AM I A SPIRIT MAGNET? Sometime in or around the summer of 1993 I moved out of my parent’s house and into my Great Grandmother's old house. The house itself has never felt or seemed that strange to me but all of the things which I am about to tell you definitely changed my opinion about that and the supernatural in general. I have always had an interest in the stranger side of things, but I never in a million years expected to experience a full on assault of the senses as I did in my new found residence. Even now as I type this, it is as if my computer is trying to stop me. Without any prompt at all the CD rom started freaking out and ejected itself, went back in and ejected again. I almost quit then and there and that happened within the first paragraph. My friend John and I used to play video games at the house quite often and we had some great times there, but we also developed a type of fear and respect for things that our minds hadn't even acknowledged days before. The first day we got together at the house we set an old television up in what used to be the dining room. We had rented a video game or two from a local video store and were playing them when we started hearing some noises outside. We were kind of paranoid about being there because the house is on an old dirt road and everyone around knew my Great Grandmother had died the year earlier and no one had bought the house, what they didn't know is that I was staying there while attending college. As I was saying, we heard some noises outside and decided to see if it was a distant neighbor being nosey or what, so we each got a knife (being the brave souls that we were, you must understand this is 'Deliverance' country) and ventured outside. Once outside we went around opposite sides of the house to check things out. By this time it was fairly dark and we were, again, a bit suspicious of the locals. We had noticed a red truck drive slowly by the house and it had repeated its pass several more times, as if trying to see what we were doing there. So we waited out in the front drive for it to come by again and when it did, we got into John's car and followed it from afar. We watched him drive until he got to another drive way on the road and turn in and then he got out of his truck and went into the house. Just a concerned local watching out for other local property, satisfied with this mutual conclusion, we decided to drive to the end of the road and turn around and come back to the house. As we neared the end of the road, we spotted a white cross on a tree. The cross was about twelve inches in length and about half that in width. It was posted on a tree at the entrance to a field. Neither one of us knew what it was there for, but John half jokingly stated how creepy it would be to jump out of the car and take it off the tree. Being the type of person I am, I said ok and before he could attempt to dissuade me, I had gotten out of the car and popped it off the tree. Upon reentry to the car John told me he didn't expect me to actually do it and that he was just joking, but we had a big laugh about it and turned around and started to drive back towards the house. As we were nearing the house that is across the way from my house, we heard something that drew our attention to the right side of the road, the passenger side, the side on which I was sitting. You have to remember that this is an old gravel road and, as such, we weren't driving very fast at all. Then after the noise something about four feet across and around four and a half or five feet tall or so runs in front of the car. Whatever it was had almost no definition and was predominantly black in color. John almost ran off the road trying to avoid whatever it was and we hurriedly headed to the house. When we got in the drive, we had to go around and up on the porch to get into the locked front door. As I unlocked it our fear was almost overwhelming because we could hear whatever it was coming up the gravel road. We got into the house without a problem and after a half an hour or so, decided to go back to John's house to sleep. But as we were sitting on the couch talking about things that had happened, a black ceramic cat that had been hanging in the same spot for years fell off of the wall and shattered over my head. We took that as a note to get out of there and proceeded to go to John's house. On the way to John's house, we passed my Great Uncle's house and I threw the white cross from the tree into his yard, the next day I saw he had ran over it and destroyed it with his lawn mower, within a week's time his house had burned. We were again playing video games but this time in the newly cleaned out living room. I got up and went into the kitchen for a drink and when I came back I will never forget what I saw. My Great Grandmother's house was setup as such.....upon entry from the front porch directly to your right was the aforementioned living room and directly ahead was the hall to the kitchen. Branching off of this hall to the left was another hall with four rooms. to the immediate right was the bathroom and on down also on the right was a bedroom that was locked up and used to store my Great Grandma's things. At the end of the hall was another room that stayed locked most of the time and was also used for storage, and the only room to the left in this hall was my room where I attempted to sleep many nights. So I was coming back from the kitchen and when I got to the entrance to the living room, I noticed something behind the chair at the entryway. There was a doll standing behind the chair as if it were watching us. It thoroughly creeped me out and I let out a less than masculine scream and stumbled backwards. John proceeded to laugh at me and asked what was up, I couldn't answer him, I pointed behind the chair. He went over and moved the chair and the doll fell out from behind it, which evoked an "OH ****" from John. He went on to explain and rant about things I had already begun to dwell upon. That there was no way the doll could have been there all night because the chair had been moved in there by us earlier and we had been sitting on the thing. That we would have noticed it earlier.... I collected myself a bit and John went to the kitchen and got a knife and knocked the doll over. I went and picked it up and carried it down the hall to a bedroom where it was supposed to be sitting on the center of the bed. My fear works in two ways, I