Hi, I’m Elliot and I’m haunted by a spirit. And I’m scared.
Well, I’m not scared of the spirit, because it’s only a spirit in need and only
happens to visit in the days leading up to Halloween, I’m scared, because I
feel it needs my help and I don’t know how!
I don’t know how or when exactly it happened, but maybe I
should start from the beginning. What I do know is this: I know his name. I
know what he used to do and everything that is easy available through an
extensive search on the internet, considering he used to be relatively famous.
I know, I know, you might think right now that I’m simply obsessed with someone
I can’t have. Like one of those celebrity crushes gone too far, but instead of
me creeping into the person’s home and taking a swim in his pool a la Keanu
Reeves stalker, I pretend to be haunted by him once a year. I guarantee you this
is not the case. And sincerely I wish it were so simple.
It all started innocently enough with a young version of
myself flipping through a teen magazine, years before he died. I came across
the “heartthrob to look out for” section and one of the pictures was the spirit
paying yearly visits to yours truly. I kept flipping through the pages *flip
flip flip flip flip -stop-* there he was in his most seductive, but still cute
and not too overtly sexual pose. I stared at his picture and had this weird
sensation. And it wasn’t the type that feels like a sneeze only better for the
female population. It was a strange almost trance-like feeling. A tragic
foreboding; a tug at the heart, and a deep-rooted sadness that I couldn’t
explain. I stared at it for minutes on end until my kid brother came bustling
into our shared bedroom (nothing out of the ordinary where I’m from). Ripped
out of my strange trance, I picked up a pair of scissors and cut out his
picture. I thought, hoped, whatever, that I could make sense of what had just
happened when I looked at it more closely at a later time.
I never found that picture again.
Fast forward what feels like a million years, to a time and
place where I felt both safe and protected; away from strange sensations and unanswered
questions. Although, I have to admit that between that scene of foreshadowing and
the next, there were strange times when I could not put my finger on what exactly
was going on, but I just filed them under “strange things that happened during
the Halloween season”.
So, here we are just about a year ago and I’m feeling like I’m
going totally mental. I keep having odd sensations, like someone is watching
me. I see shadows moving out of the corner of my eyes, doors opening on their
own, electric devices having a mind of their own and strange sounds in the
middle of the night. All were waved away by explanations of the wind, or tricks
on the mind, because, you know, it’s Halloween season. One kind of expects
these things to happen because; “I’m losing it. I’m too stressed.
Work/life/school is getting to me”. So, the season comes and goes; and no one
gets hurt.
Until this year. Once again, I thought I was going crazy. For
days, actually, over a week now, I have been feeling terrible about myself. No
idea why! It is so bad, I feel like the worst person in the world. I constantly
compare myself to people, who, for some reason seem to my delirious mind to be
better than me, and have become the epitome of everything socially acceptable so
that I might as well just stop trying altogether!! In all possible ways!
About a month ago I was lying in bed trying to fall asleep
when I felt something not quite right. I propped myself up on my elbow in bed,
while my husband slept soundly. I felt my skin prickle. I scanned the room.
Nothing, except for the dancing shadows created by the streetlamps on the street
below. Yet! Yet, there it was. That slow scraping that I have heard so many times
and dismissed. It was there, and it wasn’t. Slow, low and otherworldly.
Faintly, I could hear the doorknob of our bedroom door being turned. The door
scraped against the door frame as it opened inch by inch, just to swing open as
if propelled by a gust of wind. I stared into the dark hallway, half expecting my
worst nightmare to materialize.
But nothing. Nothing happened. All was quiet. I got out of
bed, closed the door and pretended it was only the wind…There was not a breeze
that night.
Plagued by nightmares, I thought breathing exercises would do
the trick, and they helped, but only until I fell asleep. Then it would start
all over again. I would be wandering through places familiar, yet so strange. My
worst fears would come true in those dreams; too many to list here, but I
assume you can imagine what that would feel like. Chopped up scenes, vivid
images, and feelings of utter despair would chase me night after night. There
was no mercy in sight! What was I meant to do?!
Well, never fear! The worst is yet to come! My husband, sensing
that I had been on edge for days, snuggled up to me ever so closely during this
fateful night I am about to share with you. I remember almost falling out of
bed being so close to the edge, trying to have a bit of space, I was allowed a
short reprieve from this nightmarish vision that did not come back to me until
two days later. The best way to describe it is to just take you back and show
you what happened:
I came to
awareness, standing, looking at my hands, trying to figure out where I was and
how I got there. It was cold, but I neither minded nor felt the cold seeping
through my clothes and into my bones. There were a few people around. I felt
like they were my friends, but I didn’t recognize them. They had no faces, no
identity, no real meaning in this scene. As I looked around I realized I was in
a very old cemetery. There were tombstones, tombs and entrances to underground
tombs everywhere. I knew this had to be a dream. It must be! I looked at my
hands and flexed my fingers. I could feel every muscle in my arms, hands and
fingers. This must be real!
I looked
around this empty cemetery nighttime scene and noticed one tomb in particular.
Its surface was cracked, and I could almost look inside and see who had been
put to eternal rest here, but only almost.
My group
of “friends” and I found the entrance to that particular tomb and found the
stairs into the room with its coffin. A strange scene greeted us as we stared
in surprise and amazement: a small room off the main part of the underground
tomb was sectioned off by a wrought iron gate. Inside was the coffin that held
the earthly remains of the spirit that is so adamantly haunting me. The lid was
slightly askew, with enough room to show the remains inside. On a small table
near the foot of the coffin stood a TV connected to an old VCR player showing
one of the spirit’s movies he had stared in during his living years. The tape
was set to play on repeat. Over and over and over and over again, ever since he
was laid to rest.
Horror
stricken and in shock, I realized that this was the reason the spirit was not
able to rest. He is meant to relive a moment of his living days on repeat. Why?
I did not know. We heard the opening of the tomb’s entrance and footsteps
getting closer. We scrambled to climb out of the crack in the tomb we had seen
from above, in fear we would be found out.
Here I am, three, maybe four, shots of dark rum deep, breath
reeking of herbs and garlic cream cheese, desperate to find a way to help this
poor soul. They said he killed himself. A friend found him half dead after a
dinner out with a group of friends. I am grieved and desperate to help. And my
heart is breaking at the thought of his eternal suffering. What can I do?
Reawakened: by Morgan Wylie
