Phantom Cougher
A few years ago, I lived in a little bungalow that backed on to a small railway track. My sister and brother-in-law used to live in a house about 2 miles along the track that also backed onto the track.
This being a dead-straight line we used to walk to each other's houses' along the track rather than 'the road way' as it cut about a mile off the journey. Invariably we'd get pissed and couldn't drive, so we'd use the track to travel instead.
One night, it was my turn to be walking back along the track. It's a long way from any houses or street lights and so at around 1am it's absolutely pitch black.
I'd walked the first mile and coped with the slatted bridge completely blindly, when I heard a loud cough about 100 yards up the track in the direction I was walking.
Obviously, this shit me right up.
I stopped and listened - even held my breath - to see if I could hear any other noises. I couldn't. I figured that I'd probably stood on something and mistaken the sound, and so continued walking.
Again; a loud cough, only louder this time.
Now I started to *really* shite myself - all manner of thoughts going through my head: "Someone's hiding in a bush waiting to jump out and rape and murder me" etc.... (although why a raping murderer would wait in a field along a deserted (at that time of night) train track in the miniscule hope that an unsuspecting victim would just happen along was clearly beyond me at that moment.
I fumbled for my keys in my pocket and formed a make-shift knuckle-duster and sountered along the track, albeit with somewhat trepidation.
As I approached the area where I imagined the cough coming from, something rustled in the bushes....and out shot a coughing sheep at the speed of sound.
After I'd popped my heart back behind my rib cage, I actually found it quite amusing.
Apparently, sheeps coughs sound exactly like a humans.

Scary woolly bastards.
(dchurch bah, Fri 8 Apr 2011, 10:44, 1 reply)

Yup. And the ones Calne have an odd dialect, which means their 'baa' noises sound *exactly* like a person doing a very sarcastic impression of a 'baa' noise. It's really quite odd.
( Happy Phantom has been to Hastings, Brighton, and Eastbourne too, Fri 8 Apr 2011, 18:20, closed)