What are your paranormal encounters?

Describe your encounters with the supernatural or paranormal...

1. My UFO story

As a kid, I saw a UFO during a wave of encounters in and around my hometown. Some people claimed to see actual orbs and saucers. My encounter was more mundane... a star-like light that arced in towards the ground. (Meteors travel straight across the sky.)

It split into three separate star-lights which took off in different directions. Although I can't explain it, I'm convinced it was just some natural but rare phenomenon.

2. My ghost island story

While serving on the bridge of a warship in my Navy days we were a couple of hundred miles from the West Coast. It was sunrise and I was startled to see an 'island' of trees and mountains coming up over the horizon where the sun was rising. Everyone on the bridge saw it.

All sorts of atmospheric effects can cause light to follow the curve of the earth. It's rare but not unheard of to see distant land masses up close which is what we all assumed we were seeing.

This is where it gets weird... The ops room and the radar operators below us simultaneously reported that they were seeing a large land mass ahead of us. Long range radar operates on line-of-sight so it would not have been picking up the coastline.

The mysterious island only lasted for maybe ten minutes or so before it faded away... just as the radar operators reported that they were no longer seeing the land mass.

No explanation I can think of for it.

3. The singing ghost

If you've seen any of the XMen movies, or the Deadpool flicks, you've seen Hatley Castle on Vancouver Island in BC. It stands in for the Mutant Academy.

Back in the 80s, it was part of a military academy that I attended. One of our rotating duties required us to sleep overnight in the castle in an office located behind the galley.

Of course, like any old castle it was rumoured to be haunted. I had my share of unnervng encounters during my time there, but none of them were supernatural. But one night I was awakened by the sound of singing. More like humming... the sort of random humming a woman might make while combing her hair in front of a mirror sort of thing. It was coming from the upper hallways somewhere two floors up. The dark hallways... the one with animal heads mounted to the walls.

As the duty officer, it was my job to investigate. As I lay there in the dark though listening to it, I just thought: "F**k that! I'm staying right here."

I wasn't outright scared, but I was also not keen to get dressed and start walking around a darkened castle at night. I went back to sleep. Never mentioned it to anyone.