London

This story was related directly to us by the witness, ‘Judy’, a writer living in south London. She is still living in the same block of flats where she had the experience in 1990. Judy started by saying, ‘11 really don’t know if this is a ghost story or not.’ She was at the point of waking up from sleep at around two or three a.m. and feels that she had had a dream.

In the dream she was asleep in her own bed in her own room which is illuminated by an outside street light. In the dream an elderly man was standing at the end of the bed looking at her; she could see his head and face and she got the impression that he was wearing a dressing gown. Perhaps the most interesting part of this tale is that as she looked at the man, he in turn looked surprised, looking at her. In a rather confusing sequence, Judy dreamt that she woke up and still saw the man and then actually woke up and discovered that he was in fact still standing there. This has all the hallmarks of hypnopompic imagery images seen during the potentially hallucinatory state between sleeping and waking up.

Nonetheless, to Judy it seemed very real and there was shortly to be a little corroboration from her pet cat. ‘It gave me a terrific fright. I sat up in bed and he faded, he just faded and wasn’t there anymore. There was no sense of anything evil, threatening or nasty at all. He wasn’t frightening, it was just the fact that he had disappeared.’ Judy then went to get her pet cat to sleep with her. She put it on the bed, and after padding round and round as cats do before settling down, it suddenly turned round, sat bolt upright, ears pointing forward, and stared at exactly the spot where the man had been.

As Judy put it: ‘That gave me the giggles: I thought “serve you right for going and getting a cat for protection”.’ When we discussed this incident Judy admitted that she considered the possibility that she had hallucinated and even that the cat’s attention was possibly coincidental; perhaps it had seen a moth or insect that was invisible to Judy. Nonetheless the two incidents seemed just a little too alike for comfort and left a fairly indelible impression on Judy’s mind.

Judy did some investigation of her own and became familiar with most of the people who had lived in the block since it was built. Her visitor did not match any of them, though the possibility of it having been a guest was not ruled out. Further more, the previous buildings on the site had been lower than the existing structure and there would have been no building at the level at which Judy lived. This would seem to rule out a ‘recording’-type ghost from anything other than the existing block. Judy was sure that the figure was contemporary which further suggested something relating to the present time.

The interest of the case hinged on the surprised look on the figure’s face. Perhaps some guest of a previous owner, going to bed one night, had suddenly seen the image of Judy, lying in the bed, and had then watched her fade away, leaving him with a ghost story of his own to tell!

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