Kevin's Watch

I am curious to know if anybody else has seen unexplainable things in the skies above.
I have seen on a few occasions "things" flying in the night sky.
(No, it wasn't due to "wacky-tobaccy", though it would have been a good excuse.)
The first time was in Kentucky back in the mid 70's.
Another event, there were 2 other witnesses. (in Florida)
The most recent one, there were 4 of us watching.

Here's the story: While camping in Withlacoochie State Forest (Florida),
several of us usually star-gaze in a clearing in the middle of the forest.
One of my sons, looking through binoculars, seemed intrigued about a "moving star".
One of the other campers spotted the object and thought that it may be a satillite,
slowly moving across the night sky.
(Everyone can faintly see this "star" without binoculars by now.)

After watching this object for roughly 4-5 miinutes, it started to rapidly dart in a zig-zag pattern several times, covering a large portion of the sky.
Then, as we all watched, it grew a bit brighter and then slowly faded until it disappeared.
Overall, it was observed for over 10 minutes.

I also have a few ghost stories also. (Lived in a haunted house in Largo, FL)
Maybe I am like a paranormal magnet or something.
Sounds kinda crazy, huh? Am I just weird (no snickering),
or has anybody else experienced strange things?

Here's my one and only supernatural experience:

I used to work as a janitor on an overtime basis at the job where I was head shipper. I would come in early in the morning to clean the restrooms. I was in the womens' restroom, and had just finished one of the toilets. I moved to the other stall, which was separated from the first by a wooden partition.

I heard this strange whirring noise, which lasted about ten seconds. I went back into the first stall, and the entire roll of toilet paper was lying in a wad on the floor. It appeared to have unrolled by itself.

This was an indoor location, no windows, no air vents around the stall. No one else was in the building this early in the morning except me. I do not take drugs. I wasn't overly fatigued. I don't drink except on Saturday evenings.

To this day, I'm at a loss to explain it. It WAS a very old building - there could be a lot of history there. Maybe bad history.

That definitely is odd, Roland. I wonder about the bad history: someone died on the toilet while suffering a bad case of diarrhea? Therefore the person's ghost has an obssession with toilet paper? (A JOKE...that was a JOKE...)

One summer night years ago, in the backyard of our house, my dad and I saw a peculiar thing while we were stargazing: directly above us and seemingly quite near, a broad V-shaped string of unblinking red lights suddenly moved across the sky and past the roof of our house. The lights were distinct, though small and not particularly bright. No discernible sound accompanied the lights as they passed overhead.

I've thought about it, and I think that what my dad and I saw was simply a formation of geese flying under cover of darkness, at a lower than usual altitude. The clue is the V-shape. The red light was just their underbelly or some other body part reflecting the city lights below. Their noiseless flight just meant that they had nothing urgent to discuss with each other at that moment.

I tend to take a scientific view of things and am fairly skeptical of alleged "paranormal" events. Forgive me, I don't have the quote in front of me, but I think it was Albert Einstein who said: The supernatural is merely the natural not yet explained.

This doesn't mean I refute what people see. It's often the conclusions they draw from what they see that I have problems with. When I hear about a UFO story in the media, the automatic implication seems to be UFO=alien spaceship. We should allow a UFO to be what it is: an unidentified flying object. Nothing more, nothing less. Carl Sagan took his stand on the UFO issue with these great words: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

I can't prove that what I saw that night was indeed nocturnal fowl, but I think my explanation has merit and is certainly more plausible than one in which hyperdrives and little green guys are invoked.

--My x-wife and I were driving across country in '86 from NM 2 NY 2 catch a plane 4 Portugal. I did alot of the driving, but slept 4 3hrs while she drove. I took over the driving again @ about 2am, my x-wife was sleeping and we were in eastern Oklahoma. Around 3am we were close 2 the Kerr-McGee factory (Karen Silkwood, plutonium poisoning and all that) and there r signs in that area that say "turn lights on thru smoke". Apparently they burn alot to keep the brush down in that area--they do it during the day...I caught up w/a car that was about 500 yards away and paced it @ about 68mph. this went on 4 15 minutes and there were no exits coming up on the freeway and trees and guardrails lined the road. I didn't kno it but my x-wife was awake and looking @ the car ahead of us--and mentioned something about how big the rectangular taillights were. 5 minutes later the other car and ours started down in2 a little valley and this strange smoke/mist came across the freeway and we couldn't c the taillights anymore. We could c the trees and the guardrails continually passing by, but we lost sight of the taillights. We came out of the "smoke" and topped a rise, then could c cleary 4 about 1/2 a mile down the road. But no car was ahead of us!! I thought it was odd and though that possibly the other driver had an accident so I speeded up 2 about 85. No sign of the guardrails being disturbed, no sign of the car. Then I hit up 2 over 100mph 4 about 5 minutes straight--the moon came out from behind a cloud, we topped another rise where we REALLY could c VERY clearly 4 1/2 a mile--no exits no broken guardrails NO car! We were both completely sober and I definately should have seen the taillights, or headlights 4 that matter, when I topped the first rise--even if the guy was going 150mhp!! When I speeded up so fast my x-wife kept saying "slow down" mayb he broke down in the middle of the road and u'll hit him!" But I could c well enuff 2 stop if that were the case--so I kept going. That 1 little curtian of "mist" was the only 1 we encountered--and we're both still freaked about the xperience 2 this day...

