What is the strangest unexplainable possibly paranormal event that you have experienced first hand?

okay, I have talked about a few other very weird things I have seen in my life and what happened this morning was right up there with them on the paranormal scale. This will probably go unnoticed by many and I'm not going into too much detail because many with think I'm lying... that's all there is to it but let me just say that... i don't even know what to say.
That was completely amazing, incredible and crazy. i certainly have not experienced anything quite like that in all my life.

Uh...yeah. At first I thought I was having a very strange seizure.

Holy....#. i don't really know what else to say. I will try to explain a little and this is funny to me because people are going to think I'm totally making this up especially in light of another thread floating around here, but it *seems* that I had a visitor this morning. No pictures people, completely invisible, completely amazing, one of the darnedest things that has ever happened to me.

There were moments that i wasn't sure if it was ever going to end and...well, I wasn't too concerned about that thought. I thought I might actually have to miss work or something and be very awkwardly trying to explain my situation to doctors or something because I have to say it took my a little by surprise. With no proof or even evidence, that was *extremely* real.*sigh*

I wonder if it's going to happen again.

This isn't the strangest but the most recent.

Recently I had to serve 48 hours in the county jail for a DUI I received back in August. (Yes, I know, tisk tisk, but would you rather have me lie about the circumstances?)

The person in the bunk below me had loaned me a cup that I could use while I was in there. I had the top bunk and a shelf just as high as the bed.

Anyways, I used a kool-aid type packet (sachrine) for my dinner drink. I left the cup on the shelf with just a little bit of "kool-aid" left.

About 5 minutes later the person who loaned me the cup came up to me with a little stain on his jump suit and asked "Was that your cup on the shelf?"

I said yes.

He said "Well, it rose up into the air and landed on me spilling a little of the drink."
Four other people watched the cup literally raise into the air and fall on the person on the bunk below me.

Very weird. I later used the same cup to drink some water.

Interesting thread. I will add a bit from my life in here. I have a lot that could be considered strange but I will relate the stranger of them now. I moved to Ireland in 2002 from the US. I had a few Irish friends joke with me about Ireland having spooks and what not... I paid them no attention knowing the Irish like to slag... or pick on people however and whenever they can. However nearly every week for months I had experiences that could be paranormal - because this was the first time that it ever happened to me - only when I moved to Ireland and also only in the town of Galway.

Anyway. I was courting the girl that would one day be my wife at the same time period... I would often travel to Dublin to see her and travel back late in the evening and fall into heavy sleep. The following happened on more than one occasion with or without the traveling.

About 2:30 to 4:30 in the morning I would be dreaming of whatever... when the dream would shift and get very dark. An image of my beloved would appear in my dream and I would hear a voice sometimes say things like "She loves you - you know" and then the image of my beloved would start to kiss me...
And thats when I would wake up... the image of my beloved fills me with love and peace and happiness when I am awake... this thing was heavy and scary and my heart would start racing. I would feel forced to kiss this thing and while waking up I would see an image of some kind of face... I guess you could call it like a woman image but not pretty at all... just the face floating over my face ... at the same time all of this was happening it felt like every last bit of breath was being sucked out of me by this thing.
I would always wake up before the last of my breath was gone and force myself to hold my breath a second or two more and then try desperately to take in some air into my lungs.

For whatever reasons the thing would often seem to linger till I prayed and commanded it to leave... by the time I was done with doing that I was usually wide awake till daylight.

I am aware of sleep apnea which my father has but to my knowledge I have never had it. I had this happen many times when I lived in Galway. To this day I still do not get a good nights sleep when visiting friends or family over there. Something seems to always disturb my sleep.
For me this is not a dream thing... I saw the thing even after waking up and it seemed to linger as if it wanted to try and kill me again if I fell asleep.

Please no jokes about this... I know its strange but this is a true account of something that happened to me.

reply to post by ziplogan


This is very interesting because I have read two stories now in this thread that are similar to an experience that I had so I guess I'll explain my story:
I was laying in bed one night and I had my bedside lamp on, my eyes were closed but I was not sleeping. I was kind of day dreaming (but at night ), when all of a sudden I was filled with dread and just had a feeling that I should open my eyes, I wish I could say whatever it was was a woman that was floating over me but I don't know what it was. It had eyes, a mouth but it was spectral and as soon as I seen it, it was almost shocked that I'd seen it and it it screamed. The scream was the most horrible piercing scream I have ever heard and the thing just kind of vanished into thin air as it was vanishing the scream faded as well. It was quite a few different colours, like purple, red, white, black. Its hard to explain but it seemed to be all the colours hashed together. Needless to say, I was awake for the rest of the night praying to god I did not see it again! Scared the crap out of me though! I think it may have been like a succubus or something!

