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?

The Garage Door

One part of the center where I work is like a bonus room. It is a converted garage, but still has the big double garage doors as one wall. I have worked there since 1994 and never had anything like this happen before or since - just on one day. And then I found out the next day that it happened to my coworker too, hours earlier. This must be about 6 years ago.

To set the scene - it's winter. An extremely cold, bitter winter day. There is fresh snow on the ground from the morning's dusting. I am sitting about 2 feet away from the garage door, in a chair I sit in every day, so that I can observe all the children playing.

Suddenly, behind me, there is a very loud series of knocks on the garage door. Very loud, very sharp, very striking. I jumped out of my chair and turned around, cos the sudden jarring sound scared the crap right outta me. The kids stopped playing and all turned to look in the same direction, where I was looking. They were saying things like 'WHAT WAS THAT?'. I immediately jumped up on my chair to look out the garage windows, expecting to see someone standing there, like the neighbour teens that used to go to the center, maybe banging on the door to scare us. But no one was there. I peered down at the snow and I could not see any footprints either. NONE. ANYWHERE. None anywhere on the driveway at all.

So, that was weird.

Some of the kids were quite scared by it and were jittery. So I decided to pop my coat on and walk outside to see if maybe someone had thrown an ice ball at the garage door, or something. A rock. Anything. I was going to give the neighbour kids heck for scaring my group of kids if they were out there.

So I come around the corner of the garage and step very carefully - but there is NOTHING in the snow at all. Not a dent or a bump, or anything to indicate that maybe a snowball or iceball hit the door and then blasted into smithereens before hitting the snow. There were no snow marks on the door itself either, like you might expect to see from a thrown snow ball. It was so odd.

The whole driveway was clear, undisturbed. I felt like I was suddenly on CSI, trying to solve a case, but I could not figure it out at all. I just hoped it wouldnt happen again or kids were going to start crying. It was THAT loud.

But it didnt happen again and we went down to the main center an hour or so later. No big deal. Just an unsolved mystery. I never said anything about it, and neither did the kids.

So, the next day, I brought it up with a coworker. I said "I dont know if the neighbour kids did it or what, but it was freaking loud, and I couldnt see any foot prints or anything at all". My coworker was staring at me like I was from Mars, so I felt stupid. She said 'You need to talk to J" (another coworker). So she calls her over, and says to the other woman "Tell her what happened to you in the garage yesterday morning".

THE SAME DAMN THING!

She was sitting there, la de da, watching the kids, when there was suddenly 3 or 4 really loud knocks on the door behind her. It shocked her because it was so sudden and loud, and she hopped up on a chair to look out the window, and see who was goofing off. But she saw nothing, no one, and there were no foot prints around. She did not go outside, but she looked around a lot, she said, because she figured someone HAD to be out there, but couldnt see how they could get near the door without leaving footprints in the deep snow. It was also so cold, the snow was crunchy.

Anyway, so then I told her what happened to me in the afternoon, and she couldnt believe it. So here we were, exchanging stories in front of our one witness, who had nothing to do with any of it, and was the first and only person both of us told. It was strange.

When I talked about it on a local paranormal group, they said it was probably just the door cracking because it was so cold.

Okay - plausible. But how is it that in almost 20 years of me working there, and over 10 years of the other girl working there, and both of us taking groups of children up there year after year (we swap days to be fair), that neither of us has EVER had that happen before, and then both of us on the same day, and then never again since? Every winter we have plenty of days that drop below -30C, and we've had days below -40 and even below -50 with windchill a fair number of times. So why that one day, and never again? It also was not a crack. I described it as 4 or 5 sturdy direct knocks, like a person would with their knuckles on a door, but very deliberate, spaced apart, and LOUD. She said 3 or 4 knocks, and immediately assumed 'person', not 'oh man, was that a crack or a snap?'. A serious of knocks, nothing more, nothing less.

Friday, October 12, 2012

Who's Talking?

So that little 4 yr old girl at the daycare was at it again last week. At naptime, most of the kids were asleep, only a few were still awake. It was very quiet except for light snores and delicate instrumental lullaby music.

My coworker is laying next to the little girl when she sits up a bit, annoyed, and says (around her thumb-sucking), "Who's talking?". Coworker says 'No one's talking hunny, everyone is sleeping. Lay back down". Little girl lays down but keeps her eyes open and looks curious and perturbed.

She pops her thumb out of her mouth loudly, and says in little-girl-ticked-off voice "WHO is talking??"

Coworker is confused and listens carefully. Cannot hear anything that resembles any kind of speech, looks over at me, I'm listening too, but we hear nothing beyond piano music, very faint, from the cd player. Little girl lays back down and says "they are talking to Matt". I name that child, because that is my son. He is sleeping about 5 feet away from her, on the other side of a wall, so all she can see is his feet if she sits up. He is sound asleep. I'm looking right at him and he is not moving.

Little girl pops her thumb out again and says "Oh. Matt is answering them back". And her voice sounds 'satisfied'. I can't really explain what I mean by that, because I have NO idea what the heck this girl is talking about, but it sounded satisfied, like things made sense to her now. She heard someone talking, but perhaps no one answering, and wondered who they were talking to. Then she thought she heard Matt answering, so she felt better about it? That's the impression I got.

