Monday, March 4, 2013

Darn Work Beasts!

I just don't know what is up at work. Nothing seems to happen for ages and ages and then something surprises you yet again.

It was nap time and I was just getting settled next to a toddler to help her snooze, when a movement about one foot from my face grabbed my attention. I looked up and something appeared to be popping right through the next doorway to peek. You could imagine another toddler peeking their head out to see if anyone was around, seeing me, and popping back again super fast like 'oops! i'm caught!'. It was very quick but it wasn't just like a little piece of head, it was a whole head and neck.. but so fast I could not discern any features at all, hair colour, face structure, etc. It was literally RIGHT in front of my face as I was sitting on the floor already and just pushing myself backwards to sit next to the other child when it happened. So I moved onto my knees to peek in the door and give whoever it was 'trouble' for being off their mat.

And therein lays the problem - no one was in the room. No other toddlers were laying in there yet. They were all still finishing their lunch. Oh oh.

Well then, what the heck was that? I hate it when that happens but this was a first for this particular experience. Blah!

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

The Voice

This is another that did not happen to me, but to my partner. It was a few years ago when our son was little. I was laying down with our son to help him get to sleep, when my boyfriend popped his head in the room and said "Did you call me?". I said "No" ...????.... and he just looked kinda funny and said "I didn't think so".

When our son was asleep, I went into our room and said "What was that all about?". The other two kids had long been asleep already and I didn't hear anything at all. He said "Well, it was strange. I was just laying here watching tv, leaning on my side, when a voice YELLED my name, right in my ear. Like right here" and he indicated the ear facing the ceiling. He said it made him jump a mile because for one thing, he knew no one was in the room with him, and it was a male sounding voice, and it was like RIGHT at his ear.

It bothered him for awhile, like thinking maybe the phone was going to ring with some bad news from someone - but nothing ever happened. He said it almost sounded like a warning, the voice, but again, nothing happened that we know of.

It's impossible to know what that was about, but occasionally I have experienced similar things, just not so bluntly right in my ear. Thank god! Because I would probably faint ;)

I have things happen like being sure someone called my name at work. I look around and no one did. Or at night I will be laying in bed, ready to go to sleep, and I will swear I hear someone calling MOM. But faint and far away sounding, like in the old days when someone called you and the telephone lines were bad so the person's voice sounded like they were stuck in the bottom of a well, or a mini person was way down in the ear piece of the phone (lol, I think young people wont understand what I mean by that). But I just chalk that up to 'mommy brain'... though I only recall it happening over the past few years! I don't remember going to bed when my older two were little and thinking they called me. It happens quite often now, at least once a month or sometimes more like weekly, and I don't know why. Am I hearing a voice? Or I just on mom-overload with 3 kids and expecting someone must surely be calling out for me?? I'm sure it's not one of them in their sleep because it sounds so far away, and I can never pinpoint whose voice it is. My kids are 4 10 and 15 so you'd think I would at least be able to guess - but I never can. It's just weird.

But the loud voice right at my boyfriend's ear was definitely something strange that he has never had happen again.

Sunday, October 14, 2012

Teenage Seances

I cannot put as much weight to these stories as I would if they happened when I was older and wiser ;) But there were still some odd happenings in my teen years that I could not explain at the time.

1. When I was about 13, my friend and I got this stupid idea to hold a seance in her back alley, to ask if Sid Vicious (Sex Pistols) was really dead. LOL. Hilarious to think about now. But anyway, we got a candle and a candle holder, a piece of paper to put it on, a lighter or matches, and we headed out back. It was like the middle of the afternoon. We might have been stupid but we weren't stupid enough to try this at night haha!

We set everything up and would close our eyes and chant some mumbo jumbo we probably saw on a movie, but we kept giggling and the candle would blow out with the very mild breeze so we had to keep relighting it. It was really more of a stupid fun thing to do with your friend and have a laugh.

But then we got serious. We kept out eyes closed and were holding each others hands across our paper table. I remember being able to feel the candle light growing hotter as the flame held and got higher. I could see the light brighten from behind my eyelids. I wish I could remember what silly stuff we were chanting, but I can't. Anyway so there we sat, asking for something to give us a 'sign' that Sid Vicious was really dead. The breeze had stopped, the candle light was high, we were very still and quiet - and BANG! A fence board or something right beside us SLAMMED hard. It was so loud, we both screamed our heads off and jumped up in the air, grabbed our stuff, and ran screaming back into the house.

