These are the paranormal things that have happened in waking life that were the most traumatic for me. These are the things that are not easy to talk about or think upon. These are the things that still haunt me. This is the last post in this series and the preceeding one is Senses. We'll start out small. There's a lot that I can't actually remember from my early childhood, I'm thinking because I blocked it out. There are things I remember and then there are things that jog my memory. The first is something that I actually do remember. In my earliest years, I'd be sent to bed. I'd go upstairs, open my door, flip the light switch on. If it was a particular night (just whenever these things happen), the light would turn on and burn out instantly. In the mere seconds before darkness, I'd see shapes in my room near the ceiling light. The only thing I can describe are small versions of that Fantasia short with the ghouls and dead people on Halloween. I hadn't yet seen Fantasia the first time it happened, but is what I would come to associate the things with after I had seen it. They weren't dead people. They were things. They petrified me. I was always nervous to go to my room alone for fear the light would burn out and I'd see them. I didn't see them in my minds eye. I saw them with my eyes. I'd back out, shut the door, and scream for my parents to come and change the light. To check all the spaces in my room. It's not necessarily all that terrifying to look back on and remember, but I can still remember the scene, the way everything felt and the fear coursing through me. It's like I'm still back there as that tiny four year old, standing all alone in unfolding darkness. I was also petrified of the closet. I can not remember what the thing looked like (from my minds eye), but I remember that there was some thing there. I hated having to go into my closet for clothes or items. I'd got to sleep and specifically would have shut the door. When one of my parents came up to tuck me in, I'd whine and insist that they make sure the closet door was completely closed and latched and wouldn't come open. I'd whine in anguish if they tried to open it. I'd wake up in the middle of the night and the closet door would be open. Sometimes I heard it opening as the sound is what was waking me up. It was always a pretty sticky door. Not loose at all. It's something that my child self struggled to open, and my parents had a little bit of difficulty with, though not as much as me. Basically it couldn't just open on it's own. Not by wind, not by a cat brushing against it. Not by anything unless something was physically moving the door knob and pushing (or pulling) on it. I would cover my head with the bed clothes and shiver in fear until I fell asleep. It didn't happen every night, but it did happen rather a lot. I can still feel the fear and terror this elicited from my child self though I am no longer afraid of that closet and haven't been for a long time. Now we'll fast forward to film creatures. It seems like a weird thing to talk about, but it does tie in. I don't scare easily with horror films. I might do a slight scream or a jump during them, but none of them feel real or bring about memories I'd hidden away deeply within myself. Three creatures do. First, the dead girl from The Ring. I saw this in the movie theatre and had nightmares for months. Just on its own it's not a particularly scary film. However, the girl with her limp hair in front of her face and the disjointed way in which she moves felt too real. I had fear and a feeling of, 'I know this. Somehow I know this.' The feeling I got when seeing that girl on the screen reminded me of horrors I have known in my childhood. I couldn't tell you that, "Yes, I've seen a dead, drowned girl who moved in a disjointed fashion.", yet after seeing her, I know that I've seen exactly that in my early life. I've seen other ghosty girls in films, with hair in front of their eyes or creatures or ghosts in films that move in a disjointed fashion, and they bring no emotions at all. None. They're not the same thing. They're not the thing I've encountered before. The thing I'd tried to forget. It's not even that that's the first one I saw in film, so that the others are not as scary. That's not it. I know, because I've thought a lot about it. You can't deny the feelings, man. Guillermo del Toro's creatures, I find creepy. Like the man has seen some shit for real and translates that into his film creatures. I have no feelings about any of them, except two. Watching Pan's Labyrinth in the theatre and I almost vomited and ran from the theatre upon seeing the pale man with eyes for hands. It's not something I can explain, but the same feelings of 'I know this' and the old terror were there. I'd seen this thing. I'd experienced this thing in my childhood. I can't recall any times, but I also knew, there was that ping, that it happened a lot. It could have been the thing in my closet, I don't know, but it's the thing that terrorized me the most as a child. All the pings and zings and trepidation and fear told me so. Perhaps they aren't the exact things, but these are the things that my internal radar went wacky over. "Red Alert! Red Alert! This is not a drill, I repeat not a drill. This is something that haunted you!!" The next was the black winged Angel of Death thing in the second Hell Boy film. It's