Well...here we are - the most wonderful time of the year.
Those that know me know that I'm of course referring to Halloween.
(and when that Halloween is preceded by an October Friday the 13th,
so much the better!)
To celebrate, here's some of the odd things I've had happen over the years. Nothing too dramatic, but some strange stuff.
Feel free to chime in with your own true personal experiences.
A year or two ago some friends of mine moved into a small mobile home while they looked for a nicer place.
The first time I set foot in the place, I kept getting
distracted by the far end of it, where the guest bedroom/bathroom
was. We'd be in the living room or kitchen unpacking and moving
furniture and stuff and I'd just find myself staring down that short hall
for no reason.
Within the first week, my friends reported that their cat wouldn't go
past the kitchen towards that end and that they'd see shadows
that they couldn't explain down there - sometimes feeling like there
was someone there.
I wish I could say we checked around and found out someone had
died in that end of the house, but we never actually did. They just
stayed out of that end and found themselves that better place.
***
Around junior high we moved to Charleston, AFB. I found a place
right off base that I just felt instantly attracted to. There were
woods and trails and a wide open area the local kids called
"Crystal Lake." I'd spend a ton of free time there - weekends,
afternoons, late into the night.
Not too wierd that I'd like someplace like that, I guess, but
I did think it was cool when I later found a book in the
base library about a series of UFO sightings a guy had had
in that exact spot a year or two before we moved there.
I could recognize the treeline in the pictures he'd taken.
I thought that was odd.
***
I was kindergarten age. Maybe just before. Anyway, young. We lived in
a nice little place in Georgia where dad was stationed.
Even at that age, I slept in a dark room with the doors shut. Never liked
night-lights, never will.
I woke up one night to see my mom turn away from me and walk out of the
room.
I guessed she was checking on me. I asked if everything was okay but she
didn't
reply - just left the room.
But here's the thing - in the middle of my small floorspace, there was a
floor fan
I always slept with running. She made no effort to walk around it.
And then she didn't open the door when she left the room.
I got up, went around the fan, opened the door and looked down the hall.
No one in sight.
The next day I asked mom if she'd gotten up to check on me that night.
She said she hadn't.
But something had.
***
My mom's house used to be haunted. Yes, used to be. Whatever was there seems
to have moved on some years ago, but for several years anyone who spent
enough time there experienced something...odd.
During one of the summers I spent with her during junior high, the bedroom I
was staying in had a door that wasn't set quite right. Took a bit of effort
to get it closed and latched. Took more to get it open, which was always
accompanied by a loud scrape/pop.
In a lot of ways, I'm a heavy sleeper. I've missed plenty of cool
thunderstorms because I've slept right thru them. But whenever *anything*
touches the door of the room I'm sleeping in, I wake up. Made my first
couple of months in the military heck as there was noise in the dorm
hallways at all hours that would constantly wake me up...but I digress.
During these high school years, nine times out of ten all it took was dad's
hand on the doorknob to wake me up to go to school, so you can imagine how
surprised I was when in the mornings when I'd wake up, the door to the
bedroom was open about an inch. This happened for several days. I'd make
sure the door was shut, sack out, wake up and find the door unlatched.
Now, it's easy to say that because it wasn't quite right in the frame, it
was popping open by itself, but again...it took some serious effort to get
it latched all the way and it was not a quiet process to get it closed or
open. I feel strongly there's no way it could manage to pop open on it's own
without waking me at least once.
And then I asked mom about it...and it was never open again.
***
Sometime later - the next summer or the summer after - not sure exactly, I
was again visiting mom for the summer. The house had been remodelled so I
was in a different room with a door that worked properly.
The only thing I didn't like was that she had no real curtains in my room -
just blinds and shears which still let in a lot of light from the security
light outside (like I said, when I'm asleep, I want pitch blackness - always have).
Almost felt as tho' I could read in the room in the middle of the night with
the lights off, it seemed that bright in there.
I woke up one night and someone was standing at the foot of my bed.
He had his back to me. He had black hair and seemed to be wearing an
overcoat of some kind.
He started to turn around and as he did, he faded away.
I, of course, did what any brave junior BBI would do and pulled the sheet up
over my head and went back to sleep.
When I told mom about it, she admitted her husband had also seen something
one time. Far as I know, we were the only two to actually see anything.
Everyone else who told her about something just had funny feelings or heard
noises (or had doors pop open that shouldn't).
But, as I said, that all stopped for some reason. Whatever was there,
whatever it wanted, it apparently found it and moved on.
Oh...and mom's house was put on that lot by her. Far as we know, there was
never a house there before that and aside from some possible small
skirmishes during the War Between the States, we never knew of anything that
happened there that might've spawned such activity.
***
So...there's my meager collection of tales.
What say you?
