Adventures in freakdom.
October 24, 2003
Yesterday, I was in my Jeep with a friend, backing out of a parking place in front of Best Buy. Walking toward us was an attractive young blonde woman wearing low-rider jeans and a half shirt. Her tan belly pooched slightly over the waistband of her pants. Slightly.
“Look at her,” my friend remarked, “with her gut all hanging out like that.”
I looked at my friend (he was looking expectantly at me), then at the approaching woman, then down at my friend’s sizable Buddha-like stomach resting in his lap. I reached over and patted him on the belly.
“Let he who is without gut cast the first disparaging remark,” I said.
Damn, I’m mean.
Speaking of Buddha, damnnation, I sure had a hard time staying awake while I read that Dalai Lama book. Apparently I’m just too shallow for the whole Zen thing. Meditate this, think about Buddha that, yadda yadda yadda. And what’s up with that whole “do no harm” rule? I mean, I’m as peaceful as the next fellow, but there’s a point where you have to stop turning cheeks and start kicking cheeks. Ass cheeks, that is.
You know what I mean?
I’ll turn cheeks — consider the whole getting-the-fence-repaired-instead-of-trying-to-sue-the-guy-who-broke-it thing one small example — but if someone’s trying to kill me, Robyn, or the spud, I’m going to do something about it. And that something ain’t forgiving the person and letting them have their way.
One shocker: the book referred to “piss” and “shit” at one point, using those words. I had no idea the Dalai Lama talked like that.
In other news, Brave New World is pretty damn good so far. Kind of creepy, too, and somewhat reminiscent of 1984. However, I’ve only read about 50 pages, so it may very well change when I get further in. It’s another one of those classics I’m never read. I have a little section on my bookcase of those, and I try to read one every few months.
Still waiting: The Catcher in the Rye, The Great Gatsby, and Slaughterhouse Five.
Random notes from a local news interview:
I have to say that the pictures of Dor@ the St@r Child creep me WAY out. Something about that giant head. Good God, I’m going to have nightmares now about her coming for me, crawling after me down a dark hallway with her massive head teetering back and forth and her sightless eyes fixed on me while I run as hard as I can in that dreamy slow motion without ever going anywhere, getting closer and closer until she can reach out with one tiny pale hand and…
But I digress.
Have you ever seen a ghost? Had a paranormal experience? Something really creepy happen to you? Seen something unexplainable? Share in the comments, please. I’m fascinated by that stuff, and I imagine a goodly number of people are.
If you want to get notified whenever Fred writes a journal entry, this link will do the trick.
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Holy Moly!! What does the ScanPan do that others don’t? I’m thinking it should do a lot more than cook for those prices!
I’m also fascinated by paranormal stuff though the only thing that’s ever happened to me is more of a creepy coincidence.
I was 24 when my grandfather died of colon and liver cancer. My mother decided that during the wake, someone should be at my grandparents’ house to deter burglars. One of my brothers stayed behind for half of the wake and then I went to the house to relieve them. I’m sitting alone in the house getting more and more creeped out by the quietness (I’d also just come from seeing my grandfather laid out in a coffin–it was the first time I’d ever attended a viewing as well). Anyway, I decide to put on some music so I started rifling through my grandfather’s tape collection. I selected a Chieftains tape, thinking that happy Irish music would be a good choice. I pop it into the cassette player and start to relax. Instead of happy Irish music, however, my grandfather’s voice comes on and he’s reading a medical text about the cancer that killed him. I guess he’d been keeping some sort of aural journal and had taped over the Chieftains. Holy shit that freaked me out!
Hi Fred, I love your site. I dont normally comment but I wanted to contribute to this one. I am totally fascinated by the paranormal. Here goes…I have VERY vivid memories of myself at probably 3 years old. I lived in a house with my Mom and Dad in a house around the San Francisco Bay Area. I remember one night being in my crib it was this old wrought iron (sp?) victorian type crib and I remember crying very hysterically and my father coming in the room, turning on the light and trying to soothe me. It worked, he left, the same thing happened again (I didn’t yet know why I was crying), this time he took me out of bed and brought me to my parents room to hang out then after a while placed me back in my crib. A few minutes after he turned off the lights and closed the door I ‘felt’ breathing and freaked out, he and my Mom both came in and told me to stop playing (they thought I was wanting attention), go to sleep and don’t cry anymore, whatever. They left and I, wanting to be a good girl, laid there when I started feeling movement and I realized my blanket was being slowly pulled off of me through the metal rods on the side of my bed, I still didn’t freak UNTIL…through the dark I saw a big, gnarled, “knuckley” hand with black, pointed claws that were splitting like dry old nails on it and what appeared to be red bands/rings of skin around the fingers and I remember the skin on the hand being all chapped and flaky. This hand reach through the bars from under the crib and was pulling on my blanket and I actually felt it touch my side. I screamed!!!!! My parents ran into my room and I was hysterical they just kept me in their room that night. Never happened again. My father remembers this incident but he just looks at me weirdly when I tell him what happened. Also in that same house, I had a santa claus face that was on the door in my room for the holidays and I remember it moving around on the door looking at me. This house is supposed to be haunted. Im 31 yrs old and I swear by these accounts. My dad still lives there to this day , I don’t feel scared but I never feel “alone” in that house. Sorry so long, you can email me if you want to know other stuff.
