I've posted ghost stories on this site before, but I wanted to start fresh and from the beginning since my last post had been made over a year ago. Let me just say that I've always been a believer in the paranormal while keeping in mind that 90% of the time something weird happens, a rational explanation can often be found. However, I think that there are some things in life that are beyond our knowledge and our rationale, no matter how hard we'd like to believe otherwise. A handful of really strange things have happened to me over the years beginning from when I was a small child to about a week ago, some of which I hope to get around to discussing. But for now, I'd really like to talk about something that happened to me recently.
About six months ago, I began a relationship with a young man who had just finished up his time in the Marine Corps. Over the ensuing months, we'd had a few intimate conversations about some of his experiences overseas involving his friends and a little of what he had experienced. Though I know he keeps much of it to himself, he felt comfortable enough discussing an incident with me involving the death of his best friend. He and several others were actively engaged in combat when some men managed to shoot into the tower they were in, aiming for him and his comrades. He ducked to avoid the bullets, not reaching in time to pull his best friend down with him. The man was fatally hit and passed away right there in his arms.
Afterward, even upon returning home many months later, he says he couldn't shake dreams of his friend following him around in blood-soaked clothing wherever he went. In one instance, upon arguing with his father over something in their kitchen, he slammed his hands down on the counter while shouting "Damn it dad, I've had about enough!" and a bag of flour sitting across the room next to the cupboard literally exploded. His father is a preacher at the church in their small hometown and refuses to discuss that incident whenever his son tries to bring it up. Whether that had anything to do with the passing of his friend or just pent up aggressive energy, I won't ever know for sure, but it struck me as intense and interesting. He claims to have experienced little weird things off and on since leaving and though he hates to admit it, thinks his friend may be following him around. So, that's mainly the background info for my story (and maybe futures ones -- we'll see!)
The other night around 11:30, he and I were at my apartment getting ready for bed. My living room is small and includes a kitchen off to the side where you enter a hallway and my bedroom door is the first one on the right. So, pop your head out of my room and you can almost see directly into the living room. Anyway, we had been watching TV and decided it was getting late so we went into my room to sleep. We had been laying there for maybe 10 minutes when he got up to get a drink of water. I see him walk out of my room and just stand at the end of the hallway, looking into the living room. He tells me to come over there and when I ask why, he just repeats himself. Reluctantly, I get out of bed to see what he wants...
He's pointing to the little black clock that hangs over my TV and was now laying face down in front of it, about 3 feet from the wall. I walk over to pick it up and see that the time had been changed to straight up 3 o'clock. (It's not digital, and the battery was missing). A little weirded out, we tried to think of how the clock might have ended up on the floor by itself - if you drop it, it's really loud... We had heard nothing just laying in bed not 10 feet away. We couldn't find the battery anywhere. We had just been in that room watching TV - the clock was fine and had read 11:30 at the time, signaling our decision to get some sleep. Not being able to do much about it other than be creeped out, we went back to bed. The front door was locked and we searched the apartment for anyone other than ourselves... Just us.
The next night, we were standing outside my front door talking and sharing a cigarette. I live in an apartment complex where those who live above me can walk out onto a ledge with a railing. As we were standing there, we overheard our upstairs neighbors talking amongst themselves about how their black lab had been growling nonstop at a closet door in their apartment the night before. A while later, a woman walked out and told someone on the balcony that two men in the apartment had sworn they saw a man in dress blues reflected in one of their mirrors. Two men saw this... What struck me is that men are usually the ones to blow these things off, but they were actually pretty shaken up. The clincher being that they saw a man in dress blues... (for those of you who aren't aware, this is the dress uniform of a Marine).
So... That's it. A random visit from -- what sounds to be -- a friend. My question is though... Why now and what could he have been trying to say? I get that 3 o'clock is "the witching hour" when spirits are supposedly at their most active. It sounds like he may have just been pulling a prank or saying hello, but then why would he have appeared to our random neighbors upstairs whom we've never even had a proper conversation with? This is all assuming that it is who we think it is. If it's not, then that's one heck of a coincidence.
My only possible explanation was the fact that I had been under some emotional stress that whole week regarding my boyfriend personally and wondered if maybe his friend was trying to get through to me somehow. If he was, I'm not totally sure of his message. I got the feeling that he knew what I was thinking and attempted to "scare me straight," but that could just be an assumption on my part. Either way... What the heck? According to my boyfriend, this guy was really nice in person and would sometimes do things to startle him as a joke so I'm kind of wanting to brush it off as just that. But something keeps telling me there was a reason behind this random visit. And if so, why set the clock to straight up 3? (You can believe I was awake in bed until then, scared out of my wits. Nothing happened.) --
Would love some feedback on this one as it really has me baffled. Thanks for reading.
Loading comments....
