Ghost, Ghouls & Things That Go Bump In The Night

                I’ve always had an open mind.  Personally I find it limiting & silly to not be open to all possibilities.  Think about how many times historically we have been proven wrong by limiting vision and beliefs.  Earth was once thought to be the center of the universe.  The Earth was once believed to be flat.  (Okay, some people still believe this….)  Lightning was said not to strike twice.  Tell that to Roy Sullivan, the “human lightning rod” who has been jolted 7 times.  Crystal Pepsi & New Coke…  Yikes.  That’s not really a belief that’s just an utter mistake that humanity needs to never forget.  In an infinite universe anything imaginable is possible.  I believe in God.  I believe in science.  I believe in extraterrestrials.  I believe in alternative realities.  I believe in pineapple on pizza.  In desperate times, I believe in sardines & ice cream at 3am.  I also believe in the supernatural.  Ghost, ghouls & things that go bump in the night.

                Don’t worry.  I’m not the type of person that follows all the Big Foot & mermaids stories.  Alien abductions, while possible, are most likely majority hoax.  I don’t talk to dead people or stalk the neighborhood at night with holy water, a cross & a wooden stake.  My guns are not loaded with silver bullets.  That zombie survival guide on my table is just for fun. (It does actually have some pretty solid ideas for surviving an actual cataclysmic event though.)  I’ll never go looking for the Loch Ness Monster.  I’m a big horror fan.  While the mythology of “monsters” is always fun and interesting, I do not think that the chupacabra is lurking around the Texas/Mexico border.  If you believe in all these things, that is awesome.  I’m not trying to discredit your encounter with a Mongolian death worm.  If it came up and bit me on the a** I’d believe in it too.  I just need my supernatural a little more grounded: ghost.  Spirits.    I’ve had some experiences in my life that cannot be “explained” by science.  It all started when I was a child…  

                The disappearing thing.  That’s what I use to talk to my parents about.  Mom says I was around 3 when I started trying to describe it to her.  Whenever a toy would end up missing I would say that the disappearing thing took it.  I was never afraid of it because it had always been there.  My middle brother claimed to be able to see it too but I don’t know if he did or just said he did because, younger brother.  I have not talked to him about it.  I need to.  I’m not sure how old I was when I stopped seeing it but I can still see it in my mind’s eye.  An orb, purplish & translucent, that floated near the ceiling.  I know it sounds ridiculous.  Reading my own words I can understand why doubt would set in.  I’m recalling childhood memories of something straight off of Ghostbusters.

                There was also the lady washing the dishes.  How I now it was a lady, just a hunch. Many of nights I was awakened to the sound of handwashing dishes in the kitchen.  We had a dishwasher.  The two sounds are distinctive.  And even if someone was hand washing dishes in the middle of the night, I doubt I would have been able to hear them in my bedroom on the opposite side of the house.  But I would wake up and hear that sound.  I’d crawl out of bed and creep to the hallway in the dark.  No lights would be on in the house.  Knowing something was amiss I would be very quiet. That exciting fear of the unknown coursing through my body.  Moving as slowly as possible to not create a sound, I’d make my way to where the hallway meets the living room & peak around the corner to view the kitchen.  The sound would abruptly stop.  Nothing to be seen.  Oh boy did I ever high tail it to my parent’s room or back to my bed to hide under the covers.  I developed a theory that the lady that lived in our house before us died in it and it was her washing the dishes.  As kids with imaginations tend to do, I made up all sorts of back stories.  I even had myself convinced that she died in the front room because that room always gave off a scary vibe when I was little.  It was the spare bedroom so no one really spent time in it.  The least lived in room in the house always dark.  Funny how it eventually became my room when I grew older.

                I was around the age of 7 when I first had my experience with sleep paralysis.  If you know nothing about sleep paralysis, let me tell you it’s a freaking nightmare.  It’s bad enough as an adult, but as a kid not knowing what’s happening, it’s as frightening as coming face to face with a nightmare. Most generic definition: it’s the inability to move or speak while either falling to or waking from sleep.  Also it’s often accompanied by visions or hallucinations because your mind is still somewhat in dreamland.  When I was a kid I thought I was being held down by… something.  A poltergeist.  I didn’t know what.  I’d wake up, unable to move.  I would begin to panic.  I felt like I couldn’t breathe.  Like something was pushing down on my chest.  I couldn’t scream for help.  I was powerless.  I would eventually be able to wiggle some.  How I managed to break the spell was wiggle myself towards the edge of the bed and eventually I would fall to the floor.  The impact would bring me fully to consciousness and I could move again.  I never told my parents about this when I was a kid.  They were rather shocked when I told them as an adult that I’d been diagnosed with it and had always had it just never knew what was going on.  The things we don’t tell our parents when we are kids.  Over the years learning more about my condition I’ve found that mine is mild compared to others.  I just have it maybe once every other year.  Sometimes much less often.  And I can wake myself easier.  No more impacting with the floor.  But some people that suffer from the extremes don’t believe the psychological proof.  They still believe a demon is haunting them.  Who can say?  At the time it’s certainly believable.  Am I haunted?

