I ain't afraid of no ghost. Or am I?

I don't really know where to start with this one. Maybe with a few facts about myself...

1. I like science
2. I like ghosts

The two don't really seem to go hand in hand, but I find the unknown fascinating. How can we say that 'ghosts' as we affectionately call them, don't exist? We don't know much about the Universe. A fair bit more than we did 100 years ago, but we still don't understand it all. We have also not explored our entire planet, so who's to say what is and isn't possible. I'm open to all possibilities, basically, but tending towards being skeptic .

Oh, and another fact...

1. I used to be a ghosthunter.
   
   

I don't particularly like the term, but I did go out on organised outings with like minded people for a fair while, until I realised how egocentric and utterly (power)mad some of the people also into it actually were. Vindictive and aggressive even. Some were fantastic, but I eventually decided to turn my back on it and save my energy for people who I liked. I digress.

And another fact. 4 - I'm not good at spooky writing.

So I will just say it as I experienced it. No embellishments, no fireworks, just what happened which I still can not explain.

We were out as a group of about 6 or 7 people that night. It had been quiet, apart from a bat or two disturbing the peace and the occasional moo from a lonely cow on a field out there somewhere. When you stood at the entrance of the graveyard you could see a graceful slope down towards the old church, and to the right the glistening of the full moon on the black surface of the sea, just past the grain field. To my back was the dark dirt and gravel path that led back to the small carpark. When you're out looking for the unusual, the last thing you want to be doing is rattling about and disturbing the peace, so we had quietly returned from the old church up to that entrance to see if we could encounter anything out of the ordinary there instead.

We began by using small handheld EMF meters that are supposed to detect changes in the EM field. Now, I haven't myself been able to test them in a controlled environment, but the two devices started going a bit mad. So we asked some questions.... I'm aware that it could have been anything, although there were no power leads close by and we had ran a test beforehand to check base levels, and there were no indications that anything was amiss at the beginning.

I'll spare you the details of the questions we asked, but it was a scary correlation between us asking questions and the EMF meters reacting. At this time I was standing with the path on my right and the field almost straight ahead. Graveyard somewhere on my left. The people by my left shoulder kept saying they saw -something- on the path to the car park, but whenever I looked, all I could see was bushes and emptiness. Bear in mind the only light we had was the moon and our pocket torches. After a while, a couple of other people in the group mentioned that they felt uneasy, like something bad was going to happen. Like when someone is watching you, but in a bad sense. Definitely not the 'Oh, don't look, but I think that guy over there is staring at us' in the bar kinda vibe. I wasn't feeling a thing on the other hand, but then they said they saw something coming up the field, something that didn't want us there.

Okay, they were probably spooked, which is fine. Grain field boogeyman, whatever, never saw anything that looked like it there nor could I back that story up. But then I got the nudge indicating that I look up towards the dark gravel path again, and shone my torch up it to my right, expecting to see bushes moving in the wind. What I got that night was something completely different.

Imagine being out in the woods, walking along in the dark, and you come across a naked man, kneeling on the path with his head down. But it's not a he, there's no clear definition. You can't see knees, arms, muscles... And the head is not a head, it has a different colour than the body. It's more golden. It looks like it's floating. And you stare, and keep staring until it just isn't there anymore which takes around 5-10 seconds. You don't feel frightened, which is unexpected, but when your brain eventually catches up with how you think you should feel, you want to make your way out of there.

We did make our way out of there pretty swiftly after that, and I've never forgotten it. I still don't know what it was, why it was there, why I saw it... But I do know that I did see it, as did several other people in the group.

In honour of the weirdness in the woods, I even made a retro Paint illustration for you all! Based on this pic, it must have been a giant golden caterpillar, but add some imagination to it and excuse my clumsy laptop fingerpainting exercise.

Any theories? (Apart from me being crazy - as far as I know no drugs were involved, and it definitely wasn't carbon monoxide poisoning) ;)

Summary: I don't know what this ghosty thing is, theories welcome.

All pics property of Swedoise