Post #263285 by Cammo on Sun, Oct 29, 2006 4:56 AM

Long post again. Go ahead, turn the lights down. Way down. All the way down. Get a nice glass of Merlot, a ’99 would be perfect, and sit back. Relax. Don’t glug that Merlot. Ready?…

The Haunted Farmhouse
Part 6

Let me point out for the last time that I had no idea the farmhouse was haunted. I never heard about Ken and the cellar, the windows smashing, Sara or Rod in the kitchen, anything. I never saw anything unusual. Wendy and Mark had pieced it together, but they were still confused about the whole thing, and didn’t know what to think.

Wendy brought it all up at a get-together years later and it surprised me. Rod had visited them and had finally told them what happened to him. They had spilled the beans about the windows and Sara, and it all came back in sharp-focus.

As they told me about it, I was undecided. They were so sincere, but my story sounded totally crazy. I had thought at the time that I had just gone nutso for a while, and tried to forget the whole thing. Temporary insanity is always a great cop-out.

Should I tell them? I told them. They listened, nodding their heads and looking back and forth at each other, like it all made sense. They didn’t throw a net over me. I’m glad I told them everything. Later, years later when I was reading up on true hauntings, it turned out that my experience was fairly well known, it even had a name, but more on that later…

Here’s what happened.

About a dozen people came to the party. Earlier in the day we had one last barbeque, Mark and Wendy were starting to pack up and this would be the last time we could enjoy doing farmhouse stuff together. Boxes were already all over the place, some partially filled. The place was starting to look empty. It was a fun party, but bittersweet. Wendy promised us all they’d have an apartment-warming party as soon as they got set up in the new place.

We had some drinks, I was about 17 so I didn’t have much (I’m still not much of a drinker), got tired early, and went up to bed at about midnight. I was sleeping in Sara’s room at the front of the house, keeping her company while everybody else was staying up late. She was in her little bed, I was flopped out on a futon on the floor, and I went to sleep immediately.

About 3:00 am, I woke up suddenly. Everyone else was sleeping now. The wind outside was whipping around, but there were no other noises. Why had I woken up? I was still tired, I didn’t have to go to the bathroom, what was going on? I could hear Sara sleeping in her bed.

That wind was really loud. It seemed to hit the front of the house head on, and break into waves around the sides of it. Just like a boat crashing through a sea. The farmhouse was pretty old, it had been rebuilt a few times but it was solid.

The wind seemed to be turning into a hurricane outside. Could the windows take it? I hadn’t heard about the windows breaking downstairs yet, but here I was worrying about the same thing upstairs. The wind seemed to come in howling gusts, quiet for a second, then building up and hurling itself with force against the house. I looked over at Sara to see if she had woken up, but she was still sleeping.

The wind sound grew louder. It was so loud now, I put my hands up to my ears, and thought of picking Sara up and taking her farther into the house, away from that front room. There were drapes by the windows, though, and they weren’t moving so the windows were still holding up fine.

Then the wind seemed to become a tornado outside. I was scared for us all. What if some trees were knocked down? It was so loud, I couldn’t believe Sara wasn’t awake.

The wind threw itself onto the house,

and then, I don’t know how to say this,

but it came into the room.

It swirled around, shrieking in twisting columns of air, so loud it was painful to me. It didn’t knock anything over, and I half-noticed that nothing in the room was disturbed by the wind, but I actually thought a window had broken and we were right in the middle of a tornado. It was scary, but not unnatural. Then I felt that the wind was collecting itself into a ball, which I didn’t know wind could do, and seemed to be searching around the room. It went to the far end, then came back slowly to me. The sound was still there, screeching and screaming like the noise a car window makes when you open it full at 70 mph., only louder.

It came towards me. It settled on the ceiling right over me, then came down, inch by inch, until it was on top of me. I tried to squirm out, but something was holding me all around. I tried to lean up, turn around, anything. The weight of the thing on top of me was unbearable. It was becoming hard to breathe. I could just get enough air in small gasps, it was trying to strangle me to death. Every part of my body felt exactly like it was tied down. I couldn’t move anything. Finally the thing began to weaken a bit, and I could move my fingers. I was drenched in sweat, from trying to move. It was hard exercise. I managed to move my hand, grabbed the edge of the bed and pulled myself sideways, finally slipping down onto the floor. Then I crawled over to Sara’s bed. She was asleep, I was shocked to see. The wind sound had died down to normal now. Nothing in the room was out of place.

