The following anecdotes were selected from various emails received over the years. Some have been previously posted:
"What's unusual?"
"I ask the question because I feel that so-called paranormal experiences become normal if you treat them as being normal.
I don't really know where to start as this is the first time I've tried to put things on paper as a timeline. I guess I'll start with my first experience.
When I was 8 or 9 living on a farm in Hunua, South Auckland, NZ, I was walking down the gravel road that ran alongside the farm with a friend. It was just after dark when we both stopped and witnessed a cigar shaped object in the sky in front of us. It didn't make a sound and was moving away from us slowly. It was hard to tell how big or how far away it was since it was dark and the object was totally black. The only way we could see it was the fact that the stars were disappearing behind it.
A couple of years later I had another sighting, or at least I think it was. I was 11, we'd moved to a place called Paparimu. It's just south of Hunua but still in the Hunua rangers. At the back of the house was a farm that had some hills. Some were quite steep. One in particular was very steep and almost perfectly round and had a commanding view. One day while sitting on top admiring the view, I saw an airplane flying in a valley below me. The funny thing is it was a 747. I had just finished reading a book on new aircraft and one of them was a 747. I didn't think much of it at the time, just a plane flying around in a valley. But as time went by and the more I thought about it, there's no way a small aircraft, let alone a passenger jet, could have been flying around in that valley. As I said, I think it was a UFO.
Years later, I saw another one. I had moved to Motueka, on the western side of Nelson Bay in the South Island. I was managing a dairy farm at the time. It was early one morning about 4-4:30 am and I was getting the cows in for the morning milking. Following them on the track sitting on my ATV looking up at the stars, I noticed a bright light amongst the stars. It was as bright as a welding light, purple, orange and yellow. At first it didn't move but after a couple of minutes, it started to zigzag up and down and side to side at great speed then it shot away, out of sight in a split second. I only told the farm owner about what I'd seen, no one else knew.
That afternoon my niece came to stay with my family for a couple of days. She had traveled up from Reefton which is about 200 km south of Mot. That night she told me how her and the rest of her family were outside the night before and had seen a bright light, like a welding light in the sky that moved very fast.
A couple of years later I had another experience. My wife was a paramedic and attended all sorts of situations. One night she was called out to an old ladie's home but by the time she got there the woman had passed on. My wife helped her by tidying her up and resting her in her bed. The next night I woke up and could smell a very strong perfume in the room. I woke my wife and she informed me that it was the ladies perfume from the night before??? The following night I woke again only this time she was there on the bed beside me, laying beside me. I panicked. I wish I hadn't.
Later I had moved to Western Australia. I met a woman who was very special. I was staying at her house for the weekend. She had new neighbors who had moved in that Friday. We welcomed them to the neighborhood and they invited us over to their place the next afternoon. We were sitting, having a drink and a chat when my friend, out of the blue, asked the woman about her father and if she minded talking about the barrier that was between them. The woman was both shocked and amazed by the question but she also seemed relieved to be asked. The conversation went on for a while between the two with my friend talking mainly about the woman's childhood and different parts of her life. There were tears and laughter, from both of them, and more importantly there was an understanding between them. Sadly my friend passed on not long afterwords, she is missed dearly.
People who think the same and feel the same are drawn together and see these things not as unusual but as normal.
This is the first time I've sat and thought about things all at once, it's only a small part of my experiences and I'm sitting here shaking like a leaf." SL
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Several years ago, I used to walk to the Fashion Valley Shopping Center during my break from the Union Tribune newspaper. One morning, while walking in the shopping center, I noticed a short man, maybe no more than 4'11" walking with 2 men, maybe 6' tall or more. The short man was walking between the two tall men. The 3 were wearing very neatly pressed blue work clothes with caps. The short one had a big head, and odd development around the upper eye bones. Each man on either side 'escorting' the short man was a very clean cut, healthy, attractive black and white man. For some weird reason, I mentally told him welcome. I don't understand why I didn't walk up closer to the 3 men but did walk by them and they were no more than 6' away. I always remembered this experience though everyone thinks I'm nuts. I got the impression that the 2 men were showing the short man some of human civilization in a relatively safe environment.