either get very angry or I feel the need to joke about it. So I poked at the doll and made fun and smacked it, how I wish that I hadn't done that. I proceeded to notice that the doll's only solid parts were its head with moving sleeping eyes, its hands and its feet.... there was no possible way for this doll to stand up..... The next time we experienced the doll moving, we were in the living room again playing video games. We were in the middle of a game and we heard a thud in the hall. We both stopped and looked at one another and stood to go and see what it was. We looked around the corner of the hall and the doll was out of its room again and sitting in the hall, as if it had stumbled on its way into the living room. I again picked the doll up and I opened the door and tossed it onto the bed. We left immediately. About a week or so later, I went to my Grandma's house and the doll was on her front porch. I asked her about it and she said that she had been trying to move some of the things in storage gradually to her house. So I was pleased to say the least that the doll was out of the house. Momentarily...... I went to get my Halloween decorations out of the storage room and the doll was lying on the bed. How it made it from my Grandma's house the mile or so back to my house is still beyond me. The following June, my wife and I were married and things in the house and around it seemed to worsen from there. At night from the storage room at the end of the hall where the doll used to sit you could hear what sounded like country music coming from the room all night long. The fan fell out of the ceiling onto my head in the kitchen. When we would go to bed at night, there was an eerie silhouette of what appeared to be an elderly woman on our bedroom door. I tried to find an explanation for all of the above but could find none. The following two experiences were the most terrifying to me, and even thinking about them now years later, they still bother me. I was at home alone (my wife worked midnights at the time) and I was trying to sleep. The music started in the other room and I tried to ignore it, but decided to see if I could find it. I went into the room and just when I opened the door, the music stopped. I went in and looked around for a bit and found nothing. I turned to leave and as I did the music started up and the door shut and I couldn't open it. I struggled with the door and finally got it open, went into the bedroom and grabbed some clothes and spent the night at my wife's workplace. The next time was even worse. I was sitting on the couch watching TV and my wife was up the road at another house babysitting. I heard what sounded like a basketball being dribbled up the road at the house where she was and I thought that our friends had returned home and she would be coming home soon. I looked and couldn't see their car so I called up there. My wife answered the phone and said she could hear it too but figured it was somewhere else and told me that they hadn't got home yet. As I talked to her on the phone, the dribbling noise got louder and closer gradually and she could no longer hear it. It came up our driveway and up on our porch. It was so loud at this point that she could hear it over my end of the phone. Then the dribbling was joined by whatever it was moving and banging the chairs on our porch around. I told her I couldn't stay there and stayed on the phone running out the front door with whatever it was right beside me on the porch banging away. I got to the car, terrified, and started it up. I drove down the road to the neighbors where she was and all the while I could still hear it, even as I got out of the car at the neighbor's I could still hear it at our house.... All the while, the house directly across the road from ours took on different tenants, none staying more than four months or so. We lived in that house for almost three years and there were more than eight or nine families that moved in and out of there. Some families living there only a month. The last family to move in before we moved from our home was a nice family. The day that they moved in, their back yard caught fire and we ran a garden hose across the road to help them put it out....if only then they had known what was to happen. They eventually were to be the longest staying and the last occupants of that house. We had already found another place to live and had been staying in our new home a couple of weeks. We were still moving things from one place to another, and making frequent trips to our old home. One night we get a call that our old home is on fire and we had better get out there. When we get there it is even more horrible than that..... it wasn't our old home at all, the house across the road has exploded. Not just caught fire, but literally engulfed and killed everyone inside within minutes, all three children. Their parents weren't home, leaving them in the care of their oldest sibling....all gone. My wife and I knew and spoke to quite often the oldest daughter who had died in the blaze. My younger brother had gone to school with her. She was a very sweet girl... We had to finish moving our things from our old home still and I went on what would be my last trip out there for some time. I got to the house and in the driveway was my wife's stuffed unicorn; standing there as if it were being held. It was fairly late at night and this kind of freaked me out, but this was the last of our things in the garage and I had to get them. I started up the drive in my car stopping at the unicorn and it fell over. I went and picked it up and put it in the car and got the rest of our stuff in boxes and loaded it up. I was sufficiently creeped out, but satisfied that this was it and got in my vehicle to leave. I backed down the driveway and started to put my car in drive when I looked in the rearview mirror and saw what I still believe to this day was the little girl. She was like some kind of bluish tone and glowing in my brake lights; I floored the accelerator and got out of there as fast as I could. After that, everything was ok for awhile but we started having strange things happen in our new home. My wife would be in the bathroom putting on her makeup in the mirror and she would think I walked up behind her and at times, speak to me and I wouldn't be there....no one would. You could be sitting on the toilet and hear someone and actually see the floor move where it