The Light Over The Cemetery Came Back On The Same Date For Three Years

My mother is buried in a cemetery on a hill, and I go on her birthday, in the evening, because she liked the evening and because the place is empty then.

The first year I saw it, I thought: helicopter. It was a single light, moving in a wide, patient circle over the far side of the ground, at maybe the height of a tall crane, and it took several minutes to come round.

No sound. That is the thing that took me a while to notice, and when I did notice it I felt my scalp move.

I watched it do three circuits and then I got in the car, because I am not brave, and because it was my mother's birthday and I did not want to spend it frightened.

The second year, same date, it was there. Same slow circle. Same silence.

At that point I did what any reasonable person does, which is nothing, because who do you tell? I did not want to be the woman who reports a UFO at her mother's grave. There is a version of that sentence that gets you a phone call from a concerned relative.

The third year I brought my brother, without telling him why.

He saw it. He watched it for ten minutes, not saying anything, and then he said, in a small voice: "Is that over Dad's bit?"

Our father is buried on the far side. I had never thought about that. I had genuinely never thought about that, and I felt something go cold all the way down my back.

It was not over his grave, when we walked over. It was over nothing. Over grass and a bin and a tap.

The fourth year I did not go. I could not.

This year I will go, and I am telling you now, in advance, because if it is there again I want there to be a record that I said it would be, before it was.

That is not proof. I know exactly what it is not. But it is the closest thing to a prediction I have ever made in my life, and I am making it in public, and I am frightened of being right.