I tend to agree with you, Matrixman, that the conclusions that observers draw from the phenomena they see, are suspect. As Arthur C. Clarke said, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

Stephen King, however, takes the opposite tack. He says that people encounter supernatural events all the time, but because the mind cannot or will not accept it, we tend to rationalize what we have seen, to accomodate it within our narow worldview of perceptions.

I'm not sure how I believe. I'm fifty years old and still struggling to decide if I'm a strict realist or a believer in the unexplained. But my one "paranormal" experience still baffles me.

Maybe your diahrrea explanation is correct?

I share my flat with a ghost of a very bad tempered man who lived about 200 years ago give or take. When I first moved in I nearly called the police because I was so scared; footsteps, light shades swinging backwards and forwards. i had one of those nodding dogs next to my bed, which a friend had recently bought me as a moving in present (don't ask) and it started nodding frantically. I threw it across the room and the head has now disappeared-still cannot find it nearly 3 years on.
Now he tolerates me and just knocks on my bedroom door at night. He used to do this and then get me to follow him into the living room. He paces the floor of the hall. I think that he is always trying to show me something in the living room, something not very nice. For a long time, I used to sit up in bed on the phone to my friend for hours, just so I wasn't alone there. Now, I just have to get on with it.

Something to consider...
What if they were such things as space aliens.
What if they decided to inhabit this planet.
(Surely radar, satillites, detection devices, telescopes, etc. would "see" the "space-ships" before nearing Earth, right?)
Now, what if these creatures were very tiny? Like microscopic-sized?
We could be bombarded by hundreds of thousands of these "space-ships"
around this globe, and we probably would never even know it...
Until humans, sea-life, animals, trees, whatever - are infected with a "virus" or "disease", that in fact, could be these tiny "aliens" that are
infecting our "giant-sized" host bodies. They may control (intentionally or not) our behavior, thoughts, immune system, organ functions,
or even the human evolution.
Just because we cannot see them, does not mean they could not exist.
(Maybe I should be a science-fiction writer)
Just remember... this is just an idea out of my (warped?) imagination and
does NOT reflect of what I believe in. It is just a thought to ponder on.

cheval wrote:Here's the story: While camping in Withlacoochie State Forest (Florida), several of us usually star-gaze in a clearing in the middle of the forest. One of my sons, looking through binoculars, seemed intrigued about a "moving star".
One of the other campers spotted the object and thought that it may be a satillite, slowly moving across the night sky.
(Everyone can faintly see this "star" without binoculars by now.)

After watching this object for roughly 4-5 miinutes, it started to rapidly dart in a zig-zag pattern several times, covering a large portion of the sky.
Then, as we all watched, it grew a bit brighter and then slowly faded until it disappeared.
Overall, it was observed for over 10 minutes.

I was with several friends, camping in the mountains in Montana, and we saw the same thing. There were around half a dozen of them. I'm not sure what direction they came from.....we just noticed one, and then another, and then another. And we had them pegged as satellites until they started zig zagging around in exactly the manner you describe....they darted in an apparently random pattern around a large quadrant of the sky, sometimes disappearing altogether and then abruptly reappearing in another place. This went on for at least 45 minutes, and then one by one they disappeared. Some just seemed to vanish, while others remained visible as they apparently flew away out of sight.... And yes, we were entirely sober.