looked like someone was walking in the bathroom, right next to you, and no one is there. I have since come to the conclusion that someone had killed themselves in the bathtub because the weird stuff only happened in the bathroom and the worst experience was what brought me to this conclusion. I was using the bathroom one night before bed and as I sat there I heard a kind of rubbing noise coming from the tub. I sat still and listened and it got louder and louder then it became a violent banging. I could actually see the tub floor rising with each bang. (This was a fiberglass tub and we had been told that it had been replaced but not told why, again, another reason for the suicide theory.) I was afraid to move, almost frozen to the spot. Then the noise stopped almost as suddenly as it had started. I finished what I was doing and left the room sitting up the rest of the night, afraid to sleep, our bedroom was right beside the bathroom, sharing a wall and I didn't want to go in there. We have since moved again, the man and his wife that moved into our original home have had nothing but problems. His wife has now died in the room where I heard the music and since then he has slowly lost everything. He now stands outside just wandering around and the lot across the street where the house burned is still empty, our old home is now for sale....he's trying to sell it. As is the lot next door. The house that was there burned as well........ A POSSIBLE NEW BEGINNING When we first moved into our new home, I had the feeling that we would be really happy here and it would be a new beginning for us and our son. We had just moved out of a bad experience with a roommate and were trying to start anew. The first night that we stayed here, our bed wasn't set up yet so we all slept on the hide-a-bed in the living room. All in all it was a good night. After we had lived here about a month or so, my health had declined so badly that I had started sleeping on the hide-a-bed instead of in the bedroom with my wife. I just for some ungodly reason could not get any sleep in there, so I started sleeping in the living room. We weren't having any problems, my wife and I, and she is extremely understanding with my strange nuances because I have been in poor health almost all of my life, so she was cool with our sleeping arrangement. I started noticing when I would wake up in the middle of the night there would be a man standing in the kitchen. Not necessarily a menacing figure, just a guy in my kitchen, standing and watching me sleep. Needless to say this is not a cool thing to see when you are the only "living" adult male in the home and I turned on the lights just to see him vanish before the light could shine on him. This happened almost every night and I got used to it, but sheepishly began sleeping with the television turned on. I used to work midnights and my wife does now, so we're pretty much night-owls. I began to notice that around 3:30 or 4 in the morning that the front door would make a popping noise and a funky motion line like the shadow of a small child would run across the room. Not a full fledged shadow mind you, just like the back of the butt part and the back shoulders and the top of the head. The man in the kitchen has become more active as well. When I'm watching television or playing a video game in the living room, I'll see him out of the corner of my eye walk across the kitchen or standing at the sink watching me, and it cannot simply be dismissed, it happens all the time. I feel no threat or bad feelings about this place though as I have in others, so, aside from the occasional "willies" I'll live with it...... We have also discovered that there is a woman or teenage girl in our house as well. She has screamed at me to wake up in the middle of the night and has been seen crouching next to the side of our bed from time to time. My wife has seen the little boy and the man, and has been in bed with me when the girl shook it violently. I've had health problems all my life, seizures and stuff, and since an early age have been "gifted" with a rather high IQ, so much of what I can and do experience I kind of attribute to the above. I've never had anyone investigate as such, but have sought out answers from so called "paranormalists" that have told me I possibly need to bring in some sort of priest, preacher, pastor, what have you, to try and "clear" my house. My Dad is an ordained Minister. Me? Organized religion drives me nuts. Too much of a fashion show, hypocrisy, and gossip fest. I personally feel church is just a building and faith and belief in whatever higher power you choose is a personal thing. Your faith is in your mind and your heart; you need not go to some man-made structure to access these. The other two places we lived, my Great Grandma's old house and the place we moved into from there, whatever was in these two places felt VERY bad. The presences in our home now, however, don't feel threatening at all. They are actually kind of a quirky addition to our family unit in a way. My son, who is about to turn five, talks about playing with the "Disappeared Boy" and "Disappeared Girl"...one day, I got out our vacuum to clean the living room carpet and as I walked over to the outlet to plug it in, it made this loud thud-crack kind of noise. My son told me the "Disappeared Man" kicked it because he (the "Disappeared Man) doesn't like the vacuum. I went over and looked at it, it didn't look like anything was wrong with it, so I plugged it in. It wouldn't work. I changed outlets, it wouldn't work. I could never get it to work again. We had to buy a new one. The "Disappeared Boy"(as my son calls him) in my house has an affinity for playing with my son's toys. He has a little laptop spelling and games toy in his room. As I walked into the front bathroom one day, which is off to the side of his bedroom door, the laptop turned on and started making noise. I picked it up out of the floor, opened it up, turned it off and set it back down. I turned to go to the bathroom and as I did the laptop turned back on and started making noises again. He also has a talking action figure, it says "Hey!" and some other stuff. We can be sitting in here in the living room and it will yell, from the other room, "Hey!", then wait a little bit, then "Hey!", then wait a bit more, then, "Have a nice day." He also has a talking Tommy Pickles doll from Rugrats that used to sit on top of a toy