Playing With Fire

The story I'm about to unfold is one that has haunted me for slightly over a decade now, but is just one (technically my first) of the many stories I have to tell of my, and my fiancé's, paranormal experiences.

I live in a small town, south of Sandusky, Ohio, in one of the flattest topographical areas in Ohio. I've lived here 95% of my life, with just a short span in Colorado when my mother moved my sister and I there.

Now that you have some background on me, let me explain that I grew up FASCINATED with the paranormal, and my mother is one of the most psychically terrifying people I know. Before I was born, she lived at my grandmother's house in a room that everyone calls the backroom, which sat at the end of the main hallway in a 2-story house. She was highly into the occult, and I probably inherited maybe 25% of my mother's raw talent. It wasn't until I was 15 that I finally dabbled into something, and it was a major mistake.

You see, around the age of 15 I was fascinated by werewolf movies, like the Howling and the American Werewolf movies. I was so into them that I started reading up on any "real life" story I could find. This included rituals, societies, etc. One night, while staying at my grandmother's, I happened upon a ritual with a few words that had x's in place of letters. Well it took almost 1 billionth of a second to realize what the words were (trust me, it was that simple), and at maybe 10 to 10:30pm I decided to just read aloud the ritual.

NOW, let me state that the ritual called for some fire outside, and then it would turn blue and some demonic spirit would come out of the fire to bestow some wolf mark on you. Farfetched? I know, I thought so too. Which is why I didn't truly fear saying the incantation, and was just messing around. Well nothing happens, no surprise. A little while later and I went upstairs to bed, which happened to be that same backroom I spoke of earlier. I laid down, put a random movie into the VHS player built in to the 19inch TV. Beside the bed I had a touch lamp, and after the movie was finished the tv shut itself off from the sleep timer, and I clicked the lamp and started to fall asleep.

It was pitch black in the room, and it was FREEZING, and this was summer break, which in Ohio is around 70-80 degrees average. I hadn't fallen asleep yet, and maybe laid there 10-15 minutes, and my eyes were beginning to adjust to the darkness of the room. In the living room down the hall I heard my grandparents' clock strike once, so 1am was the time. But suddenly I could feel something behind me, looking down at me. I looked towards the door, which was the direction I was facing in the bed, laying on my left side. From behind me I could hear this very deep and low sounding breath, maybe 5-6 feet away from me.

I was completely frozen, and all I could do was stare at the door, which to this day I'm thankful was wide open. For some reason I kept telling myself to just run, and hope to get to the kitchen and grab whatever knife you can, since my instinct was telling me this COULD be a person in my room, but I had yet to ascertain that information, locking my eyes on just that damn doorway. The breathing turned into a very low toned growl, and I finally started to slowly turn my have blanket covered face towards the closet behind where my feet were, and there it was. It stood full height to the 7 foot ceiling PITCH BLACK, with red eyes and what looked like ears coming out each side of the top of its head. I couldn't make out a face, but the protrusions were noticeable above its head, and the eyes were LOCKED on my position.

I've studied martial arts since I was 8, and that went out the window, because this thing was massive. I couldn't tell you what my face had to have looked like, but I was frozen in ABSOLUTE fear. Then it started to point at me, and looked like it was getting closer, with 1 nailed finger inching closer to me, and finally my body FORCED itself to move, and the next thing I knew I was SPRINTING down the hall, and ran into the kitchen. I didn't even scream, probably because I don't think I breathed for at least a minute. The only thing that came around the corner was my grandma, who was wondering why I was sweating and holding a kitchen knife in the corner. I explained everything and sat up the rest of the night in the living room on the couch watching cartoons.

Don't worry, the story doesn't end there.

A few months later I turned 16 in October and my dad and I finished painting my 1983 blue and grey Blazer that he bought me. One of my friends' families own the bowling alley one town over, so we all hung out there during the summer and fall, especially on the weekend when leagues weren't happening. One night we were in my Blazer and driving to their house in an even SMALLER town than mine (they are sister towns with a shared school system). While driving I was explaining everything that happened at my grandparents' house, and they gave me the whole "yeah right" skepticism, which I don't blame them. It was unreal even to me who experienced it.

