A Manx Experience
By John Hall
This event took place on the Isle of Man during September 1994. During a non race day in Manx GP Week. A friend and I took the opportunity to check out some Manx folklore sites and ghost lore etc. One of the locations we explored was Glen Aldyn near Ramsey just off the TT course. According to WW Gill’S Manx Scrapbooks, this was an area rife with all kinds of previously reported paranormal activity! We explored the area just prior to the Glen, which had been noted for Black Dog/ Gnome/ Water Monster reports before moving up the Glen itself! This upper part has accounts of ghost lore and faeries as well as other anomalous activity including the Wild Hunt.
The walk up the muddy footpath was halted by two enormous pools we had to bypass. Here the wood became dark, the hillside obscured by a blackness and strangely, there was no birdsong! Continuing up the path I became aware of something extremely wrong and out of place, an ice cold clammyness hugged my back. I turned around and took a photo of the area that we had just walked through and trying not to panic, we made our way back the way we had come from with the utmost urgency, also taking a second photo from the opposite direction.
The area in blackness on the hillside had the sound of movement, twigs snapping in the undergrowth and we had the feeling of being watched. My friend was convinced we’d walked through a strange grey mist, which vanished as we left the area and the walk seemed to stretch out taking far longer than it should have! Finally when the photos where developed one revealed a strange stick like figure in the tree canopy (see below) and the other was like I’d never taken it and had the following days holiday shots?
The photographs were taken with a Canon AE1 SLR camera with a 50 mm lens and 200 ASA print film. A full report of this incident will be published in a future edition of MARA's magazine The Researcher
John Hall is a founder member and co-ordinator of MARA. If you wish to reply to this article: e-mail j.l.hall@livjm.ac.uk
Glen Aldyn The anomaly appears at the top centre of the photograph. The box indicates the area which has been zoomed in on, in the photograph below.
Stick like figure: a trick of the light or something anomalous?