Fortean Times: It Happened to Me vol.1

by Times, Fortean

  As the disease took an increasingly powerful hold, people around my mother started to experience strange things. Her next-door neighbour, a good friend, was in her back garden one day bending down to pull weeds out of the ground when she became aware of a presence next to her and looked up to see my mother standing nearby watching her work. The image vanished, but not before the neighbour had time to get a good look at my mother and even recognise the clothes that she was wearing, (not the nightie that she was actually wearing in hospital but some of her ordinary clothes).

  A few days after this, my aunt was also visited by my mother in her house and once again was able to get a very clear view of her before the image disappeared. As before, my mother was just standing beside her appearing to take an interest in what my aunt was doing.

  I never saw this ghostly image of my mother, but she did manifest for me in other ways. After visiting her in hospital, I would come home to find the TV switched on (I had definitely switched it off before leaving the house) and it would be busily changing channels by itself. It would also have the annoying habit of switching channels in the middle of the programme I was watching.

  A few days after the visions mentioned above, my boyfriend was relaxing in the bath one evening when suddenly he had an overwhelming urge to get out and stand in the middle of the bathroom. He did this and was rewarded with the sound of a loud groan which he was sure came from my mother. He told me that it felt as though she wanted to tell him that things had changed and she was going to be OK.

  We later found out that it was about this time that my mother suddenly stopped getting worse. Within a few days she even began to get better and has now thankfully made a full recovery.

  She has no memory of her various apparitions, but says that the morphine produced many hallucinations and bizarre dreams. As soon as she regained full consciousness the problems with my TV stopped and have not recurred. It seems strange that someone can appear as a ghost whilst still living, but I feel that the severity of my mother’s illness and the huge amount of morphine that she was given (the hospital gave her extra amounts in the expectation that she was not going to pull through) combined to allow her to leave her body in spirit form and visit those closest to her.

  This has, however, left my boyfriend with the worrying impression that when my mother does finally shuffle off the mortal coil, neither of us will get a moment’s peace.

  Alison Derrick, Herefordshire, 2003

  Clock communications

  MARKING TIME

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

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

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

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

  CN Satterthwaite, Sollhull, West Midlands, 1997

  TOLD BY THE CLOCK

  My son died in Guy’s Hospital, London, on 5 April 2004. The time on his death certificate is 5.04am. On that morning, my alarm clock went off at 5.02 or 5.03. It has never rung at the wrong time before or since, over several years. The tone was slightly lower than usual. It woke me and I got out of bed to turn it off. It is far enough away to make sure I do not ignore it or go back to sleep. It would not turn off but made this different sound for a few minutes while I shook it and turned it on and off, trying to prevent it from waking my husband so early.

  I looked at the alarm setting, which said 5.45, the time for which it is always set. Then the ringing stopped. I checked that it would still wake me at 5.45 and went back to sleep. At 5.15 the same thing happened again. It rang, I got up to stop it but could not, just as before. After another few minutes sleep I woke with the correct sound at the correct time. At 6.30 my daughter rang me with the dreadful news.

  It was then I realised that the unusual alarm bell was my son contacting me to say his body and spirit had separated and his soul, mind, personality, consciousness or intellect - whatever you call this part of a human being - was still alive, able to remain on Earth for 10 minutes or so in preparation for the journey to Heaven. The second call was probably when this process was completed and he left the Earth, living, still able to find and recognise his mother, travelling through time and space instantly. My son chose the clock because he used to mend clocks until they became so disposable that it was not worth the bother, unless they were antiques. He knew I would associate the clock with him.

  Eileen Denham, Chatham, Kent, 2004

  WATCH SEEKS OWNER

  My grandfather drowned in a canal - whether suicide or accident was never established. When the body surfaced after about two weeks, his pocket watch was obviously beyond economic repair. However, a family friend who happened to be a watchmaker agreed to undertake the work, provided no time limit was placed upon it.

  After about six months, the watch was returned and given to me, but it refused to work for more than a few hours. The watchmaker checked it, found no fault, and my father took it on with the same result. He gave up on it and hung it on a hook in his workshop.

  Some months later, my cousin, who was partially sighted, came on a visit. During holidays from the School for the Blind he had visited my grandfather and gone on walks with him. He recognised the watch and said it had been promised to him. My father said, “Then you must have it”, but warned him that it didn’t work.

  You can guess the result - the watch kept perfect time for my cousin for many years until his death.

