Just Passing Through... I Hope

A series of thunderstorms blew through my part of Texas several weeks ago. Since South Texas was in the midst of a devastating drought and an outbreak of wildfires when this happened, the storms were a welcomed relief. That night, as the storms raged, I sat down on my couch in my living room and settled in for some "alone time" with my laptop and a plate of oatmeal raisin cookies, the sounds of the storm playing softly in the background. Unfortunately, my "alone time" was about to be rudely interrupted.

I had been sitting on the couch, staring at my laptop screen and drooling like a moron when the storm suddenly began to intensify. The wind made an eerie whistling sound, the thunder and lightning seemed more frequent and the rain beat down on my kitchen window harder than I had ever seen before. Then, as my luck would have it, the lights began to flicker, and within a few seconds the electricity was completely out. I was slightly annoyed by this occurrence (as I've never been one to enjoy complete darkness - it creeps me the **** out) but not completely disheartened. After all, our wireless internet router has a backup power source that lasts 12 hours in case of power outages, and as long as I could surf the internet, the apocalypse could come and go and I wouldn't care less. After about an hour of more mindless internet surfing I realized that my laptop battery was getting low, so I turned it off and went to hunt down a flashlight or some candles and matches.

Suddenly, it happened!

...I hit my knee on the coffee table.

Those of you who have ever hit your knee on a coffee table know the feeling. For two whole minutes I lay on the wood floor of my living room, writhing in pain and muttering enough curse words to make a whole ship full of sailors blush. Momentarily vanquished in my flashlight-seeking efforts by a wayward coffee table, I laid there motionless on the floor and waited for the pain to subside. As I focused my eyes on the kitchen windows where periodic flashes of lightning shone through, I noticed something strange. I wasn't sure of it at first, but I thought I saw the silhouette of a person standing in front of the window each time the lightning lit up the room. It was so dark, and my mind was so discombobulated by the pain that I didn't know what to think. After a few more minutes, I got up and hobbled over to the kitchen to see if someone was really there, or if I was just going batspit nuts. My eyes adapted to the darkness, and sure enough, standing directly in front of the windows was some sort of humanoid figure. I can't remember much about what it looked like, aside from the fact that it was about my height (5 ft 7in), pitch black (like some sort of human-shaped void in the darkness) and featureless.

I froze, mostly out of sheer terror and partly due to the fact that my knee was still throbbing like a psychotic drummer's bass drum and it hurt to move. For a moment - and I kid you not - I thought that the nun from my previous story had returned to wreak her horrible vengeance for some unspeakable transgression I had inadvertently committed. Fortunately, after a few seconds I was pretty certain this was not the case. This thing had a different "feel" to it than the nun. I can't really explain what I mean by that. It just "felt" like it was a different entity, and for some inexplicable reason I got the feeling that it was lost. What gave me that feeling, I can't explain. I have no idea how long it had been standing there, or how it got there. I watched it as it stood there for about 30 seconds, and then moved in sort of a gliding motion toward the back of the house and disappeared.

I should emphasize the fact that my house is probably not haunted. In the 19 years I've lived in this house I've never had any indication that it was haunted. My father died here in 2003, but I'm pretty sure he didn't stick around, and being the man he was I'm not sure he'd want to pay any of us a visit either. My best guess as to why it was here is that this entity was lost in the storm and was just passing through, perhaps taking temporary shelter in my home. There was a fatal car accident earlier that evening not far from where I live, and I've had this nagging feeling that this incident may be related. I hope I'm wrong for this poor soul's sake. It really did seem lost. I haven't seen the entity since, and I pray that it isn't simply hiding in my home.

If that's the case, it had better not get too comfortable...