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The Buzzing Misty Entity At Helen's Bay Beach

i do want to mention, that the buzzing sound is common in marian apparations and ufo experiences, so maybe you did have the beginnings of a paranormal experience. some people describe it as bees in a large jar. but i still think youre (overly) dramatic, and if it did happen, it didnt have anything to do with the previous events of the evening, your mood or depression. maybe your guard was down or maybe i was the culty religion that makes you call this experience a "demon."
 
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Frideswide said:
I've never heard a sound either, despite that reference.

Well, there's the noise of slapping and swearing I suppose? :)
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I've had plenty of occasions usually, but not exclusively on calm nights when I lived in Scotland of experiencing the wee devils. In your eye's, up your nose, in your hair, covering your legs etc, but the worst place to hear the wee midge is up close and personal.
*see https://www.highlandtitles.com/blog/midges/#:~:text=The Scottish midge belongs to a family of,in the tropics and elsewhere in the world.
Believe me, there's plenty of buzzing from them once they get right inside your ears, and they can make an audible dull buzz when amassed over the banks of lochs and bogs. Without something like a stocking pulled over your face there's not much that will keep them off. Working for the Forestry up there didn't come across them that often - thank goodness, as they congregate mostly around water, but there's also the really nasty large, and small forms of 'Cleg' Fly that give a particularly nasty bite actually drawing blood from arms etc, and can make tissue swell up beyond belief and can turn infected.
Then there's the kings of the Mozzies which haunt the old mill races in the old ruins along some of the rivers, easily identified by the large size and the zig-zag markings on long their wings, they can give a bite which will irritate for weeks on end!
Midge Cloud.jpg
 
I wonder if having ancestors who lived in places which had The Midge mean you become semi immune to the noise? :confused:
 
living-in-ithilien said:
i do want to mention, that the buzzing sound is common in marian apparations and ufo experiences, so maybe you did have the beginnings of a paranormal experience. some people describe it as bees in a large jar.
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Yes, I've read of a number of different experiences where a 'buzzing noise' seems to form part of the phenomena reported - though it's not something I've experienced before or since. The description of the sound as a bee trapped in a jar, or some other container, does indeed square with what I feel that I heard. Interesting, and thanks for that.

but i still think youre (overly) dramatic, and if it did happen, it didnt have anything to do with the previous events of the evening, your mood or depression.
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Well, ok - you're entitled to think that I'm overly dramatic, and I guess it might read that way. However, I've tried to set this experience down as I recall it happening that night.

I was feeling very emotional, and I still believe there were pretty good reasons for that. I'm not going to go into details, but suffice to say that from the way the phone call ended, I felt I had reason to believe that my girlfriend might come to harm. And, being hundreds of miles away, there was nothing I could do and no-one I could contact in an effort to mitigate that.

I can't say for sure that my state of mind impacted on what I still believe occurred that night, but I was certainly intrigued by the account quoted upthread from 'Road Map of Britain's Ghosts', which detailed a very similar visual and auditory experience reported in a coastal area of Devon with what I felt were a surprising number of parallels - including the time of night, and the personal circumstances leading to the experient being in the area.

maybe your guard was down or maybe i was the culty religion that makes you call this experience a "demon."
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Again, all valid options - but just to clarify, at no point have I called this experience "a demon" - if you go back to my original post, what I said was:

At the time, I was attending a Pentecostal-style church; while the existence of things like demons and spirits were not emphasized, they were however acknowledged. Tonight, I felt that calling on the Divine might somehow help to stop whatever-this-was.
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Whether you consider a Pentecostal church to be 'culty' or not depends on your standpoint, I guess - for some, the whole speaking in tongues thing is quite extreme stuff, whereas for others it's pretty vanilla. My own views have changed a lot since then.

The Christian Fellowship Church (for it was a local branch of this particular denomination that I fell in with for a few years, in my late teens/early twenties) maintained that the primary difference between a cult and a church was that a cult was easy to get into but hard to get out of, while a church should be the opposite.

We did a lot of youth outreach work, in the form of 'street ministry', so it was reasonable to have an answer to the frequently asked question, "what are you, some sort of cult?" (at least, I think they were saying 'cult').

In fairness, this dictum proved correct, insofar as I was eventually asked to leave in a roundabout way (too many awkward questions, maybe)...

What I was trying to get across was that the church I was involved with at that time acknowledged a reality that included the existence of demonic and spiritual forces - and although that wasn't in any way the main focus of the church group (I understand some places are waaaaay into demonology, where every minor setback or inconvenience comes down to the machinations of Satan's evil minions, working tirelessly to hide keys and mix up orders at McDonald's), I was trying to give some context to why I made the sign of the cross and uttered prayers etc.

I didn't believe at the time that I was being accosted by a demonic entity - and I still don't - but I do recall picking up a very strong feeling that the misty shape "isn't human and it never was".

My feelings about what took place, contextualised by the more recent discovery that in recent years a number of individuals have also reported strange phenomena in the general area - including what appear to be malevolent fae-type entities - means that I'm still quite unsure whether I experienced an externalised multi-sensory hallucination brought on by stress/being overly dramatic, or something genuinely otherworldly.

