I've had a few experiences concerning ghosts, most
happening when I was younger. Things pretty much came to a
stop as I got older and a bit more...shall we
say...cynical about the whole thing. Until one night...
It was a beautiful summer night in Northern California. It
was cloudy and thus very dark. I was happily sleeping until
my next door neighbor's dogs started barking insanely. They
generally bark at everything, so it didn't really concern
me at first, but they wouldn't stop, and they reached an
alarming pitch, as if threatened by something. Disgruntled,
I got out of bed and went out to my back patio.
My back yard is about 25 feet from the patio to the back
fence. The fence itself is 6 feet high, with an immediate 2
foot drop right behind it. There is about a 2-3 foot width
of "no man's land" where my fence starts and my back
neighbour's fence begins. The "no man's land extends up
from the end of my property to half way into my neighbour's
yard on the left, and on the right, it extends all the way
to the street. I am the second house from the corner.
(Hopefully that wasn't too confusing!) Suffice to say
there's a gap between the fences of about 2 feet, that's
filled with nothing but ivy and dead leaves.
As I'm sitting outside, the dogs are still kicking up a
ruckus. I'm kind of surprised that my neighbour hasn't told
them to hush up because he's generally pretty good about
that. I'm sitting there, grumbling to myself when they
suddenly stop.
One more little bit of information: on my back neighbour's
property is a huge tree whose branches dip into our yard.
It's lovely and huge, and I don't mind the branches
overlapping, as it provides lovely shade. We call it the
bird hotel, because it seemed all the birds in the
neighbourhood would congregate there, which was fun to
watch. Anyway, I'm looking in the dark to the back of the
yard for no reason other than that is the direction I
happen to be facing. I become aware then of a rustling
sound, coming from the back of the yard. Possum, I think.
But I start thinking, the rustling is very evenly spaced,
almost like....footsteps. Then, over the top of the fence
about 8 or so inches, I see two red lights. Not really sure
of what I'm looking at, I try to look harder. Couldn't be
brakelights because the house behind would block any lights
from the street, and besides, the fence was far too high.
Animal eyes? Perhaps. But they tend to be a greenish yellow
color, not red, unless there was something to reflect off
of, and I didn't have any lights on at all. And if they
were animal eyes, they were very wide set. As wide set as a
human's....
The eyes moved, and the rustling noise came again. I
realized that the "eyes" were moving in time to the leaves
rustling on the ground. But that would be impossible
because that would mean that whatever it is back there
would have to be at least 9 feet high, taking into account
that the fence was 6 feet high, and the 2 foot drop would
bring the overall height to 8 feet. And the "eyes" were
even higher than that.
I'm sitting there in the utter darkness, thinking these
things, on one level, and on another I'm still trying to
figure out exactly what it is I'm looking at. The only
logical conclusion I can come to is that this thing is
tall....very tall...and that perhaps it would be a really
good idea to go inside...right *now*. I do so, being sure
to lock the patio door behind me, realizing that this
thing...whatever it is...probably wouldn't be stopped by
something as meagre as a patio door lock. Regardless,
that's what I did. Then I did something else quite
inexplicable considering the circumstances. I went back to
bed, and immediately to sleep. I guess somewhere I decided
that I really didn't want to think about what it was I saw
until the safe and comfortable light of day.
I still don't know what I saw. I would love any information
about creatures that might possibly fit the description (or
lack of it) that I provided. I mentioned this to my
neighbour who laughed it off as a possum...it could have
been. But it would have had to have been two, one on the
fence and one on the ground, and they tend to be noisy
creatures when in groups. This thing made no noise, aside
from the rustling of the ivy on the ground. And that
doesn't really explain how, if they were possums, they
could be so synchronized in their movements. Or the fact
that the eyes were red and spaced much farther apart than a
possum's could be.
Thanks for letting me share my encounter.
Contact me here: leeryjello@hotmail.com
THE THING IN THE OLD HOUSE
I have another experience I'd like to share. This happened
when I was 15. We lived on a farm in Canada, and it was my
responsibility to mow the 4-5 acres of grass around our
farm house and the small house across the road.
