My Encounter With the Strange
When I was a child, I received a magazine focused on the paranormal and the unexplained. This humble magazine sparked my interest in the peculiar events of our world, and while this set the foundation, two events happened to me personally that cemented this interest in my psyche. I will detail one of them now, but I must preface by saying that the retelling of these experiences is to the best of my memory. This encounter happened a long time ago, so the finer details are a little hazy but ultimately true.
To this day, I have no explanation for the following encounter that I simply refer to as… The Satchel Man.
I was around fourteen years old at the time this occurred, this would have been post-September 11th and prior to the invasion of Iraq (This will play a part later), so somewhere between 2002 and 2003. As a teen I used to hang around my local city centre with friends, not doing much other than loitering and getting in the way of ordinary folk going about their business. I was walking down a busy street that branched off of the main high street accompanied by two friends, if I recall, we were heading home for the evening. The shops in the city were starting to close, other friends were heading off in different directions and we had decided we would also conclude our unproductive, yet enjoyable day and head home.
One of the friends I was with was somewhat of a loudmouth, and a bit of an attention seeker, meaning they could be a handful at times. As we walked, this friend, we’ll call him Mike for privacy’s sake, began yelling various, antagonistic and what he considered edgy statements for passers-by to hear and tut at. This was largely embarrassing for my typically quiet self and my other friend who also didn’t welcome the attention now coming our way from the public. We tried to quiet Mike down but we had little success so we let him walk a little ahead of us in a vain attempt to distance ourselves from what was unfolding.
I can never quite remember the exact words that triggered this whole event but I believe our edgy friend shouted something along the lines of “Government is just another word for better than you…”. Now I agree, that he was never going to be a revolutionary figure with wordplay like that but it seemed appropriate to him at the time and he yelled it at the top of his voice. As those words left his mouth it was like they activated a slow-motion command. Passer-bys seemed to glide past us and everything closed in around me, looking back I can only assume this was the intense embarrassment and anxiety at play.
In this new slow-mo world, a man who looked no more ordinary than anyone else on the street, passed by Mike, walking in the opposite direction, at the very second he shouted. As Mike’s words registered with the man, he spun his head, as expected but also stopped dead in his tracks before turning to follow Mike, who was none the wiser, with his gaze as he continued on down the street, no doubt thinking up other gold standard political retorts to yell.
This man was maybe five feet from me and my other friend, we’ll name him Rick, when we saw that he had taken notice of Mike, we assumed a telling-off was heading his way for shouting in the street, but we were wrong. In hindsight, a telling-off would have been a better outcome versus what actually happened.
The man, as I said, had stopped dead in his tracks and watched Mike walk past, he shot a glance at me and Rick next and due to the way we were dressed (Black hoodies, ripped jeans and wallet chains) he did the simple math and worked out we were together or at least acquainted. As we drew level with the man, he stopped us and asked us to call Mike back, as I said we fully expected a dressing down to be coming our way so we obliged and called Mike back to us. He reluctantly returned, rather bemused and joined us alongside the stranger. The man was wearing grey jeans, tan shoes and a brown, leather jacket, he had glasses and looked “academic” if that’s possible, his hair was receding at the front but still had length at the back which reached his shoulders. Slung over his shoulder was a brown leather satchel that almost matched his jacket.
We stood there for a moment in awkward silence waiting for the man to lecture Mike but he didn’t, instead, he began asking us questions. Now, exactly what he said is fuzzy as I alluded to in the intro to this post. This was around twenty years ago but the questions were unexpected and somewhat unrelated to what Mike had been yelling about. From what I remember he asked us about who we thought was really in power in the world, a sort of, who pulls the strings type of question. He asked us if we believed in God or any religion (at this point we thought maybe he was attached to a church and was walking the streets spreading his faith’s message). As dumbstruck teenagers, we answered, no to both questions and he smiled, he seemed incredibly pleased at how we had both been receptive to his questions and the answers we had given him. He asked us if we’d take a walk with him and we agreed.
