November 5, 2006

Inside the Magic

When I was a kid, I was fascinated with Houdini, like many kids are. I was fascinated both by his love of sleight of hand and escape ... as I was with his fascination with disproving charlatans who claimed they could do "real" magics. So, for years, I practiced escaping ropes and eventually moved on to attempting to escape from handcuffs.

Of course, at six, your parents evidently don't feel that real handcuffs are a "toy" and therefore should not be given to children. Hmph. I tried to explain that it wasn't a toy, it was a PROP and I desperately needed it for my burgeoning career as a young Houdini (but not David Copperfield ... for some reason, I always despised Copperfield).

I got plastic handcuffs with my sheriff's outfit. Unfortunately, escaping plastic handcuffs simply takes a flick of the wrist ... then the plastic chain holding the cuffs together and you're back to not having any handcuffs to practice with again.

An unimpressive trick at best.

Years later, my mother decided that I should enroll every summer in enrichment classes sponsored by the local gifted and talented program. I took a drawing class, a class in playing Dungeons & Dragons ... and a class in magic.

The instructor was a rather odd looking bald man who made eye for an uncomfortably long time and it wasn't long before most of us would prefer not to look him in the eye at all. This may have been a part of his magic strategy, I don't know.

I enjoyed the class very much, and probably annoyed everyone who would sit still long enough for me to show them a trick. I went to the trick store periodically and stocked up on new equipment ... and eventually I joined a magic club.

I was the youngest person there and I was highly nervous to be hanging out with these adults once a month, but I also loved my Saturday afternoon learning new tricks. I learned how to build a cardboard box prop where I could make some sizable stuff disappear. Every month, someone had to teach the rest of the group a trick, and the month after the cardboard box ... it was my turn. I had found a delightful little card trick with some fun patter and rehearsed and rehearsed and rehearsed. I was just terrified to be doing in front of these adults who'd been doing magic tricks for so long.

The trick involved a special card and I'm fairly certain that while performing the trick, my hand slipped and probably gave away the secret ... but everyone was patient with this obviously nervous kid and they let me get all the way through the trick and through my explanations.

I was mortified. I thought my trick was dumb and lame.

I only attended a few more meetings after that before deciding that maybe magic wasn't my thing after all.

It was several weeks more before I figured out why I lost interest in performing magic ... and when I did figure it out, it was blindingly obvious to me.

When you watch a good magic show, you know you're being duped. It's not the fact that the dude has made a person disappear or sawed a lady in half ... it's the fact that you were not able to see for sure how he did it that fascinates us. I had stepped inside the magic and found that the entire process was now transparent. I am fascinated with the "how'd they do that" ... not with the trick itself. It's a mental challenge ... can this guy beat me or can I figure it out?

As I've grown older, I've found this process of stepping inside the magic is common to other things as well. The short stories and novels I've written are also "transparent" to me ... because I've created everything there. There are no real mysteries to the characters for me because as the writer, it's my job to know why the characters behave as they do. Of course, when I'm deep into writing a story, my characters might surprise me from time to time, but once I'm over the initial surprise, I can see just why they did or said what they did.

And, it's the same with the drawing and animation that I do as well. I can look at someone else's sketches and be utterly amazed. I can be entranced in the way they made lines and shapes and created something wonderful. But when I draw my own characters or scenes, I'm constantly comparing what is on the page or screen to what is in my head ... and I'm never as happy with that interpretation I've committed to paper of the art that I see in my head.

I have a friend, a professional musician, and I offered to do an animation for one of her songs. Today, I showed her the half-finished vector drawing of her motorcycle, with much trepidation on my part. I expected her to note the flaws or the areas for which my vision of her motorcycle just was not coming out the way I'd wanted.

I forgot, you see, that I've stepped inside the magic here again. I can see the might-bes ... my friend is seeing what is there.

Apparently there are all kinds of magics ... art, writing, acting, engineering, medical investigation ... and when we are the actor, then we are seeing the world through the transparent mist of the magic. It's easy to forget that everyone else sees the magic we've created because they're looking at it instead of through it.

So the next time you think that your writing is not touching someone else ... or your art, or your singing, or the millions of things that you do ... remember that it might feel that way because you're looking through it.

