Raising the Bar on the Freak Scale

Okee-dokles, all of you who replied so positively to my freakshow post that I'm a bit less timid about sharing the other half of my ghostly experiences. I must warn you though: if my previous post didn't leave you a bit leery of my mental stability, this one just might!

So here it is...*ahem*...I've conversed with the deceased in my dreams. Five times to be exact. Three times it was family, twice it was friends who've passed. Given that today and tomorrow mark anniversaries of painful and trying moments in my family's life, I'll share two of my experiences.**

The first time I ever spoke with someone who passed, it was my dad. I don't remember how old I was, but I think it was in my early 20s. I dreamt I was driving down Townline Road with him in his old black truck, a 1979 Ford F150. It was originally maroon but in true redneck fashion he, my uncle and my grandpap painted it black with black tractor paint. Yeah. Mom and I christened it the Black Beauty at that point. What else could you call it without hurting the guy's feelings? He was damn proud of that truck. We lived in a small town, he worked blue collar jobs, but it was a farm truck if ever I saw one. The seats were shot: springs were poking through, the stuffing was falling out, there was a perpetual layer of grime on it. He bought a seat cover but it, too, tore where the springs were. The floor was always covered in dirt road dust. It was dirty, but it was his and far be it from us to make fun of it.

I digress. We were driving down the road and in between us was our dog, Buffy. Buffy, a white terrier-poodle mix, passed away when I was 10. I asked him what it was like, you know, being dead. He told me he was happy, that he had Boo (Buffy) with him, and that he saw Grandma and Grandpap too. Then I woke up. I woke up with a certainty that I had, in fact, spoken to my dad.

I've heard and read that the dead do visit us in our dreams because it's one medium our brains can't control. As children, our minds have no barriers - barriers that are built as time wears on, society tells us that ghosts don't exist, you can't see or communicate with people after they die. I don't believe that's true. I believe that if you keep your mind and eyes and hearts open that they'll come to you in any way they can. In my case, it happens to be in my sleep. Occasionally, I'll see an unexplainable flash of light or something move just outside my peripheral vision and when I look there's nothing there. I know that's probably my dad or Aunt Joann. Aunt Joann whole-heartedly believed in angels and given the life she lead, and the big ol' heart and spirit she had, she's most definitely earned her wings.

The other dream I had, I was at a picnic at some random park. I had both of my kids with me, as well as my husband. Off in the distance, I saw my grandma. I walked up to her and saw that she was crying. Someone asked her why she was crying, and as if I wasn't there, she said, "I'm never going to see my great-grandchildren grow up, I'll never get to meet them."

This hit home not only because I'd just had my second child, but three of my cousins had recently had kids too. She'd met her first few great-grandchildren, the ones who live up in New York. But us younger kids, we all had our kids 4+ years after grandma passed away. There are a lot of little pieces of her family running around that she never got to meet and although I knew that was a possibility growing up, I'd never thought about it until I had Beth.

So please don't think me a freakshow! I don't tell many people this side of my life because, quite honestly, it's weird and as if I don't have enough self-esteem issues, I don't need another reason to think people don't like me. Hell, it freaks me out when it happens!

Anybody want to bear their weirdness now? Please?

**If you're family and want to hear the other experiences, email me and I'd be glad to share them!

I Always Knew I Was A Little...Off...

I'm coming out of the closet. I believe in ghosts. You know, spirits, the afterlife, poltergeists, the whole nine yards. I'm forever looking for orbs in pictures, I watch every show I can get my hands on regarding paranormal things, I used to watch Sylvia Browne on Montel until I decided she's a whack job. The things she "sees" are very vague and very easy to construe as true for just about anyone. My current favorite shows are Paranormal State, Ghost Hunters, and although my husband protests heavily and calls it the "ohshit-ohcrap-ohf***-ohno show," I like Most Haunted.

Now, in the name of all us freakshows spiritually attuned people, I shall raise the freak flag and fly it proudly as I share my ghost stories.



Two of my stories are from when I was in high school. I was driving to Meadville one night and as I'm coming up route 18 into Harmonsburg I drove past a long stretch of corn field that tends to get kind of foggy in the spring and summer. It was one of those foggy nights and as I came to a clearing in the fog, a black transclucent shadow ran across the road and disappeared into the woods on the other side of the road.

The second story is the one that freaked me out the most of all my ghost stories and to this day, when I'm in my mom's house, leaves me a bit nervous in her upstairs bathroom. I forget how old I was, but I had gone to the bathroom in the middle of the night. The bathroom was at the back of the house and my room was at the opposite end of the hallway at the front of the house. It's probably all of six or seven steps from bathroom to bedroom but in the dark, at night, it seems like a mile.

So I padded from my dark bedroom, down the dark hallway, into the dark bathroom. I flipped on the light, blinding myself, did my thing and got up to go back to bed. I opened the door and right before I turned off the bathroom light, a short (shorter than me and I'm 5'4"), grayish-black translucent shadow walked past me into the bathroom. I high-tailed it back to my bed and did my damnedest to go back to sleep! I talked about it with my mom the next morning and although she denies to this day that she believes in ghosts, she says it could have been her mom since when she passed away, she was all of about 4'11". *shrug*

Needless to say, after that, you made sure you left a bedroom light on before you went to the bathroom!

Then I saw few to no ghosts for years. However, a couple of weeks ago, I was awake with the baby around 1 a.m. I was trying to rock him back to sleep and since we were sleeping downstairs (it was hot as hell and it's cooler in our living room), I was facing our balcony and my son was facing over my shoulder into the kitchen. Out of complete nowhere something tapped me on the back. Before I had time to process the abnormality and fear factor of that, my son - who was wide awake - started cooing and scrambling up my front side to go over my shoulder, as if he saw someone there that he wanted to have holding him. Very weird.

I'll save the really creepy stuff for a few years down the road when I'm more comfortable with you all. We just met - don't want to let all my cats out of the bag. *wink*