PROMPTuesday #167: Spooky Story

{{I wrote this several years ago, and no longer live in the house described below. But the weird thing? Last night an unexplained BANG! woke The Rock and I up at 3AM, and made me think of all this again. And, it’s Halloween season! This all couldn’t be more delicious.}}

 

So for this week’s PROMPT, tell me a ghost story. Something haunted that’s happened to you or a friend of a friend of a friend. Or? Make something up if it’s more your style. I sure I hope I hear some true spooky stories though, I’m a big sucker for them.

 

(As for last week’s PROMPT, I am REALLY LOOKING FORWARD to reading what came back. I’ve been in the midst of this crazy deadline and I think I’ll see the light at the tunnel’s end this week)

 

First time to PROMPTuesday? Read a bit about it here. Want to see what’s been written in the past? Catch up on the PROMPTuesdays archive here.

 

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Stairway to heaven. Except this is looking down, so…

 

I don’t think our house started out haunted. It’s a new house and we are the first to live in it, and the only hint of previous occupants on this land were the words, “The Ranch” etched in the concrete outside our garage.

 

But, things have been building. Weird, unexplained things. And they’re beginning to cluster together and become more commonplace and I wonder a little what’s going on here.

 

Could be all my Paranormal State watching. Although it’s a bit overdone, there’s something about it that’s just creepy and freaky. I get these same feelings if I watch movies like “The Omen,” and “The Exorcist,” which I don’t really watch because evil like that seems too real. Yet, that hair-raising feeling of yuck in your stomach and hypersensitivity and ooginess is what I experience when I watch Paranormal State.

 

After every show, I am creeped out and ALWAYS have bizarre dreams that hover between waking and sleeping and then I wake up and murmur, “I love you God, I love you God, I love you God,” again and again because that always worked to repel the oogies when I was little.

 

So I wonder if I’m opening some kind of portal in my home for spookiness? Holy crap, I hope not, because that spooked me even to write it. I adore anything scary, but at a good arm’s length, and definitely not in my home, which is why I do not ever use Ouija Boards and also why I destroyed those automatic writings of a reverend psychic I went to in 1995, who was so right on, I shook for days, and I’ve never been to a psychic since or will ever again.

 

So, onto what’s been happening.

 

Let’s see, about 10 months ago (note: before Paranormal State aired), I woke up around midnight to make some tuna sandwiches for my daughter’s lunch. I do not know why. And while I was fixing the sandwiches, I put my iPod on. Once again, inexplicable. And about halfway through sandwich assemblage, I heard a man distinctly and loudly whisper my name. I heard it OVER MY iPOD MUSIC. I jumped, thinking it was The Rock, who often finds me wandering around at night, sticking my head out on the balcony to listen to the waves or just having a panic attack. Usually, he will address me by name with a tone that’s a mixture of bemusement and irritation. Kind of like this voice. But it wasn’t The Rock, as he was soundly sleeping in our bedroom.

 

At the time, I wrote about the incident in my “Other Blog.” I had a theory as to why I heard the whisper. Here’s a few paragraphs from that:

 

 

I feel a little weird about our neighbor person who crossed over. We didn’t know him. He was in his 30s, felt sick one night, went to the hospital and died unexpectedly. First of all, I hate those stories, as would any self-respecting hypochondriac. Secondly, his poor wife moved out last month and obviously just wanted to have any reminder of her heartbreak gone.

 

SO, The Rock, who was in the garage as she was moving out, helped her move some of her things, and was the unwitting recipient of a lot of her husband’s possessions. A whole tray of CDs (including personal music mixes), watercolor paper with self-portraits (we didn’t know this until later), little knick knacks and — even a boatload of his receipts (long story).

 

 

As a result, I half-believed that my deceased neighbor called my name. Maybe, like, “Hey, you like that mix CD of mine you’re listening to?” or something like that. I love making mix CDs, and nag my living friends about whether or not they liked the latest one I made them, so I don’t know, this scenario seemed plausible.

 

Fast forward to last month. We’re all sleeping and the LOUDEST CRASH EVER resonated through the house. Of course, we’re up in a flash (but not the kids, which was weird), and searching for the source of the sound. The noise sounded like a mix between the roof being ripped off and a jet plane crashing through the window. It was BOOOMMMMMM!!!!!! Loud.

