Ghost Story

Poop. It's 2:17am and I just woke up from a terrible nightmare about ghost, rutabagas and tomato puree. Yes I know, but the point is it's got me up when I wanted to be down. I have a full day ahead of things I'd rather not do tomorrow starting way to early for me to take any more sleep meds in my futile attempts to sleep this restless night so why not write. Besides mood group in the morning I have to meet with AFS and that is just buckets of smiling fun. Hurrah!
The ludicrous dream (what dreams aren’t?) also got me thinking about ghost, not a usual topic for me to waste brain waves on. I don't believe in them, not real ones as they are normally defined. I think people see them all the time I just don't believe they are really seeing anything real is all. I think the ghost we experience come from ourselves from our own minds and have nothing to do with physical reality. Some of us realize this and make little to do about any "spooky" encounters. To illustrate this a little better I've decided to write about my own and only serious "ghost story". Before I start let me make clear …I don't believe I experienced a haunting but that doesn't make what I did experience any less terrifying …I was scared shitless…only my FIRM belief in the fact that there is NO AFTERLIFE of any kind held my shattered (At the time) mind together.
A year to the month after my Mothers death I found myself staying in what was her house but had become my brothers following her death. The rape that was my divorce was in full swing and I was as loony as one can be and still dress yourself. I had just exited a six week stay in a mental hospital for a combination of absurd behavior, binge drinking and a serious suicide attempt. At said hospital I was placed on a regime of some heavy duty medication and told be a good boy as I left. I stuck to that cocktail of psychotropic drugs for about three weeks before I added my own chemical of choice (Booze) to the mix. I didn't drink anywhere near as much as I had prior or near as much as everyone assumed, hell, didn't have to The combination of even mild quantities of alcohol and my meds came together like Nagasaki and Oppenheimer. I knew I shouldn't mix them but at the time I cared little if I lived or died, I simply wanted the pain o go away and well alone the meds can't make that happen plus once mixed your decision making abilities drop remarkably.
I dropped off the wagon about the same time as I started staying with Kevin at Moms old place in fact when I "dropped off the wagon" I was also dropped off on his door step.
It was the spring of 2003, March.
To put it bluntly I started hallucinating. I have never really ever done that before in my life. I never have taken anything that would cause that, with my nightmarish imagination I would simply be afraid too. That simple fact has always kept my curiosity in steady check. I have a highly addictive personality but I do know what I like and what I don't. Never have held with mind altering drugs, still don't. I am too much of a control freak. Booze, of course does diminish ones control but it also creates an illusion of power and control…fictitious though it may be. I digress.
On the first night of my short stay with Kevin something very odd happened. Kevin's room is at the end of a long hall leading out from the living room where I slept. After we had all retired for the night I heard faint music coming from the end of the hall. Probably just Kevin listening to the radio to go to sleep, lots of people do it, I don't but so what. I thought nothing of it. The next night the routine was exactly the same except when I got up to go to the bathroom (Midpoint between the bedroom and the living room) I noted that the music was on when I went in and off when I left...until I got back to the living room. There I could hear it ever so faintly. This struck me as odd and more than little creepy but I thought it was just me not paying attention when I exited the bathroom or maybe there had been a lull in the music. Was it music? It occurred to me that I couldn't really make out what the sound really was therefore maybe that was why it was playing wacky shiz nuts with my mind …I listen close. It was music and not just that it was Billy Holiday music. Well now that was weird, Kevin can't stand old jazz. Jazz is my music! Still, it wasn't anything other than a surprise at what Kevin was listening to to sleep. Maybe he liked to "bore" himself into slumber-land…it could happen. At this point I still did not perceive anything truly bizarre. It should be noted that I did test what I could hear that night a bit and noted that it almost seemed this already soft music got softer then finally a mere hiss as I got closer to the bedroom plus it was al Billy Holiday. I should also note on these first two nights I was only on my meds and no alcohol. I think that's important.
I questioned Kevin about it the next day and not only did he deny venomently he wasn't listen to B.H. but in fact was listening to nothing at all. He, like myself, found it difficult to fall asleep to music and never did it…too distracting. I was sure he was fibbing but let the matter go.
That night the music came again and now I was a bit spooked I am sparing a lot of detail here but I went down the hall several times and by the time I at the bathroom there was no sound but the rustle of the trees outside. In fact it would stay away after each investigation until I became distracted by my reading then it would return. However as soon as I noted it and rose to investigate it would disintegrate into silence. In my frustration and fear I became angry and went into the kitchen and grabbed a beer from the fridge. The moment I cracked it open two things happened at once. First I heard my mothers voice call my name clear as a bell in my ear and I felt a hand on my cheek. I was so startled I screamed and dropped the beer. I t was over. No sound no anything, just crickets and the lonely wind. I was very shaken. I'll bet I stood there for fifteen minutes if it was an hour listening and watching.
As no sound came I downed what remained of my beer and took two more sleeping pills and then I put on a Billy Holiday CD and went to bed.
I drilled Kevin again the next day but his answer remained adamant. No radio, no TV no CD's. I didn't tell him about the voice, I knew it would sound crazy.
That night I heard once again the now eerie sound of Billy Holiday from down the hall but choose to ignore it. I took my pills and went to bed as I fell into that half wake half sleep realm of partial dreams I was started awake by the voice of my ex-wife (Joy) calling my name and when I sat up on the couch as the voice faded I heard the music very loud, very clear and very terrifyingly real.
