“Anita, you write stories about ghosts and the living dead…you worked in a funeral home so tell me…what’s the scariest thing you’ve ever seen? ”
To be honest, I’ve seen lots of strange things but I’ve never seen anything that ever scared me. So I’ll laugh, joke and blow the question off.
Ask me the right question though and you’ll get a different answer- you’ll get THE answer.
I’ve never SEEN anything that frightened me but once I felt something that did.
I was working alone in a basement and for once I had the radio off and it was quiet, just still and calm. It was a nice feeling, sort of a ‘sitting by the lake at sunset’ feeling.
I was reaching for something up high on a shelf when I felt something tug at the bottom of my plaid work shirt- I always wear oversized plaid shirts when I’m down there because the dust is so bad it wrecks my clothes. I thought I’d caught my shirttail on something so I reached back and pulled it down.
Then I walked to the next shelf and just as I reached up I felt that tug again and I stood there with my arm halfway up in the air when I felt the same tug- up higher this time- under my shoulder blade.
I knew I wasn’t alone.
And I knew if I turned around there would be nobody standing there.
Now, when I’m in trouble, or stressed out I give myself these pep talks and it’s always my Grandfather’s voice I hear.Only this time it was my Great Grandmother I heard- and let me tell you she was ‘snap your spine if you made her angry’ type of a woman.
Comfort was not a word that springs to mind when I think of Nan.
” Don’t you dare turn around ” I was hearing, ” You keep those eyes forward and don’t turn around.”
Then I felt something tug at the end of my braid and I bit my lips really hard and tried to not yell. But I didn’t turn around and I walked away from the shelf and didn’t look back.
Worse then that tug on my shirt was that feeling that something was just behind me. Whatever it was wouldn’t go away and it followed me up the basement stairs.
When I got to the top steps and crossed over the threshold I turned around and pulled the door closed. And then I opened it again reached in and snapped the light off.
This time I kicked the door shut.
That’s it; those five minutes are the one thing that scared me. You can make what you like of those minutes- after all I still wonder about them myself.
I’d advise you to not consider them when you’re alone though, I don’t.
amm
ANITA'S OWL CREEK BRIDGE 
Definitely not the sort of thing you want to think of when you’re alone. Luckily, my back is to the wall when I’m at this computer….
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Just watch your feet!
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So I saw this was up and saw the first line and thought, Screw that, it is Anita, she will scare you. Another time I saw it in passing and thought, No way. And then tonight, being idle, I looked at it and thought, Oh read it it will be okay.
It is not okay.
I am all CREEPED OUT AND ALONE.
Ahhhhhh!
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Max I owe you one…maybe two.
But I owe you- and the thing in this story? It owes you too.
Ha.
amm
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AMM, the truth is way more scarier than any fiction. What an account!
I’m not a sensitive of any kind but a few times (and I stress “a few”, not alot) where I’ve had the distinct and unnerving feeling of being watched. This is an awful feeling. I think if I had been tugged, I would have totally flipped out.
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I have a scar across my chest as a reminder of “something” which scared the sh*@ out of my cat (she scratched me and thus, the scar) and knocked me off my feet and sent me tumbling down the stairs. I am confident something was there – friends suggest it was too many Mat Tais. Regardless, I moved.
m
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Hey you just keep that thing in your story over there fresh stuff. I have run into those things and they spook holy hell out of me.
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Hey Lori- that feeling is way more common then you’d know, and nothing inspires me more then hearing those stories….
Like from MS Max who’d better spill the beans…cause now I’m intrigued- after all she wrote about a dog that fights evil
and Mark Hey there Mark- did you know that in some cultures cats are suppose to be able to see evil?
Hmmmm….
amm
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hmmmm indeed. Ms. Kitty Carlyle was always jittery in that house! (it is s good thing I have 2 felines looking after me.)
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whenever i’ve felt a spirit presence – actually felt it, as opposed to sensed it – it’s been a creepy, scary moment. like, this one time i had the unsettling experience of something that couldn’t be there grabbing me quite forcibly by the ankle.
i agree, the worst thing is to look and see that there’s actually nothing there. the brain can do without that sort of cognitive dissonance.
stupidly, i looked.
it was interesting what happened next.
the pressure slowly relaxed, and then it was gone.
i was in a packing shed in the middle of an orchard complex, completely on my own, late at night, doing some overtime on the “drops”. they need one person, after a day of crew bagging, to clean up the missed stuff, and recheck the reject bins. that was my job.
there was this story that some guy had been locked by accident in the cool store back in the sixties, and that he’d died in there, frozen to death. he was said to haunt the packing shed, although how he manifested was never detailed to me.
i don’t expect it would be in the form of grabbing teenagers by the ankle and then slowly letting go, but i guess you never know.
i half convinced myself that it was just a cramp or something, this gripping feeling; a rational explanation would be nice.
but i still looked the next day to see if there were finger bruises where i’d been held so tightly the night before.
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The thing about turning around and seeing SOMETHING no matter how awful it is…at least your brain can have something to react to.
It’s much worse when there isn’t anything there because it will just keep reacting in panic mode until it has something to reference too.
So tell me- curious minds want to know- were there any bruises? Or was it….
nothing?
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Pingback: part ii : anybody home? « celluloid blonde
haven’t i heard this story before? why did i have to read it at 1:55am? i’ll never sleep…
reminds me of a time when i was around 7 or 8 years old, my back was to the wall and i was kneeling on a chair. i had long braided hair at the time and all of a sudden i felt a strong tug on my braid. freaked the heck out of me. now it’s 2am and i’m typing this the day after halloween. great. now i’ll never sleep.
i’ve had psychics tell me that i have strong powers and that i “won’t be burned at the stake in _this_ life. sometimes i just pretend that it’s a joke and other times i remember the braid-pulling incident and think that it’s all related. speaking of related, i think that anita is my sister from another life.
happy halloween, my dear.
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