Halloween Story (cat lovers, do not read)

Our story today starts on November first in 1972, I was eleven years old. I was riding my bike down Pacific View Dr, I was with my good friend Chris Hart. I don't remember where we were going . Since this is a Halloween story, I'd like to tell you it was dark and stormy, but, I grew up in Southern California so it was probably sunny and 75 degrees. As we rode by Eliot crook's house we made a gruesome discovery. What we found was the Crook Family cat, it had met a most unfortunate end. The cat's name was "Black Bastard" and it was one mean kitty, sort of a neighborhood celebrity. He was all black and as large as a cat gets. The "Bastard" ruled the street, It beat up the other cats, made noise at night and all the kittens on Pacific View looked just like him. If you tried to touch him he would SHRED you with zeal. His ears were ripped up his face was scarred and he was fat, miss-shapen and ugly. Like I said, he was one mean cat and on November first in 1972, he was quite dead.

Before I go on with my little story let me give you some background. I was raised Catholic, did the Altar Boy thing, went to St. Paul of the Cross Parochial School. The Nuns taught me a few things, like the stations of the cross, how to feel guilt for almost everything, but, mostly I learned about Satan. Yeah, you know, the Prince of Darkness , the King of Lies, Beelzebub, Lucifer, Mephistopheles, the Walking Man, The Devil. I was told terrible stories of intense torment and agony that would last "Forever". The horrible pictures those Nuns painted of this unseen monster still stay with me. My young mind could imagine nothing worse.

The Mother Superior At St Paul's was about 110 years old. Back then the Nuns wore black habits, they were completely covered except for their faces. The ancient face peering from the dark shapeless clothing combined to create a freakish appearance.The first time I saw the old broad I was six years old, I literally did not believe her to be human. The Mother Superior didn't teach class like the other Nuns. She was in charge of the Rectory and telling the other nuns what to do. She would spook around and glare at us. The word was she carried a big hatpin in her habit and if you had your elbows on the pews when you were praying she would stick you with her pin. I'm not saying it's true, but, it's the story we told.

One day the old battle axe sat down next to me when we were in the church. She pointed at the Statue of the Crucified Jesus. Now the Crucified Jesus statues in Catholic Churches tend to be in more agony than other denominations, unlike the Protestant jesuses (Jesi? sp) who look like they're watching telivision. The crown of thorns, the nails thru the hands and feet, the wound in the side tend to be visceral, horrible, real. The look of intense suffering on the face of that particular Jesus still haunts me. He looked awful. Here's a little fact that many Christians don't know; Crucifixion kills you by suffocation. When you are crucified the series of muscles you need to breath with eventually fail, you die a horrible, desperate, agonizing, gasping death.

Cute, cuddly, Protestant, bobble headed Jesus

Spooky, scary, Catholic, Wes Craven Jesus

The Mother Superior told me that the statue was to remind us of the horrible sacrifice Jesus made for us. (Alright Jesus! way to take one for the team!!!) It was also to remind us of the torment we would have to endure if we were bad Catholics and went to Hell. Hell, where Satan and his demons were waiting for sinners to torture for all eternity. "For your agony in Hell with Satan will be one hundred times worse than Jesus on the cross if you are a bad Catholic".

I knew I was a bad Catholic. Good Catholics didn't steal money out of the collection plate and eat cheeseburgers on meatless Fridays.

Now where was I, oh yeah, November first 1972. The date is significant because it is All Saints Day. The Catholics assign saints to particular days, like St. Crispin's day or St Hanford's day. You are supposed to honor a particular Saint on his day. November first is when you Honor all the Saints, hence All Saints Day. Since this is a Holy day (or Haloed, as they say) the day before has come to be known as "All Haloed's Eve" or Halloween to you and me. Nov first is when the saints walk the Earth, it is a time for miracles. The day before belongs to Satan and his dark minions.

So on Halloween Night in 1972 the Black Bastard was sleeping. (Do not read further if you are a cat lover). He was asleep on on top of the garage door. The kind of garage door that doesn't rool up, the kind with black springs on either side. The kind of door that is paralell to the concrete floor when it is open. At about midnight Mrs. Crook came home and found the garage door open. She parked in the garage and pushed the garage door button. What happened next is the stuff of my nightmares. Black bastard awoke with a start, the door under him was tiliting closed. As the door closed the Bastard ran "up" the closing door. it was the last mistake he would ever make. You see when the door closed it "caught" his neck between the top of the door and the door jam. His head was inside the garage his body was outside. He was trapped. When we found him the next day it was clear he hadn't died right away. The cat had fought for his life like a lion for what looked like hours. the garage door where he hung was deeply and repeatedly scratched. the bastard had shredded the door like a wood chipper. His blood stained the door from top to bottom, his large lifeless body hung limply. Our concern was to hide the body before Mrs. Crook saw it, it was a hideous scene. Releasing the body from the door was difficult, it was really wedged in there. The cat fell with a plop, its dead eyes locked in an unseeing lifeless stare. His tounge had swollen up and was hanging out of his head. He had died a horrible, desperate, agonizing, gasping death. We hosed off the door and buried the Bastard in a gulley. We marked his grave with a wooden cross that read simply "Bastard".

That night as I lay in bed, I wondered about a black cat that died a horrible death at midnight on Halloween. I thought about superstition and religion. I thought about Satan. I asked myself if Evil was real. The neighbors porch light was on, casting a shadow on the far wall of my room. As I was pondering these points a cat walked across the fence between me and my neighbors house. He cast a seven foot tall shadow of a black cat on the wall in my room. My blood ran cold, I could hear my heart beating. For a split second it wasn't a simple shadow, it was a demon from Hell. Scared the life out of me. I had never been terified before this night. A minute later I told myself not to be such a little girl. After all it was only a stupid cat. I laughed it off and went to sleep.

