Fortean Times: It Happened to Me vol.1

by Times, Fortean

  PENSIONERS SEE DOUBLE

  The following happened to Jack and I, both senior citizens now, sober and sane! We go for our walk along Finchley Road, eastwards towards Swiss Cottage [in north London], circa 4-5pm, most days. We walk slowly and observantly, neither of us wear glasses and we both have keen vision. Several times, we have seen things double...

  A few months ago, walking past the Post Office, going east, we saw a most unusual male - tall, wearing some kind of bright red anorak, with a springy walk. No one took any notice of him. Then a few yards further along the road, we saw this very same man coming out of Boots the chemist. He could not have run back in the time. A few weeks ago, a blind woman walked by us, (with white stick) and I drew aside slightly so as not to brush against her. Then walking on eastward, a few minutes later we saw her crossing the road at a lights crossing. Again she couldn’t have dodged past, as like the man in red she was coming towards us. Another time, we saw Idries Shah and girlfriend (whom we know) in this street, getting into their car, he smoking a cigar. We walked on and then a few minutes later, saw Idries Shah and the girl walking towards us... no cigar and no car... The last occurrence was bizarre. Walking eastwards again, we saw a woman in black, wheeling an idiot woman in white in a wheelchair... woman was lolling on one side, looking vacant. Then walking eastwards, we saw again, coming towards us, this very same couple! This time I noticed a small cross on the woman in black. This so shocked Jack he murmured, “I wonder how they managed that one!”

  We have had some other incidents like this but years ago; this latest batch have all been within a few months. It certainly adds a spice to our walks! Are we seeing into the immediate past? Which is the real sighting - first time or second time?

  Judith Gee, Hampstead, London, 1980

  MAN IN BROWN

  At about 8:30am one morning recently, I was travelling towards my office on Chaffron Way in Milton Keynes. It was a bright sunny day and the roads were busy with the usual volume of traffic. Approaching Saxon Street at the Eaglestone Roundabout I slowed to give way to the cars on my right and to my left I caught sight of a pedestrian - fairly unusual along the dual carriageways in Milton Keynes unless you are near the local college or various schools. He was about 5ft 4in (1.60m), possibly Asian but certainly dark-haired with a side parting, wearing a brown suit, oversized brown glasses and carrying a brown briefcase - my overall impression was that he had stepped straight out of the 1970s. In the few seconds that I watched him he marched purposefully along the grass verge, but his whole trajectory seemed wrong as his path would have taken him directly across the roundabout. The traffic cleared, I carried on to work and thought little further of it.

  However, returning home that evening at about 5:45pm, I was approaching the Eaglestone Roundabout along Chaffron Way from the opposite direction when I caught sight of the same man, wearing the same clothes, in the same place that I had seen him that morning and marching along on exactly the same route. It was like watching the same clip of film but from a different perspective.

  I got home and puzzled over it for a while. Eventually, I told my husband who helpfully suggested that the man might just have been walking in circles whilst my father suggested that I had had my first encounter with the “men in brown”. I’ve kept an eye out every morning and evening for the past month or so, but have not seen him again. Indeed, I’ve never seen anyone else at that particular junction.

  Tania Morgan, Middleton, Buckinghamshire, 2004

  TIME-TRAVELLING FATTY

  About two years ago I was driving down County Road in Kirkdale, Liverpool, towards the city. The traffic was fairly heavy as people were returning home in the early evening. I pulled up at the Spellow Lane traffic lights, which were on red - I was about four cars back from the lights in the outside lane. I then noticed a rather large, plump woman in a garish outfit cutting through the stationary cars to cross the road. She walked immediately in front of my car, from left to right, before crossing when there was a gap in the oncoming traffic. With her blonde hair worn up on her head and her attire, this middle-aged woman was very remarkable in appearance, arguably for the wrong reasons. The lights changed and I set off down Walton Road into Kirkdale Road, with the traffic flowing quickly. I then had to stop at the traffic lights with Great Homer Street - which are about three-quarters of a mile (1.2km) from Spellow Lane.

