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When Did It Begin?

bloop

bloop

Gone But Not Forgotten
(ACCOUNT RETIRED)
Joined
Feb 4, 2016
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First go at doing this so please be gentle. Could I also ask admin to move or delete as they see fit should this not be in the correct catergory - thank you.

On more than one occasion over recent years, I have been asked when did I first experience something in terms of things I really cannot explain. My standard answer would be when I was aged around 17/18 years, (which was when my most obvious experience happened but more about that another day) however that isn't strictly true. When I was 11 years old, my late mother purchased a cuckoo type clock from a gift shop somewhere in Devon whilst on holiday. Although it looked to be a cuckoo clock it never chimed and did not have the little door or a cuckoo. It did tell the time though. From the day my late father hung that clock on the wall it would often 'jump' from it either as I approached it or as I had passed it, yet it never did it for anyone else including my brother and sister. I know I never touched it or knocked it as I passed it as it was too high for me to reach without some sort of stretch or tippy toe lunge. The only other thing that I seemd to affect during my teens and early 20's was wristwatches as they would either end up running too fast or going the opposite way and running slow whenever I wore them. I wonder when others had their first odd experiences and has anyone else experienced things jumping off walls/counter tops etc as you approached/walked past them.
 
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melon24 said:
My son kept on interrupting me while I was trying to watch something on TV one time, I gestured at the TV quite vigorously and started to say 'shush I am watching this...' and a pile of DVDs by the TV fell over. My son was impressed....
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Would that be the first time anything like that had happened melon?
 
bloop:

Just for the sake of clarity ... Are you asking about earliest 'mysterious' experiences in general, or only about earliest experiences with things falling or jumping out of position as if in response to one's presence?
 
I believe Bloop is asking two questions: age of first weird experience, and whether anything ever jumped off the wall or counter at you.

Welcome, Bloop.

Never had anything jump off a wall or counter. First Fortean experience was a ufo sighting at age 12.
 
Never had any experience of telekinesis, but for many of us, I would expect the first Fortean experience would be when very young, having a mysterious playmate or mischievous companion that only they can see. Aka "invisible friends".

In adulthood, the only Fortean experiences I can claim are proving to my own satisfaction that dowsing works and once hearing what sounded like monastic chanting at a ruined abbey.
 
I'm fairly sure my childhood bedroom was haunted, I was always 'dreaming' about an old woman when I was about 5 years old who was trying to get me out of that room, I found out years later that my parents had got the house fairly cheaply because an old woman owner had died there and in my bedroom ..

I used to have a toy battery operated Porsche car, one night it's headlights switched on, it drove down my bedside shelf and landed on me .. it landed upside down and when I looked there were no batteries in it .. of course I could have just been dreaming I suppose .. I think my 'night hag' experiences played a large part in me becoming a huge Evil Dead fan ...
 
GerdaWordyer said:
I've heard of people who can't wear wristwatches forever, but wall clocks, never!
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An old railwayman told me recently that when digital watches first came out, the ones that lit up red, they'd go wrong when people wore them while walking along the track under the 'overhead' electric cables. Drivers would find their swish new watches were useless after a short time at work.

They reckoned this was because of the electricity. Reminded me of when people swear they can't wear a digital watch because the electricity in their body interferes with it, especially if they've previously suffered an electric shock. Yeah.
 
Wow, I was certainly not expecting so many replies.....thank you all for your time and for sharing your experiences.



EnolaGaia said:
bloop:

Just for the sake of clarity ... Are you asking about earliest 'mysterious' experiences in general, or only about earliest experiences with things falling or jumping out of position as if in response to one's presence?
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IamSundog said:
I believe Bloop is asking two questions: age of first weird experience, and whether anything ever jumped off the wall or counter at you.

Welcome, Bloop.

Never had anything jump off a wall or counter. First Fortean experience was a ufo sighting at age 12.
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EnolaGaia - as IamSundog above says, it is a two part question, sorry if I didn't make that obvious, I tend to type as I think and don't always realise folks wont grasp what I am trying to say.

