You are here: Real Ghost Stories :: A Haunted Life :: A Series Of Events

Real Ghost Stories

A Series Of Events

 

I grew up in a town pulled between country and city, with too many people and too few buildings - there were bad spots in town where I was never to go, because the people there were desperate. The town was large enough to house our own historical museum, but small enough that it was only open for one hour on Tuesdays. Where this story begins, the large corporate chains had just begun moving in and choking out the family stores. Forests were being leveled in favor of houses.

My house is not an old one; I was born with this house, and I have grown with it. It was new since I knew it, and built on old farmland - it is a tiny piece of suburbia that is quickly overtaking the countryland; one of many signs of the growing population of cityfolk. My mother herself had come from Detroit, and my father an immigrant from Quebec - together, as cityfolk, they had chosen this island of modernity over the other, more rural-looking buildings, and had bought it with vultures circling overhead. While childhood friends -- living in the ancient houses in the outskirts, their only neighbors being trees - have many stories of their hauntings, I only have a few.

I was five when our story begins. Like all girls that age, I had an obsession with stuffed animals; namely, a large Sesame Street Ernie toy roughly a third of my size. It would talk if you pressed its hand, and I was enamored with it the previous week. Being a week older and wiser, however, I had become disenchanted with it; it was left, abandoned and with dead batteries, at the back of the closet.

I was a timid child, easily frightened and constantly hiding -- because of this, I was often plagued with nightmares. This night was no different. I woke wide-eyed and sweaty, my entire world seeming to focus on the way the orange light of my nightlight reflected off the bedsheets. The silence of the night was deafening.

That was when the night was shattered by a mockery of any human sound, and while it was English - "I feel great, I feel great" - it might as well have been heathen tongues to me. I ran down the hall, the mocking almost-human voice following me; while I remember being quiet about it, my mother told me I was screaming the entire time. And so I was - I remember crying after the parents had been awakened, watching my mother; my mother reaching to the shelf at the top of the closet and grabbing the Ernie doll, limp in her hands - "I feel great, I feel great".

I don't remember what happened past that point. She threw the doll away, or else dismantled it - when I asked her why it kept talking without batteries she told me the capacitors had held a charge, but it wasn't enough to make the voice work correctly. Satisfied with this answer, the Ernie doll was quickly forgotten until later years.

Regardless, this quickly set the tone for anything following - if you don't know what it is, you confront it. In the case of the doll, this ended painlessly - it was thrown out or elsewise forgotten, and it provided no further troubles.

The issue with this line of thought is that I proceeded to apply it to everything else, as well. There was a large boa-like snake I didn't recognize in the yard - instead of fearing it, I thought it was beautiful because of its yellow tail and yanked on it hard, only months later learning that the snake was a venomous copperhead. While out selling girl scout cookies, a large red-tailed hawk buzzed directly over my head and landed on the railing only a few feet from me - instead of recognizing it as a raptor, a bird of prey, instead of seeing the inch-long claws and curved beak, I decided that it too was the most beautiful thing I ever saw and tried to pet it. My bravery was only matched by my stupidity; the only thing that saved me from becoming Nine Fingered Alex on the latter instance is that my mother saw it for what it was and frogmarched me away.

After that, my dog had begun getting ill. He was old, and his body was failing him. He was the only dog I had had in my life, I being seven and he being ten - to lose him was unthinkable, so I thought he had a simple flu. My mother recognized the gravity of the situation and took me aside one afternoon. She told me what any parent would have said - the dog would not last much longer, and in a few weeks he would die. I quickly became hysterical, crying and snotting into her sweater. Too warm and too cold all at once.

What followed was entirely inexplicable, and I can barely even describe it to you without sounding insane. There was a sudden feeling, perhaps two minutes into my crying - like someone had reached a hand into my head and touched the brain. There was a sudden calm, and all of my own hysterical thoughts were muffled, and a simple question posed in this calm invasion; how long do you want him to live?

I did not take long to consider this question, and answered automatically; two years. Two years, after all, was a mighty long time. It was nearly one third of my entire lifespan, and only after I realized that this wasn't very long at all did I waffle and try to take back the thought. No, please, twelve years! Twenty nine years! Not just two years! Don't leave!

By then, however, the feeling of Something Else had faded, and I was once again alone in my mother's arms.

When I was eight, only a few months before my ninth birthday, the dog stopped eating carrots. Two weeks after that the carrots, it was peppers. Three weeks, and it was leftovers. After my birthday he would accept nothing but his dog food, and that, too, he stopped eating. A normally fat dog became thin, to the point of seeing ribs. His thick coat fell out in chunks. We went to the vet and they told us his liver was starting to fail; they could not pinpoint the cause of it, but they surely would be able to treat it soon. After his liver, it was his bladder, his stomach, his heart. Within several months nearly every organ was failing.

