Wispy Tendrils
Two weeks after the black triangles incident, Caspian and his mum were sitting in their living room one night watching Most Haunted when they noticed that the room was filling up with the paranormal mist. It was also getting strangely cold, and they felt a prickling sensation on the back of their necks. However, they thought that this could have simply been a psychological response to watching the TV programme.
Then the TV and lights switched off, leaving them in darkness and thinking that there must have been a power cut. As they were about to go upstairs and get ready for bed, two red lights appeared in the middle of the living room.
Caspian says that this was all his mum saw, while for him there appeared two amorphous, dark blobs attached to the lights. They became a humanoid shape: a head, neck, shoulders and torso, with no arms. From lower to the ground, in the mist, there rose “wispy tendrils” which Caspian described as being similar in appearance to steam swirling up from a kettle. The red lights had become like torches shining up from the top of the humanoids' heads, casting a circle of red light on the ceiling of the room.
The two entities proceeded to telepathically explain this wonky thing that they expected Anne and Caspian to swallow: that they use crystals to open portals to get from one location to another. They didn't claim to be aliens, or provide any specific identity for themselves – they simply claimed that it had just so happened that their portal had opened up in Anne and Caspian's living room, of all places, and that they'd exited into it from goodness knows where! According to the two entities, the portals that they used were invisible to the naked eye and senses.
Neither Anne nor Caspian can remember much of the rest of what the beings said as they stood there in front of them, but their communication remained completely telepathic. (Anne recalls that she didn't hear a lot of what they were saying as it was, since for her it was muffled; she only heard when they 'shouted', which caused her to jump out of her skin!)
Caspian reports that he was trying to ask them questions, such as, “Who are you? Why are you here? Where did you come from? Crystals, portals... what are you on about?” but they barked “NO” in response, evidently quite agitated with him daring to ask things when they wanted to talk.
Towards the end of this bizarre discourse, they seemed to become more amiable and said as a parting gift, “We would like you to go and get a writing device and a parchment, and we'd like you to write an alphabet of symbols. And we want you to examine these symbols and memorise them, and then dispose of the parchment.”
Caspian assumed that a "writing device" must mean a pencil, so he went and got one along with a piece of paper as his "parchment". As the symbols they wanted him to write came into his mind, he drew them on the paper. The symbols were bizarre – just a bunch of triangles, circles and right-angled lines.
He had his eyes closed, so his drawings were scribbled and going everywhere on the page. Nevertheless, the entities seemed to be satisfied with what he was doing. Once he had opened his eyes again and looked at the symbols, trying to memorise them as best he could, they wanted him to remember to dispose of the paper that he had drawn them on. So, Anne and Caspian went to burn the result of the strange exercise in the kitchen sink. They then threw the ashes out into the back garden.
After doing what the entities had told them to do, they went back into their living room and found that both beings were gone. They couldn't get the lights or the TV to switch back on again until the following morning.
Caspian admits that this all sounds crazy, but he thinks that people who have not experienced such things are lucky, since they have the freedom to be sceptical. He and his family have had all of this stuff chucked in their faces and can't ignore it; he says that if he could go back in time, he would choose not to have had any of it happen.
Author’s Note: Again, a possibly paranormal incident that seems incredibly weird and not seemingly linked to the other events that happen to the family.
USO Encounter
About four weeks after the two entities had appeared in his living room, Caspian had another significant incident involving a USO (Unidentified Submerged Object).
While he can't remember everything which happened on that particular night, he reports that his first memory was of laying in his bed upstairs, and that he went to sleep; the next thing he knew however, he was above his house. Everything around him was see-through, almost transparent, so he couldn't make out what sort of place he was in very well. It felt to him like he was sitting on a cast iron metal park bench.
At some point, whatever he was in took off. He seemed to be flying at “a pretty decent speed”, and he could see where he was going. He went higher and could see all of Chichester below him, with all the roads he recognised. He remembers that he was flown to Bognor Regis, about nine miles southeast of Chichester. By car this would have taken about twenty minutes.
As they flew out over the water beyond Bognor Regis Beach, above the English Channel, it was between midnight and early morning and the moon was illuminating the seawater. Caspian noticed a dark shape, like a submarine, sitting on the water's surface; there was a round opening in the top of it that the craft he was seated in descended vertically down into. The next thing he remembers is being outside of the submarine-like thing under the water! There was a big, bright white light (like a torch) shining out in front of it, illuminating the silty, dirty and brown water. He says that he was “absolutely terrified” because he couldn't understand why he wasn't drowning.
The last thing he recalls is being seated back on the 'park bench' high above his house on Bognor Road, with its roof approaching him. He woke up in his bed the next morning. There were no marks on him, and he didn't have a headache or any other obvious problems resulting from this experience. He does not recall seeing any beings (whether human or otherwise) in any of the memories he has regained of what happened that night.
Again, as with his earlier abduction experiences, he does not remember how he was moved from his bed onto the craft, or how he was returned from the craft back into his bed. There is a significant missing time element to this event.
Author’s Note: Was this an abduction in the usual sense of that term? Caspian has no memory of seeing aliens and the way he was transported to the “submarine” was not one typical of being in a UFO. His previous and future descriptions of being in UFOs are more typical of such craft. However, as he describes below, the after-effects of this event have been long-lasting and distressing.
Anxiety Attack
A week and a half after that experience, Caspian was off school due to problems with his asthma; he was kept at home for about four weeks as a result of going through a cycle of slight improvements and regressions in his condition – he reports that he usually had to miss about two-thirds of each school year through poor health.
