Ghosts Over Britain, Moss, Peter Sphere Books, London, 1979: pp. 88-89
During 1957 that the Wood family were living in Great Harwood, near Accrington, Lancashire. Well after Midnight one October morning, the usually sound-sleeping Stephen (a young lad at the time) woke up and looked about the dimly lit room –the only source of illumination being Moonlight coming through the window. Stephen could not believe his eyes ; five silhouetted figures were moving silently about the room without, it seemed, moving their limbs. These figures moved to the fireplace close to his head and to the wall at the opposite end of the room.
The figures were described as about 3 feet (90 cms) tall, no clothes were distinguishable though they did appear solid. There was no sign of hair on what must have been their heads. Stephen stated that, were it possible for black to glow then these figures did so.
above: visualisation
As these figures moved slowly and then quickly to the wall beyond his feet, Stephen saw a sixth, also featureless, figure who appeared to be wearing some form of headgear. This sixth figure appeared raised above the floor and as each of the smaller ones reached it they offered or gave something to it. Stephen was unsure what –possibly a jug? Each figure then repeated its journey. Despite calling out to, or trying to, his sister, Stephen found that she slept soundly.
Then, ”suddenly”, all the figures faded or were gone.
In this report you can see the various components of an abduction / household visitation scenario. The figures –shorter entities with the oft familiar taller “leader”— were, perhaps, collecting something from the youth or even his sister : a sister who could not be woken by his calls, another familiar aspect of UFO abduction cases. Even the vague silhouette description of seemingly “solid” entities is nothing new.
Neither for that matter is the “fading” out or disappearance of the entities : an aspect that seems a little confused –did Stephen pass out?
We might say that he saw ghostly servants offering a tribute to a king or some religious figure. A third scenario, had the percipient been so inclined, could involve the event as a religious vision of some sort.
To try to get to the bottom of all this I wrote to the publisher. I wrote to the author care of the publisher. Nothing. The thing is that we are told nothing about Stephen : was this a one-off event ? Had he experienced other phenomena? We do not even know whether he had been ill, what the family circumstances were or even how old he was.
What Moss does tell us is that Stephen thinks this a one-off event. That’s it –a
“ghostly event” but with no background checks to see if previous tenants had experienced anything we are left with -what? These pot-boiler books are not really interested in case histories just the basic “main event”.
I have already mentioned hypnagogic states – Hypnagogic or hypnopompic hallucinations are visual, tactile, auditory, or other sensory events, that are usually brief but occasionally prolonged. They occur at the transition from wakefulness to sleep (hypnagogic) or from sleep to wakefulness (hypnopompic).
Remember that he tried to call out to his sister this seems to indicate that he did / could not.
I think that Stephen , like many others, had a hypnopompic hallucination and this is why he can’t recall the exact method of the figures vanishing. This is what some ufologists would leap on as a “bedroom visitation”.
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