Haunted Encounters: Shay’s Paranormal Experiences

Shay initially got in touch with me to ask if I knew of any local UFO groups and crop circle enthusiasts. She was interested in the subjects, and being new to the area, she wanted to find out more about anything going on locally. Wiltshire is the place to be if you like crop circles and/or UFOs! We chatted via email, and Shay informed me that she had had lots of strange experiences over time.

Shay kindly agreed to put pen to paper, or fingers to the keyboard I should say, and wrote down some of her strangest experiences for you to read today.

The Monk by the Riverside

The first story Shay sent me was from her childhood in the North East of England. She used to take her two brothers out exploring around the village where they lived.

There’s a river that runs past the outskirts of the village, the River Wear. Back then, two footpaths ran adjacent to the river that led out to the countryside. One footpath started at an old pub that had a small jetty to launch small boats. About 50 metres past the pub, a noisy flyover was built above the river. It used to be really quiet and picturesque until the flyover was built.

One particular summer’s day I took my two younger brothers for a walk along the footpath that started at the pub and then led out to the countryside. As we passed the pub and walked past the flyover, I noticed a figure walking along the footpath on the other side of the river. The figure looked out of place. It was dressed from head to toe in dark clothing. The clothing was one whole garment that had a large hood so l couldn’t see the individual’s head. I stopped walking to study the figure. As a child, I had 20/20 vision so I could clearly see across the river. I shouted to my brothers to check it out but they couldn’t see it.

I knew the area and footpaths really well as my brothers and I were always out walking and exploring. Both of the footpaths that ran alongside the edge of the river were made up of soil. Years of people walking along these footpaths had impacted the soil. Some tree routes had pushed their way through the soil, displacing some of it at various points. I remember my brothers and I had to either grab any overhanging branches to get across the gaps or take a run and jump.

I studied the figure and realised that it was actually a monk dressed in a long dark robe with the hood pulled over his head. I couldn’t see his hands or feet. He was just walking along the footpath. Well, he almost looked like he was gliding along as if he wasn’t following the contours of the path. There were tall bushes and trees behind the figure and clumps of wildflowers and nettles in the foreground. Low enough for me to get a good look at the figure. 

My father was very good at landscaping and building things. I was creative too so I used to pay attention to what he did as I was fascinated. He taught me a lot about how he designed and built things. So that day on the footpath I realised that years before, the said footpath would’ve looked different. The footpath wouldn’t have been as close to the edge of the river. It wouldn’t have looked like the footpath of the day my brothers and I were out walking.

To add to the mystery, after about 30 metres, the monk completely disappeared into what seemed thin air. One minute he was there and the next moment he was gone. My brothers didn’t see it. So I came to the conclusion that the figure of the monk was a spirit. He was walking along a path but how it would’ve been in his lifetime. I wasn’t frightened. I was more fascinated than anything.

I was chatting to my youngest brother last year as he had just recently returned home after a visit to the North East. He was telling me how things had changed there. He told me that the pub next to the river that we used to walk past as children no longer existed. I brought up the story of the day I saw the monk across the river when we were kids. He actually remembered. What added credence to my spirit sighting back then was that my now much older brother had found out years later that there used to be an old monastery standing in the area I saw the monk that day, a very long time ago.

——————————————————

Jumping forward a few years, Shay remembers when she witnessed another apparition. This happened in Sunderland when Shay was roughly 17-18 years old.

The Victorian Lady in Black

My first partner and I were out shopping in the centre of town one day. We were quite hungry after our trip, so we decided to stop for a bite to eat before heading home. We ended up in a Wimpy Restaurant. My diet was a healthy one of homegrown organic vegetables and locally farmed meat so I wasn’t interested in eating there. I just ordered a cup of tea.

I remember that the cafe was situated above Sunderland Train Station. The cafe looked down onto the pedestrianised street below which was to my right.

As my partner (of the time) ate, I watched the people walking back and forth along the road; the centre of town was really busy at the time. I sensed something down there. I felt I was being pulled towards the corner of the pedestrianised street. She looked out of place because of how she was dressed.

The lady looked about 30-40 years old. Her dark hair was pulled up in a bun, ballerina style. She was wearing a black dress that almost touched the floor with a high neckline. It had long sleeves, loose at the top but more fitted over the forearms. It was tight from the neck down to the waist, as if she was wearing a corset, then it ballooned out. Its style was of the late 1800’s.

I turned to my partner and asked him, ‘Do you see that woman down there on the corner?’ He couldn’t see anyone, despite looking hard, even when I explained what I was seeing and where I was seeing it. There was a museum a few hundred metres away, so I assumed there was probably a historical event going on and the woman was related to that in some way. So, I looked at her, wondering why he couldn’t see her. She stood out like a sore thumb!