You never know the lives you touch in the simplest ways which may have made all the difference in the world.

Posted by Red Monkey at 12:27 PM | Comments (8) | Storytelling: She was, of course, supposed to be sleeping. | TrackBack | Stumble

October 31, 2006

Cue the Wind

Posted by Red Monkey at 5:17 AM | Comments (7) | Storytelling: She was, of course, supposed to be sleeping. | TrackBack | Stumble

October 30, 2006

A Halloween Ghost Story

To get everyone in the mood for Halloween, I'm reposting the four ghost stories I have experience with over the next couple of weeks. These are all true stories, so far as I know. Several of them I have personal experience with; one happened to a guy I worked with as he and I discussed whether or not there was really, truly, a ghost where we worked.

This is the third in the series, "Haunted" being the first. And "The Haunted House" being the second.
And the third being The Graveyard (and there's a second part to that one ... you'll see the link to it at the top of the post).

Enjoy!

And now for your Halloween ghost story ....

In the Haunted story, I talked about a ghost that haunted the sub shop I worked in during college. As John and I discussed the possibility of a ghost running the juke box and occasionally making things fly around, he eventually told me that these things just tended to happen to him. If you're into the paranormal, you might call John a sensitive or a medium. Ghosts just tend to like him.

His first experience with a ghost was at seven.

John went to spend the night at a friend's house. His family lived waaay out in the country at a small gentleman's farm and they had just moved in about a month before. John met Kyle at school and the two fast became inseperable.

The two boys ran around the farm and played for hours and when it was time to come in, they played board games. Including ... well, what Halloween story would be complete without the Ouija board?

At first the boys played with it like most kids play with the Ouija board, making it say things and being silly. Then, for whatever reason, the little plastic piece begins moving on its own. John gave Kyle a look and Kyle snatched his hand off the toy. It was still moving. Half-convinced that John was just messing with him, Kyle began asking questions.

"Who are you?"

The board spelled out J - O - N.

Kyle laughed. "You can't even spell your own name right."

"I didn't do it," John told him.

Kyle laughed and put his hand back on the toy. "Right, John, right." He looked back at the Ouija board. "Where are you?"

R-I-G-H-T H-E-R-E

"No, I mean where do you live?"

H-E-R-E

M-Y B-R-O-T-H-E-R I-S S-C-A-R-E-D

"Why?"

D-A-D

"This is dumb, John, make it say something good."

"I told you, I'm not doing anything."

"I wanna talk to something good and scary."

"I don't wanna play this anymore, Kyle. I don't like it." John took his hand off the plastic toy.

With both boys' hands off the toy, it began flying across the board.

"What's doing that?"

I A-M J-A-M-E-S
Y-O-U A-R-E B-A-D

"Kyle? Make it stop. How are you doing that?"

Y-O-U-V-E G-O-T T-O B-E

John picked up the board and tossed it across the room. Kyle was white as a ghost.

At seven, of course, they did what any sane seven-year-olds would do -- they ran out to the living room for Kyle's mom.

Of course, Kyle's mom figured the boys had been telling scary stories and had just frightened each other. She gave them a snack and sent them back to Kyle's room and told them to go to sleep and not tell anymore scary stories.

After kicking the game under one of the beds, the boys wrestled and played until Kyle's dad came in and told them to knock it off and go to bed. So they did.

A few hours later, Kyle's mom woke up to all sorts of noise coming from Kyle's room. Convinced the boys were playing, she opened the door only to find everything in Kyle's room flying around in a circle. His clothes, his toys, everything. Completely unable to believe what she was seeing, she was convinced that she was merely dreaming and walked back to bed.

The next morning, Kyle's dad went out to the barn to muck out the horses' stalls and finally stormed back into the house. "Were those boys out in the barn yesterday?" he asked his wife.

"Of course, they were playing out in the loose hay."

"I have told Kyle a million times that pitchfork is not a toy." And his dad stormed off for the boys' room.

Every toy and piece of clothing Kyle owned was scattered around the room.

"KYLE!"

