A man called Simon Howes, who is a nurse, wrote into a forum for the 14 times of a strange

incident that happened to him back in 1982, in Essex, England.

He said at Wally Hospital, Brentwood, I encountered a stick person in the grounds of the hospital

as I was walking home one night. It loped across the roadway, having been seemingly pressed up against a wall.

It stopped when it saw me and raised its arms in fright, and quickly walked off into the undergrowth.

It was very tall with very thin, extremely long arms and legs, and a very small, oval head.

It was totally black, and there was no obvious clothing.

I saw no face even though it emerged very near a street lamp and so it was well illuminated.

I was terrified and to this day nobody believes me. If one were to think this an hallucination, however, one might be wrong.

In 2003, a man called Andy wrote into the cauldron about an experience that happened to him

when he was attending university in London and living in what he calls a leafy suburb called

Broccoli. It was an experience for which i have no explanation in the early hours of the morning i was walking back home from a friend's house where another friend sue and myself had spent the whole night talking and revising with a group of other people

i drunk only tea all night and consumed

no drugs whatsoever. Dawn was just breaking as we turned on to my street. We were very tired

and we didn't say much to each other until I spotted a man walking up towards us on the same

path, some distance away. I didn't think anything

of it. In a city like London, people are up and about at all hours. He could have been a milkman,

a refuse collector, a night shift worker heading home. We walked towards the man. He walked towards

us. My home was between us, began to feel uneasy. The word we coined later

to describe its movement was lolloping, a kind of up-down, bouncy walk. I asked my friend,

see that man? Yes, was the reply. It's not man, though, is it?' I felt myself asking.

"'No,' said my friend, sounding scared.

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