He was put down under the apple orchard by the vet's office. We went out for ice cream after, I remember, to try to recover a bit. Halfway through the dinner the previous wish for my dog's life occurred to me; I realized that was two years ago and I now was nine. There was this pervasive sense of guilt after that. I was closer to that dog than was perhaps healthy for a child, and I felt like I was responsible for his death.

There was a lull in anything happening here, to be frank. For several years I was just an angry little kid that didn't care about anything, straight up until I was 11. I played far too much Warcraft than was healthy, and looked down on the others my age with disdain, despite being exactly like them. It was at this age, then, that the OCD had begun to manifest itself once again.

Something you must understand is that OCD is not a simple compulsion, endearing in its eccentricity. OCD is not when one has to organize books or fold their clothes a certain way out of mild annoyance. OCD is about fear and adrenaline. It is about superstition - you must look away every time someone uncaps their pen, because it is a Freudian symbol of the penis and to look is to be a sinner. You must not make grammatical mistakes, because mistakes mean you are inferior, and only sinners are inferior. You must wash your hands until they bleed because it shows penance for your sins; you must starve until your nails are as soft as cheese to show you are not worthy.

True OCD has, to its core, a strong resemblance to paranoid schizophrenia, and to this day I do not understand why perfectly healthy people would ever want to lay claim to this disorder. The only true difference between schizophrenia and OCD is that the OCD-sufferer has a strong knowledge of how delusional they are, and how stupid; but they can't stop even if they know, because if they did stop, they would die from the fear.

This cycle began when I was eleven. I was unlike my sister; I had virtually no compulsions to wash my hands or fast. What I did have were the cyclic thoughts, and these cut me to my core. God to me quickly became an eternally disappointed creature, something that looked upon me with mild distaste; He became a creature that would stand on the surface of the water and watch me drown with neither like nor dislike of my death and damnation, and even if He wanted to help He could not; so completely trapped in his own power was He that action, or even inaction, was beyond His grasp, and He was forced to be a permanent, eternal Observer of the world. I became obsessed with trying to impress this eternally disappointed deity, for if I didn't Satan would find me.

Living without fear of my God's abandonment or the Anti-Christ's meddlement became an alien idea to me, and even though I knew it was crazy I was afraid. Every night became a sleepless one spent in the bathroom, either closer or farther away from vomiting than the previous night. My mental illness, indeed, was making me physically ill as well - the night I would get sleep was rare, and the day my bones did not hurt unheard of. When I did sleep there was no release from the disorder and demons followed me in my dreams.

In the height of one such night terror, however, when I was running from whatever flock plagued me that day, the dream lapsed into the silence of the Something Else - any sound faded away to the hissing pulse in my ears, and all of the characters simply dropped in their tracks. My thinking was muffled, and then stopped, and there was the same calm as the years before. There was nothing but the silence and the calm for a long time, and it seemed to stretch on infinitely. The same feeling of a hand within my skull holding the mind began before this, and it had stayed there; time itself seemed to have stopped.

There was a moving shape in the distance of the dream, the only thing moving, and as it got closer I saw it; it was a man but not a man, dressed in black with a face that I could not see directly. I think it had eyes, and they were green - or perhaps blue, or grey. Looking back it moved with jerking deliberateness, as if it only moved within key frames of an animation, but it seemed so natural, elegant to me at the time; it stopped in front of me and stood staring, no more defined than it was before. There were no words in the silence, but somehow I derived comfort from the stare; if it had spoken the words would have been simply; I am here. Then the image of a not-man went away, walking into a distant wall of the scenery and disappearing. The silent calm, however, remained.

The calm persevered into my waking life the following morning - fear and compulsion had seemingly been completely eradicated, instead replaced with an odd alien presence within my own head, something that extruded a sense of being an elder, something old and formidable that demanded reverence; at the same time it gave a sense of familiarity, as if I had known it or it had known me for far longer than it gave hint to. I was convinced I had finally reached psychosis, but I didn't care even if I had; I was happier now, and what was life without happiness?

Odd things began to happen after that day. I remember at least two occasions where, dreaming, I was being told a story by some sort of narrator with a forgotten voice. When I awoke hours after, trudging out into the kitchen for food, my mother would ask me if I had stayed up late watching Photoshop tutorials again - she had heard a voice in my room, she claimed, but it had sound canned and unnatural so she thought I was watching Youtube videos.

