By Tim Binnall
A woman in England was left wondering if she had a ghostly encounter after she heard the plaintive wail of a child outside her home, but found no one there when she went outside to help the distressed youngster. According to a local media report, the strange incident occurred last week in the city of York and was detailed by the unnamed witness on the localized social network Nextdoor. Amusingly, when the woman initially shared the account, she claimed that "this happened to a friend of mine recently and she is worried that she's either heard a ghost child or is going mad," though later conceded that the experience was her own and that she had been reticent to admit it for fear of "coming across as slightly bonkers."
Recalling the unsettling moment, the woman says that she heard a child crying out "'mummy, mummy, where is my mummy' several times in a very distressing way." The voice, the witness recalled, "was very clear" and "came out of the blue" before stopping "just as quickly as it started." Certain that there was a troubled tot in need of help nearby, she set off looking for the youngster with the expectation of finding them rather easily, but a search around her home turned up no sign of any child. "The whole incident left me feeling very shaken," the woman lamented, which led her to the website in the hopes of finding some explanation for the mysterious experience.
Remarkably, rather than ridicule the woman, her neighbors offered up some rather chilling insights as one man who lived in the area during the late 70s recalled having a similar experience wherein he and his friends were bewildered by the disembodied cries of a child. This was echoed by another person who resides in the neighborhood and said that they had the exact same thing happen to them on a few occasions. If the source of the cries was an actual ghost child, many theorized that it could have been a youngster who perished when the city was bombed during World War II. Noting that she had previously not believed in spirits, the woman mused While she mused that "this experience definitely made me think again."