I'd be more inclined to believe that the whole episode was down to a brain malfunction, than some sort of misinterpretation of a natural phenomenon - as despite the very best efforts of many on this thread, I still can't settle on anything physical that fully explains the misty shape/ buzzing noise/ relocation of same several miles down the road.

Incidentally, the same church group did not believe in the existence of ghosts - instead following Bible teachings that the spirits of the dead cannot return to Earth, and so apparitions that appear in the form of deceased individuals are really other spirit entities pretending to be them.

Just one area where I didn't quite see eye to eye with the teachings... but that's one for the religious beliefs thread, perhaps.
 
Sid said:
I've had plenty of occasions usually, but not exclusively on calm nights when I lived in Scotland of experiencing the wee devils. In your eye's, up your nose, in your hair, covering your legs etc, but the worst place to hear the wee midge is up close and personal.
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In a land with such creatures, how is it possible that the national garb is the kilt?
 
IbisNibs said:
In a land with such creatures, how is it possible that the national garb is the kilt?
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A VERY GOOD QUESTION 'IbisNibs!'
http://www.tartansauthority.com/highland-dress/ancient/redshankes

Apparently, the original wearing of the kilt versus the battle of the midges was just grin and bear it!
They were at one time known as 'Redshankes,' because their skin (legs etc) was always red with the affects of their environment (snow, ice, wind, and I expect from midge bites as well!).
They wetted there worn cloth kilt in bad weather to insulate them from the exterior cold, and probably didn't get quite so bothered with the midges as their cloth was minging (quite odorous) which must have had the effect of deflecting the midges away from their bodies. Also, as another line of defence against the midge, they had the option of attaching 'bog myrtle' to their dress which also acts as a natural repellent...
Other than that... by eating plenty of Marmite, or a rousing scourge O'the pipes maybe!
1618301942483.png
 
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I remember many, many years ago reading an IHTM about someone being out in the countryside and hearing this buzzing all around. It might have been referred to as a hummadruz(?) and I found that as creepy as hell. I've tried to find it since being back on here but it eludes me. I think it was a post on its' own rather than a comment about that feeling of terror you get on a bright sunny day in the countryside. Those Pan-ic stories are amongst my personal favourites. I did once encounter strange lights and buzzing coming from trees on the old psychiatric complex I patrolled. After a couple of minutes I remembered some guys had been out flying drones earlier and one had got stuck in a tree but for those two minutes I was absolutely bricking it! It's funny the things we each find particularly creepy. and this story did it for me
 
Hey, first time checking this site in a while. Not much to add other than that it's a great and well written account.

I'm also from NI and know the Donegall Road, Helens Bay and Crawforsburn areas quite well. So that made the account even more interesting and "real". In fact, I lived in Bangor in 2001 (maybe where you were ultimately headed?)

I don't think this is the cause myself, but just to lob in another factor, that MI5's Headquarters / Britain's "Spook" Headquarters in Northern Ireland (Palace Barracks) is located about 5 miles from Helen's Bay. Someone else mentioned a drone... if anywhere in NI had access to such things in 2001, it would've been Palace Barracks. Or some other form of cutting edge technology for surveillance or similar.

Is your avatar to do with the band Watercress, by the way?
 
Soul_Doubt said:
Hey, first time checking this site in a while. Not much to add other than that it's a great and well written account.

I'm also from NI and know the Donegall Road, Helens Bay and Crawforsburn areas quite well. So that made the account even more interesting and "real". In fact, I lived in Bangor in 2001 (maybe where you were ultimately headed?)

I don't think this is the cause myself, but just to lob in another factor, that MI5's Headquarters / Britain's "Spook" Headquarters in Northern Ireland (Palace Barracks) is located about 5 miles from Helen's Bay. Someone else mentioned a drone... if anywhere in NI had access to such things in 2001, it would've been Palace Barracks. Or some other form of cutting edge technology for surveillance or similar.

Is your avatar to do with the band Watercress, by the way?
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Hey, good to know there's another NI-based Fortean knocking about!

Yeah, you may well be familiar with a few locations, in that case... and I've a few more tales from the Bangor area yet to relate. Stay tuned.

The mention earlier on about Palace Barracks did give me pause for thought - I hadn't originally considered that it might be a factor, even though from my recall, the buzzing sound appeared more 'organic', if you will, than the frantic-sounding propulsion motor whine from a drone. And whatever I saw didn't appear to be all that solid, either.

Without wanting to give too much away, I did some discreet asking-around recently and have been advised that if military grade drone aircraft were being tested in NI around 2001, there were certain locations where this would have been done - and the Crawfordsburn/ Helen's Bay area was not one of them. The MI5 HQ was built at Holywood Exchange around 2006, I think - so a couple years after my odd evening at the shore.

BUT it goes without saying that unofficial things do happen, off the record, particularly in the early hours of the morning when service personnel on night duty might be trying to alleviate boredom, so... it's still something that can't be ruled out, though a gut feeling still says that it wasn't that.