My heart was pounding out of my chest. But we also ended up laughing because it scared the hell out of us, but it was something fun and dumb to do. I don't put any weight to the loud crash or bang we heard, because for all I know, some neighbour saw us being idiots and threw a rock at the fence. I will never know. But it's what happened next that always stuck with me.

I was sitting on the steps in my friend's entryway. She lived in a bilevel so there was one set going up, and one set going down. I was sitting on the upper set and she was standing in the doorway. We were laughing and still freaking a bit about what happened, but starting to settle down. I was saying something about never wanting to do that again, or whatever we were babbling about, when a door or something slammed SO hard downstairs, it shook the floor under my feet and rear end. I said 'OMG what was that???' and took off down the stairs to the basement. I expected to find the door that was right under me, to the storage area under the stairs, slammed shut. But it was wide open. I looked down the hall and the bathroom and two bedroom doors were also open. I was stumped.

I assumed my friend felt and heard it too because she followed me down immediately - but SHE DIDNT!!! She had no idea what the heck I was doing running down the stairs. She was scared by my actions and just followed me so she wasnt left alone lol. I didnt believe her. I said 'I was trying to find what door slammed. Didnt you feel that? It shook the floor!'. And she kept saying no and was getting very scared. I talked to her about it a few years ago and she remembers me searching her basement, but does not remember hearing any loud sound or feeling anything bang and reverberate under her feet. Back then, I had a sudden feeling that this was a warning not to get involved in stuff like seances - but of course I didn't listen ;)


2. This is one that I should probably chalk up to being a prank by friends, but I still get the willies when I think of it. A bunch of friends were doing a Ouija board thing but I didnt know. I decided to call my friend P to see what he was doing. Me and a friend were bored. When I phoned, it rang quite a few times, and finally another friend K answered. He answered in a really weird voice, saying Hello??? like he was worried about who was calling (these are before the days of Caller ID, peeps lol). I said 'oh hey K, what are you guys up to?'. All i heard him say at first was away from the phone, something like 'guys! guys! it's just ****!'. He came back to the phone sounding hugely relieved. He said 'omg, you scared the crap out of us! we are doing ouija and we asked for a sign this was real, and as soon as the marker moved to the letter R, the phone rang and no one wanted to answer it'. I laughed at them but said we would come over and hang out!

So we get there, and there are now like 10 at this house. There is a table set up using just paper letters and numbers, and a clear drinking glass (a glass one). I thought they were all insane. They did the thing where you ask permission to join in and it said Yes for my friend, but then it said No for me. Whatever folks, play your stupid game, I'll just sit here on the floor. I didnt feel like any of it was real, just someone being an ass and not letting me join in lol. The glass was too small for anyone to have more than their fingertip on though, and that started to catch my attention while watching the 'game'. I was trying to figure out which one of them was moving the glass, but I never could. It seemed odd that it could move so fast and smoothly with so many people's fingers touching it, and no one be able to guess it was being manipulated by one person specifically. Very strange but I kept watching, kept trying to work it out. The other strange thing I noted was that people would get bored, or want to go get a drink, or go potty, and they would leave the circle. EVERYONE left the circle at one point or another, so how was it planned out that someone else would immediately take control? That was baffling me but I figured they must have had some sort of system going.

But these were mainly teenage boys, and let's face it, men dont always plan everything down to the last detail in most cases ;) The story was supposedly that some older lady, in her 70s or 80s, was talking to them. She was from a little town just outside our city, and that her husband was there too, standing behind  - ME. And i think her son too? Anyway, this went on for ages but then people would ask questions like each other's middle names, birthdates, etc - and they were right (according to the others). I asked if I could ask a question even though I wasnt on the board, and it said Yes. So I asked for my name to be spelled (it's a different than usual spelling of a common name and most people get it wrong). But it was spelled right. And then my middle name. And My BIRTHDATE. I really did not know what to think of this. My friend refrained from joining in on any questions about me, so I couldnt blame her for manipulating the device. I didnt know what was going on and started to feel very weird. I had known these people for a few years, but since when do they remember your birthday, especially guys? It was just plain weird. I started off thinking this was all a silly stupid game, and ended up worried that it wasnt.