Soon after, I would often wake up to find a vague humanoid shape of a shadow (or perhaps smoke because it had form) standing in the center of my room. At first, I was barely surprised by this, as if such occurrences were merely a fact of life. Then I began to record myself sleeping, hoping to catch whatever this was in action; the recordings, upon review in the morning, were always exactly one hour and forty-seven minutes of empty footage. I was never able to get a recording that lasted far enough into the night to be of any worth.

There were a few isolated times that I remember where I was in the space between dreaming and awake, with the buzzing silence that comes before a faint; in the background, breaking behind the static, there was a lullaby being hummed. I would wake up from these dreams to the shadowman in my bedroom, passively staring.

I cannot tell you whether this was the Presence or whether I was just dreaming; I can only tell you that it happened, like all things. Even now I am just trying to put all of the pieces together, to see if there was any theme or idea behind everything.

I will not claim that, whatever this was, that it was some sort of angel or ghost or demon. Even at the time I did not believe it to be so - you must remember the clarity that OCD allows, and so I thought myself becoming unhinged from reality. I had many theories about this entity or delusion, and none of them included demons / angels; it described itself only as some sort of scavenger and would not go into detail much beyond that. The answer of what the Presence actually was (besides the possibility of schizophrenia), however, has not made itself immediately clear to me, and so I will avoid such a subject unless you wish me to explain my theories on a later date.

Slowly I am starting to recover one occurrence at a time from my childhood - my nightmares were far from normal.

I can only describe one such dream as a nothingness, which had the shape of a cube in the center. The nothingcube replicated on all sides. All of the nothingcubes touched at every point in space and lay side-by-side. Their edges, despite having none because they were touching at every point, had space between them. At the same time none of them existed at all while giving the impression that they did, all in a nothing-void that stretched out into infinity. It was one of the most horrifying moments I can remember. I was five at the time of that dream.

Even fondly remembered memories, as well, I am discovering new depth to - for at least six years after I had tried to pet the bird I had remembered it was a red-tailed hawk - to the point that I remember it so clearly I feel as though I could touch it. I remember the rust-colored tail feathers, and the warm brown of its wings, and the way its eyes caught the light and threw it back at me; I remember how yellow its scaly feet were, and that they reminded me of ducks, and that I liked ducks.

I told my mother of this memory perhaps a few months ago, and my mother gave me this dubious look, like I had gone mad. "It was a turkey vulture," she had said. I tried to argue this point with her, but she was set - it was a turkey vulture, and it was much larger than a hawk would ever be in any case, and she didn't understand how I could confuse the two when I spent all of my time in my room reading about birds anyways.

All I search for, in the end, are answers, and I have yet to find any. These are the memories I have recovered for you, so we could perhaps try to understand what has happened and why. Even if they are only mildly bizarre, they may yet have some meaning; hopefully in the future I will have remembered more, and then the picture will become clear.

Hauntings with similar titles

Comments about this paranormal experience

The following comments are submitted by users of this site and are not official positions by yourghoststories.com. Please read our guidelines and the previous posts before posting. The author, You-Sir-Name, has the following expectation about your feedback: I will participate in the discussion and I need help with what I have experienced.

dieknowsore (guest)
 
12 years ago (2013-02-21)
I know this is an old post, but I just felt the need to say that I had the exact same Ernie toy as a child 😆. I had many moments of him going off by himself, frequently telling me he felt great during the night haha. Nothing as disturbing as what you describe though. Funny thing is, I still have him to this day, over 10 years later. I have never changed his batteries, but he's still going strong, and I'm still being told "I feel great" during the nights.
An interesting and captivating story, by the way.
stormangel (3 stories) (55 posts)
 
13 years ago (2011-11-17)
Im sure you will, in time, figure out what's relative and what could be left out. I think I know what you mean, well for me it's difficult deciding what knots are worth unravelling, so many little things have happened that have been strange but I couldn't write them as one story as it would be too confusing yet can't write them on their own- title-'experiences numbered 1-30'...I wouldn't read that lol. Even though it's your anecdotal evidence, as I've chosen to believe you, I would still find it an interesting read. Why not take what's left to tell and write it in chronalogical order, piece by piece, you may end up winning 'member with the most stories' but I like your take on the issue of the paranormal and on a more basic level your stories are an interesting read. Plus I think there are many others on here who like your style too. Anecdotal evidence has an important place as it's all many of us have, seperating the wheat from the chaff is a little more difficult 😕
You-Sir-Name (1 stories) (10 posts)
 