Neither boy moved. His dad, completely disgusted, turned around, surveying the "damage" of Kyle's playtime the night before. The door to Kyle's closet was open, the light was on and there was nothing in the closet. Every piece of clothing, every toy, jigsaw puzzle, everything was in the middle of Kyle's room.

Except the pitchfork, leaning against the back wall of the closet.

Kyle's dad snapped. He'd had it with his irresponsible son who just didn't seem to understand that the farm tools were not toys. This was the first time he'd found one of the tools in the house, but not the first time that Kyle had wandered off with one hand tool or another. Furious, he grabbed the pitchfork from the closet and began hollering at his son.

The two boys woke up to Kyle's furious father screaming and coming toward them, pitchfork in hand.

His mom walked into the room and screamed - partly at the total mess in the room (and remembering her "dream" of the night before) and partly at the sight of her husband wielding the pitchfork at the boys. Surely it was just to emphasize his anger, but still ....

Kyle's parents left the room and calmed down, got rid of the pitchfork and then came back in to talk to the now terrified young boys. They explained that the boys shouldn't have trashed the bedroom or taken the pitchfork into the house -- shouldn't have played with the pitchfork at all.

Of course, they both protested and insisted they had done no such thing. And of course, Kyle's parents assumed the boys were lying. His mom was somewhat disturbed by the odd dream she'd had the night before, but it had to have been a dream.

So, the boys' first sleepover was a bit of a disaster and John was in trouble again when he got home for not behaving properly as a guest.

But, a few weeks later, John's parents called and asked to come over with Kyle. Not sure what was going on, but responding to the tense voice of Kyle's mother, they agreed.

They sat around the kitchen table ... both sets of parents and both boys.

"I know this is going to sound strange, but I need to ask John a very serious question," Kyle's mom started. "What happened when you and Kyle were playing with the Ouija board?"

John blinked a few times and then told them. "At first me and Kyle were just making it move around and being silly. But then it started to move on its own."

"John!" his mother was shocked at this bald-faced lie.

"Vivian, wait, please. John, what did it say?"

He told them that it said its name was Jon, it lived "here" and that his brother was scared. Kyle's parents blanched.

"I told you!" Kyle said. "I told you!"

"Then what happened, John?"

"Well, Kyle thought I was doing it and he thought I was being stupid so he said he umm, that he wanted something scary."

"And then? This is really important, John. What did the board say next?"

"This is ridiculous," John's father said. "What are you getting at? The boys were playing silly games and they acted up."

"It's more than that. We've done a little research." Kyle's dad turned back to John. "What did the board say next?"

"It said we were bad. And it was gonna do something, but we stopped playing."

"Anything else?"

John thought for a moment. "James. It said its name was James."

Kyle's mother blanched.

"What the hell is going on here?"

"Boys, you go on up to John's room and play," Kyle's father said.

The boys, of course, scurried around the corner and eavesdropped on the adults.

As it turned out, John and Kyle discovered that about 20-30 years before, James and Madeline Winchester and their two sons, Kyle and Jonathon had lived in the farmhouse. Not more than a few months after moving in, however, James had completely lost his mind and murdered the two boys in their bed with his pitchfork.

After the third time the pitchfork found its way into Kyle's closet, his mother couldn't stop thinking about the "dream" that she'd had when John had stayed over and began asking around the town about the house. The local librarian helped her research the house and discovered the story of the Wincehester family.

Of course, John's parents took far more convincing than the boys did, but as it turns out, Kyle's folks just wanted to confirm with John what Kyle had already told them. The final straw for John's parents was the news that they had already talked to the local priest and scheduled a cleansing of the house which was to be followed up by something resembling an exorcism for the house itself.

At the very least, John's parents realized that Kyle's folks were taking this seriously. They went on to explain what Kyle's mother had seen that night and other things that the boys had not yet heard.

Of course, John's parents didn't want John spending any more time at Kyle's house ... and he was fine with that. He'd had the crap scared out of him waking up to Kyle's father and the pitchfork. Particularly when Kyle told him why his parents had begun researching the house. Kyle was now terrified to go to sleep in the house, and had, in fact, been sleeping with his mother in a motel for the past week.

His father had been caught sleepwalking several times, each time found either in Kyle's room or on his way down the hall to Kyle's room, pitchfork in hand.