I eventually realised that I had sensed something from the moment I sat down in my window seat at the cafe. The woman was looking at me. Well, staring at me really. Intensely. She didn’t have any flyers in her hands which would be advertising any event at the museum. She didn’t talk to anyone that was walking past her. She just stood there. Staring up at me.

I wracked my brain, trying to think of an explanation. I looked around at other people in the cafe who may have been looking out of the window. Maybe they could see her too? There was no reaction from other people in the cafe. The most compelling part of this story though, was when I finished looking around the cafe and looked back at the corner of the street, and she was gone. I couldn’t have looked away for more than five seconds as it wasn’t a big cafe. The woman couldn’t have walked away without me seeing her do so.

I came to the conclusion that she was actually a spirit. My partner at the time couldn’t see her. The people passing by her didn’t seem to notice her even though she was dressed in late-17th-century clothing. She wasn’t acknowledging or talking to people who passed by her. I’d been walking around town earlier and there weren’t any other people on the street who were dressed similarly to her.

——————————————————————————————–

Another one of Shay’s stories happened in her hometown of Sunderland.

Ouija Board Portal

I moved out of home when I was 17 years old and rented my first apartment situated on the outskirts of Sunderland town centre. It was a top-floor apartment in a really old three-storey house. The landlord was renovating the old house and dividing each floor into separate apartments. My apartment, on the top floor, was the first to be completed.

An incident happened that preceded my experience, but I think it’s an important part of what happened.

My first partner used to stay over sometimes. One evening, a friend of ours of the same age came to visit after college. At one point during the evening, my partner and male friend started whispering. Naturally, l asked them what they were up to and eventually I got out of them that they were planning to conduct an Ouija board session. Under no circumstances did I want them to bring an Ouija board into my home. It’s not a game to play with; Ouija boards are dangerous. I told them so.

Later in the evening, our friend said he was going to head home and my partner walked him downstairs. I cracked on with washing up and other chores, and it seemed my partner had been absent for a while. I assumed he was just talking with my friend so I carried on tidying up.

Suddenly piercing screams, shouting and heavy footsteps running up the stairs made me almost jump out of my skin. I ran out of my apartment onto the small landing and looked over the bannister to see my partner and friend jumping multiple stairs at a time to get to my apartment. They ran into my lounge, slamming the door behind them. Their faces pale.

It turned out they hadn’t gone downstairs to say goodbye. They’d gone into an empty, small apartment on the ground floor at the rear of the property. The door to the apartment wasn’t locked, and there wasn’t anything in there apart from the odd box, as it was still in the process of being decorated by the landlord.

I’d never seen my partner so scared. They proceeded to tell me that they had set up the Ouija board earlier that evening and they’d ignored my request, going to the empty apartment when I thought they were saying their goodbyes. They told me that while using the Ouija board, the planchette flew off the board and hit the wall. It scared them enough that they let out a high-pitched scream and came running back upstairs. I was absolutely furious with them and told them they had no idea how dangerous those boards could be. I made them go downstairs again and pack up the board and for our friend to get it out of the house.

Later that week, I was alone at my flat. My kitchen was separate from the rest of my apartment, just off the landing. I’ve always eaten later in the evening, and as this happened towards the end of the year, it was dark by the time I put my dinner on. A saucepan was on the hob so I was in and out checking it was ok. Being a gas hob, I didn’t want the saucepan to boil over and put out the gas flame.

I was in my lounge when I heard footsteps coming up the stairs that led to my apartment. I walked out onto the landing to find out who it was. Walking up the last half of the stairs was my maternal grandfather. I remember saying, ‘What are you doing here Grandad?’ He replied, ‘I’ve come to see you’. I remember saying, ‘I will just go and turn the saucepan off and I’ll be back’.

Having checked my dinner, I went back into the lounge hoping he would still be there but he was gone. My maternal grandad had already passed away so he wasn’t visiting in a physical sense. I was happy he had come to see me in spirit form but I was sad that he couldn’t stay. Later in life, I learned that it takes a lot of energy for an intelligent spirit to form so it would make sense why he couldn’t stay for long.

I believe that when my partner and friend had messed around with the Ouija board, they had caused a possible portal to open. I’d seen a portal-type remnant before when I was very, very young. I think my grandad knew what had happened in the downstairs apartment and was coming to check I was okay. 

A couple of friends from college moved into the apartment below me when it was ready to rent. They had odd experiences in there. They weren’t specific about what they were but they intimated that it was paranormal. So I do believe that a ‘doorway’ opened in the apartment on the ground floor.

