by Jim Harold
Another time, I heard the footsteps coming over towards me and I saw a figure in my mind's eye. From the waist down I pictured the Greek god Pan, how it's just like two animal legs on hooves? Once again, I was able to wake myself up before it got too close to me.
Some people might think this was sleep paralysis or night terrors. I've wondered about that, because I am familiar with both. I guess night terrors aren't actually supposed to be paranormal, they're just something that you go through when you're sleeping.
The fact that these things seem to have purpose and seem to have personality, makes me think that it might be something different.
The other thing about these experiences that I've noticed is that even though they are terrifying and scary, I can honestly say I've never felt like these things were out to hurt me. I never felt evil coming from them, which makes me feel better but I still don't know what's going on.
I read a book and I've forgotten the author, but he talked about how he started experimenting with out of body travel. He talked about how within the astral plane there were various entities that he would come in contact with. Just things that kind of live in the ether. They are not necessarily there to harm us; maybe they're just curious. I wonder if it might be something like that. Maybe I just encounter these beings from another world who can every now and then communicate.
-Marie, Massachusetts
32. A Strange Gift
I first experienced the paranormal when I was probably about 9-years-old. It was a really, really bizarre time in my life. I always had very detailed dreams, but this experience wasn't a dream. It was bizarre.
One summer evening, I was lying in my queen-sized bed sleeping. As a child, it felt seven times my size. I was an only child, and my parents were at the opposite end of the house. I awoke and the closet door opened. Out of it came either four or eight hooded figures. It is hard to remember. I was just so scared. They reminded me of the Grim Reaper as they wore hoods. I couldn't see any faces, and I couldn't make out any hands or anything like that. The most bizarre thing is that they were transparent, like a shadow or a cloud.
They moved and stood next to me on both sides of the bed. I began to get cold all over. In a Georgia summer, it is very, very hot and muggy. For it to go from 100 degrees Fahrenheit down to something like 70 is pretty drastic, and that's what it felt like.
I was very, very scared. It was the first and last time that I ever had an experience at that level of intensity. As they were standing there I had this really weird sensation, like the bed underneath me was just completely going away. I felt I was levitating and I had absolutely nothing underneath me. I was just rising up from the bed. I didn't feel like anyone was touching me or carrying me. I just had this feeling of coldness around me that was lifting me up.
Then it got even stranger. It felt like someone took a cold cotton sheet and laid it over my face. I could see through it like cheesecloth. I could see through to the other side as if someone had taken a dark drape and put it over me. I couldn't scream or anything. I was almost paralyzed for a second. I was frightened, but I couldn't really do anything about it. I was suspended there.
I didn't know what to do. I stayed there for what seemed like an eternity. I'm sure it was probably maybe five minutes, but it felt like a thousand years. Then, I just went back down again onto the bed. They just walked away and retreated back into the same closet from whence they came. It was just a really bizarre experience.
My mom still remembers it to this day, because the second that they were gone and I was back down on that bed, I started screaming my head off. I thought that I had encountered demons. I didn't know what they were. Of course, my mom came in with a flashlight, walked around my room and told me that I was fine. She reassured me that I was alone, nothing was there, and she told me to go back to sleep. I had a big German Shepherd so it came and slept with me in the room. Nothing else weird happened for the rest of the night.
The next day, I was just sitting and watching TV when all of a sudden, I had this idea that I needed to write a poem. The poem that I decided to write was called "The Shadows' Dance," and it was based on my experience. The strange thing is that I sent it off to a publisher, and it got published. I started putting out books constantly from the time that I was 9 up until I was about 15. I would sit down, automatic write, and the ideas would just come to me.
I never had this ability before this experience so I believe that they had to have been connected somehow. My first year, I probably wrote seven volumes of poetry that were published, and each contained at least 300 poems.
I wasn't sure about this gift, whether it was good or bad. I eventually stopped writing for a long time but now I've decided I've been given this ability so I am going to use it. I am back to writing.
Whenever I sit down or whenever it hits me, it's as if someone is dictating to me. I'm just the person that has to put down the words on the page. Sometimes the words almost feel as though they aren't necessarily mine.
-Melissa, Georgia
33. The Monster in the Cubbyhole
It was probably about '93 or '94. Our family had moved into this 100-year-old farmhouse. There was always weird stuff happening at this place, but we just chalked it up to the house being so old.
My brother and I had side-by-side bedrooms with a door in between them. One night, I was lying in bed and he said, "John, lay down." I said, "Hush up. I'm trying to go to sleep." He said, "No, I want you to lay down. You're bugging me." I asked, "What do you mean?" My brother asked, "Aren't you standing in the doorway?" I said, "No, I'm lying in bed." I couldn't see anything, but he was lying there telling me that he could see a man standing in our doorway. I just kind of passed it off.
Another week or so later, he hollered into my bedroom, "John?" I answered back, "Yeah?" He asked, "Are you up?" I said, "Well, I'm lying in bed." He said, "That guy is standing at the end of your bed now." I froze. I said, "Uh, okay."
