I'm writing my paranormal experiences because I think I'm longing for Halloween and fall weather
Episode Three: Teen Years
At around 12 or 13, I decided I was done with the church I'd been raised in my whole life. I had become disillusioned with it, and wanted to learn about other beliefs I'd heard about. I read all kinds of books on spirituality, culture, and religions other than the one I was taught. The ones that resonated the most with me were the earth/nature based beliefs, like Wicca, Shinto, and Shamanism. So I read a lot about those, making them my main focus in my search for spirituality.
Unfortunately, these studies lead me to the darker side of spirituality as well. As most teens are, I was immensely curious about paranormal things (especially since I had already had several experiences with that myself), and even read a great deal about Witchcraft and Demonology. I NEVER tried to summon anything, I knew even then that that was a bad idea and it did not reflect what I wanted to put into the world- love and light. However, I did use a Ouija board a few times after one of my cousins introduced me to it.
It was really a nightmare.
This cousin of mine would regularly use a Ouija board with her mother (my aunt), and neither one of them were very emotionally stable to begin with. The board use made them even less so. My aunt almost became addicted to it, she would use it every day, and it got really weird. She started doing very creepy things like moving stuff with her mind (I know this sounds ridiculous but what possible reason would I have for lying about this? I'm not making money by telling this story and I'm not getting famous). We saw her on numerous occasions move small objects without touching them. Coffee cups, cigarette lighters, a little bottle of Visine, etc. And each time she would do it, she would just start laughing her loud, crass laugh afterward when she saw our amazed faces. Even today as an adult, I have no explanation for how she did those things. There were no strings, no magnets, no tilted tables, nothing to logically explain the objects moving like they did.
After I dabbled with the Ouija board, the paranormal occurrences at my own home intensified. I would see shadow figures ALL the time, just watching me, or moving around in my room. My mother started feeling taps on her shoulder when she was home alone. My brother had nightmares about a "man" standing over him while he was in bed. Once, my mother and I watched a bunch of arranged framed photos just get "pushed" one by one off of the surface of the table they always had set upon. After they all were in the floor, my mom and I just looked at each other without words, our eyes as big as dinner plates. Our electronic devices would switch on and off by themselves, or change volume on their own. We had electricians inspect the house and they never found anything wrong. We would hear strange knockings on walls, and weird whispery voices, and a noise I can only explain as what sounded like a huge stack of papers shuffling to the floor from a great height. I found odd scribbles and scratches on the wood part of my bed frame. It almost looked like a strange writing. On several occasions, we would find objects in places they would never have been intentionally placed- like shoes in the bath tub, or car keys in the freezer. None of us knew who had put them there and none of us would have done that as a joke. Another time, my mother and I both saw a very clear image of a man in a gray suit with little round wire-frame glasses and red hair, walking from my bedroom to hers. We knew that man wasn't really a man, but an apparition. We didn't even get up to go check it out, we were so used to the craziness in the house by that point. The final straw was when my brother and I were home alone, and a lamp in our living room HURLED itself at my brother's head, hitting a door behind him with a LOT of force. This scared my brother so badly he didn't leave my side for the rest of the day, and we both called a friend of ours to please come get us. We spent that whole weekend at that friend's house, afraid to go back to our own house.
We called a Wiccan priestess out to the house to "cleanse" it spiritually. She told us she could feel something in the house, but she thought it was coming from *ME*. She said that sometimes teens my age have a lot of angry energy that is repressed, and that it can express itself outside the body at times. If you've read Stephen King's novel Carrie, you're probably familiar with that theory. Well, I myself don't believe all that stuff was caused by me. I think that house was built on land that perhaps was a little haunted. My grandfather had the house built in the 70s, but before they could build, they had to demolish an existing house from the 1800s that had been there for decades. It had burned down, and all that was left was rubble. So my grandfather just told them to bulldoze the structural remains into the ground and build over them. Which is what they did. Because they did that, over the years that my family lived there, we would always find remnants of the family that had owned that old house- broken pieces of antique dinnerware, old silverware, old glass medicine bottles, and LOTS of arrowheads and Native American knives and tools. We even found a little metal cup once, which my mom kept and would plant flowers in.
All of this is the 100% truth and I am telling it exactly as I remember it. No one is required or asked to believe me. I just felt like sharing it. Thanks for reading if you've made it this far.