not the way it looked, but the way it sounded like double voices. I knew that too. It was far less frightening of a remembrance than the pale thing, but it's the only other thing of del Toro's that feels personally real. I mean, they all feel real somehow, unlike other film creatures, but none of them feel like my own personal hell. The only reason this next one is super creepy is because it ties in with the Mega Creepy event that I'll write about further on. The Sister and I were going to travel down The Natchez Trace Parkway in Natchez just a bit, be touristy because we hadn't been on it since we were kids. We stop at the first place, it's a place to drive in a small horseshoe, just a side step off the road with an information board. We pull in, get out and are reading the information. Then we noticed this foot worn path and at the top of the hill in the trees is a intricate iron fence, like the kind used in old grave yards. Surely it wouldn't look so open and inviting if one wasn't allowed. It looked like people traversed up the hill regularly. We go up there and I'm raising my foot to step over the threshold and all of a sudden, I stop. Something is yelling, "NO!", so I back my foot up and step back out of it and tell The Sister, "Don't! Don't touch anything!" to which she responds, "I was just going to say the same to you. I got the same feeling." It was a really small fenced in area and really old, the tombs must have been from the 1800s at least, but you couldn't read them. There were only three in there. But there were small handmade pieces of furniture from vines and twigs on two of the tombs. They were brand new, as there was no moss or anything on them, and they felt, not right. It's the only way I know to describe it. We take some pictures and head back down the hill. As soon as we get down there, there's a black man in all white with a non coloured Rastafarian knitted hat on. He didn't seem threatening, but he also didn't seem real, like a real person, and was watching us intently, but seemed to be saying, "Good, you didn't go in or touch anything." We get in the car and drive some more and he's behind us in a white car. We keep checking the rearview mirror because he seemed so weird. All of sudden the car is gone and crows erupt from the road and fly off into the trees. We both saw it, as I'm looking in the rearview and she'd checking her side mirror and the vanity mirror in her sun visor. He wasn't scary, but of course he does tie into a scary event several years later. We call him The Rastafari. So, we'll move on to trip from hell. I've already mentioned a few things from that trip in this post. We toured a historic home when we got there. We came in just as the last tour was about to start up. The tour lady looked at us like we had five heads or were foaming at the mouth, and also looked past us like there were people behind us. She seemed weird and a bit shaken up. We did the tour, we didn't touch anything, we didn't act weird, we didn't ask questions. But she kept trying to avoid us. The tour exited through the basement. We were looking at something and she was talking to the other family, telling them out to get out from there. She then ushered us out the door, looking frightened, and slammed and locked the door. We had no idea how to get out. And why was she so afraid of us? I'd always enjoyed cemeteries. They were always welcoming, inviting, and safe. My family always toured them when we were on holiday and I started touring the local ones in my early twenties. On this trip, I said we should visit the historic cemetery in the town we were in. In the grand scheme of things it was helpful for me, but really it was also the worst thing I could have done. It was terrible. We go and I just follow along and we park next to the Jewish section in the center of the cemetery. Somehow I always had a knack for finding the Jewish sections of cemeteries. Come to find out through dad's DNA test we have Jewish ancestry, so make you think, ya know. Anyways. Everything starts out well, but I'm getting outer voices in my head. Voices saying to come this way and voices saying to go away. I couldn't understand. The Jewish dead never hated me before. I always brought a rock to say I'd visited and was always very respectful. At the time I just couldn't wrap my head around why this cemetery felt so... hostile. Looking back, I can diferientiate the voices. The Jewish people in their section were trying to get me to leave because it wasn't safe. The bad things were telling me to stay. But the bad things in the cemetery had such lulling voices and the Jewish dead were so forceful that at the time I just didn't know what was going on. It wasn't the same experience I'd ever had before. I'm just thinking the Jewish dead don't want me in their section, so I exit their walls and then am sort of being pulled off and towards the back of the cemetery. Suddenly, I stop. It doesn't feel good in that direction at all. I don't know where I am (it's a pretty large cemetery). 