The next strange incident I would like to describe during Hallowe’en month occurred on a trip my wife and I made to Paris. I will admit, the previous stories, although true, do have an element of poetic licence, but this one happened exactly as written. I have called it, Marmottan.

During a few days we spent in Paris a few years ago, we visited the Musee Marmottan Monet, the art gallery that houses many of Claude Monet’s most famous paintings. I said in my original introduction to this series that I make no claims to having any psychic gifts whatsoever, I don’t really know what to believe. However, when we emerged from the Metro Station, La Muette, on this dull, heavy, afternoon, I had an overwhelming sense I had stepped into an age gone by. It felt as we walked along the Avenue Ranelagh through the small park, I had been transported to the nineteenth century, it was just a feeling, nothing more.

We went into the art gallery, which was absolutely amazing, and stayed for a couple of hours, but as we were leaving I had an experience I will never forget. As we reached the final steps down to the exit, a middle aged man behind us was in more of a hurry than us, and as my wife walked down the steps, he got between us which split us up. My wife left the building ahead of both of us and disappeared to the left onto the street, but as the man reached the final step, he stopped and turned to look at me which I thought very strange. It was as if he expected me to say something, then receiving a blank look from me, shrugged his shoulders and carried on.

Still wondering what his problem was, I stepped into the open air and stopped dead in my tracks when I saw for the briefest of moments a woman dressed in a long, puffed out, brown dress with a brown bonnet on her head standing with her back against the wall. I couldn’t see her face as she stood side on to me, and the tie on the sides of her bonnet that went under her chin, covered her cheeks. I was about to call my wife who was a few feet ahead of this apparition to point her out, but the figure disappeared.

I suddenly found my legs had become like lead and I could hardly move. My throat tightened and my eyes watered almost to the point of a tear trickling down my face.

The man had gone off down the road and I have always wondered whether he had seen something that day and had turned to me to see my reaction. At that point I hadn’t reacted, which was why I’d looked blankly at him, so of course he wasn’t going to ask me, a perfect stranger if I’d just seen a ghost.