Over the course of my life, I have experienced very few happenings of high strangeness. I’ve never seen a ghost. I’ve never seen a UFO or UAP or whatever the nomenclator has named them. Nor have I witnessed an orb, or Big Foot, or the Moth Man, or the grinning Indrid Cold. Hell, these days, I rarely even dream. If I am to look back and reminisce, three incidents do come to mind; happenings that I can only explain as unexplainable.
The Other
The first of these incidents occurred when I was 12 or so. My friend Donny and I had the hook-up on weed, but the person would only deal with us. As Donny and I counted the money that our group of degenerate friends managed to conjure up, we quickly realized that there were six extra dollars. We agreed that we would split the excess funds. We justified it by saying that we deserved it—we were, nonetheless, the ones taking the risk. In those days, six bucks was like 3 cheesy Gordita Crunches at Taco Bell, not far off in the neighboring parking lot. We grinned, knowing we would have munchy food. While counting the bills one last time, a dollar slipped from our grip. We both watched the weathered note as it fluttered like a falling Autumn leaf, down, down, down, until it slipped under the dresser. We both collided heads as we bent down to grab it. But to our dismay, it was not under the dresser. Actually, it was nowhere to be found in the room. It vanished, as if the crinkled thing met some kind of gateway that links this dimension to another.
“Nor have I witnessed the grinning Indrid Cold.” | video by Bedtime Stories
When I was 16 years old, I had a deeply spiritual experience. It happened an hour or so after a group of us witnessed our friend fall into eternity. After the accident, we were hauled to the police station, where we were tirelessly questioned as homicide suspects. Once the cops realized this had been a terrible accident, they released us. My friend Luke and I had left our skateboards at the scene of the accident, so right after the police let us go, Luke’s Ma drove us back to the spot to grab our skateboards. When we got there, our skateboards were gone. Supposedly, the police took them. I never did get that board back. Before we left, Luke’s Ma told us to say goodbye, to stand at the entrance of his departure and achieve closure for both us and him, so that we could maybe be healed and that he could be freed into the next realm. As I stood on that sheer cliff overlooking the mighty Pacific, I began sobbing. It may be the hardest I have cried in my life. Then, suddenly, he was there, in my mind and soul, speaking to me. He spoke to me through emotion, and it was confusing, but I think it was him speaking to that other part of me, that other part of me that is somewhere far off somewhere else. It felt like he was urging me to let him go, to let go of his angelic feet so that he could ascend and make that journey that we all must face. Someday.
Another time, during sleep paralysis, a goblin-like shadow clicked along the walls of the room in which I slept. The gaunt little creature crept across the bedroom walls, a side profile of a menacing silhouette. It clicked and clicked and clicked, louder and louder, until it got right up in my ear. I screamed in terror, eyes bulging, but nothing came out, and my mouth was stuck shut. The warm breath of this thing, tickling the inners of my ear with its insect-like clicking, was my boiling point, and finally I became awake… although I had never fallen asleep. Aside from those three experiences, nothing notable has occurred.
“Maybe this strangeness was always there. Maybe. It could very well be that I had just never noticed it.”
This last year and a half, I’ve spent many a night by myself. For months, it had just been me and an empty home, carpets torn up, no furniture, boxes everywhere, unpacked. Just me and the cat-piss drenched walls, and me, and my thoughts, and me, and the crusty bathroom mirror, and me, and my dark, sunken eyes.
For likely the first time in my life, I was face-to-face with myself, around the clock, and it was strange to get to know this person I had never taken the time to know—this person whom I spent most of my life running from for reasons that still allude me. But since I have had only myself for company, strange shit has started simmering. Maybe this strangeness was always there. Maybe. It could very well be that I had just never noticed it. As I sit here and write this now, I’m sure that the latter is more than likely the case. Positive, actually.
The Bear Mace
Like so many stories DO NOT begin, this one starts with a can of bear mace. I originally bought the stuff for backcountry excursions. It’s better to be safe than sorry, and I’m not allowed to own a gun. I’ve signed that right away more than once and in more than one state.
One night, I had too much to drink and thought it was a good idea to fire off the bear mace in my bedroom. Then I passed out. The next morning was not pleasant, to put it lightly. I’m still amazed that I slept in that cloud of fiery, peppery, terribleness. I guess signing that damned Federal Firearms Prohibition form was for the best. After that night, I think it is safe to say that a gun and I would not mesh well.
“The bear mace? Gone. Poof. Adios.”
A few weeks later, I had to catch a flight to Hawaii for a wedding. I stashed the bear mace behind my bed and manically left my house to catch a boat to a train to a plane. I got back a week later. The bear mace? Gone. Poof. Adios. And it was not just the bear mace that mysteriously moved.
Plants would be in one place when I go to sleep and in another when I awake. A good portion of my Safeway sushi station chopsticks are unaccounted for, vanished like that faraway dollar bill in a Del Coronado apartment. One morning, I found that someone had neatly cut the tip of my spider plant’s blade off and gently placed it far over on the windowsill. The cut had been made on the top right side of the plant, from its tallest blade, and the triangular piece was placed over a foot away, to the left of the plant. Oh, and the bear mace? It’s been nearly a year, and that thing is nowhere to be found. And believe me, I’ve torn this fucking place apart searching for it.