On the first weekend off school, when his health seemed to have improved a little and the weather forecast was good, his family decided to go to Portsmouth, to the Gosport Royal Navy Submarine Museum, for a trip out. Anne says that she wanted to get Caspian out of the house, which he'd been confined to as a result of his condition, and give him something to look forward to: there was a submarine [possibly the HMS Alliance] docked at the museum for people to visit, and Caspian was really excited because he wanted to see what it was like on board; at the time, he couldn't consciously remember the abduction experience he'd had less than two weeks before.
They wandered around the Portsmouth Naval Museum, looking at the HMS Mary Rose and as many exhibits as they could before moving on to the Submarine Museum, and Caspian always had his asthma medication to hand in a school bag on his back.
After going through a market area, they turned a corner and saw the old submarine docked there, with people ascending a gangplank and going on board. At the sight of the black submersible Caspian says he absolutely lost it with sheer terror. He crumpled to the floor facing away from the submarine, petrified and overwhelmed by a panic attack, which triggered a bad asthma attack. He was pawing the ground and crying out, “Take me away from it, take me away, please!” Anne remembers him screaming, “I don't want to go inside, don't take me inside! Don't take me on board down there!”
While some people simply passed by with concerned glances, or attempted to ignore what was going on, others stopped to ask if an ambulance needed to be called. Anne declined their offer, saying that she would take care of him, though she allowed two kind gentlemen to help him up off the ground.
Anne took Caspian away from where he could see the submarine, back round the corner into the market area, and helped him to take his blue inhaler through a spacer while holding onto Grace, who she says was becoming distressed by Caspian's state.
Damian was annoyed by what was happening and insisted that they hadn't come all this way to not even see inside the ship; if Caspian wasn't going to go on board, he would. Anne took Caspian back to their car while he did so, and after comforting Grace and strapping her into her booster seat did her best to help him get his asthma back under control. It took over an hour to calm him down and to get him into a stable condition, after which his mum was adamant that they should take him to the Portsmouth Regional Hospital to make sure he'd be ok, despite Damian's protests that they'd be going back to Chichester in bad traffic if they took any longer. He repeatedly stated how Caspian had missed out on seeing the inside of the submarine, and how he'd thought it was really interesting and couldn't understand what Caspian had been so upset over, after his being so excited to see it before.
Anne recalls that Caspian couldn't get the sight of the submarine out of his head for almost two weeks afterwards and kept crying each time he had flashbacks of it, even after returning to school. For many years the rusting hulks of decommissioned submarines were also present at the Harry Pounds Scrapyard, visible on the drive into Portsmouth (which Caspian would go on at least once a week, to visit his stepdad's family in Old Portsmouth); Caspian had to turn his head away each time they passed by them, as he was frightened to look at them.
Caspian thinks that just seeing the black submarine shape at the museum triggered the panic attack he had, and that he was somehow remembering whatever it was that had happened when he was taken on board the submersible craft in the English Channel. He found what he'd cried out interesting, because the Portsmouth submarine had a gangplank to get on board – you didn't have to go “down” anywhere.
Both the submersible object involved in his experience and the submarine at the museum were similar, but not identical. The biggest difference was that the Portsmouth submarine had a tall, thin part on the top, like a sail that goes above water, which I suggested (and Caspian agreed) was the conning tower. The object he was taken into in the water off Bognor Regis was a long, black torpedo shape, with a semi-hemispherical head on each end and a slightly raised round opening on top (no hatch was visible, and as a result he doesn't know how the thing didn't fill with water). It also had a big, white light on the front of it, which the Portsmouth submarine didn't have, though both craft were about the same size in his estimation.
Caspian says he cannot even look at pictures of submarines now, and still can't go near them because he's petrified of them. He has never had any dreams associated with these submarine experiences.
He says he finds the process of telling all this cathartic, although he feels isolated and lonely and wants to know about others who have been through similar experiences. In recent years he's started to read about UFOs and paranormal phenomena, in order to try and understand the sorts of things he's experienced.
In August 2020, Caspian’s mum wrote:
“I don’t remember when it was that we visited the submarine. I do recall that Damian himself was very keen to go onboard a real submarine and thought that Caspian would probably find it interesting too. I didn’t know why Caspian was so scared of the submarine. He had really enjoyed going to see the Victory and the Mary Rose so there was no reason to think that he wouldn’t enjoy seeing around this too. For want of a better explanation I had to put his fear down to claustrophobia. I know it’s quite common for people to have a fear of small enclosed spaces.”
Chevron UFO
When he was 14 years old, Caspian went on a day trip to Bosham (which is to the west of Chichester, near the coast) with his mum and grandmother.
After eating lunch and walking around Bosham's inlet they were in the public car park, ready to go home. His mum and gran were chatting together when Caspian noticed a dark shape emerge from behind the trees and boat masts at the bottom of the car park. It was a perfect black chevron shape, just drifting along at a pace comparable to a personal airplane – but then it suddenly vanished, appearing to whizz away at high speed without making any sound at all. It didn't seem to Caspian to have been flying very high.
Anne says that she thought she saw a black plane, but she wasn't really looking closely at it; Caspian's gran missed seeing it altogether, since she was facing away from it.
Emily Appears
Other, more paranormal, activity continued to happen at home.
Some years after Caspian's abduction experience, when Grace was off sick from school for the first time, she said that Emily appeared at her bedroom door and asked her to come and play in the garden, saying that they would have fun. She was confused about Grace being sick, and Grace had to explain how she had a sore throat. That was the last time Emily would appear to her during the daytime.
Grace described Emily as sounding old-fashioned, a “prim and proper” girl; they all thought she was possibly Victorian, though neither Anne nor Caspian ever asked Grace where Emily came from, in terms of place or time. They don't know who lived in the house before them and say that they still have no idea whether she was a ghost.
Sailing Doppelgänger
Caspian used to take sailing lessons in Dell Quay sailing club, in the village of Apuldram by Chichester Harbour, with Damian. He would often sail in his Mirror boat but had also learned how to sail other daysailers such as Toppers, and had completed both the Beginner and Intermediate level course tests.
