If Halloween 2026 on the Corner is to prove anywhere near as unnerving as Halloween 2025 I’m going to need at least one of you to share a spooky real-life experience with me via email. If you’ve ever seen, heard, or felt anything that conventional science would struggle to explain, and, during the next few days, have time to commit your inexplicable encounter to digital paper and send it in, then please do.
Your brush with the weird doesn’t have to involve ghosts. Tales of UFOs or cryptids would be equally welcome. Assuming there’s something suitably strange and thought-provoking in my inbox (tim at tallyhocorner dot com) on Thursday morning, October 31 won’t go unmarked.
While I’ve no first-hand supernatural tales to regale over the THC campfire, less than a month ago an acquaintance who radiates no-nonsense matter-of-factness, surprised me by revealing that they’d witnessed not one but two ghostly apparitions during their life. The latest appeared during a dog-walk in the Wiltshire countryside. Hearing an unexpected jingling sound behind them, the person had looked around expecting to see someone riding or leading a bridled horse. What they actually saw, for a few brief but unforgettable seconds, was a party of approaching Roman soldiers shin-deep in the downland turf!
P R E P A R E _ Y O U R S E L F
for one of Colonel K’s
T A L E S _ O F _ M I L D _ C O N S T E R N A T I O N
(It’s not as thrilling as last time)
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
It was 1998 or so. I was self-employed and living alone. Returning home from work, my perception was that I was approaching the porch when I heard the home phone begin to ring. I quickly unlocked the door and dashed inside to pick up the handset…
No-one spoke on the other end. It was silent but for an ocassional rustling. So I thought to myself, ‘If they want to waste my time, I can waste their time’. I laid the handset down beside the phone, leaving the line open, and went to do the usual things done on returning home: close the front door, take off shoes, etc.
I went back to the phone and listened again. Mostly silence, but rare, faint sounds of distant stirrings.
IT WAS THEN THAT I REALISED THE CALLER WAS INSIDE THE HOUSE…
Colonel K, that’s a great start to a story! What about the ending? 🙂