In the run up to Halloween, here is another true and strange tale of the paranormal. I will post a new strange true story each day so don’t miss them.
At the beginning of my second year of college, I moved into a flat in West Bromwich. It was quite a distance from the University but it was the only thing I could find that I could afford. There was a bus ride into Birmingham and so I just had to get used to the idea of commuting.
At some point I had acquired a very large paper poster of Leonardo Da Vinci’s Last Supper. I really liked the painting and would often spend time studying the detail of the picture. It hung proudly on the main wall of the flat.
One evening, I went out and ended up at a party. I met a girl there who was an art student. We got talking and I mentioned that I wrote poetry and song lyrics she talked to me about how she was expected to paint and create a group of art items around a theme for a project. Somehow, we arrived at the idea, that perhaps she would use my poetry for that. The only thing left to do was for her to review the poems and so we made arrangements for her to visit the following Saturday afternoon.
On Saturday morning, when it finally arrived, I tried to tidy and clean the flat. I was quite keen to impress her if the truth be told. I even went out and bought a few small cakes from the bakery and spent a small fortune on some decent instant coffee. She duly arrived and she sat opposite me across a small table and in between munching on the cakes, she began to read some of my poetry . At once, she spotted the theme that we had discussed and that had initially piqued her interest – fear, ghosts, astral plane and so on.
“Why do you write so many on that set of topics,” she asked.
I tried my best to explain. I told her about the Cavalier ghost, the activities at my house that had followed me to West Bromwich, about my interest in understanding it all and my avid reading of books on magic and the esoteric.
She laughed. “That’s a load of bloody nonsense,” she giggled.
To be honest, I was a bit angered by that reaction. She sits there, reading my innermost secrets in those poems and when I explain what motivated them she laughs!
“No, it isn’t nonsense. Not at all,” I said firmly.
“Of course, it is. There are no such things as ghosts.” She said matter of factly. “Magic is something done on stage by people using trickery.”
“No, you are wrong.”
“Prove it,” she said.
Those two words – Prove it – Damn it, I would try. I was pretty angry at having my intelligence questioned and being insulted by a person who had plainly never experienced anything at all unusual. Prove it Indeed.
I began mentally repeating the words “Make something happen – prove it to her.” I didn’t really expect anything to happen to be honest. I had not really ever tried to make something happen as to be honest, I was too scared of what might happen myself to try. Anger and indignation, pride and ego this time however, motivated me to try. There was no technique, no magic words, just a deep-seated will driven by anger to make her eat those words.
“I will,” I said forcefully.
To my utter amazement, the windows behind me suddenly rattled and with a loud cracking noise, blew wide open. A rush of air entered the flat blowing her hair back and scattering the pile of poems all around the room. Her eyes, probably like mine, widened in total shock and awe. Then, the piece de resistance, the huge paper Leonardo Da Vinci Last Supper picture, pinned to the wall with pins, suddenly billowed off from that wall behind her, passed over her head and landed on the coffee table in front of her. It actually flew against the wind from the window to get there.
There was a moments silence as she surveyed and computed what had just occurred. White as a sheet, she leapt to her feet, clutched her belongings and ran out of the door. I never saw her again.
I too was shocked. Actually scared silly might be more accurate.
I really do not know what happened that afternoon. Did I really cause that to happen or was it simply just a freakish coincidence that at the moment I willed something to happen, a strong wind blew open the windows of the flat. It had never happened before and it never happened again. I guess I will never know. It was however, a long time before I ever tried to work magic again.
If you enjoyed this story check out the My Haunted Life series on Kindle.