My Encounter With Flash

My story is not necessarily very recent. It happened to me when I was about eleven.

I remember this happened on a hot, sticky Saturday morning when it was still dark outside near the end of my sixth grade year in 1994, so that would mean it was either in April or May (I'm not exactly sure though. And, yes, I am a "youngster"- I'm only 18.)

Anyways, I got up earlier than I usually do for some unknown reason. I tried to fall back asleep, but I just couldn't. (This usually happens with me. Once I'm awake, I am awake for good.) Since I couldn't fall back asleep and I didn't want to wake my sister (who I shared a room with at the time), I decided to go into the living room to watch the early morning cartoons on the TV. I got to the living room, turned on the TV, flipped through the channels 'til I found CBS, and plopped down in my bean bag chair right up close to the screen. (Like any normal child, I'd liked sitting close to the TV screen despite taunts of "You're gonna go blind" from my parents.)

I was just sitting there watching cartoons when the phone started ringing. I walked over to the bar that divided our living room and kitchen to pick up the cordless phone from its charger so I could answer it- but it wasn't there. Being the semi-intelligent child I was, I stood stock-still as I listened and tried to locate from where the phone was ringing.

I came to gather that it was coming from somewhere down the hall that leads to our bedrooms and the bathrooms at the back of the house, so I slowly- still listening- began to walk down the hall. As I was passing the bathroom, I realised it was coming from there where my mother just happened to be taking a shower at the time. (She was the only other person up at the time. My father and sister were still asleep.) I figured she had been on the phone before she got into the shower and, since she was in the shower and everyone else was asleep, I figured I should go get the phone to answer it.

Just as I was reaching for the doorknob, *something* grabbed me by the throat and proceeded to lift me up until my toes when just brushing the carpet. I was so terrified. A green mist surrounded my head and shoulders and I couldn't breathe. After a while, my eyesight began to fade 'til all I saw was black. I started to freak out, thinking, "I can't die. I'm too young. Is this thing trying to kill me?" then, suddenly, it just dropped me. I fell to the floor on my knees, gasping for air as I clutched at my throat. I looked up, suddenly terrified that it might still be there waiting for me to make a move, but the green mist was (luckily) slowly fading away.

As I regained my senses, I realised that the phone had stopped ringing and I heard my mother's voice over the sound of rushing water from the bathroom. I stood up abruptly, opened the bathroom door, let myself in, and sat down on the toilet, waiting for my mother to get off the phone. She gave me a weird look, sensing there was something wrong by the way I was breathing so heavily and quickly. After she got off the phone, I told her what had just happened, but she didn't believe a word of it. She told me that I had just dreamed it and to go back to bed.

I let myself out of the bathroom, feeling rather dejected at not being believed by my own mother, and went back to the living room. I plopped down on my bean bag chair again and just stared the TV screen in a little semi-trance.

Later, after my sister got up, I excitedly told her my story since I knew she believed in the supernatural- but she didn't believe me either! As we got older, she grew into her psychic powers (they run in our family) and she became very good at using talking boards to converse with spirits. However, she never quite believed me. One day, we were bored and decided it would be cool to talk to our grandmother on a talking board (my sister owns several talking boards). As we were setting up, I told her that I thought it would be a good idea if we found the spirit who choked me when I was younger. She agreed, but still didn't believe me. Anyways, we would up talking to my grandmother and we told her we wanted to talk to that spirit and she just passed us right along to him like she was talking on the phone and had just handed the receiver to someone else in the room- that easily. We talked to the spirit and found out that it turned out to be a friend of my father's that had known me when I was little and who had always thought me to be an insolent little brat. He said that he had choked me because I had been disrespectful to my father and he thought me stupid for doing that since he had never had a father as a child. I was skeptical that it was him, but, slowly, I came to believe that it was, in fact, really him as he told us things about himself only he would have known.

Before we got off the board, he told us to tell my father something about some event that had happened when they were kids together growing up in Oak Cliff, a tough suburb in Dallas.

Well, that was enough for my sister to believe me. She's believed me ever since. So has my father. I told him what he had told us and he was absolutely shocked- they had never told anyone about that day! My father was also shocked to learn that I had "suddenly" acquired so much information about his friend (his birthday, things about his childhood, their friendship, etc.). It turns out my father had a special nickname for his friend: he called him "Flash." That's why I called this story of my experience "My Encounter With 'Flash'".