LO
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I've always believed in and been interested in the paranormal. I live in Southwestern Pennsylvania and have been a firefighter for over five years.
We have a ghost in our fire department. It's an old member who died many years ago and many of our members, myself included, have had experiences with "Uncle Al" as we call him. There have been many times where someone has experienced sounds, noises and just odd feelings while being in the fire department. We have had a game room added onto our department after our member had already died, so he cannot pass into the new room, but you can feel his presence in the doorway.
One of the most memorable experiences I have had with Uncle Al was one day when I was in the engine bay office with 2 members, Ken and myself (this has occurred before when I was alone). We could hear chairs being knocked off of the tables in our social hall. We went upstairs to investigate, and all the chairs looked like they were pushed off the tables.
Ken and I went back downstairs and left everything as is and not long later (maybe 10 mins) we hear the chairs moving again. We went back upstairs and all the chairs were set back up onto the tables. I am not making this up.
Another experience with Uncle Al occurred when I was standing in the bathroom, which is in the social hall (the part where Al can roam around). It was about midnight and I looked out the window at least 5 mins previous and noticed no members cars except mine were in the lot. Soon, I heard someone calling my name. The sounds were coming from the doorway to the stairwell. I can also hear people walking around in the bays again and people stepping on the grates on the floor. I went downstairs to investigate, looking out the window again...no cars in the lot. I go to the door to the engine bays and see that the lights were off. There is always the sense of being watched by Uncle Al, be it one person, or 10 people in the fire house...you can always feel a presence of someone or something watching you. Jeff
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In July, 1976 a friend and I, who is now a dentist and a no nonsense kind of guy, were cruising between Lincoln and Auburn, CA on a quiet country road. We drove over the top of a hilly road and we were descending I noticed a bright bluish-white light shining down on the road about 200 yards in front of us. It was coming from a point over a large group of scrub oak trees. The trees came to a point over the road creating a canapé effect over the road. What was strange is there were no street lights and none of the light shining down on the road was being blocked out by the trees.
As we approached the light my car began to sputter and lost power, then the headlights went out. As we were approaching the light I was flashing my bright lights on and off before the car shut down. As soon as the car rolled to a stop, I opened the door to step out... the light disappeared while leaves were floating down below where the light had been falling onto the road in front of us. During July in the Sacramento valley it is still about 80 degrees with no wind. It gets very hot here in the summer.
The thing that really shocked me was 4 days later we took 2 of our cats to the vets, which was about 3 miles out of town. When the vet drove up he was acting confused and was stuttering, which he did when he got excited. He had been called out to a ranch to look at a dead cow. He explained to me and my mom that the cow had been cut up in a very strange way with a missing eye ball, utter and entrails. It's hind quarters had been drilled or board out. He also said therewere no flies, no bugs and no predator bite marks anywhere on the cow. The cow was located 50 yards from the very spot we saw the lights over the trees. My doctor friend said his mother was upset with him for getting home so late the night we saw the lights. However we were only out there in the country for an hour and a half. He claims it was 4am when we got home.
After dropping him off that night, I was really tired and just went home to bed and didn't pay any attention to the time. He claims we lost 3 hours. To this day I have no idea what we saw or what happened. He refuses to talk about it with me or to anyone else. I have seen other lights and strange things over the years but this situation has always made me scratch my head and I wonder what really happened that night to us and that poor cow. Nothing was ever said to the police or to the news media regarding the mutilated cow or the lights we saw.
After years of hearing about abductions and cow mutilations, I believe we may have been part of something that cannot be explained with science or rational thought. My interest in UFO's has been very strong for years and I am sure there are other things going on around us that we cannot explain or can we make sense of them because we are not allowed to by those conducting such intrusive examinations of humans and animals.
Well that's my story and I'm sticking to it because I can remember it like it happened yesterday. We were not drinking, smoking or doing any drugs as my doctor friend was always against such activities due to his medical training and personal beliefs. On the other hand, I know something happened beyond the norm and will take it to my grave as a real and unexplained experience.
Thanks...MR
Unexplained: An Encyclopedia of Curious Phenomena, Strange Superstitions, and Ancient Mysteries
Unexplained!: Strange Sightings, Incredible Occurrences, and Puzzling Physical Phenomena
The World's Weirdest Places
