I Could Feel Him

I would love to tell you that my experiences in life have been extremely out of the ordinary, or even that they could scare you witless. However, I have never been completely normal so my stories tend to follow, and maybe that is why I venture out and find other people with experiences, or read/write creepy fiction. However, this is the first time I will have told my story, the real story.

I have always had trouble with people. For years my mother thought I was making things up, or that I was just trying to get out of arguments. In reality, I can't handle high emotion. If someone gets angry, I feel enough rage to lash out and hurt someone.

Now, my therapist says it is because of the abuse I suffered as a child, but my mother (Now that she actually believes, but we will get to that) calls me "Empathic". I am really not sure what to believe.

Things have messed with me for as long as I can remember, breaths on my neck, things being thrown at me, and even strange things like turning my Xbox on and off. I remember the first time I actually saw something, and to this day I am terrified of sleeping with the lights off.

So, this story is a simple one of how my mom actually started to believe that just maybe there was something weird about me after all.

We were living in a pretty nice home in Butler, PA. Which, considering that town is saying a lot. There was something wrong with the house and the whole family knew it. I was newly married to my now ex-husband, and we were living with my parents and three other siblings (now you can see why he is an ex) and things there never made any sense.

I have always felt like a bit of an intelligent person. Logic over fiction at all times. Despite what I had seen and experienced as a child. This house, however, made me always question what was right and what was wrong. Some days you could almost forget that strange things happened there. But, most days, it was impossible not to remember.

I was always on edge. One moment I would be happy and on top of the world, and then the next I would be struck by this tremendous feeling of loss or dismay.

Now, things would happen in this house, the same cliché things that you always hear about in stories. Our dogs went nuts, things would fly (I was actually once hit in the back of the head by a Tupperware bowl), lights would flicker, and there were unexplainable shadows and cold spots. If you had a typical Hollywood plot for a scary story... It happened in this house.

Well, one day my mom got fed up and decided to hold a séance. Probably not the brightest move but in retrospect, probably not the worst. I was in for it. So my family got down to business. We cast a circle, and called upon the elements (I am pagan). At first nothing seemed to happen, there was no loud banging, nothing, just us sitting in a circle in the dining room, and then there was a weird humming. And not quiet either. My whole family heard it. It was humming 'Shave and a Haircut'. Of course now, looking back on it, it probably could have hummed something a little less predictable. But regardless, it happened.

I don't know how it happened, but a moment later I was bawling hysterically, I couldn't stop. I was filled with the most gut wrenching feeling of loss. I could not breathe. While I have a vocabulary that is well endowed, I do not have words enough for the sheer grief that lanced through me. It literally felt like I had no reason to live.

My stepdad reached out to grab my hand, and a few things happened all at once. First my dad immediately started bawling and I stopped. Second, two words got stuck in my head. My mom closed the circle pretty quickly and the lights came back on. Next, I was hit with a barrage of questions. Being still dazed as I was, I really have a hard time recalling every word that was said.

I looked at my mom and told her there were only two words I could think of: Black and Blue. The look on my parents faces made my blood freeze. My dad started crying again which, of course, set me off. I begged my mom to tell me what I did wrong. Instead she pulled out some photos from when she and my dad went to visit my step-brother's grave.

Inscribed upon it was a poem he had written. "A part of me is a Blackish Blue". My heart dropped, because at that moment I remembered, he had killed himself years before. I had never met him.

The drama in the house never subsided, and I can tell you plenty of other stories from my home. However, at least now my mother believes me about emotions.

I still believe to this day that my stepbrother visited us, but I do not believe that he is the only thing residing in that home. I have also learned quite a few other things about my annoying emotion things, and about the weirdness I have always seemed to attract into my life. Those stories though, are for another day.

And maybe you guys have some advice for what happened to me, and what to maybe expect.