As I have gotten older I have come to a conclusion that I am quite comfortable with, one that I liked to pretend wasn't true when I was younger. I've come to accept the fact that I hate to be scared. Hate it. Don't like it at all. Not. One. Bit. I'm not talking about the adventurous type of "this is a challenge that I don't think I can conquer because of my fear but I can push myself through it and beat it" type of scared. I used to work in a wilderness program, so I am totally down for the ropes course/rappelling/rock climbing sorts of challenges that might elicit some kind of fear, but that are really more about pushing past your personal limits and learning about yourself and how much more you are capable of. No. I'm talking about "Holy shit! That just scared the bejesus out of me and I won't be able to sleep with the lights off EVER again even if I am in a house full of people 24/7" type of scared. The scary movie/haunted house/boogeyman/things that go bump in the night stuff. And because of this, I find it completely ironic that I am the one in my family that this shit always seems to happen to. Never to my husband. Which makes me appear like a complete whackadoodle looney toon. But I'm not. I couldn't make this shit up.
Several nights ago, when my husband was working the night shift from 7pm to 7am (of course he was!!!) I was sitting with my kids playing Life. Suddenly the door from the kitchen into the garage opens up. Little Dude proudly announces "Daddy's home!" because that is the door Dad comes through when he gets home from work. Only it was 8:30pm. So there was no way he was home from work. Once this reality sets in, I find myself looking at 3 little sets of deer-in-the-headlights faces. When I get up and investigate, the garage doors are down and there is no one in the garage. Things that make you go hmmmmmmmm. Now I like to think of myself as a fairly rational and logical thinker. I have a more mathematical, scientific, linear kind of brain so I am very well aware that most things have a very reasonable explanation. In this case, maybe there was a shift in air pressure and the door wasn't closed all the way and the air-pressure change pushed the door open. Could be. So, no reason to panic or freak out right? Right.
The next night I am saying goodnight to the last of my kids as he heads to bed (because its not cool to say your 12 year old wants to be "tucked in" so you just call it "saying goodnight" - whatever allows me to still give my babies good night kisses is just fine by me!). As I head down the hallway, I hear a noise in our bedroom. I go in and discover the exhaust fan is on in our bathroom. This is the same freaking exhaust fan that hasn't worked since we moved in to the house 5 months ago, that no matter what configuration of switches we tried between our bathroom and the kids bathroom (thinking it might be a circuit-thing) the fan just will not work. Until tonight. WTF!! So I run downstairs to get my phone and call the husband to tell him that I don't know how but somehow I managed to get the fan on in the bathroom and I'm going to leave it running all night so the electrician working on our kitchen can look at it when he comes back tomorrow. At this point, I'm not that freaked out at all. With all the electrical work we are having done in the kitchen (moving outlets, putting in lights, installing switches, moving appliances around, etc) its entirely possible that somewhere along the way a circuit was tripped or jiggled or screwed with in some way, and when the kids were doing their showers earlier in the evening, our fan was tripped on when they turned on the fan in their bathroom. Or something like that. Somehow. Maybe. Possibly.
So I'm explaining this phenomenon to him and I head back upstairs so he can hear the fan going. Except that he can't now. Because its not. Going that is. The effer has turned off. By itself. No light switches or bathroom switches or fan switches or circuits being messed with at all. Just turned off. All by itself. Holy shitball-palooza!!!!!!! NOW I'm freaking the hell out. NOW shit just got real! NOW I'm shaking and I really don't see how I am going to be able to sleep tonight because I am having a really hard time finding a logical and rational explanation. And I am looking reeeeeeeeally hard for a logical and rational explanation. I'm not someone who hears the logical explanation and chooses to ignore it and believe the shit is possessed anyway. Oh HELL to the no! I WANT to be told WTF is going on so I DON'T have to think the shit is possessed. And while I don't know for sure if I believe shit CAN be possessed, I do know that I have had experiences in the past that I have not been able to explain for the life of me, which makes me think its entirely possible for shit to be possessed.
Like the time at my mom's house (which was built in 1860) at 11pm when I heard a bedroom door open and close by itself. A bedroom door which has an old-fashioned lift-latch which makes a very distinct noise when its lifted and lowered, and which has to be lifted and lowered in order for the door to move. No one else up. No windows open so there is no air-flow issues going on. No way for the door not to have been fully latched because the door would have swung open already - the house was built in 1860 and there isn't a god damn flat or level surface in the entire place! So the door HAD to have been fully latched in the first place because it was closed.
Or the time I was sleeping on my mom's couch (if you think there was any chance in HELL of me sleeping upstairs in that house EVER again after the bedroom door incident, you are freaking driving the cray-cray train!) and I am awakened at 2am to the voice of a young girl speaking with a British accent coming through the baby monitor sitting on the end table. When I told Mom, she explained that with it being summer, and with the windows open on the front of the house, sometimes when people go by on the sidewalk their voices will carry up through the windows and be picked up by the baby monitor in that bedroom. I asked her to give me the name of the little British girl in the neighborhood who goes for walks at 2am. She couldn't name any.
I know there are people out there who LOVE scary movies and get a thrill out of being scared. I used to try and be one of those people. I would go to the haunted house with my friends and try sooooo hard NOT to be "that" person who gets freaked out and can't handle it. I would try to go to the scary movies and believe that it would be fun to be a little scared and cling to whoever the boyfriend was at the time. It never worked. Because inevitably I would have to be left alone at some point. Even being married there are nights (too many nights to count) where the husband has to go away for a period of time, or is working the night shift, and no matter how long it has been since I have seen a scary movie or had a scary experience, somehow that is ALL I can think of the minute I am home alone. Somehow, I have the unique ability to convince myself that no matter how far-fetched, fake, and impossible the stupid scary movie plots and scenarios are, they can - and inevitably WILL - happen to me in that moment. All of them. At the same time. One after the other. Bam, bam, bam, bam. And nothing...NOTHING...can convince me that it won't.
And its NOT an adrenaline rush for me. Its not fun. So I respectfully request that all the ghosts, spirits, souls, whatever you want to call them, please give your signs to other people. Its not that I am not open to it. I am. I just am not the person you are looking for. I'm not strong enough to be able to convey the message you are trying to send. Unless that message is "OMG OMG OMG WTF WTF WTF SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT!!!" in which case, I sooooo got this for you. Consider the message sent.