IamSundog - thanks for the welcome, I have been a member for a while but am only just getting brave enough to have a go at sharing my own weird and wonderful if sometimes unexplainable (so far) experiences with everyone.

Blessmycottonsocks - young bloopster ( since the age of around 3) always talked about a man that came to visit and play with him. This man always came from the direction of the toilet (separate bathroom and toilet). As the bloopster never appeared to be alarmed with his 'friend', we (Mr B and myself) just put this person down to an imaginary friend and didnt push it or raise the subject with our little one at the time. It was only a few years later that through a local doctor that had to do a home visit, we found out that a gentleman had died in the house some years previous. The doctor remembered this gent as it was his first housecall in which he pronounced a patient dead. The gent had, according to the doctor, died in the toilet! I did wonder after that visit if the happenings within the house that followed over the years may be related to this gent.

Swifty - that car incident must have been quite scary for someone so young, as must the dreams of the old lady. I hate things happening in the night, it unnerves me far more than when I am fully awake and with it - although me ever being 'with it' can be debated!

GerdaWordyer - who knows, the wearing of wallclocks may become, or already be, all the fashion in some realms.


escargot - I would expect it to be the same with me and the wristwatches, my body's own electricity was interfering in some way - it really is the only logical explanation I can come up with with regards the watches only one was digital as I remember preferring standard ( cant remember the name for them right now) watches. As for the wallclock and it's movements, well I am still unsure what would have caused that.

So since preteens right upto mid 20's wierd stuff peaked then from mid 20's through to early 30's I didnt notice much, that said I was pre-occupied with a young family with lots of serious medical/health needs. By my mid 30's things kicked off again and happenings started to build rapidly. Now that I am much, much older things have once again quietened down but not so much that they have completely disappeared, they are just not as often as they used to be - I hope to share more with you all if that is ok.
 
bloop said:
Would that be the first time anything like that had happened melon?
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Similar things have happened a few times - best one was when I went to brush a hair from a friends face and a blue bolt of electricity shot from my finger and shocked her nose!! (Also,when I was in my mid-teens, street lights used to dim when I walked under them......I've read of a few people doing the same thing on here).
 
melon24 said:
Similar things have happened a few times - best one was when I went to brush a hair from a friends face and a blue bolt of electricity shot from my finger and shocked her nose!! (Also,when I was in my mid-teens, street lights used to dim when I walked under them......I've read of a few people doing the same thing on here).
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Hahaha, you would be a great friend to have in a power cut :D
 
escargot said:
An old railwayman told me recently that when digital watches first came out, the ones that lit up red, they'd go wrong when people wore them while walking along the track under the 'overhead' electric cables. Drivers would find their swish new watches were useless after a short time at work.

They reckoned this was because of the electricity. Reminded me of when people swear they can't wear a digital watch because the electricity in their body interferes with it, especially if they've previously suffered an electric shock. Yeah.
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Back EMF. If I remember correctly electricity running through a cable generates a spiral of static electricity travelling in the opposite direction to the current flowing through the cable. Someone here will surely know more about it than I learned from O level physics.
 
Cochise said:
Back EMF. If I remember correctly electricity running through a cable generates a spiral of static electricity travelling in the opposite direction to the current flowing through the cable. Someone here will surely know more about it than I learned from O level physics.
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As an aside, will high-tension electricity cables flail around when severed like wounded serpents (as they did in the crappy disaster movie Titanic 2 I watched recently) or is that complete BS?
 
blessmycottonsocks said:
As an aside, will high-tension electricity cables flail around when severed like wounded serpents (as they did in the crappy disaster movie Titanic 2 I watched recently) or is that complete BS?
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Dunno, and won't be finding out as I'd be in Mo Farah mode, but the ground around severed cables is certainly dangerous. A train driver was killed a few years ago when he stepped from his cab to investigate a cable incident.

