I was born and raised in small towns of Kentucky, the youngest of three, all of us girls. The oldest, Melanie, was 3 when I was born. Sabrina was just 1 year and 2 weeks older than me. As you can see, we were very close in age. Our parents were young and poor, a common combination in these small KY towns. My sisters and I raised ourselves. We learned at an early age to not expect much from our parents. We had clothes and food, but not much else. And certainly not a lot of affection or nurturing... or protection.
You know how when children are raised in physically abusive homes, from the earliest years of their life, they think it's all normal. They think all children experience these things, all parents react in violent ways... The same thing happens to children raised in other not-normal environments. I don't remember when these things started in my home, for they are the earliest memories I have growing up. My parents and their friends would have seances. They also did this thing called "raising a table". Everyone sits around a card table and puts their palms on the table, touching thumbs to thumbs, pinkies to pinkies, all hands touching in this way around 3 continuous sides. One side of the table was left open. Someone was the designated speaker and would begin calling on the spirits to raise the table. Slowly, the open side of the table would begin to rise, leaning back on the opposite 2 legs. Much like using a ouija board, questions would be asked, and answers were given by the table returning to the ground and raising again. One knock for no, two knocks for yes. Sometimes you could even get the table to "walk" across the room. I know you are skeptical and could argue that it wouldn't be difficult to fake this happening. Just apply a little bit of pressure one the back side of the card table and it would cause the other side to lift off the ground. Nothing "paranormal" involved right? Well I challenge you to try this. Don't call on the spirits. Please. Do not attempt to actually raise the table, But get a few friends together and see if by putting palms flat on the surface and applying pressure, can you get the table to smoothly raise and fall... and walk across the room. I've seen this done many times. I've tried to "make it" happen. If everyone around the table is acting together to try and raise it, maybe you can get a couple of jerky sides raising. But remember, the people doing this when I was a child, believed they were communicating with the spirit world. Even if one person was trying to fake it, others were not. And one person alone can not raise a table that has many hands on it, palm down. I've participated in this myself. I never tried to fake it. My sisters weren't trying to fake it. We believed it to be real and by the age of 6, I was quite good at communicating with the spirits. I was frequently the designated speaker. I thought all children did this.
Around this time, 2 things happened that are important. The adults started to get scared that what ever spirits we had all communicated with were remaining active in our house. Things would move on their own. I was standing by my Mom one Easter morning as she was looking at two pairs of shoes, trying to decide which pair to wear. One pair was laying on its side. One by one, the shoes wobbled and stood up. My mom got very upset and yelled at me to stop doing that. I didn't know why she was yelling at me. I saw the shoes stand themselves up. But I hadn't touched them. I hadn't done it. Other things like this began happening. Lights turning on and off. Toys that seemed to move on their own. It wasn't scary to me at first. I didn't feel threatened. It just was... It was normal. To me. So the adults decided there would be no more table raising. There would be no more seances. They were scared and wanted it to stop. I didn't understand. And around this time, the summer before I began first grade, we moved to a new house. It was the nicest home we had ever had. It was in the same small town, but across town. It was a split level house, meaning there was a basement under part of it, and with a sloping hill as the front yard, the basement had a door that opened to the outside. It was in this house that things spiraled out of control in my young life.
It's important to understand the layout of the house, the split-level basement. There were three parts to this basement. The main room - it was paneled and big, windows that were ground level on one side. The wall that from the outside looked like a two-story house, had the door in it. You could go in and outside from the basement. The wall opposite the door wall ran from the front to the back of the house and began the underground part. The door on this wall led into a narrow room that also ran from the front to the back of the house. No windows in it. Cinderblock walls. It had a door on the long wall leading to the third part of the basement. It was a part that was unfinished. The ground had not been excavated under this part of the house. Well... not completely. There was a huge block of dirt in it. It was taller than an adult. There was only one light at the door to this room. I could not see where this block of dirt ended, but the walls were flat and smooth. I wish I had pictures to show you. This is all very important to picture to understand my story. My sisters and I were born in the early 60's. We had not seen movies like Amityville Horror or Poltergeist. But we were instantly afraid of this room of dirt. My parents stored a few things in the space between the dirt block and the cinderblock wall. As far as I know, no one ever attempted to walk around this block of dirt and explore the backside. It may have just become part of the earth on the far side. Who knows... But I hated that room from the beginning. And the long narrow cinderblock room wasn't much better.