 

We could not find ANYTHING to explain the crash. Not a thing. And we still to not know to this day what it was or why it didn’t wake the kids.

 

So then, a few weeks ago, our security alarm went off mysteriously. We activated it right before bed and then a few hours later, again I think around midnight (see above), it beeped that a door had opened. This alarm screeches, let me tell you. I saw our neighbor’s lights go on and know half our street heard it. But again, the kids DO NOT wake up. I don’t know why I capitalized that, because that’s not the unexplained part. The unexplained part is that the door that tripped the alarm sensor is an interior door, one that you’d have to be IN THE HOUSE to open. It cannot be opened by someone breaking in from the outside.

 

I love God, I love God, I love God.

 

Now more stuff: my youngest daughter, Booger, keeps talking about a “monster” in her room. Oh my gosh, I’m freaking myself out right now. Getting a grip, getting a grip… Honestly, I think it’s just that her sister is a big monster fan and Booger is repeating what she hears. But it is spooky that she wakes up in the middle of the night sometimes and from naps and in the morning and says “monster,” while pointing to the closet. We always tell her there is no monster. But isn’t that also what they told the little girl from Poltergeist?

Yikeso.

 

So the coup de grâce, which I’m pretty sure I used incorrectly, was last night.

The Rock and I are on the couch, about to watch Paranormal State, which I’d recorded, and out of the freaking blue, a BALL ROLLS DOWN OUR STAIRS.

A BALL. ROLLS. DOWN. OUR. STAIRS. Like you see in all those Lifetime movies where the woman who lost her child is being haunted, or thinks she’s being haunted, by her dead daughter/son, and the clutch scene is the BALL ROLLING DOWN THE STAIRS?

And didn’t they also have a rolling ball in The Shining????

Holy shiz.

 

So at this point, even The Rock is rattled. And that never happens. He’s trying to minimize the incident though for my sake and says something half-ass like, “Maybe the ball rolled out of the kid’s room?” And I say, “Wouldn’t we have seen it rolling past us to the top of the stairs then and also there’s the minor point of THEIR DOOR IS CLOSED.”

 

I make him get up to investigate and he finds his small paddleball ball at the bottom of the first landing. Also, he turned the lights on. Thank God. He tries to recreate the incident and lays the ball on the floor to see if perhaps it’s wobbly and will roll of its own accord. But it stays fixed right to the spot where he put it. So he’s jumping and creating wind around the ball to see if it starts rolling. And again, nothing. Finally, he sits down and says simply, “I can’t debunk it.” But I’m only half hearing him, because my “I love God, I love God, I love Gods” are just too loud.

 

So I don’t know. I remember in our other house some weird things happened too, about three years in. Which is the same time period that we’ve been in this house, so… 3? Is there some significance? Or, am I opening portals due to all my spooky TV watching and it takes a good three years for a portal to the other side to be fully operational? Or, stupid case scenario, all my PMS angst has personified into an angry, pissed-off banshee?

 

Here’s what happened in the other house, taken from the “Other Blog,” circa May, 2002.

 

 

The Rock told me that earlier this week he was awoken by the very strong feeling that something was leaning over him and staring him in the face. He was so shaken by the feeling he checked under all the beds.
The next day, he didn’t even want to talk about it beyond giving me a quick synopsis of the experience. He was so freaked out hours later.

 

Then, I woke up tonight with a pressure on my chest. Being a hypochodriac, I immediately thought “respiratory distress,” so I got up and tried to relieve the pressure with ibuprofen and water.

 

Several minutes later, as I was in the bathroom picking zits to distract myself, there was a LOUD noise which came from the direction of our bedroom. It sounded like a big pile of books falling off a dresser (which is what I thought it was). I went to the bedroom and The Rock was on the edge of the bed looking out the window. He thought the sound came from outside. SO, he runs outside with a bat, while I’m certain the threat is from within.

 

We still don’t know what it was, but it was an unmistakable hugely sonic vibration. It’s like hearing a car crash and not seeing cars anywhere…

 

Now, I just thought I heard someone walking in the living room…and The Rock is checking the house…

 

 

Weird, huh? Unexplained loud noises, being woken in the middle of the night…

 

No balls, but I’m working on growing some.