Just to kick this chapter off, I have to make it clear where I stand with the paranormal. I haven't been a true believer since I was young, say, eight or nine, because I was way more into paleontology and astronomy at that kind of age. Stuff that relies still quite heavily on faith in what you're told, but at least there is consistent, quantifiable evidence for the existence of dinosaurs and black holes.
But sometimes there are things my understanding of science, logic and coincidence just can't encompass. And I will admit that sometimes I have no explanation for the tales I'm about to reveal, which, for me, makes them that little bit more tantalising. Abstract, even.
You won't find shadow people and slender man here. You won't even find any direct witnesses to the paranormal at all. What you will read instead will leave you cold, because sometimes it isn't what you see in dark corners that haunts you. It's knowing that something is off, out of place, disturbed, almost as if you merely imagined it. But you know deep down you didn't.
That's Where You Buried Me
Back in the carefree days when I was just turning my childhood over to puberty, I met a young lad the same age as me, of whom people referred to as a magnet for the paranormal. Right away that seems hugely cliché, but I have no other way to describe the phenomena.
We'll call my friend J. We're still close.
His story begins when he was three years old and his parents drove past a cemetery 4 miles from the town we grew up in. Let's call it St. Chad's Chapel. J watches from the back window of their car and says, very plainly, "That's where you buried me."
His parents, being deaf to the whispers of the metaphysical, didn't take much notice of their infant's rambling, but J was persistent. "That's where you buried me," he tried again. "Don't you remember? I was a baby. Dressed in white. You buried me with my favourite toy."
A little concerned but still skeptical of his son's claim, his father asked, "Okay, if that's true, what was your name?"
"Harry."
"Harry what?"
"Harry L***" <Surname withheld for privacy>
What gave his parents cause for shocked silence was that they both knew there had been a child death on J's mother's side generations ago. They did not know the child's name or where he had been buried, only that he'd never made it past infancy, so young J's insistence of the facts frightened them.
But it gets a whole lot weirder than the morbid ramblings of a three-year-old, and this is where I come in.
When we were 18, J and I were recounting the story to a new-found friend, N, whose hobby back then was tracing genealogical records as part of her history course at the university. Out of the blue she offers to trace back my friend's family line and see if there was in fact an infant death on his mother's side, which was the only known information.
I was there when we saw it.
Clear as day, on a well-trusted, subscription paid genealogy site, researched by a budding historian, was a child's entry on his mother's side. His date of death was around one month after his date of birth.
His name was Harry L***.
And he'd been buried in excess of eighty years ago at St. Chad's Chapel.
I don't often get spooked, and nor do J or N. But when we saw it a cold kind of stillness came over us. To see Harry's name, location and date of death there on a screen unsettled us for a long time after. J needed to take a moment to collect himself and stepped out of the room to phone his parents.
I could hardly believe it. While I've had a hard time subscribing to the idea of the paranormal, to put all these pieces together with a friend who is himself a skeptic, was very, very sobering. Humbling, almost. What's more, J remembers being in the car when passing St. Chad's Chapel, though doesn't remember exactly what he said, (come on, he was three!) so the chances of all three people in the car misremembering the incident is slim.
I can't explain how a child would know something like that with such accuracy. His grandparents knew no more than his parents, so it's unlikely he heard the details from them either. He couldn't read at that age. How on Earth could he have known the final details of Harry L***'s premature death?
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