Today I’d like to introduce you to Loren, my online pal, and a fellow lover of the strange and unusual. You’ll be hearing from Loren again in a few weeks because he’s a crop circle guru and has spent a lot of time investigating these magical circles in the corn. Yes, we both realise humans are responsible. But here’s the thing; not for all of them! Loren’s interest centres around the energies coming from the earth and atmosphere. I shall say no more for now as we’ll be getting together to bring you a Wiltshire crop circle round up for 2023 and Loren is going to share some of his findings with us.

For today though, Loren has written about a personal account of a couple of very weird experiences from here in this liminal and mysterious county.

It was nearly 30 years ago in the early 90s and my friend had driven to Wiltshire with his girlfriend on his motorbike. They were both interested in crop circles and had spent a couple of days visiting different circles and sites. They could both feel that the ‘energies’ were completely different in genuine crop circles as opposed to human made ones. From what I remember of his account, in the last crop circle they visited, something odd happened. They noticed a small cloud of mist hovering around the edge of the field, and they heard a peculiar trilling noise.  We didn’t know each other then, but I was also having repeated encounters with crop circles and a strange trilling noise in Sussex. But that, as they say, is another story.

For some reason after visiting the last crop circle and hearing a trilling noise and experiencing a peculiar stillness and silence, they felt reluctant to camp outside anymore. Many of you familiar with high strangeness will recognize the reference to the ‘peculiar silence’. Feeling slightly and inexplicably unnerved they decided to stay the night in accommodation. They found a room in an old pub near or just outside Warminster.

After a pleasant evening and a pub dinner they retired to bed after closing time. It was a warm night and they slept with their window open. It was peaceful outside as the pub backed on to a few barns and then fields. It was a clear moonless night, and they went to sleep.

Sometime after 1am and before it was getting light my friend was woken up by his girlfriend violently shaking him.

“Whassamatter?” He yelped.

“There’s a head floating outside the window, and it’s been watching us while we were asleep.” She could hardly speak as she was shaking with fear.

“What?” Said my friend.

“I just bloody told you…” She yelled “There is an orange glowing head outside the window and it’s watching us!”

“What?” Said my friend.

“Stop bloody saying WHAT” She yelled. “Get out of bed and make it go away!”

He explained he couldn’t see it at the window and if she wasn’t on drugs she must have been dreaming. His girlfriend slapped him and told him to not patronize her.

“It comes and goes…” She said, “It floats and bobs up to the window and bobs down again when you look at it.”

My friend rolled out of bed and looked out of the window.

Seeing how scared she was, he tried to sound reassuring, “Darling, It’s probably only a balloon”. He looked back at his girlfriend sitting up in the bed. He noticed a look of abject terror suddenly appearing on her face. Unable to speak, and like a scene from a Hammer Horror film, she pointed to the window behind him. He turned to look expecting to see nothing or a party balloon.

Instead, he came face to face with a glowing orange sphere about 12 inches in diameter. He is still ashamed about what happened next. He totally freaked out and found himself running straight across the room heading for the door. Unfortunately, his girlfriend had got out of bed also trying to go to the door, but he ran straight through her and sent her flying. Picking herself up she ran after him along the dark landing and down the stairs.  They remember peering out through a window downstairs and seeing the orange sphere bobbing away over the fields out the back. They also remember there was a mist in the field and they thought they saw the dim outline of an oddly shaped building, which incidentally was not there in the morning?

As an aside and rather unsurprisingly, after being trampled on, his girlfriend dumped him not long afterwards.

OK so let’s move on to just a few years ago and my midnight drive. Wiltshire, being on the edge of the Southwest, is a liminal borderland. There is something ancient and hidden in this old part of England, something forgotten but very much alive. A long-lost memory silently revolving in the ancient stones and earth itself. My notions of mystical Avalon stretch across and include the whole of the southwest.