But Matt was not talking lol.

And then she closed her eyes and fell asleep a few minutes later, undisturbed.

What is up with that? I blamed my coworker because that was early last week, and a couple of nights later she and her daughter were going to see Sylvia Browne lol. I said "Geez, what is going on? A paranormal convention where all the spirit people are gathering and waiting for Sylvia to appear?? GEEZ". We laughed, but we were actually quite nervous. Three or so events with this one little girl, that have not happened in the 3+ years she has been with us, and two other kids that have also never talked like that, and me seeing that dad walking past me, only no one was there and no dads had come in at all. No men working there, either. All within the span of about 6 weeks now.

I don't know what's up or if it's all just 'nothing'. But too many coincidences and weird events to just brush off either.

The Mist revisited (The Hallway)

So on Thanksgiving this past weekend, somehow we got onto the topic of the supernatural/paranormal. My mom is a big time christian lady and I usually refrain from such discussions because she will ramp up her talk of how I let demons into my life as a teen because of all my dabbling in Ouija boards, etc. But we got onto the topic of how my brother ratted me out, when he was around 10 and me around 16, because I was using my wood burning set (remember those???) to make a Ouija board and hiding it under my bed haha. Oh man. Anyway, mom dragged it out and got rid of it. Probably prayed over my bed for weeks for all I know. But we were laughing about that event when Mom suddenly said "I used to see a mist, like smoke, near your room and it was probably attracted to that stupid board".

I froze.

What???

So I said "No mom, I was seeing that mist longgggg before I made the board."

Her head whipped around and stared at me. "You saw it too?".

I said "I dont know. What did you see?"

My partner was there listening, as was my oldest son, and they both know my 'mist' story and that I found out years later that my brother saw it too. So they were listening carefully. They know the key details.

Mom said "I used to see it out of the corner of my eye. It was like a puff of smoke, or a light mist, but I don't know for sure because when I turned to look straight at it, it was gone."

I said "Where?"

She continued "In the hallway, outside your brother's door, and it would usually move, like down the hall".

"Where??"

"To YOUR room, like down that way. Always like a puff of smoke and it would move toward your door".


Wow. I was stumped. I explained as quick as I could that I saw the exact same thing, and so did my brother. That it was like grey, like a thin shadow, but not on the wall - in the air. She agreed. My partner just stared at me and my son laughed. I reminded mom that yes, my door was the only door down that hall - EXCEPT for the hole in the ceiling that was the entrance to the attic. Mom said "oh yeah, I forgot about that, it could have been going there too, but it was probably going to YOUR room". And then, enter the part where mom lectures me on all the seances I was doing lol. Borrrrrrrrrrrrrrrriiiiiiiinnnnnnnnng ;)

But the point is, Mom saw the same fricken thing in the same fricken place, doing the same fricken thing. So what the hell was it? I wish my dad were around to ask - see if he saw it too. But he passed away in 96.

Speaking of Dad though, in an unlikely candid moment that did not involve preaching, mom shared that my dad had experienced things when he was younger, and one thing scared him so bad, he vowed never to dabble in that stuff again. Apparently when he was an older teen/young man, in the army, he and a bunk mate somehow got hold of the arm bone of a dead man. He told mom this story when they were dating or first married. So they put this stupid bone in a drawer in their dorm room. Just something stupid to do as a youngin', thinking it was cool to have this body part. But very odd things happened and the only one mom remembers for sure is that the drawer would open at various times, in the middle of the night while they were sleeping or at other times. They would hear it open, turn, no one was there, but the damned drawer with the arm bone in it was open. They would shut it, and it would open again later. After about a week of this crazy drawer opening, and other things mom can't remember, they got rid of it and Dad said he would NEVER do anything like that again.

This is a second-hand story and I cannot talk to dad for backup - but you have to understand my dad. He was Mr Science. He was a park ranger, forest ranger, army engineer. He never talked about stuff like that with me. Did not sit around watching horror movies, or read stephen king books. He was very straight-laced. He went to work, he came home, he walked the dogs, he went to bed. Every day. For decades lol. People could literally set their watch to him. So I was completely utterly floored to learn that dad even spoke about something spooky happening to him. To anyone. He told us lots of stories but I dont remember any of them being about ghosts or spooooky stuff. He didnt dress up at halloween. He didnt put ghosts and ghouls outside our door to freak out trick or treaters - he just did not do things like that. I wish I knew more. I wish I had thought to ask him about stuff like that when I was younger and getting curious. But I can only hold this one story and know that SOMETHING happened to scare my dad. He was not easily scared.

When a bear entered our campsite when I was a little kid, dad went right out the tent-trailer door in his undies (brown y-fronts, i remember lol), holding a rifle. He could do that, but was afraid of whatever happened to him back in his early army days. Interesting.

Monday, September 24, 2012

The Santa Clause

One more for tonight.....