I don't know if this classifies as paranormal .. but it's not normal by any means .. really got me thinking and very uneasy .. 2 or 3 incidents are connected to this ..

It happened in Africa .. when I visited my friend in Malawi ... I was about 14 at the times .. my friend and his family are muslims .. so they somehow were of the belief that you can not put pics up on the wall with 'faces' .. apparently they believe evil entities look at you through the eyes in the picture .. this itself was quite unsettling .. their house was always airy .. very few furniture items .. and voices always seemed to echo slightly when we spoke .. the house had big windows all around .. and alot of fruit trees around the spaced out back and front yards .. the servants quarters house in the back was pitch black with no electricity at night .. very errie ..

The first story was about the house servant and his family .. I went there one day on my bicycle .. there was nobody home .. so after knocking a few times on the front gate with a stone .. I entered the gate and made a beeline towards the back ... the house was very strange as I passed it .. it always had an abandoned feeling coming out of it .. the large dark windows with darkness inside always felt like someone was staring at me from Inside, as I passed by and went behind to the servants quarters .. As soon as I got there .. I saw a very long dead snake laying bloody outside .. I called out to Monga .. the servant .. he came running ...He described how the snake had entered his shack at night while he and his family slept .. the street light was the only source of scanty light coming in .. and he saw the snakes shadow .. using his machete he killed the snake amazingly based on the shadows movements .. but that wasn't all Monga killed that night ..
There was a hoe dug up to burn trash .. and in there was a large owl .. dead ... he told me the owl had been coming round his shack for few days now making the noise of a human child crying ... he explained it was witchcraft and someone was trying to do harm to his family ..so he killed the owl ..

I left the place and came back couple days later .. this time my friend and his father were home ..everyone entered through the back door .. the front one was never used for some reason ... so I went round back and found his father was slaughtering a goat .. it was hung upside down .. and apparently they were celebrating eid .. it is a day muslims celebrate ..
Now here is the crazy part ..
His father was in the kitchen slicing some meat in the kitchen .. I said hello to him and he responded with a hi .. I asked where my friend was and he said go on to the living room .. so I went there and sat waiting for him .. there was no TV or anything .. just that errie big window creepy feeling ..
Now the house was a long corridor basically .. kitchen to living room to bedrooms .. and same path back .. you HAVE to pass thru the living room to get to the kitchen from bedrooms .. or to bedrooms from Kitchen .. no other way 100% ..
In a few mins .. his father came in from the kitchen .. wearing his glasses as always .. very unusually quiet and walking slow and a little hurky jerky .. staring at me .. he just stared and walked slowly jerkily across the living room and into the bedroom .. not saying a word .. expressionless! I was very nervous at that reaction .. it made me stand up instinctively as if to do something ... like run .. just then my friend walked in from the kitched also .. and happily said whats up .. not knowing what happened .. so I dismissed it and calmed down a bit .. we sat down to play a card game .. and then his father walks into the living room again . but this time from the kitchen .. and he was normal as if nothing had happened .. this scared me to death .. because he had just gone into the bedroom .. and did NOT pass us again to go to the kitchen .. I told my friend what happened .. and he just laughed .. saying that was impossible .. I left ..

Last thing was when I visited him again after 2 weeks .. i knocked on the metal gate again with a stone .. nobody was home .. so i proceed to enter .. I did not know this that time but they had suddenly all packed and left for the UK in a hurry .. he had mentioned they had relatives there .. i don't know what happened but lost contact with him ever since that time .. that day was very errie also .. the feeling t hat someone was staring back at me from the vacant house was tremendous! .. i only managed to walk half way towards the back .. then suddenly there were two BIG dogs .. alsacians i think .. growling at me from the corner .. they never had dogs .. so this really got me shaking .. they got fierce and started barking and got up to chase me .. in a split second .. I grabbed my bike and ran as fast as ever to the gate and just managed to close it shut before one of them could get a chunk out of me .. it was very close .. but I had had enough .. I never went there again .. and eventually heard they had deserted the house in a hurry ..

sure dude, I experienced, read my ATS thread.
www.abovetopsecret.com...

