Share your stories
This section of the magazine gives our readers a chance to tell their stories of strange, scary or unexplained events.
I woke up to see a dense mist hovering over our bedroom TV .
I’ve had an affiliation with the Prince of Wales pub all my life. I’m a local lad, born and bred in this beautiful spot of south Wales. My father, my grandfather and my uncles all used to be regulars here in this pub. When I was a little lad, we used to go fi shing and camp out on the nearby common. Jack, the old landlord, would let us come in to use the water tap. I don’t remember it, but my friends tell me I used to say: “I’m going to have this place one day.” I’d worked for a brewery for 20 years and had run my own chip shop for eight – but I always felt there was something else I wanted to do. So when I became landlord here four years ago, it was almost like coming home. I moved in with my wife Julie, our teenage children Thomas and Laura, and our three dogs. The pub had quite a history and a reputation for being haunted. At first we were all terrified. If one of us wanted to go to the toilet in the night, we’d all get up together and go. The place had been built in 1545 as a new town hall. The old one had been lost to the storms that batter the coastline here. It stood next to two alehouses and the buildings were amalgamated around 1870 then named the Prince of Wales. I’m the eleventh landlord since that date. One day soon after we’d moved in, I went upstairs to the hall. It had once been a courtroom and even served as a mortuary if there was ever a shipwreck.
I get images, flashes of pictures, feelings and even words being said to me .
I grew up as one of seven children in Somerset. We didn’t have much money or many material things, but we had each other’s company, which was far more valuable. Unlike most young children, I loved to watch old fi lms. The best bits for me were the titles and the credits. I was entranced by their often ornate writing and would watch them intensely, taking in every loop, swirl and curl. But my love of ornate handwriting wasn’t the only unusual thing about me as a child. Right from a young age at our house in Chard, I used to see a second family. Looking back, I suppose they must have been people who had lived in the house in the past. They were an elderly couple together with their son. At fi rst I assumed everyone could see them. I’d notice the woman cooking at the stove. But when she was there, it wasn’t our stove but another more old-fashioned one. “Come and do the dishes,” Mum would say. But the elderly woman was sometimes already busy at the sink. “I’ll come and do it when that lady’s gone,” I’d tell Mum. And when the old woman had wandered off to do something else, I’d start the water running. Mum and Dad never made an issue of it. Some of my siblings could sense the family too.
One horse told me it's owner was frightened her partner would leave.
My psychic gift came as quite a shock when it revealed itself to me seven years ago. I was at a friend’s house the fi rst time it happened, cuddling her gorgeous new Jack Russell puppy. I had him on my lap and was tickling his ears when he looked me straight in the eye. Then I heard a voice. It didn’t belong to me and it didn’t belong to my friend. “I’m a reincarnation of her old dog,” the voice said. “And I’ve come back to help her.” Unnerved, I lifted the dog off my lap and put it on to the fl oor. “I’ve completely lost the plot,” I thought. Then, as I watched, the puppy’s little face changed. It metamorphosed into that of a Border Collie with spots on its muzzle. “This is really getting too weird now,” I thought. Then, just as suddenly, it changed back. Later, I summoned the courage to ask my friend whether she’d ever had another dog. My sanity depended on it. “Why yes, but not for years,” she said. “I had a Border Collie called Briar.” She went to a cupboard and fi shed out a photograph. It was the dog I’d seen. It had the same distinctive spots on its muzzle. I’d always loved animals. I’d worked as a veterinary nurse and had been married to a vet. I seemed to know instantly when an animal wasn’t quite right. I was always very aware of their emotions. But no animal had ever actually spoken to me before. The experience threw my life wide open. From then on, I embarked on an almost vertical learning curve.
Read more in this issue of Beyond. Share your stories.