Wow...Long time since I've written one of my infamous "Holiday Essays." What can I say, I've been slacking majorly over the past year and a half. But it's that time of year. Time for my most favorite holiday of all (well, next to my birthday). Halloween. The pagan-ness, the evilness, the whole craziness of it all. It's beautiful.
**THE OBLIGATORY "JEN LIFE STORY" STORY**
(admit it, you knew it was coming)
I've decided to relate a few of my **True** Spooky stories...things that have really happened in my life...dreams and the like...I hope you enjoy. BTW...nothing cynical in any of these...LOL
The first time I ever realized that there really WERE ghosts in this world, I was six. My parents had bought a house that was about 30 years old (if I remember correctly), so I know it wasn't the house itself that was haunted, but the land upon which it sat. The second I stepped foot into that house, something 'attached' itself to me. Followed is, perhaps, the better word. I don't know who it was, and I don't know why they were there, all I know is what I felt. It was 'evil', and it REALLY didn't like me.
There were two staircases in that house, but the first one (in the original part of the house) isn't the one that still gives me nightmares. The stairway in the back, and newer part was where this being was strongest. The place where I could feel it breathing down my neck, waiting for the time it would be powerful enough to truly harm me. I could feel it wanting, needing to push me down the steps and getting angry because it couldn't. Sometimes, if I turned around fast enough, I could catch a glimpse of its dark form, but I could never make out exactly what it was. From the age of six, until we moved to Fort Wayne when I was 15 it was lurking behind me whenever I walked thru the door. To this day I can't stand the feeling of anyone or anything unknown behind me...why you'll almost always see me with my back to the wall.
I wish that I could say moving from that house was the end of my paranormal experience, but far from it. And actually, I guess I do need to backtrack a bit. When we lived in that house, I started having dreams. Not the normal dreams that everyone has at night, but dreams foretelling the future. And they were never pretty. For the sake of the length of this essay, I'm only going to tell you of two...the first one I had, and the only one that I was able to do something about (and that's the one that takes forever to tell).
If I remember correctly, I was in the third grade when I had the first dream, which would have made me either 8 or 9, but I can still remember most of it like it was yesterday. My 'family' was meeting for dinner at a restaurant. An older version of 'me' was late, and walking towards the rest of the 'family', who were sitting in a booth on the right side of the room (from my perspective). My 'mother' saw me and went to give me a hug when a man stood up and shot her three times, killing her instantly.
The dream was so real to me, I woke up screaming and ran downstairs to my parents bedroom to see if my mother was still alive. I didn't want to disturb her, just make sure that she was all right, so I went back upstairs and waited (and waited, and waited) for morning to come. I told her what I saw, how everything smelled, even the decor of the restaurant (it was green and white, a garden-type setting indoors with trellises on the walls and vines painted on and behind them). She asked me why I hadn't woken her, and I explained why, then went off to school.
When I came home that afternoon, my mom was waiting for me, visibly upset. She asked me to tell her about my dream again, so I did, exactly as I had that morning. She asked me if I had the radio on that night while I was sleeping, and I told her no. I asked her why she wanted to know all of this...she said 'Because what you dreamed actually happened.'
It took a few more of those dreams for me to realize that the ONLY time I dream of my family is when someone is going to die. It's never someone I know (except in the following instance), and (as previously stated) only once have I been able to 'write' the ending.
In July of '95, I was on a tour of Europe with the United States Collegiate Choir. We started in Paris for three days, then went to Chamonix (a ski village in the French Alps) for two, then off to Lugano, Switzerland for another two. It was on the second night that I had this dream. The choir had a concert in a church that I had never seen before in my life. There was an aisle in the middle leading up to the altar, with rows of pews on either side. On either side of the church, the left (if you're facing the altar) in particular, had statues of saints with kneelers and votive candles in front of each one. At the front of the church, there was an open casket that, for some reason, I couldn't see into, but I felt it was the casket of my grandfather, who had died almost ten years before. The whole choir was in the church with me, we took our places on the steps leading up to the altar and began singing. There was an overwhelming feeling of unity among us which had never before been felt in any of our concerts, as if we knew we had to sing our best for the life of this unknown person.