Let me first give you a bit of a visualization. We had a
farmhouse on the north side of our lane, which was only a
few hundred feet from the road. To the south of the lane
was a small house that my great (great) grandmother lived
in while she was alive. She died back in the fifties, and
since then it had been used for storage. There were all
sorts of cool things in the house...an old pump organ, a
trunk of navy uniforms that had been worn by an aunt who
was a prison guard for female Nazi prisoners at the
Nuremburg Trials after WWII. There was old ratty furniture,
there was even dishes still in the tiny little kitchen. It
was cool for a kid to explore, and generally the feeling
was absolutely benign. But it really must have hated the
lawn mower....
As I said, I was 15 and mowing what seemed like a field
with houses. Luckily, the mower was a ride on, but on a hot
dusty day, it still was no picnic. Nevertheless I got into
the groove of the thing. Behind the little house there was
a lilac bush that ran the length of the house. I noticed no
one had ever mowed that grass before, so I decided to go in
there and set to. I got as far as the end of the lilac
bushes, and suddenly the mower started sputtering. It
sounded as if it was about to stall out, so I got off of it
and started trying to see what was wrong. The first thing I
thought was that it was out of gas or oil. I checked, and
nope, it was fine. The next thing I wondered was that
because the grass was so long, perhaps the blade had gotten
jammed. I shut it off, and lifted it up. The cover around
the blade was clean and grass free. Really puzzled now, I
started it up and left it in neutral. It started up again,
but it was still doing the chugging thing, as if at any
minute it was going to conk out (don't you just love my
technical terms?).
Okay, so at this point, I have to ask you, the reader, a
question. Have you ever been preoccupied with something,
and then felt someone looking at you, and as a result are
drawn to the person doing the looking? You know what I
mean, right? That's exactly what happened. My attention was
drawn to a side of the little house I had never seen
before, blocked as it was by the lilac bushes. There was a
little back porch there, with a long, narrow window. Over
the bottom of the window there appeared to be a white
material blocking it, like gyproc or white cardboard. Above
the white stuff, there was.....
....well, a head. It was circular, like a clay model whose
features haven't been honed yet. There were no facial
features, and yet oddly enough the first thing that popped
into my head was, it has no hair. I wouldn't even be sure
that was I was looking at was in fact looking back, aside
from two very strong things: first, it *had*(with whatever
passed for its eyes) been staring because I was drawn to
looking at it, but the second thing, the really really
definite thing that just rolled off of it in waves and felt
like a punch to the gut was that this thing, whatever it
was, was REALLY REALLY TICKED OFF.
I felt like I had been electrocuted. I couldn't move. My
feet were rooted to the ground. I have no idea how long I
stood there, but it felt like an hour. Of course it
couldn't have been longer than 10 seconds. Finally I
managed to drop my eyes, and start running back to our
house across the lane.
I was in a tight spot. I was shaking, literally, so much I
couldn't bring a glass of lemonade to my lips without
spilling. I couldn't mention what I saw to anyone because
though wierd stuff has happened before (remind me to tell
you about the barn), I knew the 'rents would just have
thought I was trying to get out of mowing the grass. I had
to go back there, if for no other reason than to get the
damned mower, and I didn't know if I could. For about 15
minutes I argued with myself. Finally I reasoned that if I
didn't LOOK, then I could get myself through it. So that's
what I set out to do.
I walk back across the lane, and up to the lilac bushes,
looking anywhere but at the old house. Then I notice
something. The mower, which only 15 minutes before sounded
like it was on death's door, was sitting just where I left
it, in idle, just as I left it, only now it was humming
along perfectly, as if nothing had been wrong, as if the
chugging and sputtering and sounding like it was going to
stall any second now never happened. As odd as it was, I
was grateful. I climbed back into the seat and got the hell
away from there.
I lived on the farm another 2 years. I never once looked
back there again. Once when back on a visit, I did venture
to look at that long narrow window. There was nothing in
it. No white stuff at the bottom, no wierd looking faceless
face. Mind you this was years later, and I can't vouch for
anything being moved in the time that had passed. I can
say, however, wierd things happened on this farm, in this
place, and I know what I saw.
Submitted From: USA