13 years ago (2011-11-17)
[at] stormangel
Right now I think it's less of a question of my memory and more of a question of what should be omitted to avoid stepping on any toes. There's tons of details I want to include in this investigation, but I don't think an in-depth memoir about my childhood -- in which not much happened -- would be very appropriate for this website. There's more beyond that, too. Most of the actually quantifiable experiences I had with what's known as "The Presence" involved other people, the majority of which I've had a falling out with. I'm not keen on having stories including former friends being found and cause even more bruised feelings.
Right now I'm trying to figure out how best to approach the whole topic. I approach it one way and it won't portray the events correctly -- I approach it the other and I'll get disgusted with the prompt and erase it. There's only so many times you can write about something before you burn out, you know? I'm just not sure where to go from here. There are a lot of experiences touched on in here that I would love to go into more detail about, but I'm afraid that I would simply be repeating what's already been said.

In this prompt The Presence comes off almost as a nonentity, and that's not what he was at all -- there's tons of information I have, entire books I could write on the character, but the problem is that the majority of it isn't quantifiable as actual evidence.

I think what I'm trying to say is; I've got the memories right here, the problem is deciding what has to go and what has to stay.
stormangel (3 stories) (55 posts)
 
13 years ago (2011-11-16)
your-sir-name, thankyou I'll defo have a look at that site! FA's totally screwed with my mind at first, now I just have accepted them but if there is a way to stop the chain of them I really need it. It certainly isn't fun when you have children especially: (they have had a couple themselves but not repeatedly all night just a 2 or 3 chain but they really don't like it at all! I had the coolest dream, I love jewellery right, and I found a chest full of the most beautiful rings, bracelets, gems everything a girl could want, so my brain decides instead of letting me enjoy the moment, it would let me know I was dreaming, as I was waking up I could feel the gold fading through my outstretched fingers, for a fraction of a second I could still feel this treasure as I awoke and thinking 'NOOOOOO, please!' seems like our minds go against us a lot, why? Lol shouldnt it want to make me happy boohoo poor me 😭. Hey 'old hag syndrome' people wake up and still feel this thing on top of them then the hag fades away, same thing maybe? I love your writing style, want to hear more, I hope you remember some other things that have happened, memory's a funny thing though 😕
You-Sir-Name (1 stories) (10 posts)
 
13 years ago (2011-11-16)
[at] stormangel
I have to agree with you, false awakenings are almost never fun, in both the experience of it and the philosophy. I used to go to a website on lucid dreaming that had methods of waking up entirely in the middle of a FA chain or simply preventing them, but I've forgotten them now. The website, if you were interested, is called ld4all. Fairly friendly userbase on there and good information, though I may not always agree with the views in their metaphysics board.
The question of whether my surroundings are real or not -- hell, whether *I'm* real or not -- has been one of those ideas that started as a fancy as a child and grew into an obsessive worry as I aged. It's become a bit of a familiar subject to me, like an old blanket. False awakenings are sort of just realizations of this fear to me, I guess.
stormangel (3 stories) (55 posts)
 
13 years ago (2011-11-15)
Picking up on a piont you made about reality, I had one terrible night of waking up, brother in law would slam my door open drag me out of my room by the hair (painfull) then I would wake up again, radio was on songs and dj the same as last time I 'woke up' (indie music) only for him to do it again, it kept happening. I pinched myself REALLY hard to maybe see if I was awake, sometimes I think I was, it happened for about sixth or seventh time so I got up, jumped around, switched light on and gave my head a shake, went downstairs and squished up next to my aunty on the settee, fell asleep, then freakin woke up back in the bedroom with this guy doing and saying the most horrible things my daft brain could conjure up. This continued until my children woke and even then my mind was that confused I thought there was a chance I could be dreaming/hallucinating the day away. I hadnt connected the discontinuation of strong antidepressents two days before duhhhhh. I didn't know at the time medication could do that, certainly do now as its happened since when on certain meds and they are just stopped. But if delusion and reality can so easily be confused by our brain, its frightening! 😨Do kind of believe shadow people exist, I and other people have seen enough of who/whatever they are>interdimentional travellers, different species of spirit (?) etc blah blah... Right 'everyone loves raymond' is on now so I'm off byeee:D
You-Sir-Name (1 stories) (10 posts)
+2
13 years ago (2011-11-09)
[at] quixoticqt:
I can't remember much from that night with the Ernie, but I think it's safe to say that then was as good a time as any to be crapping my pants. Oddly enough I still liked him even after that mishap.
I don't blame myself for the death of my dog anymore. 😜 I was nine at the time, so my emotions ruled over my brain with the tyrannical iron fist of angry children everywhere.
In spite of that knowledge of my emotional state I still feel certain that I was not alone that afternoon when my mother told me about the dog. I was nine at the time and virtually incapable of religious thought, and once I was told my thoughts were racing, I was crying, my nose was running, and I sweat; when the question was asked "how long do you want him to live?" everything had fallen silent at once. I guess that's when I learned what it means to have the world stop. It's one of those feelings that I can't really explain adequately. What I can say is whatever that was felt completely different from myself and remains in my mind as one of the most surreal events I have experienced.
Herpderp I went off on a tangent again. I apologize. Give me an inch and I take a mile.
The visuals in dreams -- the not-man dream especially -- weren't really important. What I wanted to get across was that for a second time the world had "stopped", and everything had become calm and silent -- not only that, but it had continued for several days into my waking life. I felt like something else was in my head, is the major thing.
It actually felt just like the time I had just mentioned, when all of my thoughts stopped and the question was asked.
No problemo, and I will certainly write more; I still have plenty to blab about. 😜 I really do have fun thinking about and writing on a lot of these events, and it's wonderful practice for the genre I want to get into in the future. I love the curious things in life, even if they're frightening at the time.

