Womanly sidebar: Maybe it doesn't help that the hormones are kind of raging right now. But I still don't want to belittle how I felt. The ish was real.
I truly believe that there is more to this world than what we see. Halloween night, I had a bunch of things going on in my mind that went a lot deeper than the ghost stories that I'm about to tell. But I'll save that for another post and just share some of the spooky things that crossed my mind while I lay in bed, trying to make sense of it all.
Story #1 - The Time I Got Attacked By a Hair Roller
I was about 8 or 9 years old and scared of EVERY little THING. I didn't want to go anywhere alone because I felt like I was going to encounter something horrible or creepy and no one would be around to witness it or save me. Either way, nothing scared me more than being upstairs when everyone else was downstairs or being downstairs when everyone else was upstairs. And when I found myself in that compromising situation, I made sure to take slow deliberate steps (in order to give all of the monsters enough time to get out of sight, of course) and I made sure to keep my mental blinders on (so I didn't have to worry about catching a glimpse of anything out of the corner of my eye). I also called down to my family every few minutes (so - you know - they could be sure I was still alive). So one day, I ventured upstairs to get something out of my dresser. I must have been in a brave mood that day, because I don't remember the walk upstairs taking the usual 15 minutes. Either way, I'm standing in front of my dresser and there's a bunch of junk on it. Pictures, little boxes of things, scraps of paper and one of those little pink rollers with the foam cylinder in the middle. I don't really remember what I was doing up to that point, but I do remember the hair roller suddenly levitating. It shakily flew up into the hair at my eye level. I just stood there trying to understand what was going on when the next thing I knew, it was coming toward my face. The levitating roller began hitting me over and over again. I closed my eyes tight and swatted at it. It lasted for about five agonizing seconds. Suddenly, in one smooth move, it gingerly returned to the top of the dresser - about one foot away from where it levitated in the first place. I stood for a split second longer, looking around. Then I ran as fast as I could down the stairs, screaming. I told everyone who would listen. "I was attacked! A hair roller flew in the air and attacked me!" My family, of course, was amused and this was immediately added to the archives of strange things that have happened to me. Now here's the funny part to this story. I have a twin sister (with whom I shared the bedroom) and this sister swears up and down that she was there when it happened. Of course, I argued with her for the first couple of years that nobody was there. I told her that I'd looked around and didn't see anyone. I ran down the stairs and didn't encounter anyone until I reached the living room. I asked her what she was doing while I was being attacked - so on, so forth. She adamantly defended her stance and surprisingly, she could tell me in detail everything that happened - down to the way the roller returned to the dresser. And strangely, after a while, she began to appear in my memory - standing at the top of the stairs, watching in disbelief as I got attacked . . . by a hair roller. To this day, I'll never know whether she was really there or not. Maybe it's one of those twin things (you know, shared memories or whatever) but it wouldn't be the first time and it definitely wasn't the last.
Story #2 - The Fat Demon
My family (which consisted of my mom and two sisters) and I lived around the corner from my aunt and her two daughters. Every so often, we would go and visit them. Now let me preface this story to say that (with the exception of myself and my sisters) we have some big ladies in my family. My Aunt (who has lost some weight since then) was a big lady, my mother - a big lady and one of my Aunt's daughter's was (and still is) a "thickums" as well.
So, I had to have been maybe 10 or 11 years old and just sitting around with my sisters while my mom and Aunt talked. I needed to use the bathroom and so I ran upstairs to do so. Now my aunt's apartment was set up the same way that my family's apartment was set up. The bathroom was straight ahead up the stairs. To the right of the bathroom was a utility closet and to the right of that was two bedrooms. Upon going up the stairs, I saw that one of the bedroom doors - the one closest to the bathroom - was open. Curiosity struck, and I went against my better judgement of putting my mental blinders on and glanced in the direction of the room. Inside the dark room, sprawled out on the bed, was a really fat woman who appeared to have horns. I assumed it was my fat (and mean) cousin L and kept it moving. Whilst sitting on the toilet I started thinking to myself. That couldn't have possibly been L. She's not that big. I mean . . . she's big . . . but that lady seemed to take up the whole bed! Besides, that lady's hair looked funny and L has braids right now. But it couldn't of had been Aunt C because she's downstairs talking with mom. I decided to get one good, long look at the person in the room before going back downstairs. Just to be sure. So on my way out, I stopped and turned to my left. This time, I was not glancing. I was looking - taking it all in. But no matter how hard I looked, I could not see the woman's face clearly. It was clear that it was a person. There was no doubt about that. Her legs were like two large trunks shooting out from beneath a large stomach and huge, breasts that rolled down on either side of her body. Her dark face remained shadowy, but even darker were the small horns shooting out from either side of her head. I immediately took a step back and ran down the stairs. For some odd reason, I couldn't digest the image that I'd just seen. I attempted to justify it. Aunt C's in the kitchen right now. Maybe at some point, she decided to go upstairs and take a quick 5 minute nap. Maybe it was a bunch of blankets, piled up together and it looked like a person. The room was dark. Maybe my cousin L is pregnant and decided to take a nap in her mother's room. That's it. I told myself I would go with that one. Later on, my twin sister asked to go to the bathroom. This was a perfect opportunity. As she went up the stairs, I waited for the scream. Nothing. When she walked back down, 5 minutes later, I looked at her face intently, checking to see if she looked scared or shocked. Nothing. The afternoon went on and I heard my mom ask my aunt, "Where are your kids?"
My Aunt - "They're out. Q is with her friends and I don't know where L went. Husband's at work, so it's just me today." At that point, I gave up. I didn't know what it was that I saw, but I figured that it must have been a figment of my crazy imagination. When it was time to go, we all hopped into my mom's mini-van and headed home. Everyone was unusually quiet. I was going to mention the fat lady, but then changed my mind and just stared out the window. Then suddenly my twin sister said, "So who was that really fat lady with horns laying on Aunt C's bed?"
Story #3 - The Dark Hand
I'll keep this story quick, because I didn't mean to write so much up to this point anyway. But this story, for me, is the most disturbing of them all. Maybe because no one was around to experience it except me. Maybe also, because it was an encounter with some otherworldly thing actually touching me. Either way, it was after my bedtime and I was maybe about eleven or twelve years old. I wanted to go downstairs to get some water but was deathly afraid. I creaked down the loud stairway, maybe spending two minutes on each stair working up my nerve. Finally I reached the 5th step - 6 more stairs to go. I could see the living room now. I looked around the room, probably longer than I should have. The room was dark, and I kept looking at the mirror on the wall in the living room - the only thing that reflected any light. My fear was building and I could feel my heart beating. I didn't want to move another step down the stairs because this would mean that I was farther away from everyone else. I willed my foot to take another step but it wasn't happening so I stood creaking back and forth on the same stair. I continued to look out on the scary room that I wanted so desperately to enter. I took a deep shivery breath and wished the room was brighter so that I could really see what I was getting myself into. Suddenly, I felt a hand on my shoulder. For a split second, I thought it could have been a family member until I looked down and saw a black hand, blacker than anything I'd ever seen. It gave a light, but firm squeeze and then disappeared into thin air. I almost killed myself trying to get up those stairs. It took years for me to ever go anywhere alone.
And those are a few horror stories that in my book, prove that there is more going on in life than the Republican Debates, the NBA lockout and Kim Kardashian.
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