Hitch hiking Ghost?

I slept in Mia's room that night. The Professor cracked open his laptop (he carries that everywhere, it seems) and spent the rest of the evening in our living room doing research.



By morning I had gotten only a few hours of sleep, and the Prof looked like he didn't get any. But at least no more ghosts came calling. I made a pot of coffee and set a cup in front of him, then set about making breakfast. I was shooting for omlettes, but ending up making scrambled eggs and salsa.

I sat down across from the professor, and he managed not to become overwhelmed by my morning lovliness. I was wearing an almost too small Batman tee shirt and a pair of sweats that were entirely too big. My hair looked like I had slept in a waffle machine, and the bags under my eyes had bags.

"So is this like the ride at Disney World?" I asked.

"What, 'it's a small world'?" asked the Prof.

"No, dummy. The Haunted Mansion. 'Beware of hitch hiking ghosts. They may just follow you home.'"

"Ah," he said, and closed his laptop. "well, that may be closer than you think."

The professor went on to explain that, although it was rare, sometimes a spirit found a human energy field that it found more interesting than whatever it was it usually did. It could change the location of a haunting. Or, as it seemed in this case, pull something from one location to another.

It might not last for long, but then again it might last as long as I lived. It might be tied to an area I spent a lot of time in, or it may be tied to me.

We'd know soon enough.

Party Ghost 2

Ok, where were we..?

Everyone was in my room, I was wrapped around HArry Potter, and the room temperature had dropped cold enough for us to see our breath.

"What the fuck is this?" I asked the Prof.

"I'm not sure," he said, slowly looking around the room as I adjusted my top to cover my boobs a bit better. I was still nippling something horrible, but at least I was now covered. "Some cultures believe that a spirit can attach itself to someone with a stronger energy field than the one to which they had previously been attached, but I've never seen it."

"No way could she be more attarctive to the dead dad than his own daughter," said Raj. "No offense, Liz."

"None taken," I muttered.

Raj's girlfriend stuck her head in the room and looked confused. "What are we doing?" she asked.

And then I screamed.

Although everyone jumped about a foot, and Raj's girlfriend almost pissed her pants (if she ever wore any), it wasn't them. It was a shadow I saw out of the corner of my eye. It darted across the room in a way that shadows really shouldn't. And when it crossed into my direct line of site, it looked at me. Then it was gone.

The room began to warm up immediately.

"It wasn't the waiting father ghost," I said, trying to be heard over the pounding of my heart. "But I don't know what it was."

Party Ghosts

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It was not your traditional Saturday night. It started normally enough, with the team and a few other folks from around campus meeting over at our apartment for some merrymaking. Doug's friend (*ahem*) Harry Potter was there, as well as Raj's big boobed dancer. Even the Professor was there, at least for a little bit. We had all the makings of a casual party. Wine, pot, and a collection of movies and music that would be able to entertain anyone not involved in something more exciting.

Harry and I were well into exchanging spit when I started to notice it was getting cold. "Someone turn down the AC," I muttered.

I noticed I could see my breath.

"That's not the AC," said Harry.

"Professor!" I shouted, and within an impressively shorttime the Professor, Mia, and Raj burst in to my room.

"What the hell?" said Mia? They all noticed how cold the room was.

"It's like at the haunting last week," I said.

The Professor pointed to my window. It had frosted over...

Strange Dreams

I've been having strange dreams lately. I see the music box ghost and the waiting father ghost. They're just hanging around the apartment. Watching TV, getting high. Weird.

Feedback

Thanks for everyone who emailed me about my douchebag ex. Some people felt I should have pressed charges. I'm not sure why I didn't. Maybe I was too emotionally wrecked at the time. Maybe I wasn't sure if I'd be believed. I had dated him, after all. It could be his word against mine. Too much hassle.

Besides, I thought maybe shooting him would be less paperwork...

Return of the Douche Bag

Ok, this one isn't paranormal, but I thought it was the sort of thing I should share. It's a little disturbing, in a "crazy ex-boyfriend abuses our star" kind of way, so be warned. But I survived, so no crazy plot twists coming, a la The Sixth Sense.

A year and some change back I started dating a gorgeous guy named Zack. He was an English major (that should have tipped me off) in his sixth year as an undergrad (again, tip off). He wasn't terribly good in bed, about low average, but he managed to do ok because he was so friggin beautiful. I thought it was only women who could get by as a lame lay if they were beautiful, but I guess I proved myself wrong.

Anyway, Zack had some issues. I ignored them at first, for the obvious reasons. But after a while the dominating and bossy personality got old, his lack of depth got old, and I wanted to move on.

One of Zack's issues was fear of abandonment. Another was a borderline personality disorder. The two combined made the breakup extremely nasty. He didn't take rejection well, and we had a screaming match in the middle of the student commons. About a dozen students broke it up, and Zack vanished into the crowd.

