I'd like to share the first of many strange occurrences from when I was a child. I would really like comments about them, suggestions and opinions and views. I want to be able to see all the aspects and maybe "feel" a little better about why it happened to me.
I was in 6th grade and we moved into a brand new home in a brand new development in our town. Our house sat on the edge of a woodland swamp so full of branched thickets it was impenetrable but changed colors like leaves. The house was on the side of a steep hill so it looked like one level from the street but was actually two. We had about 8 feet off the back of the house and then a straight cliff down into this "swamp."
My parents and two sisters had rooms on the upper level and I had a room on the back (lower) level. Everything was fine for a year or so but then I began having these experiences every night. It started first with me feeling terrified of being downstairs by myself. The air was "dangerous" feeling. I can't recall ever actually seeing anything but imminent danger was prevalent.
My mother had previously sold Avon and we had this ugly perfume decanter that was tall, thin and gold. It was in the shape of a vase with a fake metal blood-red rose at the top. I had everyone of the little doll shaped collector decanters and therefore was well aware of the "hideous" perfume that these things held so I never opened them.
This rose used to travel around the downstairs rooms. Because I had my own little apartment down there I was the only one who observed this. I was alone downstairs. My sisters never played down there and my parents who were running two fledgling businesses were only home in the late evenings upstairs in the living room. I never had a problem with the rose moving around because that isn't so scary. I just never gave it attention. I was aware of it, but not until things got much worse did it become a problem.
So, like I said, there was this horrible, evil feeling of impending doom thick in the air. I could tell I was being watched and threatened constantly and not by one but by many. I could hear this quiet chanting and dark hooded figures made the night even blacker with their voluminous robes and presence. I knew that I was in danger anywhere downstairs even in my warm little bed. Inevitably I would need to use the bathroom at some point and when I would work up enough courage to finally do it this rose began appearing in front of the sink. You know the little tiny bit of counter space between you and the sink? Right there! I also knew that telling was not an option. My parents desperately counted on us to allow them to work hard and not cause problems. I was truly alone.
I began not going all the way downstairs to my room when I first went to bed. The stairs went down, had a landing and then doubled back and went down again and I found if I was quiet enough I could stay on the midlanding and feel completely safe until my parents got up to go to bed. I ached for my parents to protect me and just when I had decided I absolutely HAD to tell them my mother says "I'm so proud of you for being such a big girl and being down there all alone." which I knew was significant for her as it would become one of the only times I ever felt nurtured or loved by her in all my life. There was no way she would hear from me that I was afraid.
I tried very hard to be brave but the night activity got worse. It was being accompanied by a smell so horrific that I would choke and run for the bathroom. It smelled like the worst feces and burnt, acrid smell you could ever imagine. Then it would instantly change to the sickest perfume smell possible. The same exact smell of the perfume in the rose. I knew instantly where that smell was from. So, I threw the rose away. Many times. I took it to my cousins and threw it away there. I took it to my grandparents and thew it away there. I took it to school. I tried to give it to friends. But, it always ended up in front of the sink each night.
I went through this for nearly two years until we moved and left that house behind. The rose moved with us and other than moving from my bedroom to my part of the bathroom I never had much else happen with it until I was 18 and moving out. I thew it away one last time and it showed up two years later in my apartment in another part of the state. Sick perfume and all.
We lived there from 4th grade to 8th grade for me.
The house was fine for the first 1 1/2 years (I lived down there by myself with no direct supervision and technically I was at the youngest age I would be at that house) then for 2 years I was living in hell (or at least it was scary and smelled BAD.)
For the last 1/2 year nothing happened because I got my first waterbed and my sister got really sick and so we both slept in the waterbed upstairs so she could be watched at night. She got really high fevers.
No one else had bad dreams, ghosts or even noticed the rose moved back upstairs again when I did. It just stayed perched in the bathroom ever vigilant but not moving anymore.
The only ever significant thing that happened with the house that was just freaky was... Okay, this may stretch your imagination but I'll tell you what it "felt" like and then tell you what physically happened.
It came to a point when the chanting, black hooded robes and olfactory hallucinations were happening nightly that I was a little less upset about them. How you ask? Simple. I am a survivor and I learned that the stench would make you vomit when you stood up but if you crawled on the floor like you do when there is smoke and fire you wouldn't have to vomit from the smell. The smells lasted for a LOT less time but they still alternated from excrement to sick, headache perfume. The attack lasted less time each night but a new overwhelming feeling that "something was coming, something was CRAWLING UP FROM THE SWAMPS" to get me was going to happen.
It did come. Hundreds of thousands of little newts! One night when I was crawling and crawling to get out of the horrible smells I was clear across the house (but still downstairs) and every single time I moved each hand, each leg I touched something crunchy.
Crunch, Crunch, Crunch...
I screamed and screamed in terror in the dark, but no one heard me! No one helped! So, I hightailed it to my bed where I huddled under the covers and tried not to think about the floor crawling with little salamander things. Then I heard stuff dropping all around me. Tink!, Tink! Tink! And I screamed again. My father came downstairs to find out what was going on and I told him there were things on the ceiling that were dropping around me and I pointed to the side of my bed where I heard the last one and sure enough, right there was a live little newt stuck in a globe from a light fixture that was upside down and it couldn't get out. The rest were gone at least in my room. But, when I told him about them all over the floor we went out and sure enough the entire bottom floor, carpet, linoleum, everything was covered with dried out newts!
My birthday was about then. I got a waterbed out of the blue (they were really, really new) and moved upstairs. Maybe my dad did think it was a little freaky down there.
We used to have to go down and sweep them up into piles!
We never seen another live one either.
There were times when I was someone else too. My sisters and I were left alone a lot. We were so close in age that we looked like triplets. My middle sister and I used to play together. I would have this overwhelming urge to draw her towards the deep woods that were literally at the edge of the development. I always had this strange unattached feeling and I would say things like "Come. I want to show you where I died." We always went way back in the woods and straight to the strangest place I have to do this day ever seen. It was tiny like the size of a bathroom, but it was an underground loghouse! Like the foundation for a sunk in the ground house. Very old and made out of logs.
No matter how far back in the thicket this place was I could always go directly to it. We couldn't even ride our bikes there. I wasn't ever surprised by the place, even the first time because I just felt like I "let go" and that someone else was guiding me. They were amused how afraid my sister was when she looked at "us." I just went with it and didn't fight it.
I have to admit that the feeling of aloofness and the ability to feel for someone else was addictive! Taking pleasure in other's distress gave me energy. This all came on without me knowing it would, therefore I was young and inexperienced and unafraid. But, after several times of doing this I, me, decided it was a little strange, that my sister was afraid and that made me feel bad and the urges I had to lure other children and gain their fear was really bad. So, I began to fight it. I started saying "I believe in Jesus" out loud and I slept with my children's bible on my pillow and I was never bothered in this way again.
There. That is the truth about that house in it's entirety.
What a weight lifted off of my shoulders!
Please tell me what you think.
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