  To my amazement the same woman cut through the stationary vehicles, immediately in front of my car, from left to right. There was no mistaking her, unless she had a twin sister who dressed identically. There is no way I can conceive for the woman to have got from the first position to the second in what must have been about 90 seconds, given the absence of transport. I am baffled.

  Rob Gandy, Bebington, Wirral, 1992

  LOST ON GROUNDHOG DAY

  About five years ago, my ex-girlfriend was working in a bar in the centre of Dublin. She usually worked until the bar closed and would then walk about a mile home to the flat she was sharing on the outskirts of the city. One night as she was walking home, a car pulled up slowly behind her, the driver pulled down the window and asked her for the directions to a nearby hotel. She gave the man directions, walked home and went to bed, thinking nothing of this brief incident. However, the following night, at exactly the same time, in exactly the same place, the same man, wearing the same clothes asked her for the same directions and headed off that way once again. Needless to say, it freaked the hell out of her as it did to me.

  Jamie Davis, Dalkey, Co. Dublin, 2003

  JUMP LEAD MYSTERY

  Last summer my partner and I were driving west on the M4. Somewhere near Reading, traffic ground to a halt due to an accident. For the best part of an hour we moved in stops and starts, rarely making more than 20 yards each time. During one of the stops, we were next to two very expensive low-slung black sports cars parked one in front of the other on the hard shoulder. The cars were in show-room condition, sleek and immaculate. Each had its bonnet open and the cars were connected by bright yellow jump-leads. The two drivers were standing on the grass verge chatting.

  We continued our slow crawl west. After a while, conditions improved and the traffic was moving at around 40-60 mph (64-96km/h). Somewhere around Junction 12 we passed the identical cars, parked on the hard shoulder with their bonnets open and connected by the same bright yellow jump-leads. Even assuming that one of them had a severe battery problem which needed constant re-charging, the only way they could have passed us would have been by driving at full speed down the hard shoulder. This, I think, we would have noticed.

  Mike Harding, by email, 2002

  STILL LIFE

  On Saturday, 9 June 2007, my wife and I were first out of St Joseph’s parish church in Worksop (Nottinghamshire) because we were in a terrific rush. Mass started at 6pm and finished at 7pm, but my wife, a nurse, starts work at 8pm. In the intervening hour we have to cook and eat, take the dogs for a walk, get changed and (in her case) drive to work.

  It was hot and oppressive. In our haste we failed to acknowledge various friends (who on reflection were staring at us dumbly), but no problem, we would see them the following week. It struck me that everyone was a bit, well, slow... or was it me who was in such a rush? We got into the car, I fired up, and turned into Wessex Road to do a U-turn in the mouth of the road. Halfway through my ‘U’, some fellow turned up and stopped at the junction. I waited for him to move on. And waited... And waited. Why didn’t he move? No one was coming, the road was clear. I looked at him. He was frozen with his mouth open. Everyone else was frozen too!

  A man with a black Labrador stood ramrod straight; his dog, also frozen, had a stick clamped in its jaws. Everyone and everything was motionless - except my wife and me. I just whipped round everything and drove away. “What’s up with people?” my wife remarked. “They’d move fast enough if they had to be at work in half an hour.” I looked in my mirror and everyone was moving again.

  It was uncomfortably hot - and quiet. I don’t even rec
all birds singing - nothing - it all seemed kind of muffled, distant. I’m not claiming that time stood still - but I do know that for well over a minute everyone in the vicinity looked as if they’d been deep frozen, then snapped out of it and carried on with whatever they were doing. I had this horrible

  sensation that only I knew what was going on; as if a ‘freeze ray’ had beamed down on everyone, but missed me. I’m glad my wife commented as this showed it wasn’t a solus hallucination, heatstroke, or whatever; it’s never happened before.

  Jack Romano, Worksop, Nottinghamshire, 2007

  Out of the blue

  There was a time when science maintained that reports of stones falling from the sky were folktales. In fact, all manner of things besides meteorites and water bombard the Earth. Zoologist Ivan Sanderson called them ‘Fafrotskies’ - things that are alleged to have ‘fallen from the skies’ - and they can include everything from frogs and fish to golfballs, nails and tinsel...

