The date was the 17th of March 2012, I found myself alone in the cold empty room of the Anderton Centre. We had recently set off on a week away with work, as a training exercise to help build teamwork skills and to increase the bonds with our colleagues. But nobody realized quite how close we would become.
It was a sunny day, clear skies lit up the countryside around our dorms. It was a beautiful site to see, the trees rustling in the wind accompanied by the soft chirps from the local birds. Ahead of us in that day we had a long mountain bike ride and a walk. I was excited for the day to come as I sat there eating my jam on toast for my breakfast, the toast was a clear golden brown with the butter and jam mixing to create an exquisite flavour that danced on my taste buds.
The mountain biking part of the day was rather uneventful, I had a great time out with the team but nothing amazing happened. However the afternoon walking session, in the forest across the lake, was where this day began to turn…
At around 5pm the majestic blue, clear, skies turned a sour grey in what felt like an instant. Clouds filled the open air and a single bolt of lightning struck. I was on my own at the time searching for a task objective on the walk, fear ran through my body as I felt a cold shiver run down my spine. I heard the cracking of a tree branch in the distance; I swung around to look in the direction of the sound to find myself staring at a cloudy white wall of fog. The hairs on my neck rose as I felt an ice cold sensation pass through me. Struck with fear, my natural impulses kicked in and I started to run as fast as my legs could carry me. The dense misty air made it an almost impossible task to see where I was going; I tripped and fell hitting the hard cold ground. As I fell I yelped out in shock, then to my greatest relief I heard a familiar voice in the distance shouting my name…
“CRAIG!!!” the voice shouted “CRAIG!!!” I scurried towards to sound as I struggled to stand up. Finally a figure became visible, it was Brad. Brad was one of my closer friends at the time and I was so glad to see him, I knew out of all my friends at work he would be the one that would believe me when I told him what had happened. We shared a similar belief when it came to the unnatural. As I finally reached him, gasping for breath, he worryingly asked me “Craig, what’s wrong? Where have you been? You’ve been missing for hours!” As I looked around and tried to get my bearings I suddenly realized where I was. I had reached the anderton centre; confusion filled my mind as I struggled to work out how I had seemingly traveled so far in seconds.
I was ushered back into the dormitories by Brad as he took me to my room; I had a lot of questions to ask and apparently so did he. The sound of a walkie talkie buzzed whilst Brad got in contact with the others in my team to let them know I was ok. The team I was with where looking for me for all this time and Brad had come back to the centre to check if I was there. As I led down in bed, Brad began to explain to me what had been happening. From what I though was a few minutes after 5pm, was in fact over 3 hours. Shocked and confused, I didn’t know what to say. When I was finally able to string enough words together to form a sentence I asked him “Did you see anything in the forest, anything out of the ordinary?” Pondering the question, he sat down against the wall and began to think. “No, I can’t think of anything. But now you mention it, for a brief second I thought I saw you with someone as you where running towards me… but that’s silly right? Must have just been a tree in the mist”. I was too tired to go deeper into this, but it did play on my mind.
Waiting for the rest of the team to return we spent the rest of the time in silence, both of us where obviously trying to think of logical reasons for the events that had previously unfolded.
Later in the night the team returned, looking out the bedroom window we could just barely see the forest across the lake. The fog had become even thicker now, and nothing was clearly visible more than 5 yards in front of us. Matt and Lewis where the other members of the team, they had stuck together in the forest as they searched for me. It took a while to explain to the team what had been happening, understandably they did not fully believe me at first but this was all about to change.
