The little girl, around 10 years old, woke up with her back against the wall. She was in a foreign country. There was blood on the floor. She was screaming and terrified. Her big sister woke up to the scene and was paralyzed with fear. Was there someone in the room? She took her little sister to her parents and tried to get some answers. There weren’t any. There still aren’t any. I’m now 30 years old and I would like to share the events of that night almost 20 years ago.

My name is Olivia and I’ve lived quite an adventurous life so far. I’m from a university town in the UK called Loughborough, halfway between Nottingham and Leicester. I grew up quite introverted but loved doing extroverted things. I was part of a military youth organisation and was doing adventure training camps, military camps, flying, shooting, gliding all by the age of 16. This gave me a sense of confidence and adventure that I never would have developed without the Air Training Corps. I left home at 17 and I left the UK at 21. Nothing (seemingly) was behind these decisions, just a drive to follow my spirit and independence. I like to push myself and problem- solve which has led me into some pretty crazy situations- but that’s me, that’s how I like to live.

When I was 21 I was offered a position as cabin crew for a low- cost European airline called Ryanair. They offered me one of the last places on a training course in Seville, Spain and within a week I’d packed my suitcase and headed off to start my new life abroad. I wasn’t afraid. I spent six weeks training there before moving onto my permanent base in Charleroi, Belgium. I took solo trips and with friends all over Europe from Pisa to Luxembourg, Venice to London. I felt totally free and on top of the world. The conditions, however, weren’t great; the first two months were without pay due to complications with Irish documentation as the headquarters are in Ireland, despite living in Belgium. Food wasn’t provided for crew, not even bottled water. Combined with low pay and a general lack of respect from the management team I decided to move on with my boyfriend at the time, Andrea. We trained up for a second time in London for a new airline, easyJet. After a short period of living out of suitcases at an airport hotel we got our wings and moved to our base in Berlin, Germany. The city was great, work was sublime, now I was living. And then it hit. The ’pandemic’. My exact thoughts and feelings won’t be shared here but to say I was hesitant about what was shared in the media would be putting it mildly. I saw that my industry was being hit hard so while the ship was sinking I retrained as an English teacher. No sooner had I received my certificate did I receive my severance letter from my beloved airline. I knew it was coming but my whole world was flipped on its head.

Fast forward a few years and a few jobs (pizza delivery driver in Germany, remote travel agent in the UK) and I’m teaching in a private language school in Florence, Italy. I mainly work with adults and have the opportunity to get to know many different people and talk about deeper topics which can often feel like a sort of therapy! Even as an introvert the words flow when they have meaning words are real life magic. What you say, you create. I limit self- criticism in my classroom. “Too old”, “too stupid”, “too slow” isn’t tolerated with my students. Over 2 years in and I’m really coming into myself in my professional life.

This confidence in my work has allowed me more time to reflect on who I am as a person, to slow down. As my life has been so intense over these past years I’ve never had a chance to step back and be still. My now partner, Gabriele, allows me to self- reflect and doesn’t shy away from difficult topics or uncomfortable situations. He sees me for who I am and I often refer to him as my guru!

My parents (Kev and Trish) have always taught me to think differently, to not just follow a crowd without thinking, and to always ask questions. As an adult this is great but as a child it creates a seemingly concrete duality due to the constant need to ’fit in’ and bend to social constraints. I’ve recently had the realisation that this duality impedes me from creating real connections with people as I have difficulty expressing who I really am and what I believe. There are two halves of the same person.

Many of these reflections and discussions have naturally led to what kind of childhood I had. My sister Kayleigh and I always had what we wanted as children without living an excessive lifestyle. We went on an annual holiday with our parents to Andalucía in Spain and always rented small, rural houses. We would change village every year but stick to the same region. My parents loved it. Day trips would either be to the beach or doing something cultural. This wasn’t so popular with me and Kayleigh but looking back I realise how formative these experiences really were. Thanks for not taking us to the water parks we were begging for mum and dad!

It’s on one of these holidays that my experience happened. I can’t remember exactly how old I was but based on how old Kayleigh was and the recollections of my parents we’ve estimated around 10. As I mentioned previously, our holidays were very ’self- sufficient’- the villa was booked via a private ad’ in the newspaper, the car was hired, and the flights were confirmed all by phone! We would always go in the summer holidays and our flights were from our local airport East Midlands to Malaga with an airline that doesn’t even exist anymore- BMI Baby! I remember how terrified I was of flying, even boarding the plane and smelling the unmistakable smell of the cabin and I’d start ’self- soothing’ straight away to try to fall asleep. Things obviously changed later in life..! We landed smoothly on the other side and my dad, being in holiday dad mode, went to pick up the car straight away and get us to our destination. Cut to hours and hours of driving later and we were completely and utterly lost. My parents had printed out the directions from Malaga to the holiday home but something had gone wrong and we were driving around in circles late into the night. My mum doesn’t have a driving licence so only my dad was driving so it got to the point where he was exhausted and couldn’t drive anymore- we had no choice but to spend the night in the car. To this day I remember vividly where we had pulled up. I remember that there was a bus parked in the lay- by on the opposite side of the mountain road. And I’ll also never forget the story my mum told from that night. I don’t remember exactly when she shared this, probably at the villa when we’d finally found it, but she described seeing a witch standing on top of the bus in front of our car. A terrible omen of what was to come in the following two weeks.