He was due to take the course test that would advance him from Intermediate to Advanced level, but was forced to miss out on it as a result of coming down with the flu.
However, when he returned to the club the following week the other students in his sailing group asked him if he was feeling ok – not because he'd been sick, but because they insisted he'd been behaving strangely the week before when they'd taken the test! They pressed Caspian on how he hadn't talked to anyone, even when they'd called out to him. They also challenged him indignantly on the fact that he hadn't gone with his own sailing group, instead getting into a boat with Advanced-level students and sailing across the waters of Chichester Harbour as though he was at their level! His boat had apparently sped ahead of everyone else's, baffling everyone at the club with his skill. He'd eaten the picnic with them all after reaching the other side of the harbour, but still hadn't said a word to anyone, seeming to ignore even his own friends.
At the end of the session, after sailing back across the water with the same group of advanced-level sailors, he'd silently dried off without undressing and walked off the premises, going round the corner to the Crown & Anchor pub restaurant and then disappearing from everyone's sight. Nobody had seen him get picked up by either of his parents, or walk up the lane to Sophie's Boatyard where his family's mirror was stored.
Caspian says that after hearing all of this and being told he was in the latest newsletter, he went to find it and saw that there was indeed a group photograph with a person resembling him in it, wearing the red, black and green swimsuit which his friends had said he'd been dressed in, which in reality Caspian didn't own – his was yellow and blue!
I asked Caspian the following question: “I know that providing corroborating evidence for your experiences is difficult, but there may be one occasion where it is possible. That is the incident at the Dell Quay Sailing Club. You said there was a group photograph, which included your doppelganger, which was printed in the newsletter. A copy of that would be helpful, if you could ask the club for one. Are their newsletters accessible online?”
He responded with: “Having looked around online, I can't find any records of Dell Quay's old newsletters past the early 90's, but when I'm next in Fishbourne and I'm able to walk down to the club I'll inquire there if they have any copies of the newsletter; in the meantime, Mum's sending me a photocopy of the one we kept in the post (she doesn't want to risk the original getting lost).”
On 10th January 2020, Caspian followed this up with:
“Mum's photocopies of the pages from the Dell Quay sailing club newsletter have arrived. The newsletter is dated September 2006, while on page 4 it notes that the event took place on Saturday, 19th August, returning on Sunday morning (20th August) – which adds helpful clarity to when it occurred!
The photograph featuring my doppelganger is on page 5, and while its resolution is pretty much as you'd expect for a newsletter in 2006, it's still clearly something which looks so uncannily exactly like me in every detail (face, hair, height, build) – with the only detail being its wetsuit and boots, which weren't the ones I actually owned – that gazing at it makes me feel uncomfortable and nauseous. It's a weird sensation when you're seeing something that looks just like you, yet you know it isn't you. It's not like looking at a photograph of yourself, or seeing yourself in the mirror; you know it's an imposter, and it gives you a chill and makes you feel slightly angry at the same time.
What is worse, it's standing practically in the middle of the image, right in front of one of the sailing instructors. It's also being looked down at by an older member of the sailing club, while my three friends there are standing to the left of it – we'd have wanted to stand together, if not for the fact that my doppelganger was part of the 'adults' rounders team (likely because I was only just older at the time than my friends, so I'd have only just made the cut for the 'adult' team in order to bolster out their numbers in the game). On page 4, my friends are shown sailing in their boat in the bottom image, which I would have been in if I were there; instead, my doppelganger apparently sailed with the older sailors Harriet, Charlotte and Matt (none of whom I ever really interacted with, otherwise).
Interestingly, page 4 notes that 'Whilst beating up toward East Head the safety boats had to tell us to slow down because we were getting too far ahead of the others', which accords with what I was told afterwards that my doppelganger had been sailing remarkably well considering my actual level of ability! There's no other particular mention of my doppelganger after that point, so there's no way to tell from the letter that it hadn't been talking much to anyone, or that it had barely paid any attention to my friends.”
On 2nd June 2020, Caspian was able to add the following photos of the newsletter after receiving the original copy in the post from his mum: Pages 4 and 5 of the newsletter, with the photograph showing Caspian's doppelgänger in the bottom right.
The photo showing Caspian's doppelgänger is at the top, while the bottom two photos are comparisons that Caspian has provided of other photographs of himself at similar ages (left: 11 years old, right: 13 years old).
In August 2020, Caspian’s mum wrote:
“Both Caspian and I have been victims of doppelgangers whilst in the UK. Both incidences were quite extraordinary. For Caspian, it was something impersonating him on a sailing trip at Dell Quay. Caspian had been signed up for this activity, but in the end he couldn’t go as he wasn’t well. On the day in question he was at home with me, tucked up in bed because he was feeling so poorly.
When we saw the article mentioning him in the sailing club’s newsletter, and the photo of ‘him’ with the instructor and some of the other children it was very unsettling. People were convinced he had been with them that day, albeit behaving oddly and when we tried to explain that Caspian hadn’t actually been there they said we must have got our dates mixed up because there was no doubt he was there, that they had even spoken to him.”
School Doppelgänger
Not long after the incident at the Dell Quay sailing club, Caspian was once again off school – but a doppelgänger of him was reported to have been present at his school all day, going to the wrong classes! The doppelgänger didn't seem to know where it was going, wandering aimlessly around the school and never talking to any of the teachers.
When it talked to any of the other students, it was about things Caspian would never talk about: TV shows he didn't watch, and facts about computers and other topics he didn't know about, or wasn't interested in. The doppelgänger wasn't seen eating lunch anywhere on the premises at all, and other students in Caspian's class had said that he didn't go down to the cafeteria to get food that day. It had completely ignored Caspian's girlfriend at the time, which had upset and confused her.
