Maybe not the scariest thing that's happened to me but probably the most fortean. My only contribution to The Fortean Times and I have reproduced the letter here to avoid confabulation of an event from over 40 years ago. . Not sure why I bring it up now - well, whatever.
By the summer of 1980 I had been on permanent night shift for over a year and had no trouble in sleeping soundly through the normal day-time disturbances in my parent’s farm-house in Bucks. It wasn’t a noise or a sudden movement that gradually woke me one afternoon however, but the persistent and quite unmistakable feeling that some-one was watching me as I lay in bed.
I’d never liked the prickly sense of unease when being intensively observed by someone out of my direct line of sight (a common protective instinct I guess), but it was usually fleeting and the situation frankly didn’t arise often. But this occasion was different, for it must have taken a very deliberate and protracted scrutiny to have woken me up in this particular manner.
My bed was under the window and I lay facing the wall, so as I opened my eyes and glanced up I could see under the thin curtains at the sky outside. It was roughly four o’clock on a gloriously sunny day, I could hear wood pigeons and the muffled bark of a dog and the cries of its owners in the nearby woodland. Everything felt familiar and normal, so normal that I closed my eyes to settle down again - but was almost immediately prompted by the discomfort boring into the back of my neck. It was as if some-one was behind me and staring at me, so I rolled over.
She stood in silence about six feet away, between the wardrobe and the Hi-Fi unit, in the corner of my room furthest from the door. It was difficult to say how old she was, maybe a slim 19 or 20 (my age) , as she wasn’t wearing make-up. Her simple bodice and skirt didn’t look shop-bought and I noted shallow breathing although I self-consciously did not linger on her chest. She wasn’t pretty in any conventional sense, I remember uncombed fair hair and a large sore or birthmark on her lower lip, an expressionless face and large sullen eyes that were staring intently and unblinkingly into mine.
My first thought was that one of my Mother’s visitors had accidentally wandered into my room and that there would be an embarrassed apology at any second. Bit annoyed but not wishing any fuss, I rolled back over to say don’t worry you didn’t disturb me and closed my eyes.
There then followed a long awkward pause.
The apology never came and the sensation of falling (literally) off to sleep was met by a rising panic on the way up. I could sense the girl was still standing there (and remained for quite a while) and my mind was starting to process the oddness of the situation. For some reason I didn’t want her to gain my attention again, either by talking to me and definitely not by reaching out and touching me. I had to make a very conscious decision on how to react and it was difficult. Even though the adrenaline was starting to kick in I was tired, I had a Shift that evening and I chose sleep. When I awoke, she was gone and my Mother later confirmed there had been no visitors that day.
The farm-house was not old, it had been built for the family 15 years earlier with no indication that anything had existed on the (agricultural) site before. It did have a glorious view over the Chess river valley, where only the rubble of a 13th century church remained of a settlement rumoured to have been wiped out by the plague. I’m not a believer in ghosts as deceased Spirits, but I am intrigued by the idea of sightings possibly being a passive replay of past events under special circumstances (á la Stone Tapes). What I experienced though was not passive but an interactive event. The girl was alive as far as my senses could judge. I don’t know why she was staring at me so intently, but it was something my unconscious brain had perceived (somehow) as a potential threat and woken me. If this was some sort of a time slip then the girl was in my bedroom at least 10 foot above ground level.
I'm not saying there isn't a rational and mundane explanation, I just don't know what it is.