A coworker of mine's husband plays Santa every year for the kid's Christmas party. He has done this for about 9 years now. Every year he sneaks into the upstairs room of the center to change into his Santa costume and then comes down with a Ho Ho Ho. Afterward, he always goes back into that room to change into his street clothes and head home. It's the only room up there because it's actually the converted garage.

So fine, last year he finished his Santa job and went out the door. I assumed he went into the garage to change back to his normal clothes, and I waited a few minutes because I had a few more of the kids' presents to take up there. That is also where our coat room and cubbies are. I figured I had waited a decent amount of time, and hauled the gifts up the stairs. I stopped outside the door and called out "Are ya' decent?' and I heard his reply but wasnt exactly sure if he meant Yes or No. The door to that room does not go all the way down to the floor, there is about a 6 inch gap. I could hear his voice coming out from beneath and through the door, a male voice, clearly talking, but not make out his actual words. I pushed open the door a couple of inches and called out around it "Sorry, I didnt hear you" or whatever, something like that. I was met with silence. Total silence. I thought 'What the heck?" and I peeked carefully around the door to make sure I was not catching Santa in his birthday suit - but the room was completely empty. I was shocked.

I had worked there for almost 18 years at the time, 7 of them consecutively, so I am used to the sounds of the area and how voices carry from outside the walls, etc. The garage is heavily insulated, the doors are metal, and I rarely hear anyone talking from outside even when I am right inside the garage.... so what the heck happened? I heard him - or some man - answer me. I could almost make out the words, the voice was very deep, definitely saying a short sentence of a few words - but no one was there. It freaked me out so much, I ran in there, threw the presents in the cubbies as fast as I could, and ran back down the stairs. Yes, I am brave lol. I stayed long enough to confirm that the room was indeed empty, since it's my job to keep the kids safe and we cant have a stranger in the daycare obviously, but then I got the hell out of there.

I came back in the main center looking a bit weird, so my coworker asked what was up. I said "oh, I thought your hubby was still in the garage" and she said "no, he came here already dressed today cos he thought it would be funny to drive around as Santa, so he just left right away". I said 'Oh' but then filled her in later on what really happened. She was floored. She has heard the odd voice here and there, but I hadn't, so it was a new thing to everyone. We never tell our boss these stories because it's actually in her home lol, but the rest of us share experiences and there have been a lot over the years. I would love to talk to 3 former staff I worked with back in the 90s to see if they had strange things happen to them too, but I never run into them in a place where I could ask such questions. Maybe one day...

Story Time

A few years ago, when my daughter was in Kindergarten, she was reading a book to me on the couch. She was laying at one end, and I was laying at the other. Just having a nice quiet time while everyone else was out of the room. Suddenly I noticed that while she was reading, she would start looking to her left furtively. Her reading would drop off for a second or two while she quickly turned her head, looked annoyed, and then turned back to continue reading. This happened several times but I didnt say anything. I thought perhaps an errant hair was sticking out past her head and she could see something but couldnt figure it out. So I just watched her. But then she changed from quickly turning her head, to slowly turning her head while she was peeking as far out of the corner of her eye as she could. It was starting to get bizarre, but I still just watched her.

There was nothing else beside or behind her aside from the wall and the front door of the house. She kept reading and darting her eyes to the left, like she was trying to catch sight of something sneaking up on her. Then she started to get really annoyed and would huff and puff and Grrrrrrrr when she turned and apparently saw nothing.

I finally said "What are you doing??" and she put the book down on her lap and said "That white light is really starting to annoy me". I said "What white light??" and she said "A  bright white light. It's beside or behind me but when I turn my head to see it, it's gone, and then it comes back". She was annoyed and frustrated by something that I could not see and I had full view of her and everything beside and behind her the entire time.

I had a very sudden vision or impression of my grandmother, my dad's mom, standing a little behind her and watching over her shoulder to see her reading. I dont know why that happened, and the 'impression' was gone as fast as it popped into my brain. I call it an impression because it's not like I 'saw' or envisioned my grandmother standing there, it's more like I felt it. It's so hard to explain. I don't recall anything like that happening before. So I said, really loud inside my head, 'Grandma if that's you, stand back a bit, cos my daughter can see you and it's distracting her!". My daughter picked up her book and started reading again, and I think she looked over her shoulder one more time, but that was it. She didn't look there again.

What was it? Heck if I know lol, but it was weird! Hasnt happened before or since then either.

My Daughter

In the summer of 2005, my daughter was just about to turn 3. I lived across the street from a small copse of trees, a community mailbox, and a pond/park. We were leaving the house to head across the park to the local corner store, and she walked out in front of me. I turned to lock the door behind me when she said "Your dad says 'Hi'". I nearly dropped my keys, and froze in place. I said "Pardon?", and she repeated "Your dad says Hi". My dad died in 1996, before any of my children were born, and I rarely talked about him to my children because I did not want to confuse youngsters with talk of death and dying yet. My oldest child was almost 8 at the time but was not with us. I did not know how to handle this sudden, strange situation, but I had to get some answers.

