank.
He saw a horseman in Cavalier’s uniform coming down the embankment. The horseman crossed the road, climbed the other bank, jumped the hedge and disappeared. Rod’s immediate thought was how could a horse go up such an incline and jump the hedge at the top? Almost at the same instant he realised that the horseman was headless. He recalled that the rider’s uniform was badly bloodstained down the back and realised, even though rider and horse appeared quite solid and were in full colour, that what he had seen was probably a ghost.
Two of Rod’s passengers confirmed seeing the same phenomenon, while his mother, sitting in the back, was so shaken she was unable to speak for some time and refused ever after to discuss the event. Rod discovered later it had taken place close to the site of the Battle of Edgehill (AD 1642).
It was the only time in the eight years I worked with Rod that I ever heard him talk about anything mysterious. Sadly, he died some time ago. David Abbott, Wootton, Northampton.
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FT143: Your magazine reminds me of my childhood growing up in Louisiana – sometimes n the summer when it was already 100F (38C) and 80% humidity by mid-morning us kids would ride the trolley down to the old oak shaded "voodoo" cemetery to marvel at the candles, feathers, and food offerings laid out around some of the graves the night before. Even in the late 1960s there was still one pharmacy which still sold bat, dog and cat blood, ground bone and sympathetic remedies.
And I recall when a friend and I were paid to clean out a long-neglected plantation house for its new owner. We found an exquisitely decrepit black and white television which, when we turned it on, seemed to show on every channel the same archaic and faintly diabolical rite being performed by robed penitents. Later we learned that the channel selector was broken and we had merely stumbled upon a canonisation procession being televised from Rome.
My wife and I are today both born again sceptics, certain that reason will outlast superstition and that all mysteries will fall before scrutiny, given time. We consider metaphysics, evangelical religion and ufology inordinately suspect. Thus we were especially amused when mystery hit close to home. In our case we seem to be sharing a quiet suburban house with a ghost, if a lethargic one.
It was perhaps 4am only days after moving into our 40-year-old home when we were awoken by the cat (a usually sullen and sedentary beast) as he frantically bounded from one piece of furniture to the next, wailing balefully. As we tried to talk the cat into returning to bed (a silly exercise as the cat was a completely deaf albino tom) the room suddenly filled with a loud, indecipherable conversation among perhaps three persons. Both of us understood it to be conversation, although in retrospect neither of us could identify a single familiar word. The conversation persisted some several minutes with both of us stupefied and agape at what was happening. It stopped just as suddenly as it had begun.
I jumped from the bed to the window, hoping to spy the prankster, and yelled to my wife to call the police. She stopped dialling part way into the number to the police to ask what she should report. There was no-one outside our windows and no further signs of disturbance, so we abandoned the call to the police and anxiously awaited the dawn.
Feeling like actors in some silly horror movie, we approached each of our neighbours individually and casually inquired if they had been disturbed. None of the neighbours had heard anything and in two of the three instances their dogs had been sleeping outside that evening only a few dozen feet from our bedroom windows. None of the dogs had alerted their owners to any intruder. We lived with such apprehension for several weeks that we considered selling our just-purchased home.
That was 10 years ago. The events are few and far between but dramatic. Since then we have learned to live with periodic visitations – the sound of wild gunfire and yelling (none of which our neighbours ever hear), the loud metallic banging which issues from the walls and unplugged appliances (I have stood and watched unplugged appliances bang and rattle all on their own for many minutes at a time). The occasional scrawled note in an unfamiliar hand about the end of time and merciless judgement, and the chicken skeletons which we find in human sitting positions in the crook of our fruitless mulberry tree. Steven Beebe, Dallas, Texas.
