This story is about something strange that my wife and I witnessed in the autumn of 2021. It happened when we lived in our last house which we had been renting. We have since moved to our current house which we bought in May 2023.
The ‘event’ didn’t last long but it was certainly weird. My wife and I were chilling in the evening before heading off to bed. I can’t remember why but I looked out of the front window and noticed that the street was in darkness. It was around 10:30 pm and had been dark out for an hour or so and the street lights should have been on.
I went outside and realized that the street lights (on our street) were all off but those for the next street down were working fine. It was also very, very quiet. Not the sound of a car in the distance, no wind blowing, nothing.
I eventually noticed that there was a circular hole in the clouds pretty much right above our house. The clouds in general were relatively low and thick. I don’t know what the typical cloud ceiling level usually is, but for some reason to me, it just seemed to be obviously lower. The diameter looked to be around 200ft across but that could be way off as it was very, very difficult to judge.
The clouds didn’t seem to be moving either. Not even the typical slow drift and the sky within the ‘hole’ appeared to be a lot darker (almost black) when compared to the sky on the outside. We stood there looking for about 5 minutes and although we would eventually hear the odd car in the distance it was still eerily quiet and dark.
There’s a telephone exchange at the end of our street, a small park to the side of the house, and then a main road at the other side of that park. The rest of the immediate area is all houses on quiet suburban streets. My wife headed indoors as it was a little cold out. I hung around looking up at the hole in the sky for another few minutes and then headed inside too.
Although this occurrence really piqued my curiosity, for some reason I never mentioned it to anyone other than my wife the next morning and that was that. I was actually pretty eager to chat about it with friends and work colleagues however it continually ‘slipped my mind’. I sometimes wonder if I was being forced to forget about it, at least for long enough that it was no longer a ‘current event’. Maybe I can talk about it now because so much time has passed that my mental block has now been lifted, who knows? It was certainly a weird but also super cool experience.
Woohoo! Dave Schrader read this story out on the Paranormal 60 News 200th episode show (streamed Wednesday 6th December 2023). Starts 1:08:45 at the link below.
https://www.youtube.com/live/GaulLtt08Hk?si=0dZ6zsIupbqKGGR6
Possible explanation – a very low-level circular hole in the clouds at night might be associated with a phenomenon called a “skypunch” or “hole punch cloud.” This can occur when supercooled water droplets in the cloud freeze suddenly, often due to the introduction of ice nuclei, like those produced by aircraft contrails or particles from the ground. The freezing of the droplets creates a gap or hole in the cloud layer at lower altitudes.
Beyond The Finish Line 