'Find your sister now' I hear in my minds eye. I look around and don't know where she is. The leaf blower I'd heard at some point before has stopped. It's eerily silent. No more bugs, no more birds. It looks beautiful here, but it feels really, really horrible. I turn around and head in the direction I think is back where I came from. I see her, my sister. She's examining headstones over there in front of me. She's on the other side of one of those intricate iron cemetery fences. It's in a circle. The circle is quite large. Perhaps 10 or more feet across. There's a lot of burials to the right, which would be the quickest way to get to her. I can't go through because something is telling me not to go in the circle. I'm thinking I'll go around the left side. I start walking that way and stop. I don't want to go this way. It feels bad around the bend. Really bad. Also the tree that I'll end up getting too seems not right. It seems like it's seen a lot of stuff and probably people hanging from its branches. The tree is angry at the evil, at what it was made to do. I back away. I get back to where I started and feel that I should take a picture. Just straight ahead across the circle. I do. Then I've lost my sister again. I end up going right from there and come out of a proper cemetery road. "Don't go up the steps." "Go this way." So, I start walking down this bit of road. Then I stop, because something bad is ahead and I don't want to go that way. "You have to. You can't back track now, it's not safe. Don't look in there, but you have to walk past it." I felt pulled in all directions and I felt ready to scream and fall to the ground and sob and sob and sob. But I couldn't. I knew everything had to remain hidden, all my emotions reined in. I advance slowly but purposefully down the road towards the small mausoleum tomb. When I get right in front I'm told to look. "Don't show fear, but look now." I felt I should take a photo "Yes, take one and then go quickly." So, I took a photo and started walking again and didn't look back. Ended up at some bushes with hidden tombs in there. There were odd things set about, an old empty coffee can and a weather worn doll. I immediately remembered the little furniture at The Natchez trace. Those felt wrong and bad and these did too. They were not lovingly left for the dead. I backed away. Stumbling my way in utter confusion and I'm surprised I made it back to the car. The Sister was like, "I know, I know, but don't fall apart here." We get in the car and try to leave. I'm having trouble finding an exit as it feels like the cemetery is shifting to block our way. We're passing a Confederate monument, to the dead, not generals, and The Sister wants me to stop. I see them too. Ghostly figures of me encircling that monument. They felt sad and betrayed and lonely. Not a feeling of betrayal as in they lost the war, but that they were fighting for lies. They felt like their own people lied to them and betrayed them. They felt nice in a sea of horror, but I couldn't exit the car. I couldn't pay my respects to them, which dead that feel like them are the entire reason I visit cemeteries in the first place. But I couldn't do it. I wasn't getting out of this car until we were far away from this place. We finally make it out and The Sister directs me to a bar and we got in and have a beer. She insists that I have one, though I don't drink. I was practically hysterical and I couldn't seem to calm myself at all. It takes me forever, but I'm finally calmed down enough that we can return to our very creepy and very haunted B & B. I open the laptop and plug the camera in. I need to see why I felt compelled to take photos. I had to hold it all in and then leave the building to cry in the car before I could return to our room. These photos weren't tricks of the light or "I might see something there." They were extremely vivid and real, like you were seeing a person you'd just taken a photo of. Across that circle, where I felt prompted to stop going that way and come back and take a photo, there was this thing. This grey thing sitting on top of this headstone like a large toad. It was probably 4 feet, it had protruding eyes and was staring straight at me with this toad like grimace on its face. It was the creepiest looking thing I've ever seen. It was horrible. I had felt like I was being watched, felt like I shouldn't go that way, felt compelled to take a photo... and there it was. In the photo, clear as day, no need to circle it or point it out, you couldn't miss it. The next photo was of the inside of the tomb. There were large slanty eyes that seemed to absorb what little light could get in, and the outline of this huge black shape. They didn't seem like eyes, they were eyes. I didn't have to point anything out to my sister because she said, "Holy fuck!" This one wasn't creepier in looks than the toad thing, but unlike that one, this big, hulking thing felt familiar. I'd known this before and that scared the hell out of me. The reason I think it was good for me, is that I'd been so complacent in the paranormal. Nothing really happened to me anymore and I'd blocked a lot out and I didn't really listen to what was being said in my minds eye. This taught me to no be complacent. I also had photographic proof. I immediately deleted those pictures and have no remorse for doing so. They didn't need to be kept. I apparently just needed to know that what I thought was real, was, in fact, very real. This next event is The House From Hell. We went to tour an eighteenth century home along the banks of some river. We drive up to get our tickets at the booth and the lady keeps looking into our car and asking if we're sure it's just two people. o_0