There's an explanatory video on youtube about it in case you run your car into a power cable post. I've watched it several times and have rehearsed the special both-feet-together/hands-by-sides jump you have to do to get clear of the car, and learned that you DON'T pop back for your phone.
 
I realised that I had only answered one part of bloop's original question - the bit I missed out was when the first odd experience happened and what it was.

I posted years ago on here about the two times I had been slapped round the face by strangers passing me in the street, but the first odd thing I really remember, which somehow seems to be connected, was when I was quite young, maybe 11 years old, and I was slapped round the face by an invisible hand in the kitchen of my childhood home.

Before this, as a small child I remember often there being moments when small things happened when I had a feeling of 'uh oh, this shouldn't be happening' and whilst shocked by whatever 'it' was, pretending to ignore 'it', but simultaneously trying to consciously bookmark 'it' to think about later and realising the memory of 'it' was already fading from my memory. Weird, I know, I am sure there is a German word for it.....! Don't know if that makes sense?

I also knew that other people couldn't see what I could and, even being very young, knowing that I wouldn't be able to see these things, whatever they were 'when I grew up'. There are two occasions I do remember though, one when the big old fashioned valve radio we had switched itself on, lit up and dialled through the frequencies. Another was when some big copper and glass contraption appeared on the kitchen counter and started bubbling, then levitated and disappeared. Wasn't a dream, I remember trying to pretend I couldn't see it, but at the same time looking at it out of the corner of my eye. The memory faded a bit as I looked but not totally, hence I can still remember it........
 
bloop said:
First go at doing this so please be gentle. Could I also ask admin to move or delete as they see fit should this not be in the correct catergory - thank you.

On more than one occasion over recent years, I have been asked when did I first experience something in terms of things I really cannot explain. My standard answer would be when I was aged around 17/18 years, (which was when my most obvious experience happened but more about that another day) however that isn't strictly true. When I was 11 years old, my late mother purchased a cuckoo type clock from a gift shop somewhere in Devon whilst on holiday. Although it looked to be a cuckoo clock it never chimed and did not have the little door or a cuckoo. It did tell the time though. From the day my late father hung that clock on the wall it would often 'jump' from it either as I approached it or as I had passed it, yet it never did it for anyone else including my brother and sister. I know I never touched it or knocked it as I passed it as it was too high for me to reach without some sort of stretch or tippy toe lunge. The only other thing that I seemd to affect during my teens and early 20's was wristwatches as they would either end up running too fast or going the opposite way and running slow whenever I wore them. I wonder when others had their first odd experiences and has anyone else experienced things jumping off walls/counter tops etc as you approached/walked past them.
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Hi Bloop,

Effecting time pieces is probably far more common than you might think. My wife and her mother have both found that when wearing wristwatches they have a tendency to make them run fast, and run down batteries far quicker than others.

That (we think) is something biochemical. Probably hard to prove. But it does seem to happen.

The wall clock, though? When you say 'jump' do you mean that it physically strained against whatever was holding it to the wall?
 
Morning CuriousIdent, the wristwatch thing I agree, is much less odd but thought I would mention it all the same. Perhaps it is a woman thing who knows!

The wall clock would leave the wall for a few inches and drop to the floor, leaving the nail or whatever it was hanging it still in the wall. I have since put it down to the possibility that in the house at the time was one female teenager, one female just entering puberty and one male who was just prior to puberty, who one way or another, contributed to some type of polt like energy.

Other things would also happen in the house , only minor things like mum experiencing someone pushing her when she was laying away or getting things from the chest freezer, or her purse being found in the fridge when she always left it in the bureaux. Now as none of the family were believers in things that go bump, everything was given a logical reason for it happening - the only thing they couldnt explain is the wall clock.
 
bloop said:
Morning CuriousIdent, the wristwatch thing I agree, is much less odd but thought I would mention it all the same. Perhaps it is a woman thing who knows!