box we had for him in OUR bedroom. It would randomly in the middle of the night spout out phrases like "Hey, wanna play?" or "Let's play some more" followed by "See ya later!" I couldn't handle that, so I put the damn thing in the closet where it still talks every now and then, it's just not so loud and I don't have to look at it. This stuff really doesn't bother me that much most of the time. When the doll stuff was going on and I lived in my Great Grandmother's old house, I didn't sleep unless I was totally exhausted, I couldn't. I spent many nights driving around or at friend's houses. I'm not trying to brag or anything, but my Mother seems to think that my health problems and my high IQ make me more "sensitive" to this stuff. They say most infants can "see" spirits, but as they grow older they simply lose or "ignore" the ability to do so. Could it be possible because of my almost dying on several occasions due to seizures and a drowning incident when I was six or seven, along with my higher intellect, that I didn't lose this ability or hide it all away like most people? Now I'm not like "I see dead people" and stuff like that...I just happen to bump into these lovely beings more often than not. I would also like to point out, I do see these things more often than those around me, but they tend to experience things as well because this phenomena is somewhat drawn to me. Something funny happened on recently. The kid that lives across the way from us, his dad had to go to a specialist for a doctor's appointment, so he asked me to watch his son while he was gone. I was like, "Sure," so when his dad left he came over and played video games for awhile. We were sitting here in the living room playing, I think it was NHL Hitz, anyway, we were playing and that little figure that talks was lying in the floor a little ways across the room from him...and it goes, "Hey!......Hey!" he paused the game and was like, "What was that?" I said, "It was just the ghost boy playing with Logan's toys, don't worry about it it's nothing." Logan(my four year old) piped up and corrected me saying, "He's not a ghost daddy, he's just a 'Dissed- appeared Boy'!" I was all like, "Ok, sorry, the 'Disappeared Boy' was playing with his toys, and like I said, it's nothing." I told Ryan(the kid from across the way)about the boy and the teen girl and the middle-aged man spirits and he got all freaked out and didn't wanna' be here anymore so we went outside for the rest of the time he was here. Even today I saw him outside and he said, "Man, I can't believe you got ghosts in your house, how can you stand that?" and like always when someone asks that, I just laugh and tell them, "Its ok, it doesn't bother us that bad." “Have you ever tried taking a picture of the ghosts?” you may ask… Yeah, I could, but honestly the outside chance of catching something in a pic I don't honestly want to see kinda freaks me out ya know? “Have you ever tried talking to them, asking why they are there or what they may want?” I was always under the impression that talking to them would be dangerous on the outside chance they had bad intentions. You know, actually recognizing their presence vocally giving them more credence in the "outside world". Also, and this may not have any bearing on things, but because of my health problems, I hardly ever sleep more than two or three hours at night before waking up. Also, unlike other people I have talked to about it, I dream almost every time I go to sleep and I can almost always remember everything from them. Ever since I was a child I had dreams about things that would happen the next day or the next week. It still happens to this day, exact conversations, clothing, time, places, everything. I also have recurring dreams that are much too horrible to recount here, but I will give one example of a very realistic dream I had, one that actually hurt. In my dream, I was about 14 or 15 years old (I'm 27) and at a shopping mall, not one around here and not one I had ever seen before. At this mall, I was headed toward what would be the food court, and had a few friends with me, two guys and a girl. We decided to go into a Funcoland store, which I have never been inside in my entire life as we don't have them around here, and I was looking at DBZ and Pokemon stuff in the store(which I really, no offense, do not like in the least). They had some figures that whomever I was thought were really cool and some new games for Super Gameboy Advance or something(which I don't own, I don't own a single hand held system). Whoever I was, was looking at some of these game cartridges and thinking about stealing some of them when the following happened. As my friends and I were in there, some guy came in the front of the mall through the food court and started shooting. I looked up when the shots were fired and pushed my female friend out of the way, then hid behind a planter and was crouching there while the gunman took down whoever was in his sight. He came to me and as he pointed the gun, I started to get up and hit him, but the blast caught me full in the chest, and it hurt, it felt burning and cold at the same time. I didn't wake up, in my dream, I started to die. I lay there dying as the gunman walked on into the mall killing other people and my friend was holding my head in her hands and lap and crying. I died...only after I died and everything was black and quiet did I wake up. My chest hurt, and was VERY cold in the center, inside and outside. It continued to hurt all day long and into the next day... It was way too real for me as I felt as if a part of me had actually died or something. Due to all of the other dreams I have that come true, it just made me wonder if this one being so vivid had also happened or is going to. I even watched the news for a few days to see if I could see anything about a shooting at a mall. (I don't usually watch the news because it is just depressing and the Simpson’s and King of the Hill comes on at the same time as the news here, so the news loses out!) "What exactly are these health problems you have that you mention numerous times?" Well, from the time I was born until I was like 6 or 7, I had seizures quite often. Then after around age 13 or so they started coming back. I also have diabetes, hypertension, slight OCD, anxiety disorder, and an, as of yet, untreatable chemical imbalance in my brain. I've tried all the popular medicinal forms of treating