Whether concerning the Ouiji, ghosts, or even divinity, a lot of seemingly questionable material withstands skepticism and becomes engrained in our minds as a part of life. Perhaps this is due to the virtue of imagination, and the inherent fear humans feel at the mercy of their ceaseless creativity... Or, perhaps this is merely due to fact, and the long withstanding memories that linger after any frightening episode...If you've had an "experience," by all means share it here.
As for me...well, I'll start with this:
When a person is stabbed in the chest, the blade usually passes cleanly through the ribcage, guided into the gap by the shape of the ribs.
But not always.
You may get chills from the sound of a rake scraping against concrete, or, perhaps, fingernails on a chalkboard...but there is nothing - nothing - more hideous and bloodcurdling as a knife screeching along bone. It’s LOUD, and it resonates so much a bystander will feel it throughout their body, from the tiny vibrations that buzz the sinus cavity to the painful chill that races down the spinal column.
Due to the nature of my previous job (the Homicide Unit of the Public Defender), I bore witness to an unhealthy dose of murders and fatal accidents. Such a job affords the great luxury of hearing every hair-splitting detail about such deaths, and in the course of investigations, there are always some fairly intense visuals to go with.
One day, my boss mentioned that we had fieldwork to conduct regarding a case that I knew involved a rib cage stab wound. I really didn’t want to go, but had no choice: we needed to get a feel for our diagrams and collect any evidence the DA had left behind before going to trial.
We arrived at the scene at approximately 1800 hours, and it was already getting dark in Santa Ana. For those of your that don’t know, Santa Ana is a Southern California scrum hole infested with gangs and broken down tenements. Granted, the city has its nice, safe areas (the massive county civic center where we worked is situated in a neat historic district) but some areas are just plain bad.
My boss is licensed to carry, which was a bit of consolation to the fact that we were walking into a building stolen straight out of my darkest nightmares. I’ll never forget that scene when we pulled up...how the overcast sky cast a drab gloom over rusted metal sheeting…how periodic gusts of wind rustled through the uncut grass. Picturesque, in a surreal and demented way...
Everything started off fine: we peeled back the police tape, turned on our flashlights, and began snooping around the first floor. The room of the actual crime was well-documented, and any evidence of foul play had been suppressed by the barrages of police officers that had trampled through over the past six months. Other than that, the majority of the warehouse consisted of dank and empty space. I recall sitting at a desk, my back to a glass pane that faced the empty hangar. I was looking through a Mead wirebound notebook, and that’s exactly when I first heard that noise.
That noise…
Actually, it was more like a screech, and it was coming from the upstairs loft. My boss and I looked at each other, and he pulled out his 40-06 and flicked off the safety. We made our way to the half-ladder, half-staircase positioned right outside the office and shined our flashlights into the black gap. For a moment, there was silence. Then it happened again.
“Show yourself!” yelled my boss. There was no reply…just that drawn out, sickening shriek, and every time it happened it dug further down my spine. The goosebumps on my arms were almost as tall as the hairs standing up on the back of my neck, and it didn’t get any better when my boss started to climb up the stairs. Inch by inch, he crept up, and between the rib-rubbing howl and the squeak of the old, wooden staircase, I was dumbstruck with fear. I tried not to shake as I kept my light on the second story entrance. My boss slowly peered over.
“It’s coming from a room,” he said. “I think it’s just the wind.” The squeaking became more frequent. I climbed up the ladder/stairs and stood behind him as he entered the last room of an especially dilapidated attic space. We could now hear the shrieking corresponding with gusts of wind that pelted the side of the metal siding. As we entered the room, we saw a tree branch rubbing up against a window pane. It shrieked again, but it just wasn’t scary anymore.
The sudden flush of blood and anxiety that drains out of the brain and back into the extremities is indeed a welcomed feeling, and I breathed a large sigh of relief when I saw what our “ghost” really was. My boss walked out of the room, shaking his head at our chicken shit performance and muttering some blasphemous explicative – his way of dealing with the fright. I just chuckled, and made my way to the window. It took a lot of effort to crack the paint and turn the handle, but the pane finally budged and creaked open. I reached around and broke off the branch. Then I closed the window, and turned for the door.
But then, there was another shriek. Except…except this one was real…
It came out of nowhere, from all around, and I felt it resonate through every bone in my skeleton. But worst of all, I felt it…
…like someone pinned me down, pried my mouth open, and slowly scraped my teeth across a concrete curb…
…and in my chest, I could feel the bone being shaved, and the uneven tug of something being caught and dragged against it. Swift, indescribable pain - I couldn't even scream. And right then, my boss yelled out my name, snapping me out of the trauma.
He ran into the room and found me, as he describes it, “pale as a ghost.” Jawdropped, afraid to breathe, I said nothing. He whispered, “dude...I just fucking saw something.” He was facing the door jam, holding his gun up alongside his flashlight, as if ready to shoot. He had a tremble in his voice I had never before heard.
“Did you hear that?” I asked, referencing my…experience. But he didn’t reply. He just said, “Let’s get the fuck out,” and so we went.
On the way down the stairs, I could have sworn I felt a drop of liquid hit the base of my neck…right down my collar, between the shoulder blades. This scared the living shit out of me at a point when I thought I had no more shit left to scare out. In fact, it spun me around and I almost fell down the stairs. The two of us hit the warehouse floor and bolted. We scrambled across the street to our car, ducked behind it, and peered back.
The warehouse just sat there. I expected some ghastly face to be staring at us from the highest window, like something out of a Hollywood movie. But we saw and heard nothing. At least, nothing besides rusted sheet metal siding and rustling grass…those long green blades standing out underneath the dim gray sky. My boss explained that, for a split second, he though he saw someone squatting in a dark corner of the attic hallway, but it was gone as soon as he did a double take. When I finally took my eyes of the warehouse and looked at him, I saw that he was reaching down his back and checking his palm. I did the same. “Did something drip on you?” I asked. He nodded.
We both found nothing. Not even a trace of water. It’s odd, because despite the gloomy weather and the dubious integrity of the warehouse’s roof, it had not rained in weeks. In fact, it did not even rain that entire night.
Trust me, I would know…
I didn’t sleep.