The wall clock would leave the wall for a few inches and drop to the floor, leaving the nail or whatever it was hanging it still in the wall. I have since put it down to the possibility that in the house at the time was one female teenager, one female just entering puberty and one male who was just prior to puberty, who one way or another, contributed to some type of polt like energy.

Other things would also happen in the house , only minor things like mum experiencing someone pushing her when she was laying away or getting things from the chest freezer, or her purse being found in the fridge when she always left it in the bureaux. Now as none of the family were believers in things that go bump, everything was given a logical reason for it happening - the only thing they couldnt explain is the wall clock.
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Interesting.

I mean if it were poltergeist activity the ages of your family arguably DO have similarities with other reported cases of poltergeist activity. Never say never :)

You say that the clock never chimed. Are you sure that it had no door for a cuckoo? I mean if there were a door, and you never saw a cuckoo, the mechanical bird might have been 'stuck' behind it. Wooden parts moving, but not being able to fully complete their movement, *might* cause enough vibration to move the clock a short distance along it's nail?
 
melon24 said:
I realised that I had only answered one part of bloop's original question - the bit I missed out was when the first odd experience happened and what it was.

I posted years ago on here about the two times I had been slapped round the face by strangers passing me in the street, but the first odd thing I really remember, which somehow seems to be connected, was when I was quite young, maybe 11 years old, and I was slapped round the face by an invisible hand in the kitchen of my childhood home.

Before this, as a small child I remember often there being moments when small things happened when I had a feeling of 'uh oh, this shouldn't be happening' and whilst shocked by whatever 'it' was, pretending to ignore 'it', but simultaneously trying to consciously bookmark 'it' to think about later and realising the memory of 'it' was already fading from my memory. Weird, I know, I am sure there is a German word for it.....! Don't know if that makes sense?

I also knew that other people couldn't see what I could and, even being very young, knowing that I wouldn't be able to see these things, whatever they were 'when I grew up'. There are two occasions I do remember though, one when the big old fashioned valve radio we had switched itself on, lit up and dialled through the frequencies. Another was when some big copper and glass contraption appeared on the kitchen counter and started bubbling, then levitated and disappeared. Wasn't a dream, I remember trying to pretend I couldn't see it, but at the same time looking at it out of the corner of my eye. The memory faded a bit as I looked but not totally, hence I can still remember it........
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To be a child and be slapped would be awful at the best of times, to have an unseen hand do it must have been really quite scary! What about now melon, I know you said you could see things that others couldnt see, knowing you wouldnt be able to see them as you grew up, but has that happened? Can you still see things others cant or did that stop? If it stopped how old would you be then if you dont mind me asking.
 
CuriousIdent said:
Interesting.

I mean if it were poltergeist activity the ages of your family arguably DO have similarities with other reported cases of poltergeist activity. Never say never :)

You say that the clock never chimed. Are you sure that it had no door for a cuckoo? I mean if there were a door, and you never saw a cuckoo, the mechanical bird might have been 'stuck' behind it. Wooden parts moving, but not being able to fully complete their movement, *might* cause enough vibration to move the clock a short distance along it's nail?
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No the clock definitely had no door or cuckoo - think of it along the lines of what I call 'tourist tat' really......plastic moulded, alpine house type clock that you would expect to be a cuckoo clock but was just a clock - it even had the dangly bits below it ( whatever they're called) with plastic pine cones at the botton of them. For anyone to look at it, it looked like a cuckoo clock and that is what it was referred to as. It was a very 'pretty' clock but touristy stuff all the same.

It is funny as since mum died some years ago now, I have the two other items she purchased on that holiday here. One is a plaque that hangs in the kitchen and the other is a shoe brush that sits in a clog - yes one single brush and one single clog. Both items are again touristy stuff, I have no idea at all where the clock went though.
 
bloop said:
To be a child and be slapped would be awful at the best of times, to have an unseen hand do it must have been really quite scary! What about now melon, I know you said you could see things that others couldnt see, knowing you wouldnt be able to see them as you grew up, but has that happened? Can you still see things others cant or did that stop? If it stopped how old would you be then if you dont mind me asking.
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I don't know about stopped, mostly faded away; the streetlight thing stopped in late teens / early twenties, the slaps in the street happened in my twenties, but weren't supernatural, just reminded me of the time of the invisible slap. The feeling of experiencing stuff adults couldn't stopped in early teens I would say, the final time being able to hear our recently dead dog whimpering outside the back door......

