Something wicked this way comes: Scary tales 6

Assorted personal happenings.

As I have mentioned through the last several posts I started seeing and hearing ghosts, that I recall, when I was about ten. I knew ghosts were not supposed to be real, but I also knew I was not completely insane. For me I had to decide if I was possibly mentally unstable or if things that go bump in the night are real. I chose to go with the latter. I refuse to believe that this was the wrong decision considering how many experiences I have had, as well as the number of eye witness accounts from others I have heard through the years. Lets just face it, there are some things that are rationally unexplainable, and ghosts are among them.

One of the earlier run ins with ghosts I can remember was when I was in 7th grade. My mother had remarried at the beginning of the summer and we had moved to Austin. I was going through a pretty good run of insomnia at the time, so not surprisingly I was awake and sitting on my bed reading at about 6 in the morning. It was a weekend so everyone else was assured to be asleep for several more hours, and I was trying to be as quiet as possible. Out of nowhere my brother rather suddenly appeared in my doorway looking both sleepy and angry. He wanted to know why I had woken him up, and I assured him I had not. He again insisted that I had to have, or mom had to have woken him up. I said again it wasn't me and mom was still in her room. He said a woman had grabbed his arm and shaken him telling him it was time to get up. I hadn't heard anything at all. Normally I would have said he had been dreaming, but the finger nail impressions on his arm clearly said he wasn't.

I was in college when I saw my first cemetery ghost. I have always been fascinated with cemeteries. When I was in Vicksburg a couple of years ago we spent hours getting lost in the state cemetery and I took hundreds of pictures. There was a cemetery in Nacogdoches that was particularly lovely. It was old and had a great deal of character to it. When you walked the trail at Pecan park, it ended at the back of the cemetery, so we would often take a break there before heading back. One day we were at the park just around sunset, sitting and taking a break and chatting some. At first I had thought we were alone, but then I noticed off in one of the far corners there was a woman standing over a grave, her head was bowed, and her shoulders shook as though she was weeping. Not wanting to be rude and stare at a mourning woman I turned my attention away. When I looked back she had moved and was wondering down the path towards the back fence. I mentioned her to someone else in the group, but when we looked back she was gone. There was no place she could have gone to from where I had last seen her.

We got up and went to examine the grave she had been crying over to see if there might be a clue. The grave was that of a childs, no more than seven when they died. The details were hard to make out without the aid of paper to take a rubbing as the grave was nearly 100 years old. A woman weeping over her childs grave is not uncommon, but when the woman has surely been dead herself for some time, it is a little odd.

I had an apartment in college that was really the coolest thing ever. It was two stories, it had these beautiful balconies, and was one of only 16 units, with a lovely central courtyard walk. It was also home to an entire fraternity, but the boys were mostly not a big problem, and always meant we got free beer. The apartment was quirky though. It had been built in the 60's and never really updated. There were some electrical issues, and some door issues when the building would shift, but nothing we couldn't handle.

There were however other odd things that were hard to overlook. We used to hear Donna Summer's being played in my roommates room when there was no one in there. My roommate didn't have a tv or stereo or really anything that could play music in her room. Also, every time we heard the music this overwhelming smell would come from her room. It smelled like Italian food that had been left sitting in the sun for three days. It was foul to say the least. When you opened the door to check on it, the music and the smell would disappear.

Her room was not the only one that was bothered. I had issues in my room constantly. I would often wake up to the feel of someone sitting on my bed. My roommate did have a habit of crawling into bed with me, but in these occasions there was no one there, although I could see the impression in the mattress of someone sitting with me. I had a dog for a short while and whenever this would happen she would freak out. She would back up to the far corner of the bed and growl at thin air with her hackles raised. It never did anything but sit on my bed that I know of, but it was still a little odd.

Ghosts taking an interest in me while I sleep is a recurring theme. I don't recall this next story personally, because I was actually asleep. I don't doubt the validity of the story despite my sleeping through it. We were at a friends farm outside Tyler Tx for a weekend when this event happened. We had spent the day traipsing through the woods, and the evening down by the lake talking. Upon coming back to the farm house we saw a light go off in the back bedroom and a figure move across the window. There was some mild panic and then a sweep of the house with shotguns to check for the intruder. In the end all the doors and windows had been locked and no one was in the house.

Needless to say we were all a little freaked out by this event. We drove into town for IHoP, but after four hours there we were no less freaked out, and now wired on caffeine. When we got back to the farm house we decided the best idea was to just go to bed. I was staying in a room with two double beds which I was sharing with my friend John. At one point during the night he got up to use the bathroom, and noticed that there was someone else in bed with me. He thought that our friend Sarah had gotten scared sleeping alone and had crawled into bed with me (This happens a lot to me). When he came back from the bathroom he said she was still in bed, cuddled up with me.

In the morning when we woke up I was alone in the bed. He asked when Sarah had left and I said I hadn't known she was in the bed with me. Honestly I barely fit into a double bed (at the time because I was so tall, now because I am so tall and chubby), I didn't see how Sarah could have gotten into bed with me at all, least of all without me noticing. Sarah was a really big girl. Still he swore she had been there.

So we went and asked Sarah. Sarah was still asleep and locked in her room. When we finally got her up she swore to us that she had not left the room. She had even put a chair in front of the door in case someone tried to get in. If she was sleep walking she did one hell of a job. I slept walked for years and moving and resetting a chair was definitely beyond the things I was capable of.

In the end we decided that it had to have been a ghost of some sort since Sarah hadn't moved and I hadn't felt anyone climb into bed with me. When you are left with only one answer, no matter how absurd it seems, that is usually the right answer.


Tomorrow there will be one last scary story in honor of Halloween. I have saved it for last, as it is the most frightening thing that has ever happened to me. Come back tomorrow to hear the tale of the house that tried to eat me.