It Happened to Me…
No impact
My dad and I were celebrating some of lockdown being lifted by trying out his new car on a trip to the Cotswolds. It was late on a blustery night when we slowed down in Chipping Norton, on the Oxfordshire borders with Gloucestershire, to navigate the roundabout in a 20mph (32/kmh) zone at the junction between the A44 and the road to London.
It was then we saw it: something about the size of a large dog ran out right in front of the car less than a couple of inches from the bumper, giving us no time to brake or stop. But there was no bump, no impact, nothing at all. While it was going on I let out a “Hey, look out!” and spun round to discover what we’d hit, seeing nothing at all in the rearview mirror, or on the road behind or around us. My dad, meanwhile, was saying disbelievingly, “You saw it too?” as if he thought he’d imagined it. Clear as day (or clear as streetlight), the thing had been about 3ft (90cm) high and black, but insubstantial, semi-transparent, looking precisely like black ink swirling in water, and, I kid you not, flickering and contorting wildly – a black shape moving quickly and phasing