I did see an orange glowing orb when my dad was driving me back home thorugh the countryside once, late evening, must have been about 15 at the time, I asked him if he could see it and he could, but by the time we got home, he couldn't remember it - we also seemed to lose time but I don't want to think about that.....

Other things happened around teens /early twenties but mostly centred around other people - I've posted one or two things previously; the Byrons Pool incident, and some other things which happened around then, were centred around a friend I had at that time.

Later on, when I met my husband, things hotted up again. I have posted some of these things, they were /are definitely centred on my husband who has experienced stuff all his life - Poltergeisty stuff but also 'visions' which others around him also experience, or bits of them. He didn't tell me about these things until after we were engaged, when his friends had already told me about experiences they had had being around him.......

These odd things have mostly faded as well, occasionally hotting up for a brief period - when the boys were teenagers for example, but fading now. Still get lots of stuff going missing and appearing again where you have already looked. There are also odd occasions when we get banging sounds and nothing to explain them. We haven't had any oddness in the way of entities appearing / making themselves known for a while now, I guess since we hit late 40's.

Well, that's my Fortean life! Sorry it turned into War and Peace....

PS I haven't posted that much here but all I have posted about happened and in fact I joined this site because of these things
 
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blessmycottonsocks said:
for many of us, I would expect the first Fortean experience would be when very young, having a mysterious playmate or mischievous companion that only they can see.
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Hang on a sec, are you saying that you had an "invisible friend" that you could actually see, but that nobody else could? To put it another way, did you experience this friend as having an independent existence rather than you knowing him/her/it to be a figment or construct of your imagination?
 
melon24 said:
I don't know about stopped, mostly faded away; the streetlight thing stopped in late teens / early twenties, the slaps in the street happened in my twenties, but weren't supernatural, just reminded me of the time of the invisible slap. The feeling of experiencing stuff adults couldn't stopped in early teens I would say, the final time being able to hear our recently dead dog whimpering outside the back door......

I did see an orange glowing orb when my dad was driving me back home thorugh the countryside once, late evening, must have been about 15 at the time, I asked him if he could see it and he could, but by the time we got home, he couldn't remember it - we also seemed to lose time but I don't want to think about that.....

Other things happened around teens /early twenties but mostly centred around other people - I've posted one or two things previously; the Byrons Pool incident, and some other things which happened around then, were centred around a friend I had at that time.

Later on, when I met my husband, things hotted up again. I have posted some of these things, they were /are definitely centred on my husband who has experienced stuff all his life - Poltergeisty stuff but also 'visions' which others around him also experience, or bits of them. He didn't tell me about these things until after we were engaged, when his friends had already told me about experiences they had had being around him.......

These odd things have mostly faded as well, occasionally hotting up for a brief period - when the boys were teenagers for example, but fading now. Still get lots of stuff going missing and appearing again where you have already looked. There are also odd occasions when we get banging sounds and nothing to explain them. We haven't had any oddness in the way of entities appearing / making themselves known for a while now, I guess since we hit late 40's.

Well, that's my Fortean life! Sorry it turned into War and Peace....

PS I haven't posted that much here but all I have posted about happened and in fact I joined this site because of these things
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What you have explained is very interesting to me :D I am still finding my way around posts on the boards so havent yet read many of your stories, hopefully I will do soon. Like you, we too experience the quieter times more now ( wrong side of fifty) than in our younger years, now only minor things happen thankfully. It is as if whatever energy that caused the experiences with our home has slowly petered out. I do wonder if the minor stuff relates now to our energy that has been absorbed into the brickwork and surroundings after living here 30 years and the trials and tribulations of raising 3 boys. I must say that none of what has ever happened here as been scary - surprising at times, startling even but never scary. :)
 
If this is about your earliest Fortean experience then I remember being very young - about 3 or so - and playing with a very bright ball of light in bed that was dancing in the air around me. I suppose people might call it an orb. I don't remember being scared at all but just having fun playing with it! Of course, I have no way of knowing if this memory is true or whether it was a dream or whatever.