Anne's Doppelgänger Re-Appears
At around the same time, a doppelgänger of Anne was seen by her mother and sister shopping at the Waitrose supermarket in Chichester, which she never went to (she only shopped at Sainsbury's and Tesco). It had looked over at them when Anne's sister called to it, before pushing its trolley round the corner to the next aisle and promptly disappearing out of their sight.
They'd been confused at why Anne hadn't acknowledged them, but waited patiently for her to arrive at the check-out area before looking around the store to see where she was, and what was taking her so long. She had seemingly disappeared, along with the empty trolley she was pushing around the store!
Disembodied Noises
Caspian reports that alongside appearances of doppelgängers and the usual paranormal activity that occurred in their home, as 2006 drew on the whole family was beginning to experience other unsettling phenomena.
One increasingly common occurrence was hearing the sound of someone parking up behind their garage, opening and closing its door and shuffling around inside, or opening the kitchen door and walking around the bottom of the house, only for nobody to be there when one of the family went to check who had returned home, or greet whoever had come round to visit. They would also come back to the house and hear what sounded like Damian in the bath, when in fact he wasn't home and the bathroom was found to be empty.
Anne reports that she would invite her mother round and a minute or so later they'd hear the sounds of her tapping on the door with her keys and calling out Anne's name, only for her to not be there when the door was opened.
Though he doesn't remember much about it now, Caspian says that there were also two appearances of the apparent ghost of his birth-father in the house at around this time (he had died when Caspian was 12 years old).
Doppelgänger Meetings
Caspian says that quite a few times he had people come up to him in the streets up town, swearing that his name was Archie and that they'd seen him around the Chichester College grounds and adjacent skate park! Though they knew details they shouldn't have –such as Anne's name, Grace's name and other facts about his family– they also expressed surprise that Caspian wasn't smoking, since Archie was known by them to be a heavy smoker.
Damian was having problems, as well: people were calling him up from work and asking him about phone conversations he'd never actually had with them, nor with any other staff members. At first he thought that his colleagues were simply messing him about, but after a while its persistent reoccurrence began to deeply unsettle him.
Anne reports that a few times while she was shopping she also had total strangers come up to her and hug her, insisting that they'd met her before and likewise possessing intimate knowledge about her family that she'd never shared with them. At times they would pour their hearts out to her, talking about personal matters in their lives out of the surety that she was someone they could trust – they seemed to have had prior experience confiding in someone they thought was Anne, without being judged or given unhelpful advice. Even people Anne knew would begin chatting with her about events they'd attended with her, or places they'd seen her in, when she hadn't actually been there.
Anne says she “learnt quite quickly to just go along with it, as people don't like to be told 'it wasn't me' when they are convinced it was!”
Shared Nightmares
Throughout this time Caspian was having bizarre dreams, as was Anne. Both of them would wake up at nights and notice that their bedrooms were “warping” around them, and that they were either spinning “like water in a plughole” or that the room itself was spinning; they would then begin to rise upwards, passing right through their respective ceilings without hitting them.
Caspian says that he can vividly remember the feel of being soaked by moisture as he rushed upwards through the clouds. In these dreams, each of them would approach a grey or silvery, rotating tornado-like tunnel, with sparkles of silver or white light moving in the walls and other people flying past them at high speed in both directions. They can't remember what was at the end of the tunnel, but they kept on going to it and coming back again. One night Anne woke Damian up because her dream ended with her falling back down into her room, slamming down heavily onto her mattress.
Other strange dreams Caspian had at this time included one in which he woke up and was like a third-person observer inside of some sort of medical facility. He was in a single-storey, flat-roofed grey and brown building with a chain-link fence surrounding it; there were black-suited people armed with automatic rifles guarding the facility in the courtyard outside. It seemed to be out in the middle of a large, flat desert environment.
There were human medical practitioners inside the building: brown and black-haired men and women, wearing medical outfits. Caspian can't remember seeing any badges, etc. on anyone at the facility.
He recalls that they had ratite birds –emus, rheas and ostriches– laying on tables in several rooms, and that they were removing their heads and necks and surgically affixing black boxes onto the sides of their bodies, with wires coming out of them. They were then sticking blunt implements into the birds where their necks had been, and shocking them to see if there was any response.
Caspian can't remember much of what happened during the course of the dream, but at one point they shocked one of the birds which had been positioned upright and it spasmed, suddenly bringing its saw-like neck implement down and hacking it into the shoulder of one of the medical workers, who had been knelt down in front of it doing something with the wires on its body. There were shouts of surprise and warning from nearby rooms as doctors began fleeing out of them, followed by the augmented birds who were suddenly running amok. They raced down the corridors and burst through the main entrance doors, making an apparent effort to escape across the courtyard before being gunned down at the gates by the black-suited guards.
Memory-Like Flashes
Caspian also had dreams that felt more to him like memories, of a location with pine and fir tree forests, a cell phone tower, a little iced-over lake and a valley between two rocky, snow-covered mountains. He had never been anywhere like that, so it was strange to him that he was dreaming of such a place so often.
In conjunction with those dreams, he experienced weird 'flashes' of memories and almost overwhelming emotions from them, which could hit him when he saw particular scenes (such as driving past the former garden centre further up Bognor Road, where a cell phone tower stands against a row of conifer trees). It could also occur when he listened to parts of certain songs e.g. the intro to Kylie Minogue's On a Night Like This.
Canadian Woman
In 2007, while asleep at nights Caspian began encountering a girl around his age with pale blonde hair and green eyes, often barefoot and dressed in light blue pyjamas with dull-dark blue polka-dots. He reports that conversing with her felt starkly different from even the most vivid of dreams he had, as though she were flesh-and-blood: “more real than real”. When she was around, Caspian says that it was as though two minds were simultaneously inhabiting the same space; it wasn't like talking to himself. She acted fluidly, like a real person, with the way she spoke and reacted to things being unpredictable.