When I saw stuff around the house, I wouldn't tell my dad because I didn't know how he would react. One day, I was watching TV downstairs and out of the corner of my eye I saw something coming down the staircase. Then, it made a right through the kitchen. I looked and saw what appeared to be a man in a cape. I told my dad and he said, "I've seen that too." That blew me away.
We had so many other strange things happen at that house. In my room, there was this little cubbyhole, a little attic crawlspace. I always thought it would be a great hiding place for comic books or whatever. One night, the door to it started moving on its own. The little wooden latch on the door started moving like something was in there trying to get out.
I freaked out so badly that I moved out of the room. My brother started living in there after I left. I was always scared to go up to the room and so was every friend I ever took up there. Anyway, one day after I moved out I went up there and saw that my brother had two dressers up against that cubbyhole door. He told me that one night something was trying to get through there, that it had moved those two dressers about three inches away from the door. It scared him so badly that he started staying in the living room.
All I can say is that was one freaky place!
-John, Indiana
34. It Had No Eyes
I was about 9-years-old and one of my chores was to set the dining room table. While I was doing so one night, I noticed from the corner of my eye that something was standing at the end of the hallway. I figured it was my brother doing whatever. After a while, I noticed it was still standing there and as I looked up and over, I realized that it wasn't even a human being. I noticed a dark mass and I know it sounds so typical of seeing a shadow person, but it was true; it was dark, but something about it seemed to move within its mass. It didn't have solid edges. It was almost as though it blurred out.
I never felt intimidated, but it just didn't feel completely human to me. At that time, I didn't know what it could've been. I was just a kid. I found it more curious than anything. The one thing that really stuck
with me, and the reason why I don't really like to call it a shadow person is that where its eyes should've been, there was nothing. I could see through to the wall behind it. The only reason I say it's the wall is because our hallway had a nasty, old, yellow light to it and the eyes matched the exact color of the walls behind it. Any time I've heard anyone talk about a shadow person, I've never heard them ever say anything about holes for eyes.
Me and the shadow person kind of stared at each other for probably less than a minute and it took off towards the right, which would've been my parents' bedroom. I was a kid and I had to know what it was, so I took off after it.
I followed it in there and I shut the door, because I figured it had to be there. I didn't want it leaving. I checked everywhere. I turned my parents' room inside out but it wasn't there.
I believe it may have been connected to an experience I had a couple of years prior. We were visiting the Philippines, where my mother is from. We were having a great time and I woke one night because I heard somebody in our room. I thought it was my cousins or somebody just getting up. I peeked open my eyes and there was something in the corner. I just stared at it. I know a lot of people might say, "You might've been dreaming," but I'm sorry, when you know you're awake, you just know.
This thing, it looked exactly like the figure I saw in my house. It came out of the shadows, it walked across the room and didn't pay any attention to me. It just walked across the room and through the wall, which would've led to the room next to us. I just accepted it for what it was and went back to sleep.
I don't know what any of it was, but it has certainly stuck with me.
-Drea, California
35. Strange Legs
When I was 5-years-old, my mom had just had a baby, my little sister. This event occurred when my sister was just a few days old. My mom went to take a shower and I was with the baby. My father was in another bedroom. We lived on the second story of a two-story house, our relatives lived on the first floor.
So my mom was taking a shower and she had a habit of putting the radio outside of the shower with the door open. She'd listen to her music. She was doing this as usual and the radio turned off. She thought that maybe my dad had turned it off, so she just continued with her shower. Well, the radio turned back on. She yelled out to my father, "Ruben, could you leave the radio alone?" My dad didn't say anything. Again, the radio turned off. She got out of the shower to see what was going on.
She looked towards the living room and it was dark. She saw her bedroom door cracked open slightly with the light on because I was in there. She looked in the kitchen, nothing. My dad was in the other room and she went to see him. He had his headphones on because he was also listening to music. She was going back to the room where I was at and looking down when she saw this pair of legs, like hairy legs. She only saw them from a little above the knee down. They were a man's hairy legs.
It was scary. She was concerned for me and the baby. She went to get my dad who asked, "What's going on?" She said, "I just saw a pair of man legs here." My dad started checking the house. They checked if I was okay. She never saw those legs again and no one was to be found in the house.
A few days later, my mom decided to sleep with me. She was lying down with me and hugging me. I was asleep, totally out. Then, all of a sudden, she felt little hands on her neck. Those little hands were mine. I was choking her and she could not get me off of her. She said, "Nelly, get off of me, get off of me, get off of me." She pushed me. She said that she saw something black come out of me and shoot out the window. It is scary to know I was trying to hurt my mom in that way.
A lot of weird things happened to us and my relatives who lived downstairs. There was something strange about that house.
-Nelly, Illinois
36. A Chip on its Shoulder
This experience involves a friend of mine who lived not far from me in Brown County, Indiana, which is known for rolling hills and scenic views. He had this home that sat up on a hilltop with a big panoramic view from his back deck. My buddy told me on several occasions that his home was haunted, because back in 1970, it was the scene of a murder that went unsolved for many years. Actually, the story has been featured on Unsolved Mysteries.
