BART Monster And Other Strange Stories

By James Donahue

Writer Jason Offutt, who maintains a web blog “From the Shadows,” recently posted an eerie account about a strange encounter a woman named Elaine Steele had with a spooky priest while riding the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) in the San Francisco area early one Saturday morning in 2006.

As Steele related the story, she was only one of four people on the car she entered at 24^th and Mission that morning. But then she had a chill come over her as someone took the seat directly behind her. She said she looked in the window and saw the reflection of a man dressed as a priest.

Steele said she had the opportunity to turn and observe the rider because he unexpectedly tapped her on the shoulder and said “good morning.” She said she looked over her shoulder to return the greeting and was shocked at what she saw.

“This guy was so scary looking. He looked sweaty even though it wasn’t yet hot and he had this big birth mark that took up one side of his face and it was dark pink. He had incredibly thick lips and large teeth, and he had freaky, basically colorless eyes.”

Steele said the man’s movements were strangely irratic . . . giving her the sensation that she was in a dream. “His hand was resting on the back of my seat. Then it was gone and he was adjusting his robe. But I never saw his hand move.”

She said that as she looked, the man’s body began to shake and vibrate and she had the sensation that she was looking at a bad television signal. “It was like the outline of his body hummed with vibrations, kind of like an animated cartoon.”

Steele said she turned in her seat but then heard the man chanting and breathing heavily. She said she felt his breath in her hair. Then she felt him reach out and touch her hair, leaving a wet and heavy feeling. She said she pulled her hair over her shoulder and looked back. The mysterious priestly rider had disappeared as strangely as he had arrived.

This is but one of a list of new stories of strange and unexplained happenings reported in world news stories.

There is a stretch of road in Coventry, England, at the junction of Keresley and Kelmscote Roads, where strange and unexplained things have been happening for years. People say the road may be haunted, or perhaps influenced by witches living in the neighborhood.

The latest event occurred in early December, 2011, when cars on the roads were pelted by hundreds of apples raining down on them from the sky. Drivers said the small green apples bombarded their cars just after rush-hour. When it was over the streets were covered with apples for about 20 yards. The source of the apples and the cause of the strange rain of them from the sky could not be explained.

And in Staffordshire, England, in February 2009, at least five people reportedly watched in awe they witnessed what appeared to be a may flying through the sky over their heads. Mike Lockley, editor of the local newspaper, said he was contacted by all five witnesses who said they saw the figure of a humanoid “traveling, seemingly unaided, over houses at around 11 a.m. on Sunday, February 8.”

One elderly man who saw the flying man through his living room window said he thought the pilot was using a jet pack, a strap-on engine developed by the military and used in a 1965 James Bond film.

A woman said she was watching seagulls and noticed something among the birds that was moving slowly and in a straight line. “I got up to take a closer look and realized it was a flying man.” She said she thought he had bailed out of an aircraft but no parachute was opened. And she could not see an aircraft in the sky.