Things that go buzz in the night

MANY years ago there was a programme on TV called Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World.

The author of 2001: A Space Odyssey would explore strange phenomena such as UFOs, ghosts, alien abductions, poltergeists, werewolves and the fantastical workings of the States of Guernsey (not really, I made the first five up).

It was really interesting to me as a kid, as it entered into unknown worlds and parallel universes. When you grow up in Keighley, West Yorkshire, you need all the parallel universes you can get.

The programme started with old Arthur C. strolling along a sun-burnished beach wearing a Hawaiian shirt, baggy shorts and a floppy hat and carrying a huge parasol. We called the show Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious Clothes.

But the stories stuck with me.

I've never, to my knowledge at least, been abducted and tested on by aliens, though it would explain the worryingly long, antennae-like hairs that sprout out of my eyebrows on a regular basis. Perhaps they really are actual antennae and when the time is right, the aliens will pull a lever and I – and all the other poor saps they have tampered with – will switch into zombie mode and carry out their evil demands.

(Actually, I can't believe I'm so calm about having such long eyebrow hairs. If they grew that long out of my eyelids, I'd freak out.)

I have never turned into a werewolf either, though they are the coolest of all those old-school horrors, which include vampires, mummies and tall blokes in dark suits with square heads and bolts through their necks.

Running around Guernsey in a torn shirt and trousers and baying at the moon sounds like a great way to spend the evening, especially if it ends in chips, cheese and gravy.

So I've not encountered those strange happenings. But I have witnessed others.

When I used to sign on and lived in a rooming house above a rocking-horse shop, there would come a time every second week when you would find yourself flat broke. Being paid £67.40 every fortnight, that was hardly surprising.

But not working, mooching about the moors, hanging around in pubs and haunting public library reading rooms meant never keeping track of time, so nighttimes were often spent keeping awake.

When you had no money, it was best to sleep as much as you could during the day.

One night, two of the other boarders – Grimwright and Callum O'Quake – and I were up talking.

We were all broke, awaiting the different new dawns of our giros.

'Let's go for a walk,' said Grimwright.

It was a mild, late-summer's night with no threat of rain. It was also 3am, but as I said, time didn't matter.

So off we set.

We climbed the silent cobbles of Haworth's main street – every shop, cafe and guesthouse shuttered and asleep.

We climbed the stone steps to the church and passed its dormant bell tower, tramped alongside the parsonage and its ghosts and out onto Haworth Moor.

There is something strangely vibrant about the moors at night. There is no one there, yet the darkness bristles with life.

Every now and then you will hear the sound of a curlew or a plover calling from a pond or the scared scuttling of some rodent through the thick grass. Over the hills you can see the dirty-yellow, halo-like glow of distant towns and cities and can even hear the faint roar of traffic. And above you, you can see the bones of Orion and countless other unnamed constellations.

It might have been the hunger, the lack of sleep or even the remnants of past alcoholic or narcotic indulgences, but we were on a path just down from a manmade pond called the Blue Lagoon, when out of the faintly lightening sky, ghost-white against the stars, an owl swooped above our heads.

It didn't screech. All we could hear was the thunderous beating of its wings about seven feet above us.

We all ducked as it swooped back up, twisted and then completely disappeared.

All three of us stood there transfixed, looking up, trying to find a hole, a door, something in the sky.

'Where did it go?' asked Callum.

'It just disappeared – like through a trapdoor or summat,' I said.

Grimwright, who was older than us and had seen many more things, said only two words: 'Let's go.'

And we turned and headed home. We never mentioned it to each other again. In fact, this is the first time I've ever told anyone.

A few years before that, Bob, the landlord of my local pub, the Red Pig, commissioned me to do two oil paintings for him.

'I want a couple of local characters – £20 apiece,' he said.

He knew he was going to get it straight back over the counter.

I couldn't think of any local characters, so I made them up.

I did a tramp in a top hat reading the Financial Times (I used a real Financial Times) and a bloke playing an accordion.

The second one he hung in the pub and to my knowledge, it is still there, 23 years later.

Fast-forward to 1994 and I was best man for my mate, Jim's, wedding.

I'd come up from London and we were going along North Street for a haircut. Jim went into the hairdresser's but I was struck motionless by the man across the street.

He was wearing a tatty trilby and a stripy blazer. He had a grinning, monkey-like face. Around his shoulders he had straps and on his chest... he clutched an accordion.

He was exactly the bloke I had painted for Bob but I had never seen him before. I completely made him up. And there he was, alive and well and walking along the pavement.

He shuffled to the end of North Street and disappeared round the corner.

Did I run after him? Nope. Why not? Have you ever seen the film Don't Look Now, when Donald Sutherland runs after the dwarf in the red kagoul? That's why.

But the weirdest thing has just happened while I'm writing this.

It's 9.30pm. It's the first week of November.

I'm tapping away, writing about disappearing owls and paintings that come alive, when from behind the cabinet in the corner of the room comes a buzzing sound.

A winged insect flies into the cup of the angle poise lamp on top of the cabinet. It buzzes loudly, hovering in the light of the bulb.

I go over and look. It's a wasp. A wasp at the beginning of November. It is covered in a grey dust, like it has risen from the grave. A tiny wasp grave. It casts grotesque shadows on the wall. Grotesque wasp shadows.

I catch it in a glass candleholder and release it through the back door.

Be free, Waspula – be free to haunt another night.