To start this one, I need a bit of back story. I've always had a bit of a 6th sense. Not like in the movies, where everything is plain as day, just the ability to feel presences, hear and smell details that are not so obvious, but that others will notice when I point them out, and sometimes see auras or what I think of as energy disturbances. Sometimes I seem to pick up on "leftovers," energy or strong emotions that are attached to areas or objects. Once in a while, I'll have a full-on "psychic" experience, where I get an image, or a memory, or some other information that is hanging around waiting for someone susceptible to show up and feel it.
I've never been entirely comfortable with this, and have avoided messing too much with "the other side." I don't seek things out. If things find me, I do what I have to do to handle and extract myself from the situation, and try to have no more involvement than that, with the exception, at Samhain, of honoring those of my loved ones who have crossed over, or of helping friends handle and protect themselves from unwanted "other side" experiences that they have had.
In 1996, I moved in with a bunch of friends. When I say a bunch, I mean 7 of us all combining our resources together to rent a house. We had 1 kitchen, 1 bathroom, 3 guys 4 gals, a straight couple, a 1 -straight-1-bi couple, a lesbian couple, and a single gay man all living together. It was a beautiful disaster. We'd have made a great reality show.
The lesbians were into ghost hunting. My then fiance and I were practicing Wiccans. For some reason, the girls thought this should translate into a desire on my part to go ghost hunting with them.
It didn't. I refused. So, one day, my sweet buddies decided to take me out for fast food, then pull a half-bait-and-switch (we actually did get food) and take me to reputedly haunted places as kind of a psychic sensor without even giving me a heads-up. I was not a happy camper.
"This isn't the way home. Where are we going?"
I look around at my housemates. My fiance is in the front with SL & DK, with SL doing the driving. I'm in the middle of the back seat, between JD & TG, having just finished a fast food feast. I'm in the middle because it's the only way for me to have enough leg room. JD & TG are razzing me about my insanely huge appetite and how it doesn't go with my skinny ass. They're loud and funny, and I've been enjoying the camaraderie until this moment, when I realize they're taking me somewhere other than where they said we were going to go.
TG says, "This is the only way we could think of to get you out."
I admit, I've been cooped up since the accident, but I've also been in a lot of pain, and it's cold outside. I just recently found out that the reason my recovery from a simple whiplash injury has been so slow is that I have fibromyalgia.
ST pulls over in front of one of the area's more broken down farms. It's kind of odd in the Northwest Ohio area. Driving through the rural areas, you'll see everything ranging from state of the art to completely abandoned. This one looks abandoned. It's overgrown with weeds and brush, the buildings decaying, equipment sitting unused and rusted beside the slowly falling barn. Something about this place gives me the willies, and I shiver involuntarily.
"Everything ok? Why are we here? Is there something wrong with the car?"
The girls exchange a secretive smile. JD opens her door, gets out of the car, and before I can protest, grabs my arm and pulls me out too. TG is getting out on the other side. Everyone is exiting the vehicle. At this point, even my fiance is asking why we're here. We don't have a flat tire, and there were no funny noises from the motor.
I'm feeling a super-sized dose of get-the-hell-out-of-here from the barn. The energy here nauseates me. I feel the oddest sense of dread, like a kid who has been told "wait 'till your father gets home" and is anticipating far, far worse than just the lectures I had when I was a kid. I am shaking, fighting tears, and my back feels like it's covered in bee stings. I look around. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the car.
My fiance sees me losing the color in my face, shaking, and looking very upset. He is immediately right next to me, asking why we've stopped here and if I'm all right. I say we should leave, now. JD & TG start to look less sure of themselves, and ask what I'm "seeing."
I'm not seeing anything, but I'm feeling way too much. I try to push it away, mentally focusing on putting a divide between myself and the residual energy or feelings of this area. I don't know what's hitting me, but it feels totally awful. I use a technique I've learned in my Wicca studies with my fiance and some other people we practice with, drawing lines of strong, pure, positive energy around myself and spinning them into a hard, egg-shaped shell. That strongly mutes the "psychic" ambiance in my personal space, allowing me to take a more objective, uninfluenced look at what just hit me. In this case, the biggest relief I got was that my back felt better.
Something bad happened here, not just once, but over and over, to someone who was powerless to avoid it. I'm not skilled or practiced enough to be able to tell exactly what it was, because I don't practice this. I avoid this. I'm pissed as hell that they have done this to me. I don't want to be here. I told them that. Things like this are why.