When we decided to finish, I asked if I could join in for one last show, because I had sat out the rest of it. The marker (glass) went to Yes after seeming to pause, and so someone got off so I could stick my pointer finger on the bottom of the overturned glass. Someone asked for a major sign that this was real and the glass started going around in circles. Small circles, slow, and building steadily into bigger and bigger circles. I was really shocked. It went so big and so fast, we kept falling off. You had to stand up to reach the far side of the coffee table and try to catch up with the glass if your finger fell off, and then suddenly it would race back to your end of the table and around again to the other side. I was baffled and freaked out. Then suddenly it stopped and the glass fell over. Everyone was pretty quiet.

I picked up the glass and started moving it around the table myself, with 2 or 3 fingers on it. I wanted to see how easy it was to manipulate. Only problem was, it was a cruddy old coffee table with rivets and bumps on it. Even with just me touching the glass, I felt it hitting little bumps, and it would scrape loudly across the table instead of just the light glass scraping sound I had heard all afternoon. I tried going faster to see if that helped, and all I managed to do was hit a snag in the table and knock the whole glass right over. Other people tried it with the same result. Then I tried pushing it with one finger and that was very difficult. I could not make it go exactly where I wanted all the time, and again was hitting little bumps or 'cuts' in the table surface that stopped the glass or it would lurch over the bump. That stuff was not happening during the Ouija seance at all! I will never know what happened, I just know that there were some unexplained things going on that we could not re-create afterward. That will always stick in my brain as a What The Heck? moment.

3. I will make this one short lol. I was doing a seance at a different friend's house and we had set up rules like we all had to hold hands, and we also had to have our feet touching the people next to us at all times as well. This was our way of making sure no one was doing something stupid like knocking the table or trying to bump the table, etc. I was on a corner of the table, so there was no one sitting directly beside me - that person was sitting at the head of the table. I had my eyes fully closed and at one point I heard footsteps come up beside me on the carpet. I snuck a peek and no one was standing there, and the guy to that side was still touching my foot with his. I heard 3 soft treads come right up to the table, but I must have been mistaken because no one was there when I peeked.

Afterward we were chatting and the guy beside me said "Well I thought I heard footsteps" and he looked at the rug in the same place I had looked when I snuck a peek. I said "I did too!!!" and he said "I swore I heard 3 or 4 footsteps like someone walked up right to the corner of the table". That's what I heard too. I thought maybe he was full of crap and did it himself, but I'm not sure how he would have accomplished making a sound in that spot when my foot was touching his. Even if he and the person on the other side, opposite me, had worked out some kind of deal, I should have felt him moving a bit if he was trying to get that leg over onto my side to tap the rug, and manage to make it sound like they came from further away to closer. That would be some cool acrobatic or lithe moves. So what was that? I dont know.

Saturday, October 13, 2012

My Partner's Experience

My partner is pretty much a skeptic when it comes to other people's stories of strange phenomenon. But he has one story about something he could not figure out and to this day wonders what happened. He thinks there is a rational explanation for most everything that people 'experience', but even he could not find one for what happened to him before we met.

He lived in a tiny 2 bedroom house with his ex girlfriend (Ive been to that house, and he told me the story while he was still living there, so I know the house and room layout and spent almost a year there visiting him before we moved in together). Anyway, so he and his ex were sleeping in bed one night and he woke up hearing women's voices. More like one woman's voice was clear, and others were muffled. He laid there listening to it for awhile, trying to figure out where it came from. It was chilly out so he didn't have the bedroom window or any other windows open, but the voices were loud enough to seem like they were coming from within his house. He thought 'WTF??', like someone WAS in his house. He listened more and it seemed to be coming from toward his closet, which was right beside the door into the main house. So he slowly quietly got out of bed and headed toward the bedroom door. As he got closer, he expected the sound to change from sounding like it was in his closet to sounding like it was coming from the living room or kitchen or wherever. But it didn't. It sounded more like it was coming from the closet, or rather the floor area, beneath the floor. He stopped and turned around to look back at his ex, and there she was laying in bed with the covers pulled up to her chin - with her eyes bulging WIDE OPEN. Terrified. She could barely speak when she said 'Do you HEAR THAT?'. He shh'd her and crept out of the bedroom. He looked around the house but could not hear the voices coming from there at all. He walked to the top of the stairs to the dirt cellar - nothing! Nothing from the spare bedroom, kitchen, front porch, etc. But he could hear the voices, muffled and far away sounding, like down a tunnel almost - coming from his bedroom. He crept back in and there it was - stronger. He said it was like listening to a group of women having a tea party and chatting away happily, amicably. Just having a lil ole party in his closet. His ex was completely paralyzed with fear in the bed, so he grabbed the closet door and pulled it open - and the voices stopped immediately.