I tried to be as casual as possible, but still could not make myself turn around. I said "Who says Hi?" and she was very frustrated in her answers to me from then on. She said, loudly and toddler-obnoxiously - "YOUR DAD" (like I was some sort of idiot for not hearing her the first two times). I turned to face her and she was standing half way down our long sidewalk, looking at me like I was stupid. I said something like "oh okay, so..... where is my dad?" and she pointed across the street, in the direction of the mail box or the trees behind and beside it, and said in an even more frustrated tone "He is RIGHT OVER THERE!". I nearly fainted. I thought perhaps I had led her into that answer by asking her where he was, but I did not know another way in my stunned frame of mind to ask. I said something like "WHERE is my dad?" and she really got annoyed with me then and said "He is RIGHT OVER THERE, with your grandma".

Well, that was it for me. I was ready to run for the hills. My dad's mother passed away a few years after he did and that's all I could think about. Was my dad really standing there across the road, with his mother? Was this some way to let me know that they were together? Had my daughter seen them before? What the heck was happening? I didn't want to read too much into it, but it is really hard to process how she could have come up with this stuff. For one thing, she had never met my grandmothers. They live on the total opposite side of Canada, and I have only seen them a few times myself. I do not have photos of them around, or my father for that matter, and I did not chat with them on the phone for her to hear, etc. It was just too weird for her to say something like that, so out of the blue.

Then my daughter said "Your dad says he likes you, he doesn't love you, but he likes you". She was a bit more halting while saying all of that. She was an excellent talker for her age, but was still only 2 years old, a couple weeks or so from turning 3.Her words were loud and clear and while she seemed final in her speaking, she still seemed a bit confused or unsure in that last sentence. I said 'Oh Okay' and then realized that we should get going to the store, and we started to cross the street. She never said anything else about it and did not look or point to that area again. I could not bring myself to look there either, afraid I would see a shimmer in the air or something lol. But as we passed that spot, I muttered under my breath "Hi Dad. Don't do that to me again!". I did not say it mean, but more like 'you scared the living crap out of me, please dont do that again'. I regret saying that because I have always wondered if it was really him, or really them, and if they might have appeared another time with a message. I dont know what my daughter meant when she said 'he likes you, but doesnt love you' but if it was indeed some sort of message from my dad, I think she was too young to interpret it properly, or something, because I cant see my dad saying something like that directly lol. But whatever. It was without a doubt the weirdest day of my life.

I should also point out that my daughter called my mom Grammie, not grandma. That was not a term she used for anyone at that time, so it was extra kind of weird for her to say it.

Who Is That?

Today at work, there was only myself and one of the older children in the Wake Up Room for an hour and a half while all of the younger children napped. We had been hanging out for over an hour already and the little boy was standing right beside me, when he suddenly jumped a bit and said in a laughing voice "Who IS that?" and then he darted quickly behind a bookcase and then just stopped short, looking confused but still smiling too. He was saying 'Where did you go?' and then lifted up a bean bag from the reading corner, and then he really looked perplexed.

I said "What are you doing?" (already wondering what the heck he thought he saw), and he said "I saw someone over here, so I thought it was ****" (another child, who was napping in a different room). He looked around a bit more, and then came back to me at the table. I casually said "What did you see?" and he shook his head and said "I don't know". Then he thought about it and said "I don't know what I saw, but I thought it was ****, but no one is over there".

I left it at that. But that is now 3 children in the past month commenting on seeing someone that I cannot see, 3 different ages, and children that I have worked with for several years and never had a similar experience with before. Strange.
________________
An update on this story. I had the chance to share this occurrence with coworkers the next day and one looked shocked. She shared what happened to her with another child that same afternoon. A 4 year old girl said "I see a brown girl". My coworker said "Huh?" and the girl was looking at an area of the center that has a blue door, a wall mural of frogs, and a puzzle shelf. She said "I see a brown girl". My coworker was confused, looking at the wall and the puzzles for something resembling a 'brown girl', but there is nothing remotely human-like over there. So she said "Where is she?", and the little kiddo said "She is RIGHT THERE" and pointed toward the door or space beside the puzzle shelf. It dawned on my coworker that something strange was happening. So she asked again where she is, and the girl was sounding exasperated and repeated "she is RIGHT there".... my coworker said "Um, what does she look like?"  and the girl responded "She is wearing a dress". Then a second later said "Oop. She's gone now" and the girl just walked away.

So is there a little brown girl visiting us? Or what? Could it be the same thing the little boy in my group saw earlier that day? Who the heck knows. But it was certainly funky that this happened to two of us on the same day, without the other having any previous knowledge of an occurrence.

Monday, September 3, 2012

The Elbow

My family likes to hide and jump out to try to scare the bejeezus out of one another. It's a fun pass time :) So, about 3 or 4 years ago, when I was in the basement doing laundry, and I saw something out of the corner of my eye, I didnt think much of it, and braced myself for my son to jump out and scare me.

I should point out that my basement is completely open. It's not finished at all, so it's just a set of stairs (with open steps, as in, you can see through each tread), next to the laundry, and behind you when you are standing at the laundry is the hot water tank and furnace. Otherwise, everything else is just 4 cement walls.