A few weeks later, the "exorcism" of the house was ... well, not particularly successful. The priest insisted that the entire family needed to be present at the home. Kyle refused to tell John what had happened, but the family moved into a motel immediately thereafter and quickly moved to another town. John never saw him again.

And, of course, in the true tradition of all haunted houses like that, no one ever bought the farmhouse. By the time John left home and moved away to college, he said the farmhouse had begun falling down. The town had talked about having the house bulldozed in an effort to make the property saleable ... but it hadn't happened by the time John left.

Happy Halloween!!

Posted by Red Monkey at 7:17 PM | Comments (4) | Storytelling: She was, of course, supposed to be sleeping. | TrackBack | Stumble

October 28, 2006

Continuation of The Graveyard

To get everyone in the mood for Halloween, I'm reposting the four ghost stories I have experience with over the next couple of weeks. These are all true stories, so far as I know. Several of them I have personal experience with; one happened to a guy I worked with as he and I discussed whether or not there was really, truly, a ghost where we worked.

This is the third in the series, "Haunted" being the first. And "The Haunted House" being the second.

Enjoy!

This is a continuation of yesterday's post, The Graveyard.

A few years after my trip out to witch mountain, I'm still kind of fussing at myself for getting worked up enough that I kept imagining hands trying to grab my feet from below ... and not even a cheesy imagining zombies reaching up from their grave -- I kept imagining it from the "clean" area at the front of the cemetery. The area that hadn't yet been used for graves. What a weird little imagination I have.

So, again, near Halloween, I'm talking with some friends and I share the story of going to witch mountain.

Candice goes absolutely as white as possible. I'm talking no blood left in her face at all.

"You went WHERE?"

"Some witch mountain place out near Duncanville. It's way out in the country. It's this funky graveyard."

She just blinks at me and doesn't say anything for a minute, so I continue telling the story that I wrote here yesterday.

"You were damn lucky to get out of there," Candice says.

"What do you mean? It was the middle of the afternoon."

"Promise me you won't ever, ever go out there again."

"What is the deal?"

As it turns out, Candice's folks were highly religious and expected her to be as well. As part of her teenage rebellion stage, she did what every teenager does - went as far opposite her folks as she could think of. She joined up with ... you guessed it, a satanic cult. The very cult that used that graveyard I'd visited.

According to Candice (whose name and details I've changed here for her protection), the things that my classmate had told me about the graveyard were just the tip of the iceberg.

First, the cult did rule the graveyard after five. They'd show up (I didn't ask if they drove and made the cops let them in) at the graveyard, practice some random vandalism and then ...

... then they'd crawl into their tunnel system for the real rituals.

Evidently the most recently dug up grave was always the entrance to their tunnel system.

And, evidently, that weird thought I kept getting about having a hand reach up for me was not so weird after all. Or, depending on your point of view, it was even weirder than it had been before. The tunnel system honeycombed that whole front area.

Then Candice tells all the stuff this group was into.

Now, here's the deal before I go any further. It is a known fact that there are satanic cult groups all over the U.S. (and other countries, to be honest). Many of these groups are completely harmless and only "play" at being evil. That is, they get together and read the Satanic Bible and hold their masses that are a perversion of the Catholic mass and that's all there is to them. Other than offending a lot of people, they don't really do any harm.

Then you have groups of teenagers who get together and do things they think that satanists would do and at the same time, try to scare the crap out of each other. This often involves heavy drinking or sometimes drugs. These groups are mostly harmless.

Then there are groups that take things a step further. They look up old books, they attempt to follow old patterns from mostly forgotten ancient cults. They generally find at least a few victims to terrorize. They may go as far as to sacrifice animals. (Some Santeria practitioners, for example, will do this to chickens and perhaps goats.) Those groups can get more than a little frightening just on a personal safety level.

Then there are groups who do worse things.

The group Candice had been involved in was one of those.

Now, again, there are two types of these nasty groups. One type simply stages scenes. They'll go to elaborate lengths to make new initiates believe that they have supernatural powers -- perhaps by breaking a thick marble gravestone into pieces. There are also groups that appear to actually be able to do things they shouldn't be able to do. The problem is, most of the time you can't tell the difference between these two groups. They're both dangerous.

