Ghost stories, part 3

I might as well give you a bunch of ghost stories. :D



Well, this is nothing really like anyone else's stories... in fact, this could all just be my imagination. Some kids can't go to sleep without their door ajar, and a light on in the passageway. This was never the case for me: I always slept in complete darkness. When I was a child, I dreamed more than anyone I've ever discussed it with; I had several dreams that I could remember a night. And in every one of my dreams, I died. I died a thousand deaths, being shot, stabbed, poisoned, I fell from cliffs, I burned in fires.

Most of these nightmares I just put down to an overactive imagination. The dreams I was shot, it was usually by some soldiers in some war. Too many movies. But I knew some dreams were different. They all involved places I knew, as opposed to the other nightmares, where I was killed in all sorts of locations I'd never been to. These particular dreams, I was prey. I was being hunted by some beings that I couldn't see, couldn't feel, but I knew they were there.

When they caught me, they tried to kill me. But they were non-corporeal, so they couldn't physically injure me in these dreams. When they got me, I couldn't breathe, and I felt them draining at me. Normally, when I knew I was dreaming, I could wake myself up very easily. But not when they had me. I could feel them keeping me in the dream, and it took all my will to drag myself away from them and wake up. All my other nightmares, I could wake up and say to myself "it was only a dream," and forget about it. But these particular dreams I couldn't get out of my head. I somehow knew that they were real. And that scared the hell out of me.

In the nightmares, when these beings caught me, I was trapped, and couldn't breathe. I would slowly, intentionally, claw my way back to consciousness. I am an only child, and for the first 12 years of my life, I slept alone, in a bedroom at the opposite end of the house from my parents.

Occasionally, I would have friends sleep over. And I would completely freak them out. Because I discovered that when I was dying in a dream and couldn't breathe, I couldn't breathe in real life. Sometimes for extended periods of time. Some of the times, I'd wake up, and whoever was staying at my house would be shaking me, trying to wake me up because I was choking, unable to breathe in. As soon as I regained consciousness, I could breathe again.

This didn't happen every night. Just the nights when I knew the dream was real. Sometimes I would be having a normal dream, dreaming about being a champion footballer or whatever the fuck young kids dream about, when I knew that the being searching for me had found me in the dream, and all of a sudden the dream became real.

Over time, I realised that not all of my real dreams involved me being hunted down. Sometimes, I would be talking to other beings. One group of beings in these real dreams tried to help me. These were not like the dark, invisible things which tried to kill me; these other beings were semi-visible, shorter than me at the time, making them quite short. They tried to teach me things in the dream world. There were three in particular. I can't remember the names of two, but I can remember the name of one distinctly: "Ry-ing." I'll explain why I can only remember that name later. These beings taught me, and I think they tried to help me hide from the hunters, but they couldn't protect me, or fight the hunters off.

I learnt that in these real dreams, I had powers I didn't have in the real world. I could fall great distances without injury, because I could slow how quickly I fell. It was as if I could affect gravity's effect on me. This also meant that I could almost fly. It was more like levitation, it required all my concentration in the dream, and I could never get more than a meter or two off the ground, and couldn't move very quickly.

There were other creatures that inhabited my real dream world. One was a small creature that looked a little like a hedgehog. It was a misty, semi-transparent creature, which made it easy to accidentally step on. If you stepped on it, you wouldn't feel normal pain from its spikes, but a strange pins-and needles-feeling. The other strange thing about these creatures was that where they died, this pins-and-needles effect would stay where they died, even if their carcass was moved, or decayed.

There was one corner of my grandparents' house that my father grew up in where I knew one of these creatures had died, because I got that effect in my foot wherever I stepped there in my real dreams. All these dreams happened when I was about 10 and younger. I guess I started having them less and less often, and I forgot about them. I mean, completely forgot. I never thought about them once.

When I was about 15 or so, I can remember one specific dream I had. Some invisible beings I could sense were trying to get me. And in the dream, that's when I remembered. I remember all the dreams I had when I was younger. The realisation was so shocking, I felt like it hit me.

