This story was given to me by my friend Simone. What was the dark orb and why had it visited them?:
Many years ago in New Zealand, my best friend, her sister, and I spent New Year at her grandparent’s batch on the coast. Firstly, New Year is in the summer in New Zealand, so we wanted to spend time at the beach, swim, and enjoy the summer break together, "Getting away from it all." This was before we had internet and mobile phones. Secondly, a batch is, or at least used to be, a basic holiday house. This one belonged to her grandparents. Her grandfather had built and adapted it over many years from a very basic one room to have two bedrooms, living room, a proper kitchen, bathroom and laundry facilities, so we were quite comfortable, but there was no television or stereo, or even a radio. It was on a very quiet residential street a few streets away from the beach, where there were regular houses, and stood alone with a big lawn all around it. The street had one streetlight, but this was rather dim and blocked by trees and foliage at night from the batch. One bedroom was for her grandparents, and the other had six single beds in it. This is the room in which all three of us slept. One night after a day of sunning ourselves, we finally went to bed late. Since it did not get dark early, we had stayed up talking, listening to music on my ‘boombox’ as we used to call them, and reading. The beds which my friend and I were in were right at the back of the batch, our heads at the outer wall towards the back lawn, and opposite each other. Her sister was at the other end of the room with her head on the side of the batch and her feet towards the doorway. After turning out the lights, we chatted away to each other in the dark, until her sister fell asleep. We had the curtains closed as the sun rose early, but it was a very dark night, seemingly with no moon as I recall, and there was no light on in the batch, nor was any light coming from the window, so we couldn’t see each other. My friend and I continued to talk for a while then naturally just fell silent. I lay there for some time, as I am a real night owl and didn’t tend to go to sleep until very late. After some time, I noticed a slight scratching sound which I couldn’t define where it was coming from, but as there are generally spaces underneath houses in New Zealand which are usually made of wood, I just thought it must be a rat or mice under the house. After some time of this, something made me open my eyes and turn my head towards my friend, who by now I assumed to be asleep. I saw hovering over about where I knew her chest to be, a thing which I can only describe as a ball of dark light, about the size of a melon. It was moving, swirling, and like a complete absence of light within the dark, but still almost faintly orange and luminescent. This was no more than a metre and a half away from me. I stared, blinked my eyes several times, thinking I must be seeing things, but it was still there. I closed my eyes and turned my head towards the ceiling for a few moments, then turned and looked again. It was still there. I knew there was no light on or coming from outside, nor anything else that could account for what I was seeing, and it felt faintly menacing. I felt the sinking feeling of dread in my chest. Just then my friend said in a quiet voice "Simone, there’s something there, isn’t there?" I was shocked that not only was she still awake but also aware without me making a sound, nor her opening her eyes, that I was seeing something very strange. For a moment I debated saying "What are you talking about?" so as not to frighten her but knew that was pointless, so I just simply replied "Yes" in a rather flat voice. She said "I knew it. I could feel it was there." Not knowing what we should do, I did what people often do in such odd situations, and after a pause said "I think it’s best if we just go to sleep now" and ignored it. Oddly, I fell asleep quickly after this, almost as if my brain couldn’t cope with thinking about it too much. In the morning we discussed it briefly, but my friend did not want to dwell on it much. She is very sensitive to all sorts of things but prefers to try and block them out because she finds it frightening. She told me once of waking at their home to see a large dark figure leaning over her sister in her bed in their shared bedroom, and screaming out, whilst at the very same moment her sister awoke to see the same figure leaning over her and ALSO screamed. Their mother flew across the hallway to turn on the light and find out what was going on, and my friend said the figure did not immediately disappear but slowly faded. A friend of her mother who was psychic herself said that lost spirits and especially those of animals seemed to be drawn to my friend as she is such a loving and happy person herself, and some have followed her home. She does not like this idea. Although this happened almost twenty-five years ago, I still cannot find a logical explanation for what I experienced, and I will never forget it. I believe there are far more things in this life and universe than we yet know or can understand.
Photo by Melanie Magdalena on Unsplash