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FT144: With reference to your article on ghost aircraft [FT142:34-38]: One pleasant Sunday afternoon in the early autumn of 1941, my sister and I cycled quite a few miles north of Crosby, then a suburb of Liverpool, way past the Formby Point area, inland close to a RAF station. We had stopped on a rural lane amid conifers for a drink of tea from a thermos flask when we saw a twin radial-engined aircraft about 200ft (60m) above tree level. I was only 14 but knew all the aircraft types then flying, and identified it as an Anson. We saw that it was losing altitude at an alarming rate and I realised this was not an area suitable for landing. My sister pointed out there was no sound of an engine.
We cycled in the direction the plane had dropped out of sight. Leaving our bikes in a clearing, we ran through grass and bushes expecting to find aircraft wreckage strewn about; but there was nothing but quiet countryside. In any case, we had heard no noise of a crash. I remember a solitary seagull gliding silently by just as the enigmatic Anson had a few minutes earlier.
I haven’t mentioned this episode to anyone until now. It was perplexing and outside normality (whatever that is). I am convinced that we had witnessed a spectral re-enactment or presentiment of an actual crash. Mr D G Smith, Leicester.
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FT146: One February morning three years ago I had finished my nightshift and was driving home. I reached the three-mile (4.6km) long country lane to my village at about 6:45. The lane connects Lavendon, Bedfordshire, with Harrold, and is just off the A428 between Bedford and Northampton. In the dark I spotted an injured bird lying in the lane. In my headlights it looked like a female pheasant. I had almost run it over myself, but drove on to a spot where I knew I could turn round.
As I reversed into the farm entrance, I saw another car coming up the lane. It swerved across the lane (I guess to miss the bird) and came to a halt. I was by now slowly driving back. The other car had stopped on my side of the lane, and the driver – a young man in jeans, a grey jumper and a red woolly hat – was standing beside his car staring back at the bird, perhaps 20ft (6m) or so to the rear. As I approached he did not move; I had to drive round him and then take care not to hit the bird.
Something struck me as odd and I decided not to stop after all – so I drove on for about 60ft (18m) to a turning off the lane where I could do a u-turn. As I swung my car round and straightened up, the first thing I saw was that the bird had gone; then, that the young man and his car had also vanished. I had a clear view right up the lane and no car was to be seen. I was completely alone there as the grey light of dawn began to break.
Much later I realised what it was that had struck me as odd. I was driving towards the young man, who was standing in the lane, and it would have been instinctive for him to glance at me for safety’s sake; but he hadn’t moved a muscle. I went back to the site many times after that, looking for rational answers, but without any luck. Gerald Boak (by email).
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FT147: I was struck by the similarity between Colin Field’s letter [FT140:52] and an experience of my father’s. He was a miner at a Barnsley Colliery; shortly after the miners’ strike, he was on the night shift and commuted to work on a scrambler bike, partly to save fuel but also to save time, as he used to cut across Grimethorpe Common on a rough track.
He rode into the back of the colliery through disused railway sidings, which led to a tunnel under the railway used by lorries to load coal. At the inner end of the tunnel there was a security guards’ hut which was manned round the clock to prevent vandalism.
One winter night, going to his shift at around 4am, he entered the tunnel and noticed the figure of a young woman going in the same direction. She had long, black hair which was sopping wet and was virtually naked, wrapped only in a dark red or purple blanket. He asked her if he could help, or if she was in trouble, but she ignored him and kept walking, shivering along the tunnel in bare feet. Feeling that he couldn’t help, he rode on past her.
The next night, he stopped at the security hut and asked about the strange young woman; the security guards laughed this off as imagination, as anyone coming down the tunnel would have to pass them and would also be caught on security cameras, and they had seen nothing. To prove this, they replayed the tape of the previous night, which showed my father riding into the tunnel (there were no cameras in the actual tunnel) and nothing more.
Obviously I have only his word for what happened, but he seemed quite disturbed by the experience and as far as I know he told only me about it, having no reason to fabricate the story. What strikes me about the similarity with Mr Field’s letter is the wet hair and the purple coat/jacket. Robin Davis (by email).
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