We were driving on SR 19, which goes through a LOT of country, with fields and wooded areas on both sides of the road, and it was once again 1am. We were planning to go toilet papering people in the smaller town, which had only 1 patrol car, who we also all knew growing up. Out of nowhere one of my friends in my backseat yelled, "Look Out!" and I thought for SURE I was going to hit a deer, and ruin my first vehicle. Well it wasn't a deer that stood 15-20 yards from my car, no. It was MASSIVE, almost the size of a bear, but it wasn't a bear. It's fur was orange with brown and grey hinted in it. The head was a canine's, and it was on all fours... At first. We were nearly pressed against my windshield, blankly staring at this thing looking right at us. 5 seconds, 10 seconds, 15 seconds? I couldn't tell you how long it just stared at us, but then we all nearly ruined my car seats, when this "thing" just stood up, on its hind legs, which were jointed like a canine's and had some of the most massive shoulders I've ever seen. It stood maybe just a few seconds before bolting into a cornfield on our left.

Superman himself couldn't have pressed that gas pedal as hard as I did, and needless to say, we didn't go toilet papering that night.

Fast-forward 8 years, I was a student and new father at a local community college and took a random film class for some fun and an easy A. Hadn't seen or heard from the thing in years, and trust me, that was fine by me. For our film class we were required to make a short film, and luckily I was placed in a group with actual film enthusiasts who made homemade films all the time. These guys were meticulous, and for one of our ghost scenes, we needed one of those showers with the sliding glass doors.

Lucky us, my grandparents had one, so we decided to take some photos of the bathroom to see if we could use it as a scene transition. No one is at the house but us, and my grandmother's cat BOLTS out of the backroom down the hallway, and we all look at the doorway, which is also connected to the hall. All the sudden we hear large footprints walking down the hall, but there is nothing there. These guys start flipping out, and start filming up and down the hall, because we can still hear the footprints, like they're walking through us. Out of nowhere, we hear this god-awful growl and we ran our asses off.

When we presented our film (which didn't include the bathroom shot, because they refused to come back to my grandparents'), they all told the class about the story and I think we got more attention from the story than our film (which rocked).

Fast-forward another 2+ years, my fiancé and I have a three year old son and we've dealt with many paranormal experiences wherever we move. Unfortunately, she leaves me (don't worry we're back together) and I move into my grandparents' house in order to save up some money and get an apartment. My one thing, I wanted was a room that WASN'T the backroom, and so we made a bedroom downstairs where their computer room used to sit. First night I go to sleep, I hear footsteps coming down the stairs and the room was so cold my breath was slightly visible. There was nothing in the room, but a voice kept whispering, "You're back, you're back" for maybe a minute, and then it was gone. A few nights later, again "You're back, you're back". It happened 3 other times, all random nights over the course of a few months.

Finally my mom found me an apartment, which I would rent with a family friend who was pregnant and needed a roommate. Fine by me, until the second to last night I would be at my grandparents' house. I woke up and couldn't see, like a black sheet was covering my eyes, and I was choking. My arms were being held down to my bed, and the ONLY part of my body I could move was my legs, which I flailed like a fish, but kept kicking just air. The growl was right in my ears, and finally I was able to move, and the darkness was gone. I ran upstairs and once again sat in that same living room I was in before, a decade in the past.

The next day, my arms felt like I had lifted weights and I found 2 black marks, one on each forearm, about the size of an average index finger, but mirrored. To be honest, they looked like frostbite, and it took over 9 months for them to finally fade. My dad rubbed holy water on them, my fiancé (a wiccan) tried spells and healing ointments, nothing. Eventually they went away, but they literally would hurt for months if anyone touched them.

I'm 26 years old now, my fiancé and son moving into the apartment with me after my roommate left to be with her baby's daddy. This is the first place I've lived in over a decade with no real paranormal activity, and I'm not going to lie, it's the best feeling in the world.

Moral of this story, even if you THINK something is fake, DO NOT fool around with it, especially if you're some naïve teenager who thinks that it's cool to play with demons or spirits. Trust me, it's only cool to the spirits, who just found another idiot to torment.