Scary & Freaky stories: The Paranormal World

The Wall

After my parents long and bitter divorce my mother lost custody of me for child abuse and neglect. The court awarded full custody of me to my father. After the dust settled on the divorce decree, my dad bought this old house in a small town in Southwestern IA population approximately 323. I'm convinced that this town was on a map simply because Burlington Northern ran through it and had a train stop there, but who knows.

A couple of years after we moved there, my older siblings were all gone from the nest and out on their own. I was only 14 so I was there alone with my dad and four dogs; one very large burly German shepherd/timber wolf mix named Sarge, some long haired mutt my dad adored named Raggamuffin, a beagle, Mr. Jasper and my puppy, a small tan colored mutt, named Snuffles. My dad worked really hard on a graveyard shift in the big city 48 miles away so I was left to my own devices basically until I turned 18. I explain this situation so you can get a feel for how frightening some of this stuff was when I was home by myself all the time at night. Basically I saw my dad on weekends - during the week our paths didn't really cross because he was gone by the time I got home from school and he was asleep by the time I left in the morning to go back to school.

Anyway - it was what it was.

I didn't really care for the house my dad bought, he was thrilled to be putting down roots somewhere and not paying rent to someone. And it was his 'handy-man's dream" because this place needed a lot of work; work which never really got done in the end because it burned to the ground 6 or 7 years after I left home and he had to put a manufactured home there in its spot. But this house was probably easily over 100 years old to start out with. It was originally only 4 rooms and whoever had it before us added on two additional rooms and an upstairs; however, they neglected to put in any duct work so these add- on rooms were not heated. I mention this because the room I stayed in required a little portable space heater to keep the area half-way warm in the dead of winter.

Like any other dumb/bored (insert whatever adjective you can relate to) teenager who thinks it's cool or exotic to mess with an OUIJA board, I was no exception. It was the first thing I bought with my babysitting money and even though I'd been warned by one person not to use it by myself I ignored the advice and went ahead and used it by myself anyway. A MENSA candidate I have never been. I was merely fascinated when the pointer thing moved around the board by itself sometimes - there were instances when I wasn't even touching it and the thing went ahead and continued spelling stuff out to me. A few of my friends didn't believe this, they said it shouldn't even work that way - using it by yourself they said 'you have to have at least 2 people!' Well - hogwash -it's possible, and I know it, to use one by your lonesome if you're crazy enough to try it.

I started talking to a spirit, supposedly of a young man; he said he was 23 when he died. He claimed he'd been killed in a duel over a woman in the 1800's and he went on to describe all the blood that stained the snow around his body after he'd been stabbed to death. It was really a fascinating story to a 14 year old. It had drama and intrigue it was my own esoteric soap opera - I was always tuning in for the latest installment! He told me his name which I won't mention here -since I believe now it wasn't ever a human's name. But I started to feel like I had made a new, albeit unseen, "friend".

Well it went along without any weirdness for awhile, but eventually the messages he was giving me got a little flirtatious he suggested I come be with him (which apparently didn't 'dawn' on me at 14 that I'd have to kill myself in order for that to occur); after awhile however, the messages became downright p0rnographic and I really didn't want to continue. I thought this had gotten out of hand and I didn't want any more to do with it. So I put the board away deep in the closet and tried to forget about it.

It was embarrassing, this whole experience, because some people claimed your own psyche moved the pointer around and that it was really stuff in your own mind that came out in the board messages. I didn't want anyone thinking I was some pervert sending myself twisted sexual messages from my imaginary boyfriend.