A strange encounter in London’s Crouch End left STEVEN TAYLOR convinced he had seen a white, ghostly shape fluttering above the street before vanishing into the darkness
I was visiting a friend who lived in a multi-occupancy house in Crouch End. A fellow tenant had recently died in the house, one whom I had met late in 2025 and got on quite well with whenever I bumped into her. It seems she had been a heavy smoker, an unwise habit.
I approached this living friend’s house at about 11pm and saw, about 20 feet in the air and not many houses away from my destination, what looked like a rectangular white sheet appear, flutter once, and disappear diagonally upwards back into aerial darkness, much like a visual flicker.
It was like ectoplasmoid film above the street which vanished very quickly, as if it came from nowhere and went back to nowhere.
My friend was taken aback when I said I had just seen her dead friend. I agreed she was dead, but no more non-existent than before she was born alive.
Yes, it was a stormy evening and it could have been a flimsy rag or newspaper, save that it had no visual origin or destination, that is, as it were, no existential perspective.
The sighting itself lasted barely a second, no more than a strange visual interruption in the darkness above the street, but it carried the same uncanny quality as certain dreams or sudden intuitions, appearing and vanishing before the mind has time to properly measure what it has witnessed.
Many people speak of ghosts as lingering presences or long hauntings. This was nothing like that. It was merely a glimpse, as if I had been alerted to witness something rather than truly observe it.
Perhaps supernatural perceptions vary from person to person and these glimpses are incidental and accidental, or particular in their subjective briefness. If ghosts are all in the mind, we could as well argue that awareness itself is a ghost in the body.
My guess is that consciousness is immortal, as is matter, and that a ghost is an earthbound self in limbo between reincarnation and a mooted transcendence, and that we all are but warm ghosts.
STEVEN TAYLOR is a writer, artist and lifelong student of the strange. Introduced to paranormal subjects as a child, he grew up reading classic ghost stories, exploring folklore and developing a fascination with philosophy, the occult and metaphysical ideas. Over the years he has worked in a wide range of jobs, exhibited his artwork, founded an arts club, performed in a punk band and written poetry. Now retired, he continues to write fiction, philosophy and poetry, having completed his first occult-themed novel and currently working on a second. Find out more at stephenpauldavidtaylor.co.uk and gothscape.com.