The closest analogy I can draw is the effect you see in movies where the camera draws away from the subject, but zooms in, so it looks like the subject's face doesn't change in size, but the background rushes in at them. I remembered having real dreams. The strange thing was, the being that was attacking me suddenly drew away and disappeared.

When I woke, I could still remember everything. I could remember the dreams I had as a child as if they had just happened. I found it strange. But as a 15-year-old, I had stopped believing in things like that. I thought it was just my imagination.

A couple of years ago, I was talking about dreams with my dad while we were having a few beers. He told me that when he was a child, he had two friends that came back to a lot of dreams he had. He told me their names. I didn't recognise one, but hearing the other one nearly made me drop my beer. "Ry-ing." The same name as one of the three that tried to help me in my dreams.

My father told me how they used to be his friends in his dreams when he was young. And he went on to describe one particular dream, where one of his pets in his dream, a little creature he said looked like a "shadowy brown echidna," died. He told me exactly where it died, just in between the crabapple tree and the kitchen. This was EXACTLY the spot that I had dreamed of knowing one of these creatures had died, because I had walked over the place it had died in one of my dreams, and had felt the strange pins-and-needles feeling that these creatures gave the place where they died. The place was outside at the time of my father's dream, but by the time I was young, the kitchen had been extended, and the spot was indoors in a corner.

This blew my mind. Most things in my life like that I put down to coincidence, but that was just too close. I told Dad about the same dreams I had had as a kid, and to my surprise, he wasn't shocked at all. He said that his mother had similar dreams when she was young, and so had her father (my great-grandfather, who died a long time before I was born). I have spoken to my grandmother about this, and she remembers vividly talking to "the little people" in her dreams, and talking to her father about it. She seems to treat them as perfectly normal. Having an Irish background, she believes in "the little people." I had never even heard of them until I talked to her about it, and that was a long time after I had these dreams.

I haven't had real dreams for years now. I haven't seen Ry-ing or the other two in my dreams for years either. But I know that they are still there.

What really bothers me is that my father, grandmother, or (from what I have heard) great-grandfather weren't ever hunted in their dreams. They knew that other, evil creatures existed in the same world as the little people, but they were never attacked. I was attacked in every real dream I had.

The other difference was that "the little people" taught my family, and spoke to them, but they didn't teach them what they taught me: limited flying, controlled falling, etc. Why was I different? I can't explain how I know these dreams were real. I am agnostic, I'm not sure there's a God, I'm not sure of much in this life, but some things I just know. I knew that of my 4 grandparents, my maternal grandmother would die first, even though my father's parents are older and more sickly, and my maternal nan was fit as a fiddle till the day she died. I know that my father will die before my mother. I don't know how I know, I just do.

Sometimes, lying awake at night, I can almost feel the real dreams. But whenever I concentrate on them, I feel them slip away, like sand through my fingers. Sometimes I momentarily see things that aren't there, like a single frame with an extra object spliced onto a roll of a movie.

When I get déja-vu (this happens occasionally, about once a month), it kills me. I often have to sit down and close my eyes, I get the feeling that strongly.

But what really fucks with my mind is my memory. You know how
sometimes when you are trying to think of someone's name, or a word, and you get it "right on the tip of your tongue," but you just can't remember it? Whenever I think about these dreams, I get that feeling. Like there's something about all this that I have almost forgotten. But I know that it's important somehow. But remembering it is like trying to grasp smoke.

I have tried hypnosis to remember more, but I'm one of the one in ten people that can't be hypnotised.. it just doesn't work on me.
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My friend's sister - we'll call her Carson because, well, that's her name - was going to college in Boone and had just moved into a large three-story house with four other girls. A lot of things happened which, looking back, could be taken as other-wordly. Televisions and lights would turn themselves off and on, dogs would bark at empty air, and the smell of cigarette smoke would permeate the house although none of the girls smoked - nothing really that spooky. After about three months, it began occurring more frequently. The dogs were always restless and the smell of cigarettes was constantly in the house.

