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Ghost Stories
Apr. 13th, 2007 08:22 pmI was going to hold off on writing this post, but then I realized that it is Friday the 13th. And, really, if there's any time to write this post, I suppose it would be now. A friend of mine recently told me that it was hard to imagine me scared of anything: I really appreciate that thought, and so I'm going to try and live up to it now. I'm going to sit here, in this house, and have the figurative brass balls to tell you a few of the inexplicable experiences that have happened here.
Allow me to preface this by saying that I've had several inexplicable experiences since I was a child, ranging in tone and form. Being a rational sort, I'm willing to seek scientific explanations to what I've seen, felt, and heard. But also, being human, I'm willing to admit that sometimes there's just no accounting for what one experiences. It just is.
The first time anything happened in this house, it was to my father. My mother, three brothers, and I had gone away to the beach. When we returned, my father related to us how he'd been just on the edge of sleep one night when he felt or heard someone walk into his bedroom from the bathroom. This person had a definite presence he said, and he could almost feel them sitting next to him and watching him. He attributed the presence a peaceful feeling and said he felt as if his mother was watching over him.
I never experienced anything while I lived here the first time, except once when I was feverish to the point of auditory hallucinations. And that's what I've always assumed that one experience was-- auditory hallucinations. I thought I could hear someone talking and walking when every member of my family was quite somewhere else. I left well enough alone.
Yet when I moved back to the house many years later, after my mother and father had divorced and the house was quiet, it was different. My brothers no longer lived here. The house was no longer filled so full to bursting with life. Times were quiet now. My father would go to bed around 9-10 PM and I would be the only one awake into the early AM.
That's when I first heard it. Someone walked down our hallway (it's all wood flooring) and into our kitchen. I heard a cabinet open. Or I heard a cabinet close.
This happened consistently. It wasn't my dad being a midnight snacker. You see, my dad snores very loudly and every time this happened, I could clearly hear my dad in the bed snoring and these footsteps in the hallway.
The first few times, I was afraid someone had gotten into the house. I woke up my dad once, to no avail, searching for no one. So I began to accept it. I began to ignore it. It's fine, I'd think: just someone where no one is walking down the hall and into the kitchen. Nothing wrong with that.
My mom suggested once that I follow the sound and confront whatever was making it. She advised me to put something small in my hand, something that reminded me of who I was, something that grounded me. She told me to close my hand tightly around this object and to follow the phantom. She said then, if I got too scared, I could just open my hand and see my object and I'd be back in myself again.
I smiled and thought to myself, "Hell-fuck-no."
I used to sleep with the door to my room closed, but I stopped that shortly after I moved in. One night, as I was on the edge of slipping into sleep, I was startled awake by a loud noise directly outside my closed door. It sounded like a body falling, to be quite honest. I have never gotten out of my bed so quickly, and stood tensed to run in such agonized indecision. Where could I go? To escape, I'd have to open the door. And to open the door, I'd have to face whatever heavy thing had fallen outside it. It took every bit of my willpower to close my hand around the knob, to turn, and to snatch the door open: only to find nothing. Empty hallway. Just my blood thundering in my ears.
As I've mentioned before, I'm a rational sort. I'm willing to explain most of this away, especially the sound of something falling as it happened in the transitory period between wakefulness and sleep. I refuse to bend on the footsteps, however: that's happened so many times and so consistently that I refuse to believe it's an auditory hallucination. If it is, I'm in trouble and probably need to be seen by a psychiatrist immediately.
But here's the one that left me scared shitless:
Late at night. I had gone to sleep around 1 AM when I was suddenly awakened at 3 AM. I knew a noise had awakened me, and I lay in bed groggily trying to figure it out. I listen: I hear my dad snoring in his bed. And then I hear the sound threaded around it and through it, steadily rising and falling, not fading as I move from sleepiness into alert consciousness: yes, there it was. The sound of someone weeping. This was no slight crying, either: it was fully realized, intense and grief-stricken weeping. For some reason, this frightened me to the core. I was afraid to get up, afraid to leave the protection of my covers. All I could do was huddle in bed, and think over and over again: "Please stop, please stop, please stop, please stop..."
