Phantom Pilot

Fascinating account of pilot meeting a friend, only to discover he'd died. I've heard of a similar case where a man met an old chum in a pub and talked for some time about people they knew from the past. He too found the man had died recently. Case begins at 5:45.

 
Thanks Gabriel.

This is an example that I believe either the pilot Bob must be lying or it must be evidence that something strange happened ? He really doesn't appear to be the kind of man that is prone to making stuff up.

Is it a recent programme? The commentators voice sounds like the blonde guy from Tomorrow's World in the eighties ?
 
Thanks Gabriel.

This is an example that I believe either the pilot Bob must be lying or it must be evidence that something strange happened ? He really doesn't appear to be the kind of man that is prone to making stuff up.

Is it a recent programme? The commentators voice sounds like the blonde guy from Tomorrow's World in the eighties ?

It was the same presenter I think :)

The person interviewed struck me as honest. He was also interviewed by Archie Roy, or one of his colleagues. I did a little research on him and he was a former pilot instructor in the Royal Navy when the Phantoms (no pun intende) were introduced. A serious guy IMHO.

The series has a number of episodes, some of the experiences reported are astonishing.
 
The presenter is William Woolard and the series ran, IIRC, in the mid-1990s. As Steve said, the captain is either lying, or he's telling the truth. Crisis apparitions are not uncommon, ones with close proximity and conversations are less frequent but not unknown. The other case I referred to had a man meeting someone he hadn't seen for years in a seaside pub. He also acted 'oddly' and didn't make physical contact, but wanted to talk about people they both knew. He was subsequently shown to have died shortly before. When he checked with the landlady she said she remembered him coming in, but he was sitting alone.
 
That's it. I got the full series of amazon a few years back. Money well spent as it's fascinating.
 
Actually hearing the testimony first hand is very helpful.

I agree, you can get so much more information from seeing and hearing them describe the experience, plus as you say it's first hand.

From hazy memory, I love the guy, who hears someone coming up the stairs to his bedroom, at which point he went for his shotgun, then the apparition entered the bedroom and ignoring the challenge from the guy, went to the side of the room, where it promptly disappeared, apart from the fact that the guy could still see the bottom of the apparitions legs and feet moving around.

A strong indication to me that the apparition had in the past opened a wardrobe door, and consequently been hidden from a third party viewer, apart from the feet. These sorts of classic apparitional replays, definitely seem to originate from the consciousness of a third party who is viewing the scene.

Yet if you hadn't seen the interview with the guy, in the very room, it would be so much harder to work out what is going on.
 
Agreed. I like the Pilot interview and the guy from York who claimed to see the Roman soldiers.
 
Agreed. I like the Pilot interview and the guy from York who claimed to see the Roman soldiers.

Aye, Harry Martindale's experience with the Roman Soldiers in Treasurers House, York is the cream of the crop for me, at least as far as classic apparitional hauntings go.
 
I've never personally seen an apparition, but suspect they occur due to the number and persistence of reports over time. In my life I've known 3 people who I believe to be sane individuals report that they have seen apparitions. Two of the three have seen them more than once, always in their homes, and suspect it has something to do with the geographical area around their home.

Harry Price believes he may have witnessed one, I posted this in another thread:

http://www.survivalafterdeath.info/articles/price/rosalie.htm

Cheers,
Bill
 
Didn't realize this was that ubiquitous and/or well-researched an area. Like the title of "Crisis Apparitions" Good stuff.
 
Didn't realize this was that ubiquitous and/or well-researched an area. Like the title of "Crisis Apparitions" Good stuff.
Crisis apparitions are one of the more common variety. I have a book from the 1980s with a chapter devoted to them. In one case a guy who had been at a bar in the Alps returned sometime afterwards, and was seen outside by his partner, in his uniquely painted Audi. She didn't know why he'd come back without calling in, before driving away. He was subsequently shown to have been killed in a road tunnel rockfall earlier that evening. His father heard his unmistakable engine note make its familiar manoeuvres into their parking place, but he never came into the house. Troubled by this, his father went out searching, to find the road blocked by the fall.

One case I came across was reported on a WW2 airbase site that had nothing to do with ghosts. In the comments section, a woman stated that her husband had been based at the location in question, and she had moved with her child to a rented house fifteen miles away, to enable them to share his brief leaves of duty on bombers. One day she became unaccountably depressed, which she described as untypical and couldn't shake it off. As she entered her bedroom for a lie down, she found her husband, smiling, facing her across the room. He was only visible from the waist up. He then disappeared. She feared the worst and so it transpired, he'd been killed in action. There's a famous case of a WW1 pilot who looked in on his room mate at the barracks, exchanging a few words before saying, "can't stop (name), must be going". The pilot thought little of it until the commanding officer informed him he'd been killed.

There are numerous similar cases.
 
Our family had a similar case. My step-mother spoke with her brother who should have been overseas fighting in WW2. He was confirmed killed in action by telegram the next day.

Greg Taylor describes a few more cases in his recent book and there are many other documented cases.
 
Our family had a similar case. My step-mother spoke with her brother who should have been overseas fighting in WW2. He was confirmed killed in action by telegram the next day.

Greg Taylor describes a few more cases in his recent book and there are many other documented cases.

Yes, we had two cases in our family. The neighbour down the street (this was during WW1) came around to see my grandmother to tell her that her son, had been killed. (He had known this neighbour and appeared to her) A telegram arrived not that long afterwards . I know for a fact whatever these experiences are (I accept them) they were very common. The families thought nothing about it, many of them having several visions.

I think people became scared to talk about them because of the incoming rationalism.

A friend of my father's (he was in the second war) in the RAF talked to me before he died, we were arguing about survival. He'd had a particularly hard war
and didn't believe in it. Total nonsense he said...but I can tell you something that might interest you if you like ?

He told me categorically that many pilots knew when they were going to killed. He didn't know how but he related the story of one of his friends who never came back from a mission who was inconsolable and in tears before entering the aircraft, claiming I've seen my death, goodbye I will do my duty regardless. These things were well known by all.
 
Our family had a similar case. My step-mother spoke with her brother who should have been overseas fighting in WW2. He was confirmed killed in action by telegram the next day.

Greg Taylor describes a few more cases in his recent book and there are many other documented cases.


I went to check out the book only to find it's one of those still waiting patiently on my Ipad.

Does anyone think they have an explanation for these apparitions ? Are they people who have not yet seen 'the light' or are afraid to admit that they have died. Or do we all see the light and this is a phantom part that is left behind ?

I don't expect anyone to know necessarily but what are your ideas ?
 
From what I have read, it seems that the transition "into the light" is not always immediate. Indeed, it has been suggested that it is not all that common. Personalities seem to hang around a while, even attend their own funerals. NDE's seem to constitute a kind of "taster" experience, to show the experiencer what we might expect. But belief/expectation has a lot to do with the nature of the experience, sometimes resulting in a "hellish" one.
 
Back
Top