Nothing had happened. Maybe it was a dream I had woken from, and I was in a half-dream state when I thought I was awake, mixing up the sound of the wind with reality. That must be it.

But I was still shaking, and wet with sweat, so I went downstairs and made a cup of tea. I kept the lights on the whole way and kept listening for any sounds, but all was quiet. I stayed down there for almost an hour, drinking tea and waiting until I was totally calm and unafraid, just sitting in the kitchen chair, listening to the quiet breeze outside.

Finally, I gathered the spit to go back upstairs. I clicked the lights off all the way back up, checked Sara again, and laid down in bed. I wasn’t sleepy, I was wide awake. I put my head on the pillow and looked up.

Over me, I could feel it. It shrieked, and fell down right on top of me again. I tried to move, but it was even worse now. I tried to edge sideways, but it was holding me so tightly I could feel my arm bones pushing into my ribs, squeezing my lungs.

It had been waiting for me.

It was crushing me from all sides, my legs, on top of my face, I fought as hard as I could, pushing in any direction it gave me the slightest room. My muscles were getting sore, I was soaking wet with sweat again. The sound was unbearably loud. There was nothing I could do but move my eyes, and I kept glancing over to Sara, who wasn’t disturbed at all by an invisible demon from the seventh dimension of hell coming over to kill her good ol’ Uncle Cammo in the middle of the night.

Sara made me a bit mad, actually. Why was she sleeping though all the good stuff? What kind of lazy no-account kid was she anyway? Why didn’t she whip a pillow at this thing, or turn on the lights, or heck, make me another cup o’ tea? Anything! Those Little Rascal kids would have been throwing sacks of flour at it by this time, and it would have turned out it was the local real estate man trying to get the property back. Spanky would have hitched him to a wagon, and it all would have ended with somebody getting kicked out a window by a mule.

C’mon Sara, be a bud and yell or something, I’d do the same for you!

No go. My breathing was almost cut off. I had to fight it, conserve breath by filling my lungs with air and gulp it a bit at a time, and feeling around for a weak spot all at once, it went on minute after minute for a really long time. Whatever happened, I didn’t want to black out. It was trying to kill me. I could feel it adjusting, moving on top of me, trying to kill me. I have no idea how long it lasted. Finally it seemed to weaken just enough, and I slipped out of bed again. I was so exhausted I crawled back downstairs, pausing to get my breath every few feet.

Maybe it left sometime that night, or maybe it stayed with Sara, alone with her the rest of the night, the last night she slept there.

It was early morning now, and I wasn’t going back up to that bed, so Mark and Wendy found me downstairs, dozing in the living room. They didn’t think anything of it, or asked me why I was cutting my visit short by going back that night. We loaded boxes all day and that was the last I saw of that damn farmhouse.

Fifteen years later, I researched true hauntings.

My experience, as I said earlier, was pretty common. It’s called ‘hagging’. It seems to happen when an angry female spirit wants to rape and kill a man. It’s the worst kind of poltergeist haunting. Some people who’ve been ‘hagged’ say they actually see the dim outlines of a hag – an evil, horrible lady on top of them. I didn’t see anything. The Old English name for it is a Succubus, or an Incubus, take yer pick. It’s probably the origin of the vampire myth.

In Japan they call it the “Iron Band Ghost”. That sounds better to me, that’s exactly what it felt like.

Medically, a too-slow transition from dreaming to a half-dream, half-waking state is called “Hypnopompia”. It can cause auditory and visual hallucinations and a feeling of strangulation, accompanied with feelings of extreme dread. I had classic, by the book “Hypnopompia”. Look it up.

Except - the second time it happened I was wide awake.

And - the next morning my ribs were bruised all over, sides and front. When I looked in the mirror I got a shock - my neck was red and tender, all the way around. I hadn’t touched my neck once that night. And my right arm’s tendons at the elbow were pulled from straining, it would hurt for a year every time I tried to push anything heavy or play tennis. Straining against what? The muscles were the ones you use for pushing out with. Pushing against what?

And finally - why did it happen at the farmhouse? Nothing even slightly similar has ever happened to me anywhere else. I don’t have any sleeping problems. Never have.

Sara is a grown woman now, a tall leggy blonde teacher who’s about to be married. She doesn’t remember anything about the farmhouse.

We went back there years later, though.

What we found was rather odd. To say the least.