Uncanny UK reader Beth Warner, an American lady who now lives in Britain, mentioned on Twitter that she had a spooky story to tell. Turns out it took place in Texas, otherwise it would have appeared on the main site. However, I’m delighted to offer it here for everyone’s interest.
“Years ago, we lived in a rather wonderful house that for the United States qualified as being old. Here in England where I now live of course, a house built in 1922 would be sniffed at as a mere latecomer. I don’t know if what I experienced qualified as seeing a ghost as I saw nothing. I was convinced at the time and ever since though that despite only feeling what I felt and seeing nothing that I did encounter something supernatural.
“We lived in the house for 9 years. When we moved into the house in an older section of Houston I was 35 years old and my children were 15 and 10. My children claimed to have seen things many times and my partner who is the most practical of engineers and refuses to countenance the supernatural even h
ad an odd experience which we would have discounted had it not been almost identical to one experienced by the previous tenant. I found that house to be very peaceful and a pleasure to live in and my cats were always content there. My experience occurred during the late afternoon after my return from work. I was alone in the house and was still in my work clothes.
“The stairway leading to the first floor started in two sections, one in the kitchen and one in the lounge on both sides of dividing walls between the lounge and the kitchen. Those two short stairways met at a small landing in the center and continued up in a single wide stairway between the kitchen and lounge walls. On the left side of the stairway was a blank wall and immediately at the top of the stairs was a doorway into a large bedroom on the left. The hall went forward from the top of the stairway for about six yards and there was another door on the left wall into another bedroom and a door immediately ahead to a room that adjoined that second bedroom. If you turned to the right at the top of the stairs, the hall continued back along the stairs with a railing along the stairwell and on the left hand wall were doors to the bathroom and then the laundry room. At the end of that portion of the hall was a window that lighted the upstairs hall. The hall was rather gloomy even when lighted as the fixtures were the originals from the twenties. It being still daylight I did not have the lights on and there was only the dull afternoon light. It was raining out at the time so it was more dim than usual.
“As I said, I came home from work and went upstairs to put some laundry in. I was not thinking of anything in particular or in any particular mood that I remember. It was just life as usual. As I walked from the bedroom at the end of the hall to the laundry room at the opposite end passing along the railway over the stairs, I walked through “something” in the center of the hall and about two feet from the laundry room door. That is the best and most accurate description. I walked through something. I had never felt anything like it before and never since. It was not frightening in the slightest. I was so startled by it that I immediately put the laundry down in the laundry room and went back to the spot.
“I was a bit breathless because it was such a unique experience but not out of fear. I walked through the space again and very clearly felt it again. I sounded out the size of the “something” by edging around it and using my hands and body. It seemed to be both the size and rough shape of a person. I say rough because I could only sense the outlines of where the clear sensation started. The air in that space was neither hot nor cold. There was no change whatsoever except that it felt as though the air was “different” there. There was a very clear spot there in which my body recognized a complete difference from the air around it. If I had to compare it to something it would seem comparable to walking through a field of static electricity but without the usual physical reactions to static electricity. No hair standing on end or goose bumps.
“Being very interested in the supernatural and never having had that sort of experience, I continued walking through it just to verify that I felt what I thought I felt and after fifteen minutes it faded away and the air there felt no different from the rest of the hallway. I later wondered if it might have to do with the stormy weather outside but that wouldn’t account for it having the size and shape that it did. It occurred to me also that maybe I irritated “it” by continually walking through it. Only after it faded did I think of trying to speak to whatever it was and tried it with no success. It never happened again.
“It was, I believe, my single recognizable brush with something physically uncanny. I’ve had the odd experience or two with other people and the mind but for something that might have been a ghost, that was it.”