Approximately 8 years ago I was spending a Saturday morning in a friend's basement. We had a vigorous workout and were both enjoying a bowl of cereal when his toddler niece opened the door to the basement to call for him to come up. Quick description of the environment: Basement is standard. Uncarpeted, cement floor, wood board stairs with two high hand rails with no guards leading up towards the upstairs door.

I was sitting on a couch facing the stair steps, approximately 7 or 8 feet away from the base of the stairwell. My friend was sitting in a chair on the right, the chair was angled to face the couch, but with the stairwell barely within peripheral vision.

My friend told the toddler to not come down, close the door and that he'll be up soon (she had called for him once or twice in this manner prior to this event that day), but this time she decided to try and take a step down onto the first stairwell step.

She slipped and began to tumble. Her trajectory was such that she would have sailed right out of the right side of the stairwell about 6 feet above the concrete floor with nothing to break her fall. My friend lunged out of the chair still in the seated position in the direction of the stairs and fell to the floor with his arms outstretched, but he was only half the distance to the stair landing.

This is what I saw happen to the best of my recollection, with no embellishments, substitutions or trickery whatsoever: entities appeared along the stairwell's right side and along the bottom portion of the stairs. There were several, they were transparent and appeared to be made of light, not bright or soft, but distinct enough to discern features such as hands, joints, etc. They were not fully visible, as in I could not make out distinct facial features, feet, whole bodies, etc. The parts of them that interacted with the falling child were the easiest to make out. It was as if they were superimposed into my vision, yet maintained their 3 dimensionality due to being transparent as well as illuminated. They slowed her momentum while altering the arc of her trajectory away from the right of the stairwell (which had nothing over there to break her fall) and out to the lower left (which had a box of laundry and clothes-hangers). It was almost like they formed a little chain and passed her along it like a marathon torch, only extremely quickly. She tumbled off of the stairwell and straight into the box with a crash (the clanging of the clothes-hangers in the box).

The first words I said, even as my friend was rushing over to the box and people were rushing down the stairs was, "Did you see them?" I asked this about 3 or 4 times until my question registered to the family members gathered downstairs. They were rightly preoccupied over the status of the child, but after a few minutes my friend asked me what I was talking about, after which I relayed the account from my point of view as recounted above.

I rarely tell this story to people seeing as can completely understand what it would be like to be on the receiving end of a tale like this. I can't prove anything in this story, and it's all too easy to dismiss this account as a delusion or fabrication due to the stress of the moment. All I can say is that this is what I saw, which I acknowledge to be the complete and unabridged truth as retold to the best of my ability, as far as I could tell during the event and afterward that I was completely sane, lucid and calm, and that I feel extremely honored to have been allowed to witness it.

reply to post by Nerf

and it it screamed. The scream was the most horrible piercing scream I have ever heard and the thing just kind of vanished into thin air as it was vanishing the scream faded as well. It was quite a few different colours, like purple, red, white, black. Its hard to explain but it seemed to be all the colours hashed together.

I don't remember it screaming or any sound for that matter other than the words "She loves you, you know" and being preoccupied with trying to breath when all my air was being sucked out.
On the next note...
Now that you mentioned it. I do remember that as it was leaving it left a very strong purple blotchy spot in the air for a while where it was... and it was kinda dark gray. And to my defense in some sort of strange sanity bid... I remembered as well that when I saw the after image in the air I looked away a few times to see if it was a spot in my vision - like a screen burn in and to see if the spot moved when i looked elsewhere... it didn't. It was only a spot over my head. When I looked away - with the light on it was not in my field of vision. When I looked back the splotch was still there for some time. It faded after what seemed like 5 or 10 min. but with the way my heart was pounding it may have been less.

Last thought on this subject... I think in mythology there is a succubus and a banshee and they often get switched in the minds of others in concepts. A Banshee shrieks or wails (in myth that is) - The succubus I don't think is known (in myth) to have made a particular noise.