  SA Skinner, Watford, Hertfordshire, 1999

  Timeslips

  Common sense tells us that time moves inexorably in one direction and we are confined to the present. The past, we believe, is out of our reach; but on rare occasions some of us appear to glimpse scenes from yesteryear. And time can play other tricks: the same sequence of events can repeat like a tape loop, or everything around us appears to slow right down or even come to a halt.

  Historical visions

  ROMAN CAVALRY RETURNS

  For almost five years, John England and I have gone metal detecting on 2,000 acres of land belonging to a country estate near the village of Little Wenlock outside Telford in Shropshire. One warm Autumn evening in the first week of October 1995, we made the half-hour drive and, after cooking up two tins of beans, decided to search a large field which had never produced much, but we felt it had potential; just a gut feeling. We called it the boulder field, because of a pile of boulders in one corner.

  Shortly before midnight, we began to sweep our search heads over the ancient landscape. John headed off on his usual perimeter route while I made a diagonal across the field. The silence was broken by the occasional ‘clunk’ as
my search-head hit a stone. The first half dozen signals produced nothing but iron, but then I unearthed a silver coin. The profile of an elephant told me it was a republican denarius of Julius Caesar. Over the next hour I found several Roman bronzes and another denarius, this time of Rutilius Flaccus.

  Three hours after we began the search, I met John, who had found seven coins and a fibula. We flopped down on a grassy bank for tea and sandwiches. Getting our second wind, we resumed the search together and discovered four artefacts within 40 minutes. One had “Nigel” punched on its surface and was obviously a javelin tip. Suddenly, we heard a noise like galloping horses. The ground vibrated as the thundering hooves came right at us. The noise passed between us as we ran in opposite directions and died away as quickly as it had started. We had not seen anything.

  A little unnerved, we headed across the field towards the car. Half way across, we came upon what looked like a hedge, although we knew there was no such obstruction in the boulder field. It was about 9ft (2.7m) tall, very dense, with a straight top as if it had been cut; brown in colour, with traces of white on top.

  Thinking we must have strayed in the dark, we walked next to it for almost 80 yards. By the time we had come to the end, we were able to look down the slope of the field and see the car. Realising that we were indeed in the boulder field, we turned round to find that the ‘hedge’ had disappeared.

  We waited for dawn by the car and then spent the best part of an hour examining the field. The winter wheat had yet to break the surface; our own footprints showed up, but nothing else. These clearly showed how we had been forced to deviate from our route. From a diagonal course, we had gone off at a tangent for almost 100 yards before resuming our original direction.

  A few weeks later, we called on archæologist Mike Stokes at Rowley House Museum, Shrewsbury. He was very interested in our finds and their location. There was no record of any Roman sites in that area. The javelin tip was one of the best he had seen and the only one inscribed in such a personal way. “Nigel” was presumably short for “Nigelus”. The other artefacts were bridle fittings used by Roman cavalry.

  I believe that John and I witnessed a time slip and that the ‘hedge’ was really a stockade surrounding a fort. Could the sound of hooves have come from a cavalry unit coming from (or returning to) the fort?

  Colin Ayling, Woodside, Shropshire, 1996

  MANCHESTER REWIND

  In early 1983, when I was 49, I travelled to the Cheetham area of Manchester for my son’s wedding. The day before the ceremony, I walked to the church to become familiar with the route. I had never been to Manchester before. Glancing across a main road, I saw a rather dilapidated cemetery with rusty railings, very long grass and what I took to be a chapel with a square tower. I can’t recall if I glanced away and then returned my gaze, or if what took place happened before my eyes. Suddenly the scene changed: the cemetery was neat; the streaked and dirty yellow brickwork clean; the railings newly painted. The clouds were replaced by blue sky and sunshine.

  Several figures were walking quite quickly along an unseen path to my right. There were two women about 30 years old; the one nearer to me had her hair up, with a small, circular hat of flowers and a cream-coloured parasol to shade her and her companion. She wore a long tight white dress that swung from side to side in a corkscrewing motion, a frilly blouse with a high collar and white gloves almost to her elbows. Her companion was shorter, with loose, shoulder-length hair. They were in animated conversation, too far away for me to overhear. Other figures on the path, about 20ft (6m) before and behind this couple, were less clear. Very quickly the whole scene vanished and the drab present-day returned.