I didn't like to go in that room and neither did my sisters. Our family's deep freeze was at the far end of the room. Our parents would send us down to get meat or vegetables out of the freezer. My sisters and I would fight over who had to go do it. I can remember the times I lost those fights. I would open the door to the long cinderblock room and stand there for the longest time, telling myself it would be ok... there was nothing that was going to get me. There was nothing there. I would look at the door to the room of dirt, and listen.... Sometimes I could hear movement in that room. Sometimes I heard sounds that I can not name.... Not whispers. Not talking. Not moaning. But something was in that room moving and making an unearthly sound... Communicating. A whirring muttering sound that came from beyond that door. I would take off running as fast as my 6 year old little feet could move. Run down to the freezer. Stand on my tiptoes to open the chest-shaped freezer, all the while my back to this long room and I knew I wasn't alone. I could feel it there, hear it... I would be standing on my tip-toes and be so afraid... lean over and reach into the freezer and grab what ever was needed get back on my feet and slam down the freezer door before turning around. And still I could feel and hear the movements from the door I had to pass to get out into the main room of the basement. Again I would take off running.... Sometimes by now I would be in tears because I was so afraid. My heart racing in terror... I would run out of this room, slam that door shut, and run up the stairs to deliver the frozen food to the kitchen. My parents would laugh at me. They thought it was funny that a trip down to the freezer would result in such a reaction... that I would be running up the stairs in tears because I had been so afraid in the basement. They would tell us there was no such thing as a boogey man. Nothing to be afraid of. And is if they wanted to prove their point... They moved my sister Sabrina and I to the basement. We had first had a bedroom upstairs. After about a year, we were moved to the basement's main room for our bedroom.
We had always shared a bed from the moment I was moved out of the crib. We couldn't afford houses that would allow us to each have our own room. Melanie had a room of her own, but Sabrina and I had always slept together. And that was a good thing. Especially in the basement. We were scared in that basement. And many things happened to us. I'm wrestling with how much to tell, how many stories to share, but knowing this could go on for many more chapters than any of you would care to read. I'm trying to set the stage with what was happening in my home that makes the terrible thing that happened to me that one night make sense. What happened to me when I was 8 or 9, driven out of town in a car, and the telephone poles flashed by... didn't just happen in a vacuum. There are reasons it happened to me and my sisters. We thought some of it was normal, although I remember being so afraid most of my childhood. I wish there were more words to describe this feeling. Afraid. Scared. Foreboding. Terrified. Horrified. Absolute terror. Panicked. In Danger. Wanting to be saved. Wanting to be protected. From the earliest years of my life, these are the emotions I remember experiencing the most. And trying to tell my parents I was afraid only resulted in them laughing at me. Mocking me. Telling me how ridiculous I was. Sometimes I would even get spanked and sent to my room.
I learned early on that no one was going to protect me from the scary things. I learned early on that there were monsters in the dark. And under my bed. And on the other side of the door. I learned early on that you can't always see the things that can hurt you. My sister Sabrina and I took care of each other. We slept holding hands until we were into our teen years. Sabrina slept with the covers pulled over her head. Her first husband thought it was funny that she still did that as an adult. This is how powerful the fear was and the coping behaviors we adopted stayed with us for years after they were needed. While Melanie was involved in some of this, she tended to deny what was happening at the time. Much like my parents.