So there I am at the washing machine, putting in a load, when I see movement at the right of me. That's where the stairs are too. I turned my head in time to see what I swore was the elbow of my then-10 or 11  year old son. It was white, bent at the elbow, and disappearing behind the hot water tank. I thought 'oh you little turd, how did you get down the stairs without me seeing you?' and I waited for him to scare me. I didnt want to disappoint him after he did so well sneaking past me on the stairs. I waiting a few seconds but nothing happened. I got bored, so thought I would scare the crap out of HIM instead. I snuck around the other side of the tank and furnace and found - NOTHING.

No one was there. I just about wet myself (seriously, it freaked me out totally), and I tossed the rest of the stuff in the washer, slammed down the lid, and ran up the stairs as fast as I could. The family were all where I left them - sitting together on the couch watching a movie. My bf saw the look on my face, and I was out of breath, and he said 'whats wrong with you?'.

I said 'oh nothing, someone was just trying to play hide and seek with me in the basement, and it wasnt any of you guys'. then I walked to the bedroom to calm down lol.

I dont know what I saw, but I have not seen it since. The pale white like my son's skin still stands out in my mind, at the right height for him at the time, the windows down there are very small and old, and do not face a street, etc. I wear glasses but I have for almost 30 years now so I am used to what I see as reflections and can normally figure that out instantly anyway.. this felt different. I was completely sure that my son was there to play our little game, and flipped out when he wasnt.

The Door

One afternoon at my old house, around 2006, my ex boyfriend and I were sitting in my living room on the couch. Directly behind us was a half-wall that divided my living room from the stairs to the basement. We were watching tv when suddenly, a door slammed SO hard, we both jumped and peered over the wall to the basement. It was so loud, and I also 'felt' the door slam - like a change in air pressure in my ears or something. We both looked at each other and then went down the stairs.... only to find all of the doors (3) were OPEN. Wide open. I lived in a duplex but the other side was empty at the time, but I didnt think that loud of sound could come from next door either, especially since I felt the slam like a change in the air too. Kind of like when you're in a car and someone else gets in and slams the door, while all the windows are up... anyway so he says 'is there a window open?' - thinking perhaps a breeze caught the door and slammed it, but it hadnt latched so just popped wide open again. But all of the windows were closed tightly, as were all of the windows upstairs. It was just plain strange. I had heard a door slam like that in my place once before, but I was alone so you kind of convince yourself that you were just hearing things --- this time I was with another person and he heard it too. He was as baffled as I was and said something like 'That was LOUD'. I said 'I know'. But we never figured it out.

What I didnt like is that a few months later, I was alone and got myself all freaked out reading about ghost stories on the net, so I didnt want to sleep downstairs in my bedroom. I slept on the couch upstairs instead. In the morning, I got up to run downstairs to get clothes for work - and I stopped dead in my tracks at the bottom of the stairs because all three doors were closed tightly. I have a habit of NOT closing my doors  - EVER - because I dont like the thought of opening them to find a person standing there lol. Ive felt like that for a long time, but as a single mom this became stronger. I dont know why, that's just the way it is. So to find all of my doors closed, when I had just been down there the day before to do laundry and to wake up for work the previous morning and left the doors open as usual, it freaked me right out.

And to top it all off, when I finally got moving again and went to carefully open my bedroom door, I found that a latch/hinge for a padlock at the very top of my door frame was CLOSED. I did not put that lock on there, it's from a previous tennant, and there is no padlock - but the hinge part was swung totally closed over the latch and tightly. I could not figure that out. I even videoed myself trying to open and shut the door that day, seeing if slamming it would budge the hinge enough to jump it over the latch, but I could not get that to happen at all because the latch and hinge are not lined up properly. In order to flip the hinge over the latch by hand, I had to hold the door handle and lift the door up half a cm or more, and then use my other hand to flip the hinge over. It was just SO weird. And again, none of my windows were open anyway, so Im not sure how the door could have slammed itself shut, engaging the locking hinge, and do that without waking me up and do it even though the hinge and latch were not lined up properly. I also had to push quite hard to get the hinge over the latch because it was old and dirty or rusty. It was not moving smoothly at all.

Some friends suggested that I did it in my sleep, a sleepwalking adventure that led to me closing 3 basement doors and latching the lock - but I do not have a history of sleepwalking (my kids and brother do, I should point out), and the latch was way too high for my young children to reach anyway (I could barely reach on my tiptoes)... and there are no chairs or anything down there to stand on.

So... what happened? I have no idea. But the doors in that place liked to open, shut, or SLAM, and I have a witness to one event.

The Hallway

Just a short one here - I moved with my family to a new home in the city when I was 12. I lived in that house until I was 19. Several, countless times over those years, I would see something out of the corner of my eye while sitting in the living room. It always seemed to be something high off the floor, like chest to head level on a tall man, moving from left to right down the hallway that all of the bedrooms came off of. My bedroom was to the right, the only room on that side. I always found it strange because it had no form in my vision, it was just a 'shape', like catching the shadow from something... but there are no windows in that hall and the bedroom windows are in various places, but this would happen at night as well as during the day. I could never figure it out. I only knew that it bothered me when it kept happening, because whatever it was moved toward MY bedroom. The only other doorway there was the ceiling hole that went into the attic, right outside my bedroom door. Either way - attic or my bedroom, I didn't like it, but could never make sense of it or catch it in my full vision.