I can't tell you if Candice's group was one that was simply staging events or if some of the folks involved could really do some things they shouldn't be able to do. I wasn't there and no one was running scientific equipment to try to verify any of the events. So, you'll have to make up your own mind.

Evidently this group had built a series of tunnels under the "blank" part of the graveyard up near the gate. The tunnels were actually a maze. Some of the tunnels led to deadfall traps. Others took a funny turn and dumped you out on the dropoff -- and if you weren't careful, you'd end up in the river below pretty easily.

Some members of the group stayed in the tunnels during the day. They were supposed to guard the ... well, for lack of a better word ... the secret hideout from anyone not in the group as well as from the newer members who might be trying to discover secrets they shouldn't.

Candice told of bonfires in the fields (and I accidentally typo'd that as bonefires which is a much scarier image). She told me about the time one of the head guys in the group slaughtered a German Shepherd as part of some insane ritual.

She also told me that I was damn lucky, broad daylight or not, to have made it out of there without any confrontation at all. Evidently they'd leave a large group of people alone during the day, but groups of two were fair game to attack ... either a mundane fight or scare or actually try to drag you down into the tunnels.

She claimed they'd killed more than one person.

Now that's a lot of hearsay. I don't know how much of it was true, but I do know that Candice was honestly scared out of her gourd. She stopped a couple of times and had to mutter to herself that they wouldn't hurt her now. That they couldn't know if she revealed some of their secrets.

The fact that I announced I wanted to go back there to check all of this out terrified her beyond words.

Then she told me about some of the supernatural things she'd seen: simple levitations, curses, the standard scary stuff.

But then, stumbling and almost stuttering her husband told us about finding a severed goat's head in the middle of the living room, floating. Obviously still shaken, he told of how Candice had freaked when they came home and discovered it. Oh, sure, he freaked too. No one likes to see a floating goat head in their living room.

Candice said it was a sign that they had found her and had not forgotten her. It was a sign that they were coming for her. She was practically hysterical. The head fell to the floor and her husband called the police. The police recognized it for a cult calling card and said they'd keep an eye out. No one mentioned the floating part, though. Who would believe that?

In fact, over the years, they've called her repeatedly, left other pleasant calling cards. She did finally escape them ... but it took moving to Saudi Arabia for a few years before the group finally quit contacting her.

I never did get back out to that graveyard. I still want to.

And I'm curious now. Duncanville was starting to really build up in that area. Candice told me when she first joined that cult, you couldn't see anything but trees or prairie grass anywhere around. But when I saw the place, there were some condos within sight of the graveyard and signs out along the road claiming that more would be coming soon. Not that they'd even broken ground yet, but still .... If this group was really such bad news, how would they react to a residential development? Would they wreak so much havoc the developers abandon their plans? Or would they be forced to leave their secret hidey-tunnels and find a new graveyard in a more isolated area?

I don't know. But I'm still awfully curious about it.

And I never did actually promise Candice that I wouldn't go back.

Posted by Red Monkey at 12:57 PM | Comments (0) | Storytelling: She was, of course, supposed to be sleeping. | TrackBack | Stumble

October 27, 2006

The Graveyard, Part One

To get everyone in the mood for Halloween, I'm reposting the four ghost stories I have experience with over the next couple of weeks. These are all true stories, so far as I know. Several of them I have personal experience with; one happened to a guy I worked with as he and I discussed whether or not there was really, truly, a ghost where we worked.

This is the third in the series, "Haunted" being the first. And "The Haunted House" being the second.

Enjoy!

Here's one of the spooky, but slightly less ghost-infested stories.

My first year in college, I was going to my voice and diction class (I started out as a drama major, go figure) and talking to one of the kids in my class. It was probably about this time of year, weather barely turning cool -- it's Texas, remember -- and she tells me about this place near where she grew up -- maybe half an hour or so away from school. The kids called it witch mountain or ghost mountain or something. She told me that it was this awesome old, old graveyard out in Duncanville. It's one of those perfect old graveyards, way out in the country, trees all around.

And, she says, she doesn't know about haunted, but the satanists "own" this graveyard.

