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Until about six hours ago, I was absolutely sure that I was prepared to meet any kind of paranormal anomaly. Seriously, be it creature, spirit, hell, maybe even a demon: bring it on. I've done so much research about this stuff, and I know how to protect myself (or at least what several different cultures say will do the trick). I've even gone on a few graveyard runs, and that takes guts.
But, turns out, I'm scared shitless at the thought of a spirit actually confronting me.
It's been a rather long few days. This all started with a friend telling me that she has been haunted for most of her life by a young Jewish girl and describing to me her encounters with this spirit. Long story short, she point-blank asked me, "You know a lot about this stuff, don't you?", and I told her that yes, I did, and we talked for quite a while about the girl and what potentially could be going on. Now, through this whole conversation, I was fairly skeptical, mostly because this friend has a tendency to exaggerate situations every once in a while. I was really skeptical about the whole thing until she asked me that question, without provocation, with no previous knowledge at all that I spend a good deal of time reading up on this kind of stuff. At that point, I started to consider her story as a possibility; considering the factors of it and the age that she was when it all started, it sounded like a typical poltergeist encounter, except without the violence. Which was weird, but whatever. Other than texting
kandkl to joke that I'd found a potential spirit magnet-of-sorts, I let it go.
Later that evening, my friend went on to tell me that she thought something weird was going on at our work. She had been there one morning with a coworker, and they'd heard some strange rustling noises. She'd left to check it out, and he had stayed put. When she had returned, a lot of the furniture had apparently been moved around. Both of them swear up and down that the furniture had not been that way when they had arrived that morning. Now, the guy could be lying, or he could have done it while she was out of the room. But I know this guy, and I find it really hard to believe that he would move the stuff around, then lie about it for this long and be able to resist rubbing the joke in our faces. He's doing a really, really good acting job, if that's the case.
Once she mentioned this to me, I remembered several other things that I'd noticed during my time of working at this place that were strange. It became our joke that we had a poltergeist (despite the lack of any violent occurences; it was just a funny way of saying it). Nothing else of significance was discussed, but I just remember that at the end of the conversation, I was, again without provocation, suddenly very clear on what my personal theory was, regarding spirits, how they are formed, how they evolve and how they carry the potential to become something more powerful, like demons. (This might seem ridiculous, but I'd been mulling over this for several months, and it was finally brilliantly clear in my mind, and I was so happy to have it figured out! Then, of course, Ruby had to jump in the next day and inform Dean of this very thing and totally steal any originality from the moment. Stupid Ruby.)
Which brings us to two days later. Within the elapsed time, I hadn't spent any more time discussing any of this other than a little with
kandkl and a little with the guy who was there when the furniture was moved. I'd also been to work, and had been fine, noticing nothing out of the ordinary.
kandkl and I were out with our psychotic mother, and we started talking about witchcraft. I had to explain to my mother, like, fifteen times the difference between a person practicing Wicca and calling themselves a witch and an old-school, Middle-Ages witch. My mom is psychotic and not quite the brightest crayon. I basically ended up defining old-school, Middle-Ages witchcraft as serving the devil, which, to a point, it was. From there was launched the topic of demon possession. Good times. I tell you, there is nothing like debating the validity of the concept of demon possession with a woman who is so Lutheran it's fucking painful. Luther himself claims he dealt hands-on with Satan, but she can't believe it's even a possibility. The point of all of this is to say that I asserted that for a person to be possessed by a demon, he or she needs to be open to possession, however subconsciously. This goes against SPN's theology, I realize, but it's what I believe to be true. (Side note: What scares me about this is that, in theory, anyone who "opens" their mind enough to explore this realm of possibility, this realm of demons and spirits, is potentially open to possession.)
Later that night,
kandkl and I were in my bedroom; she was laying on my bed and my kitten was attacking her face. (He is fittingly named "Cujo".) So I dragged out my camera to take a picture. I turned it on, and the screen was doing this weird, scrolling thing. Remember when VHS tapes would get those lines scrolling down the screen, and you'd have to mess with the tracking? That was what it looked like, but a lot of lines,and the background color of the screen was that blackish green color. I said, "Uh,
kandkl ? It's being weird..." and all the while trying really, really hard not to jump to the childish conclusion that this was something supernatural. I flipped the camera and showed her the screen, to which she said, "That's...kind of paranormal." Great. As I'm turning it back towards me (still determined as fuck to not let this get to me), the screen flashes to a still image.
kandkl saw the screen change but didn't see what it changed to.
I apparently have ninja reflexes, because I saw the screen change, I saw the still image, I barely processed that it was a still image that I DIDN'T TAKE, and suddenly I was making a conscious decision not to see what was in the image and I turned the thing off. Like, lightning fast. Even now, I can see parts of the picture in my head but I don't. want. to. know. And, really, that should have been my first clue that I really wasn't as ready for this stuff as I thought I was.
