Spunky Monk
Alright then, i actually haven't had any close encounters of the brown kind myself, but this story coming up is the best i've heard, and it happened to agood, honest, trustworthy guy i know well, so basically i believe what he was saying...

The background being that he had just gotten over a bout of heavy food poisoning which resulted in fevers and mild hallucinations...a few days after recovering he decided to come back up to Scotland to stay with his sister and recuperate....no sickness, squirts or sweatiness for a number of days, so he is on the road to recovery...

He decided to go for a wander and have a wee smoke as his sister does not partake...he gets to a nice spot by the Gryffe river near Kilmacolm, sits himself down and skins up...he has his reefer and is relaxing in the summer sun. The spot is by a river in a small bowl shaped depression, he is sat at or near the bottom, by the river...he looks over his shoulder and sees a monk, yep, full robe, hood up, the lot, standing halfway up the bowl shaped depression, it is semi transparent and does not move, he looks away, looks back and it is still there. After repeating this a few times the apparition disappears.......

He is pretty freaked out, but manages to go over to where it had appeared and look for any clues. There are none. He quickly walks home. The thing is that clouds his judgement is the fact he thought it could have been a vague hallucination brought on by the smoke and retreating food poisoning....He puts the matter to the back of his mind.


Ffwd 10 years or so and he is back working in Scotland, he is giving a lift to a few female workmates and on this morning they start talking about spooky things, well, they do. He is listening with interest when they start talking about 'the monk of duchal woods'. he hasn't mentioned anything of his own experience to them and the topic is totally unprompted. They then relay the story of the monk who haunts the river and woods at Duchal, the site of an old castle that was destroyed by the infamous Mons Meg canon, with a lone monk still inside. He was very interested to hear the background to the apparition he still wasn't sure if he saw or not...

So, he saw this monk with no prior knowledge of its existence but it deffo is a known phenomenon...

www.paranormaldatabase.com/highlands/Invedata.php

I have been to the exact spot many times before i even knew this friend, and didn't like it at all, and refused to camp there with my pals. And have been since and nothing happened, bastard ghosts.

meh!
(Cancer Joy was short lived, Mon 7 Jul 2008, 11:05, 2 replies)

A bowl-shaped depression, eh?
Mist can often form in such depressions, and can form quite monklike shapes, or shadows on the mist can. But because it's so dependent on particular conditions it can be difficult to repeat.

I once saw a monk standing by the edge of the road that disappeared when I got near to it. Shocked the hell out of me. Then, I saw another one that did the same thing. Then another. After the fifth one I thought this was less spooky and more interesting so I stopped. Turned out that the combination of my headlights, a light mist and some roadside posts was enough to create the illusion. Never seen it before - never seen it since.
(richardm, Mon 7 Jul 2008, 15:49, closed)

maybe
but it was a crisp, clear summers day...no mists or weather tomfoolery to be had.....i already went through this with him....the monk had textured brown robes on, apparantly...

I thought it all the more believable because he was unaware of the monk legend, yet gave a very accurate account of it.

I would have to run towards any apparition i saw, never taking my eyes off it, then see what happened.....either that, or pour a portion of bum gravy into my pants and tremble with teh fear
(Cancer Joy was short lived, Mon 7 Jul 2008, 15:57, closed)