  About 10 or 15 minutes later I reached a road junction. Opposite was a patio area bordered by four or five modern-fronted shops set in a semi-circle. I scanned other shops to my right and turned once more to the patio, ready to cross the busy road when traffic allowed. It now had four or five wooden tables set with chairs. Several men were sitting at the tables, dressed poorly in thick grey flannel and large flat caps. The shops behind them looked empty with sparse window displays, I’m not certain of what.

  Around the edge of the pavement were three raised steps, with bollards at about 6ft (1.8m) intervals. The whole scene was grey, rather like an old photograph. I had the impression that the men were outside a public house or a café. They were in conversation, but I could hear nothing, not even the modern traffic passing me. A sense of “unworldliness” pervaded and yet it seemed familiar in some way. Then it all vanished, to be replaced by the modern scene.

  Derek Gibson, Wadebridge, Cornwall, 1999

  EPIC FOREST

  Some years ago, I used to drive regularly from Ilford [Essex] to Hornsey [north London] to visit my sister-in-law, always taking the same route. On one rainy afternoon in about 1983, I was driving with my husband and we approached a certain junction on the Woodford New Road. I had to be in the outside lane ready to approach traffic lights in the wide road, prior to turning right - the only turning at this T junction. The approach to these lights involved a bend in the road and on turning the bend, we were confronted with a totally unfamiliar scene.

  Instead of traffic lights there was a small grass triangle with a wooden signpost that we didn’t have time to read. Having no alternative, we turned right and found ourselves lost. The weather was dark and rainy and there was a bank of trees on either side of the road. We came to a fork in the lane, and there was another wooden signpost pointing to Walthamstow and a few yards ahead we could see a normal road and people, so we drove towards it. We were out of our way but finally were directed back to our intended course.

  I firmly believe we were in a time warp of some kind. The whole thing lasted, I suppose, about three or four minutes. I would love to know what this ‘lost’ area was like years ago before it was altered and traffic lights introduced. It is easy enough to take a wrong turn, but there is no other turn to take at this junction and those who know the area can’t explain what we might have done.

  Mrs JM Green, Ilford, Essex, 1992

  TIME-LAPSE ENCOUNTER

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

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

  After taking a few more steps, I turned around for another look, assuming by this stage I had happened upon some guests on their way to a fancy-dress party. They had disappeared. There wasn’t time for them to have reached the farmhouse, which was the nearest building. Unless they had darted into a field and hid behind a wall, there was no way they could have disappeared from view so quickly.

  Feeling a bit shaken, I hurried on to my girlfriend’s where my tale was greeted with a certain degree of mockery. The area where I lived was not up for historical re-enactments and this style of clothing was certainly not de rigeur in late 1980s Greater Manchester.

  Lee Stansfield, Stockport, 2003

  INDIAN ON THE HIGHWAY

  In the summer of 1985, I was working for the Kansas Department of Transportation doing traffic studies at the intersections of remote rural highways. It was a dull job, but it afforded me some time to read and earn some money for college.

  One part
icular hot July afternoon, I found myself doing a traffic study overlooking the Smokey Hill river valley in west central Kansas. It had been a rather uneventful day. All of a sudden I heard a very high-pitched noise akin to electronic feedback. My first reaction was to turn down the car radio, which I did to no avail. The irritating sound seemed to come from the back of the vehicle, so I got out to investigate. As I walked down the road, a movement to my right caught my eye. I turned my head and saw an Indian on a horse coming down the highway embankment. This was not a modern-day Native American, but an Indian brave circa 1840. He was naked except for a leather loincloth and a pair of moccasins and was riding bareback without any conventional bridle, just a rope tied around the pony’s head. In his right hand was an antique-looking rifle and in his left the rope.

  The sight took my breath away and all I could think of was saying “Hi!” He ignored me as if I were not there. As he approached the far side of the road, he stopped and intently scanned the river valley below. I turned to see what he was looking at. Down in the valley was a large herd of buffalo [bison] strung out for miles. This sight made my head swim because the mighty herds of buffalo had been exterminated in Kansas over a century ago.

  I caught my breath and turned back to observe the Indian, but he was gone. I ran over to where I had last seen him and looked down the hill. There was no sign of the Indian and now no trace of the buffalo either. As the hot sun beat down on me, I slowly walked back to the car and noticed that the annoying sound was absent, too.

  Keith Manies, by email, 2002

  Reruns and slowdowns