This happened to me whilst I was working in an office in Chester about ten years ago.
Chester was founded, as you may know, as a Roman fort. It was one of the largest Roman fortresses and civilian settlements in the country. There are important pieces of Roman architecture in and around the city such as the Minerva shrine in Edgar’s Field park and the Amphitheatre just outside the walls. You can see an original Roman hypocaust in the basement of Spud-U-Like on Bridge Street. Roman remains can still, to this day, be found in Chester, particularly in the basements of buildings. This has some bearing on what I had to tell me, because the office in which I was working was probably, or more or less certainly, built on top of some of those Roman remains - it’s pretty hard to avoid them, in Chester.
One night l decided to stay late to finish some work. I was alone in the big open-plan office, on the fifth floor, with nothing but orange-tinted darkness to be seen outside the windows. In the middle of the room was a double row of metal filing cabinets, about 4 feet tall. I was working at a terminal at the other end of the room, on a desk up against the wall so my back was to the room and the windows and filing cabinets were some way off to my left. I got quite into my work and oblivious of my surroundings, as you do, but at about half 7, a sudden sound made me jump out of my skin. It came from the direction of the filing cabinets. A sharp metallic clang, repeated three times in quick succession, as though someone had struck the cabinets with something metallic. This startled me, but it only happened the once so I put it down to 'building sound' and set to work again. About ten minutes later the sound came again. Bang-bang-bang! Then again - louder and more insistent. BANG BANG BANG! I literally felt my blood run cold, as no way could this sound be attributed to any settling or shifting building noise. The cabinets were only 4 foot high so if there was someone there I'd have been able to see them... unless they were a midget or a child... or were bending down in order to stay out of sight...
The sound came again. BANG BANG BANG! And again, and again, regular now like a drum-beat. I hurriedly shut down the terminal I was working on and got ready to leg it - no way was I going to investigate - when the sound abruptly ceased. Then, in the sudden silence, a figure rose up from behind the front row of filing cabinets. I felt the most scared I had ever been in my entire life. I literally could not move. This figure appeared to be the outline of a man - totally black, like a shadow come to life. I could only see the torso, head and shoulders as it was behind the filing cabinets, but as I watched it walked forwards THROUGH THE CABINETS and marched down the office towards me. I couldn't even scream as the spectre drew nearer. It was very definitely the outline of a man, with striding legs, swinging arms and an odd-shaped head - it looked like it was wearing a helmet. In one arm the figure appeared to be carrying something long and pointed, almost a metre in length and about two inches wide. And as it came nearer, I noticed the weirdest thing of all about the apparition. I noticed that it wasn't solid at all. It was composed of tiny black spheres about the size of a marble, arranged in the three-dimensional shape of a man. I remember seeing the hand of this shape, the fingers opening and closing as it marched closer and closer, the fingers made of individual black marbles... It was coming straight for me but I still couldn’t move. And, as it passed by me, it paused - AND TURNED TO LOOK STRAIGHT AT ME with its featureless ‘face’ of tiny black spheres. As though it had just noticed me. And then it thrust the object in its hand straight into my stomach.
I looked down to see the sword, or blade, or whatever it was, made up of little black marbles, slide into my body just above my belly-button. It didn’t hurt. It was a strange, satisfying, almost euphoric feeling, like you get when you sink into a hot bath, or scratch an itch. It spread out from my guts over my whole body, a tingling wave of almost unbearable, tickling torment. Then there was this intense, rushing feeling, as if I was falling from a great height, and then I must have fainted.
I came to some time later, clutching something in my right hand. Looking at my watch, I saw that hours had passed, it was now 10 pm. Remembering the shadow figure I leapt up, left hand probing my stomach. There was no blood, no wound, nothing. No indication that anything had happened. And then came the most terrifying thing of all. A deep, resonant voice spoke, quite distinctly, into my left ear from over my shoulder. It said, ‘Quis est? Amicus vel hostis?’
I can’t quite recall exactly what happened in the moments after I heard this challenge. I only have flashes of memory; screaming and running, bashing through doors and clattering down stairs. I eventually came to my senses in the lobby, panting and sweating, glaring around myself in confused, terrified panic. Two security guards were approaching me making calming gestures and saying, ‘put the weapon down, sir.’ I glanced for the first time at the object I’d picked up from the office floor before I’d fled the office. It was (I found out later when describing it to a local historian) a gladius; a Roman sword - the primary weapon of a Roman footsoldier. Even as I stared at it, the blade transformed into a multitude of black spheres and a jolt like an electric shock ran from the handle of the weapon through my hand and up my arm. I let it go and it fell to the floor, the black spheres rolling in all directions before vanishing completely.
The security guards say they saw none of this, and that I took the sword with me when I left, but I swear it’s true. I refused to go back to the office, in fact refused to go back into the building, and lost the contract.