Until two nights later.

I didn't even know he had a key to my apartment. But right as I closed the front door, there he was, standing in the foyer less than a foot away from me. He punched me twice, and I was out like a light.

I woke up gradually, in my bedroom, with Zack on top of me, grunting like a drunken dog. The side of my face hurt, and my left eye was swollen shut. I was scared to death, but I pretended to still be out, and he was otherwise occupied so he didn't notice. I let my hand bounce like a rag, but guided it closer to the nightstand where my sketchpad was. When I was pretty sure he was getting close to fire off his load, I wrapped my hand around the pencil I had there, and jammed it with all my strength into his shoulder.

He screamed like a girl. It shook him enough that I was able to get my legs free enough to put him in a scissor hold that I learned from an earlier, much more productive relationship. I squeezed my thighs around his neck as hard as I could, then yanked him over onto his shoulder. He landed on the pencil, driving it in further and snapping it off. He let out a bellow like a wounded sea lion. He managed to get one hand between my legs and was working his way out, so I flipped him off and rolled the opposite way, towards the night stand on the other side of the bed.

As far as I know, there's only one weapon in the apartment that was built as a weapon. It's a collector's item my father gave me when I was entering college. It's a black powder pistol; an 1860 Army revolver, .44 caliber, nickle and gold etched. It's very nice looking, and my daddy taught me to keep it that way, and to keep it loaded. It's totally unregistered, and probably very illegal. I never really checked.

I keep it in that night stand drawer.

I pulled it out and aimed it at Zack, in a kneeling aim. I'm a pretty bad shot, and I've only fired it a few times. I can't hit the side of a barn from inside the barn. But Zack didn't know that. And that gun is big. Google a black powder pistol and you'll see. It's big in Clint Eastwood's hands. In mind it was ginormous.

"Stop," I said to Zack. He looked at me like I was crazy.

"I'll fucking kill you!" he roared.

I fired. It was like a grenade going off in a submarine. I thought it was loud outside, inside it was just plain nuts. I had tried to aim at his foot. The bullet whizzed past his right ear, taking off about an inch of it. He grabbed his bleeding ear, while trying to also hold his bleeding shoulder. With his pants around his ankles.

"You cunt!"

"Zack," I said, my voice rising. "If I see you again I'll kill you. If you come here, I'll shoot you. If I see you on the street, I'll run you down with my car. If I see you in a bar, I'll bribe the bouncer to crack your spine. I'm serious. You better vanish from my life. As of now."

I gestured with the gun. Then I shouted, "I fucking said NOW!"

Zack, crazy as he was, got the message. He started penguin walking backwards, then when I pulled the hammer back again, he hightailed it out of the apartment.

When Mia got home from work, she found me in the kitchen crying. I think I threw up a couple times, too. She put some ice on my face, brought out some chocolate ice cream we save for relationship problems, poured us both some Bacardi and coke, and we watched a Phineas and Ferb marathon until I started to psycho analyze Candace on the show. Mia's the best.

I didn't see Zack for a year.

I briefly saw him yesterday, at a bookstore. He looked up, locked eyes with me, and ran from the store like his hair was on fire. Made me feel good.

The Waiting Father Ghost - part 4

To wrap up, all we caught on the camcorder was a phone falling out of its cradle, and the Prof blowing fog (although the fog seems to part around something). The EMF spike was certainly noteworthy, as well as the sudden and marked drop in temperature.

What I think was the most interesting were the vocals we recorded and enhanced. Most of it was indistinguisable whispering sounds. Really hard to tell for sure what Bill was saying. But when he pointed and got angry, the volume and clarity increased. He sounded like he was saying, "Get out of here! Go! Get out of here!"

Mia wondered if that was meant for us. Were we invading his territory and his grief? I don't think that's it, though. When he looked at us, he didn't seem upset. It was when he looked away that he got angry. Something we weren't paying attention to, or couldn't pay attention to, was more of a threat than we were.

Something else was in the room with us.

If anyone has any guesses or ideas, feel free to share them.

The Waiting Father Ghost - part 3

It was cold as balls in the upstairs room. Doug was right, the windows had frosted over. Since it was the middle of August, this was pretty odd. But sometimes the appearance of a spirit is a process that draws a lot of energy, and by doing that it drops the ambient temperature. I'd never seen one drop a room this much, though. And the EMF was through the roof.

Something was in the middle of the room.

It wasn't showing up on the camcorder, not exactly. But when we swept the room with the infrared thermometer, there was a pocket in the middle of the room that was colder than the rest of the room. The Professor leaned in close and blew softly on the pocket, and the fog of his breath seemed to seperate in the middle, forming a vague outline.

