Sapientum : one wise banana!

A Strange Occurrence

This story tries to recount emotions which occurred to me late one night about a month ago. When if first happened I really didn't know what to make of it, or even if I could share my thoughts and feelings at the time with anyone. However a Blog is a good, place to bear one's soul.

Work for one of my clients had kept me at my PC much of the weekend and until very late at night on Sunday. I was concentrating at putting the final finishing touches to a document which had to be submitted early on Monday morning. My office, equipped with computers and other hi-tech gadgetry, presents a curious anachronism in my otherwise old world 17th Century cottage of stone, timber and thatch. The CD player had long since finished playing a disc of smooth jazz, leaving me with only the gentle hum of my PC below the desk for company. I had been working most of the day and as the clock showed it was rapidly approaching 1am, I began to think about completing one last visual check through the document before attaching it to a waiting email and sending it out into the electronic ether to find its own way through the complex and unfathomable network of servers and switches to its final destination. My shoulders were sore and my neck stiff from hours of intense concentration. Added to this my eyes were tired from looking at the screen for so long. As I scrolled through the document I leaned forward in my swivel chair to focus both my eyes and attention on the task before me.

It was then it happened. Suddenly and thus surprisingly, over in a matter of seconds and quite unlike anything I had experienced in my life before. In the fleeting moments it took to pass, and for minutes afterwards I progressed through a series of emotions; shock, surprise, curiosity, fear, and self-doubt. To list the emotions like that is to suggest that each phase of my thinking, each state of mind, was separate and identifiable. But that is not so. The thoughts that went through my mind, the human and animal reactions (abreactions) to what had occurred, or more accurately my perception of what had occurred, merged and flowed into each other like the competing lines of melody in a round. These feelings were swimming together each rising briefly to prominence, replacing the former to be subsumed by another and then to be repeated again. Over and over went the chorus of emotion. New thoughts chiming out from the ever changing blend of a complex orchestral mix.

But what had happened? I really didn�t know.

It began�. No, that is not a good way to start because I am not entirely sure when it began, I am only sure of when I became aware. Given how �bombproof� I normally am when working, reading, or in any other state of intense concentration, it probably took the stimulation of most of my 5 (6?) senses before events invaded my consciousness. So let us say "I first became aware�" Yes that�s it - because it was the sudden way in which my concentration was broken that made the occurrence all the more startling, and probably accounted for the lasting effect it has had on me. Even now, as I sit writing this account at the same desk, in the same room, with only the gentle hum of my PC to comfort me I can recall and almost re-live the moment. A moment which has been playing on my mind for several days. But now I have to think. I have to concentrate and ask myself if I have the sequence exactly right. Did all the things I am about to record really happen, and happen in the way I recall them now? Or have I amplified, extrapolated, invented, modified and manipulated with each of the replays that have run though my mind in the hours and days which have passed between the experience and relating the experience to others? Who knows, I must just try to be as honest and I can be. True to myself, true to you; the reader, and - should this documentary of that night last beyond a single reading - true to history.

What was it I wonder that began to tug at the edges of my awareness? Something must have pulled my attention from the screen, made me look round. I believe it was the sense I had of a distant but momentous rushing sound. My tiny window was open but it was a still early autumn night. An anticyclone had been anchored firmly over the country for days giving us a sequence of those balmy airless nights so common in summer but most unusual as the cycle of the sun approaches and passes through its autumn equinox. But there it was - late on a Sunday night, when most of the population, certainly the majority of the souls who inhabit my sleepy village, are asleep. Yet I heard it, or felt it, or both. A low, intense rushing sound - as if a vast quantity of air had suddenly moved across the land but causing not one breath of a breeze to enter through my window. This is when something really grabbed my attention, calling into service every nerve ending. Trillions of cells, firing their tiny pulses of energy back to a brain too tired to make sense of, or even handle correctly, this sudden overload of messages. Tiny fragments of data come together to form a collective message signalling only one thing, giving my brain the precise information to draw only one possible conclusion. A presence had moved through the house, through the room, through me!