The crying lasted for over one full minute of full consciousness. And it wasn't the only time this happened: it happened on one other occasion and I responded in the same way.
That's enough for now.
Allow me to preface this by saying that I've had several inexplicable experiences since I was a child, ranging in tone and form. Being a rational sort, I'm willing to seek scientific explanations to what I've seen, felt, and heard. But also, being human, I'm willing to admit that sometimes there's just no accounting for what one experiences. It just is.
The first time anything happened in this house, it was to my father. My mother, three brothers, and I had gone away to the beach. When we returned, my father related to us how he'd been just on the edge of sleep one night when he felt or heard someone walk into his bedroom from the bathroom. This person had a definite presence he said, and he could almost feel them sitting next to him and watching him. He attributed the presence a peaceful feeling and said he felt as if his mother was watching over him.
I never experienced anything while I lived here the first time, except once when I was feverish to the point of auditory hallucinations. And that's what I've always assumed that one experience was-- auditory hallucinations. I thought I could hear someone talking and walking when every member of my family was quite somewhere else. I left well enough alone.
Yet when I moved back to the house many years later, after my mother and father had divorced and the house was quiet, it was different. My brothers no longer lived here. The house was no longer filled so full to bursting with life. Times were quiet now. My father would go to bed around 9-10 PM and I would be the only one awake into the early AM.
That's when I first heard it. Someone walked down our hallway (it's all wood flooring) and into our kitchen. I heard a cabinet open. Or I heard a cabinet close.
This happened consistently. It wasn't my dad being a midnight snacker. You see, my dad snores very loudly and every time this happened, I could clearly hear my dad in the bed snoring and these footsteps in the hallway.
The first few times, I was afraid someone had gotten into the house. I woke up my dad once, to no avail, searching for no one. So I began to accept it. I began to ignore it. It's fine, I'd think: just someone where no one is walking down the hall and into the kitchen. Nothing wrong with that.
My mom suggested once that I follow the sound and confront whatever was making it. She advised me to put something small in my hand, something that reminded me of who I was, something that grounded me. She told me to close my hand tightly around this object and to follow the phantom. She said then, if I got too scared, I could just open my hand and see my object and I'd be back in myself again.
I smiled and thought to myself, "Hell-fuck-no."
I used to sleep with the door to my room closed, but I stopped that shortly after I moved in. One night, as I was on the edge of slipping into sleep, I was startled awake by a loud noise directly outside my closed door. It sounded like a body falling, to be quite honest. I have never gotten out of my bed so quickly, and stood tensed to run in such agonized indecision. Where could I go? To escape, I'd have to open the door. And to open the door, I'd have to face whatever heavy thing had fallen outside it. It took every bit of my willpower to close my hand around the knob, to turn, and to snatch the door open: only to find nothing. Empty hallway. Just my blood thundering in my ears.
As I've mentioned before, I'm a rational sort. I'm willing to explain most of this away, especially the sound of something falling as it happened in the transitory period between wakefulness and sleep. I refuse to bend on the footsteps, however: that's happened so many times and so consistently that I refuse to believe it's an auditory hallucination. If it is, I'm in trouble and probably need to be seen by a psychiatrist immediately.
But here's the one that left me scared shitless:
Late at night. I had gone to sleep around 1 AM when I was suddenly awakened at 3 AM. I knew a noise had awakened me, and I lay in bed groggily trying to figure it out. I listen: I hear my dad snoring in his bed. And then I hear the sound threaded around it and through it, steadily rising and falling, not fading as I move from sleepiness into alert consciousness: yes, there it was. The sound of someone weeping. This was no slight crying, either: it was fully realized, intense and grief-stricken weeping. For some reason, this frightened me to the core. I was afraid to get up, afraid to leave the protection of my covers. All I could do was huddle in bed, and think over and over again: "Please stop, please stop, please stop, please stop..."
The crying lasted for over one full minute of full consciousness. And it wasn't the only time this happened: it happened on one other occasion and I responded in the same way.
That's enough for now.