Likewise, when I was a little older, I remember I would wake from dreams and find myself floating downstairs in the house. I would float around and had the distinct sensation of being able to touch things. I would then shoot upstairs and find myself looking down at myself in bed and looking over at my brother who slept in the same room. I would wait there a while and then suddenly feel pulled down into myself as if on a thread. I would always wake with a start back in my body. This happened quite regularly until I realised it wasn't normal and I found I could consciously will it to stop.

Obviously this would be seen as an out of body experience or astral projection, but I had no concept of these things at that age. I have often wondered if these things are more common when you are young and are more receptive to them.
 
OrsonSwells said:
If this is about your earliest Fortean experience then I remember being very young - about 3 or so - and playing with a very bright ball of light in bed that was dancing in the air around me. I suppose people might call it an orb. I don't remember being scared at all but just having fun playing with it! Of course, I have no way of knowing if this memory is true or whether it was a dream or whatever.

Likewise, when I was a little older, I remember I would wake from dreams and find myself floating downstairs in the house. I would float around and had the distinct sensation of being able to touch things. I would then shoot upstairs and find myself looking down at myself in bed and looking over at my brother who slept in the same room. I would wait there a while and then suddenly feel pulled down into myself as if on a thread. I would always wake with a start back in my body. This happened quite regularly until I realised it wasn't normal and I found I could consciously will it to stop.

Obviously this would be seen as an out of body experience or astral projection, but I had no concept of these things at that age. I have often wondered if these things are more common when you are young and are more receptive to them.
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One of my brother in laws used to do the floating downstairs thing when he was young too. I think it stopped as he moved into his teens. Perhaps, as you say, these things are generally more common when we are younger and dont tend to question or doubt ourselves quite so much. Our youngest son has witnessed orbs in the house but whereas yours were made of light, he explained it as a floating black football that would shoot off through the glass in the window.
 
bloop said:
One of my brother in laws used to do the floating downstairs thing when he was young too. I think it stopped as he moved into his teens. Perhaps, as you say, these things are generally more common when we are younger and dont tend to question or doubt ourselves quite so much. Our youngest son has witnessed orbs in the house but whereas yours were made of light, he explained it as a floating black football that would shoot off through the glass in the window.
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Interesting. For some reason I've never looked into whether these are common experiences or not.
 
There's a thread somewhere about floating downstairs, in fact, it could have been me who started it. Hard to remember, but I definitely contributed to it. Around 2002 ish I guess. I was quite startled that others had had this type of experience.
 
Hello Bloop, and welcome.

Very interesting experience with your cuckoo clock there, and nice premise for a thread :)

Now in answer to your questions; I've never had any objects jump at me, and my first strange experience was probably the disappearing phone box... to save repeating myself here's the link in case you're interested http://forum.forteantimes.com/index...s-of-real-weirdness.4630/page-16#post-1754100. Not terribly exciting as far as some Fortean experiences go, but I like that it happened :)

I've never had an imaginary friend.

Hmm, now the floating downstairs thing - I used to be able to do something similar but I'm not sure it's exactly what others are describing - basically, I remember (not sure of age, but I certainly would have been no older than ten, and likely much younger than that) being able, when I went downstairs, to sort of.... jump... but in a floaty way... holding onto the bannister (I want to say with both hands, but I can't quite remember)... such that I was able to traverse several stairs at once without touching them.

But this wasn't like normal jumping, I hasten to add... it was... like I was weightless, in the sense that there was no heaviness to the movement. (Hopefully that makes some sense).
 
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