The first time Caspian encountered her, she appeared to be just as surprised at his appearance in her dream-space as he was to have interrupted it! She had a Canadian accent, which Caspian didn't recognise at first because he'd never heard one quite like it – he wondered if she was European or from the United States, though her voice wasn't like that of anyone he had ever heard from either place. It wasn't until many years later that Caspian thought to look up Canadian slang, and he recognised several of her verbal mannerisms.
Over the course of almost a decade of intermittent encounters, they gradually conveyed personal information about themselves to each other. While at first it was difficult for each of them to make out certain things that the other was saying, she eventually managed to tell him what her name was, as well as details about her family, her childhood and where she lived. They would talk together about everyday happenings in each other’s lives.
Caspian says that the things she told him about where she lived proved accurate when he looked them up online, such as how big her church was, and its colour; what the houses there looked like; what the nearby river was like; what the distances were to certain places, etc. Caspian says that at the time, he could not have known any of the information that she told him because he'd never had any particular interest in Canada, nor had he ever been there.
They would sometimes encounter each other in blank, empty dreamscapes, or he would find himself in her dreams, or she would appear in his. When they were in each other's dreams, they were able to 'step back' out of them and observe that what seemed like a series of events was in fact two-dimensional light and darkness, like a series of still frames compressed into long, thin bands or strips, with only certain elements 'rendered in focus' in each scene (as though dreams were all tunnel-vision).
At first he would encounter her on random nights, at least once every fortnight or month, though his meetings with her inexplicably died down for a while halfway through 2007. He says that their meetings were completely bizarre – it wasn't something that either of them proved able to arrange or force into happening.
She was very poor, and Caspian says that his family was not well-off either, but they wanted to find a way to fly somewhere so they could meet each other. They reasoned that if each of them was truly real, they would actually meet up at the designated time and place – but they were never able to get around to affording it, especially since Anne insisted that she would have to accompany Caspian for safety's sake, and they would have to bring his little siblings as well.
As they grew older, Caspian started having fewer dreams featuring her; he reports that she was 23 years old when he last saw her. She had become increasingly depressed and revealed to Caspian that she had decided to commit suicide. During the last dream that they had together, she took his hands and apologised for not being able to meet in person, saying that she had to do what she was doing. She then placed one of her hands against his cheek and told him to find someone else like her, or better than her, before her other hand slipped out of his and she was gone.
A month later, a few days after his birthday in November 2016, Caspian had a weird dream of being out in the snow in the middle of a dark forest at night-time, and experienced himself dying from exposure. He knew inside that he'd experienced his friend's death, since that was what she'd said she was going to do: she wanted to die surrounded by nature, where she felt she truly belonged.
Caspian had been informed of the passing of his birth-father from cancer at his twelfth birthday party, so November was now associated for him with two deaths. He grieved her loss, crazy though he realises it sounds, since she had been his closest friend for a long time, as real to him as anybody. He is certain that if he ever went to where she'd lived that he would be able to find a grave belonging to her there.
I recently asked Caspian “Where in Canada did you think your dream woman lived?” He responded “The only details I can remember most clearly now, since they've often circulated in my head over the years, are Laura (initially I couldn't make out whether she was saying "Lara" or "Laura"), "Amy-Wells" (I can't remember what this refers to now, unfortunately), and "MacKenzie" (the river she lived by, in the Northwest Territories of Canada).
Her father hadn't been around for most of her life: a detail we shared in common was that he'd disappeared from their lives when she was young; however, I can't remember if he simply left them, or died. Where she was, there weren't many others around her age, and to my memory there was no-one else that she got along with in terms of friends; she spent most of her life lonely, describing her existence as ‘not that exciting’. She was more at home in the subarctic, forested and grassy environment of her part of Canada than around people, besides certain members of her family. She didn't mind the cold, but told me that during the winter temperatures could sometimes drop so low that it was better to stay inside. She considered herself more spiritual than religious; I can't remember if she attended church herself. Nevertheless, she described a local church with a white, wooden exterior and a turquoise-green roof, with a spire above the entrance.
One interesting thing she told me about, was a time when she was walking down a trail near to where she lived one summer, when she saw a silver light - like a cloud with mirror-like sparkles in appearance - floating just ahead of her. She tripped and fell over while approaching it, and when she picked herself back up the light had disappeared. She'd never heard of the artists I love listening to, such as Adam Young and Taylor Swift. She thought that the former sounded like lovely music however, and when I described to her what sort of music the latter made, she commented, ‘it sounds like she mixes a country beat with a keyboard,’ adding with a smile, ‘we live in a strange time, don't we?’ Mum remembers that over a decade ago I actually started making some drawings and descriptions about her and the dreams we shared, including quotes of things she'd said, in a little writing journal with a dark blue cover, but she hasn't been able to find it in Damian's office or in my storage container.
I remember distinctly what she looked like, and I've tried to find photos of her online after searching a number of years ago, but unfortunately I couldn't source any records of her - I imagine I'll have to actually go to Canada one day and search for information myself, asking around and looking in public records."
Below are two photographs which Caspian found online which remind him of the lady:
Author’s Note: I have not heard of these sort of intense dream-like experiences; the nearest equivalent may be a type of conscious/lucid dreaming. Many people have spontaneously had the experience of finding themselves conscious in a dream. In other words, they are aware that it is a dream and not consensual reality that they are experiencing. Sometimes they have found that, with practice, they could also seem to direct and control at least some of the events in the dream.
Being conscious of being in a dream as it is occurring and even being able, to some extent, to control it has been called lucid dreaming. However, this description does not seem to be what Caspian describes. He/they had no control over when these dream-like meetings happened, they randomly seemed to “meet” together and they were able to have complex conversations and experience physical contact. He learned facts about where she lived. None of these things have been discussed as being possible in lucid dreaming research that I have found so far.