(
kandkl got pretty excited and wanted to know what had happened, but since we were going to bed, I didn't tell here because I didn't want to freak her out. I did, however, break out the salt. Too bad Cujo totally destroyed the line around my window.)
This brings us to today. I should mention that this morning, I turned the camera back on and it was completely normal. Nothing weird happend to me all day, and I didn't spend much time thinking about the previous night, or demons, or anything related to SPN other than the wonder that is Jensen Ackles. :P Fangirl, right here. However, I was very aware that ever since that night with my friend, things had been...getting strange, and while a large part of that could very well be attributed to me overthinking things or being over-sensitive to them, I am a fairly objective person, and some of this stuff I know was not in my head. I went to work with this in mind and actually kind of hoped to run into some stuff. My operating theory at the time was that perhaps, like demon possession, a person has to be open to the paranormal on even just a subconscious field to experience it, or at least the subtleties of it.
At work, nothing concrete happened for about an hour, other than just weird feelings, which again can be attributed to me being a huge bundle of nerves. I did talk to KandKL at one point and told her that very thing, and we left it at that. After that, different things started happening that were still easy to explain away, but they were becoming more concrete: doors shutting for no reason (but it could have just been residual momentum from someone walking past them, or something), several lightbulbs flickering and going out (could have just been their time, but all within minutes of each other?). There were a couple of times within the next hour that when I would stand in a certain spot, my left forearm would feel slightly cold and sticky, like when you have leftover gel on your hands after you put it in your hair. It was strange.
I need to disclaim myself once again by saying that I am fairly objective, and I operate in a nearly constant state of denial, and I was not praying that this stuff would happen to me. While I'm aware that some of it was brought on by hypersensitivity and that I probably overanalyzed that portion, the rest, I feel, cannot as easily be discounted.
I had to go to the bathroom. I had to, and I didn't want to because I didn't want to be locked in room that was cold and had a mirror and a vent and felt so much like it belonged in an SPN episode. I didn't want to go in there because I was sure something would happen, most likely in my imagination, but, you know, wasn't going to pee my pants, so I bucked up and went in and did my thing. And it went fine. I laughed at myself internally the whole time and called myself crazy for thinking anything could possibly happen since, clearly, nothing was happening. It was fun, really. But then I stood up, pulled up my pants, and suddenly the light started flickering. And I'm not talking flickering like a bug hit it, or like a bulb is about to go out. I'm talking flickering like full-on there's-a-demon-in-the-motherfucking-room flickering. Simultaneously, this incredibly horrid, noxious smell hit me, and, not to go too Dean Winchester, but it totally smelled like ass. I've never smelled anything like it. And no, it wasn't me.
Totally freaked. Zipped up my pants, glanced in the mirror, didn't see anything but my freaked-out face and decided that I really didn't want to see anything else and totally booked it out of there. There were other sinks without mirrors in front of them that I could use, I was out.
At this point I sent
kandkl a text saying "I wish I had either an EMF meter or a Winchester here!"
After all of this, I pretty much stopped paying attention. I was so weirded out, and I didn't want to think that something was happening that wasn't, so I just let it go. Other stuff happened, yeah, but it wasn't viewed or felt without bias, so I won't present it here. But
After the going-ons in the bathroom, it hit me so hard that I was clearly not ready for a face-to-face encounter with a spirit, harmless or no. And it kind of bummed me out, because after all of this time, all of this reading and noting and theorizing about and essay-ing about this stuff, I really thought I could handle it, much like I've always been sure that I would handle being held up at gunpoint like a pro. I'd probably laugh in the guy's face. But a spirit, apparently, is too much for me to handle. And it's not even the spirit itself that is the problem; it's the concept of the spirit that's getting me.
Reality check, I guess. But out of all of it comes this theory that is so crystal-clear in my head now, that a person has to be open to this stuff in order to experience it. I mean, sure, if a frying pan flies through the air and hits you on the head, you experience it, but you didn't experience all of the little stuff that came before that. A spirit doesn't just start out doing that kind of stuff. There are little things, things that are usually explained away as coincidence or "nothing" and consequently get overlooked.
I just don't know how a person gets to the correct level of openness. Because I do think that a person can look too hard for the paranormal. I do think that there is something different about a person who this kind of stuff just happens to, versus a parapsychologist who is out looking for it to happen and hoping that it will happen to them or someone standing next to them.
So as much as I have some new answers, I have twice as many questions now after all of this. The plan for tomorrow is to head down to a coffeeshop/lunch place that I haven't been to in awhile. I've had some weird stuff happen to me there before; if my theory is correct, and I can manage to maintain the same objective openness as I had earlier today, maybe I'll see something. Or hear something.
