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?