I will say now, that a few years back while I was in therapy, I asked my parents for the first time if they had any memory of these things happening to us, and if they thought we lived in a haunted house, not having any better words to describe it. My parents acknowledged all the things I remember actually happened. They knew at the time that something was going on in that house. They too felt things, heard things, saw things. But they thought it would make it worse to acknowledge it, that we would get more afraid. And they didn't have the money to just up and move and sell the house. That finally happened when I was nine, but for three years we lived there. Terrified the whole time. So my parents tried to act like nothing was happening. And getting mad when things really got bad... So my sisters and I learned at an early age to not tell my parents when bad things were happening to us. Don't tell them when we hear sounds at night. Don't tell them when the stereo turns on and the records play by themselves. Don't tell them when the lights go out in the basement but not upstairs. Don't tell them when we are upstairs and can hear footsteps on the stairs leading up from the basement. Don't tell them when my sister and I lie in our bed in the basement, night after night, terrified... Hearing sounds from the cinderblock room, footsteps... Hearing sounds from the dirt room... a whirring muttering. Sometimes we would see a dark shadowy figure crouching on the stairs watching us. Don't tell my parents, when things really got bad... Someone entered our lives who they trusted but she should have never been trusted. Our parents let us go to her house, left us in her care. Again I remember being so afraid of her. But I never told my parents.
I'm getting ahead of myself in the stories. What you need to know before I begin the final part of my story is that we had not stopped having seances and raising tables. Both my parents worked and were never home. Even though the oldest of us was 9, we never had a babysitter after school or in the summer. We couldn't afford those things. In this new neighborhood, we made new friends - my sisters and I have never had a problem making friends. And since we thought everyone had seances and would do things like raising a table, we would mention it to our new friends. They had never done these things but wanted to do it. It was scary and fun and forbidden so kids always asked us to show them. Now even though that cinderblock room in the basement was always scary, this is where we had the seances. Not very smart for us to do. But we did it many times. I don't remember specifics but I remember lots of kids screaming and running and saying things happened to them. We also did the table thing alot in the basement. For us at the time, this was entertainment and we didn't connect it to the scarier things that began happening to us.
Two stories before I stop tonight.... One night all three of us sisters were lying in bed upstairs in Melanie's bed. She had a plastic dove on a long spring that was connected to a hook on the ceiling. I remember laying there and concentrating on that dove. I would think... spin bird and picture it spinning and it would start spinning. I would... Stop! and it would stop. I did this several times before telling my sisters to watch what I could do. I was probably 7 at this point. I told them, "I'm gonna make that bird spin..." and sure enough it began to spin. I said "Stop!" and the bird immediately stopped. I repeated this a couple of more times and then Sabrina began yelling at me, telling me to stop it. That I should never do that again. I stopped. And never tried to do it again.
Another vivid memory I have is from towards the end of the years we lived in that house. I was 8 and it was the summer after third grade. I was upstairs and dressed in just a t-shirt and my panties. My sister Sabrina was downstairs. We were the only ones home. I was trying to call a friend and had my back to the kitchen when I heard a sound that made me turn around. When I did, I saw the utility room door open and shut by itself. Then our old refrigerator with a crank handle on it opened by itself. Everything in the fridge began flying out of it. Big jars of mayo and pickles, milk bottles, everything... One by one these objects would fly across the room, and gently drop to the floor and begin rolling back toward the fridge. Nothing broke. I began screaming in terror dropping the phone. Sabrina ran upstairs and had no idea what had happened... why the kitchen floor was covered in the contents of the fridge. I was grabbing my sister trying to pull her out of the house. Screaming crying, "We have to get out of here. We have to get out now!" Sabrina started putting things back in the fridge but finally left the house with me and ran into the driveway of our house. I was hysterical - and not fully clothed, but I didn't care or even think of that. I had just ran out of the house screaming. A neighbor came out and asked what was wrong. When we tried to explain what had happened, we were not believed. The neighbor brought us in to her house and called my mom at work. My mom was so mad that we were acting so ridiculous and telling our neighbors such impossible stories and that I was outside in my t-shirt and panties. We got in trouble for this, even though when Mom left work to come get us (which made her mad to have to do) and we walked inside, there were still some jars on the floor. We got grounded and had to stay in the basement... So we learned to not tell our parents when these bad things happened.
Submitted February 17, 2015 at 05:57AM by Gale09 http://ift.tt/1FkwE5F nosleep
No comments:
Post a Comment