And this is my ghost story -

The theater where my company performs is an old 40's movie palace that has been rennovated into (mostly) a venue for rock bands. Our performance space is a tiny, swampy smelling 68 seat theater on the third floor. Legend has it (and a trite one it is too ) that a fire broke out in a projection room sometime in the 60's(?), trapping and killing the man inside, and rendering the building unusable until it was bought and completely renovated in the early 80's, becomming what it is today. Now regardless of the authenticity of this admittedly dubious ghost story, I've often been creeped out when alone in certain areas if the building....it's just a creepy place.....lots of dank, dimly lit corners, and tiny rooms with paint peeling off the walls, and the smell of damp everywhere....but this is what I saw.
We were holding auditions for Peer Gynt (I think), and almost everyone was upstairs in the theatre. But myself, my director, and his girlfriend were on the second floor in the bar, deserted except for us, just taking a break and jawing. They were sitting on a bench facing me, and I was facing the bar. And as we talked I saw someone start to come through the curtains that lead to the little stockroom behind the bar. There was no question in my mind what it was.....it was definitely the shape of a person under the cloth. But I started to wonder when this person never came all the way through. They just stood there for a minute or so, and then appeared to back off into the room again. It was then that I noticed there were no lights on in the storeroom or in the bar, and I asked Michael if the owners (the only people with any business in there) were in the building. He said no, so I asked if the AC was on. He laughed and again said no.....we don't rate the expense of the AC just for auditions, you see. Or rehearsals for that matter. So I asked if he could please explain that. And they both looked, and where the shape had been the curtains were swinging wildly, billowing in and out, as if in a high breeze. We watched for a long time, until the movement had completely ceased, and then Micheal shrugged and said "Well, we were pretty sure this place was haunted...."
I guess there could be any number of explanations, but we were the only people in the building that night, the air was not on, and there was not a breath of breeze outside - it was hot and totally still.
I've felt watched up there several times since. Particularly one day when I spent many hours alone in the tiny little prop room on the third floor, organizing it. It wasn't a threatening feeling, but it was a little creepy. At one point I politely asked it if it would mind not staring at me all the time....."You're making me nervous!" And it seemed to take me literally-After that I only felt watched part of the time.

Anyway, it was probably all in my mind. Right?

The above ghost story is VERY simular to the one
told about a playhouse/theater in Tampa. I had never been there, but there has been a few write-ups in the St.Petersburg Times over the last 4-5 years.
Creepy, ay?

Since BnB had a ghost story to share, I may as well tell one of my experiences.

My family and I rented a house where a few "strange" things happened.
About 3 a.m., my wife and I both woke at the same time
to hear what sounded like someone shouting in a distance.
At the time, all of our children were young and living with us.
This "voice in the distance" was calling our kids by name.
But when I got out of bed to find who was calling our kids
(which I thought that they may had snuck outside),
my heart started to hammer as I actually realized that the "voice" was
coming from inside our BEDROOM! (Although it still sounded like
it was afar).
My wife ran out of the bedroom to check on the kids (Who are sound asleep),
while I grab a BIG knife (a machette to be exact) to search our bedroom.
When I turned on the lights to look around, that's when the voice stopped.
No intruder, no-one was outside, nothing.
That was the scariest episode that had happened in that house.
(There were many times where my wife and/or I would wake
to the smell of coffee brewing, in which there were two or three times
that the coffee pot was just turned on;
a couple of pictures on her mother's desk flew off to the floor;
shadows across the walls; watching a dog that was NOT there.)
After living in this house for a year,
we experienced quite a few things that cannot be explained.
Sometimes nothing would happen for several weeks,
once in a while there would be a couple of incidences within a few days.
Needless to say, we no longer live there.

Stuff is happening again!

My wife's Uncle in Ocala, FL died early this morning around 2:20.
Just about the time he died (of cancer), I woke up with stomach cramps and
then had to sit on the toilet to relieve myself.
My Brother-in-Law woke up about that same time with a terrible headache,
and my wife's Aunt in Georgia called and told us that she too was awakened around then
to the sound of a radio playing. (She doesn't have a radio!)
To top things off, a cousin that lives in Alabama called us today and told us that
she had a "visitor" in her bedroom early this morning.
She swore that her husband, who died earlier this year,
was sitting on the edge of her bed, trying to comfort her.

None of us knew about the death of Uncle Ronnie until later this morning.

IS THAT SPOOKY OR WHAT???

A nurse I worked with in St. Louis took a vacation to London. Her grandmother collapsed in a grocery store and Sheila had to cut her trip short by a day. Grandma came around and nothing wrong was ever found. If Sheila had come home when she was supposed to, she would have been on the plane that was blown up over Lockerbie, Scotland. Probably was just coincidence but it was still weird!