The next day, November second, is the day the Mexicans call El Dio Del Muerto (Day of the Dead). I decided to walk over to Chriss's house and tell him my cat story. I walked through the gulley where we had buried the Bastard. The cross was still there, but , the Bastard was gone. An empty hole marked Bastard was all that remained. Part of me knows that a coyote dug him up. But part of me knows it was him on the fence between me and my neighbors house that night. Checking up on me, watching me, waiting for me. Who knows, maybe he's waiting for you too? Pleasant dreams children.
Mahalo,
Al

[ Edited by: Alnshely 2006-10-11 15:36 ]

[ Edited by: Alnshely 2008-10-24 16:03 ]

WONderful story, Al. I love best the gravestone marked simply "Bastard"!

Great story Al.

Great story Al!

I don't know what gave me more chills... Bastard coming out of the grave or the image of Mother Superiors glare from behind that black and grey habit.

With my "fond" memories of Catholic school, it's definitely the Penguin!

Cheers! :drink:

Skeeereeee!

I'm a cat lover, but the first to admit that they ARE wierd, especially black cats.

I had a mean black cat named Petula who liked to nap in the street. She had some kind of uncanny sense when to clear out at the last second before she got run over. But a few days after she gave birth to kittens she was napping in the street and was fatally hit. See what happens to bad mothers who don't stay home with their kids!

My grandparents had a creepy picture of a heart wrapped in thorns with blood oozing out of it. It freaked me out as a kid, but now I get it, sort of. I get it but I can't explain it. As the nuns would say, "it's a mystery".

Al, that story was sick. Really sick disgusting and repulsive, you should be ashamed of yourself for telling it.

Please post some more :)

Al, you spin a mean yarn my freind. The Christian religion (Catholicism in particular) has provided man with an endless source of horror & brutality for centuries. The only upside (to an atheist, at least) is the fuel for great art and literature. The Hieronymus Bosch painting in your post for instance has always been one of my favourites. Salvador Dali is probably my all time fave painter and I look at at his work and have to ask myself what would it be like without his Catholic upbringing and its subsequent influence and would he even have painted at all. Well gotta go now, its time to get back to worshiping those false idols & craven images that I'm so wickedly fond of.

[ Edited by: Shipwreckjoey on 2003-10-18 18:47 ]

[ Edited by: Shipwreckjoey on 2003-10-18 18:54 ]

I grew up Catholic so I can relate to the whole repressed guilt thing. A nice by-product of this is Catholic women tend to be super freaky nymphomaniacs! Anyways, when I 12, one of our cats met his demise from Mr. Goodyear. So I bury him in our cow pasture on a cold and rainy overcast day. About a month later for some unexplained reason I decide to dig him up. As I remove the last bit of dirt I see maggots crawling out of my cats mouth. To this day I still have a vivid picture of this in my mind. The point of this story, I guess i'm a freak.

I think I have this one figured out. The nun did it, in the driveway, with the hairpin! (There wasn't a butler in this story was there?) Hey wait a minute. How did you know it was an accident? How do we know that the old lady didn't PUT that Bastards head in the door...HOW DO WE KNOW YOU DIDN"T DO IT?!

I think someone spiked the King's Tang tonight -- he's doubled his post count just in the last few hours!

Good to see you here, Kuk.

I'll add to Al's great story with my own true-life experience.

My very first regular paying job was working in a cemetary over the summer, doing things like cutting grass and setting sprinkler heads to water the lawn. One week the guy who regularly dug the graves (by hand, with a shovel) went on vacation, and for that week, that task fell to myself and one other employee - both of us around 16 years old at the time.

We had a burial request, in the older part of the cemetary, which was perhaps 100 years old. The caretaker showed us the location for the grave, watched as we started cutting and moving the sod away, then went to attend some meetings held elsewhere.

Me and my co-worker started digging - about 3 feet down, we started hitting large splinters of wood. I started paying closer attention, and soon found some old ornate screws. Knowing that we were in the old part of the cemetary, we knew that we had come across an old grave site. It was very creepy, as the day was windy and overcast. I knelt lower into the grave, and brushing my hands through the dirt I came across a vertebrate and what I think was a quarter-sized piece of skull (with hair still on it)

We stopped digging, and waited for the caretaker to return, to learn what our next step should be. Which ended up being told 'We have a funeral coming two days from now, and we need an empty grave for them' and were instructed to continue digging. We were way behind schedule, and had to rush a bit to finish the job. We encountered many more wood splinters, but fortunately didn't find any more body parts - perhaps because we chose not to look for any. Our job was to dig the grave quickly, not to act as archaelogists.

By the way, I was attending Catholic high school at this time, but the nuns there were generally quite friendly, and had no role whatsoever with the above story.

VErn

I get a creepy image of the Bastard suffering and somehow it makes me thirsty!

Any new Halloween stories for this year?

OK, I'll chime in. One of the houses I grew up in was a very old farmhouse in Grafton, WI. I'm not sure how old the house itself was, but it was associated with the underground railroad during the civil war. I should clarify that it was the estate, not necessarily the house that was that old, but it still dated back quite a ways. In the basement there was a huge square-shaped wooden column that ran through the center of the house that was scribed with names and dates that went back way into the 1800's. Anyway, it was haunted. I know what people think when I say that, but it was true, regardless of what others believe. For some reason it didn't seem so scary when we were there, but looking back now I can't believe we stayed so long. I guess when it's happening your mind makes excuses for what's really going on.

My dad and I were the first people to check out the house before we moved in. I must have been about 9 years old. I remember standing in the hugest kitchen I had ever seen, and all the other rooms connected to the kitchen through a doorway, so there were what seemed like a thousand doors in the room. My dad had walked into a bedroom while I stayed in the kitchen staring at the giant china cabinet. As I gawked at all of the glass and wood work, I wondered about all the people I could hear upstairs and why we had to unlock the front door if there were already people inside. Of course, when I asked my dad about it he just gave me a strange look and didn't say anything. When we finally worked our way upstairs there was not a soul in sight, and my dad said he had heard nothing. I don't know if he really did or not, but I know I heard several people, none of which were there when we walked upstairs.