"Holy fuck," whispered Raj. The Professor held a finger to his lips, shushing him.

"Is that you, Bill?" he asked.

Something prickled across the back of my scalp. Like I had almost heard something.

Suddenly, I was scared to death. I wasn't entirely sure why, but I was stomach-churning afraid. I felt like something utterly horrible was about to happen, and there wasn't a thing I could do about it.

"Guys, is anyone else scared shitless right now?" I asked, trying to keep my voice from shaking.

"A little amazed, but not really scared," said Raj.

"I'm terrified," I said.

The Professor looked at me. "Are you afraid of the ghost?"

"I'm not sure. I don't think that's it."

"Does it feel like you're about to find out something really bad, like a loved one has died?" he asked.

Then I got it. "Yeah. Is it the ghost projecting?"

The Professor said he thought it might be. So I tried to calm myself down. It wasn't a real emotion, at least not MY real emotion. It was something someone else felt years ago coming back up, like a bad piece of fish. A father worrying himself sick over what he would find out about his daughter. I felt so bad for the man, the ghost, whatever. To go through that, it was horrible. A parent should never have to lose their child.

Then, like someone flicked a switch, I could see him. In the middle of the room, like a smoky shape that kept trying to move in and out of focus. Bill. He was wringing his hands and shaking his head. He was distraught.

Then he turned and looked at me. His mouth moved, and although I didn't hear anything, my skin prickled again.

"I can see him. He's trying to say something," I said.

Then his head snapped back straight ahead. He pointed at something I couldn't see, and his mouth moved again. This time, angrily. He was shouting something and pointing. I couldn't see anything else, but whatever it was had Bill's panties all in a bunch.

Then he was gone.

"EMF dropping," said Mia.

"Temperature coming back up," said Doug. "Looks like it's over."

"Yeah, but just what the hell IS it that's over?" asked Raj.

I knew we had witnessed a true haunting. I don't know what the data will say, but I knew what I knew.

But it also seemed to be something more.

The Waiting Father Ghost - part 2

It was around 11:30 when we got our first bite, as it were. The EMF detectors started spiking in both rooms. That didn't necessarrily mean anything, as there were power lines running past the house, and the EMF had been a little high the whole time. But sometimes a spike can represent an increased spiritual presence, or a doorway opening between here and there.

At exactly 10:33 pm, the time when the father had received his call many years ago, the phone receiver on the kitchen wall fell off the hook. I'd almost say "jumped" off, but when it did I definately jumped. The professor look at me and raised an eyebrow in that Mr. Spock way.

"Are you here, Bill?" asked the Prof. I just kept my eyes open. "We know you must be going through a bad time right now. WOuld you like to talk about it?"

Nothing. The phone stayed on the floor spinning gently where it fell. It rotated once or twice from the inertia of the fall, and then stayed still.

"We're sorry about your daughter, Bill," the Professor said, again trying to establish communication. To me he whispered, "It might just be a residual."

"I'm sure your daughter misses you," I said in a shaky voice. "If you move on, I'm sure you can join her."

Nothing.

Then Doug burst into the kitchen, out of breath. "You guys should come upstairs. Something big is going on."

"How big?" asked the Prof.

"The windows just frosted over," said Doug. The Prof and I exchanged looks, then ran upstairs.

The Waiting Father Ghost - part 1

There were two main locations in the house where the waiting father ghost (we decided not to share any real names at this time. The family of the deceased have had enough of a spotlight for all the wrong reasons). One location is the murdered girl's bedroom, which is now an office used by the husband living in the house now. The other location is the kitchen, where the father was when he received the last phone call of his life.

We set up cameras in both rooms, as well as digital recorders and EMF detectors. The professor and I took the kitchen, and Mia and Raj took the upstairs room. Doug was the runner, who would go between us if we needed anything.

The little girl (Angie) had been half way through her first year of kindergarden. She had been adorable, and in her school photo she was all smiles and pony tails. In those days a parent was required to be waiting at the bus stop, and the girl's house was only a few blocks away, so she always hopped off the bus, waved to the bus driver, and walked the short distance home.

The last time she waved to the bus driver, a car had been parked at the corner. A car no one gave a second glance. But, according to the police report, the driver of that car was somehow able to intercept the little girl, and no one who loved her ever saw her alive again.

The kidnapper was never found. Angela was. Her horribly mutilated body was found tied to a tree in a wooded area only a few miles from her home. Police called her family as soon as they had identified the body. Angie's mother was asleep, having been taking tranquilzers for the last few days. Angie's father, who had been frantically doing everything he could to find his daughter, answered the phone. His heart wasn't up to the news, and it felled him right there in the kitchen.

The mother moved away eventually to try and forget.

It seems the father still hasn't forgotten.