I am now almost 40 and less than a decade ago, my younger brother and I were chatting and somehow got to talking about strange events, or ghost stories. He floored me by saying that something in our old house used to bother him... and then he went on to explain seeing 'something' move down the bedroom hallway, always out of the corner of his eye. I could not believe my ears! I said 'What direction was it going in?' and he was uncomfortable but said 'always toward where your door was'. I told him that I saw the same thing for YEARS and he was shocked. He is 6 years younger than me, and lived in that house until he was 18 (when I was 24), and he said he doesnt seem to recall seeing it when he was a little kid, but did when he was a teen.

So I don't know what it was, it was just nice to have the story matched by another person, so I didn't feel quite so insane :) He said it was like a shadow, up high, and moving fast. Same as me. Very odd. Mom sold that house around 2003. I would love to know if other people experienced it, but I most likely never will.

Saturday, September 1, 2012

Past Experiences at work

I mentioned in my previous posting that there have been other strange occurrences at my workplace in the past, which leads me to put more weight to what has happened recently.

The two most startling that come to mind are as follows:

About 3 years ago, my coworker and I were sitting at a table chatting quietly while the rest of the children were napping. The lights were out, the room was dim, the blinds closed on the windows to just let in soft light around the edges, etc. It is difficult to explain the layout of the center to those unfamiliar with it, but I will do my best. From where we were seated, there was a hallway where my then- one year old son was sleeping, along with 3 other children, which then leads to the very back room where our most recent experiences were, and then there is a large carpeted open area where 6 children were sleeping. Blocking my direct view of my child and others in the hall-like part were two large Rubbermaid containers, stacked on top of each other. My son slept directly on the other side of that, with the rest of his buddies sleeping further from the tote boxes. I was facing the boxes, and my coworker was seated sideways, her profile facing the tote boxes. We were just chatting, blah blah blah, when I saw a dark shadowed head start to peek up over the boxes. At that exact moment, my coworker turned her head to face that direction, and I glanced at her. When I glanced back, I could not see the little child-sized head any longer. We both immediately assumed that my son was awake and had stood up to peek over the boxes. My coworker was out of her chair to check on him before I could have time to move, and I was saying 'that little TURKEY! I thought he was asleep!' as she walked over to tell him to catch him in the act of being a sneak. But when she quickly walked the 8 or so feet to the boxes, she stopped dead in her tracks instead of talking to my son.

She looked at me and said 'come here'. I still thought I would find my son being a goof and about to get in 'trouble', but as I rounded the totes, I instead found him still sleeping on his belly, as usual, blanket perfectly covering him, as were all of the other children - ZZZzzzzz asleep without any blankets disturbed. I was shocked. What the heck? What did I see?

My coworker and I walked silently back to our chairs, and then I said 'What did you think you saw?' and she said 'someone was about to peek over the box. I assumed it was your kid'. I could not believe my ears. She saw the same thing I did, at the exact same time, and also thought it had to be MY son because he slept directly on the other side of the totes. They were high, he would have had to completely stand up to see over them at that young age, or someone else would have had to stand on his head to do it. But they were all laying down, perfectly covered up as we had left them, and there is no way a one year old or and two year old can jump back into bed, lay on their tummy, and cover themselves up perfectly from behind. There are extremely few who can manage it even when they take their time and are laying on their backs, let alone in the 2-3 seconds it took for my coworker to walk over there, and the 5 seconds it probably took me. What happened? We will never know, but we both saw a darker head when my son's hair was very light blonde at the time, which confused us too. Weird.

But speaking of blondies, this leads to my next odd experience. It involves the same back room featured in my previous posting. When it's not nap time, that room is called 'Dress Up' and it is the toddler's most favorite place to play. Full of Little Tykes kitchens, tables, chairs, toy food, dress up clothing, doctor kits, a kiddie hair salon with all the perks, etc. We have a lot of trouble keeping the little monkeys out of there when it's time to clean up or go home. They love it. They are always escaping to that back room when they are supposed to be sitting for a story or playing in another room. I have chased endless toddlers around in Dress Up, trying to get them to go home with mommy, or get them out for a diaper change, so it's nothing new lol.

Therefore, it did not surprise me at all one day, about a  year ago, when I was walking near the room and saw a little white-blonde head dash past the door. The daycare is in a house and the Dress Up room was a bedroom in the former owner's home, so it has a standard-sized doorway. I saw the little person run past the door, on the inside of dress-up, and I marched toward it laughing and saying 'Alright! WHO'S IN HERE!' in a mock-grumpy voice..... I stopped in the door with my hands on my hips, ready to herd the escaped toddler back with the main group..... but the room was empty. No one inside it at all. There is only one way in, so only one way out. And certainly no one passed me. I was floored once again. I went into the room to check under the table and behind the kitchen sets, but nope. Nothing. Nada. Zip. Zero children.