His ex was like 'WTF was that??' and was scared. He looked outside (he did this before opening the closet too, I believe), but it was 4am and he couldnt see anyone anywhere along the street. The neighbour's house was dark, and there are no windows on that side of their house that you might think sound could travel through. They were old people, not prone to being up partying til 4am anyway.

It was just a strange occurrence that he could not explain, scared the crap out of his gf at the time, and never happened again in the several years more that he lived there. You'd think if it was wayward sound traveling through from outside, it would happen at least once more, but it didnt. He was in that house about 10 years and only had that one experience.

Deja Vu? ---- Sinister

This is going to sound completely nuts, am believe me I am well aware of that fact, but I have to write it out somewhere so I can refer back to it when I finally see the movie Sinister. I think it came out yesterday, but I have not gone and have no plans to. I WANT to, it's just that we dont get out to the movies very often lol.

But I have to share this with you --- when I first saw the movie trailer a week ago, I thought 'huh? this is not new'. I saw a short trailer with Ethan Hawke and all it really showed was some freaky faces, and then Ethan looking rather disheveled, and while the trailer was running, I thought 'oh yeah, Ive seen this one, he finds all those tapes and watches them and goes kinda crazy'. I was running my own preview of the movie through my head while watching the trailer, and I could 'see' Ethan doing things that are not actually in that trailer. I was thinking about his family being outside and a face popping up in a tree or bush, I was picturing him going through boxes, watching tapes with a bunch of different families in them, birthday parties, swimming, playing in the yard, happy family moments, and then they all die, the tapes look old, and he gets obsessed with watching them. And then I had the feeling of him killing his family at the end, fulfilling the supposed curse that is on the house or on the vhs tapes, only youre not really sure if he is possessed by the scary face thing or what the heck. I was picturing all of this and wondering why the movie trailer acted as though this was all brand new, but I didnt give it that much thought.

Then a couple days later, I saw the longer trailer and I started to feel very confused and weird. I asked my partner if he has seen that movie before, and he said it's not even out yet, so 'no'. I am well and truly stumped. I SWEAR I have seen this movie before. Not something similar - THIS movie. I have spent some time tonight working google hard, trying to find out if there is a similar movie (there does not appear to be), or if perhaps this was supposed to be released in the past but something happened so they delayed it a year or two and are re-releasing it now (that does not appear to be the case either), or what. I really have no idea but it has been bothering me and creeping me out.

I can see him having fights or arguments with his wife over him obsession and not getting any other work done. I can see him pacing or something and slowly seeming to go bonkers. I can see all sorts of things. I am kinda freaked out to see the movie, to be honest, because if it is the same as the stuff I can picture in my head, I will go crazy lol. Is this like a really long drawn-out episode of deja-vu that can be explained by some weird scientific theory, or did I see a trailer for this months ago and forgot that I havent actually seen THE movie, and now I'm just remembering that older trailer? I do not recall the title of the movie, and I don't recall that weird ink or blood coming down the wall and changing into a face like you see in the trailers now - I feel like I remember the actual movie, to the point of having sat down and watched it, and feeling like they have re-released it.

I honestly hope that someone writes and leaves me a link to show that yes indeed, this was filmed years ago and trailers appeared on tv, but then the date was changed for some reason and it's taken all this time to start up again and be shown in theatres. Although I feel like I saw the end where his family dies. I'm not sure about him, but I feel like I see the face somehow being involved, like just as you HATE the guy for going crazy and then driving himself to kill his own wife and children, the spooky face arrives and then you wonder if they were just victims of the same ghoul.