Now, I know how this sounds right away, in my defence this was a “different time” and our naive age, curiosity and lack of life experience compelled us to go with him. If I was to embellish this story I could say that there was some bizarre force that made it almost impossible to resist, or we felt pulled along with him, not knowing what we were doing. That would be false and I’m not looking to mislead anyone, we were just foolish kids, intrigued by a strange man who stopped us in the street and we agreed to follow him out of curiosity more than anything else.
Again the haze of time comes in and things get foggy, I don’t distinctly remember us having a conversation amongst ourselves or with Satchel Man as we walked but I think it’s likely we did. He leads us the short distance from the street to the Cathedral that sits in the centre of the city, it must have taken under five minutes. Once we were at a quiet spot near the back of the Cathedral (again I know how this sounds) he stopped us and he opened his Satchel. As he rummaged through its contents he told us he was very important and didn’t have much time but he wanted to show us something and wanted to talk to us about it. He seemed rushed but not flustered, as if he knew exactly how many seconds he had to spare and was counting them in his head, this strange detail has stuck with me over all the years and I’m not entirely sure why.
From his bag, he pulled out a collection of notebooks and proceeded to kneel in front of us so we followed suit. He began to rifle through the books. He opened them up and spun them around for us to see their contents. Inside were the most intricate and detailed drawings I have ever seen to this day, laid down in blue ink on graph paper. The illustrations that stick in my mind the most, and have remained over the years depicted anatomically correct humans (similar to a medical sketch you’d find in old textbooks) standing within large semi-circular devices mounted on platforms, that somewhat resembled tunnel entrances. Inside the semi-circle devices stood a man and the woman, one showed them standing straight with arms at their sides and another with their arms outstretched in a T-like position, their fingers tips almost touching the sides of the devices, to me it appeared these drawings were for scale.
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There were other drawings of highly detailed anatomically correct humans, some of which strongly resembled Da Vinci’s famous and iconic Vitruvian Man. These were surrounded by notes, equations and tiny, almost indecipherable words in the margins of some pages. I wish I could have read these notes but it was, at the time, not possible due to the strangeness of the situation and the distance of the small text from my vantage point. Satchel Man flicked through three hefty notebooks that appeared to be full from cover to cover. All the books were filled with similar images, blueprint-like drawings, paragraphs of text and numbers in the margins. He showed us another drawing, this one looked like a technical drawing of some kind for a circular gate, much like that shown in the other drawings with the humans standing inside but in more detail, imagine the symbol for Omega (uppercase) and you’re along the right lines. This drawing was scaled up and accompanied by copious notes again.
He now asked us “Do you know what a Stargate is?” We mentioned the TV show of the same name but he said “No, the real ones,” like it was the most natural and everyday thing and tapped his finger to the drawing. We all looked at him puzzled, maybe even let out a snigger but he remained stoic and deadly serious, he rifled through more of the pages and showed diagram upon diagram of every component of the “Stargate” in minute detail, this was, to him at least, a step by step guide on how to either build or assemble what he believed and told us to be an actual Stargate. It became clear that these books were manuals, whether he had created them himself or not, he didn’t say but I have always had the sense that he was the author.
At this point, we thought the guy was nuts, or a major fan of Science Fiction TV who had far too much time on his hands but he was so relaxed, so utterly convinced, he gave no hint whatsoever that he was winding us up or wasting our time because he didn’t like Mike’s actions in the street earlier. He remained immovable in his conviction that he was letting us in on a secret, his secret, that he knew how to build a Stargate. It seemed important to him that we understood and believed this.
I don’t recall him mentioning if he had already built or was in the process of building this thing but he spoke about it in a matter-of-fact way that we could tell his intentions were imminent either way. He talked about the complicated math involved with such an undertaking and the science that went along with it and explained that we likely wouldn’t understand it, (he was right) and he told us that he knew how to build what he called “wonderful things” and to our amazement, he said he could prove it before diving back into his satchel.