I was able to drown it out with the TV and I stayed up the entire night and next morning doing so. Around 1pm I fell asleep Thanks to a healthy amount of booze and sleeping pills. Several times before I got the volume right I heard horse whispers that reminded me of my mothers speech right before her death when the cancer had basically consumed her. I also heard a chorus of crying, it was soft and made up of several voices but I heard it.
When I awoke it was late evening and Kevin was gone. I think he was off with his band and I didn't figure I would see him again until the wee hours so I decided to look through his room to find the culprit radio. I had a theory…some where at the back of the house was a clock radio going off at a soft volume .One soft enough not to wake Kevin but just loud enough for me to hear. It was positioned in such a way that I couldn't hear it well from the end of the hall but could just make out its sound in the living room (The only room I ever heard it in) acoustics are very weird…it could happen. If the music returned I would uncover this foolishness
The music came shortly after dark. Kevin was not home so I took off slowly down the hall. As I approached the door to his bedroom (Moms old room) it faded as I expected. I open the door and rapidly switched on the light, which promptly blew out. After I recovered from THIS mild startle I cut on the bedside lamp which was sufficiently bright to illuminate the room well.
I found nothing, absolutely nothing. Kevin didn't even have a radio of ANY kind in his bedroom. His alarm was one of those old fashioned bell ones and clearly not the source. Also the room was as silent as a grave (Pardon the pun).
As I shut the door leaving I heard my name again. Clear as the time by the fridge and felt, once again, a hand now on my shoulder. I didn't scream this time but I went stone cold. I marched down the hall but this time it didn't end there. I heard "things" all the way down the hall always to my sides or rear. Voices, car horns, mumbles, barking and crying. Some of the voices I recognized some I did not. I did start to scream and when I did all fell silent.
The next few hours where uneventful but that changed. I began to hear things, as I did in the hall but not with such veracity. They noises were coming in short, very short burst and as individual isolated sounds rather than all at once.
They Billy Holiday music softly played on but no longer filled me with the same fear now that I had heard the other sounds, hell it was kind of pleasant and comforting.
Some new sounds entered my nightmare around midnight (How appropriate eh?). Knockings on the door (No one there of course) and scratching on the windows other less identifiable sounds. I was in a near panic but it was far from over. By turning up both the radio and TV in conjunction with talking loudly to my self ("I am not hearing this and you guys had best split cause I know you ain't real motherfuckers" etc…) I was able to basically tune out the persistent audio hallucinations but I still could hear them slightly over the wall of sound I had created as a shield. To be honest I thought I had taken the final plunge into true deep insanity.
I also at that point started to "see things". Outside one of the front windows I saw someone staring in at me through the blinds when I open the door to confront my fears the "person" was gone…I never saw the image clearly but I saw something (In my wrecked mind at least). Several times while looking out the window I saw people in the trees and around my car about ten meters away from the house. When I went outside there was of course nothing but when I looked back up at the house I could make out the silhouette of some one sitting inside through the blinds. I almost didn't go back in but considering what I was experiencing I was afraid to drive away. I went back in. …You guessed it …no one home but the invisible and shy Billy Holiday fan at the back of the house.
This went on all night and as the sun rose it all but faded (Billy Holiday too) except for the occasional voice. However the voices I heard in the morning were cut short …just brief burst of loud but incomplete words. It all finally stopped around 11 am or so when Kevin returned. I didn't tell him the tale of my hell night (until very recently) I just went to bed, finally able to sleep at that point because I could hear HIM knocking around the house instead of the bizarre shit I had been hearing knocking around in my head.
I didn't sleep long however, I got up and made arrangements to move in with an old buddy that very afternoon. I have never had anything of the like happen again. Not a peep. That week scared the hell out of me but I know it was not real. If I was not so disinclined to believe in the supernatural I would swear I was haunted that night. But I am not a believer.
I mixed my meds with booze a few times after that to bad ends but never again did I have any such hallucinatory results (That is something It took me a while to learn not to do). So what was the X factor at Moms?
No spooks so what made the difference.
Psychological stress.
Booze + Meds + Moms House divorce + anniversary of Moms death +sleep depravation + guilt + massive imagination + traumatic stress t= Massive hallucinatory Effect. That week, that time, that place all came together in a very bad way. It wasn't a haunting no one but me ever experienced any thing weird there especially Kevin and he slept in Mothers old bed for Pete's sake …if anyone was supposed to see ghost it was Kevin.
It was so real to me then. However even as it was occurring I knew it was a psychological event not a paranormal one. Only because my faith in science and pragmatic reason is strong was I able to understand this. If I did believe in the afterlife, god or any sort of supernatural "anything" I would have sworn I was in a ghost story. All the circumstances and events were right. That statement leaves out an important factor one that goes beyond the idiocy of mixing mood medication and alcohol. Those factors made my mind weak and off balance add in the trauma affecting me (most likely) from being in not just in the house of my dead mother but the one in which I witnessed cancer consume her body and mind and you have the answer.
While nothing like that has ever since occurred and I no longer mix meds and booze I still get a little gun shy when I hear odd sounds so far the are sounds everyone else can hear too but I always ask just in case.
Life goes on… "scared but smarter"