On this particular night, I was driving back to Somerset from Sussex. It was a route I had done hundreds of times and knew very well. It was early September, and the landscape and air was still warm from the Indian Summer we were experiencing. I had turned on to the A34 heading north where I would usually turn off for the A4 as part of my journey back home. I was driving along quite happily. It was late and the road was almost empty. I suddenly noticed it was getting cold and closed the window. Then an eerie sense of stillness and silence filled the car. I’d had this before, but always out in the open and sometimes in buildings. I’d never experienced it in a car before. Being pragmatic in nature and by default levelheaded I didn’t think anything more of it. I remember indicating for the next turning, negotiating a roundabout and choosing a particular exit and going across the county along a dark deserted road. About 10 miles into the journey, I suddenly realized something that shocked me. I had turned off about 20 miles too soon and was taking roads I had never driven down before. What was really odd was I had a notion in my head that this WAS the right route to take. It clearly wasn’t.

I decided to pull over beside the road and start the Satnav on my phone. Unfortunately, there was no phone or internet signal. I knew this often happened near here, so I still wasn’t bothered other than the inconvenience of looking at a real map we kept in the car. I was able to estimate my position as being on the edge of Salisbury Plain. I could see that the road I was on would eventually take me to a small village where I could further negotiate the route from and set off on my weird journey. After a few miles I began to encounter mist banks drifting across the road. At one point it was so thick visibility was extremely poor. I crawled along and when I came out to the other side I decided to pull up again and have a break. I used to smoke then and rolled a cigarette. I got out of the car and looked over the dark fields to watch the mist that was still lingering. There was a gibbous moon low in the sky and it cast a very pale light in the pitch darkness.

It was then that I saw it.

About a mile away towards Stonehenge, rising out of the mist in the field was a grey tower. It was unusual in design and seemed very out of place for our architecture. It was about the height of 3 electricity pylons but very narrow. It was however wider at the base and seemed to be made of grey stone. There were some architectural features dimly visible like ridges and small terraces. It also had some small dark window spaces, like you would see in a medieval castle. I was slightly mesmerized by what I was seeing and kept blinking and tilting my head unsure of what I was looking at. I stood there for at least 10 minutes before realizing this might not be normal. It was at this point I decided to take out my camera phone and get a photo. I reached into my pocket where I was sure I had placed my phone only to find it was not there. I searched through all my pockets and couldn’t find it.

I glanced up at the grey tower and this time several of the small windows now had flickering lights inside them. Now desperate for my phone I went back to the car to search for it. Oddly it was on the dashboard. I took the phone out and turned around to face the tower.

But as you can probably guess, it had now gone.

There wasn’t a lot I could do after that, and I admit to feeling uneasy. All I could do was to continue my long dark journey home. It still perplexes me about what I saw.

However, there are some key points to consider:

• Both my friends account and my own involved
• Mist
• Darkness
• Proximity to crop circle locations
• Ancient stone sites
• A peculiar paranormal silence
• Acting slightly out of character (him running through his girlfriend in an out of character panic and me thinking I was driving the right way home when I wasn’t)
• Seeing odd buildings as if glimpsing into another world

So, there we have it! Two separate accounts of high strangeness, both really very unusual and highly unsettling. Sometimes things happen in life that you just can’t explain. Often when you least expect them. Whether you are an arch sceptic looking to explain an experience on the power of the mind or a more open-minded person, choosing to take an account as a true event of a supernatural experience, you have to admit that whatever the reasons, both these experiences are pretty creepy ones.

As ever, I seek not to explain but to tell a story and I always leave it up to you to decide what you think! But I do have a couple of thoughts. I know if either of these things had happened to me, I would be very much freaked out. Am I surprised they happened in Wiltshire? Not at all! This is one very magical and mysterious place after all. Strange things occur in Weird Wiltshire all the time.

With thanks to Loren for being my guest blogger and taking the time out to write this fantastic account. I look forward to collaborating on our crop circle blog soon.

Loren can be found over on Twitter, although we now have to call it by its new rubbish name of X! I recommend you find him as there’s always lots of interesting bits of information to be found.

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Don’t forget, I’m always on the look out for spooky stories from Wiltshire and beyond. If you have a tale you would like to share I’d love to hear from you. Contact me via Twitter or here.

Stay spooky everyone!

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