Anyway, he had told me he had several weird experiences in the home, but I never put much stock into it.
In the summer of 2003, when Mars was really close to Earth, he invited me and another friend over. He's an amateur astronomer and has this huge telescope on his back deck. He thought we'd relax for the evening and go out on his back deck under this starry expanse to look at Mars through this telescope. So, we went. We were just hanging out and it was such a beautiful, quiet night. We were just being really quiet, just because the stars were incredible. We were in awe of the whole experience and kind of taking it all in.
I had carried a tall glass outside. It was square cut and kind of heavy. I remember it distinctly. I sat it down on the floorboard of the deck, back behind me several steps so I wouldn't accidentally knock it over with my foot. It was just bright enough out from the stars to see a bit; we had no artificial lighting anywhere or anything. Anyway, I knew there was nothing out on the deck. There were no animals with us; there was nothing. I was standing shoulder-to-shoulder next to our female friend. My buddy was sitting down on his stool looking through the telescope. Like I said, we weren't talking at all.
All of a sudden, I heard a whisper in my ear. I thought my female friend had leaned over and said something to me, but at the same moment she thought that I leaned over and whispered to her. We turned to each other at the same time, and almost at the exact same moment said, "Excuse me, what did you say?" At that second, the only way I can describe it is, something punt-kicked my glass on the deck behind us. It made that real distinct ting sound that you hear when heavy glass gets hit by something. The whole thing full of ice and water, went flying overhead past us, soaking us both with water.
At the same time, we screamed and I can't tell you what we said because it wasn't G-rated. We were in shock. My buddy was in front of us, but away from where the glass landed on the other side of the deck. He never even looked up from the telescope. He said, "Oh, that's just the ghost. That kind of stuff happens all the time."
He said it matter-of-factly. It didn't shake him up in the slightest. He had told me some stories of things that happened to him, and as I said, I just kind of blew him off. After that happened to me, personally, I believed everything he said. That's my crazy story.
This made me more aware of the paranormal. After having that experience, I've been more tuned in ever since. Me and some of my buddies, we started a small paranormal investigation group here in Indiana. We call ourselves SOUP – Society of the Unexplained Phenomena.
I really got into the murder mystery that happened at that house in 1970. I've always wondered if there was a correlation between the murder and arson that happened on that property, and these strange experiences. Whatever was there, seemed to have a little bit of a chip on its shoulder.
-Matthew, Indiana
PART FOUR:
VISIONS, DREAMS &
MESSAGES FROM BEYOND
37. My Other Sissy, the Dead One
My mother passed away when I was 12-years-old, about 32 years ago. She had this beautiful bedroom suite that has this huge mirror above the dresser. Over the years, the suite has been in three different homes. Any time we would walk into a room where it was located, if we didn't turn on the light, we could see Mom in the mirror! My sister saw it first, and a few months later, I did too. Years later, my niece, who wasn't born when Mom died, saw it as well.
In the mirror, my mom looked about the same age that she was when she passed, in her early 40s, but she looked healthy. She didn't look sick. My mother had cancer and when she passed away she was very frail and skeletal. She had lost a huge amount of weight. When we saw her in the mirror, she looked healthy and happy like she was before she got sick. It was a very clear image to all three of us.
He's an adult now, but when my first child Christian was 2-years-old, my ex-husband and I heard him in his bedroom talking to someone. I went in and asked him, "Christian, who are you talking to?" He said, "My other Sissy." Well, he calls my sister Susan "Sissy." He was real close to her, so I didn't think anything of it. He had obviously modeled this imaginary friend after his aunt, so I didn't think twice about it.
About a year or so after that started, my sister and I were looking at a photo album, and my son walked up and pointed to a picture of my mother and said, "That's my other Sissy, the dead one."
My sister looks almost identical to my mother, except her eyes are not as dark and her hair is red rather than being a dark brown. But the face is almost identical. If she darkened her hair and put in contacts, my sister Susan could be my mother. So the fact he compared the two really fits the bill.
It gave us chills when he said it but we sat there and said to each other, "You know what? This is not a bad thing. There's nothing to be afraid of. It's our mother." That's the one person in the world we never have to fear.
The final chapter in my story happened about six months ago. I had recently bought this random book on ghost stories at a local secondhand bookstore.
When I graduated high school, my father gave me a cedar chest, and the first thing I put in that cedar chest was a photo of my mother. I haven't touched that picture since. My husband and I were looking at my daughter one night and we asked each other, "Okay, she's got my eye color, but where did the shape of her eyes come from?" They're not round like mine and they're not almond like my husband's. She's 15-years-old. We're sitting there asking ourselves, "Whose eyes does she have?" The day after this conversation, I picked that book up and opened it to the page that I had left off on. That picture from my cedar chest was in the book. It was clear that my daughter had my mother's eyes.