Paranormal Violence
The paranormal activity at the house began to intensify in 2007. Books and other items would fall off shelves, or seem to be thrown across the dining room. If any of the family were standing outside, every now and again little bits of the garden wall would hit the backs of their heads, and random bricks would be tossed into their garden from the direction of adjacent gardens, striking their plant pots or hitting the ground alarmingly close to them.
Caspian reports that he would wake up in the morning with bruises on his body, and in one instance while he was standing in one of the bedrooms at his grandmother's house he was punched hard in the face by something invisible! Upon hearing him cry out in surprise and pain, Anne rushed into the room and saw him trembling, with blood in his mouth and streaming from his nose.
When Grace was 8 years old, a message also appeared in her bedroom while the family were out, made from her magnetic letters and other toys. It very threateningly told them to get out of the house! The sudden shift to apparent malevolence made it clear that whatever was in the residence with them now wanted them gone.
Caspian was also suffering terribly with his health and from vicious bullying at his secondary school, with two students attempting to take his life, treating his only friend there so awfully that he became suicidal, and committing acts of vandalism and theft against his family (such as slashing their car tyres and stealing Damian's bike, leaving it outside of a nearby Tesco Express without its wheels or handle grips). Though they informed the police, they seemed disinterested in looking into anything that had happened; Caspian's school likewise did nothing to help him or his friend.
Together, these events inspired the family to move elsewhere: just over 3 ½ months later, on January 15th, 2008, they emigrated to New Zealand's North Island, intending to start a new life there and hopefully leave all of the troubling and strange events they'd experienced in England behind them. Damian had family in the part of the North Island that they were moving to, which made their transition easier.
Disappearing Evidence
I asked Caspian if he has kept any sort of record of any of these events. He replied that he has tried to, but each time he and his mum would attempt to make diaries, take photographs or type up documents about their experiences prior to 2019, such items would end up inexplicably disappearing, or delete themselves off the family's desktop computer and laptops. Even attempting to make back-ups of digital files proved useless, as Caspian reports that they've tried saving documents and photos onto external storage, but in every instance files would either somehow become corrupted or once again simply disappear without a trace.
The only items that he and Anne have been able to retain are his little sketchbook of drawings, their copy of the Dell Quay newsletter, and several recent photos and a short video of the night lights that pass over where Caspian now lives. While he recognises that some people would understandably consider such disappearances to be suspiciously convenient, for them its constant occurrence is both frustrating and demoralizing. He has expressed concern that the drawings and documents he has sent to me would also disappear, though they have not yet done so.
Devonport Experiences
Caspian explains that they initially went out to New Zealand on a 6-month holiday visa while waiting for their residency visas to process, during which they rented a house in Hanlon Crescent after briefly staying with Damian's family on Burgess Road, in Devonport, Auckland. It was peaceful there. In August 2020 Anne recalls seeing flashes of blue light in the kitchen, although Caspian doesn't recall anything of a paranormal or ufological nature happening throughout those six months, and from the moment that he arrived in the country he felt at home. He got on well with many of the local people, and felt like Auckland was where he belonged – somewhere he wished he'd grown up in. During this time, Damian spent a few months back in England, fulfilling his job contract and sorting out any remaining affairs in the country.
Caspian attended the nearby Takapuna Grammar School along with his step-cousins, and though he found adapting to a new school system difficult and couldn't resonate with the non-religious worldview and materialistic, partying lifestyle of many of its students, he was able to make a couple of friends there and even entered into a relationship with a girl in his year. She was very sceptical of certain aspects of what Caspian believed in, believing his passing mentions of past experiences to be stories he'd made up, since she'd never had any such experiences herself and didn't consider them compatible with her Anglican faith. He decided that it was best not to broach the topic with her again so it wouldn't affect their relationship, and was careful to only talk about other aspects of his time in England whenever she'd ask him about what his life had been like there.
Shadowy Figures Appear
After being granted their residency visas, the family moved into a better-sized rented property on Abbotsford Terrace, which was a recently built one-storey house just up the road from the NZDF Defence Technology Agency and Naval Supply Depot. To their dismay, paranormal activity started up again after the move.
One night, as Damian was walking back home from the local yacht club, he told Anne that he was looking at his reflection as he passed by the windows of cars parked along the roadside when he saw a shadow-like form following behind him. He began walking faster, but it seemed to be keeping pace with him. When he turned around to confront it, it had disappeared.
He woke up in bed later that night and saw a hooded, robed figure at the foot of his bed, which distressed him as he was worried that it was something Satanic. He accused Anne and Caspian of somehow bringing it with them to New Zealand, or of drawing the attention of some sort of sinister cult to their family as a result of Anne's brief usage of the crystal pendulum she had been given back in England. After this, he began to become increasingly anxious, paranoid and angry at the very mention or appearance of any strange phenomena and was convinced that the hooded being he'd seen had come for his soul. Caspian admits that Damian has sleep paralysis a lot.
Following Damian's experiences, Anne and Caspian began to see moving shadows (not always full-bodied, most often being simply lower or upper parts of an indistinct, human-like shape) in the living room, kitchen and hallway of their new home, even during the daytime; they also spotted them several times while walking along Victoria Road. They would disappear whenever any of the family tried to look at them directly.
Grace was scared because she saw hooded, shadowy figures in the bedroom which she shared with her younger brother, Peter. The entities that she saw would typically stand silently at the doorway to their room, or between the children's beds. They would either fade into invisibility shortly after being noticed, or Grace would hide under her duvet until they went away. She described them as being as tall as Damian (approx. 5' 9”) and said that sometimes they had glowing white eyes which “flashed.”