At around 12 or 13, I decided I was done with the church I'd been raised in my whole life. I had become disillusioned with it, and wanted to learn about other beliefs I'd heard about. I read all kinds of books on spirituality, culture, and religions other than the one I was taught. The ones that resonated the most with me were the earth/nature based beliefs, like Wicca, Shinto, and Shamanism. So I read a lot about those, making them my main focus in my search for spirituality.
Unfortunately, these studies lead me to the darker side of spirituality as well. As most teens are, I was immensely curious about paranormal things (especially since I had already had several experiences with that myself), and even read a great deal about Witchcraft and Demonology. I NEVER tried to summon anything, I knew even then that that was a bad idea and it did not reflect what I wanted to put into the world- love and light. However, I did use a Ouija board a few times after one of my cousins introduced me to it.
It was really a nightmare.
This cousin of mine would regularly use a Ouija board with her mother (my aunt), and neither one of them were very emotionally stable to begin with. The board use made them even less so. My aunt almost became addicted to it, she would use it every day, and it got really weird. She started doing very creepy things like moving stuff with her mind (I know this sounds ridiculous but what possible reason would I have for lying about this? I'm not making money by telling this story and I'm not getting famous). We saw her on numerous occasions move small objects without touching them. Coffee cups, cigarette lighters, a little bottle of Visine, etc. And each time she would do it, she would just start laughing her loud, crass laugh afterward when she saw our amazed faces. Even today as an adult, I have no explanation for how she did those things. There were no strings, no magnets, no tilted tables, nothing to logically explain the objects moving like they did.
After I dabbled with the Ouija board, the paranormal occurrences at my own home intensified. I would see shadow figures ALL the time, just watching me, or moving around in my room. My mother started feeling taps on her shoulder when she was home alone. My brother had nightmares about a "man" standing over him while he was in bed. Once, my mother and I watched a bunch of arranged framed photos just get "pushed" one by one off of the surface of the table they always had set upon. After they all were in the floor, my mom and I just looked at each other without words, our eyes as big as dinner plates. Our electronic devices would switch on and off by themselves, or change volume on their own. We had electricians inspect the house and they never found anything wrong. We would hear strange knockings on walls, and weird whispery voices, and a noise I can only explain as what sounded like a huge stack of papers shuffling to the floor from a great height. I found odd scribbles and scratches on the wood part of my bed frame. It almost looked like a strange writing. On several occasions, we would find objects in places they would never have been intentionally placed- like shoes in the bath tub, or car keys in the freezer. None of us knew who had put them there and none of us would have done that as a joke. Another time, my mother and I both saw a very clear image of a man in a gray suit with little round wire-frame glasses and red hair, walking from my bedroom to hers. We knew that man wasn't really a man, but an apparition. We didn't even get up to go check it out, we were so used to the craziness in the house by that point. The final straw was when my brother and I were home alone, and a lamp in our living room HURLED itself at my brother's head, hitting a door behind him with a LOT of force. This scared my brother so badly he didn't leave my side for the rest of the day, and we both called a friend of ours to please come get us. We spent that whole weekend at that friend's house, afraid to go back to our own house.
We called a Wiccan priestess out to the house to "cleanse" it spiritually. She told us she could feel something in the house, but she thought it was coming from *ME*. She said that sometimes teens my age have a lot of angry energy that is repressed, and that it can express itself outside the body at times. If you've read Stephen King's novel Carrie, you're probably familiar with that theory. Well, I myself don't believe all that stuff was caused by me. I think that house was built on land that perhaps was a little haunted. My grandfather had the house built in the 70s, but before they could build, they had to demolish an existing house from the 1800s that had been there for decades. It had burned down, and all that was left was rubble. So my grandfather just told them to bulldoze the structural remains into the ground and build over them. Which is what they did. Because they did that, over the years that my family lived there, we would always find remnants of the family that had owned that old house- broken pieces of antique dinnerware, old silverware, old glass medicine bottles, and LOTS of arrowheads and Native American knives and tools. We even found a little metal cup once, which my mom kept and would plant flowers in.
All of this is the 100% truth and I am telling it exactly as I remember it. No one is required or asked to believe me. I just felt like sharing it. Thanks for reading if you've made it this far.
41-45, F