Bumped and moved.-jay

One night - around 11pm - I was in the car with my brother as we were coming home. There was low cloud cover and I could see dots of light in two concentric rings moving along - keeping pace - with car (through the clouds) and they were pulsing in and out and rotating. This happened for about twenty minutes. I finally tell my brother and we stop then they vanish. Either I was having a seizure and hallucinating or I witnessed an unidentifiable phenomena.

dang, some of your people are lucky! I crave to see a ghost, or ghost-like appearance.
The only thing I can tell that happened was a little over 3 years ago. I got married fairly late in life -- when i was 34. It was the happiest day of my mother's life when I told her 'out of the blue' that I was engaged. The only thing that could make her happier, would have been to hold a grandchild in her arms.
Unfortunately she passed away suddenly about 3 months after the wedding.
My wife and I eventually had a beautiful baby girl (Alejandra Amelie). Her crib was in our room, right next to our bed. When she was a month old, one night my wife and I were awakened by a creaking of the wooden floor in the bedroom. It was strange. There was obviously no one there. As the creaking continued, we could eventually locate the creaky floor as being at the foot of Amelie's crib. I leaned across the bed and held my face near the floor where the creaking (like someone shifting their weight on a loose floorboard), and could tell the exact spot where this was occurring -- I even waved my hand around the area (silly, I know). But, of course, nothing was there. This went on for about 2 or 3 minutes. My wife wondered what could have been causing it. I could only think of something which sounded logical: such as temperature changes causing a shift in the wooden floor at that spot. I did not want to tell her what I really thought at that moment: that perhaps it was my mom, coming to take a look at her granddaughter. (my wife is terrified of the idea of ghosts)
The creaking has never occured since.

I can only hope that it was my mom... It's nicer that way. <shrug>

Beautiful name.

--A

Camping Kentucky last spring, my wife saw a light in the sky that wasn't a plane or a satellite. It stayed in the same area of the sky, but it moved around erratically in that area for over an hour. Sometimes it would move quickly, sometimes slowly, in every direction. And sometimes is would sit still for long moments. There was no sound, and it was high enough to appear point-like.

So, unless this was a very high surveillance helicopter, I'm not sure what it was. The Red River Gorge is supposed to have lots of illegal "gardens," but the spring would be the wrong time to monitor for that.

Premonition???

Took my 7 year old grandson (Timmy) horseback riding yesterday.

Timmy was paired with a pony because this was the first time he ever been on a horse and I had a very beautiful (and BIG) horse.
The handlers first helped my grandson up and then turned thier attention to another child that was in our group.

I climbed on my horse and was just getting comfortable, when I suddenly had a very strong nagging feeling to get to Timmy ASAP.
Just as I turned my horse around, the pony slipped away from the handler that was holding it and began to trot away, with Timmy sitting cock-eyed on the saddle.
As the pony started to gallop, Timmy started to slide off the saddle!

Luckily another handler, already on his horse, rode past me and grabbed the reins on the running pony and was able to halt him.
I was right behind and got there just as Timmy fell off.

Nobody was hurt and Timmy thought that the ride was GREAT!
He wanted to climb back on and continue.
Next time, maybe an older horse that won't bolt away will be his ride.

I have a horsey sort-of premonition story, too. Nothing creepy, but kinda cool.

When my mom was pregnant with me, she had a dream that she gave birth to a little tiny horse instead of a baby. Now, we seem to have some horse-lover gene running in our family, but it's never been an overriding passion of anyone's until me. One of my uncles and his daughter ride some, but I don't think they've sold their souls for horses the way I have.

So, baby horse dream comes and goes, I get born, I get old enough to sit up in a stroller, and my mom starts taking me around town, going to the market or the bank or wherever. This is back in Poland, and there were still farmers driving wagons around small towns like ours. As we're going down the street, I see what is apparently my first horse and cart (I'm something like eighteen months old), and what do I do but lunge forward and try to reach the horse to touch it. Only the little seatbelt straps kept me in the stroller.

When I was older, we'd go to the farmers' market on the other side of town, and she'd leave me to sit in front of the farmers' horses tied up at the back of the square. I wouldn't go anywhere, just sit and watch the horses through the fence until it was time to go home.

Anytime I wonder about how I got into horses, I remember my mom telling me about that dream. Guess I was fated for it.

It's not really uncommon for women to like horses. Or to dream about them. I don't really see anything strange about that.