‘While out walking after having eaten dinner, on a moonless night, taking a ‘short-cut’ through the woods behind the library in *** (a small stretch of land that runs east-west between ***and *** I heard the sound of small indistinct voices talking, whispering and laughing from trees around me. I could see nothing, but caught glimpses of small black shadows moving in the branches. The night was pitch black and impossible to see, and though I had walked the path through the woods many times and houses with lights could not have been more than a hundred yards away, I felt quite lost and confused of my way. On a whim, I reached into a pocket of the backpack I was carrying with and found a small metal bell that I had found someplace and had kept as an oddment. I tinkled it for a few minutes and said aloud, ‘Here, you can have this,’ and hooked in on the nearest branch I could reach in the darkness. The woods seemed a little less dark and the path, though not visible, was suddenly discernible underfoot, as a flat clear space to walk. I quickly found myself out of the woods and on the sidewalk and made my way straight home without looking back. I went back to look for the bell the next day. But it was nowhere in sight.’ ‘Small, humanoid, shadowy figures darting through branches.’ ‘Small, high pitched voices, whispers, and laughter.’ ‘The woods in question (during my experience) always seemed to be, although very sparse and in the middle of an urban environment, quite old.’
§306
Michigan, US
1990s
Male: Age 21-30
never or almost never has supernatural experiences
in woodland
6 pm-9 pm
two to ten minutes
on my own
no special state reported
mischievous
loss of sense of time, profound silence before the experience, hair prickling or tingling before or during the experience