A Close Encounter of the Personal Kind.

Sandie Seward

About ten years ago, I was working as a Nightshift Manager at a Twenty-Four hour petrol station. My shift finished at six a.m., and on this particular day, I was a little later than usual finishing work. The morning cashier had overslept a little, and it was around 6.30 a.m. before I could get away.

I drove home along my usual route, which took me off Canvey Island by the main road on and off the Island The name of this road, is "Rememberance Way". It is a very exposed section of road with views to the right of the Thames Estuary and the Bird Sanctuary of Two Tree Island.

As I was driving, I glanced over to my right, and noticed in the clear dawn sky, (the sun hadn't quite risen yet), an extremely large and very bright light, hovering in the Eastern Sky. I pulled over, and stopped my car at the roadside. It was very quite, with hardly any traffic, it being a Saturday morning. Two other cars, travelling onto the Island, had also noticed this light, and had also stopped. The drivers were out of their cars, lokking at this intense light. I crossed the road, and joined them. The three of us just stood there, not saying anything, just watching this incredable spectacle.

There was no noise, no motors, or anything that we could discern from where we stood. I suppose the distance we were standing from that light, was extremely hard to tell, but I had never seen such a bright, almost blinding light before.

One of the other drivers spoke in a hushed voice, "What the hell is that?" he asked.

"It certainly isn't a plane or a helicopter," I answered, "no sound, and that light is just so pure".

Yes, that was the only way I could describe the light, as being "pure",

We stood a little while longer, the light had not even moved. Another driver stopped near us, leaving his vans engine running.

The light grew even brighter, and seemed to be slowly moving towards us. The vans engine suddenly stopped, on it's own. A deathly quiet descended on us, in the dawns early light. No birds sang, nothing disturbed the perfect silence, until, an early morning train clattered by on the C2C line about a quarter of a mile away.

The "spell" was broken. Suddenly, in the blink of an eye, the light seemed to rise, and then it was gone. The four of us stood gaping at each other, and we knew that what we had just experienced was something that none of us could properly explain.

On the following Monday, the local paper reported many calls from people who had also seen that light. I never reported it, but I have never forgotten it, and probably never will.

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