this, but the meds either made me feel like killing people or just be a huge bastich to everyone. "What about your wife and son? Do they get scared and see/hear the same things you do? Or does your son only talk about the invisible boy?" My wife has seen them as well. She actually knows what the little boy looks like, (I've never seen a full figure of him) because she saw him just standing in our room, something I've never seen him do, staring out the open door across the living room. Anyone that stays here overnight and sleeps on the hide-a-bed in the living room sees the Man in our kitchen. I always ask them the next morning if they were woke up during the night and the answer almost without fail is ALWAYS "yes". The people that stay over here the most often and sleep in the living room, my brother, some of his friends, some of our close friends, have all seen the man. Several friends and family members have been here and seen the evidence of the little boy running across the living room, faint lights by the doorway, the sound of the floor and door as if someone enters and runs across, the little boy shaped motion trail... "Other then the teen girl's screams, have any of the spirits communicated with you?" Nope, not a single word. Oh, and since I've started writing and telling about them, for some reason my telephone is acting all screwy. I'll be talking to my wife, (and ONLY when I talk to my wife for some reason) and regardless of what phone SHE is using or where I call her at or she calls me from, the phone starts making all of these garbled beeping, screeching, kind of creepy noises. Not like Internet or modem chatter either (like when you accidentally pick up the phone while connected or the noise you here when you dial up your connection) but almost like some kind of weird music or something. It even did it last night when I picked up the phone and was gonna call her at work. I picked up the phone, heard a dial tone, before I even dialed the number, still hearing the dial tone in the background, it started up for no reason. Cold chill....grrrr.... Again, I AM NOT THE ONLY ONE WHO EXPERIENCES THESE THINGS. They just seem drawn to me. Others around me see and hear them as well, and last time I checked, intellect, chemical imbalances, and seizures weren't contagious, unless of course, I've developed the ability to "Be-fog the minds of others..NARF!"..uh...I don't think so. Mellow mass- hysteria? Could be...I suppose; pushing my perception upon those around me...but its doubtful. Yeah, I dream all the time, every time I sleep, which is only in about 2 or 3 hour spurts at a time. Then I wake up and have to fall asleep all over again. I also have a lot of recurring nightmares and stuff. About two months ago, every time I would go to sleep I would dream about the end of the world, and I couldn't stop dreaming about it. This went on for almost three weeks, every night. It would either continue where my last dream of the Apocalypse left off or be a "rerun" of sorts and they were really awful. I also still have frequent nightmares about my Great Grandma's old house we lived in when we first got married. Dreams about going back there and trying to live there, or about friends trying to live there. Also, I just thought of this as well, the whole time we lived in my Great Grandma's old house, my wife and I never used any type of birth control at any time, we weren't really worried about it since we both wanted children. After living there for over two years however, she never got pregnant. Within four weeks of moving out of there and into our second home, we conceived our son. We've always thought that was kinda weird. Like we COULDN'T have a kid living in that house or something. “Theories why?” As far as theories on the IQ...Have you ever noticed, which I'm sure you have, that the majority of artistic talent, be it painters, sketch artists, impressionists, musicians, are somehow tortured, eccentric, or almost completely insane? You know, cutting off our ears and putting them in the canvas of our self portraits, creating flying machines when the rest of the world scoffs at the idea of flight, writing love poems to long dead women, visions and all that. I feel because of our unique talents in art, music, and other creative endeavors, that we use more of the right side of our brain than other people. Have you ever had your IQ tested? Mine is, shall we say, quite far beyond what is considered genius level. You should really do a test if you get the chance. Anyway, the left side of the brain controls analytical thought and mathematics while the right side of the brain controls creativity and dreams. This is something that has disturbed me for quite sometime because with training, you can, at will, turn off (not totally however) the left side of your brain and heighten the sensitivity of your right side. Here's an example, have you ever been so "into" something like drawing or painting or reading or whatever, that your mother could be standing directly across from you saying your name trying to get your attention but you don't hear or see her? That's because your right side has taken over. I have gotten to the point that I can actually, strange as it may sound, "feel" the physical change in my head between when my right and left side are active separately or in unison. I believe because of this, a combination of artistic ability and more trained control over my brain's abilities and my heightened intellect that I and others are possibly able to tap into parts of the brain (sometimes entirely unintentionally) that remain/become dormant for many others and is what causes my higher degree of sensitivity. Plus I am an extremely open minded individual, but not a foolish individual. "So much positive evidence exists, but there is also overwhelming evidence to disprove the existence of the supernatural, yet not all of the evidence to the contrary is entirely dissuasive." More often than not, information provokes more questions than true answers and this can go in circles forever with pros and cons, truth and lies, opinion and supposed fact.. Why do some people put their trash ON TOP of the garbage bag instead of going that extra mile and ACTUALLY putting their trash IN THE FREAKIN' TRASH BAG? “What if you’re just trying to get attention by making all this up?” If I may ask, why would I and others around me POSSIBLY lie about this stuff? How old do you think I am? Two? As