Or smell something.
But, turns out, I'm scared shitless at the thought of a spirit actually confronting me.
It's been a rather long few days. This all started with a friend telling me that she has been haunted for most of her life by a young Jewish girl and describing to me her encounters with this spirit. Long story short, she point-blank asked me, "You know a lot about this stuff, don't you?", and I told her that yes, I did, and we talked for quite a while about the girl and what potentially could be going on. Now, through this whole conversation, I was fairly skeptical, mostly because this friend has a tendency to exaggerate situations every once in a while. I was really skeptical about the whole thing until she asked me that question, without provocation, with no previous knowledge at all that I spend a good deal of time reading up on this kind of stuff. At that point, I started to consider her story as a possibility; considering the factors of it and the age that she was when it all started, it sounded like a typical poltergeist encounter, except without the violence. Which was weird, but whatever. Other than texting
kandkl to joke that I'd found a potential spirit magnet-of-sorts, I let it go.
Later that evening, my friend went on to tell me that she thought something weird was going on at our work. She had been there one morning with a coworker, and they'd heard some strange rustling noises. She'd left to check it out, and he had stayed put. When she had returned, a lot of the furniture had apparently been moved around. Both of them swear up and down that the furniture had not been that way when they had arrived that morning. Now, the guy could be lying, or he could have done it while she was out of the room. But I know this guy, and I find it really hard to believe that he would move the stuff around, then lie about it for this long and be able to resist rubbing the joke in our faces. He's doing a really, really good acting job, if that's the case.
Once she mentioned this to me, I remembered several other things that I'd noticed during my time of working at this place that were strange. It became our joke that we had a poltergeist (despite the lack of any violent occurences; it was just a funny way of saying it). Nothing else of significance was discussed, but I just remember that at the end of the conversation, I was, again without provocation, suddenly very clear on what my personal theory was, regarding spirits, how they are formed, how they evolve and how they carry the potential to become something more powerful, like demons. (This might seem ridiculous, but I'd been mulling over this for several months, and it was finally brilliantly clear in my mind, and I was so happy to have it figured out! Then, of course, Ruby had to jump in the next day and inform Dean of this very thing and totally steal any originality from the moment. Stupid Ruby.)
Which brings us to two days later. Within the elapsed time, I hadn't spent any more time discussing any of this other than a little with
kandkl and a little with the guy who was there when the furniture was moved. I'd also been to work, and had been fine, noticing nothing out of the ordinary.
kandkl and I were out with our psychotic mother, and we started talking about witchcraft. I had to explain to my mother, like, fifteen times the difference between a person practicing Wicca and calling themselves a witch and an old-school, Middle-Ages witch. My mom is psychotic and not quite the brightest crayon. I basically ended up defining old-school, Middle-Ages witchcraft as serving the devil, which, to a point, it was. From there was launched the topic of demon possession. Good times. I tell you, there is nothing like debating the validity of the concept of demon possession with a woman who is so Lutheran it's fucking painful. Luther himself claims he dealt hands-on with Satan, but she can't believe it's even a possibility. The point of all of this is to say that I asserted that for a person to be possessed by a demon, he or she needs to be open to possession, however subconsciously. This goes against SPN's theology, I realize, but it's what I believe to be true. (Side note: What scares me about this is that, in theory, anyone who "opens" their mind enough to explore this realm of possibility, this realm of demons and spirits, is potentially open to possession.)
Later that night,
kandkl and I were in my bedroom; she was laying on my bed and my kitten was attacking her face. (He is fittingly named "Cujo".) So I dragged out my camera to take a picture. I turned it on, and the screen was doing this weird, scrolling thing. Remember when VHS tapes would get those lines scrolling down the screen, and you'd have to mess with the tracking? That was what it looked like, but a lot of lines,and the background color of the screen was that blackish green color. I said, "Uh,
kandkl ? It's being weird..." and all the while trying really, really hard not to jump to the childish conclusion that this was something supernatural. I flipped the camera and showed her the screen, to which she said, "That's...kind of paranormal." Great. As I'm turning it back towards me (still determined as fuck to not let this get to me), the screen flashes to a still image.
kandkl saw the screen change but didn't see what it changed to.
I apparently have ninja reflexes, because I saw the screen change, I saw the still image, I barely processed that it was a still image that I DIDN'T TAKE, and suddenly I was making a conscious decision not to see what was in the image and I turned the thing off. Like, lightning fast. Even now, I can see parts of the picture in my head but I don't. want. to. know. And, really, that should have been my first clue that I really wasn't as ready for this stuff as I thought I was.