My mom, you should understand, is a bit high-strung. She would often break down into tears at the sight of mice or bugs which were quite common in an old farm house. One night she almost had a nervous breakdown because our cat had caught and killed a mouse and for some reason had left it in the pantry. During her fit our furnace went out. That was not to uncommon because it was very old and during the Wisconsin winters it ran almost constantly. It made a very specific sound when it stopped running, and my mom went to the basement to reset the pilot light. Within moments she was screaming at the top of her lungs and my sister and I ran downstairs to see what was wrong. I will never forget this: there was a line of dead mice, maybe 12 or so, lined-up on the floor in front of the fuel-oil furnace in a perfect arc. It was not like our cat had left these there because these were lined up perfectly. They were positioned straight as arrows from nose to tail, in a perfect arc as if someone used a protractor to line them up.

I could go on for a long time with stories like this. I should say, though, that there was a certain "feeling" that I associate with that old house; sort of a pull at the bottom of my stomach. It's not a bad feeling at all, it's just something I learned would let me know when "someone" was around. To this day I occasionally have that same feeling. It's not very often, but it does happen. I kid with my wife and call it the "farmhouse feeling".

I can tell you with a straight face, because I'm completely serious, that I felt it more than once at the Mai Kai on Saturday night.

The house isn't there anymore. The city bought the property and the fire department used the house for practice. Now it's a parking lot for an industrial park. When I found this out I cried like a baby. My sister and I visit sometimes and talk about all the fun and strange times we had there.

Hope that wasn't too long!

WOW! AlnShely?
Those are entertaining stories.

Maybe not funny to some but a little scary to us parents. Last year my son and his best buddy decided they would "Trick or Treat" in their speedos. 14 years old. At first it was very funny as some of our neighbors asked them where they would put their candy. They both decided they would walk a little further just inside our tract of homes and then come back. Well, they didn't come back. We thought Oh shit, some wierdo kidnapped them. We called a few of their friends and every time, the friends would say, "They just left". They didn't take their cell phones as there was no place to put them. Finally one of my daughter's friends arrives at our house and says she saw 2 boys, in speedos walking by the side of the road. I asked, where, in which direction were they walking? I dash down in the car and retrieve these cold, near naked boys from the side of the road. I asked them if they are crazy. They said people were calling them bad names and throwing eggs at them. I guess it could be a lesson in psychology. Jeez, watch your kids closely.

GROG want to hear more stories about the farmhouse, Fink.

Now, for a story that'll make yer balls shrink ta' the size a raisins................Let's hear 'em.

The Haunted Farmhouse
Part 1

My brother lived in a haunted farmhouse for three years. My whole family can identify with anybody who's been through that kind of weirdness, cripes, we never believed in ghosts until that dang house.

My brother was a newly married young dude with a wife and a little 1 year old girl. He needed to rent a place and found the cheapest place in all of St. Catharines, Ontario Canada to be this farmhouse way out in the middle of nowhere. The only thing for miles around was an old barn next door. The house didn't look like other farmhouses, which usually look cozy and prosperous. This looked grey and cold. It was a two story job that had been done over in the early '70s with that hard rock-like exterior panelling. It had a huge pear tree out front that he'd get buckets of pears from and we'd have pear pie all summer.

But something was wrong from the very first day.

The real estate guy wanted my brother to see the place really fast, right away at lunch if possible. Mark (my bro) asked his friend Ken if he wanted to come out with him to visit the place. He was excited about seeing it, and wanted to explore with Ken. A farmhouse just sounded too cool.

The three of them got out there at about 12:30 that day. The place was really impressive to a young father, there was a cornfield out back (a Cornfield! Superb!) and tons of room. Why was it such a low price? my brother asked.

"Oh, it's just hard to rent these places. You wanna sign we can get you in here next week." he smiled.

At that moment, Ken found the root cellar. Almost all Canadian houses have root cellers, just like the one they hide out in "Wizard of Oz" when the big cyclone comes their way. They used to stack the coal down there for the furnaces. Ken found this little door open, and walked in. There wasn't an electric light anywhere, but there was some dim sunlight coming through some small slit-windows around the edge of the room. It was dusty and damp down there, but Ken loved the idea of finding some kind of old chest or maybe some photos or something in a corner. He looked around, it was fun.

Then the door closed. Wham.

At first Ken thought Mark had closed it on him as a joke. He walked up to the door and pushed on it. It wouldn't open. He put his shoulder up to it and pushed hard. It wouldn't budge. Not a bit.

Now Ken is a big guy, six-four, muscles, a big afro of bright red hair and a thick red mustache. He hit the door again and it didn't even creak. Then he tried fooling around with the handle, but there was no catch on the inside, which was weird because that's usually where they are, y'know? He looked at the door again, then he felt something behind him. Whatever it was, just the feeling of it was so scary he couldn't look around but just started yelling as loud as he could.

"Get me the F*** OUT OF HERE!" he screamed.

Mark and the real estate guy heard him, they came up to the door and tried to open it too. No dice. They yelled back and forth at each other, Mark yelling at him to look around for a bolt that had to be holding the door closed, because they couldn't find anything outside. Ken, inside, could feel something behind him, and it was getting closer. His hands were all sweaty now, he was shivering with cold, and he kept pushing and feeling around the inside, screaming at my brother to get an ax and rip the damn door down right NOW!

Then the door opened. Real slow, creeeeak. Nobody was pushing it.

Ken RAN OUT. "What the F*** are you guys DOING!" he yelled.

"What do you mean, we aren't doing anything. What are you talking about?" Mark said. Ken was standing on the other side of the yard now, away from the cellar, but they could see he was pale and shivering.

They all looked at the door. There was no catch or bolt of any kind on either side. It just opened and closed like a garden gate.

My brother, for that matter nobody even then realized that place was haunted by a very angry ghost. He rented the place.

