This incident took place back in the 1980s, in a small town in Lancashire, North West England. I've spent 25 years trying to find a rational explanation for it, and failed!
I was a single parent living in a tiny house with my baby son. It was early March, 1987. At about 9.30 p.m., I had been watching a TV sit-com and eating an orange, and when the commercial break came on, I decided to go and throw the orange peel in the kitchen bin. I can see pretty well in the dark, so I didn't bother to put the kitchen light on.
Because of it being dark, I saw through the window that the sky was clear and filled with stars. I love star gazing, so I stepped outside into the tiny backyard to get a better look.
I stared up for maybe a minute, identifying the stars I could see, when something caught my attention. The street backing on to my backyard had a gap between the blocks that was directly opposite my yard, and something had just flashed past that gap, moving pretty fast -- at second story level!
At this stage I was more curious than anything else, and I kind of automatically waited for whatever it was to reappear at the end of the block. Bear in mind, this took place in a matter of a second or, so I was reacting, not thinking.
Anyway, what appeared at the end of the block took my breath away! Four points of light, just like ordinary stars, yellowish white in colour, moving in formation, in kind of a diamond or kite shape! It was higher than when I first saw it at roof level, and it swooped high up in the air in a loop, then dropped back down behind the block of houses.
I was absolutely speechless, trying to make sense in my mind of what I had just seen. Then suddenly I felt a sense of overwhelming fear. I lived close to the centre of town, but I couldn't hear any traffic noise. I ran back inside, slammed the door and locked it.
Inside, everything was normal. The TV was playing, my cat was asleep in front of the fire, but I couldn't believe what I had just seen.
The next day, I told my boyfriend (we didn't live together) what I had seen and he just laughed at me. So I didn't tell him what happened two nights later.
I woke up at around 1 a.m. thinking at first that my baby son had cried, but all was silent. I was about to go and check on him, when I realised I could hear a deep, low-pitched throbbing noise, like some huge machine. It seemed to be coming from all around, and an orange light was filtering through the curtains, way too bright to be just the ordinary sodium arc street lights.
Call me a coward, but I was too darned scared to open those curtains and look! I was afraid of what I might see. I ran to my son's room, grabbed him out of his cot (he was fast asleep), and brought him back into my bed. Then I just lay there with the covers over my head, too terrified even to cry. I don't know how long I lay there, but eventually the noise faded away, and I began to hear faint traffic sounds, so I knew it must be early morning.
When it got light, I got up and went downstairs. My cat was hiding under an armchair, and he spat at me when I went towards him (and he acted spooked for several days after, although normally he was your average lazy, laid-back tom cat). I looked at my mantel clock: it had stopped at 1:12 a.m. My watch had also stopped -- at the same time! When I went into the kitchen, the clock on the heating timer was flashing, like the power had gone off and come back on again.
I was a skeptic in those days, and I tried to find rational explanations for what happened, but nothing makes any sense, and now I've finally accepted, and more, embraced, the paranormal. I've had other experiences since, but that first one was the most terrifying.
