MacabreMagpie
Paranormal Novice
Two brief, personal stories for you.
I was walking through an area that I know well (I've lived here for nearly 30 years) and took a side street to join onto a main road. Just to set a clear picture in your head, the street that I was intending to join lay parallel with the one which I was leaving, separated by a line of buildings with occasional side-streets to connect the two. I was heading up one of the side streets when a woman - I wasn't paying enough extra attention to her to notice anything specific about her appearance - crossed a few yards in front of me and disappeared from sight behind the building to my left as I approached. No more than 3 or 4 seconds later I made the same turn and was met with a completely empty street devoid of any other people. The building which she'd disappeared behind had no entrances on that side (the nearest door was approximately 50 yards away, which would have taken 15-to-20 seconds to reach) and was basically a tall, solid wall for the length of that pathway. She couldn't have possibly crossed the road in that time so I'm certain she hadn't entered any buildings.
The second story is brief and involves a friend but I've heard it corroborated by two others. The friend in question used to live on the same street as myself and her parents and moved away several years ago, but visits every couple of months for a weekend. On one particular stay, she made a comment about how she'd seen what was a very common sight for years - a neighbour walking his dog. But she hadn't been told yet that the neighbour in question had committed suicide since she'd last visited.
Despite these stories, I am a skeptical-minded person with some issues of the paranormal. I don't really believe in the traditional explanation of 'ghosts', for example, but am open to the possibility that some people genuinely experience something. So, obviously, I've tried to look for possible explanations for the above situations and I'll offer them here;
1. I wasn't really paying enough attention to the woman to pick out any particular features, so maybe my perception of time was equally affected in how long it took me to make the same turn before she could have entered a shop on the opposite side of the road.
2. My friend is so used to seeing the neighbour walking his dog that, upon seeing a seemingly familiar collection of shapes and colours out the corner of her eye, her brain connected it to her expectations without any further clarification and she made an incorrect mental note of having "seen her neighbour".
So there you have it - this turned out longer than I expected, sorry about that. If any of you guys have had a similar experience to either of the above, I'd love to hear it.
I was walking through an area that I know well (I've lived here for nearly 30 years) and took a side street to join onto a main road. Just to set a clear picture in your head, the street that I was intending to join lay parallel with the one which I was leaving, separated by a line of buildings with occasional side-streets to connect the two. I was heading up one of the side streets when a woman - I wasn't paying enough extra attention to her to notice anything specific about her appearance - crossed a few yards in front of me and disappeared from sight behind the building to my left as I approached. No more than 3 or 4 seconds later I made the same turn and was met with a completely empty street devoid of any other people. The building which she'd disappeared behind had no entrances on that side (the nearest door was approximately 50 yards away, which would have taken 15-to-20 seconds to reach) and was basically a tall, solid wall for the length of that pathway. She couldn't have possibly crossed the road in that time so I'm certain she hadn't entered any buildings.
The second story is brief and involves a friend but I've heard it corroborated by two others. The friend in question used to live on the same street as myself and her parents and moved away several years ago, but visits every couple of months for a weekend. On one particular stay, she made a comment about how she'd seen what was a very common sight for years - a neighbour walking his dog. But she hadn't been told yet that the neighbour in question had committed suicide since she'd last visited.
Despite these stories, I am a skeptical-minded person with some issues of the paranormal. I don't really believe in the traditional explanation of 'ghosts', for example, but am open to the possibility that some people genuinely experience something. So, obviously, I've tried to look for possible explanations for the above situations and I'll offer them here;
1. I wasn't really paying enough attention to the woman to pick out any particular features, so maybe my perception of time was equally affected in how long it took me to make the same turn before she could have entered a shop on the opposite side of the road.
2. My friend is so used to seeing the neighbour walking his dog that, upon seeing a seemingly familiar collection of shapes and colours out the corner of her eye, her brain connected it to her expectations without any further clarification and she made an incorrect mental note of having "seen her neighbour".
So there you have it - this turned out longer than I expected, sorry about that. If any of you guys have had a similar experience to either of the above, I'd love to hear it.