Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

Sit back and enjoy what is probably the weirdest "letter to the editor" in history.  “The Guardian,” November 30, 1976:

Recent reports of peculiar events have reminded me of a mysterious experience I had in East Anglia a few years ago. I was teaching in a small village school and the caretaker's husband declared that he had seen strange orange lights in the school field as he walked the dog home at about 10.30 pm. Cynics suggested that he had seen more light ale than anything else. I thought little of it. 

The next day a little lad brought me a small plastic toy pistol which he had found near the school.  I popped it into my drawer until such time as some-one claimed it. Near the end of the afternoon of hectic activities I felt that I could not tolerate the compulsive and ceaseless chatter of one Sandra and on an impulse pointed the pistol at her saying mentally, “Gottya!” 

To my astonishment she immediately vanished. The other children, conditioned to ignore her perpetual trivialities, didn't even notice. At the end of the session I dismissed the class and sat down in the ill-lit room to ponder over the unprecedented situation. I was suddenly aware of the figure of a man standing by me dressed in some kind of boiler-suit protective clothing.  I assumed he was a parent on the way home from work. He extended his hand, lying in the palm of which was another toy pistol. Wordlessly I passed the first one over to him. He examined it briefly, clicked a small ratchet at the side, pointed it toward a corner of the room and pulled the trigger. To my utter amazement Sandra reappeared immediately in full spate, breaking off only to observe that it was time to go home.  And as I sat there, Sandra and the stranger independently disappeared into the evening gloom. 

A Wiltshire Teacher.