FALSE ARRIVAL
One Saturday afternoon in the 1970's i was home alone while the rest of the family were out shopping in town, and i spent the time up in my room building a plastic model ship.
Around teatime i heard voices in the street outside that sounded like the family returning, then i heard our front gate unlatch, then i heard the key go in the front door, then heard their voices and footsteps come into the hallway.
Then there was dead silence.
I went downstairs to greet them but there was nobody there, i looked in the living room, kitchen, even the garden and garden shed, but nothing, they were nowhere to be seen.
I assumed they must have gone out to do a bit more shopping up the road , and i went back up to carry on with my ship.
After about an hour they came back and i asked my mother if they'd arrived earlier and gone back out again, but she said no, and hadn't a clue what i was talking about.
So i just put the earlier arrival down to a trick of the mind or a "waking dream" or whatever, and felt fascinated and privileged to have experienced it.
A few years later i happened to learn from a paranormal book that the phenomenon is fairly common, and is called "False Arrival", where somebody hears one or more friends or family members come into the house or run up from behind to join them in the street, followed by silence.
