Puzzle Pieces

Ever since I accepted the fact that I have abilities, things have started to come together.  It is like finding the missing pieces to my life's jigsaw puzzle.  The missing pieces are those that I locked away deep inside my mind, not wanting to accept them for what they were and what they meant.

Sometimes, I feel as if I wasted a part of life by denying what had happened.  I pushed aside my abilities instead of embracing them and then, over time, learned to suppress them.   Looking back, I guess I was scared of being different or labeled as a freak.  

When I was growing up, paranormal experiences were not as accepted as they are today.  Stories of ghost and demons were told in Hollywood movies and parents would tell their children, 'oh, it's not real, there's not such things as ghost'. 

I am now able to reconcile several unexplained experiences from my youth.  It's a good feeling, those "aha moments" which gives me some closure in the form of a missing puzzle piece.

A couple of experiences from when I was growing up are now pieces that I'm finally able to fit into the puzzle.

Window To The Other Side

My father was in the Air Force which meant we moved around, but I was more fortunate than other Military Brats as we didn't move around a lot. We did however move and that's hard on a child growing up, especially for me as I was an only child.  Having no siblings meant that I didn't have that support that others had; I was, at times, my only friend.

Being an only child in a new place caused me to withdraw and keep to myself.  To compensate, I'd open up in other ways.  My mind would become open and things would come forward.  I was very fortunately that fear would close my mind when things got a little too frightening.  On the flip side, my curiosity would allow things that gave me some peace to hang around.  I recall countless spirits of children that kept me company until I made real friends.  It was a new twist to imaginary friends.

I have never slept well, I always seem to wake up for some reason or another.  This was true even as I was growing up.  I would wake  up in the middle of night and lay in bed; trying hard to go back to sleep.  If I couldn't fall back to sleep, I would get up and look out my window.  I found it peaceful and relaxing because everything was so calm.

One night I woke up because a thunderstorm was moving through.  I couldn't fall back to sleep because each lighting strike would light up my room like a camera flash.  I went to the window to watch the lighting in sky.  It was amazing to watch the streaks of lighting move through the clouds.  The bolts were so strong that it literally turned the night into day.   There was one bolt that stuck close to the house and it lite up the whole street.  It was then I noticed someone standing in the street.  I thought why would someone be outside in this storm.  Then there was another strike and I could see clear as day that it was a woman.  She was wearing a long black flowing dress, like an evening dress as if she was going to formal party.  

My eyes were glued to her.  She was just standing in the middle of the road, her back to me.  Even with the lighting all around her, she didn't flinch.  It was as if she didn't even realize there was a storm at all.

After watching her for what seemed like an eternity, she finally moved.  She didn't seem to walk but glide, I saw nothing that resembled a walking motion. The storm had passed and the thunder & lighting were far away in the distance.  The night time sky had cleared and I could see the stars.  Suddenly, out of nowhere,  there was a blinding bolt of lighting along with a loud clamp of thunder.  I could see the bolt strike close to her.  She appeared to grab it and then she was gone.  It was like she used it to carry herself away.

I recall not being scared at all.  I remember a peaceful feeling after she left.  It was like I knew everything was fine.  I went back to bed and as I was laid there I kept asking myself, who was she?  Was she from another dimension?  Was she a spirit?  Did she use the energy of the storm to travel?

After all these years, I finally realize she WAS the storm. She controlled it.

Now, I find myself looking for her in every storm that passes.

Up A Creek

All teenagers have that one local urban myth.  Be it abandoned house that was the scene of some horrifying crime that is now haunted or something that lives in the woods and comes out when called by a certain name.

But what if the myth was actually more fact than fiction?

When I was in high school we had such a myth.  It was a small church on a dark country road that was close to a creek.   The myth was that it was a "Devil Church" and that a cult would do human sacrifices there.  In order to hide their victims, the cult would bury them under an assumed name with made up dates in a cemetery across from the church.  Myself and some buddies would always find our way there to scare our girlfriends.

The creek that ran close to the cemetery was called Bull Creek and the road by the church didn't have a bridge over it at the time.  It had a dip in the road with a culvert and had a flood gauge post on each side.  If you stop at the flat part of the culvert, you could see far down each of side of the creek.

One night,  my best friend and I, along with two girls from school, decided to take trip to the church.  Once we got there, we decided to park and get out and do a little ghostly sightseeing.  My friend and I took turns at scaring the girls as we walk around the church and cemetery.

My buddy went around the back of the church with the rest of us staying close to the front.  All the sudden he came running back towards us, scared out of his mind.

"Let's get out of here!"  he screamed as he ran by us heading for the car.

I remember that was enough encouragement the rest us of to join him.

He was pale white, like something has scared the life out of him.   I asked what happened, what did he see.

"Someone...something is in..the back of church...inside"  He said, struggling to put a sentence together.

By this time we all freaking out.  My friend is fumbling for his keys as the girls are screaming for us to get out of there.  Just as he starts the car, we hear screaming coming from the church.  My buddy floors it and we speed down the road.  He had to slow down as we got to dip in the road where it goes over the creek.  By this time, we had calmed down  and we all start to give my buddy some grief about what happened.  Maybe he saw an animal, maybe the scream was owl or something else, maybe he just imagined it.

"I swear it was someone in the church.  It scared the shit out of me." he said defending himself.

As we got to the flat part of dip, we could see down creek.  Suddenly the all the lights on the car went out and as we looked down the creek bed, we saw two red glowing eyes flash at us. They were hovering about 10 to 12 feet off the top of the creek and were about the size of basketballs.

I screamed, the girls screamed, my friend floors the accelerator and we speed off.  Thankfully, this was a road that we were familiar with because we drove without headlights for about a quarter of a mile.  As we got closer to a main road, all the lights in the car came back on all on their own.

"Do we want to talk about what just happened?"  my friend asked us.

"No" one of the girls said softly.

"I don't either" I replied.

As I look back on this experience I've learned that every myth or legend is rooted in some sort of real event.

The trick is to distinguish the fact from fiction.