Haunted Dreams

I’ve always had incredibly vivd dreams.  My mom always says it’s because of my active writer’s imagination. I guess that’s it, because I know better than to eat anything right before I go to bed.  Some of these dreams are a lot of fun, some are incredibly stressful, and some are just downright creepy.  Last night, I had one of the creepy ones.

It began with a friend of mine (in my dream only.  I don’t actually know this girl.  I don’t even remember her name) telling me that she and her fiancé were going to stay in this old, historic bed and breakfast and that she was terrified.  She said that they’d stayed there before and that she had been terrorized by what she thought was a demon in her room.

Now, it just so happens that in my dream, I was dating Zak Bagans (the lead investigator of Ghost Adventures… Who, you know, I honestly wouldn’t mind dating… He’s kind of hot… Anyway, I’m guessing this was all in my head because I was working on Cemetery Tours 3 last night till like, five in the morning).  Together, we agreed that we would go spend the night in this bed and breakfast to see if we could find out exactly what was going on.

The bed and breakfast itself was really cool and really creepy.  We were staying on the second or third floor, and it had old, fancy burgundy rugs lining the hallway and that overall sensation of a building that has stood for a very long time and has kept more secrets than most of us living can remember. My friend asked if she could spend the night in my room.  Honestly, I didn’t really want her to because I’m really scared of the idea of demonic entities, but I agreed anyway.

I had packed a crucifix, so I made sure to set that on the night stand as we were preparing for bed.  I said a couple of prayers, hoping they would protect the room and keep any unwanted spirits out.  But my friend was still in a panic.  She was convinced that this spirit was going to come for her just as soon as the lights went out.  I tried to comfort her, saying that the building was old, it made a lot of creaking noises, the foundation shifted…  It could very well all be in her mind.  But she wasn’t convinced.

Finally, we turned out the lights and settled into bed.  I was a little nervous, but I kept reminding myself that I grew up in a haunted house (it’s true) and that I’d always been able to sleep just fine.  But then, I heard footsteps walking across the room.  I glanced up and saw the reflection of a man’s silhouette on the television screen.  At first, I really thought it was my friend’s fiancé, so I sat up and looked around and realized that we were still alone.

Freaked out, I ran out into the hallway (yes, I totally abandoned my friend) and looked around for a sign of anyone who could have been the source of those footsteps.  There was no one.  However, as I was standing alone in the hall, some invisible presence rushed up behind me and growled in my ear.  I screamed bloody murder and ran down the hall to Zak’s room (wow, this is beginning to sound an awful lot like a fanfiction).  By the way, I have no idea why he left us girls alone to fight off a demon all by ourselves.  What a terrible boyfriend.

Anyway, I woke him up and told him about what had happened.  He went out into the hall to investigate while I stayed in his room like the scaredy-cat that I totally am.  Meanwhile, my friend joined me and I apologized for leaving her, but we both agreed we were not going back to that room.

Moments later, her fiancé came to get us.  He said that they’d discovered a loose panel in the wall outside of our bedroom.  My friend and I anxiously tip-toed back down the hall to where Zak and he had plied the panel off to reveal an old, dusty, wooden coffin.  It was disgusting and horrific, but I was totally intrigued.  No wonder that room was so haunted.  I told them that we should probably call the police or the manager or something before we went tearing into this creepy wooden box, but of course, no one listened to me.  Even in my own dream, I can’t make people listen to me.

They opened up the box to reveal, not the corpse of a person, but of a mangled, hairy beast, with the body of a jackal and the head of a boar.  I know where that came from.  In The Omen, Damian, the devil’s son, is born from the womb of a jackal.  By that point, I was absolutely done with everything having to do with that bed and breakfast.  I begged them not to mess with the body, to just leave it there and let professionals come in and deal with it, but again, no one listened to me.

The dream ended with the body being destroyed and the four of us hoping that would be the end of it.  But right before I woke up, my friend found a note scribbled on an old piece of parchment.  All the note said was, Don’t you remember me?

So yeah, that was my dream last night.  Creepy as all hell.  But it left me totally inspired to keep working on Cemetery Tours 3, so that’s a good thing.