Then we're driving up the long drive and when the house comes into view I have this unexplainable memory of fear. I'd not seen photos of this place, didn't even know it existed until two people during our told us to visit it. Yet, I know this place. I know it from a long, long time ago. And suddenly I'm filled with thoughts, 'I never wanted to come back here...', which in the midst of wondering where that thought is even coming from I'm verbally stating, "I don't want to be here." in a scared and hushed tone, to which The Sister says, "I know. I feel it too." We park, look in the gift shop, and take the first part of the tour, which is a talk in this building. We're sitting there listening just like the other few people and the lady talking suddenly says, "And then they sold the family members and shipped them down the river.... to MISSISSIPPI.", which at that break, she turns and stares straight at The Sister and I. We are from Mississippi, but we've not mentioned where we're from, and we have a rental car with Kentucky plates, if she even saw us get out of the car. After the talk, I go to the bathroom. There are several stalls in the ladies loo. When I enter, it sounds like water running and there is someone in there who's really, really upset. I'm figuring a tourist from a different country, because they are not speaking English. I'm relieving myself in the last stall and I can hear her better. She's highly upset and sounding pretty inconsolable. I'm pretty good with languages just from hearing them, as in I know what language it is. It's not a language I've heard before. I also get this weird feeling that somethings just not right. I look under the stall doors as I'm leaving and there are no feet in any of them. I slowly push open the stall door where the voice is coming from. There's no one there and the talking stops. I let it close and the talking starts up again. It's not coming from the men's bathroom and there's no one milling about outside except The Sister. We're both feeling a little ill. We need something to eat, some sugar, something. We go back to the ticket booth and ask if we can leave and come back that we just desperately need to eat something. She says they don't normally, but apparently we look distressed or convincing enough that she allows it and directs us to a neighbouring colonial plantation home that serves sandwiches and such. The oppressive weight that we'd been feeling lifts as soon as we're off the property, and we hadn't even realized that weight was there. We eat and begrudgingly go back. One, because we'd already paid and two, because it felt important somehow to go back. It's gotten a little dark by this time, though it's only mid-afternoon, because a storm is on the way. We're on the last tour of the day. We make it to the parlour of the once grand estate to join the other people waiting for the tour to start. We hate it inside this house. Then out the window we see him. It's the Rastafari. I'm not even kidding. This is not a case of we can't tell people apart. It's him. When he enters, he sees us and recognition sparks on his face before it becomes deadly serious and he nods at us. Almost in a way of , "I hope y'all are ready for this shit. Stand tall. Be brave." He's accompanied by a tiny, spritely girl that we called Faerie Girl. The tour starts when this short, thin older woman enters and starts talking. Only she seems weird. Like she's flicking in and out of view for just the briefest of moments. She asks a question about the style of the home and some large guy in front of me keeps saying "It's Baroque" as in the Baroque Period, only he's saying "It's Broke". It's agitating the tour lady, but the feeling isn't of his mispronunciation, but of the fact that he doesn't know the homes' style (or perhaps that it's like he's saying the home is broken, which let's face it, it kind of is), like it's some sort of personal insult for her. Which was weird. We move on through the house and she keeps getting more and more weird, like somethings wrong with her. There's something just below the surface that I don't like, but can't place. She's pissed that some crazy family crest over a fireplace had attempted to be ripped off. Again, not from a historical preservation stand-point, but like it was personal. Then she smiled this awful smile showing us the secret door leading down to the basement kitchens. One would say it was racist that she enjoyed the thought of the slaves using those cramped stairs, but it wasn't. Not really. Again it felt personal, almost like she remembered personally the times that her slaves were carting her food up and down the stairs. It was making my head spin, but I had to keep it together. Then people in the group, including myself, were wondering about the symbols painted on the inside of the door. She angrily waved it off saying it was graffiti, but it wasn't just recent vandalism. And again, she felt this personal anger and nothing to do with historic preservation. She kept wanting to shoo people along and not let them look at particular things, including that "graffiti". It seemed purposeful and intentional, this "graffiti" like it was put there for protection. Protection against... and my head snaps to the tour guide. 