(
kandkl got pretty excited and wanted to know what had happened, but since we were going to bed, I didn't tell here because I didn't want to freak her out. I did, however, break out the salt. Too bad Cujo totally destroyed the line around my window.)
This brings us to today. I should mention that this morning, I turned the camera back on and it was completely normal. Nothing weird happend to me all day, and I didn't spend much time thinking about the previous night, or demons, or anything related to SPN other than the wonder that is Jensen Ackles. :P Fangirl, right here. However, I was very aware that ever since that night with my friend, things had been...getting strange, and while a large part of that could very well be attributed to me overthinking things or being over-sensitive to them, I am a fairly objective person, and some of this stuff I know was not in my head. I went to work with this in mind and actually kind of hoped to run into some stuff. My operating theory at the time was that perhaps, like demon possession, a person has to be open to the paranormal on even just a subconscious field to experience it, or at least the subtleties of it.
At work, nothing concrete happened for about an hour, other than just weird feelings, which again can be attributed to me being a huge bundle of nerves. I did talk to KandKL at one point and told her that very thing, and we left it at that. After that, different things started happening that were still easy to explain away, but they were becoming more concrete: doors shutting for no reason (but it could have just been residual momentum from someone walking past them, or something), several lightbulbs flickering and going out (could have just been their time, but all within minutes of each other?). There were a couple of times within the next hour that when I would stand in a certain spot, my left forearm would feel slightly cold and sticky, like when you have leftover gel on your hands after you put it in your hair. It was strange.
I need to disclaim myself once again by saying that I am fairly objective, and I operate in a nearly constant state of denial, and I was not praying that this stuff would happen to me. While I'm aware that some of it was brought on by hypersensitivity and that I probably overanalyzed that portion, the rest, I feel, cannot as easily be discounted.
I had to go to the bathroom. I had to, and I didn't want to because I didn't want to be locked in room that was cold and had a mirror and a vent and felt so much like it belonged in an SPN episode. I didn't want to go in there because I was sure something would happen, most likely in my imagination, but, you know, wasn't going to pee my pants, so I bucked up and went in and did my thing. And it went fine. I laughed at myself internally the whole time and called myself crazy for thinking anything could possibly happen since, clearly, nothing was happening. It was fun, really. But then I stood up, pulled up my pants, and suddenly the light started flickering. And I'm not talking flickering like a bug hit it, or like a bulb is about to go out. I'm talking flickering like full-on there's-a-demon-in-the-motherfucking-room flickering. Simultaneously, this incredibly horrid, noxious smell hit me, and, not to go too Dean Winchester, but it totally smelled like ass. I've never smelled anything like it. And no, it wasn't me.
Totally freaked. Zipped up my pants, glanced in the mirror, didn't see anything but my freaked-out face and decided that I really didn't want to see anything else and totally booked it out of there. There were other sinks without mirrors in front of them that I could use, I was out.
At this point I sent
kandkl a text saying "I wish I had either an EMF meter or a Winchester here!"
After all of this, I pretty much stopped paying attention. I was so weirded out, and I didn't want to think that something was happening that wasn't, so I just let it go. Other stuff happened, yeah, but it wasn't viewed or felt without bias, so I won't present it here. But
After the going-ons in the bathroom, it hit me so hard that I was clearly not ready for a face-to-face encounter with a spirit, harmless or no. And it kind of bummed me out, because after all of this time, all of this reading and noting and theorizing about and essay-ing about this stuff, I really thought I could handle it, much like I've always been sure that I would handle being held up at gunpoint like a pro. I'd probably laugh in the guy's face. But a spirit, apparently, is too much for me to handle. And it's not even the spirit itself that is the problem; it's the concept of the spirit that's getting me.
Reality check, I guess. But out of all of it comes this theory that is so crystal-clear in my head now, that a person has to be open to this stuff in order to experience it. I mean, sure, if a frying pan flies through the air and hits you on the head, you experience it, but you didn't experience all of the little stuff that came before that. A spirit doesn't just start out doing that kind of stuff. There are little things, things that are usually explained away as coincidence or "nothing" and consequently get overlooked.
I just don't know how a person gets to the correct level of openness. Because I do think that a person can look too hard for the paranormal. I do think that there is something different about a person who this kind of stuff just happens to, versus a parapsychologist who is out looking for it to happen and hoping that it will happen to them or someone standing next to them.
So as much as I have some new answers, I have twice as many questions now after all of this. The plan for tomorrow is to head down to a coffeeshop/lunch place that I haven't been to in awhile. I've had some weird stuff happen to me there before; if my theory is correct, and I can manage to maintain the same objective openness as I had earlier today, maybe I'll see something. Or hear something.
Or smell something.