That's where the real trouble started.

JT it's a good thing I don't have any balls or I would be in trouble! By the way who is Alnshely???????

We'll return to the Haunted Farmhouse shortly, I'm sure. And it's a great story so far. I just wanted to mention that that cat story was a really good story, and one of the saddest tales I ever read. I started tearing up while I was reading it. For some reason, out of all the animals in the world, it's the little cats that I love the most, and I am always worrying about these three cats that live in the alley behind my building--sounds silly, I know, but I started feeding them at one point, and helped get them fixed a few years back...

Anyway, I really feel sorry for that Bastard cat, because even though he probably was a Bastard, he was probably a pretty decent cat in many ways, and I'm glad he was given a respectful burial.

The Haunted Farmhouse
Part 2

I know these stories sound like a bad Wes Craven movie, but I swear to all the Gods of Tiki that every single thing I’m describing actually happened to either me or my family or our friends.

The odd thing was, we never once thought that farmhouse was haunted. It never occurred to anybody. We all had experiences but we never talked about them because we didn’t want people to think we were crazy. The next morning in the bright daylight it was hard to believe they had happened, even to ourselves. You try to forget it, not explain it. We never connected the dots. So nobody knew what had happened to each other until years later, when Wendy, my brother’s wife, started talking at a party about the house and it all came out.

Like Rod in the kitchen.

Rod was my brother’s best friend in high school, but he was a bit of a bum these days. He was always jumping from job to job, with long months of unemployment between. He was staying at the farmhouse for the first summer they were there, and seemed to have no intention of leaving. Rod was kind of skanky looking, long greasy hair, skinny, short, with a Danny Devito type of face, but in his early 20’s. Can you see this guy? Correct, totally unemployable.

Rod was washing dishes in the kitchen for a change, nobody knows why. And he heard the screen door open behind him. Wendy was outside and she had apparently come back into the house.

“Hey, Wendy, wanna dry?” he asked. There was no answer, but he heard steps and one of the kitchen chairs moved a bit, like somebody was brushing by. The steps, he noticed, were hesitant. They stopped, then came closer.

Stopped again, then closer. Rod didn’t think anything of it. His arms were dripping wet with soapy water, and he was washing down a pan. It was messy work.

The footsteps came closer, then stopped again. They were right behind him. He could feel the person breathing. It was then that he got a funny feeling. Whoever was behind him wasn’t Wendy. He stopped washing, but didn’t want to turn around. The water was hot, but he started feeling cold. Then he heard a rustle behind him, the feet shuffled a bit…

and a hand came up, and rested on his shoulder. He could just see it out of the corner of his eye. Rod had to look around now.

He turned around. Nobody was there.

Rod just stood there with his mouth open, feeling really cold, goosebumps crawling up his arms. Then he jumped up, ran out the front door, yelling “WENDY! WENDY!” She was at the back, sorting out some boxes.

“What?” she yelled back.

But Rod stood there, thinking. What the…? He didn’t tell her then. Wendy always remembered Rod running out of the house, but it wasn’t until years later he told her what had really happened.

And by then everybody had a story. The strangest, and what seemed to really turn that farmhouse into a frightening place, was what happened to my niece, who was just a baby then...

What?!!What happened your niece? GROG need to know!!!

I'll tell ya tonight, GROG. Tell Ernie to bring you along in the trunk.

Everybody else has to wait. This stuff brings up a lot of scary memories, it's really hard to write cause I get all creeped out thinking about it.

tarzan say don't scare Grog, not pretty. tarzan get goose bumps.

I wanna hear GROG SCREAM REAL LOUD!

I used to work nights cleaning a machine shop. It was a huge 100,000 square foot place with lots of noises. Air hoses and whatever. You'd hear a loud sound here and there and not think much of it. But then you'd hear specific sounds. Someone throwing the metal parts in a metal bin in that corner of the shop. One after another. You'd not think much of it, except it was 1AM. You'd walk that way and get to the aisle next to it and it would stop. The alarm would go off by itself every now and then. Strange noises all the time. You'd try to write it off as just normal, but, way too often it was not. It was loud and regualr like a hammer on steel. You'd walk way across the shop to see what was messed up and it would stop before you got there and there's nothing there but large bins of metal parts.

My pattern for cleaning the place was very regular. And the same things tended to happen pretty regualrly too. I'd be pushing the large dust mop along at this point and see a guy in a blue shirt out of the corner of my eye and look up and see noone. Not every night, but regularly. I worked alone.

These machines leaked lots of stuff, so the job meant throwing lots of kitty litter around and sweeping it up. One night I was sweeping around this one machine and I hear someone walking up. You can't mistake footsteps in kitty litter. They said "Hey" and I turned around, expecting to see my boss checking in on me. There was no one there. That kind of freaked me out. But I put it behind me and kept working. I had worked my way around to the other side of this machine and again I hear someone walk up through the kitty litter and this time, loudly say "Hey!" I turned. No one there. I put the broom down and walked out. I got out to the car and thought, how will I tell my boss this? I can't. I relaxed a bit and went back in to work.

A bit later a girl came in to help by cleaning the front offices. She had done my job before me. I asked her why she stopped and she told me she refused to go into that shop. She saw and heard all sorts of things and said she'd never work in the machine shop again.

That's a great story, Swank...really creepy!

You're not just funning us with that?

Me LOVES a good ghost story around Halloween!

FinkDaddy -- I had the same feeling a couple of times at the Mai Kai...especially at 3 in the morning all alone in the bathroom area. At the time I thought, wow my imagination is getting away from me...I'm tired...probably the case. :)... but maybe not. Doesn't affect my appreciation of the Mai Kai in any way though.

Cammo -- Thanks so much for sharing the stories. I would LOVE to hear more when you're up to it. You've peaked my curiosity, especially about your niece. Wow!

