This actually occurred a good few years ago now, when I was a teenager.
I’m not an avid believer of the paranormal. I’m open to the idea of course, but I just haven’t seen enough evidence yet. But this is something that always creeps into my mind when someone mentions ghosts. It’s certainly not the scariest of tales I could tell, as I think the living are a lot more scary than the dead could ever be.
Some may find it eerie, others may feel sorrowful. Some may even roll their eyes and dismiss the entire event. But anyway, let’s get on with the story.
I was sat in the woods of my local park with a group of friends doing what unsupervised teens do; drinking, smoking and playing music.
On this particular day, we’d all planned to have a camp out at the top of the woods. This was a fairly regular occurrence for us in the summer, and most of us knew of the best spots to set up camp out of earshot of wardens and the general public.
The evening went on, and one of my friends approached me and suggested the two of us go off up the hill and start setting up camp while we still had light. I agreed. Naturally, it would just be the two of us as the rest of the group were a bit worse for wear and wouldn’t be much help putting up tents.
So, the two of us gathered up all the equipment and began the trek up the hill while chatting.
We reached the large dirt path of the woods, knowing soon we’d have to turn off and start a steep ascent when I saw something in the corner of my eye at the far end of the path.
It was quite tall and bright, it turned its head to look at us and within two sprints it was gone. The whole thing lasted about a second, and I assumed it was just a trick of the eye until my friend spoke up.
‘Did you see that?’
We stop in our tracks, confused and speculating for a moment what it could’ve been. We ruled out passing cars or torches as it was too light out and it looked as if the figure itself was glowing as it ran along the path.
We decided to just carry on with heading to camp, and didn’t walk down to the end of the path to investigate.
The rest of the night goes on, we do the usual teenagers at a camp out activities and eventually all uncomfortably fall asleep.
We wake up the next morning, pack up all our things, say our goodbyes and head home.
I don’t really recall what I did the following day, I likely just had a bath and rested up from a rough nights sleep. Until I got a message.
‘I found an article.’ My friend sent me, with a link attached.
I open it and read through.
It was about a man who sadly passed away while running a half marathon through the park a little while before our camp out.
It was the last line that made my mouth drop, and my friend shared my reaction.
The nickname of the man who passed away during the run.
‘Bright Star.’