Strangely enough when the sun was shining the next day we found our home and realised that it had only been a few miles from where we had slept for the night. Why hadn’t we found it? Nothing to dwell on at the time, it was a bad dream, we were tired... The house we found was beautiful, there was an old mill that was still operative but not frequently used by the owners. There was a hydro wheel dipped into the running stream and a small waterfall with a natural ’plunge pool’ which was great to take dips in in the 35 degree heat. We noticed a guest book in which someone had written something along the lines of “all is well in the house, but the boys came back to the pool again today. They won’t leave.” Creepy. A few days passed without note and the boredom started to set in slightly so my mum decided to pull a practical joke on me and my sister. While we were out on the terrace playing cards she hid in the stream where the hydro wheel was, she went quite deep into the tunnel and, pretending to be a ghost, she started wailing “ooooh” “heeeelp me” “ooooh” “I’m stuck”. Now we as a family are very tight- knit and very playful, this was something completely normal to do. But this time my body had a different reaction, it was pure terror. I remember her being surprised by my reaction when we found her but it was written off due to the heat and change of environment, like any parent would with their child. And the holiday continued without a hitch.

Around a week into the holiday is when it happened. I don’t remember exactly what we’d done during the day but nothing out of the usual holiday routine. My parents were on the terrace having a glass of wine and enjoying the tranquility of the Spanish evening and me and my sister were asleep in our shared room. My parents would’ve headed up to bed in their room, just down the corridor from us, at around midnight/ 1am ish. So the events that are about to unfold would likely have taken place at around 02:00/3:00. I remember waking up in pitch black. I was squatting down beneath the light switch in the corner of the room. There were two single beds in the long room with Kayleigh’s close to the window and mine nearer to the door and corridor to get the bathroom and my parents if needed. I remember screaming and Kayleigh’s panic to switch on the light and rush to my aid. When she switched on the light, however, the pure terror set in. What she saw was blood all over the floor which was pouring from a deep gash in my leg. She dragged me to my parents’ room but strangely they hadn’t heard the commotion and were still asleep. The screams must’ve been blood- curdling. Why hadn’t they heard us? My mum took me and Kayleigh into the bathroom while my dad went to search our bedroom and then the whole house, naturally thinking that someone had broken in. As my mum cleaned my wound she wanted to know what had happened. What could I tell her? I couldn’t remember anything. I remember the feeling of paralysing fear waking up out of my bed with my back against the wall in the crouched position, but the events leading up to that? Nothing. I don’t remember what happened for the rest of that night but the next day my parents were weighing up the options and potentially flying back to the UK early. My mum had bandaged up my leg and there was still another week of our holiday. The real disaster though was not being able to go into the plunge pool at the back of the house. Holiday ruined for 10 year old me.

We ended up staying the remainder of the holiday there but I know my family were shook. My dad turned into Sherlock Holmes to try and solve the mystery but there weren’t even any real hypotheses. The best idea he had was that it could’ve been a spring from my mattress- but the problem with that theory is that there wasn’t any blood on my mattress. I don’t remember it even being painful. It was almost as if I was seeing it happen to someone else. He also mentioned that it could’ve been an animal bite, maybe a rat? Well my wound was one large hole on the outside of my left leg, around 5cm above the knee. The diameter of the scar is around the size of a British 5p coin, around 1.8cm, which I don’t think could’ve been caused by an animal. Surely an animal would leave bite marks? Recently I’ve been using AI to get some more insight and after going into an in depth explanation of the events of that night, its best guess is that I pierced my leg on the milling equipment after a night of sleep walking. Could be. Doesn’t seem likely though with that being my only sleep walking event in my life to occur. The more I try to come up with solutions, the more questions I have. I have recently been listening to the work of Professor Corrado Malanga, a former university of Pisa researcher and organic chemist. He has dedicated his life to researching human consciousness, ufology and human abductions. For the first time in my life since this event I’m starting to find some answers to what could have happened to me. Now I’m not 100% leading with the theory that I was abducted by alien life form but in my desperate search for the truth it’s starting to feel that things are being explained instead of remaining a mystery. I am a very open- minded person and I would love to hear your theories as to what happened to me that night, from the banal to the out of this world! In my search for the truth I’m also searching for all kinds of people to share their experiences too.



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