[ Edited by: Coco Loco 2006-10-13 13:44 ]

The Haunted Farmhouse
Part 3

When Sara was just a year old she was all over that farmhouse. It was a fun place for a kid to be. It was fun for all of us, we had an Olympics party there every summer where all our friends came to roast corn, burn burgers, guzzle beer and take part in a bunch of crazy sport events we invented for them, like the Toilet Seat Toss or the Long Jump Carrying an Egg In Your Mouth. We’d judge, running around with clipboards. It was a blast actually. Maybe that’s why we never thought of a ghost being there, it was a happy place despite the oddball stuff that kept happening.

We would find scissors everywhere. They were our own scissors, but they seemed to never be where we left them, next to the postage stamps. They’d be on top of a table, hidden next to some dishes, in the bathroom. Nobody ever remembered putting them there. Knives, too. I found a knife in a planter once, a steak knife. They had been looking for it, it was part of a set. Sara wasn’t doing it, she didn’t like knives and never played with them. It got to the point where if you wanted a pair of scissors, you just started looking all over the place first, not in the scissor drawer. They never thought about it, it was just bothersome, and it was hard enough dealing with bringing up a baby in a big old farmhouse. Who thinks twice about this stuff? Other things happened, too.

Like the stones. It wasn’t scary, just really strange.

One day Mark found his car was making a horrible steel rattling sound every time he came to a stop. It never made the sound when he was driving at fast speeds, just when starting and stopping. He looked everywhere under the car and couldn’t find the problem. It drove him nuts. He took it to a mechanic and the guy listened while he was driving real slow. Then the mechanic took the hubcaps off and bingo, they were filled with stones. All the hubcaps had stones in them. A lot of stones. The mechanic wondered how somebody had done it; replaced the smooth hubcaps without having all the stones fall out as they punched it back in. It was kind of a complicated prank, and real noisy to do.

Some kid having fun, my brother thought at the time. The mechanic didn’t even charge him, they laughed about it and he drove back home.

But all the way home he kept thinking, we live miles from anybody in the country. Who could have done it? They had never seen any kids anywhere. And it had happened when he had come home for lunch one day, the car had been in the driveway for about 10 minutes tops. He had a bite, and had to go back to work right away. The rattling had started then. And the kitchen window looked out on the car. Nobody could have done it without him seeing them. The stones were the exact same ones they had in their driveway, they hadn’t been put in when he was in the city. Rod hadn’t even home that day, neither was Wendy. He had been alone.

It was puzzling, but he never thought it was unexplainable. They laughed it off. He never once thought anything unnatural was happening.

Until later. With that business about his daughter.

Cammo told GROG the story about the neice and it's a good one. GROG only scream like a girl once during the story.

On 2006-10-16 00:20, GROG wrote:
Cammo told GROG the story about the neice and it's a good one. GROG only scream like a girl once during the story.

Well???? What happened with the neice? Coco Loco waiting to hear.

I told GROG the neice story in person at the Crazy Al-a-Go-Go Show. (He threatened to clobber me if I didn't spill.)

Don't worry, I'll post it soon. I'll tell ya in advance, get a nice shot of aged whiskey ready, yer gonna need it about halfway through this one. Again, it sounds like a bad movie, but I swear it all happened exactly like I tell it.

[ Edited by: Cammo 2006-10-16 11:53 ]

GROG's only ghost story:

GROG was working at a small commercial studio in Texas, and had only been working there a short time. The 3 animators worked upstairs and there was a fairly long stair/hallway that you had to walk up to get up there.You could ALWAYS hear when somebody was coming up the stairs. GROG's desk was just around the corner, so GROG would always look up to see who came up the stairs when GROG heard the footsteps reach the top.One day, GROG is working upstairs and hears footsteps coming up the stairs, so GROG looks up, and nobody comes around the corner.GROG gets curious and gets up from desk and walks around the corner, and there is nobody on the stairs.GROG goes downstairs and finds the other animators busy helping out downstairs. Everybody was pretty busy, so it seemed obvious that none of them had come up the stairs.GROG jokingly asks, "Hey, do you guys have a ghost here?" The other employees look up with a funny look on their faces and say, "Why do you ask?" GROG tells them about hearing footsteps coming up the stairs and nobody being there.They tell GROG that a number of strange things had happened over the years. The most convincing thing was when one of the employees had worked really late one night. The last person to leave studio has to go around the whole studio and turn off all the lights in every room and make sure nobody else is in the studio before they lock up, and this person did that. After he locks the doors he goes and gets in his car parked out in front of the studio and starts it.While he is sitting there letting the engine warm-up, suddenly one of the lights comes on in one of the back offices. He had been through the whole building, so he knew there was nobody in the studio, so he just puts the car in reverse and heads home. He wasn't about to go back inside.

Oh Cammo! Coco Loco is waiting... :D Even if the story isn't true, it's a great one!

On 2006-10-16 11:52, Cammo wrote:
I told GROG the neice story in person at the Crazy Al-a-Go-Go Show. (He threatened to clobber me if I didn't spill.)

Don't worry, I'll post it soon. I'll tell ya in advance, get a nice shot of aged whiskey ready, yer gonna need it about halfway through this one. Again, it sounds like a bad movie, but I swear it all happened exactly like I tell it.

[ Edited by: Cammo 2006-10-16 11:53 ]

Ready with a shotglass of the good stuff?

The Haunted Farmhouse
Part 4

Sara’s favorite thing to do in the farmhouse when she was really young was to hide in the cupboards. That old kitchen was solid cupboards, most of them empty. She’d hide behind the pots and pans at first, then she’d start climbing into the higher shelves, using the lower ones as a stepladder. Sometimes Wendy would find her way up in the top shelf next to the ceiling, sitting there quietly for a half hour and then opening the door. Yikes! It wouldn’t scare Wendy, just startle her. She never thought twice about it. They’d find Sara all over that kitchen, you’d never know where she was hiding.