I suspect that I'm feeling the residuals from a situation of serious abuse, but I can't feel how old it is, or whether it's attached to the building, or the property. It could have been anything; animal abuse, a family thing, an employer thing, a cruel slave owner, or mistreatment of native people by white immigrants. The only direction I have is the feeling that the origin of the dread is young and male.
I find myself unable to keep it to myself, and end up explaining that to the girls. They're eating it up like it's some kind of entertainment, but I'm not. Even with my shield, I feel like I'm going to heave on the lawn if we don't get out of here.
My fiance can see that I'm extremely uncomfortable with being here. He tells me he'll protect me, and he steps right up next to me, puts his arm around me, and creates the same kind of shield I just did. With him standing there, the residue is not getting through as easily, and I feel better, but I still really, really want to leave.
The girls ask if I can see anything. I'm looking at the barn, but there's no shadow or figure that doesn't belong there. The creepiest thing about the place, I tell them, is that rope hanging from the ceiling which can be seen through the sagging, half-open doors.
Both girls immediately give me the hairy eyeball. I'm confused until my fiance tells me that the barn isn't falling apart, the doors are shut tight, and there's no rope that any of the rest of them can see. When he says that, I'm finally able to see through the residue of the past, as the rot, rust, and decay just sort of slowly fade away. First, I can see through everything that isn't there, then it rapidly increases in transparency until it's gone. The house isn't the same house. It's not quite in the same spot, is made of wood instead of bricks, and is bigger. The barn is in the same spot, but it's taller, in good shape, and closed up tight. There's no farm equipment sitting out. The place is deserted, but not like before.
At that moment, the air of the place changes for me. There's a sense of the dreaded moment rapidly approaching, and I physically hear someone stomping across a hardwood floor in heavy boots. The far off sound of a deep, inhuman growl makes me jump out of my skin. It almost sounds more like someone dragging something heavy across a rough surface than a voice. I cover my ears with my hands. Whatever I'm feeling nearby wasn't here before, and it's malevolent. We could be in serious danger.
JD & TG both pepper me with questions. "What is it? What do you hear? Do you see something? Is there a ghost?"
At this point, SL & DK, both of whom have just been kind of watching, are starting to get really creeped out. If I'm going to convince anyone to leave, it'll probably be them, because JD & TG are too curious, and my fiance is bent on being a knight in shining armor. I look at DK and say, "We have to move, now. It's pissed, and it knows we're here. We have to go."
That creeps her out like nobody's business, and she starts pestering SL to get back into the car and drive away. I push my fiance toward the car and tell him to get in, at the same time shoving myself away from him. I climb into the back seat. SL agrees to leave, not willing to admit it's because he's got the heebie-jeebies, but quite able to admit that DK's emotional state is a concern. JD & TG reluctantly agree to go. As we all pile in and close the doors, I'm hit with a sense of urgency, my mind picturing SL stomping the gas and shooting forward like a race car. Something is approaching the vehicle.
SL turns the key. The car turns over, but doesn't start. He cusses a blue streak, pushing the pedal to the floor once, letting it up, and trying again. I hear pounding on the ground outside, turn to look, and see a dark shadow coming out of the barn. It looks like a big black cloud of smoke, moving slowly across the yard toward the car. I hear SL flat out yell at his car to start, still swearing like mad. My fiance puts his hands on the dashboard, closes his eyes, and quietly starts singing an elemental fire chant we sometimes use in the circle. SL turns the key, and the engine roars to life as that smokey cloud crosses the drainage ditch and reaches the car. The whole vehicle rocks sideways like something slammed into it. SL floors it and peels out of there, speeding up the road for quite a distance before slowing down. No one says a word until we get home, where I remind them "I don't go ghost hunting!" before heading up to my & my fiance's room to defrag with some music.
The actual experience was almost identical to the dream, until the last paragraph. I remember getting into the car, and SL having some difficulty starting it, but we actually got out of there without that black cloud getting anywhere near us. We drove around for awhile, hung out by a reservoir, and had a second experience I also wasn't happy about. I ended up telling the girls off a little, but I didn't wander off to sulk in my room when we got home. We sat around playing video games, instead. The memory of my fiance using the fire elemental chant to start the car was from an entirely different incident, with a different car, and for the record, after the chant, the previously unresponsive car started like nothing was ever wrong.
I don't know what made me think of this last night. We ended up having a falling-out, moving out of the house, and breaking off contact with them. It's been around 15 years since I've had any contact with anyone from that car except my then fiance, who is now my ex, but still a friend. Either way, the dream has stuck with me today. I'm not hugely bothered, but I do feel kind of weird, and to be honest, I do miss those guys.
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