Sharing and Scaring

What you are about to read is a sampling of spookiness from myself and a couple of friends. I personally have had very little experience with the paranormal, or if I have none of them are worth telling. I love scary things but if I'm ever put in a freaky situation, I am in no way a brave person! So in that sense I am happy I have had no dramatic run-ins with the unknown.

I would like to share 4 sets of experiences from 4 different people. I will tell them in what I believe to be the "least scary" to the "scariest" order.

(1) MY STORY:

Everyone has experienced weird things because we live in a weird world. However, I'd have to say there was one night that just baffled and surprised me.

I was laying in bed trying to sleep. My parents were watching TV downstairs and had the front door open because it was springtime. I had just fallen into a relaxed state when an image suddenly flashed before my eyes. If you have ever seen the movie "The Shining", it was like the scene of the twin girls murdered and lying in a bloody mess.

I saw a blank hallway with blood EVERYWHERE, and two forms on the ground that I can only assume were bodies. This image was gone a millisecond later but it had startled me and my heart was racing. As I mulled over why such a scene would appear in my head, I heard a loud animal sound coming from my front yard. It sounded like a cat's yowl except more canine, if that makes any sense. Now I was additionally creeped out because I had never heard something like that before.

At this point I can no longer remember the exact sequence of events, but basically sometime later I asked my parents if they had heard that animal noise, and they said no. This does not make sense, because they definitely would have heard something, considering that the open front door lies right in the middle of our small front yard. So I wonder now if I was having both a visual and auditory hallucination that night.

I have never had something like this before and I wasn't very groggy at the time.

(2) LINDA'S STORY:

Linda is a good friend of mine. She is very intelligent and good-natured. Her mother is manic- depressive and Linda often worries that she is becoming manic-depressive herself. Sadly, I think she already has.

Her story is probably not related to anything supernatural but it includes strange phenomena, anyway.

One day I asked her if she had ever heard someone calling her name, because this seems like a very typical aspect of paranormal occurrences and I was curious. She said "oh yeah all the time" like it was a given fact. Then she went into how oftentimes she'll be falling asleep or just sitting quietly and she will begin to hear voices in conversation. She said that the conversation gets progressively louder but she can never really decipher what is being said, yet it does not seem abnormal at all--in other words it sounds very real. Then, suddenly, one of the voices will shout very loudly into her ear, sometimes yelling her name or something else. After the first syllable of this shout, the word(s) quickly fade out and vanish. She explained that this is why when she starts falling asleep in class, she sometimes jerks awake suddenly, because someone has yelled into her ear. I asked, "Don't you get scared when you start hearing the voices again, and do you prepare for the yelling because you expect it?" Linda replied, "Nope. They get me every time."

(3) DANNY'S STORY:

Danny used to be one of my best friends, and it seems the paranormal likes to follow him around. He had strange experiences in his old house, and he's had strange experiences in his new house. The one I remember most clearly is as follows:

Danny was home alone one day and sitting upstairs in his room. The phone rang and he went to answer it, but before he could someone picked it up downstairs in his kitchen. He said he clearly heard someone walk over and lift the receiver, but had never heard anyone enter the house. He did not investigate because he was afraid it was a burglar or some other threatening person, and soon he heard the phone being placed back in its receiver.

Thoroughly freaked out, he waited upstairs until the phone rang again. This time he managed to pick it up and it was his father calling. His father asked "Who was the guy who answered the phone last time I called?" Apparently a man had said "hello" but that was it before he hung up. Danny did not hear anyone leave the house after that, nor did he hear any movement at all.

(4) MEGAN'S STORY:

Megan is another pal of mine, and when she told me this story I got the willies!

Her boyfriend Ryan lived with her and her family for a while, and would sleep on the couch downstairs. One night marked the beginning of a phenomenon that would continue till this day. Megan was sitting in bed reading. The lights were on in her room but off in the outside hallway. Her door was partly open so that there was a good amount of space between the door and the doorjamb. She happened to look up and saw a face in this space, staring at her and not moving. It was down near the floor so that it looked like the person was crouching and peering in from around the corner. She said that since there was insufficient lighting, she could not clearly see the eyes but the shadowing of eyes and a nose.

She did see a mouth that was expressionless, and asserted that what she was seeing was clearly someone's face. At first she thought it was Ryan playing tricks on her, so she kept saying "Ryan, what are you doing?" "Ok Ryan, that's enough" "Stop it Ryan it's not funny anymore" for a considerable length of time without getting any response. Frightened now, she did nothing for a while but finally got the guts to go to her door and look out.

Of course no one was there, and upon further investigation everyone else in the house was sound asleep. She tells me that nearly every time her door is left open so that that space is present between the door and doorjamb, the face will eventually show up. She has looked for every explanation and there is none. So now she keeps her bedroom door wide open at night, and doesn't see anything. If I were her, I'd CLOSE the door, because what if that thing comes in???

And so concludes my eerie presentation! Feedback welcome!!! >^_^<