In other news, in the midst of editing horse pictures and playing outside, I’ve totally been overlooking all the work I really need to be doing.  For example, I need to revise my short story for the Lurking in the Deep anthology (Cover release on April 2!!!).  I still have an interview with Luke Rainer to write.  I have a friend’s book to edit.  Not to mention, it’s almost April!  Boy Band will be released in less than a month!  In like, 22 days!  I’m so excited!  But I need to get a few more teasers out and get to work formatting the eBooks.  It will all happen.  I just need to get organized.  Make a list.  That’s always my go-to strategy.  Make a to-do list.

That being said, I should probably go get started.  Happy Tuesday, everyone!

Scary Stories

My sister and her friends love telling scary stories.  They love being afraid.  They’re like fear masochists or something.  Her friend, Emily, is just about the most demented person I’ve ever met.  Case in point, last year, she and my sister were on a school trip to New York.  They bought a teddy bear, ripped off its arms and head, stuck the bear head on a pen, stuck the pen in a water bottle, and left the “sacrifice” in the room for the poor hotel staff to find.

My sister wants me to add in this disclaimer: Emily is a good Catholic girl.  She even has her own Catholic Saint name.  But you can be a good Catholic girl and still be demented.

Anyway, last night, they were hanging out with the third musketeer of their little group, Kenzie, and, as usual, telling scary stories.  Emily told two exceptionally frightening tales, one about her friend who is haunted by a demon who takes the form of a little boy with no eyes and long, creepy fingers (that one about brought me to tears), and the other, about a teacher that one of her friends had had and one of his students, a young girl named Kimberly.

Upon further research, it turns out the Kimberly story is actually something of a legend.  It’s a story that Ed Hermanski has been telling his students for at least 15 years or so, and to this day, he claims it to be true.  The story takes a while to listen to, but every spine-chilling moment is pretty worth it.

http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/53420840/kimberlystory.mp3

There’s also a news article written about Hermanski and his famous tale.

http://tucsoncitizen.com/morgue/2007/10/29/67157-chandler-teacher-tells-chilling-story-to-students/

Well, after listening to almost the entire thing (my sister told me that the last few minutes were nothing important… just the weird things that happened every time after Mr. Hermanski told the story), my sister and I had a long talk about demons, God, Christ, religious stuff etc.  Needless to say, we both slept with crosses next to our beds last night.

This morning, I woke up, not really thinking too much about either story.  I got up, went about my morning routine, stepped out to run a few errands, and came back home.  Not five minutes after I walked in the door, I heard a loud POP out behind our house and the power failed.  I waited, thinking it might come back on after a while, but it didn’t, so I called the power company.  They confirmed there was a power outage (shocking, I know) and assured me that the power would be back on sometime later on in the day (clearly, as I am posting this, it is back on now). After I got off the phone with them, I went out again to meet a friend for brunch.

By the time I returned home, the power was back on.  My sister was up and alert.

“Yay, the power’s back!” I said.  My sister just looked at me.

“Were we the only house that lost power?” she asked.

“I don’t know.  I know the neighbors across the street still had theirs because their porch lights were still on, but I don’t know about the ones on our side of the street.”

My sister remained silent for a brief moment before she said, “That’s what happened to that teacher after he told the Kimberly story.”

“What?”

“He lost power.  You know how I said that the rest of the recording was just a bunch of weird stuff that happened to him after he told the story?  It was that the day after he told it, his power went out.”

Now, we live in an old house.  Power outages are far from unheard of.  But today is not particularly windy or rainy or snowy.  In fact, the weather is quite pleasant.  I’m not saying that a random power outage today is impossible, but it is kind of a strange coincidence that the day after my sister brings this actually quite disturbing story home, we experience the same strange phenomenon as the man who told the tale originally.

I’m hoping that we won’t be seeing or hearing any more of Kimberly, especially since I’m spreading the story around even more so.  I like to think that, since this is a Christian household, we’re pretty protected from things that go bump in the night.  But when it all comes down to it, I guess you never really know.

*EDIT* December 28, 2013

It happened again.  The power went out AGAIN this morning.  I am so done telling this story.