——————————————————————————————– 

I do believe some of us are more intuitive than others, and some of us are positively psychic. Clearly, by the time Shay reached adulthood, she was well aware she could see and sense things that other people had no awareness of.

The Coventry Crawling Ghost

I had a frightening experience in Coventry, back in the late 90s and it happened in my bedroom. It was about 11pm by the time I got into bed and turned off the light. No sooner had I pulled my duvet over me I felt something climb onto the bottom of my bed. I closed my eyes; I was scared. It was a human spirit and it proceeded to crawl on top of me. When the being was kneeling above me, it placed its hands on either side of my neck, on top of the duvet, pressing on my throat. I got a rush of anger and courage and sprang into action. I pushed at the spirit, shouting, ‘Get off me!’ The duvet flew off me, and I ran to turn the main light on. The spirit was gone but the room was icy cold. It was a terrifying experience.

My mother came to visit me in Coventry shortly after and that first night, she went into that bedroom to change into her pj’s. She’d only been in there about five minutes when she ran out screaming that there was a man with dark, curly hair in the bedroom. I went in there but again, he was gone. Once more, the room was freezing. I didn’t know my mother had ‘the gift’ too.

Ten years later, I was living in Glasgow. The mother of my partner at the time had passed away. I knew when she was going to pass but had to keep it to myself. She died on the afternoon I predicted in my premonition.

A few weeks on and my partner wanted to see a psychic to see if she could have some contact with his mother’s spirit. My partner’s mother didn’t make contact that evening but my partner kept asking me to speak to the psychic. In the end, I gave in. She didn’t say much but what she did say made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Personally, I think she was a true and very gifted psychic!

She told me about a young man who wanted to say sorry. He was asking me to forgive him. I didn’t know who he was. The psychic told her he didn’t mean to hurt or scare me that night in the bedroom, (referring to ‘that’ night in Coventry). He said he just wanted to speak to me.

There I was interacting with the same spirit from Coventry in a different place, years apart. There are many questions to be asked, and logic to be applied. I have thought about them throughout time but it always comes back to the supernatural. The spirit world exists.

——————————————————————————— 

The next experience Shay had happened at the same flat in Coventry.

Spiritual Takeover

I had blocked out the world of spirit after that terrifying night and until recently, I had not thought about this story for a long time either.

My partner at the time had a previous girlfriend who had severe mental health issues and she eventually ended up committing suicide. Not at the apartment but there was a photograph of her there.

One evening, while I was watching TV with my partner, I had an overwhelming feeling of sadness and burst into tears. For a time, I remember feeling extremely heavy. Eventually, I began to feel like myself again and my partner told me what had happened. He said I had gotten onto my knees on the floor and proceeded to apologise to my partner for what I did. Apparently, my eyes changed. My partner said they no longer looked like my eyes and my face changed. He was really scared and seemed convinced that his previous girlfriend had taken me over somehow, apologising for leaving by taking her life. I was told that the girlfriend was a size 18-20 in clothes size. I was a size 10 at the time. I wondered, was that the reason my body felt ‘heavy’. I don’t know for sure what to think but I guess it’s a possibility if my eyes and face changed shape. The whole experience was bizarre.

Writing this now, I still feel some fear. If my body was used as some sort of vessel to give a message that night, obviously, I had no control over my own body. It’s very worrying and I hope that it never ever happens again.

—————————————————————-  

Shay said in an email she hadn’t seen any apparitions for a while. It seems she has managed to take control of her psychic gift to stop these terrifying experiences but maybe there will be stories to report in the future. I just hope, for Shay’s sake, that if there are more experiences, they will be positive ones. I’m sure Shay will keep us posted!

—————————————————————————————————————————————————————————-

Don’t forget; I’m always on the lookout for spooky and weird stories from Wiltshire and beyond. If you have a tale you would like to share I’d love to hear from you. Contact me here.

If you enjoy my weird tales from Wiltshire and beyond and can spare a few pennies, please head over to Ko-fi and buy me a cuppa. Every bit is used to help bring you more stories. I sure would appreciate it.

I’m over on Bluesky. Hurrah! 

abbey all hallows day All Saints Day apparition astral projection avebury black cats bowerchalke British folklore calne castle crop circles cryptid dartmoor devizes devon essex Fae fairies folklore ghost ghosts Grovely Woods guising halloween haunted house haunted houses haunted pub haunted pubs hauntings history history of wiltshire monks paranormal salisbury stone circle stone circles stonehenge swindon tisbury UFOs Wales warminster wiltshire witches