Caspian's step-cousin Amy also noticed the shadowy figures on a few occasions, usually only for a moment or at the periphery of her vision, whenever Caspian's family was present, or she was visiting their home. Her older brother Harry likewise mentioned having seen “something” at the house to Anne and Damian, but he didn't want to talk about it any further, or go into any detail about whatever it was that he had seen.
Damian was very upset that his brother's family was noticing these things as well, and said that he'd learned from a private conversation with Harry that he was more consternated by it all than he'd outwardly shown, since he didn't otherwise believe in such things. Caspian says that while Damian is a professing Christian, Harry and Amy come from a family of Humanists/Atheists and as such have no interest in anything paranormal. Damian made it clear to Anne that he didn't want them becoming interested or involved in such things either, as a result of what he insisted she and Caspian had brought into the house, because he was certain that it would destroy any chance of success his niece and nephew might have in life.
Orbs and Warm Spots
Auckland is a subtropical environment with warm, humid weather throughout most of its spring and summer, so hot temperatures are to be expected indoors at those times of year; however, despite having the air conditioning on high and many fans circulating cool air throughout the house, there were anomalous warm spots in the living room (particularly in front of the TV), the kitchen and two of the bedrooms. In certain corners of those rooms it would be baking hot even in autumn and winter, with the radiators in the house turned off! One part of the kitchen would get so unbearably hot at times that a corner of the wooden top on its island began to warp, and ice in the freezer would repeatedly melt, causing the food inside to thaw.
These warm spots would suddenly move to other random parts of the house, leaving areas that just moments before had been too hot to bear standing or sitting in for long, at a more comfortable or expected temperature.
Around the same time as these warm spots began to manifest around the house, orb-like phenomena also returned, this time being the size of tennis balls and “jelly-glassy” or semi-transparent in appearance, either white or pale mint green in colour. Much like the orbs that the family had seen while living on Bognor Road, these would appear slowly at the edges of certain rooms in the house and then whizz across or around them, ultimately disappearing into thin air.
Usually they made no noise, but sometimes there was a faint, hissing whine that accompanied them, similar to the sound that some kettles make when they start to boil. This sound grew louder as the orbs got closer, and they would sometimes pass right by members of the family or disappear within inches of their faces! Anne, Caspian and his little siblings weren't scared by them, nor were any other intense or unusual emotions triggered in them from seeing or being close to these orbs.
The orbs weren't confined to their house this time, since Caspian reports that they could also manifest in motels that the family stayed in while travelling around; there was also an instance in which they were seen following the family's car for a short distance after it had left their driveway, fading out of sight before they reached the turn-off onto Victoria Road.
Author’s Note: It is unusual for orbs to be reported as following a car, even for a short distance, or for them to appear in motels where the family stays just overnight. Perhaps the orbs are in some way linked to a person, rather than a particular place. It may be that it is Caspian’s mum that is the focus for the orbs, rather than Caspian, given the events in New Zealand that are described later in this report.
Damian's response to everything that was going on was quite different to that of Anne, Caspian and his siblings, as Caspian explains:
“He tried to ignore the orbs, though we could see that everything which was manifesting in the house was causing him considerable anxiety, to the point that he was spending increasing amounts of time away on sailing trips with my step uncle or out drinking at the local yacht club. He became obsessed with having absolute control and authority over everything that went on in his household, only allowing the rest of us to do whatever he gave us permission to, and making it clear that nothing was to happen outside of his knowledge or we wouldn't like the consequences.
Part of that was because he blamed me and my mum for what was going on, and he thought that by 'keeping us in line' weird things would stop occurring – which of course, they didn't, because we weren't really summoning or controlling anything. Over successive months, his behaviour continued to deteriorate until he was treating me, my mum and my little brother even more aggressively, impatiently and manipulatively than he had done back in England. His moments of erratic and unsettling behaviour in public returned, such as whimpering and jumping up and down in the middle of the street or pacing back and forth while burping and farting at anyone who talked to him, which embarrassed mum; and despite his family's stance on blood-relative loyalty my step-uncle and step-cousins had to step in to defend me and her on several occasions when his outbursts and intimidation got out-of-hand.”
Electrical Interferences
During the 6-7 months that the family was living on Abbotsford Terrace, Caspian did voluntary work at his little siblings' primary school, St. Leo's, as a teacher's assistant. During break-time one morning, the unlocked classroom door suddenly slammed shut and Caspian got an electric shock from the handle when he went to open it again. He saw a strange shape reflected in the glass panel of the door, which seemed to move sideways into the room.
Just before this happened, Damian had once again begun to notice street lights turning on or off whenever he would walk underneath them. Anne also recalls that he firmly believed he'd caused his brother's house to experience a power cut one afternoon, simply from being there.
The reception on the family's TV set was repeatedly bad, with the picture and audio often turning to static when Anne or Caspian were close to it. CD players in the house would act oddly during playback as well, skipping and getting stuck on loops even when replacement discs and CD players were purchased.
Author’s Note: This is a repeat of earlier incidents of electrical interference that the family have also experienced in the UK.
Mediumship Training
While living in England, Caspian had undertaken a period of work experience as an assistant to the family's priest in Lavant, because of feeling an internal calling to serve in Christian ministry. This conviction remained in him after his family moved to New Zealand, though he was unable to find any priests in Devonport who were willing to take him under their wing.
He had been advised that the sort of things he and his family experienced were incompatible with certain doctrines of the Church, but both he and Anne perceived that to be a failing on Christianity's part. Despite repeatedly coming up against a taboo toward any mention of the paranormal or ufological in churches they visited, they wanted to find a way to marry their faith and experiences together, so they signed up with a small group near Albany who were offering training in psychic mediumship at a time when Damian wouldn't be home to find out.
