Quercus - three points/queries spring to mind:
1) Your emotional reaction to having a bit of a tiff following a few unreturned text calls (in an area with a bad connection) seems to me to be a tad excessive. I raise this not to be either cheeky or dimissive of your feelings - but to raise the possibiity that, instead of the `entity` (whatever) feeding off your emotions as you suggest, but that perhaps, rather, it was your emotions which were being enhamced and magnified by the phenomena.
2) Reading your excellently written account I was struck by the depopulated feel it had about it. Once you had left your friend's place it seems as if you were entirely alone. (This is what gives your story its creepy ambience). Okay, it was late at night...but were there no other cars on the roads? No lit windows in houses? Nobody else around at all?
Again, there's method in my madness: I raise this because it puts me in mind of the `Oz effect` - a phenomena which has been noted - I think J.Randles coined the term - when paranormal events occur (such as a UFO encounter),in which the landscape goes suddenly eerily quiet prior to the event - no birdsong and so on, and no passers-by who could corroborate the event.
3) Has anyone mentioned ball lightning? I understand that this rare and little understood natural phenomna can take different forms - sometimes appearing to be translucent and other times solid. Also it is accompanied by a buzzing sound. I note further that `Anomalous Zones` often have a history of such atmospheric stuff being seen in the area - Jack O Lanterns, Will O wisps and Balls of Light and so on.
Hey Zeke - thanks for your thoughts on this one!
Taking them in order:
1) Yeah, I was pretty upset, but mostly angry at myself for having broken a promise and let down someone I cared about who was already having a really hard time of it. I'd allowed it to become late, and had been so busy chatting with my friends in their new place that I hadn't checked my phone to realise I'd lost reception.
Thinking back, it wasn't so much an argument as just me listening impotently to her sobbing hundreds of miles away, because she was completely alone and things were genuinely very difficult (for a number of reasons I won't go into but trust me, they were) and I'd been the one person who at least seemed vaguely reliable. She was in a state of complete hopelessness and my feeble apologies, and inability to make anything better for her, just seemed to make things worse for both of us. If I were placed in the same situation again today, I'd probably feel just as bad.
But the phone conversation and my initial feelings of self-loathing occurred in the car parked outside my friends' house in South Belfast, and it was about a 25 minute drive through the city centre to get over to Helen's Bay, 12 miles or so away. Taking into account the drive, the walk around the shore, and the time spent sitting on the bench, I'd estimate that over an hour had elapsed since hanging up the call, and while I was by no means in good form at the point at which I heard the buzzing noise begin, I wasn't quite as raw as I'd been earlier.
However, I get what you're saying that some places can seem to instigate and amplify negative feelings - had the whole episode played out in the same location, I'd say that's definitely a theory worth keeping in mind.
2) Yeah, depopulated would be an accurate description of the overall setting - I wasn't really aware of it overtly, but thinking back it was certainly very quiet in Helen's Bay that night.
Now, that's maybe not unusual for the area - it's a wealthy village with big houses, often behind security gates; there's only a single corner shop which closes at 10pm, and it's really not a place you would ever see people out walking who aren't daytrippers. Because there are no restaurants or pubs apart from the golf club, there aren't many taxis or cars circulating late on. In all the times I was there late at the beach, I may have encountered the occasional dog walker, but on the night in question I don't recollect seeing any moving vehicles or people, in either Helen's Bay or Crawfordsburn.
I've heard of the Oz Factor, and while I wouldn't say that forms part of my recall of the whole episode, it's also another factor worth bearing in mind. I hadn't felt overly creeped out or isolated until the point that the buzzing noise started; but then I was pretty absorbed in my own thoughts.
3) Again, I can't say that ball lightning didn't play some role in what happened - as a phenomenon that seems to be accepted to exist but not yet clearly defined or understood, it certainly can't be ruled out.
The cloud-like shape I saw didn't seem to be illuminated, or even luminous though - it was just like a small, opaque white cloud floating at roughly head height as it approached me on the bench. There was no sort of 'ozone smell' or electrical prickling (and I'm normally
very sensitive to electricity), but that may have no bearing on whether it was or wasn't ball lightning.
My immediate take on it seemed to intuit that it had some sort of non-human intelligence directing its movements towards me, rather than a meteorological event - but I've absolutely no concrete reasoning to back that up. Just a weird feeling.
Mind you, even if ball lightning were involved rather than something more paranormal, it'd still be an experience worth recounting.
Thanks for all these additional points to consider, excellent food for thought!