                My high school years were a bit different.  No longer a child, I became more of a sceptic and shrugged strange happenings off as nothing.  I would choose to ignore.  I was telling Bekah about how on many occasions street lights would turn off when I’d drive under them and my 17 year old self didn’t find that peculiar.  I’d wake up to in bed (the front bedroom) only to see a shadow, a darkness darker than the room itself, looming over my bed.  I’d just close my eyes and tell myself it’s nothing, go back to sleep.  Pictures in the house would always be moved and facing opposite directions.  Oh how someone in the house must love playing pranks on my mom.  That’s all it must be.  The occasional sounds in the house that would have scared the crap out of me as a kid were nothing more than the sound of settling.  As a teenager, I had other more important things on my mind.  Girls.  Ghost are just something made up to scare little kids.  They are not real.

                College days in Lubbock, TX.  A bit of a dry spell.  To be honest, which I clearly am with this blog, these were my party years.  If anything did take place I either told myself it was because I was under the influence or I simply don’t remember, because I was under the influence. There was this one time in the dorms though…

                Let me take a break from the supernatural and talk about dorms in general.  What strange places dorms are anyway?  I’m not talking about what the kids have now.  They have it made.  What we had.  They just throw people that don’t know each other together.  Sure, I met some interesting individuals.  My roommate I knew from childhood.  Everyone else…  We were on the only wing of the band dorms that didn’t have band members.  It led to some interesting dynamics.  I remember walking out into the hall and seeing rope tied from one door to the other across the hall.  Our RA’s dorm.  It seemed someone wanted to keep him prisoner in his own room for the night.  Who am I to interfere? (I also recall someone used his door as a urinal on multiple occasions.  Poor guy.)  Another time someone leaned a 32 gallon trash can full of water against a buddy’s door.  When they opened it their room was flooded.  Lucky that they were slobs and the 1 ft. layer of dirty clothes they had on the floor soaked up all the water.  During the weekends some degenerate f*** would throw all the toilet paper in the community bathroom into the toilets.  Paper wasn’t restocked until Monday.  We eventually had to keep our own supply in our rooms for the weekend.  The elevator never worked so it was always the stairs.  After a few too many drinks that was a lot of fun.  I thought I was climbing Everest one night.  For a month there was a TV in the hallway plugged in and playing nothing but static.  Not weird at all.  Someone kept putting empty pizza boxes in our dorm mail box.  Probably in protest to my roommate leaving them in the hall outside our room only 10 ft. from the trash cans.  And what about all the times I found some student outside their room drunk without a key to get inside.  Too many.  I’d go downstairs to the lobby to check out an extra key for them.  Which was always alarming that they would give me a key to someone else’s room.  Let me not get started on the community showers.  GROSS!!!  My parking was 13min away so I would have to walk in a blizzard just to get to my dorm.  I was on the list to get my dorm parking and eventually in May I was granted.  IN MAY!!!!

                Sorry about that little rant, I got carried away.  So back to the story.  There was this one time I was in the community showers.  It was at night.  Well actually it was more like somewhere between 2-3am.  I had been up studying for finals and my body and soul were exhausted.  Allowing the warm water to wash away my weariness, the lights went off.  I was left in total darkness.  I remember thinking to myself “oh great”.  Nothing like stumbling around in total darkness wearing nothing but a towel.  As I hastily tried to dry myself off, I noticed a sound.  The oh-so familiar creek of the handicap stall door opening.  I was the only one in the room and I would have heard the entrance door open because it also is noisy.  You can hear if over a shower running.  I stopped breathing.  I noticed I’d stopped drying myself off.  I am no one to normally let a little darkness frighten me, but at that moment my heart was pounding and I was wide awake.  Not a sound to be heard for I don’t know how long.  And suddenly BANG!!  The stale door slammed shut.  I half a** threw my towel on and bee lined it to the entrance through the dark.  I stood in the lighted hallway staring back at the bathroom entrance anticipating someone to come out but they never did.  And I have to admit I was too unnerved to take a peak back inside.  I went back to my room, put on some clothes and laid in bed.  Staring at the ceiling and not finding sleep I finally broke down and took a sleeping pill.  The next morning I tried to shrug it off but I just couldn’t.  Tried to convince myself someone was in there playing a prank on me.  But I know that I was alone.  Thinking back on all the things I’ve experienced, that might have been the only time as an adult that I was actually scared.  I’ve been creeped out, but never really frightened.  Maybe it was the vulnerability of being naked and in pitch black darkness?