The course lasted for several months, and though neither of them felt that they learned much which was new or particularly useful from its sessions, they were at least able to discuss many of the experiences they'd had with other people who were open-minded to them. Both the session leader and several of the group members were convinced that Anne and Caspian had clairvoyant ability and that they showed promise in mediumship, but when the global financial crisis occurred in 2008 the family could no longer afford to live in Auckland, so they had to stop attending those training sessions.
Dunedin Experiences
Caspian's family chose to move down from the North Island to the South Island, to the city of Dunedin, in February 2009. The property that Damian had chosen which they moved into initially was not of a good standard, and Anne in particular hated it, bursting into tears shortly after they arrived; after it was determined that necessary repairs to the property would cost more than they could possibly afford, none of them wanted to remain there. They managed to sell the house and moved to a better one on Manchester Street, in the Bradford valley. After doing so, much of the paranormal activity that they had been experiencing in Devonport begun manifesting again, though at first it was only experienced by Caspian and his mother.
Doppelgängers Return
Anne had found work at a local primary school as a teacher aide, but only a few months after starting that job she had to be off work for an entire week as a result of coming down with a bad illness and losing her voice. While she was recovering at home, the principal phoned her to ask why she'd been on-site that day, and expressed confusion at why she'd gone into the school office and asked for a pay rise in a perfectly healthy voice, then walked out before the receptionist could reply!
Meanwhile, Caspian attended a Catholic secondary school, Kavanagh College, for 6 months to complete Year 12. He looks back on his time there positively, saying that it was the first school he'd ever felt happy and valued in; not only did his grades greatly improve, but he made many friends there as well. He hoped that he would be able to finish his schooling there, but by the end of 2009 his health had deteriorated, forcing him to miss out on his last school year after only being able to attend the first week of Year 13. He was virtually bed-ridden for 18 months, with extreme fatigue and in near-constant pain from his chest condition, spending most of the time with the blinds in his bedroom semi-closed so that the sunlight wouldn't trigger his migraines.
Though he was barely able to make it out of bed, unable to make it down the hallway to the toilet or even eat without assistance on most days, one of his friends called to ask why he had come round his house to play on his PlayStation, only to run off upon being invited inside! When Caspian explained how it couldn't possibly have been him, his friend didn't believe him and remarked that ever since his condition had worsened, he had become “no fun anymore”. Caspian hadn't seen him in several months, so he didn't understand what he was talking about – but for his friend enough was enough; he never called Caspian again, saying that he was fed up with him “messing around and acting weird.” His last comment was that if Caspian was healthy enough to run, then he should be at school.
Not long after this, the family once again began hearing what sounded like Damian or other family members in the house when only Caspian and/or Anne was there. Even stranger, at random times during the day and night the chimes of Big Ben would ring out through the house. Its occurrences unsettled them. While this may have been produced by a small box above the fridge that Anne speculated could have been linked to an old doorbell button by the front door, none of them could work out how or why it was activating and playing those tones, especially since the bell was broken and hadn't been working for quite some time before they moved into the property.
Caspian reports that the rest of the phenomena in the house were only being experienced by other members of his family, since he was confined to his bedroom at the opposite end of the property (above its garage, which they used to store piles of wood for the house's log burner) and was asleep for much of the time. The only thing he remembers noticing on most nights was the strange paranormal mist which his family hadn't seen since they were living on Bognor Road, as well as a few manifestations out in the hallway behind his bedroom of shadowy forms which simply consisted of a featureless head, neck and shoulder, or an arm and torso; he says that any legs always appeared “jelly-like”.
In August 2020, Anne gave the following description of the strange events that were occurring during this time:
“It was quite common to hear footsteps in parts of the house where nobody was and on occasion, we heard footsteps walking in the attic above us. The house is detached so it is not possible for the attic to be accessed from adjoining properties. Another frequent occurrence is hearing keys turning in the lock of the front door and the sounds of someone entering the property, but there would be nobody there. We have also had incidences when we've been sitting down to dinner and there'd be a loud knocking at the front door. Someone would go to see who was there, but there would be no one there at all.”
During this time Caspian had become agnostic to the existence of God, though he converted back to his childhood faith on 22nd January 2010, after hearing three knocking sounds on doors of the house each night for two weeks. Anne reminded him of a verse in the book of Revelation in which Jesus says he will “stand at the door and knock”, and Caspian reasoned that the knocks he'd been hearing were a divine message for him to figuratively open the doors of his heart and mind. Curiously, after he prayed and vowed to re-commit his life to serving God as a pastor, the knocking ceased.
Reptilian Visitations
Halfway through 2010, Caspian's health slowly started to improve. However, one night he woke up and saw a 6fttall dark shape standing at the end of his bed, making a heavy, hissy, grunting breathing sound. Caspian tried to call out, since while his chest was hurting, he wasn't experiencing any paralysis, and he eventually managed to succeed in shouting “Go away!” When he did so, the shape disappeared along with the sound of its breathing, leaving the room in silence.
The next night Caspian awoke again to see what he describes as a 6-foot reptilian, with thick, black scales of differing sizes on its body and greenish-yellow eyes. It reached out one of its arms toward him, opening its taloned hand, and started to move round the side of his bed. He once again shouted out, “Go away!” but it simply grinned and reached out for his face before disappearing, fading away into the darkness of his bedroom.
Later in life, Caspian would compare the appearance of the entity's hand reaching toward him to that of the hybrid Indoraptor dinosaur in the movie Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, which came out in June 2018.
Though Caspian has always loved reptiles of all sorts, he was petrified of the entity that visited him on those two nights – he says that nothing else of a paranormal nature he's ever experienced in his life has felt so sinister. After the second time it appeared in his room, he slept at the other side of the house in the living room for 3 months.
(Continued in Part 3 - click here)
Copyright © Ian Jones 2020
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