Scary Stories Part I

Since Halloween is this coming Wednesday, I decided to tell some scary stories.

These stories are all true and have all happened to me at some point in my life. I would not fabricate these events. The stories are not filled with blood, guts, or gore. What truly makes them scary is that they were real and I have never forgotten about them.

So, turn on your lights and have the phone handy to call your mommy. Here is part I of JQ's Halloween spectacular.

When I was a kid, we lived in a haunted house. It was built in the 1800's in an area that was the site of many battles involving the Indians, French, English and American settlers. The Dudley Massacre, The Battle of Fallen Timbers, Fort Miami, Fort Meigs, they are all within ten minutes of my old house. This may or may not have anything to with my haunted childhood but it sets a nice back drop for a ghost story.

From spectral cats to a shadow person, the house had spooky happenings. One time after school, I was home alone enjoying a bowl of cereal. What kind I can’t remember. Anyway, the bowl of cereal slid about six inches across the table. Not so weird if you think about the unevenness of the floor in that old house. Add a little milk and gravity and you have a sliding bowl. Right? The weird part is that the bowl of cereal slid back to me. With crawling skin and the TV blaring I finished the bowl.

Another time I was exercising, again alone, when I heard footsteps up stairs. I dismissed the noise as one of our cats and continued to pump iron to the classic melodies of ZZ Top. Again I heard the footsteps tromping around upstairs. They seemed to be traveling in circles, spiraling to a central point in the main hallway. Once again, I played the noise off as the cats chasing each other around, and continued to rip my biceps. A few minutes elapsed and there were the footsteps again. This time they were moving from bedroom to bedroom upstairs, almost as if looking for something. I got an eerie feeling and began to suspect that it was not the cats. Just then the footsteps began to head for the stairs. I froze. My heart was pounding. Sweat, not the hot type you get when you exercise, beaded on my arms. The hair on the nape of my neck jolted upright. For some unknown reason I approached the doorway that lead upstairs, the footsteps now stomping at the top landing. As I looked up I remember seeing a shadow of a person(?) pass across the light cresting from the window to the side of the top landing. No person was there. The footsteps continued. Louder and faster they came down the steps, as if they were letting the momentum carry them. I turned and fled outside. I stood in the back yard for what seemed like eons waiting for my parents to come home. I never told them what happened. Although, they did ask why I was outside with nothing but shorts and socks in the middle of October.

This was not the last time I would encounter this shadow person. Later I would meet him...it...whatever face to face.