A shiver went through me, the hairs on my neck and arms raised by some primeval instinct. I glanced at the window, back at my PC and sometime in the fractions of a second it took me to do this I experienced another powerful sensation. Something or someone had firmly grasped the back of my swivel chair and shaken it gently but firmly from side to side. My leg, the foot end of which was securely on the floor, amplified this to and fro motion. A cold fear gripped my stomach. Three thoughts occurred to me in an instant. Who and how and why? Who on earth had managed to get into my house without me knowing? How had they managed to enter the house, mount the stairs, enter my office and get behind me without a single floorboard creaking under their weight? Lastly, why would anyone want to do that at this time of the morning and then announce their presence to me in such an unusual way? No cough, no gentle utterance of a hello, just a jostling of my chair. An action designed to annoy, such as one might experience as the butt of a practical joke in an office full of juvenile pranksters. Without thought I turned my head behind me to look at the assailant. What I saw was a total surprise to me.

Behind me, in my office, at almost 1am on a Monday morning was�.nothing, no-one. Between me and the bookcase there was air. But how could that be? I had heard something, felt something. I couldn�t be wrong, and yet now all was quiet. I heard no sound - except the familiar whir of the fans on my PC, but event these now failed to give comfort or reassurance.

I felt no presence in the room. My chair was no longer shaking. Had I imagined it all? Was I over tired, or worse, losing my grip on reality? I was sure of most of my senses but my sense of sight was betraying me. It was not showing me what must evidently exist. It was not letting me see whatever it was that possessed sufficient force to shake a chair containing a 144lb man. My mind instantly began to work to fill the void - to place something imaginary in that expanse of air that filled the space between me and the books.

I have lived in this house for four years now and for most of that time I have been alone. I am not concerned about being alone; in fact I quite enjoy my own company. When I need to speak to people I have the phone and my car if I need to see a friendly face. Some people, given to fanciful imaginings, might be afraid of the dark because of what they cannot see. Others are more afraid of the dark when in or near old buildings because of the weight of history with which they are imbued. Such proximity and the lack of light triggers an irrational fear. But why is this? Almost every house in the United Kingdom which dates back more than 100 years has seen its fair share or births, marriages and deaths. It is the deaths that trouble most living people because it remains the last unknown.

The human brain, which reaches most of its conclusions by linking together familiar patterns, is challenged when presented with something that doesn't fit the known, or when it tries to categorise that which is new and outside its experience. But it won�t rest, the brain is not able to handle the possibility of "no answer" and so it needs somewhere to file the strange, the unusual, the things which are not normal - the paranormal. Therefore anything which is unknown and unexplainable is most easily linked to, and filed alongside, that great unknown - death. It is this reflex to choose the mental dumping ground for uncategorisable experiences which has, over the centuries of human evolution, given rise to a wealth of superstition and speculation about what happens once our days on this earth are over. We are conditioned from our earliest years to fear death. Our parents give us warnings about crossing the road, eating toadstools, playing with fire, electricity, near deep ponds or anything else which might harm us because the ultimate price for disobedience is certain death. Then as we grow older we accept that death is inevitable, but become all too aware of the only thing our culture had educated us to believe is worse than being dead. Being undead. We sit and marvel at tales of ghosts and spectres, entities which are explained as being the shadows and echos of those who loved life so much they refuse to let it go and so lurk about, near the places of their, normally untimely, demise. Hanging on every word of the storytellers tale we paint mental pictures of the torment faced by those anguished souls who were walled up, poisoned, strangled or met their end in other unfortunate and often violent ways. Ways which were so shocking and surprising that the person cant believe their time is up and so they remain, beatifically gliding about the place looking for something, or causing havoc by rattling their chains and moving the furniture.

