Ghosts

I see dead people. Or I’ve seen dead people. I don’t currently see any dead people, that would make writing this blog a lot harder.

Just like that terrible M. Night mess, I think only some people can see dead people. I’m unfortunately one of them.

The first time I saw a ghost was in my old house when I was very young. I was convinced that the house was haunted for months (or was it years?) before I saw one. I would have terrible nightmares (maybe due to the ghosts?) and after I would wake up and I would pace through the house for hours on end.

One night, during my pacing, I walked into the kitchen. There was someone sitting there, staring at me, sitting in a dining room chair turned completely away from the table. I yelled bloody murder and got my mom to investigate. When we went back into the kitchen, the dining room chair was turned and placed back where it normally rested. I tried to convince my mom that the chair wasn’t under that table, it was pulled out but she didn’t believe me or in ghosts at all.

She soon would change her mind.

We stayed with my aunt in her 200 hundred year old West Virginia home. IN THE ATTIC. You talk about fucking scary, that place was just a little less scary than the Lookout Hotel but Elm Street had nothing on this attic. We didn’t sleep the entire night, my brother, mom and I stayed awake looking at passing shadows in the darkness. The strange howling was a little too much to take. The next day we were like zombies, no sleep and scared that something might catch us while we ate Cheerios in the Kitchen two stories below Hell’s attic.

Then there was the time when we were at a retreat for my fraternity. The retreat was in the middle of B.F.E., in the scary woods at an old camping ground. A bunch of us guys went out for a late night snack into the mess hall. When we were standing there making hot cocoa and eating cereal, I looked up into the kitchen. There was someone watching us. I thought maybe it was Bradford screwing around.

But then I turned, Bradford was standing right next to me. In fact, everyone was there with us, who the hell is in the kitchen? Suddenly, everyone got a chill up their spine and a feeling that we need to run as fast as humanly possible out of the mess hall. After we stopped running about a half mile away, we all confirmed our fears, there was a ghost watching us from the dark recesses of the kitchen.

After this ghost sighting, my friend Kyle was obsessed with ghosts and haunted houses. He convinced me (I don’t know how exactly) to go with him to a haunted hotel on the US border with Mexico and spend the night in the most haunted room there. After we got to this God forsaken empty hotel and as soon as we walked inside, a feeling of dread and fear fell over us, the hairs on the back of your neck stood up, I shit you not. We met the caretaker of the Hotel, a crazy old man who was nearly as scary as the hotel.

After he left the hotel, I realized that this most be the most scary place in the world, much scarier than another ghost scare I had before. It was old, creepy and filled with random scary shit like broken dolls missing eyes and antique photos of long dead people. As we walked through the hotel, I gave an account of one of the dead people we read about to Kyle and his video camera. Suddenly, there was a terrible BANG that resonated throughout the entire hotel, shaking the foundation. I turned to Kyle and we both went ghost white. We ran out of the hotel and stood in the front yard, wondering if we would really spend the night there.

After eating dinner at a local restaurant, we decided that we came all this way and paid, we should stay the night there. We sat up most of the night, playing games and watching TV and trying to not to think about the crazy noises that were happening all over the house. Eventually, I passed out, although I wasn’t sure how (I think the ghosts wanted me to pass out so they could fuck with Kyle).

I went through the night sleeping ghost free. Kyle didn’t have the same fate. He would wake up cold, with all of the covers magically tucked under his torso like you would wrap a corpse in a burial shroud. He’d fall asleep and then he would wake up hot, with every single cover and sheet pulled off the bed and laying on the floor. Then he woke up once to a deadly smell of sulfur and fish, piercing his nose. Freaky huh?

He pulled out the video camera during this and video taped the dark room. The only light was at the crack of the door. Suddenly something walked past the light, darkening the room and then disappeared.

The next morning we met the care taker again and he told us a hundred stories that make ours sound silly. Apparently, devil worshipers used the hotel for sacrifices after it was abandoned.

And even though we asked to stay in the most haunted room, the guy told us the room we stayed in was the second most. When we asked why he didn’t give us the other room, he said, “No one stays in Grandma’s room.” Apparently, that’s the room that all the sacrifices took place in as well as a 1910’s grandma who killed her grandkids and herself. Every night at three AM a fake koo koo clock with no gears or clock attached rings out and all sorts of random shit happens in the room, including the screams of children and blood pooling on the floor.

Scary right?

I can honestly say after that experience that very few things scare me. Now if I could just get over my fear of heights.