My brother used to brag about it at work, even. He said she was the best mountain climber in St. Catharines. I found her more than once inside the top shelf. It was entertaining. We never seemed to think it was dangerous, but it sure looks that way now. She seemed to know what she was doing, y’know?

The only slight problem was that nobody ever really saw her climbing, see. We’d just find her there.

A few years went by, some strange incidents happened but nobody thought anything about them. Wendy knew that she didn’t like the cellar, though. They never stored anything down there, it had no lights and it was cold as heck. She finally decided they needed locks for the inside and outside entrances to the cellar, supposedly to keep Sara from going down there but really because she felt uncomfortable about it. Hearing about that whole thing with Ken still bugged her.

As Sara had grown up a bit she had slowly stopped hiding in the cupboards. We had forgotten all about it.

One day Wendy had made a batch of her classic Trail Mix Cookies. These were big yummy oatmeal & nut cookies made especially to take to work. They were great with coffee. After cooling them down, she stuffed the cookie jar with them, got on a chair and put it on the highest shelf, over the sink. She didn’t want Sara getting any, they were just for hubby Mark and the folks at work.

Wendy went into the next room for a while, lost track of where Sara was, then came into the kitchen a few minutes later.

Sara was sitting on the floor eating cookies.

Wendy looked up at the jar on the shelf. She got on the chair again and took the jar down. Yup, a lot of them were gone. There was Sara eating them on the floor. Something was wrong, she felt scared a bit for the very first time.

“Um, Sara, can I have a cookie?” she asked.
“Ya mommy.”
She took one of Sara’s cookies, munching it. “Where did you get the cookies?” she asked, trying to keep her voice calm.
“The lady wit lon hair gimme them.” Sara said, still chowing on cookies.

What had she said? Now Wendy started feeling really uneasy. She looked up at where the cookie jar had been. It was way up, had no shelves under it to climb on, and Wendy couldn’t even reach it without the chair. Sara couldn’t have used the chair anyway, she was too short. Wendy had to stretch to reach the jar. And the jar was heavy, really heavy. It was impossible for Sara to get it down.

What had Sara said?

“The lady with the long hair gave me them.”

Wendy looked around. The back door was locked. She was really scared now.

“Where did the lady come from?”

Sara smiled, “Where she always comes from, mommy. Through the wall.” And Sara pointed. Wendy followed where she was pointing to, but it wasn’t to the wall.

She was pointing to the locked cellar door.

Wendy FREAKED. She picked Sara up, took her outside and stood there for a long time, trying to warm up. She asked Sara to tell her all about the Lady with the Long Hair, but Sara knew something was up and wouldn’t talk. Sara promised to tell Wendy the next time she came through the wall, though.

Wendy had finally realized. Her basic, primal mothering instincts had plowed through, ignoring everything but the truth. We were really dumb back then, but we weren’t brain damaged. She understood everything in a flash, the cupboards, the cookies, the cellar, the knives.

Something else was in the house with them. Something dangerous.

It was female.

And it liked her child.

And here’s something weird – Wendy had really long hair. She had straw-blonde long hippie hair that she was really proud of. It went all the way down past the small of her back. If this other lady was ‘the Lady with the Long Hair”, how long was IT?

Even then, Wendy didn’t say anything to her friends. She did tell Mark, and he didn’t like it either. Wendy never went into that kitchen alone again. And she never got near the cellar door that was right next to the cupboards they had kept finding Sara in. And she started looking for a new place to live in the next day.

You see, the thing was smart. It had never done anything directly to Wendy, and very little to Mark. It knew that Wendy would take Sara away if she ever suspected.

Wendy knew now, and they were planning to leave. That seemed to make it angry. The worst stuff happened in the last few months.

tarzan feel goose bumps low guttural sounds coming out

must not scream like girl

That is some good stuff

Gosh Cammo, whata story!
Has a teenager we lived in a very old fashioned farm house that still had all it's barns, chicken coops, stone round milk cooler building, and a little one room house that was a replica of the main house. We kids took that house over and made it our club house. One very warm summers night we begged to sleep out in the tiny house. There was about 6 of us spending the night and we had a great time eating snacks, drinking sodas, and playing cards. No lights in the place, but we had flashlights. Everything was very normal. We finally fell asleep somewhere in the wee hours. I woke up to the sound of one of my friends kinda whimpering in his sleep. He was all sweaty and had the most frightened look on his face. I was about to poke him and tell him to knock it off, when I heard the noise at one of the windows. Sounded just like someone was trying to pry it open from the outside, but I couldn't see anyone. I was scared cause I worried that whatever was out there would try the door next, and we didn't have a lock on the door. I woke everybody up and we all kinda huddled in the middle of the room, barely breathing as we listened to the sounds at the window first, and then as I had feared...steps on the old porch leading to the front door. I absolutely freaked out as did everyone else. We all jumped up started screaming for my parents who were in the main house across the compound. We must have been running around like a bunch of trapped rats or something I don't really remember cause I was so frightened. The last thing I remember is this crack like sound in my head, and brief blinding white light and then coming to, several minutes later. From what I was told, I tripped over my night gown ( while running around, I guess) and fell cracking my forehead on a piece of old farm equipment in the corner of the room.
I'm sure any of you who have ever had a head or face wound know, you bleed like crazy. I was soaked down my face and night gown. The other kids burst out of the little house, and left me laying there! They Got my parents and ran back to find me now looking like I had been dragged part way across the compound. I had grass stains running down the length of my night gown.
Although my parents made light of this at the time.(said one of the others must have dragged me part way.) We never got to sleep outside or get out of their sight ever again while on the property. Many years later my mom told me she was really scared.And had reported it to the sheriff.
Was it a ghost or crazed person, we'll never know.

