My first Fortean experience happened when I was about five years old (I can't be exactly sure of my age when it happened, but I shared the experience with my older cousin M. who has an extraordinary memory for events and dates, so he might be able to clear that up).
I was, and am, an only child, but growing up I had a bunk bed, since the lower bunk provided a useful place for one or other of my cousins to sleep when they were visiting us.
On the occasion in question my cousin M. was occupying the lower bunk and myself (as usual) the upper. M. is about two years older than me and, as I recall, we were lying in our respective bunks and chatting about whatever inconsequential stuff a couple of five and seven year old boys talk about, when the bunk bed began to shake.
It was
exactly as though an adult was standing at the head of the bed, holding on to the headboard of the upper bunk and shaking it to-and-fro with considerable force. Naturally, I thought that M. was doing it from the lower bunk. Naturally, he thought that I was doing it from the upper bunk.
From memory the conversation went something along the lines of:
M: Stop doing that!
Me:
I'm not dong it!
M: Yes you are!
Me: No I'm
not.
etc.
M: Prove you aren't doing it.
At this point I leaned over the side of the bed and dangled my hands/arms in front of his face.
M: You're doing it with your legs
So, I sat up on the edge of the upper bunk with my legs dangling over the edge in full view and leant over as well, so that he could see my hands. Throughout the above, which must have lasted for at least a minute, the bed continued shaking.
At seeing that I obviously
wasn't doing it M. shot out of the lower bunk and stood against the wardrobe opposite the bed. From his point of view, I would have been sitting perched on the edge of the upper bunk, with my legs dangling and the bed shaking violently back and forth beneath me. I can still picture him now, with his mouth wide open in shock and his eyes like saucers. He bore a close resemblance to the promo photograph of Macauley Culkin from
Home Alone:
View attachment 28088
He then shot out of the room and burst into my parents' bedroom next door.
I was left sitting on the edge of the bed, slowly processing the fact that
- My older cousin has abandoned me
- The bed is still shaking backwards and forwards
- He wasn't doing it - therefore someone/something else was
- I was thus alone in my room with that unidentified (and invisible) someone/something
So it was my turn to leap out of bed and race into my parents' room, where M. and I spent the remainder of the night.
Years later, when I was a teenager, my mother said that she and my father mightn't have been so understanding of sharing their bed with us for the night if the exact same thing hadn't happened to their own bed the week before it happened to mine!