'No... am I crazy? No... remember what you know now from the cemetery. That's the house owner from all those years ago inside the tour lady. You're not crazy. Rastafari and Faerie Girl are here. It's all real. Keep calm. Compose your face!' Too late. It/He knows why we're here, or that we could be a threat. I don't even know why I'm here, but I'm certain it's important now. He was staring out at me through the tour lady's eyes. We go into a room and the fireplace mantel is missing. It's pissing the tour lady/ghost man off. Saying, who ever took it better bring it back NOW. And he looks straight at The Sister and I. We didn't take his damn fireplace mantel! But I just remain calm like I didn't notice that he just looked straight at us in some sort of weird accusation. We move from that room to the next via a pass through and suddenly It is right behind me and starts talking closely into my ear. He has been talking about cows when leaving the other room, and I have no idea why. "Do you know where else they have a lot of cows? Mississippi." I remain calm though the name of my state was slurred out like a snake if it could speak English. In the next room it's become too dark to really see and make out details. The house was never electrified. He's saying there are growth charts carved into the wall, but we can't see it. Some one says, "If only there was some light." to which the He responded with a smarmy, "Yes, if only..." That's when The Sister and I remembered our flashlights. The B & B where we had stayed, the then owner is one of the two people to mention that we should tour this place. In a separate bit of conversation he gave everyone at the breakfast table a flashlight (with the B & B name and info on it) and then looked specifically at The Sister and I and said, "You'll need these." The Sister was quicker and pulled hers from her purse and flicked it on. The He was not happy about that, the look of anger booming in its face. However, the guy that mentioned needing light was ecstatically happy and kept calling her a Boy Scout though was trying to say Girl Scout. After that everyone got their mobiles out and turned on the flashlights on them or took flash photos. It was allowed, but He didn't like it. Last was the basement, which though we were supposed to be able to see, He ushered us out so quickly that we weren't allowed to see it. Then He and another lady tried to sell us this trashy rice spoon. It started raining and other tour workers were bringing umbrella's and golf carts to get us back to the parking area. The Sister and I each took an umbrella but didn't get in a golf cart, we allotted the ride for the older people. So, that tour was thoroughly disorienting and the original plan had been to go back to the gift shop, so I just followed the plan, though I kept looking back to check on The Sister who was being slowed down by the former owner wearing the meat suit of the tour lady. But The Sister kept being OK, so I kept progressing on my path. They were half a football field away when I made the ramp and onto the porch of the gift shop. Rastafari and Faerie Girl were there and their eyes were wide and I could hear them say in my minds eye, "Not here! You're supposed to be at your car... watch out!" and his eyes motioned behind me. I turn around and there is the "tour lady" who isn't the tour lady. There's no way she could have made that distance in 10 seconds. She's mere inches from my face and in a serpentine motion, I can see the former owners face coming in and out of her face, in my minds eye. Danger Will Robinson, Danger! I have to go and now. I don't remember what He was saying but it wasn't good and I just said, "I'm leaving" in an authoritative voice and dashed to the bathrooms because I didn't know where The Sister was. When I got to the bathrooms, I turned around and the tour lady seemed disoriented and confused and Rastafari and Faerie Girl were no where to be seen. They couldn't have made it completely out of view like to their parked car in that amount of time. I go into the ladies to see if The Sister is in there. She's not, but that ghost lady is still in that stall. The water is flooding out of the toilets and the sinks and she's screaming, howling and laughing in that way of someone whose found freedom after decades spent in confinement. It was unsettling, but I could feel her bliss. I left and found The Sister in the car park. We got into the car and started driving away. "I did what I came to do. I freed them. I didn't know that's why we were here, but I freed all the souls that he had trapped her." I'm trying to drive, but also want to know what she's talking about. "The non tour lady stopped me out in the rain and wouldn't let me pass. I just kept asking 'Are we free to go? Are we free? Are we free?' It finally said yes and I could feel them all sweeping past me and it didn't understand what had just happened and I left and booked it to the car. Where were you?" So, I told her how I followed the original plan and that encounter and the ghost woman in the bathroom knew she was free and she was fucking shit up. Then things felt weird. It felt like He knew that all those souls of the formerly enslaved were free and he knew exactly who did that. It was like some boom or shift in the atmosphere. He was coming for us. Not him exactly, but things commanded by him were coming for us. I started driving and we didn't stop for 4.5 hours. I could see and feel in my minds eye phantom British soldiers on their phantom horses chasing us, in our rental car that looked