Fast forward about a 10 years and my husband and I rent a real nice farm house way the heck out several villages away from the nearest town where work can be found. ( unless you're a farmer)
The house had real nice carved wood work and the most beautiful hand carved staircase that I have ever seen for a once working Midwest farm house.The living room could be closed off by a closing two sets of pocket doors. We loved all the hand crafted trims and ideas that were built into the house. Everything except for the upstairs area.
Upstairs was always cold, even in the summer which is very unusual for a farm house. Nobody like to stay in the guest rooms although they looked quite normal and nice. No one felt threatened, just uneasy. At night we would hear strumming of an instrument. We weren't sure what kind, but it didn't sound like a guitar. very calming and relaxing sound though. We just thought it was nice and learned to live with it and even enjoy the music. We alway had one step on the stairs that everyone tripped on and where knew visitors would say what is that glow on the step? It would last a few seconds then fade away. Not in any big hurry, just slowly fade to black. One day we got the notion to see if we could find any relics inside the stair case. We lifted up a step...nothing, pried off the bench seat top carved into the foot of the stairs...nothing. Then I pulled up the cap off the post at the bottom of the stairs. I looked down with a flashlight and saw a scrap of news print. We pulled it out and although very crumbly and yellowed, you could still clearly read the obituary notice. It was of a farmer who had died in a fire in one of the barns that used to stand on the property. We thought whoa! this is wild! We kept the clipping, but things were not to be the same after that. The glow disappeared, the music stopped and the house didn't "feel" right anymore.
We had a fella renting out one of the rooms from us at the time and his bedroom had a door that lead to the attic. He started hearing strange sound up there. We told him he was probably just hearing mice or maybe even bats had found their way in. The noises continued to get louder as the nights wore on. Now they were scaring the dog and he'd cry when he heard them. Then one night after a large party some people stay the night due to the long drive back to town. The dog was laying on the floor, next to my brother who was asleep on the sofa. Without any warning we all at once heard this horrible KA BOOM! the dog jumped on top of my brother knocking him onto the floor. We all then ran out into the halls checking to see what had happened. Nobody knew... The guy with the attic door in his room swore the noise came from up there in the attic. None of us would look. I said right then that tomorrow I would put the news clipping back where I had found it. We stood around talking a bit more, finally going to sleep.
Ten next morning my brother was pounding on our door yelling to wake up and come outside. We dressed and went out to the driveway. There was all our cars parked side by side with bricks laying all over the drive and in between the cars. we all looked up and the chimney on the house was blown to bits! Not a single brick had hit the cars although many fell between the cars. I put back the clipping that very day. Things returned to normal ( for the farm) the music, the glow, everything.. We stayed on a few more months, but sadly had to move closer to town.
not so much scarry as just strange.

That's really weird, Exotica, because a lot of your story is similar to what happened next at our farmhouse!

The violence, the taboo broken, the dog, etc. It's like ghosts go to a big Ghost University and all learn the same way how to haunt. They all have the same teacher, and go home with the same course notes.

Anyway, I know nobody believes this stuff, if it doesn't happen right in front of you its just too bizarre to accept.

Great stories!! I love hearing the stories. I appreciate your sharing. Keep em coming!

Don't know what it is, but I am absolutely addicted to ghost stories in the month of October. Just finished watching Ghost Hunters in Tombstone AZ last night. Fascinating.

[ Edited by: coco loco 2006-10-21 10:58 ]

Sit back kids. This is a long post. Turn the lights down, way down. Oops! First get a glass of your favorite, and one for the middle section of the story, cause you’re gonna need it this time for real.

The Haunted Farmhouse
Part 5

Way way later, years later when we had talked over the farmhouse stories and pieced together what had seemed to happen, I got really interested in True Ghost Story books. There’s a great one, let me get it down off the shelf – it’s called;

“I Never Believed in Ghosts Until…” by the Editors of USA Weekend, it’s assembled from their annual poll of reader’s true ghost stories. They have all kinds of rules to submitting a true story, like it must be backed up and witnessed by at least 2 people not related to you, etc. It’s an interesting book, to say the least. Scary as heck. Sincere. Many of the experiences were very similar to what we went through.

Another good one is –

“The Ghost Book” by Charles Lindley, Viscount Halifax, from 1936. This is the original classic true ghost story volume. Very very scary. A great Halloween read. He established the same rules as the USA book; the ghost must be witnessed by more than one person, names signed, dates given…

But the point is, in neither book, or any other I’ve ever read, did anything nearly as violent happen as what happened that night at the farmhouse. It was off the scale in destruction. I still can’t believe it happened, but Mark and Wendy told me about it and refused to say anything again, it was just too frightening to discuss.

That had found a new place to live that day, and had been making plans to move very soon. They really wanted to get out of that farmhouse, the new apartment was nice and close to work. Lots of kids in the area. Close to grandma, even. And cheap, but not too cheap, y’know?

Rod had acquired a dog. A fully grown Afghan, one of those tall skinny dogs that look like Greyhounds but has long hair. Rod had finally left for parts unknown, but the dog had stayed. It was always outside next to the garage. It was really mild mannered, just laying around all day and chasing a few rabbits for exercise. Three square meals.

That friggin dog had a great life.

It was a cold clear night. Mark and Wendy were snuggled in bed up on the second floor. Sara was in her room next door. Everybody had down covers over them, all fluffed up and toasty warm. Down covers are a necessity in a farmhouse, it can dang cold. And they make for a pretty fun bed, y’know?

Wendy woke up suddenly. She had been asleep one second and fully awake the next. She sat up in bed, listening. What had she heard? Somebody walking around downstairs, footsteps shuffling around, something moving. She felt it in her stomach at the same time, something was wrong. It was a burglar. It must be, she could hear it distinctly.

“MARK! Wake up!” she hissed.
He rolled over and decided to snore some more.
“Mark! I’m not kidding!” She shook him awake, “There’s a burglar downstairs!”
She listened again, the noise had stopped. Had the burglar heard them?
“There’s nobody downstairs.” Mark sniffed.
“There IS!” Wendy turned around, put her feet up against him and pushed him to the edge.
“Hey!”
“Get up! Get down there! Our house is being burglarized! Somebody’s going to steal stuff an kill us!”

