You Could Feel The Sky

Twentieth Century Fox (suck it, Murdoch)

The past few weeks I've been starting work whilst it's still dark and stood at my window waiting for my lift. The first day I was staring out toward the hills in the distance and a light appeared on the limb and grew brighter and brighter moving right until quickly fading. Whilst I wandered what I had seen, the same phenomenon repeated itself and then I realised I was watching the headlights of cars on the road along the hillside. Similarly, the first time I saw an Iridium satellite in the sky I wanted to believe it was something supernatural, but by actually being educated in my observation I knew it was only a communications dish catching the sun over the horizon. As someone who would like to see evidence of extraterrestrial life or of the paranormal, is it not odd that I've never seen an aerial phenomenon that I was unable to identify? I've got Mulder's I Want To Believe poster on my wall for more than just X-Files fandom. Most UFO reports really are of Venus refracted through swamp gas, because most people can't identify the brightest planet in the sky.

The Darkness That Lurks In Our Mind

The Void (149), Prij

One of my favourite programmes in the mid 90s was Strange But True? - one of the very few programmes I ever watched on ITV. As a child just old enough to have grown up with Ghostbusters 2, I was fascinated by the paranormal in the same way the more exotic scientific phenomena, like blackholes, captured my imagination. Because it was broadcast on a Friday night, I was allowed to stay up to watch it. I clearly remember one particular evening, The Enfield Poltergeist episode (broadcast 20/10/95) kept me awake a lot longer. I was nine years old at the time so that's understandable. I was too young to have seen Ghostwatch, but I obtained a copy last year and at the age of twenty two I was disturbed enough to sleep with the light on.

Back in July I was lying awake one night with the window open. I go to bed early on a Friday because I have to get up early on Saturday morning for work. I had already been in bed around two hours without managing to fall asleep. By now it was midnight and I was on the verge sleep when I was startled by a noise outside. What at first I thought was water running down a pipe resolved into a loud growl. I live one floor up so either it was on my windowsill or in the garden and very loud. So loud in fact that my brother who didn't have his window open went out to see what it was (as the cat had gone outside). Neither of us could see anything in the dark, though the cat appeared and was watching the far wall that separates downstairs' garden from next door. Foxes occasionally wander this far down from the golf course and cemetery, but it would have had to have vaulted two fairly high fences to get into our garden, and jump the wall to get out the other side and I've heard foxes before but never that sound. Nevertheless, the most reasonable answer is that it was a fox but reason pales to emotion in forming impressions, and that is from which the mind jumps to conclusions.

When You Think Your Toys Have Gone Berserk

When I was a toddler, one of my uncles bought me a particular stuffed toy as a birthday or Christmas present. This toy was the eponymous character of a mid-late 80s tv show. I was very fond of this toy and the show.