Hi *daylia*,

This is just a quick response to your amazing experience because I am on my way to work, so I'll explain more later. A woman I used to know who had clairvoyant abilities to some degree said once that quite often she saw things like that through the edge of her vision rather than when looking at them straight on, and she believed that it was something to do with the way the rod and cone cells are lined up in our eyes. Looking straight at something uses the cells differently than being aware of them from the edge of our vision and she believed that the cells used for the edge of vision were also somehow more able to pick up the clairvoyant images.

I thought of this because you said the column of smoke was appearing and disappearing, and I wondered whether it was visible to you when you saw it from the edge/side of your vision and disappeared when you tried to look straight at it.

(I'll put this here to remind me to tell about the rays of light I have seen but not seen, not far from my home.)

Helen