THE FACELESS PHANTOM

This happened to me in the early 1970s. I was in my late teens and still living at home with my parents. I was in bed and had just drifted off to sleep when I felt someone pulling my pillow from me. I looked up to see a man's hand on my pillow. It was even wearing a man's ring with a black stone in it. I looked up properly at it to see a monk! He was wearing a habit with his hood up.

He had no facial features, just skin. He stood now at the end of my bed and he crossed his arms then disappeared.

A few months later, I was going to work. An older woman sat next to me and we began to talk about anything really. Then we started on the supernatural. We started to tell each other our experiences. This lady told me about a monk waking her up who had no facial features and crossed its arms and disappeared, just like mine, with the only difference was that hers thumped her gently in the back to wake her up. I was shocked as I didn't know this woman, yet she had exactly the same experience as I. We came to the conclusion that it must mean something. - Cathy A.

THE LITTLE MONK AND HIS LUTE

When I was about four years old, we lived in an old trailer, and I had to share a room with my two other sisters. My parents were already divorced, but arguing frequently about visitation rights. Then "he" started to appear to me. I had trouble sleeping at night and would toss and turn and always end up at the end of the bed staring at my door and the light that emitted from the hall.

One very restless night, I laid staring in the same spot when suddenly a little man about four feet tall dressed in a brown monk's cloak entered my room. He carried with him a small lute (I'm not sure how else to describe the item), and his face was hidden by the dark hood. He would stand at the foot of my bed and stare at me.

I wasn't afraid, and I actually quite enjoyed his presence. He would then play me a beautiful melody (to this day I can still hum the odd tune) and it would send me sleeping within minutes. He visited me as often as three times a weak, or whenever I had trouble sleeping, all the way up to first grade and then he disappeared from my life. He helped my through tough times with my parents, and then when things got better (my parents came to an agreement), he left. When I was 17, my mother and I were having one of our "little chats" when I decided that I would tell her about my monk friend. She looked surprised and pleased at the same time. She then began telling me about her incident with the monks that visited her. - by Rachel H.

THE BLACK HOODS

Shortly after my daughter was born in 1978, we moved into an old farm house that was creepy to begin with. Visitors who spent the night would always tell us the next day, "I am sorry, but your house is creepy." "I felt like someone was watching me all night long!" One night I awoke suddenly, able to see everything in the room: my tiny daughter in her crib at the foot of our bed and my husband sleeping contentedly beside me, but I could not move. I felt a presence beside me that was communicating with me. It was strange and I was terrified. The visitors were telling me to come with them. This was strange considering they had no faces, only black-hooded robes and darkness where their faces should have been.

I was telling them NO, even though I could not speak aloud. I tried to move, to wake my husband, but all I could do was to make strange guttural sounds. They finally left and went out past the foot of our bed. I must have fallen asleep or passed out. I awoke very shortly after that, still very frightened and the room was freezing. I woke up my husband to tell him what happened. He comforted me went to our bedroom to get another blanket and to check on our daughter. He covered her with one and got back into bed and told me everything was all right, to go back to sleep. When we awoke later in the morning, my husband said, "Honey, remember when I got up to get the blankets? Well, don't be alarmed, but our front door was standing wide open." All I could do was stand there with my mouth wide open feeling the shock spread through my body. I know the door was closed because we checked doors together before we went to bed. - Vicki L.

THE FAIRY RING

In the 1920s in the wilds of County Donegal, Ireland, my great grandfather was a police officer. One night on returning home through a lonely road, he began to hear some of the most beautiful music he had ever heard. He then saw a circle of figures in a nearby field dancing to the music, which he watched for a while before being overcome with an urge to escape from the area, which he believes the fairies induced on him. Despite being laughed at and being joked at, he swore what he saw was real and genuine.

In a separate incident in the same area, he was riding his horse along another lonely road when the horse, which had been calm for the whole way, suddenly bolted and became very scared and hesitated before making an enormous jump over something unseen in the darkness. It then threw him off and galloped away like the wind, leaving my great grandfather to get home in the darkness on his own. He always claimed that the horse had sensed something like a demon or evil spirit and jumped over it. - JBPWALSH

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