[at] Nysa and
[at] stormangel
On the piles of anecdotal evidence, I think that while anecdotes are helpful, they're only helpful to a certain extent. Too many times people will read another' anecdote, and then try to look at their own experiences through the same lens as if they were one and the same. I'm not saying anecdotal evidence is worthless, but you have to take into account what the accepted beliefs were at the time -- and that includes here and now. What is one person's faery is another person's djinn is another's demon.

I think everything is explainable. I don't mean that as "all ghosts are just swamp gas" sort of explainable, either. If there are species on this planet that happen to exist metaphysically, then so be it -- but look at the more likely explanations first.
stormangel (3 stories) (55 posts)
 
13 years ago (2011-11-08)
yes Nysa, I often look at the for and against arguements for existance after death, personally it really could drive me round in circles thinking about it, for example let's say our souls do survive after death... The sun is half way through it's energy source, so when it dying, expands and swallows the earth up as scientists say it will, where are we all going to go, if its another dimension is it in this universe? I know since humans came to being there has been a need to believe there must be something else, surely we don't just cease to exist? But then again why not? And if we do just die and that's the end, then I won't be bothered as I won't have a conciousness for it to bother. I actually find the idea of our souls going on and on pretty scary 😨. People have seen spirits of animals, dinosaurs were mammals so were are their ghosts? Reincarnated? Jeez, the more I thought the more questions popped into my head so for the moment I just say there are things we don't understand and maybe arnt meant to, I could ramble on worse than anyone trust me, no need to apologise. No-one can say one way or the other because we don't know until the big event of death happens, if I pass over anytime soon I'll try and log on and let y'all know 😁 😁
Nysa (4 stories) (685 posts)
+1
13 years ago (2011-11-08)
Very interesting train of thought Stormangel. Like you I find the mountain of anecdotal evidence going back thousands of years hard to overcome. However, there is the issue of how badly we want to believe in spiritual beings. We are desperate to believe we exist after we die. We even want evil or harmful things to be real so we have something to blame & fight against when we are afraid. Maybe we really do need to overcome the sickness of belief, to paraphrase Bill Maher

And to be fair, if we are going to accept anecdotal evidence at face value we have to accept a lot of things, like fairies, vampiric beings, & the Yeti. Unless of course we accept that there is "something" to the accounts but our major hurdle to understanding them are the forms our minds insist on imposing on them (ghost, fairy, demon, etc.).

Sorry, I think I am rambling. I just find the discussion you (Stormangel) & You Sir are having to be extremely interesting.
stormangel (3 stories) (55 posts)
 
13 years ago (2011-11-08)
you sir name, yes your right, there is totally a nagging doubt whether anything I or anyone else has seen was really paranormal or one of the many other things it could be, bad electric wiring...tiredness...when I thought I saw a boy in my wardrobe, I'm thinking it could so easy have been clothes and my eyes turning them into something else but then it's the eyes and smile I remember and I then argue with myself that I know what I saw, but I would drive myself mad argueing back and forth so I always give plenty of margin for error. Throughout history and in all cultures there have been reports of spiritual phenonema, I simply don't understand how one person can decide that there is a simple and rational explanation for every single phenonema reported and god knows how many unreported experiences. James Randi's One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge> it's an impossible quest as no matter what proof you think you have a hardcore skeptic will always come up with an explanation.Here's one of a few good reads-Rationalskeptisism.org, formal debate 'existance of ghosts and apperitions' the arguement against seems to focus on hallucination, for myself, there are to many problems and unanswered questions with using that arguement, although it is very informative I couldn't read all of it, I was getting a headache! 😭
quixoticqt (5 stories) (104 posts)
 