Ugh. I really cannot figure this out and it's making me feel insane. It doesnt feel like a normal deja-vu where it's all slowed down and your brain feels prickly, noticing that things seem to be repeating themselves. I seriously thought this must be a remake of a prior movie, until I saw that Ethan Hawke was in it, and that's who I could see in my mind as being in the one I was picturing. The more I type it out, the more confused I get because it seems SO real. ARGH.

** just adding that I feel like I remember his family being video taped too, like with the family camera, perhaps that his wife wanted to do or bought, or something he likes to do. I picture him trying to do his work at home but going up to the attic over and over and losing hours watching the tapes. I picture him changing from a kind of quirky guy to a reclusive weird guy, dark attitude, etc, while his wife and family get annoyed or confused or something like that. I picture him being grumpy to other people, like neighbours or friends that stop by. I dont know. It's just weird. I really felt like I had seen this movie before and I do not know why.

Did Something Touch Me?

I happen to think that most of the time when people think something has touched them, it's just some sort of sudden muscle twitch that they just happen to notice. I see a lot of ghostly encounter shows where people think they have been touched lightly on the hair, clothing, etc but I have it happen a lot where there is a sudden isolated twitch in my leg or arm, and if I were standing in the pitch dark doing a ghost tour, I would probably think that something touched or poked me, just because of the situation, but I would have to think about it later and wonder if it was just a twitch.

However, there have been a couple times where something much more pronounced and over a larger area happened, and I'm not sure what to make of it.

At work, I was sitting in a chair serving up lunch to the kids. We sit in child-sized chairs and I was just enjoying lunch and chatting with the kids. My son was at another table about 10 feet away, back to my left. While I was eating, something touched me on my back, but it felt just like a finger running down my back in a straight line, about 4 or 5 inches. It was on my right side, so from about my shoulder blade down toward my belt line. I turned around, immediately expecting to find my son standing there, trying to sneak out of his chair and come sit on my knee like he often does.... I was surprised to see that no one was there. I guess I turned so suddenly, and there is nothing behind me but a big carpeted area for story time, that it drew the attention of my two coworkers who were sitting at other tables facing me. I turned back and said nothing, but they were staring at me. One said "What?" and I made the gesture that something touched my back, and then put my hands up and looked around like 'but no one was there'. It was just weird. It was a very long line, straight down, and pressure. Not like a poke feeling that could possibly be a muscle twitch/spasm. I felt it and absolutely thought that someone was standing behind me trying to get my attention. It was weird and I was pretty silent for awhile as I tried to puzzle that one out. But - who knows?? These are all things you can't prove. Personal experiences that only you know about and have no explanation for.

Another time, a few years ago, something odd happened while I was laying on my couch at home watching a movie. I was by myself, the kids were all in bed, and I think my partner was asleep already too. So there I was, laying on my right side, with my head resting on my hand. Suddenly I got a very cold sensation on my outer left thigh, so the part of my thigh that was facing the ceiling. It was quickly uncomfortable - like REALLY REALLY cold, in a rather large area. Like maybe the size of both my palms side by side. At first I didnt think much of it, just thought 'oh it's getting chilly in here'. But after a couple minutes I realized that nothing else on me was cold - not my bare arms, not my bare feet, not my face or neck - just that one area on my thigh, which happened to be covered in pj bottoms. I ended up actually STARING at my leg, wondering what the heck was going on. The cold did not spread any further, it just stayed there, and it was uncomfortably cold, like someone had just plopped an ice pack on my leg. I put my hand there to try to warm it up but that did not work. I could feel the warmth of my hand, but it did nothing to warm me, if that makes sense. Very odd. I started to feel very strange about it and then in another few minutes the cold faded away, like someone had taken the ice pack off and I was steadily warming back up in that spot,,,,, but of course I didnt have an ice pack on.

What was that?

I have a facial neuralgia now that makes my neck feel like ICE ICE ICE even when the rest of my face is totally warm, even if I'm wearing multiple layers of a scarf etc (it happens when wind touches my face, warm or cold wind), but it happens a lot. I suppose maybe I had a one-off nerve incident that night that has never happened since, but unless it DOES happen again, I cant really be sure. It doesnt happen on any other part of my body aside from my neck and that one incident with my thigh. So.... who knows?