That Sunday night, alone, in the dark, with no information or experience to make sense of the events of the immediately preceding seconds, I have to admit my mind went galloping off down that well worn path to ferret about in the waste heap of the unknown. I recalled tales my Aunt had told me about how their north Oxfordshire farmhouse had been haunted by a poltergeist which removed the electric plugs from their sockets at night, and in one celebrated instant had pulled a mirror off the wall, smashing it to the ground as the family slept. My Aunt said that this troublesome presence only became active when there were strangers staying in the house. Between you an me I think she used it as a convenient device to rid herself of guests who had outstayed their welcome. Nevertheless, I had heard sufficient other stories, seen enough television documentaries, and watched enough Steven Spielberg movies to think there might be some possibility of sleeping presences suddenly becoming active. I began to think of exactly what I might have done to awaken a resting soul, to suddenly cause ire or unrest when in four years we had lived together in harmony - or blissful ignorance. Was it that I was making preparations to move, having progressed further with my prospective buyer than I have with any other? Was I giving off signals of vulnerability, unhappiness or loneliness, stress or uncertainty? If I was transmitting strong feelings, was there a presence in my house that was making itself evident to reassure me, or to threaten me? To provide me with support at a time of weakness, or to move in like a hungry predator, tired of waiting but now sensing its patience imminently rewarded � but how would it take its prize?.

My mind could run like this and it would get me nowhere. If only I had someone I could discuss it with but I was alone, and who does one call at 1am to test one�s sanity? Maybe that was a test to which I already knew the answer, especially if I was seriously considering waking a friend at this time of night to have them discuss my tenuous grip on reality. I had work to finish and a deadline to meet. Somehow I also had to sleep!

Slowly I pulled my attention back to the screen of my computer, which being an entirely logical device and of limited senses and input mediums had missed the entire episode and sat there facing me, unblinking, displaying the familiar text of a valuable document. I rapidly skimmed through the remaining pages, saved it, zipped it and attached it to an email. As I hit the send button I gingerly pushed my chair back to leave my desk while the bits and bytes and packets began their journey to the offices of my client where they would be caught and re-assembled by another cold emotionless machine.

For the next hour as I shut down the technology in my office and made myself ready for bed my mind continued to sift and synthesise the information it had. As I lay in bed, staring in the darkness at the ceiling of my bedroom in the now silent house, my mind would continue to race, to slice and dice its way through the data. I listened acutely again for any sound which slightly resembled the rushing noise I remembered from earlier. I coaxed my nerves to sense any kind of involuntary nervous motion which might give me a clue to the shaking I had experienced. At one point I wondered if I had suffered the symptoms of a nascent neurological disorder which would gradually creep over me until I was left a quivering vegetable, lying in a bed with only a constant rushing noise in my head for entertainment. Finally as I felt myself entering sleep, I arrived at the only practical conclusion I could given the information available to me. Something had happened, something I had never experienced before. I had experienced it alone. It hadn�t happened again since, and there was no lasting evidence that it was he caused by anything more that overtiredness and too much caffeine.

Five hours later the radio clicked on. The sun was up; I heard the noise of traffic outside. The confident voice of a radio presenter was reading a summary of the news headlines. As I struggled to open my eyes and clear my head of the cloudy veil of residual sleep something I heard snapped me wide awake. Words coming from the radio suddenly provided me with the missing piece of the jigsaw with which my mind had struggled and abandoned in the early hours of the same day. Had I known then what I know now, I would have been saved that pointless wander down the route of fear and superstition. I imagined the BBC news reader, seated in his air conditioned London studio with his elegantly coiffured hair, wearing a smart Saville Row tailored suit. There he was, at the sharp end of the most efficient information collation, processing and delivery infrastructure in the world. In beautifully enunciated Oxbridge tones he told me that the events of Sunday night were not a personal experience, not a brush with the tormented souls who walk the earth, but a phenomenon far older than the tales of spectres and sprites.

"At ten to one this morning the UK experienced its most powerful earthquake in over 20 years. The tremor, which measured 4.8 on the Richter scale, had its epicentre 10 miles below Dudley in the West Midlands, and the shockwaves were felt as far afield as Buckinghamshire in the South, and Yorkshire in the North��"

So that explained it. Sitting alone and quietly in my Buckinghamshire cottage I had experienced, for the first time, the sensation of the earth below me shifting slightly. It explained the shuddering of my chair. The noise? Well I don�t know about that, I wasn�t the only one to hear it but no-one I have spoken to about that night has been able to explain it either. Maybe I will never know.

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