Thanks,
Ellie
Gotta love Coast to Coast - I try to listen to it every Friday and Saturday evenings. Paranormal experiences? Tons — makes me wonder if they are really happening or if I’m imagining them all. Grew up in a haunted house, lived in an apartment haunted by a cat, visited by my father after he died, moved into my fiances home, got pinched on the butt by a ghost? I don’t know - maybe it is all in my head. . .
I don’t comment often, either, but Ellie’s story really creeped me out. When I was about eight and my younger sister was seven, we were sitting on our bed one night playing (we were supposed to be asleep). The hall light was on, as it always was when we were put to bed, and I glanced over my shoulder at the doorway. There was a figure in silhouette on all-fours but I assumed it was my older brother and didn’t give it a second thought. The next thing I knew I was being pulled over the side of the bed by my head while my sister grabbed onto my legs and started screaming. A few seconds later it let go and I scrambled back up the side of the bed. My parents ran up the stairs as soon as they heard my sister screaming and my brother followed up after them, since his bedroom was in the basement. My sister told everyone what happened and said the hand was huge and hairy. We never found anything under the bed and our bedroom was on the second floor of the house. We still have no idea what happened although we bring it up and talk about it once in a while.
Hey Fred! This isn’t really a ghost story, but it is a chiller.. When I was around 16 yrs old, I started having these thoughts about twins.Not that I would have twins, but something I could not put my finger on, these ‘twin’ thoughts stayed with me for years…flash forward to my late 20’s and I have the MOST VIVID dream I have ever had…Im on an operating table giving birth, when I look down I can clearly see that I have given birth to both my own mother and my aunt(her sister)looking like they looked at that time. One month after that dream, my Aunt is dead from a heart attack, one month to the day after my Aunts death, my mom passes away. 9 and a half months later, I give birth to my very own identical twin girls…How ’bout that?! My husband and I both think they are my mom and aunts guardian angels re-born.
Perhaps Dora was suffering from the elephant man’s disease now known as NF. It appears that way to me from the pictures. I am not sure when they were taken but I am pretty sure they did not know much aboyt NF back then.Star child? Probably not.
I don’t see ghosts but I do verbally channel an entity named Augustus (move over Shirley MacClain). Seriously, I do.
Two years ago this month I was leaving work and as I stopped at the stop sign there was a old model, yellow Mustang with a black rag top slow in front of my car to turn. When I looked at the person in the car, it was my Grandmother was waving at me. Doesn’t sound to weird until I tell you that she had been in a nursing home for about 10 years and about 30 mintues after getting home I recieve the call from my Dad that Grandma had died about 45 mintures earlier. Oh, also, that is the exact car Grandma drove when she was able to drive.
Star Child…. good grief, the poor child had hydrocephalus or “water on the brain” it’s caused by an abnormal accumulation of cerebrospinal fluid in the brain. I had a neice born with it in the early 50’s, she eventually died. I think they can do more for it these days, but back in the 50’s it was usually fatal. He’s a story for your paranormal question, My husband had the habit of making me coffee every morning before work, I used to get up later than he did. Well, in 1995 he died of a sudden heart attack at work and the morning after his death I went downstairs and the coffee pot was on… I did not set it the night before ( and no I did not forget to turn it off) and there was no one in the house but me. I took it as a sign that he was still looking out for me. JC
Suzi -
Our ScanPans were gift from my parents (we’d never spend that much on pans, either) and they are without a doubt the best pans I’ve ever used. They’re nonstick without using Teflon, and you’re actually supposed to run cold water in them when they’re hot to clean them. The thing that amazed everyone is that I cooked 6 eggs in less than a minute.
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Everyone else: thanks for sharing so far!
