This was about 10 years ago, when my dad took my older brother and I on a trip with him to France. At one point my dad decided to see an old friend of his, who was an archaeologist in an old town somewhere out in the middle of nowhere. A lot of my not knowing what was going and where we are is attributed to the fact that I was 11 at the time, entirely ungrateful, and don't speak a word of French.

Anyways, my dad's friend ended up inviting us to stay at his house for a few days. My dad's friend, who we'll call Jean because I can't remember what his real name was, had specifically moved out to this remote region of France because of its richness in ancient artifacts and tunnels. His own house had actually been built on some old ruins, which he himself had dug up. Interestingly, the door leading to these ruins was accessible through his kitchen of all places. Upon opening what looked like a door to a pantry one would be greeted with a dark, ancient, scary as hell set of steps leading underground.

He had found a few old artifacts down there - some old keys, some old cups and plates, some religious relics, and two skeletons. Yes, he had dug up two skeletons from under his house. Somewhere under the kitchen sink, to be exact. He had decided they were preists, based on the religious artifacts he had found scattered around the room.

So anyways, Jean was a good host and, after a tour of the hell tunnel under his house, showed us our quarters. My dad would stay in the guest bedroom upstairs, while my brother and I would sleep on fold-out couch in the living room. Later on that night, as we were sitting around in the living room, my dad, who had been conversing in French with Jean while my brother and I stared into space, said that Jean had something to show us.

Jean stood up, turned out the lights in the living room, walked over by the front door, and turned on the outside lights. An outside light would shine on a stained-glass window in his living room. One of the pieces of glass in it would project this image on the wall when the light shined through it:



The quality is poor - Jean gave me a picture of it before I left, which was eventually lost through my family moving 3 times. I took a picture of the picture with an extremely shitty digital camera a few years ago, which is all I have left of it. Maybe if you mess around with it enough in photoshop you can see it more clearly.

Anyways, about the image: First off, it was actually silver. I don't know why it's orange in that picture, maybe Jean took the picture that way for some reason or another. The image was apparently of a skeleton, apparently wearing a robe, with something on its head (presumably a crown of horns). Some kind of disembodied hand in the corner was making what my dad translated to me as an ancient symbol of divinity - maybe one of you'll recognize it and be able to say exactly what it is.

The image had started appearing on Jean's wall a few months after he had removed the skeletons from his "basement". Somehow he was still convinced it was a "coincidence". My dad and brother both agreed it was a "coincidence". Nobody seemed to think it was out of the ordinary. Alternatively, I was shitting my pants knowing I had to sleep in the same room as this thing. Though the skeleton is kinda goofy looking; the robe, arm, feet, and thorny thing on its head are pretty clearly visible - one hell of a coincidence. Jean demonstrated with a large piece of paper how, the closer he moved to the stained glass window with the image shining onto the paper, the more the image began to just look like a big blurred booger - I suppose this was a large part of his skepticism, which I guess sort of makes sense.

Aside from the image on the wall, nothing else strange ever happened. The image never moved or anything. Though I was convinced it was going to appear at night and kill me, neither one of the nights I was there did I see or hear anything strange. If it really was a dead priest attempting to contact the living, he sure picked a shitty way of doing it.

- Aquas <- 7:17:46 pm, friday, february 22nd, 2008 pst