I have written in response to someone else before, I have nothing to prove to anyone. If you don't believe..that's your choice. Why should I or anyone try to convince you or anyone else of anything? You're going to believe what you're going to believe and that's all you'll believe. Preaching to the choir or damning the damned, it's kind of a pointless circle of wasted energy. ”Could your medications or health be influencing you?” I have taken Paxil, Fluoxotine Pulvule, Prozac, Zoloft... that's all I can think of at the moment. The chemical therapy I endured was more akin to being a test subject than being helped by my physician. At first he tried to tell me it was all in my head...that there wasn't anything wrong with me. Do people really fake this stuff that often? Right now I am not on any chemical therapy of any kind and haven't been for over two years. I am however taking Glucophage XR, Atenolol, and Zestril for my irregular heart rhythms, diabetes, and hypertension. Some of my experiences, which may indeed be genuine, have been attributed to my health or mental state by me...but some of it is simply undeniable as far as I'm concerned with others sharing in these experiences. Someone has suggested jokingly that possibly those around me feel sorry for me and just agree to make me feel better. "Oh yeah, WOW BJ, I really DO SEE THEM!" heheheh...not hardly. Also of interest, someone has finally bought my Great Grandma's old house from the guy who was living in it after us, you know, the guy who's wife died in there after we moved out. Let's see how long it takes for something to happen to this family... “Why are those that are ‘gifted’ plagued with so many problems” Possibly it's a somewhat balanced genetic makeup on our parts being deficient in one or more areas and more than proficient in others. I'm sure it is perhaps prevalent in you, you just do not attribute it as such because it is not one extreme or another. Everyone has some things they excel at and some things they are not quite so good at. Those who are more extreme to one side or another are the ones who suffer the most due to the complete and utter mortification of "normal" society towards those things that are unusual. You must admit, it has been practice in human nature for many, many years to shun, kill, maim, and torture that which is different...sad but true...because MOST people fear that which they do not understand. While those of us on one mental extremist side or the other live upon the mantra "that which does not kill us only serves to make us stronger". I was typing on here earlier and my wife was sitting on the couch and Logan was at school, while we were all happy and content, something kind of slammed into the kitchen table, making this huge noise, scaring the bejeezus outta' me. I turned toward the kitchen and said to my wife behind me, "Did you hear that?" She was like, "Yeah, you didn't do it?" I said, "Uh..nope." Then that was it. I went back to typing and she went back to watching television. That's just the way it is around here. I've been told I'm a glutton for punishment and a sick sadistic bastich, and that's by my closest friends! All kidding aside,I guess that's why I was able to stay there...we all know what curiosity did to the cat and I have tempted it many, MANY times. It's in my nature really...I just HAVE to know, ya' know? The same thing that made me jump out of a car on a dark and lonely road and pull a white wooden cross off a tree one night is what drives me on a day to day basis. I suppose I thrive on adversity or something. I'm also a kind of defensive person, and that damn doll was making me uncomfortable in my own home...THE AUDACITY!! I don't have a clue where the doll is now. I think it is in a storage building somewhere with some other things of my Grandma's. No other dolls have ever messed with me except for the ones mentioned here. I even have life size versions of Chucky and Tiffany on a desk in my entryway...again, glutton for punishment. “Orlock, the night the girl screamed in your ear, what were you dreaming? Also, was anything amiss or out of place when you woke up?” The night it happened was a rare night indeed. I was really very tired and fell asleep in about 30 to 45 minutes which is rare for me, most nights it takes at least an hour. Anyway, I, again very rare for me, was dreaming of absolutely nothing. I heard her scream "WAKE UP!" and opened my eyes alarmed and checked my son in the bed next to ours and scanned the room quickly. Figuring it was just my imagination or something, I lay down again and laid there for about 30 minutes or so and went back to sleep. Right after I went back to sleep, she screamed again but louder and directly in my ear. I sat bolt upright in bed and like a sheepish little bitch, I went over to the light switch and turned it on. I scanned the room once again and saw that no one was there, but decided to go into the living room and watch TV for awhile because there was no way in hell I was going to be able to sleep right then with my heart all freaking out and stuff. When I opened the bedroom door, in his usual spot at the edge of the kitchen counter was the middle aged man. That was the last damn thing I needed to see right then. I quickly shut the door and turned back around into the bedroom and was like, "Now what?!" I waited a little bit, and again like a little bitch, peeked out the door and saw nothing in the kitchen so I went into the living room and got the telephone and called my wife. I actually had her come home from work early so I wouldn't have to be here by myself. Not my proudest moment but the honest truth... “The vacuum incident. Had you had any past problems with the vacuum? Also, did you look inside it? Any backed up tubes that could have caused a problem if it were turned on?” I'm fairly adept at taking things apart and putting them back together and fixing stuff in general. I used to work on VCRs and NESs and stuff when I worked at a video store and the vacuum we had was fairly simple. I had taken it apart before and replaced belts and trimmed the brushes and stuff like that. No problems with it before out of the ordinary, no clogs or anything, I checked it all out..I dunno, it just wouldn't even turn on any more. Hell, I even went so far as checking for fuses in the thing. I mean, they put 'em in Christmas lights now so...you never know. I have submitted a couple of pictures to this site, one