I walked back out with a funny look on my face, trying to remember what I saw and wondered what happened, and a coworker said 'what are you doing?'. I simply replied 'oh, I just saw a little blonde head bob past the door in dressup, so I went to go get them out, but no one was there'. She said 'oh' because similar things have happened to her from time to time. I did not see a face clearly, or arms or legs really, I just remember focusing for a split second on the top of a very white blonde head, very 'shiny', short haired, and there is only one child at the center with that color, and she was not even there that day. I joked and said 'maybe 'A' is here is spirit today instead of being on holiday with her parents?' and my coworker gave a nervous laugh and then we left it at that.

So I dont know what is up. There have been other things occurring there,  but mainly what others have experienced and I cannot recall all of the details. There IS one more story to tell another day that happened to me that totally blew my mind, but I will save that for another time :)

There Is A Stranger Here

I work in childcare and have done for over 20 years. Occasionally, strange things have happened but the most recent has been happening for the past month.

It started with a coworker coming to me out of breath, to tell me a story of how she was just down in the sleeping room, lying next to a three year old girl, when the girl suddenly said 'I don't like that man in the mirror'. My coworker looked toward the small wall mirror, to see if there was perhaps a doll or wall picture in her view that was bothering her. But there was nothing. All that she could see, even putting her face right next to the little girl's head, was the blank light-blue wall. Meanwhile, the little girl had covered her head with her blanket. We have known this girl for almost 3 years now and she has always slept in that very same spot, and she has never made such comments before, nor has she ever seemed afraid in there.She also does not like sleeping with the blanket even close to her face, let alone covering her head. It was weird, but my coworker chalked it up to imagination and carried on rubbing her back to help her fall asleep. A few minutes later, the little girl peeked out from under her blanket and yelled quite loudly "GO AWAY" and then covered herself AND my coworker up with her blanket, making sure their faces were both totally tucked away. My coworker could barely manage to keep herself laying there 'normally' until the girl fell asleep, which is when she raced up to the room I was working in, to share the story. She didn't know what to make of it, just wanted to tell someone about it. I was not with any children at the time, just doing paperwork, so we could speak freely.

A couple of weeks later, so about 2 weeks ago, the same little girl and my coworker were again laying down getting ready to nap. My coworker had made a habit of laying between the girl and the mirror so she could not see in it anymore and freak herself out. As my coworker was laying there, she saw a shadow move behind her, reflected in the mirror, so she turned to look and see if perhaps one of the other children had tried to sneak off their sleeping mat or what, when at the exact moment, the little girl stated 'There is a stranger in here'. She then flipped the blanket up over her head again and did not move. My coworker was stunned, as she had seen the shadow, none of the children were off their mats, no other staff members were wandering around as it was their lunch break time, and I was upstairs with the older kids that no longer nap. She had to wait until after work to tell me this story, and again we did not know what to make of it.

Had the little girl been watching strange shows or movies? Had she been dreaming of something and it came back to her as she was falling asleep? What about the shadow my coworker saw? The window in that room looks out under a deck in the private yard of the building owner, and the blinds were closed tightly anyway. We have all worked in that place for 10-18 years each and do not see shadows randomly playing on the walls in that room EVER. So it was bizarre, but what can you do?

I took over a couple of days putting the little girl down for her nap and I did not see or hear anything. But after all of the kiddos were asleep, I said out loud into the room 'If anything is in here, STOP bothering this little girl.' I felt silly saying it, but also felt like I had at least tried, in case something WAS hanging around.

But then things got a little weirder and this time it involved me. The other stories I was not witness to, so I can only go by what I was told. But for the past little while, maybe a week or two, I have been annoyed at work by seeing things out of the corner of my eye. Even with the stories surrounding the little girl, and what I said in the room afterward,  I did not put two and two together when I started seeing 'things'. Just that aggravating moment where you think you see something moving at the very edge of your vision so you turn your head, and find nothing, or find the source such as a curtain blowing in the wind, or whatever. But I would turn my head and not find the source - ever. I started wondering if I was having vision problems or high blood pressure issues (I have been told that very high BP can cause people to see spots in front of their eyes). But nothing seemed amiss, aside from these brief moments of 'grey' at the very very outer corner of my side vision.

Until Monday, this week. I was washing dishes at the sink. The children were all reading books or playing with toys on the main carpet area. It was nearing the end of the day and many had already gone home. There were three staff members in the building, including myself. The other two were watching over the children. So I am washing the dishes, not really thinking of anything, just getting the job done - when I see something more clearly from the corner of my eye. I see a form that I immediately assume is a person, but it appears kind of grey, like a thicker grey you might expect from thick smoke or something similar. It appeared in my vision as a person walking from my right to left, if I was facing the 'form', and leaning forward a bit, moving fairly quickly. I still did not think much of it, but I turned my head in curiousity, just to see who it was. I completely expected to see one of my coworkers moving among the children on the rug, though I was aware that my brain could not figure out which one of them it might be, as I did not recall seeing any color like from clothing, hair, etc. Just as I am realizing this is a bit weird, my head finishes turning - and I am facing a rug with NO ONE standing on it. No staff members, not even the children (though what I saw in my side vision was very tall, with the high windows behind it anyway). My coworkers were still seated on their chairs as before. I froze and stared around me, feeling completely off-kilter and strange. I had the distinct impression as I was turning my head that I was going to see a man actually, like one of the dads, even though none had come in and would have had to walk right behind me from the door to get to the rug. My mind was spinning. It was like my brain was saying, as I was turning my head, 'I guess it must be this-coworker or that-coworker, but it looks like a guy'.