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I had an experience with a couple of ghosts.
My mother-in-law died in one Dec., and my father-in-law died the following May. The night after the funeral everyone was gathered at the FIL’s house, visiting and trying to comfort my husband. But at some point everybody wanted coffee. SInce I knew my FIL drank coffee, I went into the kitchen to make some. But I couldn’t find any coffee in the kitchen anywhere. So everyone went to Shoney’s and left my husband, my son and myself. Before we went to bed, I did the few dishes in the sink. I put my MIL’s special cup on a shelf in the china cabinet. She had two cups left from her first set of dishes, and she used them when they drank coffee in the morning. My FIL drank his last cup of coffee alone, stillusing the cups he had shared with wife all those years.
My husband, son and I all slept together that night, after we cried and huddled together. That night I dreamed that my MIL and FIL were drinking coffee from the cups and giving me advice on how to be sure my life ran smoothly. They both bore the signs of being embalmed, you know the whole Frankenstein stitches thing. My MIL warned me to take care of my health, or I would end up in bad shape. My FIL toldme to watch the money, that my husband couldn’t take care if it and it would be up to me. Then they drank the last of their coffee and told me to take care of my son, and then they vaporized.
I woke up with a start, my heart pounding. I went to the kitchen to get
some water. There on the table were the two cups, with traces of coffee in the bottom of them.
I woke up my husband, who helped me search the kitchen. We never found any
coffee. My husband put it off, saying I had to be playing a trick on him.
So I cleaned up the kitchen again and went back to bed. No more dreams of the dead.
BUT STILL NO COFFEE!
When I was still in high school…I had a very vivid dream of a car accident. I couldnt see the face but remember seeing the always beautiful nails of the girl who died. I woke up and was pretty upset.
The next evening I was at my sisters house and we heard a car crash down the road. We found out later …sadly …was my friend who had been living w us part time as her family was very dysfunctional. Creeped me out.
Here is my paranormal experience:
My father died in 1996, his sister (Aunt Zet) a couple of years before that, his mom, step-dad and dad when I was a young child. The only surviving member of his immediate family that I am in contact with is Uncle Jim, who was Aunt Zet’s common law husband since before I can remember.
On Christmas eve 3 or 4 years ago, I was up late wrapping gifts and getting stuff ready for Christmas day. I was getting ready to lay down on the couch to take a short snooze before getting the turkey in the oven. I moved all the Christmas cards from the top of the bar to the ledge below it because I was going to light a scented candle and didn’t want a fire while I slept.
I left the room to go to the bathroom. When I came back, my Uncle Jim’s Christmas card was sitting back on top of the bar.
Someone from his side of the family was saying Merry Christmas!
I don’t think I’ve ever heard the story, Fred.
How did you quit smoking?
I did it myself, first-try, cold-turkey three years ago, ten years after I started.
About six years ago when my husband and I moved to Ohio, we were staying with friends until we found an apartment. Our friends live in a big old house - over a hundred years old I believe - and insisted it was haunted, but pretty much just shrugged it off.
Lots of things happened during the couple months we lived there that could have a perfectly reasonable explanations, and I didn’t really believe any of them were ghostly in origin. One room at the end of a hall always seemed out of the corner of my eye to have someone standing in it, but when I’d turn to look there’d be nothing that could have been mistaken for a human figure. Stuff like that.
The one thing that really got to me and creeped me out happened one afternoon when I was alone in the house. I was sitting downstairs and heard heavy, steady footsteps coming down the stairs and then down the hall, and let me tell you I was about freaking out thinking someone had come into the house. This wasn’t a couple of creaks; it was the sound of a sizeable someone plodding down the stairs and then down the hallway.
It stopped outside the room I was in. After a minute or so I got up to look, and there was nobody out there. Nobody upstairs, either, nobody in the yard, nothing.
I am very interested in the paranormal and I have two instances in my life that have creeped me out enough to make me believe in the afterlife.
The first incident took place over Thanksgiving weekend in 2000. I was visiting my parents who lived for two years in an old farmhouse located right on the Chesapeake Bay in rural Maryland. This house had been in my family since the 1920’s but it pre dates the Civil War even. The land records we have go back to 1847. Anyways, this house has always had a strange feeling to it. I HATED to be in it alone. My mom even said that they didn’t like being there when they visited over the summer in her childhood.
