D:1974
L:Nr. Middlesbrough, Cleveland
S:Andrew MacKenzie
On the evening of 7 May 1974 Mr Live Stirland, a metallurgist employed by British Steel's Middlesbrough Research Centre, was alone in his sitting room. He suddenly felt an almost physical jolt. Mr Stirland swiftly considered all manner of explanation: time slips, and atomic bomb exploding some miles off, two cars crashing outside. As Mr Stirland moved towards the window, he suddenly saw a vision of his father who had died over twenty years before. The apparition was insubstantial and misty but nevertheless clear in detail. It had natural colour and stature; Mr Stirland commented that it was looking at something through rotating blades in the electric fan. THe figure of his father was surrounded by auras of gold, silver and blue; Mr Stirland felt that a feeling of intense love was radiating from the apparition. He became emotionally overwhelmed, astonished and bewildered.
The apparition remained visible even when Mr Stirland went into the kitchen, but disappeared when he made the conscious decision to write the letter that he had been about to write when he had been 'interrupted'. It appears that the decision to carry out some particular act, therefore changing the state of his conscious mind, destroyed the circumstances that had brought about the apparition in the first place.
The whole incident lasted just over a minute