I have had 2 that are equally thee -most- highly strange paranormal experiences I ever had. This first one was back in '79. A friend and I saw anomalous ufos. There was a 'flap wave' going on, of which we gleaned from a magazine article and mention on the radio, as well. One day, we were both standing in the living room of her house looking out the main window which overlooked their front yard and the sidewalk. These two men were walking there, appearing to look directly in at us too. They both looked alike. Thin, caucasian pasty-white, average features though. All black suits (suit jacket, pants, shoes) and a white whirt with black ties that looked like black strings. Their 'hair' was all black, short, but sat up high so that you wondered is that a hat or hair? We ran out the front door so we could look at them closer------------And there was no-one. Anywhere.
In 2001 I was working various temp overnight security guard night watch'man' (night watch-girl) posts. During the spring and summer (prior to 9-11-01) I was working on a private property. This very old mansion with it's own family crypt on the property. I experienced a number of apparent ghostly phenomenon, but this one, OMG: My car was always parked near my post, and kept locked. One morning, as my shift ended as usual, I go into my car. The inside windshield was --completely-- covered with these handprints on the slight misty condensation. The finger tips of each hand came out to long points, it looked like long claws. I put my hand up there, those hands were larger.

I've had a couple.

The first one was our cat (I hope animals count). My husband and I were upstairs talking by the window, I looked out and saw our cat that had died the year previously, virtually to the day, I looked away and when I looked back it had disappeared. I didn't say anything to my husband but later I mentioned it and he said he'd seen him too. It was in a neighbour's garden that he particularly liked to walk through when he was alive and it was definitely him. I like to think he was still having fun prowling around out there.

The second one was at a friend's house that was said to be haunted. He was my husband's best mate and my husband had told me stories of other friends who had run out of the house scared at night and not gone back because of a cold presence. I was always a bit sceptical but I went to the toilet there one evening and found I couldn't get out again (don't laugh). I tried and tried to get out, and also called but no one came, then after what seemed like ages I tried the door again and it opened without a problem! Doubtless to say, although we visited there again I never went to the toilet!!!!

reply to post by jammoon1


Cats -definitely- survive death. My mom and brother had this cat who harbored feline AIDS. One day, it was taking him down quick, so they ran with their beloved over to the Veterinarian's. The Vet put him 'to sleep'. They came back home and grieved and cried, of course. One night while they were in their beds, they felt the cat walking on them in the bed as he always did. They learned this from each other the next day.

reply to post by simone50m


Yes, we've got a cat and dogs and cats definitely seem more spiritual, whereas dogs just want food and walkies! Still, I wish I knew what any of them were thinking when they look at you as there seems to be more going on inside them than we think.

Me again,
When we lived at a previous address here in town (before the landlords tried selling it while we were still renting it) we picked up a stray kitten that had camped just outside our house and wouldn't leave. Well it was getting cold at that point and the neighbors while they were feeding it - no one was taking it in. I had refused to get any cats even though I like them as I grew up with them ... for the longest time. This poor thing broke our (wife and I) hearts and we took it in and took it to the vet as well to get seen to. Well thats when we found out that the poor thing had cat flue and prob would not live much longer - but there was a chance it could. We payed the fees and shots and medicine needed to get this thing better. It started doing wonderfully and was even running and playing around the house... long enough for us to get attached to the cute ball of fur. Unfortunatly the symptoms came back - it stopped eating and the vet could do nothing about it. Three days later we found him barely breathing and we both sobbed as we took it back to the vet and they said the only option was to put it down.

On the way back from the vet - we passed by a pet store since there is one near my work. They had two of the most adorable kittens in the window... (our current pets today lol) we had to take them to help with the silly emotional attachment we had towards the last ball of fur.

Anyway... we got used to the new guys running around the house and we often kept our bedroom door shut due to the amount of times the kittens would jump on top of our heads in the middle of the night. Often in the morning my wife would get up to make breakfast for me before work (i am spoiled) and would leave the door open when she came back in. If it was early enough we would fall back asleep usually to be awoken by a cat running and playing on the bed.

