Don't Bother Knocking, Just Come On In

Let me start by saying this is my one and only story. I feel the need to post it here because it is the only one I cannot explain away and this is the only place I feel I can share it.

One warm afternoon (it's Texas, it's always warm there), my mother is visiting with my Aunt in the dining room of her home. I am sitting in the living room reading quietly because once you have said the proper "hello", a child is to make themselves scarce. "Grown-up talk" is not for their ears. However, I can catch bits of their conversation because the two rooms are only separated by a half-wall. My back is to that half-wall.

My Aunt may have been a spiritual person, but my Mom is definitely not. "Don't be afraid of the dead," she would tell me, "fear the living."

As the two women are conversing the front door suddenly opens and a wind swoops through the dining room, down the hall, and into the bathroom, then slams the door behind it. I go to the dining room to get an explanation and I find my Mother and Aunt sitting silently. Then my Mother laughs out loud; she is breaking the tension. She shows us the goosebumps she has on her arms. The hair on her arms is standing straight up. I realize my Mother was scared and that scares me. My Aunt simply says, "It's my daughter." My Aunt had a teenage daughter who died in a terrible car crash not too far from home. My Aunt then stands and goes to close the front door. She returns to the table and they continue on with small talk and I go back to my book. We never speak of it.

If you would ask me what it felt like, it didn't feel like a person or a presence. It felt like a concentrated, purposeful energy. Wind is energy. And since that time I have seen the wind slam a door shut on several occasions. But not since that time, have I seen the wind open a latched door.