like a hearse that so many people thought was holding more passengers than it really was. Chasing across what in their time did belong to them. I couldn't stop. I had to make it to New Spain. I wasn't entirely sure where New Spain really started in the eighteenth century, but we had to get there. I didn't speed recklessly, but I didn't lollygag either. They kept gaining on us. Though I know that the British Royal Family during that time period were German (they still are, but it's ancestrally and not they're mom came from the German Empire sort of deal) and they all knew German and spoke it daily; British people did not speak German. I needed music to keep me awake (Remember I hadn't slept since two days prior to this and all of this can take its toll on a person. I was exhausted) and keep them at bay and though it made no real sense I told The Sister to shuffle to all the Rammstein music I had in my iPod. It worked. It pissed them off and they backed up a little. Perhaps it's a weird paranormal border issue thing? I don't know. I only know that it's what my gut told me to do even though my brain had doubts about it working, but I was willing to try anything at that point. They were still following, but not as closely, which is good. We passed the sign that said Welcome to Florida and The Sister said, "Whew, now we can stop." "No, not yet. I still feel like this is in their control. We can't stop." Then in my minds eye about thirty miles down the highway, there was a line of phantom Spanish soldiers standing guard. I drove right through them and the phantom British clashed with them. I'd crossed the old line into New Spain. Now we could stop. We found a hotel and once inside I looked up on the internet old borders. During the owners time, stopping right after today's state line would have still been British territory. The "line" I crossed was the old border. That freaked me out. I didn't know, how did I know? The next day, we got up early and started driving west. I didn't drive as purposefully as I felt the Spanish were still holding the British back, as in there was no pursuit currently... but what if they broke through? I was uneasy, but still didn't feel pursuit and just knew I had to make it to what was then The Wilderness, but is now my home state. As soon as we crossed into our state a weight was lifted that I hadn't exactly realized was weighing me down. All these phantom people were lining each side of the highway. All of them having lived and died here a long time ago; Indigenous, White, Black; formerly enslaved or indentured or always free; dying of disease, war, or famine. Didn't matter, they were all there. You could feel it. You could see it in your minds eye. They were all welcoming us home and basically told us good job. They were proud of us. We'd accomplished something huge. It made us cry. The Sister could "see" and feel it all too. After that trip I felt like Frodo after destroying The One Ring. My town felt too crowded, too harsh, too weird and not at all comfortable. It took me years after that trip to settle back down and get back into the groove of things, but it's never really been the same since. The Shire just doesn't mean the same things to me anymore. I've been through too much to go back to my soft blanket like the other Hobbits could. While we were gone a new restaurant had opened up. We decided to check it out about a month after we'd returned home. Once inside it felt creepily familiar. They were basically stating that it was the state we'd just left, with its food. Why? Why would someone open this restaurant here? (Incidentally now it's all cajun food because we're close to Louisiana and New Orleans and people dig that and not this new food). We were seated in this one dining section but our eyes kept snapping to the next room. We were being drawn to look in there. So, we both got up from the table and went through the open doors into the next room. Our eyes slide to the right side of the room and our breath catches in our throats. It's the fireplace mantel. We know it is, it feels the same as that creepy, horrible place we'd escaped from twice now in several lifetimes. That was just the initial feeling, we went closer to inspect and the paint colour was the exact same shade of green and the wood work was the same. The mantel had been painted a long time ago. And there were oddly elongated fingerprint marks in black along it. But dirty hand prints that had reached out from inside the fireplace and not from outside. We both stepped back at the same time, which is the same moment we took it all in that we were correct and that those hand prints were extremely unsettling. He knew that Mississippi had stolen his fireplace mantel and it turns out He was correct. We didn't personally steal it, but it's here in this new restaurant with decorations, a whole feel, and cuisine from the territory He used to inhabit. Honestly we want someone to just burn that entire motherfucker to the ground. That place is just evil. It may be free now, but that place really just needs to go. I'll celebrate if it ends up in ashes one day. I honestly will. I won't burn it down, but I'll love the person who does.
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AuthorA girl from South Mississippi who finds herself in exploration. Archives
November 2019
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