Mysterious entities
Last weekend’s local press reported that sightings of UFOs in Suffolk were the tenth highest in the country. Regrettably I have not witnessed one of these events, though some years ago a UFO allegedly landed in the Rendlesham forest and was witnessed by both US service personnel and local residents.
But ghosts are something else. When the children were small and having an afternoon sleep, very often we would hear the cries of a young child and its footsteps running along the upstairs passage. We would check – the children were definitely asleep – so there were no explanations. The Czech au pair had hysterics one day when the light switch in the loo was inexplicably clicked off. Equally one afternoon a very loud single note on the piano downstairs was struck, again with no explanation. None of this really bothered us. Two other perfectly rational people I know have had rather more direct ghostly experiences, and they are not exactly excitable people.
But back to UFOs. On holiday once in the United States, white-water rafting in the Rockies, a commercial airline pilot and I got talking about this. He had been in the USAF and was something of a cool cat. So I was surprised when he said whilst flying a F-111 he and the co-pilot were visited by a UFO. He said that he never normally talked about it because he thought nobody would believe him. I don’t think he was having me on.
The vast majority of people sensibly do not exactly go around thinking about UFOs and ghosts. I certainly do not, but there is something rather engaging about the fact that some people do.