This incident happened during late summer in the northwest of England in 1995 at around 10:15 p.m. My brother, our friend, and I were taking a short-cut home through an old mining area, which is  known as the Tawd Valley. I was walking a few yards ahead. I crossed a small stone bridge, and on getting to the other side, I stopped walking and waited for them.

It was a dark night and there were no street lamps in the Tawd, but it was a clear, calm night, so although it was dark, it wasn't pitch black and most things were quite visible.


 I looked around while I was waiting and noticed what looked like a grey (or dirty) plastic sheet caught up in a hedge near the river. I didn't pay it much attention to begin with because I assumed that it was just rubbish.

I called to my brother and friend to hurry up, but they were busy laughing and joking with each other. As I was waiting for them, I glanced back toward the plastic sheet... and it had started floating away from the hedge and across the footpath. I wasn't sure what I was seeing, so I looked away and focused my vision on the stonework of the bridge, my brother, and friend to make sure that the darkness wasn't playing tricks on me.

Everything looked and sounded normal, so I looked back at what I thought was a plastic sheet and by this time it had crossed the width of the path and was now floating down the line of the hedge on the opposite side and was slowly heading straight toward me.

Again, I turned my attention away from it, thinking that when I looked back it would be gone.

 But it was still there. As it got closer, it didn't look grey anymore, but instead it was a white light. Again, I tried to find a logical explanation: moonlight or any kind of light reflection, but there wasn't one. As it got closer, I noticed that the light was contained within itself and did not illuminate anything around it.

I have never been a nervous type of person and will stand my ground when necessary, so that's what I did. As it got closer, I saw a woman wearing old-fashion clothing inside this strange glow, but the centre of it was white, so I couldn't identify her face, just her clothing, shape, and height.

I didn't feel threatened by her, so I stayed put. However, once she got within a 5 metre distance and still heading my way, I guess uncertainty got the better of me and I suddenly bolted uphill to the nearest housing estate.

As I was running, my brother and friend came running past me at incredible speed. We reached the edge of the estate and the first thing I said to them was, "Why did you run?"

Their response was quite frantic: "Did you see the woman in the light? We saw you looking to the left of the path, then next minute you were legging it." I told them that they saw the same thing I had, which made it even more bizarre because all three of us saw it without saying a word to each other.

Although we still weren't sure what just happened, none of us were scared; more baffled really. I know we all saw something that night, so I decided to try and find out afterward what it was. I know quite a lot of history about the old mines in the Tawd Valley, but who was this woman? And where was she going?

On further investigation, I found out that there once stood a mill near where I had been standing that night. The wives of the miners used to work in the mill. It appears that she was following an old brick path, which is now covered by bushes, soil, or newer footpaths put on top of the old ones, and I believe that she was simply going to work and had no intention of bothering anyone.

The only regret I have about that night is running away. I wish I'd held my ground a bit longer. I never saw her again after that.

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