Mark was awake now too. They both listened, but there was no sound.
“Are you sure?” he asked.
They both listened again. Wendy shoved him some more, and his legs swung out onto the floor.
“Okay, okay.” He stood up, totally naked. It was cold.
“Where’s my shirt?”
“Who cares! Get a weapon and defend us!”
Mark looked around the room. The full moon outside gave him a little light, but he already knew what was in the room. Every wall was a book shelf, made from stacking wood slats on top of bricks, and fixed to the wall with little cup hooks. Hundreds of books.
“We don’t have a weapon, what am I supposed to do, throw the Oxford Unabridged at him?”
“Do something!”
Mark took a few steps. The hall outside looked down on the living room area if you leaned over a bit. Nobody seemed to be down there. A broom was leaning against the wall, Mark picked it up. He put the whisk part down by his privates, and held the stick out like a sword. It looked stupid. Even half asleep, he knew it looked stupid. He took a few steps to the stairway. Wendy’s head appeared from the doorway behind, watching him. Cripes, it was cold!

They heard the screen door opening downstairs. Somebody was leaving the house. Both of them ran back into the bedroom and looked outside. A glassed-in porch projected from the house below and to the left of them, they could see it clearly in the moonlight, it’s flimsy aluminum glass-and-screen door opening right underneath them. Nobody had come out though.

The door closed just like somebody was there closing it. The Afghan dog was about 15 feet away, chained to a tree next to the garage. He was awake too, standing up at he end of his chain, watching the door.

He started to growl, then bark loudly. He never barked, not even at strangers.

The door opened again, slowly. Creeeeeaaaak. The dog went crazy. It was barking viciously, pulling at the chain, trying to get at the thing opening the door. The dog was howling, screaming now, people probably heard it miles away. Mark and Wendy were holding onto each other, shaking with fear. The door closed again.

Wham!

Then it opened, slowly, but the dog was barking too loud for them to hear it open now.

Slam. It closed.

Wendy managed to look up at the tree the dog was tied to. The leaves weren’t moving. There was no wind.

The door opened this time with a jerk, like it was being kicked open. Bam! It hit the side of the porch.

Then BAM it slammed closed.

The dog had suddenly stopped barking. Now it went back to hide behind the tree, whimpering. It was totally silent outside except for the door.

The door opened so hard it seemed somebody had hit it with a baseball bat. BAM! Wendy could hear the glass in the frame cracking slightly this time. Then it closed, just as fast, Crash! Some of its glass split more, a big crack ran around the edges now.

Again, pause, and SLAM! All the glass shattered this time, they could see the splinters falling down the porch steps.

It opened again, crashing against the side of the porch. It slammed so hard, Wendy could feel it hit the house, the floor vibrating slightly each time. Even the porch glass was cracking now.

SLAM! It closed again. The dog was whining in fear, it sounded sickening. All the glass in the porch was cracking, they could see and feel the whole frame shaking each time it opened and closed. BAM! BAM! BAM!

It was going so fast now it was hard to follow, the violence was incredible. The whole house shook. Glass was falling all over. Every single window downstairs had cracked now, the ones closest to the door had been completely shattered, but still it went on, BAM! CRASH! BAM! More glass smashed, the grass outside was filled with big cracked pieces of it shining in pools of moonlight.

It went on, smashing every window in the porch, opening, closing like it had a life of its own. The door from the fifth ring of hell. Mark and Wendy were hanging into each other so hard it hurt. Mark was shaking in spasms, from cold and fright. Still, the door kept smashing, the house jerking each time.

Then it stopped. Everybody waited to see if it was going to start again, or if they heard footsteps below, footsteps coming up the stairs. No, nothing. They listened more, nobody moved.

Then the dog walked out from behind the tree and howled, a long, thin, quiet howl with its head pointing right at the moon.

Wooooooooooouuuuuw. Wuu, wuuu, WOOOOOOOOooooouuw.

It was then they remembered to take a breath.

I won’t tell you what they said next, it ain’t fit to print, but they checked on Sara (still asleep, hadn’t heard a thing), finally went to bed and got to sleep hours later.

In the morning they both went downstairs together. It was all real. This wasn’t like the first Star Trek episode where nothing is real to Captain Pike. Nope. Glass was everywhere, they couldn’t walk near the windows. It took days to clean up, and a lot of money. Almost every window downstairs had been cracked, every window in the porch was shattered and gone. They stood around, having a real hard time believing it had happened. Wendy kept pointing out that there was no wind that night.

Mark went over to the screen door. It was bent at every edge, twisted so badly it couldn’t close correctly anymore.

“That isn’t the point, Wendy,” he said, “watch.” And he closed the door, pushing it as hard as he could with his hand. The whole door was flimsy, though, without any glass in it there was too much wind resistance and too little weight for it to even move fast. The door just swung a few feet, stopped, and hung there, swaying in the slight breeze. It was so light, it would just move a few feet and stop. No matter how hard it was pushed.

It couldn’t slam. It wasn’t a big oaken door, just a thin aluminum frame on light hinges. It was impossible to slam that door closed.

A week to get the windows back, and they just told everyone there had been a storm. Sara was moved into their room most nights. I had no idea anything had happened, nobody did. When they had a final going-away party two weeks later it was a lot of fun. They were happy to get away for their own reasons, we were all happy to celebrate the good times we had over the last three years. A lot of people came to the party, it lasted late.

Lottsa fun.

It was what happened after the party, late that night, that wasn’t any fun at all. I think it was the last strange thing that happened in the farmhouse. It was the only time the ghost attacked anybody directly.

I know, ‘cause it happened to me.

I can't wait for the next installment
Mahalo,
Al

Oh, c'mon...

I have no fingernails left, and can't eat my dinner I'm so anxious. I will just sit here staring at the monitor waiting for the next part of your story...

:D I'm awaiting!!!!

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.

...you're killin' me with these installments!