13 years ago (2011-11-08)
OMG! 😨 If you said Ernie laughed his weird laugh I think I would have peed my pants. Still as a kid "I feel great, I feel great" must have been a terrifying experience. I am more of a Grover fan out of the entire sesame street posse.
I'm sorry for the loss of your dog. I think my heart was a little bit broken when I read that portion. *sniffle* I don't think you should blame yourself for "killing" your dog. Everything happens for a reason and maybe you just knew the years before it actually happened.
I don't know where your beliefs abide but I find praying a prayer before going to bed sometimes helps with my crazy dreaming. Especially during a full moon; my dreams tend to become more vivid during the full moon and I'm more apt to remembering them in the morning. I also kept a piece of paper or a journal nearby to write them down whenever I got the chance. I read what I dreamt about when I was a teenager, now that I'm an adult; it almost takes my breath away that I would dream such dreams.
It's amazing how well written your first experience is. I can't wait to read your next one. Thank you for sharing ywhat you feel in your heart with us thus far.



❤ Qt
lazria (9 stories) (82 posts)
 
13 years ago (2011-11-08)
I love your writing, plain and simple. The flowing eb of thought is excellant. I truely understand and find your explainations of OCD to be both facnating and enlightening; the points of do paranormal events occur to the mentally touched more make sense on many levels. Its so much easier to ingore the ranting of someone, claiming to see shaows and the walls talking to accept that someone beyond the normal is capable of occuring to people who want nothing more than to fit in than stand out.
I didn't find your flow difficult to understand, even the replies of your to others ponderances, although they sometimes take wondering trips, get to the points they seek to make. I hope you'll stay on and continue with your tales, perhaps someday through reflection on thoughts writen or musings of other might lend knowledge of what you are seeking.
You-Sir-Name (1 stories) (10 posts)
+1
13 years ago (2011-11-08)
[at] stormangel: To a certain extent I can understand where that guy would be coming from. I mean, we as human beings have a high margin for misunderstandings and misinterpretations, from what I can tell. Just like the people of the medieval ages believed that illness was caused by evil spirits and mentally ill children were changelings of the Fae, so too do we believe that Ouija boards are portals to the Other Side and sleep paralysis is a sign of attempted possession. We're always learning new things all the time. As it marches on I'd venture to say that we lose more and more of our old superstitions.
It's okay though brah. 😜 I do think everything else should be exhausted before I start seriously considering a spirit -- but then again, when is the possibility of delusion ever exhausted? It's one of those things, where no matter how much evidence or how many experiences you may have had, you always have that nagging voice in the back of your head that says, "Maybe this isn't quite the truth, maybe you're just crazy; how many times have you ever had another person involved?"
Illness is an inexhaustible resource when it comes to explaining the unexplainable; no matter what, that possibility will always be there.
stormangel (3 stories) (55 posts)
 
13 years ago (2011-11-08)
No I don't see skeptisism as a bad thing, somebody once said 'have an open mind, but not so open that your brain falls out' and yes of course, there are more people seeing things that can be explained then not. But, I was listening to a guy on tv, he wasn't just a skeptic, he KNEW there was no such thing as ghosts, residual energy even, nope, nothing at all... At least I accept mass hallucinations etc does exist but doesn't account for everything. That was my point, sorry if it came across I have a bad view of skeptics 🤔 I think the idea you have seen an actuall spirit should be the last conclusion after all others have been exhausted. 😁
You-Sir-Name (1 stories) (10 posts)
 
13 years ago (2011-11-08)
[at] stormangel
I wouldn't see skeptics as the enemy. Skepticism is healthy for all of us. Besides, mass hysteria is a powerful thing. I've been subjected to it more than once.

[at] Nikki_77 No, no hallucinogens for me. 😜 The scare tactics they shove down your throat in the school system seem to have worked. I've done some research on mushroom trips/LSD trips though, and they don't particularly sound like something unique enough for me to try, (my issues with taking them besides). Acid experiences to me sound too close to Alice in Wonderland Syndrome (a type of painless migraine that involves your size/time/sound/shape perception going wonky). I mean, when I was a kid I got those AiWS migraines a helluva lot, so I guess the mystery of LSD has been a bit ruined for me to even bother. No point in even going there if you know it's not going to be fun.
Besides, I don't much enjoy the idea of a trip; it doesn't seem like you can sober up at will. If I want to eat clouds and question the meaning of life I can do that in a dream with my own subconscious. A dream, at least, I can wake up at will from.

