About My Paranormal Background and ExperiencesOver the years I would say that I have experienced quite a few paranormal, or unexplained, events going back to early childhood. While none of them were incredibly powerful, they were enough to spark my interest in the unknown.
Over the years, I have experienced several paranormal or unexplained events going back to early childhood. While none of them were incredibly powerful, they were enough to spark my interest in the unknown.
It all started way back in primary school during the mid-80s. My school was an old Victorian building about to celebrate its centenary at the time. The school had an old cottage in the centre of the u shaped playground. It used to be for the caretaker. It was abandoned and still had what looked like old-fashioned net curtains, which we would sometimes peer through while walking past or during dinner breaks. It was probably our child's imagination, but we were sure that we could see a skull on the table on Fridays, which wasn't there on Thursdays, nor was it on Monday. I recall the skull appearing on the table every Friday in the spooky abandoned Victorian cottage.
We used to sneak into the library to read books during rainy dinner times when the computers were not working or had already been taken. Our favourite were the ghost stories. Our little circle of friends, 4 of us, would turn the lights off, close the door and sit in the corner, taking turns reading to the group. We later formed the Ghost Club, a lunchtime club the teachers encouraged children to form to take up an activity. That made our group official and the teachers actually let us use the library without having to sneak in! Sometimes, we were able to watch Ghostbusters, the animated series. After a few years, we all went our own ways when we went to secondary school, and nothing really interesting happened there, not paranormal anyway.
It wasn't until I left college and started exploring that I had my next paranormal experience. We were visiting an old national trust property, I cannot remember which, but I remember feeling very claustrophobic and oppressed in one room. I later found out that someone was murdered there many centuries ago, and their spirit is known to haunt that room.
Around the same time, I got my first job, and one of my duties was working the night shift alone in offices. Offices are usually busy, noisy environments with many people going about their activities. Being in an office at night is quite different - dark, empty, quiet. It's a little unnerving, knowing it's just me and a security guard at the other end of the building. Some nights, whilst sitting in the computer room running reports and backups at night I had strange feelings, like I was being watched or that I should leave. I could put these feelings to the back of my head until a stack of invoices would fall over, or a printer would stop working or jam, only to get up to investigate, and it starts back up by itself. I remember one night when I had to go into the machine room to load more tape cartridges into the autoloader. We usually kept the lights on until we were done and turned them off. That night, I thought I was done, turned the lights off and sat waiting for the backup to complete before heading home.
The backup job wanted another tape, so I had to go in and put a blank one in the autoloader. When I opened the door, what I saw shocked me and chilled me to the bone. Two glowing eyes at the back of the room. I quickly turned the lights on, and nothing was there; the eyes had gone. I quickly loaded the blank tape and closed and locked the door. I don't think I turned the lights out. I tried to convince myself that what I saw was the lights on a server or router reflected in something. Not long after this, I changed jobs and worked normal day hours in the same company.
It was around this time in 2007 that I started this website, initially to collect stories about the paranormal, then later to do my own research, and in the future, I plan to start some paranormal investigations of my own.
Back in 2013, I witnessed my first UFO. I was visiting my sister and brother-in-law in Scotland. We had taken the dogs out to the field to do their business when we saw a red light moving above the hills. It was twilight, so the light stood out. I'm a keen amateur astronomer, at this time, for nearly 8 years. I know what aeroplanes look like and the general way they fly a set course. I know what satellites, the ISS, meteor showers, and fireballs look like. This was none of them. We first observed a bright red light in the east, about 20 degrees above the horizon. It was moving north. Noticing the red colour and the lack of any flashing, we kept chatting with one eye on it, and after a few minutes, noticed that it was now north of us heading West; it had circled around us. We kept watching as it continued west and then south. It had completely circled us, albeit at some distance. The colour and intensity did not change as far as we could tell, and then suddenly, it just disappeared, like the light had been turned off. To this day, we haven't seen anything like it again.
Fast forward to 2018, my most recent paranormal encounter. I'm in my flat with my girlfriend. We had a normal evening, cleared the dishes and glasses from the living room to the kitchen, turned the lights out and went to bed. Sometime during the night, I cannot remember when we heard a loud smashing sound - glass breaking. Worried that someone was breaking in, I checked all the rooms and all the windows. None were broken, no pictures had fallen from the wall, the glass display cabinet was still intact, and nothing seemed out of place or broken. After checking again, I noticed that in the kitchen , one of the glasses we had used that night had exploded on the worktop. I've dropped glasses before, and they break; you get shards and fragments, but this glass exploded into loads of tiny pieces. There were chucks on the floor, the worktop, the sink and even the window ledge. How could this glass explode with such force hours after being used and tidied away?
I've always had a scientific mind and always try to find a reasonable explanation for these events. I'm open-minded to explanations that defy current thinking, but only when these things cannot be explained by any other means. I enjoy reading and learning about the history and folklore surrounding places and visiting them myself. I hope to bring these qualities to my future paranormal investigations.