Carson had been living there about six months, and Spring Break was coming up. All of the girls went home except for her and one other girl, Haley. That night, Carson and Haley were sitting in the living room when the dogs ran into the kitchen and went absolutely berserk. Carson and Haley ran into the kitchen to find the dogs barking at the dead-bolted back door and cigarette smoke wafting through the air.

The dogs could not be calmed down, so Carson finally opened the door and the dogs wasted no time running outside. All of them except Carson's black Lab, who stood between her and the door. Carson went to bed that night and Zadie (her Lab) jumped into bed with her. Zadie was always protective and affectionate, so she didn't mind that Zadie wanted to sleep with her. All was quiet for a few hours until Carson was awakened to the sound of Zadie snarling and growling. She opened her eyes to see Zadie, teeth bared and viciously growling at the foot of the bed.

Carson looked around the room and, seeing nothing, told Zadie to be quiet and go to sleep. Zadie, however, never took her eyes off the foot of the bed and continued growling so viciously that she was beginning to drool like a rabid animal. Carson again told Zadie to be quiet and looked again around the bedroom. This time, something looked back.

Seated at the foot of her bed was an almost-transparent woman, blurry and almost not there at all. The woman was old, wearing an old-fashioned housecoat / nightgown and smoking a cigarette. She took a long drag from the cigarette and looked directly at Carson. When the woman exhaled, Carson could smell the smoke and actually feel it blow across her face. Before Carson could even react, the woman was gone and Zadie stopped growling. Immediately, Carson ran to Haley's room, only to find Haley sitting in her bed paralyzed with fear.

Apparently, both girls had been visited that night. Together, they ran from the house and spent the night with a friend. The next morning, they confronted the landlord / owner about what they had seen. His response? "Yeah, that's my grandmother. She died in that house. I'm sure I mentioned that to you girls when you moved in." They both moved out that day.
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Quick story, humorous...

My mother bought some cool gadget at Radio Shack. It's a remote control for appliances. Basically, you plug the one part into a wall socket, then the appliance (usually a lamp, or a fan) into it. It had a remote you then controlled those receivers with. It was fun. Well, my particular room at my parents' house was in the basement. The room has a bathroom coming directly off it, and a stairwell to the outside right next to that.

So I hooked one of the receivers to the lamp in the bathroom, and one to a string of Christmas lights I had strewn across my room. The quirk about the receiver is, when you turn it off or on, it makes a loud click sorta noise.

Well, the first night I got it was right in the middle of our Ouija board experiences. One of my friends was very much into the board, and very very into the whole spirits deal.. he did a lot of personal research, and just found it a very amazing hobby. So, he became our victim.

We did a little bit of Ouija board action, then retired to my bedroom (which had two couches) and chilled for a while talking. I strategically placed the remote in my front pocket. While sitting there on the couch, I was able to stealthily press the on / off buttons for the bathroom and Xmas lights.

There were like six of us in the room, and four of us actually knew what it was. One victim was someone who had just shown up, and the other was our supernatural-loving friend. I waited a bit, and turned the light on. Everyone took cue and went, "What the hell was that?" We joked about it for a bit, claiming it was that spirit Jake or something. I let time pass, and turned it off. The Xmas lights were the only source of light in the room that night. So after a while of toying with the bathroom, and getting my friend kinda on edge, I decided to give the Xmas lights a go. Did it, and people on cue again went: "Holy shit!"

Then, to add to the insult, as previously planned, my friend was hiding this old Deathmetal CD I had found, and chucked it lightly at our friend. The hopes were: CD hits him, lights come on, he reads title of CD (Dismembered), and freaks out. No, he freaked out the moment the CD hit him. He screamed so loud, my mother woke up (it was rather late). He had stood up, and just panicked. The rest of us, unable to hold our amusement as I turned the lights on, all burst out laughing hysterically. I mean, I have never seen this guy freak out so bad. He was pale white and almost shaking. We showed him the setup of the lights, and he of course hated us for a day.