So one night I am lying in one of the upstairs rooms on a futon and I’m having trouble sleeping. I woke up and happened to glance out of the window and out over the property towards the pier on the bay. There was a ghostly light right over the pier just sitting there. Then it started moving and came towards the house and I started getting VERY freaked out. I could of sworn that I saw a girl’s figure in the light but once it got about 20 yards from the house it dissapeared suddenly. I told my parents and they said it was probaby ball lightning or something, but when I told this old guy who lived next to us he said it was just “Emily”. Apparently, she was a young girl who drowned in the bay around the turn of the century AND that her mother killed herself in the house after it happened. Needless to say, I couldn’t sleep a wink the rest of the trip. My parents deny the story…but you never know.
The second incident occured at Gettysburg National Military Park in the summer of 2002. I was visiting there with my fiance and I decided to take an early morning drive through the park while she stayed at our hotel. I got over to the area known as Devil’s Den and was doing a little bit of hiking when I had a feeling that someone was watching me. I turned..expecting a Ranger to be over there, but there was a gentleman dressed in tattered clothes carrying what looked like a musket on his shoulder. He wasn’t wearing any kind of uniform…just old dirty work clothes. I thought maybe he was a maintenance guy or reenactor or something and I went to check my watch to see what time it was in case there was an event planned for here and when I looked up….he was gone. In the span of 2 seconds. Creepy stuff….and I will never spend the night in that farmhouse again.
My sister-in-law had the face of the devil on her bedroom door, she lived there for a year before she noticed it. She sold the house as soon as she could. My mother-in-laws house was haunted. 7 different familes lived in that house and 5 of the families had someone die (my father-in-law was one) after moving in, and the other 2 families moved as soon as they started seeing doors open and hearing things at night. We also had a UFO here. You can see it if you do a search for McCurtain Gazette UFO.
Ya’lls stories are seriously giving me goosebumps & chills & what not. But I love stuff like this. I guess it’s doubly creepy to me since we just watched “Identity” earlier today. Good suggestion for stories, Fred, glad you did it.
Wish I had a story to tell, too. Then again, maybe I’m glad I don’t!
Hey Fred when is the story going to be on channel 48? I don’t want to miss it. Ghost stories try being able to predict when and how people close to you are going to die. Not fun at all.
Susan
Susan,
Sometime in late November is all I know. It’s apparently for sweeps.
I haven’t ever had a scary paranormal experience, but I do have some personal ghosties that watch over me. As far back as I can remember, the “bed people” have kept an eye on me at night. If I kicked my covers off, the bed people would re-cover me, if I had a bad dream, the bed people would sit next to me (I could feel their weight as they sat down) and caress my face. They moved with my from house to house. Even now, if I am by myself the bed people will visit me. I never actually saw them, but I am quite sure that there were two of them. Once I was old enough to move out of my parents house they faded out of my daily existence.
The house that I grew up in had some sort of mischievous little spirit in it. My parents never believed me when I told them that our ghost rattled our front door. But I know it did - when it rattled the door it was letting us know that it wanted to “play”. I used to chase it through the house (following the rattling doors and windows). Silly, I know but it was fun. Also, I never felt alone in the house even if I actually was.
The other cool ghost experience I had was in one of the first apartments I had all by myself. The original inhabitant was a writer that lived there until he died from old age. This guy happened to love cats. I moved in there with my cat and he was so, so happy! He immediately let me know he was there by opening the swinging door that I had blocked with full boxes so that he could play with my cat. She loved him too. More than once I would come into the dining room and she would be purring to beat the band twining between invisible legs.
The apartment I live in now seems to have a ghost in it too. But it isn’t very active - the only time it seems to show up is if there is tension/arguing. I guess it’s peace gets disturbed. It likes cats an awful lot too. The kitties get all excited when it makes an appearance.
Sorry for going on for so long Fred, hope I didn’t bore you…
Ive got goosebumps now!
I have had a few experiences with “the paranormal”.
One was with my best friend. We were sitting up late one night on her back porchy thing when something caught our eye under one of the trees. At first I just thought it was the tire swing that I was seeing but then my friend informed me that the swing was on a different tree. It was a human shaped figure and a smaller figure on the ground next to it. I was too freaked out and got up and went inside, but Heather was facinated by it. She swears it was her late grandmother and her (heather’s) dog standing there under the tree. Here’s the kicker…they appeared as they did when the died though…her dog was mangled (got hit by a car) and something was wrong with her gma too (suicide) although I dont remember what. I think my own goosebumps have goosebumps now!