My interest is now beyond piqued. "Let's go out there after class," I enthuse. She's a little less sure about that, but I finally talk her into it.

As we're driving out there, she tells me that there's only one road that goes up to witch mountain. And there's a gate on that road. And every evening, there's two cops in a patrol car stationed at the gate. They'll open up the gate if you absolutely insist on going up there, she says, but they also warn you that if you break down even ten feet inside that gated area, they won't go in there to help you. No one goes in there after dark unless they're part of it or stupid.

Now, personally, I wondered why the cops didn't just start taking everyone who wanted up there after dusk in for questioning on the vandalism at the graveyard, but whatever.

She tells me about all sorts of horror stories about this graveyard. Mostly the standard types of scary stories -- these satan worshippers kill people there, hold all sorts of scary rituals. They're so bad even the cops are scared of them.

So, when we get into Duncanville and out into the hinterlands, sure enough, I see the gates open on the side of this road. They're the basic kinda triangular metal tube gates that often block off parking lots at universities and high schools. Stephanie (the girl from my class) is now visibly nervous. It's maybe noon on a Thursday and she's actually already scared to be driving up to this cemetery.

We get to the cemetery and park just across the little street. There's an open field on the side of the street where we park, all blowing prairie grass. The cemetery is bounded by trees on two sides. The other two sides, near the road (the road makes a right turn here), are bounded by an old-fashioned wrought iron fence. There's a great big wrought iron archway and gate at the entrance to the graveyard and a large expanse of grass in the front before you get to the modern graves. There's maybe four or five rows of modern graves before we start getting into folks who died in the 40s, 30s, 20s and a whole bunch from the 1800s. The cemetery is maybe about 75 yards long and about half that wide. As we walk closer to the entrance I can see why they didn't even bother to bound the north end and the east end with a fence. There's a dropoff there. A little kid might say there's a cliff on those two sides, but really, it's not quite high enough or steep enough to truly be called a cliff. Nonetheless, I can't imagine too many people would want to make that climb.

The leaves had already fallen on many of the trees, leaving some at the top level looking dead and barren -- while some whose roots were deeper and a little further down the incline still with a full "head" of green "hair."

The weirdest thing that I noticed as we approached the front gate is that some of the trees appeared to be wearing decorations. I couldn't quite see what they were but it wasn't some kid's lost kite.

The gate to the cemetery was open and I noticed a set of heavy chains and a really heavy duty lock that was used to lock the place up. All shiny new, they really stood out against the black matte and rust of the wrought iron fencing. There was a sign just outside the cemetery listing the hours it was open. It closed at five p.m. Now that seemed really weird to me. Why would you close a cemetery that early? Most of the ones I knew of were open until at least nine or ten p.m.

We walked in across the "front yard" of the cemetery -- all that blank expanse of grass just waiting to be filled with more graves. We walked quickly past the modern graves, but I admit, I got creeped out almost immediately. In addition to the multiple modern gravestones that had been broken, there was a grave that had been dug up.

Now this was not a freshly dug grave. This was not something where the coffin had just been buried. No, there were bits of flower arrangements, bits of plastic wreath frames, and a vase or two sticking out of the dirt. Also, a freshly dug grave doesn't generally stand about three feet higher than the ground level.

And there's generally not a hole big enough for a human to actually disappear into left there.

Despite my very overactive curiosity, I was seriously creeped out by that grave. I walked quickly past it after a very cursory look and went on to look at the old graves instead.

On the way to the back of the graveyard, I could see where someone had tossed plastic wreaths out into the trees, leaving them trapped there. I'd thought it was some kind of weird frisbee before.

I was fascinated by the old graves and appalled by the vandalism. But I'd really seen nothing that said satanists used this place.

Except for the dug up grave.

Oh and the really weird thing ... you know that wind whistling through the trees that you hear in horror movies? I always assumed that this was some goofy sound that Hollywood had made up and was just a stupid contrivance to signal that something scary was going to hapen.

I heard it repeatedly that day. Now if that's not enough to get an overactive imagination running wild.

Well, as we were leaving, I got seriously creeped out going across that expanse of lawn. I kept imagining someone reaching up through the ground and grabbing my feet.

Silliness right?

