When I was a teenager I was cycling home from Bath through an area which was known locally as Sally in the Woods
I had made this journey many times before on my bicycle without incident but on this occasion I suffered a puncture deep in the woods on a rather chilly but bright September evening.
It was what did not happen that I found so frightening as although I was engaged in repairing my tyre I felt that time had frozen around me
There was no evening birdsong and for the entirety of my time in the woods no other vehicles passed me in either direction
Local legends noted unexplained screams and ghostly white figures seen for an instant but I saw nothing at all that evening absolutely nothing
They found me hunched on the roadside and supposed that I had either been hit by a car or had fallen from my machine
But on examination at the hospital the doctors found that I had suffered no injury and that my clothes showed no evidence of a fall.
I recounted my story about the puncture but my bicycle was also found to be in good condition
My strange tale was put down to an episode suffered by a young man with an over active imagination who basically had exhausted himself and had foolishly decided to sleep by the roadside deep in the woods
From that day onwards I always avoided Sally in the Woods even at great inconvenience to myself and others
I would not say that I forgot about the incident but as the years passed it certainly faded from my memory
That was until this evening when I happened upon a photograph of the Sally in the Woods when engaged in some research about Bath
At first I did not recognise the location as the photograph had been taken probably by a drone high above the woods
But then the geography became familiar and I began to recognise the soft contours of the woods and the surrounding area
The photograph had been taken at sunset most probably on a late summers evening and the whole area was bathed in a dull golden haze
Out of interest and protected by the movement of time I began to explore the photograph from the safety of my laptop.
It was then that I began to notice that my cursor was beginning to glow as it rested on the left hand side of the photograph
This alarmed me a little and I tried to move it but to no avail as it was frozen to the screen
Although I was hundreds of miles away I began to feel a sense of unease as I had on that far off evening in the woods
But I did no lose consciousness and after an undetermined pause my screen unlocked and the cursor returned to normal
I immediately retired from the site and and made myself a hot cup of tea as my nerves felt frayed
The tea calmed me and I tried to return to the website only to find that it did not appear to have existed in the first place
My recent history bore no witness to my visit although I did note that for the period between 08:30 and 09:10 that nothing was recorded although I knew that I had been working on my laptop all evening
It is now ten minutes off midnight and I have nearly completed my account of this peculiar haunting
Whether what happened just under three hours ago was just another episode as supposed in my youth is not a question that I can easily answer at present
I am a fit and healthy man with no noted mental aberrations but I know that I will be haunted by both these visits for years to come