Another one that comes to mind is about my dog. We finally euthanized him after years of heart troubles and in the end, seizures mostly unable to be controlled with medicine. He seemed to stick around for awhile. I was laying in my bed that night (after) and I could hear him walking across the floor in the kitchen (our other dog was laying in bed with me at the time). My sister and I both had caught glimpses of him from time to time, and heard him walking around a few more times. He left shortly after we got his ashes back from the crematorium…I guess he just wanted us to always know he would be around!
My experience isn’t a ghostly, but I believe it to be Satanic. I had been married for 13 years, but recently my marriage felt like it was falling apart. My husband had been caught lying and I thought possibly cheating, but I didn’t know for sure. I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt since we had two babies, 3 and 1 year olds.
One night he wanted to get amorous with me and I agreed. During the act I looked up and behind his back I saw a silhoutte of black wings. At first I thought I was crazy and I didn’t respond. I closed my eyes to see if I was imagining and I looked again they were still there and this time they gently flapped/moved. That was it for me, I took my hands and shoved my husband off, and cried, “What is that?” Once I did it all dissappeared. He had no clue what I was talking about. It scared me so bad it took me awhile to fall asleep. A few days later I discovered my husband was having an affair with a 17 year old girl (he was 33). I asked him to leave our home. To this day I believe what I saw was a glimpse of the demon who was controlling him. I spoke with someone in the church about it and they agreed it was probably true. My ex-husband hasn’t changed much in how he treats women or his kids, I beleive that demon is still on his back.
My husband and I were visiting Antietam Battlefield one hot June day. (The single bloodiest day in the Civil War occurred at Antietam.) As I was reading a plaque describing the area, my husband looked up and saw a soldier standing beside me. He was not solid (you might say he was … ghostly) but clearly visible. We were the only folks around. My husband got totally weirded out, asked me to get back in the car, and we left the park. He didn’t even tell me about it until we were back at our hotel because he was so freaked!
Last semester around Halloween, me and a friend (we both lived in the dorms) started messing around with a Ouija board and lots of weird stuff started happening. A stuffed animal of hers would move randomly around the room, she’d come back to her room and drawers would be opened (she had no roommate at the time) and once a sock flew at my head in my room. She was standing near the door on my right and the sock came at me and hit me on the left side of my face. I didn’t sleep that night, much.
When I was eight I was alone in our house. My brothers were all staying the night at friends and my mom was a couple houses down. When it was time for me to go to bed I turned out all the lights and headed up the stairs. Near the top the last three stairs turned into the hallway. I took the turn and at the end was my grandfather, who had died when I was five. We had a picture that hung on the wall at the end of the hallway, I could see it through him. He was sort of smiling at me and with this right hand was motioning for me to come to him. Ya know, the hooked finger move. With his left hand he was holding the box of kleenex I had given him for Christmas a month or so before he had died. Silly gift I know but then I was only five and he was really sick at the time. Under his left hand was the cane that he used to walk with. It was one of those kinds that has for legs at the bottom for more support. It freaked me out and I ran back down the stairs and through the whole house into the bathroom. I locked myself in for a good hour or so. Finally I had the nerve to go back up, creeping up the stairs the whole way. He wasn’t there anymore so I turned the light on in the hallway and looked where had been standing. In the carpet were for indents where his cane had been. Didn’t sleep much that night and of course my brothers and mom didn’t believe me.
Got a lot more stuff that happened in that house but it’d take to much space. Great stories so far.
Glad to have a chance to share my ghost story with you! I live in Charleston, SC, and we seem to have plenty of ghosts lurking about.
A few years ago, I was in a cemetary downtown - it is one of the oldest cemetaries in the city. I was in a very strange mood at the time, thinking about all of the headstones, and how each one was a person just like me, living and breathing at one point, with emotions and dreams. I felt something touch my hand and turned to see a woman dressed all in white swing through a gate in the brick wall - she kind of opened the wooden door and swung around with it. When I looked back, the brick wall was solid with no door in it.
Several months later I went on a ghost walk during October - we stopped outside of that cemetary, and there were a lot of people already in it, so our guide took a moment and asked if any of us had any ghost stories to tell. I told my story, and the guide nearly flipped - apparently I had seen Mary Blumfield, a well known Charleston ghost, and my sighting was the most recent reported sighting. Her husband had travelled somewhere north and died of yellow fever I believe. She died waiting for him to return, never knowing he had died. They believe she is still waiting for him to return.
Dawn has been sharing some good spooky stories this last month, starting here, I think:
http://bizarrogirl.com/bg/archives/000992.html
Jenniffer
I would lose. my. shit. if anything like this ever happened to me. GAH. I’m quite glad I have no stories to share. These are GREAT though.