Tomorrow I'll tell you want happened a couple of years later, as I was telling one of my friends about my trip to witch mountain.

Posted by Red Monkey at 2:36 PM | Comments (2) | Storytelling: She was, of course, supposed to be sleeping. | TrackBack | Stumble

October 19, 2006

The Haunted House

To get everyone in the mood for Halloween, I'm reposting the four ghost stories I have experience with over the next couple of weeks. These are all true stories, so far as I know. Several of them I have personal experience with; one happened to a guy I worked with as he and I discussed whether or not there was really, truly, a ghost where we worked.

This is the second in the series, "Haunted" being the first.

Enjoy!

Since I was a tiny, little thing, I've been determined to meet a ghost. Well, actually, I misspoke: I wanted to see a ghost. That still hasn't happened, but I have met a few.

As a kid, I did not understand AT ALL, how people could be afraid of ghosts. What's the big deal, I thought way back then. They're not physical beings, so they can't possibly hurt you.

I was misinformed.

Okay, I would STILL love to see a ghost. But I don't ever ever ever ever want to live in the same house as one any more.

1144 E. Corby Blvd. is a haunted house.

I lived there from 1994 until 2001. And at first, I didn't notice anything at all odd about the place, other than the fact that South Bend has some of the tiniest homes with the most oddly teeny-tiny little rooms that I've ever seen.

Between my various roommates and I during this time, we had anywhere from four to six cats in the house. Cats notice odd things, right?

It was ultimately the way the cats would act when one of us was already noticing something odd that finally let us start talking about the possibility of ghosts. I mean, no one actually ever saw anything odd happen. But you would be sitting alone in the house and you could hear people talking. Get up, look out the windows, nope, no one was near the house. Stand in the doorway to the basement -- bingo! The conversation stopped. Hmm.

The corner of the living room where I sat when I heard those conversations was the one corner every cat who ever entered the house would try very hard to avoid. Double-hmm.

Again, sitting upstairs, I would hear a kid giggling. Now, as I've said before, I collect old Fisher Price Little People. And at the time, I had a bookcase in the far corner of the basement which was filled with all the old playsets: Sesame Street, the old garage, the children's hospital, a couple of houses and so on. Well, I would hear a kid giggling and that distictive clink/thunk of a little Fisher Price car rolling off the bookshelf and hitting the astroturf floor. (I don't know, this house was the landlord's "party house" back in his college days. I guess astroturf is easy to clean up after wild parties.)

I'd look around upstairs. Every one of the cats was up here with me. Go down to the basement: sure enough, some of the pieces had been moved around and there was a car on the floor.

Well, okay, so what. The floor's not perfectly level down here and, as it turns out, we live close to a fault line which occasionally rumbles a little bit. Just a little fault line, the North/South continental divide. (Who would believe there's a fault line that close to Notre Dame? I keep waiting for the earth to just up and swallow that place!) Anyhow, things fall over. But what's with the giggling?

If this had been all there was to it, I would have totally ignored it. Maybe a ghostie, but probably just the house settling and those little earth rumbles. (But what about that giggle?)

But there was also a really nasty, nasty bad ghost living in that house. Got the distinct impression it was a 'he,' but who knows.

If you heard a serious thud from the basement, you could freaking feel the bad ghost at the same time. It was one of the creepiest times of my whole life. And the weirdest thing was that I would go downstairs and look through the whole basement -- and I couldn't find anything that had been knocked over. But the whole time I was downstairs, I could just feel that malevolence issuing from the basement. Feeling a bit stupid, I'd just head back upstairs (a little hurriedly, of course!). Again, the cats were NEVER in the basement when this would happen and they'd stay out of the basement for quite a while after.

But the worst of it, even worse than just the weird feeling -- wait. You know when you watch a really scary movie late at night, alone and you get that feeling that the serial killer is just on the other side of the door? or waiting in the next room? And you know you're being silly and stupid and it's just because of the movie that you feel all paranoid, but you can still feel it?

Well try getting that feeling at random times while walking around your family room (the basement) for no apparent reason at all. It's even creepier when you can't blame it on a scary movie. And it's even creepier when there's this bit of personality attached to the feeling. It felt male. It hated any nudity at all. (Occasionally you could feel him in other areas of the house, too.)

