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"MORE MORE! The four of you have spiked my interest. (to understate.) Excellent writing by the way. I would love to hear more and if any others have made the visit- please divulge!"

I arrived at Stonehenge with a traveling companion and we walked the well-worn visitor path around the great megaliths. Walking slowly on the path, we passed another couple who were chatting in muted voices. There were very few visitors due to the December season and the cold, windy weather that day. It was quiet, and only the sound of the wind disturbed the silence.

We had walked nearly half way around Stonehenge when I was drawn to look away from the stones into the distance of the surrounding plain. Soon it was all I thought about and Stonehenge was forgotten. To the aggravation of my companion, I turned outward off the visitor path and began to make my way alone across the uneven surface of the barren ground.

It was then that I felt the strong presence of something or someone nearby and glanced quickly once or twice to the side expecting to see someone approaching. I was alone and yet not alone. I had a strange compulsion to look only at the ground around my feet as if searching for something. When I finally looked up I was surprised at the long distance I had walked from the monument; seeing the great, gray stones of Stonehenge in the distance blending into the ashen, overcast sky.

During the solitary trek on the plain, I sensed great loneliness and desperate need. The feeling clung to me like a frightened child, separated from a parent, hugs the legs of a friendly adult for solace. It was very eerie and unsettling, but not threatening. Thinking back now on that time, the presence might have been imploring me to follow and bear witness, but there was nothing memorable in the low stubble of grasses on the cold ground.

While Stonehenge might have been an ancient place of unspeakable evil and terror, after my odd experience I don’t conclude the spiritual presence encountered was a demonic perpetrator of evil or the tortured soul of a victim. My intuition tells me it was one who dearly loved a victim, terrorized and murdered long ago, who walked beside me that day on Salisbury Plain to show me a grave they cannot bear to leave.

I went with a tour, and it was a dreary day anyway, but the sense of foreboding that hung over that obscure spot on the Salisbury Plain didn't have anything to do with the weather. The stones were cordoned off so I couldn't approach the inner area, but the sheer un-naturalness of them jarred the senses. They were huge, obviously out of place, obviously the result of massive effort, their purpose as shrouded as the sky.

I broke off from the rest of the group and walked all the way around to the far edge of the circle. As I did, a huge black crow settled onto one of the plinths. My discomfort increased, but I raised my camera and took a picture, which doesn't appear nearly as ominous as it felt.

There was a rowdy group of punkers hanging out nearby, but even they muted their antics as they approached the stones. When we finally left, I felt somber and preoccupied, like I'd left some business unfinished ...

It wasn't that it was necessarily evil, more that it was a place of many hidden stories, and one where great power once circulated.

Or maybe I was just imagining it all.