I looked back toward the sink and stared straight ahead while finishing the dishes. I was thinking 'omg what was THAT??' and trying to puzzle it out in my head. The memory of this form standing almost straight, bent a little bit forward, long arms - one ahead of the form and one behind, as if it was someone in the middle of a long striding walk, stuck in my brain like it had been burned there. I could not explain it, it made me feel very odd and woozy, and I did not tell anyone about it. It was only during this moment that my brain finally made a connection - was I seeing what this little girl had been talking about 2 and 4 weeks earlier? What was going on? I just felt WEIRD.

On Tuesday, the very next day, the form was not on my mind much. In the late afternoon I was changing a child's diaper and then washing my hands. Normal routine, every day stuff, not thinking of anything in particular. A 6 year old boy was sitting at a long table just outside the bathroom door, facing me. He was colouring with felt markers and wax crayons. All of the other children were at least 10 feet away, all younger, and playing on the carpet area. Just as I walked out of the bathroom, the boy quite loudly said 'HEY!'... like 'HEEYYYY' as a sister would say to a brother who was annoying her to death lol. But no one was around him. He was staring down at his paper and I said 'what's up?'. He looked up at me for a second but then was all spacey and weird. He said 'My name' and sounded perplexed or slightly annoyed.

I had no idea what he was talking about so I walked over to him and looked down. He had written his name on the paper earlier with white wax crayon, but had then been making little drawings in various felt marker colours. I saw right away that there was a blue marker line sketched diagonally right through the middle of his name. In his hand was the blue marker, which he had also used to draw other things on the paper earlier. I didnt think much of it, I just assumed he slipped with the marker and was annoyed at himself for going through his own name with a line about an inch or so long. I figured since he was frustrated, I would just say 'it's okay, you can write your name over here instead'. He again said 'my NAME' and was still acting strangely, slow worded, almost slurry, sounding bewildered, and had an odd look on his face. I have known this boy for over a year and a half and was not sure what to make of his actions. I decided to try a different tactic, pointing out that it was he who made the booboo, so he could fix it by writing his name in a different spot. So I said, light-heartedly, 'well, who did it?' (thinking he would say 'me' and then I could get on with showing him how to fix the error)... but instead he floored me by saying 'that MAN' , emphasizing 'man'. I froze. WTF?? But I remained calm and tried hard to sound normal and said 'what man?'. He was super spacey still and delayed answering me for several seconds,,,then said 'THAT man' but he was not pointing anywhere, he was just staring at his paper. He then said, after a couple more seconds, 'the one at the playground'. I had a weird feeling like he was making that last part up, just to fill in the space and give me some sort of answer. I do not know why I felt so strongly about that, I just did. Gut feeling? He seemed to be searching for more of an answer than 'that MAN' or 'THAT man', when I did not respond fast enough, and he came up with 'the one at the playground'. But then he lost interest and started to write his name in an open space I had indicated.

I looked up to see my coworker folding hand towels at another table. She was STARING at the boy, and was holding a cloth in mid-air, like she forgot she had it in hand. She met my eyes and I just shrugged and walked away to do other jobs. But my mind was racing... WHAT man? What kind of a weird answer was that? Why so stunned about making a booboo on the page? This boy loves to colour and draw and does it every day, and so rarely gets upset about making a mistake, I can't even think of a single time he was ever frustrated about it. My coworker was clearly shaken, perhaps thinking of previous events with the little girl, but we have not had much chance to talk about it. I told her later about seeing the weird grey form on the carpeted area, but that was all we have had time to chat about.

My mind was racing because I was thinking of all the things happening - the little girl saying 'I dont like that man in the mirror' and then 'there is a stranger in here', and then the shadowed form I saw, and now a boy who is not in that little girl's group, saying 'that man' when indicating what happened to his paper, and acting all strange about it. What is up with that?

Has something unexplained popped in for a visit to the daycare? Or has nothing really happened and we are just squishing all of the ideas together in our minds in order to try to make sense of them, like humans so often try to do? If it weren't for a few other things that have happened there in the past, I would be inclined to think it was 'nothing' and just strange co-incidences, but I cannot help feeling that something strange has happened, and whatever it is, I hope it moves on soon!

Friday, August 31, 2012

Strange Happenings of a Tormented Mind

I have always been fascinated by the Paranormal but have not had anything totally completely concrete happen to me - not really any strange photos (other than dust orbs), nothing caught on video, no full figure ghostly fright in the middle of the night --- but I have had several strange occurrences over the years that will always stick in my mind and make me wonder. I decided to start logging them here. Feel free to comment, but I also reserve the right to moderate content of this blog. All stories are mine unless otherwise indicated, and are mine by copyright.