                I’m going to fast forward about 10 years.  I was back to my home town.  I had met the woman that was to be my wife.  One thing Bekah and I have in common is our shared belief in spirits.  She is pretty in touch.  If anything, connecting with her helped me become reacquainted with my own experiences that I’d managed to write off since high school. When I first brought her over to my parents’ house she could sense something before I even brought it up.   She also did not like being in the house alone at night.  I told her it’s nothing malicious unless stealing toys from toddler’s counts.  Nevertheless, she didn’t care for it.  There were also some weird things that happened where she worked.  We both had a shared moment that really brought us together.  We later moved into a rental together.  Nothing really happened to me in the house.  Bekah seemed more in tuned with this one.

                We eventually bought a house and have now been living in it for a little over a year now.  We are both pretty certain the old man that lived in it before us likely passed away in it.  No big deal.  But a funny thing.  Bekah has not experienced anything while I have.  I hear things from time to time.  I was awakened by the sound of tapping on the walls.  It sounded like it was right outside the bedroom in the hallway.  When I went to investigate, the sound was now coming from the living room.  When I got there it was now coming from the kitchen.  Peaking around the corner the sound stopped.  The house was silent.  This was an all too familiar moment.  It brought me way back to the dishwashing.  I never felt anything threatening so I just went back to bed.  Not so long ago I had a repeat of that night.  A few weeks ago I saw something.  It was late and I was in the spare bathroom taking my meds when out of the corner of my eye I saw Bekah walk into the bedroom.  I thought absolutely nothing of it.  Imagine my shock when I walk out of the bathroom to see her sitting on the couch watching TV in the living room.  I spun around towards the bedroom and it was empty.  I just stood there for a while.  Dumbstruck.  I eventually made my way to the living room and sat on the couch opposite of her.  She could tell something was wrong and I told her.  Her reaction was one of frustration because she never experiences anything anymore.  She seems to think maybe it is I that is haunted and not the house.  Whatever the case, I was just a bit unsettled by this development.  I know I saw something walk by.  But the house was empty except for us and the two dog & cat that were in the living room with Bekah.  Let’s just say I made myself a stiff drink to settle my shaken nerves.

                There are other instances I could write about but this is already WAY too long.  I wasn’t planning on writing a book, it just happened.  Maybe on a later date I’ll recap.  You can call me a charlatan.  And that’s fine.  You can think I’m crazy.  I don’t really care.  I’m sure you can come up with many explanations for what I’ve experienced if you try.  If that makes you feel better, go for it. I quite frankly can’t believe I’m writing about this on a platform anyone can read.  But heck!  I don’t get to discuss this with anyone but Bekah and a very select handful of other people.  Why not take the load off my chest.  And it’s fun.  So keep an open mind.  You never know what you might find.

Red Jalapeño!!!!!!!!!!!

                This week we decided to do a little bit of cleaning out the fridge and pantry.  Lots of experimentation.  First up was actually a truly exceptional meal.  Chicken, cream of chicken, broccoli, onion, red jalapeño and curry.  The sauce was amazing with all the other ingredients.  I will make this again.   Simple!

                This meal, although it did taste “okay” was kind of a flop.  More broccoli & Schwan’s frozen beef tips & gravy we had in the freezer.  That meat is very good for stroganoff.  Not what I did with it here.  I mistakenly cooked it in the skillet with the broccoli.  The meat broke down to a pulp.   The texture was a bit off setting.  I wasn’t impressed.  I will not make this again.  But guess what?  We actually had leftover that I could eat for lunch the next day.  Barf!

                Grilled chicken, onion, with red & green jalapeño.  Topped with sharp cheddar and something precious.  Julio’s green sauce!!!  How could this mean not be good?  And again, leftovers.  This time because the meal was too HOT for Bekah.  They were even better the next day.

                Seasoned ground beef over baked beans.  Doesn’t get simpler than that.  I was left satisfied. 

                My first attempt at making crab cakes and I’m so glad I did.  A little on the expensive side, but after a week cleaning out the fridge and pantry I felt justified.  Without a doubt I’ll make this again.

                 No cocktail of the week…..