After I posted a while back about a possible ghost sighting I had many years ago several people have expressed curiosity about exactly what happened.
Misha Gericke's comment (
you can visit her blog here) yesterday under the 'Versatile Blogger' nomination
HERE has now prompted me to write this article in the hope that other folk will be kind enough to share their own experiences of similar strangeness. In my line of work I get to meet lots of different people and over the years I've heard several of my clients tell me their own very personal accounts.
For me, what I saw that evening nearly twenty years ago didn't seem strange at the time. I was with a small group of friends at a beach party (it was more like a gathering around a small fire than a real 'party') on a fairly remote stretch of coast, north of the town where I grew up. The weather was warm and the sky perfectly clear, the sun having set some time ago. I distinctly remember the last vestiges of yellow light slowly disappearing over the western horizon and the night sky drawing in. The sort of sky where Venus often appears alone for a brief time.
We had been there for a while and were talking quietly among ourselves when one of us (my brother, I think) drew our attention to a man standing very close by. I turned to look and saw a dark silhouette against the fading light, no less than ten feet away, with its back slightly turned toward us, looking out to sea. There was also a dog standing beside him on a leash like a small, black Labrador. I could tell the man was dressed in a long overcoat. Both were perfectly still and very clear. I turned away to talk with the others, (some of whom have told me in later years they don't remember what happened, or never noticed), then when I looked back moments later. Literally only a few moments. The man and the dog had vanished.
The beach was very stony and we should have heard him crunching across the gravel, but he left (and arrived!) without making a noise. We shrugged and carried on talking, glad that the strange person had left and didn't think anything more of it.
It was years later that I came across a booklet, created by a local historian, mentioning the ghost of 'Tramp's Alley', a short, sandy road that leads straight down to the beach.
The party that night was right at the bottom, out on the beach a little way beyond the end of the road. The local legend mentioned how a tramp and his black Labrador were both murdered there in the early 1900's (the killer was never caught) and their ghosts seen on occasion over the years ever since.
Was it a ghost? I have no idea, but that's my story. Anyone else had similar weird experiences they'd like to share?
