First True Experience

I guess I'll start this story at the beginning and describe my childhood. When I was 4, my family moved from Florida to a farm in north Georgia. At the time it was four of us, my father, mother, younger brother and me. The house we moved to was a very old farm house built in 1890 and everything in the place was original, with only the electrical wiring and plumbing being "newer", though from the 60s themselves.

The house was the epitome of what one would imagine of a "haunted" house. Old windows that rattled in the wind, no insulation anywhere, allowing for drafts to come and go as they please, wood floors, walls and ceilings that creaked constantly, and an old tin roof that leaked in the rain and popped in the sun. We also had several very old outbuildings that were quite creepy, though for a little boy, they were fascinating.

We owned a little over 200 acres and growing up, I crawled all over that place. To this day I do not know if the house had any kind of history, but years later while clearing a back piece of our land, we did discover 20+ Cherokee Indian burial mounds. This was yet another fascinating find as I myself am part Cherokee (though barely - 1/16). That said I doubt they had any influence on the house, being more then half a mile away, but I will say that I saw a lot of interesting stuff in the woods surrounding them. Honestly, I can say that I truly loved growing up on that farm, but it did not go without its dark history as well.

My first accounts started when I was 6, and really, based on my memory, went throughout my childhood in random succession. Growing up, I had little fear of anything, being taught that everything in the woods are more afraid of you then you are of it, I would walk the woods at night without a light, I could hear strange sounds in the house and find them "cool", watch spooky movies and laugh, etc.

No, what I feared most as a child was going to sleep. And it wasn't just the nightmares, which were very frequent, but also the after affects of the night as well. Most of the times the nightmares would wake me up in a cold sweat or shaking or in physical pain, but sometimes I would wake with a black eye or bloodied lip. At first my parents would say that I probably rolled out of bed and hit the floor or maybe tripped on something while going to the bathroom and not remember it. It wasn't until I was 8 that things got a little more... Serious.

My parents had different sleep schedules, my father being in bed by 10pm whereas my mother would stay up until around midnight or so. On one of these nights she had stayed up later then normal, watching something on TV until well after 1am. She had gotten up during a commercial to go to the kitchen when she had heard something coming from our bedroom (me and my brother shared a room). She stepped into the doorway and I guess she heard me groaning and crying, so she flicked on the light, which for some reason immediately blew out. I don't remember much up until the light flashing, which at that point I remember feeling as if my nightmare was real and I was fighting it off of me. I recall my mother screaming for my father who came down the hall, flashlight in hand and remember the beam of light hitting my face and him picking me up off the bed. They took me into the bathroom and washed my face but I guess exhaustion took over because I don't recall anything after that. What my mother told me the next morning sent chills down my spine and gave me my first taste of real fear.

She said that when she had flicked on the light, it looked like a dark shape had been on top of me and was swinging violently in my direction. She had thought that it might have been my brother (we fought a lot as brothers do) but she said that she could see him asleep in his bed. Since the light flashed off so fast she said that she couldn't see anything after that except spots but that when she saw my face she had been terrorized by what she saw.

Looking in the mirror that next morning I got to see the truth, black eye forming, dried blood in my nose, a busted lip, and strange scratches along the left side of my face. Obviously I did not go to school that next day, but I don't think staying at home helped much either. It was fairly quiet around the house, nobody really speaking about what happened, dad out working the cattle, mom doing chores around the house and me watching TV.

Really, in time, what happened that night faded from everyone's minds, and only on certain occasions do I even think about it. I can say this much though, looking back over the years, I have analyzed what happened and I can be fairly certain of this much, that was no ghost that haunted me. This was but only the beginning of what life had to throw at me. Fun...