enhanced a little one the original. In them you can see what looks to possibly be a face. As far as the conditions during the time I took the picture of my brother. It was a clear night, no rain or anything. It was in April I believe. It was kind of chilly outside, around 60 degrees Fahrenheit. I'm assuming because my brother is wearing his windbreaker and not his coat. We were just outside messing around. My brother is a skater and I take a lot of pictures of him skating and stuff around here because the drive in front of my house is paved. I've checked a lot of pictures and this is the only thing I've seen so far, but it jumped right out at me when looking for things that were...different. Also, I was getting ready for him to do something, some great feat of athleticism or something, and took three quick consecutive pictures of him doing it, this one being the first one, he was getting ready to jump and do his thing. The next two show him in motion and the same area is clear and nothing is there at all. You think this may be fun? I can tell you I wouldn't wish it on anyone. Sometimes when I close my eyes at night, and that simple task never comes easy and without fear, all I can see are flashes of the things I have seen and for all intents and purposes, could go the rest of my existence and never see again, and be just fine. These "images" stick with you and it is much easier to conjure up your own than to forget the reality of these...trust me. Ever wake up to having someone you've never seen before sitting right next to your bed, in the floor at eye level, I'd say, about four inches from your face with theirs, staring at you then going away like they were never there? Believe me, to this day I'm still afraid when I shut my eyes at night that when I open them she'll be there. I'm sure you've heard the phrase "Afraid to close my eyes but afraid to keep them open," THAT'S ME SOMETIMES!! “You must have nerves of STEEL!” Uh....no. I have nerves of regurgitated Jello actually... I've been through so much crap though that the average stuff that people would freak over (I say average like the incident with the kitchen table a few days ago) just doesn't phase me anymore. I guess its what political pundits like to call desensitization, but mine is not R rated movies', Marilyn Manson's, or GTA3's fault no matter what Jerry Falwell says. No offense to followers of the Rotund Reverend of course;) I mean after you've been terrified that a something is going to kill you in your sleep, you're afraid to shut your eyes because of what you might see when you open them, you live with what amounts to some form of pure evil for over three years, the little things like talking toys and bumps in the night just don't cause the same reaction..ya' know? I mean sure, it does freak me out at times, especially if I dwell on it. I have NEVER been known to over analyze something....heheheh. Also of interest and quite creepy when it happened actually, I showed my wife the picture of my brother with the thing in it, the regular one and the enhanced one. Before I even showed her the enhanced one, she gasped and looked away from the picture saying "Oh...I didn't wanna' see that, that's the "Disappeared Boy" That's the same face I saw staring back at me from the bathroom" “Do you feel get mad at these spirits?” I made the mistake one time of getting angry at a spirit and I got the crap scared out of me almost literally. I worked midnights at a Jr. Food Mart about six or seven years ago. My shift was from 11pm to 7am. I was in the store alone mostly from 3am to around 5am because of, well, because it was so damn early in the morning. Anyway, people that worked there on midnights had the responsibility to make breakfast every morning to be sold before the day shift came in. Eggs, bacon, biscuits, sausage, gravy, all that good stuff. The pantry in the back where you would go to get stuff and was directly behind you as you cooked breakfast in the back had always been an uneasy area for anyone who had to work back there. Many co-workers would see things move out of the corner of their eye or hear stuff going on in there. There were many mornings when the Manager would show up around 5am and find his midnight’s person sitting outside on the sidewalk because they were afraid to be in the store alone. They would sit out there until a customer would pull up and go in with them or something. Whatever it was liked to bang on stuff, open the registers, open the cooler doors(the ones with the glass doors where sodas are kept and stuff)and move things around. One night I was going about my business, cooking breakfast when something started to bang on the hood vent over the chicken fryer. It was lightly at first then stopped. Then I got the feeling that someone was watching me from behind and turned around to the wide open pantry door. I shook my head and closed the pantry door and continued mixing up the gravy. As I was getting ready to cut up some sausage to put in the gravy, I saw a customer at the register out front. I hadn't heard the electronic door chime when they came in so I was surprised to see them there. I called to them that I would be right there and wiped off my hands and went up front. There was no one there. I figured I had been mistaken and no one had been there to begin with, seeing as how I didn't hear that loud- assed annoying door chime, so I went back, washed my hands, and got back to work on the gravy. As I picked up the sausage to continue, the slight banging on the hood vent started again. At this point weird stuff had been going on all night long and I said aloud, "Would you just stop it?!" Then I got this feeling that can only be described as a feather that was really hot on the back of my neck and whatever it was started slamming the hell out of the hood vent. Hood vents are made out of metal and are VERY loud. This scared the beejezus outta' me so I went out front and out the front door and was determined to let whatever it was just have the damn kitchen...I was done fooling with it for the night. I don't know at what point the banging stopped. Not long after that, a customer came in and I went in the store with them. I took care of them and then went to the back to attempt to finish breakfast. I got breakfast done and went back up front. There was a customer coming in the store. The next few events are kind of hazy...but this is what I've put together. I gave the