I was in our kitchen, getting some water from the sink when I happened to hear a helicopter overhead. Not uncommon as we lived a few blocks from a military base. A searchlight was also seen in our back yard. The strange thing was though, that only I heard the noise of the helicopter, only I saw the searchlight even though both my mom and Kufury looked outside in the backyard.

A few blocks away, my friend S was reading a book and started to smell something burning. She checked her house and there was nothing burning there. She heard screams - they sounded like they were coming from in the house. Just in case, since her neighbors' houses were pretty close to hers, she went outside. While outside she smelled the burning, but no longer heard the screams. Now she heard sirens and a helicopter - and saw a searchlight in her back yard.

Her neighbors were out having an evening chat in the driveway - and heard and saw nothing! S saw the searchlight and heard, but did not see, the helicopter. The light only went into S' back yard, not the neighbors. The searchlight from my back yard only went in my yard, not my neighbors.

Both yards had leaves on the ground that looked as though they were crawling across the yard to get away from the searchlights - and all of this happened at the exact same time on the exact same night.

Come to find out that although we had known S' house was not the original house on her property and that the original house had burned down - we had not known that the family, all except the father, had been in the house when it burned, and we had also not known that the fire had been arson. We found that out when we did some research at the library and found the newspaper articles about it!

Now we wonder if perhaps the spirits were trying to tell us what happened the night they died? Or perhaps they were reliving the horrible night they passed on.

Ordinarily this wouldn't be all that disturbing, except that the covenmates on either side of me were holding my hands.  I focused on the sensation and tried to identify exactly what it felt like

• it felt male as the hand was large
• the fingers were spread open, not closed
• there was no real emotion attached to it, simply a need to be noticed

After circle was over we noticed that a picture on the wall had shifted a full 90 degrees - a photo of Lady Rose's late father in law.

:: insert eerie music ::

What experiences have you had?