Well spotted on the Watercress album cover, by the way - thought that one might go unnoticed. Fantastic band, gone too soon!
 
Quercus said:
… experiences where a 'buzzing noise' seems to form part of the phenomena reported - though it's not something I've experienced before or since. The description of the sound as a bee trapped in a jar, or some other container, does indeed square with what I feel that I heard. Interesting, and thanks for that.
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Or, could it be the description of the buzzing sounds emanating from inside, or around a property?
Check this out ~
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?...B0EB38212D6367A50F7FB0E&view=detail&FORM=VIRE
Worth a look, as there is apparently a private gas pipeline which enters Ireland near this area!
 
I wonder if the 'buzzing' is an artifact of the brain. It seems to occur at points in which the brain is 'cutting out' - episodes of OBEs, lucid dreams, sleep paralysis, abduction incidents, sightings of UFOs etc. Maybe, just at that point before we slip into unconsciousness, the body can somehow sense the electrical activity in the brain and, on occasion, that can trip us into an altered state?
 
catseye said:
I wonder if the 'buzzing' is an artifact of the brain. It seems to occur at points in which the brain is 'cutting out' - episodes of OBEs, lucid dreams, sleep paralysis, abduction incidents, sightings of UFOs etc. Maybe, just at that point before we slip into unconsciousness, the body can somehow sense the electrical activity in the brain and, on occasion, that can trip us into an altered state?
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I believe there is an inner sound of activity within our brain - an 'internal' electrical buzz or hum at certain times when into quiet deep thought processes, which somehow some people's hearing can sometimes pick up on and then lock on to. I've heard this at odd times.
From memory, sometimes when you may have a bad cold, and you're hearing dulls all normal sounds, but your brain picks up on the internal sounds as the brain undertakes it's electrical functions, and the sounds get amplified that otherwise wouldn't get noticed at all.
 
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IbisNibs said:
News bulletin! This just in! Mobile buzzing event reported in the Panic: A Genuine Example In The Old Sense Of The Word? thread! Post #151.
Bonus feature: An authentic Mayan temple!!!
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Yes, this certainly reminds me of times when standing under trees you would hear buzzing yet see very little. Mainly because all the 'buzzers' were up in the canopy of the tree - had a 60ft Willow in my garden when I lived in Scotland, and that used to come alive with flies, bees of a certain kind and it made you realise just how amazing nature can be when sound plays it's sometimes unexpected part.
 
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Quercus said:
The MI5 HQ was built at Holywood Exchange around 2006
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Ah, didn't realise that - that would seem to rule it out then.

And yes, very keen to hear any other stories you may have, even second hand ones! Had a quick look at that NI ghost story website you mentioned, looked great and a shame it appears to be defunct
 
My entire garden is buzzing at the moment. One of my bushes has barely-noticeable flowers and a variety of bee (not sure which one, not honey bee, I think maybe burrowing bees?) are finding it irresistable. Whenever I set foot out there, all you can hear is the bees buzzing, although they aren't easily seen, being between the bush and the fence.
 
Years back, it was a particularly hot summer. Even with only one good ear, I kept hearing a strange sound.
It was a very hot day and there was no noise other than this one.
I went outside to investigate.
The noise seemed to be very loud and emanated from a bush in the front yard of my neighbour across the road. It sounded like a LOT of insects and they sounded like they were in trouble (high-pitched noise rather than low-pitched buzzing). I went over but didn't get too close, didn't see anything at all. Neighbour wasn't in, away on holiday.
I can't remember, but I think it persisted for more than a day before it went quiet.

Oddly, I was left a bit perturbed by this. Was it an entire colony of insects dying? Were they in distress? What was causing that?
Unanswered questions.
 
Mythopoeika said:
Years back, it was a particularly hot summer.
I can't remember, but I think it persisted for more than a day before it went quiet.

Oddly, I was left a bit perturbed by this. Was it an entire colony of insects dying? Were they in distress? What was causing that?
Unanswered questions.
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Maybe it was that the Bees or Flies were purely after something in particular from leaves (when leaves sweat on the surface), or maybe the pollen itself, and when it was exhausted they depart the scene?
 
Mythopoeika said:
Years back, it was a particularly hot summer. Even with only one good ear, I kept hearing a strange sound.
It was a very hot day and there was no noise other than this one.
I went outside to investigate.
The noise seemed to be very loud and emanated from a bush in the front yard of my neighbour across the road. It sounded like a LOT of insects and they sounded like they were in trouble (high-pitched noise rather than low-pitched buzzing). I went over but didn't get too close, didn't see anything at all. Neighbour wasn't in, away on holiday.
I can't remember, but I think it persisted for more than a day before it went quiet.

Oddly, I was left a bit perturbed by this. Was it an entire colony of insects dying? Were they in distress? What was causing that?
Unanswered questions.
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Bees, swarming?

I captured a series of pics of a swarm forming at Bisley rifle range several years ago. Unfortunately, because we were all wearing ear protection, I can't comment on the noise or lack thereof:

DSC-0272.jpg


DSC-0274.jpg


DSC-0286.jpg


maximus otter
 
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