I woke up sick as a dog. We had to go to Busselengo, Italy that day for a mass and then a concert that night and a day trip to Venice the next morning. The entire bus ride, I told anyone who would listen how crappy I felt, and that I really didn't think I was going to be able to sing that night. It's weird to think back and remember that I only told one person about the dream.
When we got to the hotel, my rommates and I (all four of us) crammed ourselves into the dinky room that we'd be spending as little time as possible in for the next two days. They kept asking me if I was sure I didn't want to sing that night. I kept saying yes, as I got dressed in the required white shirt and long black skirt. When it was time to go, I asked them to tell the director that I wouldn't be there, and then walked out the door with my music in hand. I got on the bus and thought to myself 'OK, I'll go, but I'll ask G (what we called the director) if it's all right if I don't sing.' When we got to the church, G went inside to check out the choir loft, where we would be doing the mass, and found that it was too small to fit all of us, so he came out and said that the Catholics in the group had first go. Being the 'good' Catholic that I am, I thought 'what the heck...maybe if I do the mass, he'll let me get away with not doing the concert,' but when he called for the sopranos to come forward, I couldn't move a muscle (and believe me, I tried...boy, did I try). By this point, I was so frustrated with not having done anything I had actually wanted to do that day, I decided to buy a bottle of water (because it was hotter than blazes that day) and sit and do nothing for at least two hours.
I was sitting in front of the little deli where I had gotten the water, sipping it and thinking about all the freakish things that had been going on all day when a group of the 'Guerilla Smokers' from the choir came by and asked me if I wanted to join them (we had to keep our smoking hidden from the director and the chaperones, or else we'd get in deep chit). I said 'No, thanks' and then...you guessed it...got up and went with them.
With us in the group was a guy named Patrick. The story, as I heard it, goes...when we were in Chamonix, Patrick was walking along the side of the road when a truck that was going at a pretty fast clip comes by, and the outside mirror hits him in the back of the head. The only people that knew this were the ones who were with him, and they didn't bother to tell any of the adults. So Patrick goes around like a normal person, eating, sleeping, drinking for a day or so, then he starts walking into walls, passing out in the bathroom for half an hour, and waking up not knowing where the hell he is. Everyone that knew what happened to Patrick said 'oh, he'll be fine.'
We found this cute little park, with a fantastic view where we decided to land and smoke. Patrick walked off by himself and sat down on a bench. I was (semi-happily, I still felt like crap, and it was getting steadily worse) taking pictures of the view, and blissfully ignorant of Patrick's accident. All of a sudden, Patrick is on the ground, passed out, and everyone crowded around him. We got him lying down on the bench he slipped off of, and I was standing behind it, right at his head.
The story of the truck vs. Patrick's head was told at that point, and I said 'Dude, you need to go to a hospital.' He said 'No, I'll be fine, don't worry.' So I said, 'No, really...Dude...you NEED to go to a hospital.' (we did this a few times...I'll spare you the back-and-forth) Finally, everyone else said 'Hey, he'll be fine...no worries.' and Patrick made what I now refer to as the fateful comment: 'Besides, I don't want G to have to call my mom and tell her about this.' I looked him dead in the eye and said 'Patrick, would you rather have G call your mom and say "Your son is in the hospital with a concussion, but he'll be fine," or would you rather him say "I'm sorry, Patrick died because he was an idiot and didn't get checked out AT THE FUCKING HOSPITAL!!!!!" '
I have never heard it get so quiet...I think everyone was shocked that I had said such a thing, but I was still looking Patrick dead in the eyes. I saw the exact moment that he realized I was right. At that moment, everything I had been feeling that day vanished, my body was my own again, and I felt better than I ever had in my life. Patrick went to the hospital, and the rest of the choir went back to wait outside the church for the concert to begin. Soon everyone that hadn't been in the park knew what had happened, so we formed a prayer circle where there was this overwhelming feeling of unity. It was at this point that I remembered my dream and became absolutely terrified. I realized that I had seen not my grandfather's casket, but Patrick's. It took the one person that I had told the dream to to point out that I hadn't seen if there was a body or not...Had I not done everything I was 'pushed' to do that day, the casket would have been filled. When we walked into the church for the first time, I truly understood. It was the exact same church that I had seen in my dream.
I could go on, but I believe I'll save a few stories for another (shorter) essay ;-)