Well on more than one occasion just a few weeks after the fluff ball passed away... we would be sound asleep in the mornings when a cat would walk into the room... jump on the bed and rub our feet - mine and my wife... and crawl into the bed and lay down... Any cat person will tell you - you get used to the weight and feel of the cat laying next to you and you end up avoiding rolling around in the bed or moving the blanket and so on... well eventually my wife asked me which cat came into the room - one liked her and one liked me so we have our favorites. I rolled over to take a look at the small dented place behind our backs where the cat was laying only to see no cat...
I don't know which cat it was I said... I think he jumped off the bed.
She sat up and looked in the same spot I did thinking the cat should be right there... we were both awake at this point and looked under the bed - in the closet and then we both noticed at the same time the door to our bedroom was closed.

I could have sworn a cat came in... rubbed our feet and settled in the bed... she said the same thing.
This happened again and again... to the point where we would keep our door open so at least we could logically say the cat must have gone out.

Other things happened as well... On more than one occasion I saw the ghost cat as well. At the top of the stairs when I came home... walking in the door glancing around while I take off the coat and gloves... seeing a small gray cat at the top of the stairs finishing what I was doing... walking into the down stairs living room - opening and closing the door behind me - and seeing my wife sitting playing with our two cats in the closed room...

Waking up in the morning and seeing two cats asleep in the guest bedroom - going to the toilet and one of them starts scratching at the door... opening the door to let the cat in... only to see nothing there and the two cats are still sound asleep.

This happened to my wife as well... it was not scary - haunted by a ghost kitten... not the worst thing in the world honestly. We just came to accept it as the invisible cat that we didn't have to feed. We didn't talk about it much after a certain point - we would look at each other and kinda know the sound of small furry feet in the hallway and just know what the other one was thinking (our cats usually looked up as well but didn't move from their positions on our laps... )

At other times our other two cats seemed to be playing with the other cat... both of them looking at the same direction when running and playing as if the third one joined in.

We had to move eventually... we said our goodbyes to the kitten and told it that the new owner of the house would love if it stayed around. (we didnt know this for sure)
The ghost kitten did not follow us to the new house... and we never asked about it either from the owners - how do you ask something like that?
However for the longest time they acted very weird when we did see them... which makes us think that perhaps the small ball of ghostly fluff is still in the house seeking love and attention from the people there.

True story.

Could not edit my last post. I just wanted to add the following... this is our OLD house where it is occupied by a small gray invisible ball of fluff that we tried to rescue.

Google Maps Link of the OLD house

I thought a bit more info would help the post seem more than just a made up story. It really happened.

Thank you for that, zip. I would love to live in your house with a little ball-of-fur ghost cat. The house where my mom and brother recieved visitation in their bed, well they no longer reside there, they had long since moved. And no more cat ghost. That house they left, to this day, is unoccupied and flooded with water in the basement rooms. I wonder if poor Noah (that was his name) (Noah and floods, NO pun intended.) is still there wondering where everyone went. Or do animals eventually go into the light?

13 years ago we bought a 117 year old farm house. On one of our first nights there, I came home from second shift, grabbed a beer out of the fridge, and joined my wife who was watching TV in the living room. She asked me if I saw the new jar of jalepeno stuffed olives. I hadn't and set my beer on a yet unpacked box next to my chair and went back into the kitchen for my fave snack. I came back and sat down and my beer was gone but there was a sweat circle on the box. I thought I must have taken it to the kitchen with me and went back to look. No beer to be found. I retraced my steps again with no luck. My wife asked me what I was doing and when I told her she said it must either be in the kitchen or living room since I hadn't been anywhere else. Bear in mind I'd only been home about 3 minutes. Now I was on a mission and began to methodically search the house. In just a couple of minutes I found my beer on my wife's dresser in our bedroom on the other side of the house. I told my wife where I found it and she looked at me puzzled and said "I didn't think you'd been back there." I had a fleeting thought that maybe she was playing a trick on me but when I told her I hadn't been to the bedroom she lost a little color in her face. At that moment I new she wasn't the guilty party. I raised my eyebrows and said "ghosts"? I made a loud and clear announcement that I respected the fact that someone lived there before us, but it was our house now, and we'd appreciate not being screwed with and "LEAVE MY BEER ALONE". There have been no more physical incidents but occaisionally it sounds like someone is upstairs. The dog used to look up the stairs and bark for no apparent reason but she quit doing that years ago. When my daughter was a baby in her room upstairs, sometimes she'd giggle and coo like someone was playing with her. If it is/was ghosts, we seem to be cohabitating OK.

reply to post by matthewgraybeal

Once when i was 13/14 (21 years old now) i was in my bedroom playing GTA, i was sciving off school. I went to open my bedroom door and it was locked. My door is a wooden door, metal handle, with no lock. I stayed there until my parents came home. The strange thing is they opened the door fine and it worked fine for the rest of the day. Next day the same thing happened, but this time I climbed out of my bedroom window and onto the porch (or whatever you call it) which is above my front door. I walked into my house and on the television there was an old ladies face, sort of a portrait. There was still a program in the background so it had paused on her face. I was well freaked out.