customer their change, they turned to leave, as they walked out the door I heard the door chime, the cooler doors out front, one of them opened and there was no one there, then I fell over. Next thing I remember, a pastor or priest from a local church was holding me up in a booth over to the side and had a cup of water for me. I asked what happened and he said he came in and saw me in the floor behind the counter and helped me over to the booth. I was fine after that and I never experienced the loud banging in the kitchen again. I remember when I was younger, before the store was built there, it was an empty lot used to sell Christmas Trees. Come to find out, before that, it was a funeral home. I would like to thank all of you that have shown interest in my experiences and are reading this, and kick those of you that think I’m a liar...heheh. That out of the way...you guys would be astonished by how many emails I have received since first posting this story, all of them recounting some sort of experience similar to mine or searching for help or answers. I'm gonna' be the first to admit, I wish I had all the answers. I wish I could help everyone out there that has this "problem". I wish I knew what to do about these things. But I don't. If I did, I probably wouldn't be sitting here awake while my wife and kid are asleep in the other room. I was sleeping soundly when I heard what sounded like a sigh through tightly pressed lips twice..really LOUD...kind of like "SSSSSSSSSHHHhhhh..." and it came from the end of our bed over towards the wall. I opened my eyes (I'm a very light sleeper)only to see a bluish glow, a bit rectangular in shape, about 9 or 10 inches long and 4 or 5 inches wide, with some purple spotted kind of smeared edges hovering over by the wall. It brightened abruptly then seemed to flash away into nothingness. Needless to say, I'm awake now. I'm not saying don't email me...far from it. Please, if you're not comfortable sharing your life experiences here as this is such a public forum and subject to ridicule, or just want to talk about things, feel free to email me. I may not have all the answers but sometimes just knowing that someone else out there has "it" just as bad if not worse than you makes the burden a little easier to bear. Contact me here: orlock@vci.net THE INDIAN WOMAN When I was four years old, we took our first trip to Walt Disney World in Florida. It was a very long drive down so we stopped at my mother's friend's house in Georgia on our way there. Her son Jay*(names have been changed)who was five at the time slept in his own bedroom and his sister Amy who was only two at the time slept in the room with her mom and dad. I was to sleep in Jay's room with him, but no one said anything about what had been going on in there until it was too late. Apparently, while Jay slept every night, an old Indian woman would come and stand at the end of his bed and stare at him. He went and told his mom and dad about it several times, but they always told him he was just dreaming or something and either he'd sleep in their room floor with them because he was too scared to go back to his room or he'd just go back to his room and try to go back to sleep. On the night's he'd go back to his own room is when the problems began. The woman came into his mom and dad's room and his mom woke up and saw her. She led her outside along the road and up into the forested trails of the mountains near their house. Mary (Jay's mom) was in a daze when she realized where she was and what had happened....stunned at the fact she had walked so far from home, she turned around and the woman was gone, so she walked back to their house and cleaned her feet and went back to bed. Never saying a word to her husband or the children about what had happened...until it started happening to Jay. Mary and her husband Ron would wake up in the mornings and Jay would be nowhere around. The old lady had started leading Jay away from the house and up the trails of the mountains in their back yard. The night I slept in Jay's bed in his room, I was awoke by him crying. I looked over and the lady was standing there at the foot of the bed, she simply turned and walked out of the room. I looked over at Jay, and there was much to my poor little four year old horror, what seemed to be gallons of blood covering the bed, my pajamas, and Jay's face and clothes. I screamed and my mom and dad came into the room. My dad immediately picked me up out of the bed and then Mary and Ron came running into the room. Mary was shocked at the condition of myself and Jay, and she just kind of stood there with her hand to her mouth. Ron however, came over and scooped Jay up out of the bed and we all ran into the living room. We both took baths to get the blood off of us and then Jay and I were put to bed on the couch and chair in the living rooms after we were cleaned up. Our parents didn't go back to bed however. They stayed just off the bedroom in the dining room and kitchen and went ahead and started cooking breakfast. I think to this day that is why I hate the smell of pancake syrup so much, but in any event, they fixed breakfast and were sitting at the dining room table which from my spot now in the floor next to Jason on the couch I could see Ron sitting and smoking and drinking coffee with my dad. They were whispering about something I didn't know what, but both of their faces looked so stern and sincere that I figured it was some "grown up stuff" so I sat up and turned the TV on and they told me where I could find Sesame Street on the local stations so I watched that and played with some toys that were in the living room next to the TV. Jay got up a little while later, but for the rest of our stay we were NOT to go into his bedroom for anything. Our moms and dads would go in there to get whatever we needed. Before we left for our drive on to Florida and Disney World, we went in there to get the last of my things. My mom and dad and I...and the bed was still coated in a pool of dried blood. ALL OVER the white fitted sheet a huge round circle covering almost the entire middle area of the bed. I was (much) later in life told about the old woman incidents and that apparently after we left, Jay started having massive "nosebleeds" but they couldn't figure out why. Jay, as an adult these many years later, has now murdered someone and is serving a life sentence in jail. Submitted From: BJ Sizemore, Kentucky, USA