So anyhow, even worse than the weird feelings were the nightmares that everyone who stayed more than a couple of nights had. You know how in most dreams you have dream logic? You know it's your house, for instance, but in real life you've never lived anywhere even remotely like that?

These dreams weren't like that.

These dreams always took place in that house and if you were really lucky, you could make yourself wake up before the obvious conclusions happened.

Some examples:
I would walk into a room in the house and reach for the lightswitch. Nothing. Horror movie feeling. Overwhelming fear. Lights across the house go off. I've got to go down to the basement and mess with the circuit box. Flip at the basement stairs lightswitch, just in case I'm lucky.

I'm not.

Flashlight on, I head back into that corner of the basement where he lives. If I'm lucky, I wake up now. If I'm not, I go back into the room that used to be the landlord's darkroom. Just a flashlight. The feeling is becoming unbearable. I know he's there, in the back-most part of the basement, by the furnace, water heater, crappy toolbench and the circuit box. Under the stairs. I know he's there.

On occasion the dream goes far enough that I turn and see him briefly with the hunting knife. But I always wake up before he can strike.

The feeling lasts for a couple of days -- not just a few hours like with most nightmares. And no one after having one of those, will actually go into that back part of the basement -- especially not when one of the breakers trip. And they trip all the time in that house. I'm not saying the ghost actually tripped the breakers, but going back to the circuit box usually involved figuring out who had had the nightmares last.

The worst nightmare that I had involved me waking up in the morning and walking out of the bedroom. The house was not air conditioned, so I'd put a little window unit in the bedroom because I canNOT sleep if I get too hot. So the bedroom door was always closed during the summertime to keep that cool air in.

So in this nightmare, I walk out of the bedroom and into the living room. And into one of the worst things I've ever seen in dream, reality or movie.

Not so graphic version: my cats had been killed. Stop reading now if you're the squeamish type. Skip down until you see
*****HEY IT'S OKAY NOW*****

*

Seriously, you don't want to read this if you're easily grossed out.

*

Okay, I double-warned you. I walk out into the living room and each of the four cats I had at the time has been mutilated. Each one has a frickin' railroad spike through the chest/tummy area and is nailed to a wall. One cat to one wall. There's writing on the wall, using of course, the cats' blood. I don't remember what it said, I'm not sure I even remembered once I woke up for real. They were further bloodied, but I won't go into it.

*

*****HEY IT'S OKAY NOW*****

And we all knew that those weird nightmares that took place in that house were related to that ghost. I've never had any nightmares similar to that since.

But the last coincidence that really just confirmed things was when one of my roomates had a friend over. We were sitting on the living room floor when this friend suddenly got a weird, weird look on her face.

"Is there a ghost in this house?"

I shrugged. "I think so. There's a kid who plays with the toys down there. I can hear him giggling sometimes."

She shook her head. "No, there's some--" She shivered and paled a bit.

Now, look. I think this lady's a bit of a flake most of the time, but this was really freaky. She was sitting in that spot where the cats wouldn't go -- above the spot in the basement that I thought of as the ghost's. And it was obvious from her reaction that she wasn't doing this just for her "rep" or for attention. You don't turn that color for fun. And I never saw her do anything like it ever again. (Of course, she didn't set foot in that house again, either.)

"What's the matter?

"There's something wrong in your basement."

My roommate shot me a look. I nodded. The bad ghost had been very active lately.

"There's a bad ghost down there, too."

About six months and two roommates later (I'm a little more stubborn), I finally had a roommate who was himself so scary that the bad ghost quieted (or left, I was never sure which).

How did Justin get the ghost to leave? He played techno-goth every night. He watched more horror movies than any human on the face of planet. And anime. The really, really violent anime.

I don't know if he scared the scary ghost or if he just satiated the ghost's need for violence.

And that's the story of the bad ghost. And that's why I no longer think that ghosts are harmless. I don't think they could physically hurt me ... but that one taught me they can make you hurt yourself just from the paranoia you start to get!

Posted by Red Monkey at 9:05 PM | Comments (6) | Storytelling: She was, of course, supposed to be sleeping. | TrackBack | Stumble