From within he pulled out what I can only describe as a lightsaber… I know, I know, but bear with me. He asked if we knew what it was and we said, rather sheepishly that it was a lightsaber. He said no with a slight laugh like were idiots and how could he possibly have a real-life lightsaber? He grabbed another notebook and showed us another drawing, he didn’t have to think about which of the three notebooks it was in, nor which page, he just knew, he bent down, snatched the book up and opened it on the exact page to show another technical drawing, completed in the same obsessive detail as the “Stargates” but this one showed the device he now held in his hand.
Now, this thing, if it were a prop of some kind was Hollywood level, it was clearly metal, weighty and sturdy. It closely resembled the handle or hilt, if you like, of a lightsaber from Star Wars. As we looked closer though, we could see it was different. You could see inside it thanks to two open sections that ran down its centre about an inch and a half apart if I were to guess. Inside and visible through these gaps was a mass of complicated wiring and what appeared to be tiny brass tubes intersecting with circuitry. At its centre was a black push button that looked well worn, set on a metal buckle that bridged the gap between the two open sections.
We asked Satchel Man what it was, and he said that he could only tell us that it could “change the world”. He also mentioned that we “weren’t ready yet” to understand it all. I remember Rick was silent for this entire encounter but Mike asked if we could hold it, Satchel Man said absolutely not, even in its current “deactivated” state, he made it crystal clear that under no circumstances could anyone but him ever handle the device.
As we were pondering everything that had occurred so far, Satchel Man, glanced up at the sky and then rather abruptly he packed all his notebooks and his strange device back into his Satchel and checked his watch. He said he needed to go because he had a very important decision to make before the end of the day. I asked him what that decision was and he smiled rather smugly and asked, “What’s the biggest news story right now?”
We thought for a second and then answered that it had to be the potential invasion of Iraq, at the time the world was poised waiting for confirmation that coalition forces were going to green-light their invasion plans. When Mike finally answered “The invasion of Iraq…” The man nodded slowly and the smile faded from his face, he told us flatly that it was up to him what to do, he made it clear that it was his sole decision to either go to war or not. Then he checked his watch again and said whatever he chose would change the world forever but he had to choose correctly.
Before we could probe any further he told us very sternly to never speak of this meeting and to not even discuss it amongst ourselves, essentially we were to forget it ever happened, and then he just left, he strode off back in the direction we had come from and never looked back. The three of us were extremely confused and a little creeped out but for the rest of the day decided not to talk about it, just as instructed. To this day I have never spoken to Mike or Rick about Satchel Man, not that I have much contact with them these days but for the remainder of our friendship from that day on, it was never discussed.
For years I didn’t tell a soul and only told close friends for the first time very recently. I can’t tell you why I kept that vow of silence for so long, I think something deep down shook me a little about this encounter, not so much the strangeness of it but the utter conviction of the Satchel Man.
Was this just some highly intelligent Sci-Fi fan with too much time on his hands who liked to mess with kids at least half his age? If so… why? What did he gain from this? Was he a movie prop guy on a random street in East Anglia? This would explain the detail of the notebooks and the device he had but why show us at all and not explain who he was or not elaborate? I’ve looked into props used in the Stargate TV series and its spin-offs as well as other Sci-Fi shows that aired around the same time and found nothing that resembles the books or the device.
I always look for rational and logical answers to things, no matter how much I may want the answer to be fantastical and otherworldly. With this one, the really unexplainable part is the why, why did Satchel Man stop us, have us follow him, show us the contents of his bag and weave this narrative that he was some kind of chosen one, then tell us to never speak of it?
He never once laid a finger on any of us, and there was never any threat that we could detect from him, his attention was caught by Mike and he decided he needed to have a chat with us. Had Mike not been making a scene, I believe this man would have walked right past us without a second thought, something compelled this man to stop us, interact with us and show us the contents of his bag, what that something was, will haunt me forever.