This is a true story, honest i hate seeing people make ridiculous things up.

reply to post by matthewgraybeal


I have many, MANY strange things happen to me, but I will list the creepiest.

One - I was home alone, and woke up to a BANG on the side of the house, directly behind my bed, coming from the outside. I live half a mile away from the nearest house, in a very rural area. I jumped up. I continued to hear bangs on almost every wall in the house (always near windows) but looking out a window, I never saw a thing. This event ended in me crying (keep in mind that paranormal events happen to me quite often) and at the end, I yelled "STOP!". A knock happened right after, not a bang, but it was like it said "I'll stop, but you can't make me".

When I was younger, around 8, I woke up to footsteps walking around the house. We had a split floor plan, and I knew it wasn't my parents because of where they started. They were walking around in the weirdest way, too. It went on for a few minutes and then they stopped outside of my door, and I remember being terrified.

Around 12, in that same house, I was home alone watching TV. The TV went off about 3 times, and on the 2nd time I checked to make sure I wasn't sitting on the remote. I wasn't. After the 3rd time, I remember being like "Ummm...this is super weird..." and then BOOM something either slammed against the back door, or slammed it shut. I honestly thought someone had broken in. I jumped up, grabbed a butcher knife, and checked it out...nothing.

I've heard clocks chiming (sounded very distant), had my bed shake, someone sat on my bed, I woke up to something walking around in my room, I've had things tap next to me (once, it scared the living hell out of me because it kept getting louder and closer, at one point it was in my face and I jumped up and ran out of that room). I've heard voices (the most recent one said "Ahem") and most of the distant sounds (like the clock) and voices came from near a china cabinet in my dining room, where there are many antiques...hmmm.

When I was a child I had a bizarre experience that has always stayed with me. In recent years I mentioned it to my mother and she expounded on the incident with what she could recall.

I've never been a sleepwalker, and my mother states, with a certainty only a parent can possess, that I wasn't sleepwalking during this event, although she has no explanation for what was happening.

The first thing I remember is seeing a large wispy "spider-like" black apparition/blob of darkness swirling and morphing endlessly on the ceiling of my room, alternately lurking in the corners, or right above my bed. I can recall being utterly fascinated by this apparition, rather than terrified, as my 6 year old self should rightly have been.

Then it seems like I'd lost some time somewhere, and I can next remember standing in front of a tall set of shelves in the corner of my room (which held stuffed animals, books, and the like). I was speaking very quickly, but I had no idea what I was saying, it certainly wasn't anything I understood. My mother came into my room at some point, having heard me making quite a bit of noise so late at night.

She says that it seemed like I was almost in some kind of trance, having a nonsensical one sided conversation with something she couldn't see. Finding me like this, she quickly came over to me and jolted me back to reality. I remember feeling very dazed (although not as if I had quickly woken from a dream), but allowing her to lead me to bed. I can't remember much else from this incident, only that I can't remember seeing the wispy black mass after this, when I'd seen it, to a lesser extent and weaker, multiple times before this incident occurred.

Anyone else ever had a similar experience? It's always been something that's kinda disturbed me.

my most recent happened over the summer of this past year

i went to bed at i wanna say around 1230-1 am EST i was completely asleep to the point where i wasnt even dreaming

between 3-330 i was immediatley awakened by a loud sound, like footsteps walking up my stairs when i turned in my bed to see if i could see who it was through my door a white object about a foot and a half off the ground appeared and then just went straight through the wall that is next to my bedroom door that leads into my parents room

i got up and went to my parents room to see if they were awake and saw or heard anything and my father was awake looking in his closet when i asked him what he was doing he said that he heard footsteps on the stairs and thought it was me and then he said that when he opened his eyes to see if i was me and saw something go into his closet through the closed door

since this happened my father hasnt had any other occurances and when im there on weekends i havent had anything happen either