[at] Reptilian: That may be so, but I can't fully understand whatever being or illness this is if I can't remember. It becomes a bit difficult for me to show compassion if I don't know if I'm supposed to be giving it to myself or someone else, you know? Understanding is the root of compassion, I think.
reptilian (45 posts)
 
13 years ago (2011-11-08)
You hope to recover more memories so you will get a clear picture? Memories contain no answers. True understanding of life is born of compassion and wisdom. Life is not an equation, there is no magic formula.
Even should you remember every experience of your life with an essay to accompany every moment, it would not bring you happiness.
Forget answers and instead seek fulfillment.
Nikki_77 (1 stories) (7 posts)
 
13 years ago (2011-11-08)
Personally I don't care if your story is paranormal or not, most of that cannot be proven one way or the other. You just have a profound sense of "otherness" I see that you are a teenager? Good lord what is to come?...your description of the cube with no sides? Lol mindblowing! I hope it's not innapropriate of me to ask if you have experienced mind altering/hallucinogenic drugs?...Anyway it appears you have a gift; all I can say is, as long as your experiences are not affecting your life negatively or stopping you from experiencing a "normal" life then... Carry on
stormangel (3 stories) (55 posts)
 
13 years ago (2011-11-07)
your most welcome and yes, your mum hearing a voice coing from your room is great, it builds on confirmation that there was definetly something weird going on, it's excellent when you are not the only one to see, sense etc a presence and by the way... When it comes to mental illness (it's been discussed before) of course there are people hearing and seeing things that are from within their own mind and nothing else but I truly believe that in some cases these circumstances open parts of the mind we know nothing about yet and may possibly make us more receptive to things we just know far to little of (although hardcore skeptics would have us believe its all in our mind, mass hallucinations, complete liars etc... Mmmm out of all the hundreds of thousands of accounts they are not willing to give credance to one!) LOL yeah we are all loony, gullible or liars 😭 😁
Argette (guest)
 
13 years ago (2011-11-07)
You, Sir, are obviously a very intelligent and well-informed being. Keep writing!
You-Sir-Name (1 stories) (10 posts)
+1
13 years ago (2011-11-07)
[at] Stormangel
Again, thank you. You've all been quite lovely to me so far, I was expecting to get flamed out of town.

I did see the Presence as a shadowperson in waking life several times, as I mentioned -- but he never really moved. It was like he was stuck to the spot or something -- close friends have reported similar occurrences.
The most certain fact I could give you right now is this; as a waking-life shadowperson, the Presence was quite unnatural looking. Most of the time the Presence did not seem to have any discernible legs or feet -- the few times friends reported him touching the ground he appeared to spread out, like a tree's roots. He was hunched over in what appeared to be a painful position, and the head was pointed -- it became a running joke that he was actually the secret leader of the KKK. He was only humanoid in theory and if you squinted a bit.

My impression of him was that, if he was anything, he was some sort of nonhuman-entity trying really, really hard to portray himself as one of us to avoid any mindbending encounters (or culture clash, one or the other).
You-Sir-Name (1 stories) (10 posts)
+1
13 years ago (2011-11-07)
[at] Argette: Yeah, my wordiness gets ahead of me sometimes -- I could probably talk the Pope into a circle. I apologize for it, but that's part of the reason I'm here; to get constructive criticism on both my beliefs and my writing.

The dreams aren't necessarily what I want you to be paying attention to, like I said to Moongrim; it's what comes after them. It's not about a dream with a narrated story; it's about my mother hearing a narrator in my room.

The wordiness actually irritates me a bit. Somehow everything I touch turns into a twisting Lovecraftian abomination with nothings- and nots- going everywhere. Seems like my current natural author's voice is one of pretentious condescension, but again, I'm working on it.
stormangel (3 stories) (55 posts)
+1
13 years ago (2011-11-07)
The other commentors have said what I was going to write about your writing style, excellent! There is another story on this site (and a few others) describing a 'jerky-moving' shadowy being but this was seen while the writer was wide awake so I would conclude that even though you seen him in a dream-like atmosphere, he could be very real in a spiritual sense, and chose this approach so as to manafest in a way that would not have you feel scared or uncomfortable.
You-Sir-Name (1 stories) (10 posts)
 