  Stuff from the sky

  COSMIC YOKE

  One Sunday night at 11.30 in Huddersfield, in (I believe) January 1986, I walked from the railway station to the bus station with a suitcase in one hand and a sports bag in the other. After walking for a few minutes, I saw an old man waiting for a bus outside the Caledonian cafe. It dawned on me that he was the only person I had seen in the town. At a distance of about five metres (16ft) we looked at each other closely. I thought he was going to speak. As I looked into his eyes, an egg (hen’s I presume) exploded with extreme force in his face! It was so violent it made a slapping noise and his head was thrown right back. He staggered backward into the cafe windows and almost keeled over. I stood there like a maniac and looked all around. No cars, no people, no sounds, just me, with my hands full, and him. After a few seconds he managed to compose himself and we both looked around for an assailant. I stood rooted to the spot and replayed the scene in my head. The egg seemed to materialise an inch (2.5cm) from his face and hit him with extraordinary force. After checking he still had all his faculties about him, I left.

  Rob Kirbyson, Pershore, Worcestershire, 1997

  SUNGLASSES FROM HEAVEN

  About 11.15 this morning [16 Jan 1986] I parked my car in Conyngham Road, Shepherd’s Bush, West London, and crossed the Goldhawk Road to perform an act of honesty - pay £10 to a wine shop that had undercharged me before Christmas. As I came back across the road to my car, I heard a sound of something falling lightly near me and I looked down to see a pair of glasses lying a foot or two away. I bent down to pick them up and looked to see who had dropped them.

  The only person nearby was a cyclist who was actually wearing glasses. I asked him if they were his, he denied it and rode away. I saw they were a brand new pair of sunglasses with no scratches. It occurred to me that they might have been thrown from a moving car, but I concluded that this was very unlikely because the sound of them falling was quite gentle, not as of something thrown with force. Nor is there any possibility that they were attached to my clothing as they fell a little distance from me and I was wearing a close-fitting coat with no folds in which they could have become entangled. Was my act of honesty rewarded with this gift? They were just the type I would have chosen for myself!

  Margaret Hickey, Chiswick, London, 1986

  WATCH OUT BELOW

  At 1am on 18 December 2000 in Tweed Heads, a town in New South Wales close to the border with Queensland, I saw a mango fell from clear skies and land almost at my feet, before bouncing several times across gravel. Closer observation revealed that it was unripe, unpunctured by teeth, and dry, hence unlikely to have been dropped by a flying fox. In any case, there weren’t any flying foxes around. The following night, at 10pm, in similar circumstances, another mango fell at my feet, this time on grass. Since I don’t like mangoes, is this some sort of cosmic joke? I just hope it’s not a phantom greengrocer.

  Phillip A Ellis, Tweed Heads, New South Wales, 2000

  HOLY MARY!

  About five or six years ago, I was visiting my mum’s house in Isleworth, Middlesex. I got off the bus onto a wide pavement, quite far from any houses, and no cars were passing. A rosary dropped on me, apparently out of the sky. I looked all around me, but there was no one in sight and the street was completely quiet. I wasn’t standing underneath a tree and there were no planes overhead. The event spooked and baffled me, as it still does, but not being religious I don’t take it to be of any great consequence. However, as friends and family think it must have been some kind of ‘sign’, I keep it just in case.

  Nicola Savage, London, 1996

  Strange showers

  GOLFBALL RAIN?

  In April 1975 when tracing a disused footpath I was crossing rough and unfrequented ground about a mile west of Saundersfoot, South Wales, at an altitude of about 150ft (46m), when I noticed a golfball in the grass, and looking around I picked up about a dozen within a small area. I thought at first that the balls might have been lost by a careless and affluent golfer practising, but later I decided that no golfer in his senses would practise on such rough ground when there was a smooth field a few yards away - so returning to the place a few days later and searching more carefully I discovered more balls, making about 30 in all. Many had been trampled into the ground by cows that use the place, and were barely visible, so probably more could have been found by digging. The balls varied from apparently new, clean ones to badly battered; I gave them away to local golfers. The place where I found them is on the side of a valley that slopes at about 30 degrees. It is rectangular, about 50 by 30 yards (46x27m), and is in the corner of a large field, but separated by a hedge with gaps in it. The surrounding hedges are wide belts of brambles with shrubs and trees. I found no balls outside this area.

  I considered the possibi1ity that these balls could have been transported from Tenby golf links, a distance of about three and a quarter miles (5km), by magpies which flock in this area during the spring. Though I have never seen seagulls there, I thought they might have done it. The seagulls around here dig cockles out of the sand, carry them up to a height of about 30ft (9m) and then drop them, causing them to open. I wrote to the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds about this but their reply was that it was unlikely that birds were responsible.

  I continued to visit the place during 1975 but found no more balls. Much rain prevented me struggling through mud to reach the site during January and February 1976 but when I got there in early April there was a new supply of balls just as in the previous April - and again I collected about 30. I then looked forward to a regular supply of balls each April but since 1976 I have not found any.

  AT Ryland, Saundersfoot, Dyfed, 1981

  AN AFRICAN FISH FALL

  I was a boy of seven in 1964, and I lived in the Lower Gweru District, not far from Gweru Town [in what was then called Rhodesia]. A friend and I were playing in the rain when to our amazement fish dropped from the sky right in front of our eyes. We actually saw them before they hit the ground. At first we wanted to run into the hut but decided against that, so we took the fish and roasted them.

  Elias Paul Mutwira, Zimbabwe, 1990

  SHEERWATER FISH FALL

  On the morning of Friday 15 January [1993] at around 7:30am I walked to the bottom of my garden in St Michael’s Road, Sheerwater, and saw a fish on the path. There were others on the lawn, in the rose bush and on the shed roof, all within a 15ft (4.6m) radius. I counted 12 in all, ranging from four to five inches (10-13cm) and looking like sprats. I couldn’t see any in adjacent gardens. The previous night had been very windy and stormy, with winds from the south-west. I contacted the Woking Review, which carried a short report on 23 January. Later I heard that John Field, who lives next door but one, had found 11 fish within a small area in his garden. He is a keen fisherman and also thought they looked like sprats, which are of course seawater fish. The sea is almost 40 miles (64km) away, and the Thames over six miles (9.6km). The fish smelled, so they could have been out of the water a long time.

  D
erek Gosling, Sheerwater, Surrey, 1993

  SNAIL HAIL

  The following incident happened when I was a student living in Walthamstow, east London. It was either in the autumn of 1985, or the spring of 1986. I was ringing my mother from an old phone box by the Shern Hall Methodist Church, on the junction of Shernhall Street and Oliver Road. It was early evening, and a light rain began to fall. Suddenly, I heard a knock on the phone box. Assuming it was somebody waiting to use the phone, I turned around, but couldn’t see anybody. A few moments later I again heard a knock, but again couldn’t see anybody. The knocks continued at intervals of five or 10 minutes, but I didn’t pay them much attention.

  I was on the phone for about an hour. As I left the phone box I saw that it was covered with snails (I think they were common banded snails). As a life sciences student, I could have taken a specimen home to identify, but I was too unnerved by the whole experience to be thinking logically. There were also snails on the ground in a small area (about one metre in radius) around the telephone box. It looked as if the snails had fallen onto the telephone box and some had crawled away. I couldn’t see any other snails in the vicinity. I wonder if the metal phone box had somehow attracted the fall of snails.

  Ms KJ Kimberly, Dagenham, Essex, 1996

  FROG RAIN

  About 30 years ago, in 1976, I witnessed a veritable deluge of frogs. In those days, I used to leave my office in Sydney, Australia, and drive some 125 miles (200km) south to a very small fishing village called Greenwell Point. I used to drive to a town called Nowra, then turn off and follow a narrow road for some nine miles (15km) to Greenwell Point. One day I was late leaving Sydney, and it was around 10 o’clock at night by the time I got to Nowra. It had been raining more or less all the way, but from Nowra on towards Greenwell Point it was heavy driving rain with a lot of leaves and branches over the road. One of my companions remarked that it must be starting to hail, as he could hear something striking the car’s roof. A lot of small whitish objects starting to accumulate on the bonnet, but because of the driving rain we couldn’t ascertain what they were.