13 years ago (2011-11-07)
Thank you for the kind comments.
[at] Nikki_77: Yeah, that's one of my issues and why I came here, honestly. I don't know how much of what's happening is actually paranormal or just a result of my own mental shortcomings. I'm more than just dispositioned to paranoia as has been made clear to me by my OCD; it's not like I can just say "so today there was a wall of silence next to my ear and I felt like I was being watched". At this point that could just as easily be a delusion brought on by the disorder.
I've had a lot of odd things happen to me, but the issue is I can never tell whether they're truly worth telling or not. Some of them are small, and some of them are big. In the end it's not a question of "did this freak me out or not". It's the question of "did this actually happen or am I just being paranoid"? That's why I'm here, to see if anyone else can put a specific name to this.
I think in short what I'm trying to say is that I don't know where the illness ends and the entity begins. If I portrayed it any other way -- as if it was clearly just a mental illness, or clearly something paranormal -- would be to make a liar of myself. Truth is I don't know either way, and that's the reason I'm here. There's a hidden mythos to this story that I didn't include. This story was more of an overview of my life previous The Presence and leading directly up to it; my beliefs on the Presence, what the Presence supposedly told me and others, is another story for another time.

[at] Lunahenry: I want to believe it's real and it's not just a bad case of the crazies, but I'm not sure. Delusional people never know they're delusional, you know? The whole thing is sort of a ridiculous Catch-22.
I mean -- and I've thought about this a lot -- theoretically if I was an entity that did not want to be discovered, I would purposely seek out the mentally ill because they're the least likely to be taken seriously. No one's going to call in a paranormal investigator because the local schizophrenic was scribbling on the walls again, you know?
But on the other hand you have to weigh in the more likely explanations; Occam's Razor does not take kindly to the paranormal. Occam's Razor states that I'm probably unhinged.

[at] DeviousAngel: Many things actually did happen in the timeframe of this story and afterwards -- some of which are happening to me now -- but I omitted them for personal reasons. I wasn't comfortable to divulging certain things because they honestly sounded like bullshiat -- and really, this story was enough of a wall of text as it was!
I will make certain to write about major experiences in the future. This was more of an introduction to my life, as a bit of explanation as to why I believe what I do and how I got the way I am. A bit narcissistic in retrospect, but hey. It's best to know the full story before making any diagnoses.

[at] Moongrim: I'm not one to condone the act of "HAY I DREMT MY HOUSE WAS HAUNTED IS THIS PARANORMAL", but the events leading up to and after the dreams seemed to require their inclusion. The events that I wanted you to pay attention to would not make sense otherwise.
It wasn't the fact that I dreamt about a narrated story with a girl and a sea serpent that made me include it; it was that my mother asked afterwards whether I was listening to a recording because she had heard a droning voice in my room. The dreams themselves aren't the important parts in the situation -- it's what follows them. I'm not asking for a dream interpretation in any sense of the term -- actually, I think I'm asking for quite the opposite. A reality interpretation.

In the end I think that's all I want to know -- whether this is delusion or reality. I guess by nature I'm very much a solipsist in that I expect everything to come from my head. It's just nice to get out of my own head sometimes and write what's happened down -- maybe if I'm lucky, someone else will have experienced similar things with a similar entity and we can compare notes.
Argette (guest)
 
13 years ago (2011-11-07)
Yes, interesting style. I must agree with Moongrim, however. Also, some of it makes no sense.
Moongrim (2 stories) (871 posts)
+1
13 years ago (2011-11-07)
Yes I agree, your writing style is quite good, but you've also overlooked the fact that Your Ghost Stories is supposed to be about Ghosts and Paranormal encounters involving ghosts.

Dreams, do not technically count as 'paranormal'.

It must've been rather difficult to arrange turkey vultures to circle whilst your parents were purchasing.
DeviousAngel (11 stories) (1910 posts)
+1
13 years ago (2011-11-07)
I agree that your writing style is amazing. It sounds like you have experienced some extremely profound things that I will not even begin to guess at. I hope that if you have had any more experiences, you will share them with us. Has anything like this ever happened to you again?
Lunahenry (2 stories) (50 posts)
+1
13 years ago (2011-11-07)
You are one heck of a writer. You have me wondering if mental illness opens the door to the other side of life.
Nikki_77 (1 stories) (7 posts)
+1
13 years ago (2011-11-07)
WOW your story read's like a sci-fi novel and I say this with the upmost respect. Your insight into mental illness is riveting and although I found it hard to disentangle the two (paranormal experience vs effects of mental illness)... Captivating nonetheless, what a strange and complex world you must live in...

To publish a comment or vote, you need to be logged in (use the login form at the top of the page). If you don't have an account, sign up, it's free!

Search this site: