The Anomaly Report

Stick Figure

My daughter and her best friend were about 12 or 13 when the movie The Blair Witch Project came out on video.  My daughter had begged me to rent the video because all of her school friends had seen it, but I wouldn’t because it was rated R and I hadn’t yet let her watch anything with an R rating.

One weekend, her friend came over to spend the night. She brought the movie with her. Her father had bought it for her without her mother’s knowledge (they were divorced), and she wanted my daughter to see it.

The girls begged and cajoled, and since my young son was away for the night, I finally said I would watch it with them, with the understanding that if it was too bad, I would turn it off. So, we piled on the couch and the chair in the living room with blankets and pillows and popcorn — and turned out the lights to have a scary movie party.

We watched the movie, and were scared out of our wits by it — but it was  still fun. After it was over, we all went to bed. My daughter insisted on using her brother’s night light in the hallway, because she and her friend were so spooked. The night was uneventful.

The house we were living in at the time backed up to woods. We had two huge trees that were about six feet from the patio, and then another six feet, and then the woods. A sliding glass door opened on to the patio and the back yard.

We slept in that morning, and all got up shortly before noon.  I came downstairs and went over to the sliding glass door to open the blinds.

When I opened the blinds, my eyes were drawn to the tree on the left. I don’t know what it was, there was no movement or animal or bird that I caught out of my peripheral vision — I just automatically looked at the tree on the left and up.

There, about 12 feet up, hanging from one of the branches, was a stick figure that looked exactly like the stick figures the characters in the movie saw hanging from the trees.  I couldn’t believe my own eyes. I yelled for the girls to come downstairs, and asked them if they had gone outside.  I could tell from the looks on their faces they were telling the truth when they said no.  Besides, the figure was too high up for them to have put it there.  I pointed at the tree and told them to look and tell me what they saw.  Both of them started laughing and said “really funny — how did you do that?”  I said, “it  wasn’t me.”

Their faces paled and they were speechless.  I turned around and closed the blinds and went into the kitchen to get something to drink.

My daughter said, “seriously, Mom, how did you do that?”  I said, “Jessica, I did not do that — it was just there.”  Not another word was said.

Later I was in my bedroom - which also looked out over the trees, and I looked to see if there was some way they could have climbed the tree and hung the figure on the branch.  There was not.  We did not have a ladder either.    From my bedroom I could still see the figure so I quit trying to figure it out, and I tried to put it out of my mind. We were so freaked out by the incident we didn’t look outside again until several hours later, just before it was starting to become dusk.

This time, there was no stick figure. There was nothing.

To this day, I have no explanation for this incident.  And to this day, my daughter and I will tell this story to people, and they will say we are making it up.  But, it’s true.  We saw that stick figure just as surely as we saw each other.

The Thing in the Red Shirt

About 7 years ago we went on a family vacation to Lincoln, NH. I made reservations to stay at a condo.

I had a very uneasy feeling when we got there but didn’t say anything. The first thing the kids did was pick where they would sleep. The first floor was an open livingroom, dining and kitchen. The second floor had a bath and two bedrooms. The third floor had a loft that could sleep 3 people.

I decided to take the bedroom at the top of the stairs and was unpacking when my daughter, then 9, ran past into the next room. I heard her address her brother by name and say, “Stop running away.” A few seconds later she came in and said, “Who’s that boy?”

I said, “What boy?”

She said, “The one behind the door in the bedroom.”

So we went in the bedroom and looked behind the door, under the bed, in the closet. No one was there. She thought he must have gone downstairs but that was impossible because I would have seen him pass. She was so upset I searched the loft too and nothing. I asked her what he looked like and she said he had a red shirt on and from the back it looked like Tom. But when she had pulled the door that he ran behind she said it didn’t look like Tom at all. Then she wouldn’t talk about it anymore.

My older daughter took that room and the 3 other kids went into the loft.

The entire week was a disaster. My daughter moved into the loft on the second night. She said she would rather sleep on the floor than go back in that room. Radios went on at all hours, very loud, and we couldn’t seem to shut them off, even unplugged. We all felt like we were being watched, especially when on the 2nd floor. I don’t even know why we stayed except that we would’ve lost our deposit.

When the week finally ended I went to the office and asked them why they rented me a condo that was haunted. No one asked what I was talking about. They just said their policy is no refunds. I didn’t ask for one.

When we we got home I told the kids to get to bed because they had school on Monday. They did. I was in the family room on my computer. The family room and the kitchen are open so you can see in the kitchen. I saw my son Tom, his back to me, wearing a red shirt and jeans, walk in the kitchen and open the cabinets like he was looking for something to eat. I asked him what he was doing, no answer. I asked if he was hungry and said there was tuna if he wanted. No answer.

Tom turned and walked back toward his bedroom. I said, Hey, close the cabinets.

I got angry because he was ignoring me. So I got up and went down the hall, passing my other son’s room on the way. When I got to Tom’s room he was sound asleep. He was not wearing a red shirt. The next day my son said when you went looking for Tom to shut the cabinets, I was so scared for you, that wasn’t Tom. He said he watched ‘it’ walk by his room and go in the kitchen but he was so scared he just watched the whole thing.

About a week later I was taking an afternoon nap when I heard water running. I woke up and called for someone to turn it off. it kept running so I rose and walked to the kitchen. When I turned the corner there was someone in a red shirt standing with his back to me, vigorously washing his hands. I asked who he was and he stopped moving. Still facing away, he reached up and shut the water off. Then he turned around.

I screamed and fell backwards into the bedroom. After I awoke I drew the face that I saw and showed it to my daughter. She threw the paper and said, that’s what I saw. I felt so bad for her seeing that hideous thing. Unusual things have happened here since but as far as I know no one has seen that red-shirted thing again.

Thank God.

White Room Dreams

I went straight from high school to college, straight from college to law school, and had a modest but fortunate life. My and my friends’ parents were still married; our moms all played bridge together and we kids spent our spare time in backyard pools and on various sports fields. Few clouds darkened our suburban horizon.

One early winter day in ninth grade, my father’s best friend dropped dead of a massive coronary. His daughter, somewhat of a bully, was disconsolate, although she didn’t change her stripes.

Nine years later I was enrolled in a rural law school. In my spare time I worked at a riding stable. One day, work finished, I sat on the ground, back against the weathered wall of the barn, drinking a cold Bud. I looked at the clear sky and stars and thought to myself that my dad, a private pilot, would love to be flying on such a night. Three hours later, I had a midnight knock on the door. My uncle told me that my father’s plane had gone down. Dad was flying solo. He didn’t survive.

That year I began having what I refer to as White Room Dreams.

In a White Room Dream, I am always in a room that is aglow with white light, sitting in a chair knee to knee with another person. That person is as real as if he or she is really there. I speak to them only briefly, and it is always emotional.

In the first dream, my guest was my father’s friend, who had been gone so many years. The father of my nemesis. He said he just wanted to say that he never knew about her bullying me, and that he wanted to apologize for that. Dream over.

Some months later I had another dream, another guest: my father. He was crying. I told him how much I missed him and how much it hurt. He told me how much he missed my Mom, my sister and me. Dream over.

My final guest was my beloved Aunt Ellen, who is still very much alive. She was distraught, crying so much so that she could not speak well enough to tell me what was wrong. All she could get out is, “It’s awful, it’s just so awful.” Dream over.

I woke up and stayed awake worrying until it was a decent hour to call her. She insisted that she and Uncle Bobby were just fine, but Aunt Ellen burst into tears when I explained the motivation behind my call. I never received any explanation from her as to what was going on at the time.

Nearly twenty years later, these dreams remain absolutely real to me. I’ve never had another one, but I wish another one would come. My beloved stepfather passed away last year after a terrible battle with cancer, and I would really love to see him just one more time.

Still Here

I just traveled a thousand miles to scatter my husband’s ashes in the same spot his parents’ ashes were scattered.

Since he died, I have frequently been aware of his presence around me, usually accompanied by a musky odor. I had been wondering, during the journey, if he would go away once his ashes were deposited where he had wanted them to be.

Not so. He is still here. My son and I are in a town that saw a Civil War battle, and we were discussing it over dinner. My husband, a Civil War buff, was right there.

I’m not yet sure how I feel about that, but I think it’s okay.

Foregone Conclusion

On my way to work I was listening to KMOX, as usual, and heard that they were giving away Elton John/Billy Joel Concert tickets. I don’t really think I was consciously listening and I only remember hearing it at all because of what happened later that day.

Busy at work, I expected the ringing phone to be one of my customers. My boyfriend was calling, which in itself was very unusual because we don’t call each other at work.

He asked me what I was doing Friday night.

I had been concentrating deeply on a project I was working on, so out of the blue, I heard myself saying “Friday night? I’m going to the Elton John/Billy Joel concert”

My boyfriend remained strangely silent, until he asked, shocked: “You are?”

I laughed. “Why are you sounding so perplexed? I am joking. I think I heard on the radio that there was a concert this morning, so it’s just something I blurted out to make a joke”.

After a short pause, my boyfriend replied, “Well, I guess you ARE going to the concert because I just won 2 tickets on KMOX.”

Angel Rover

When I was five years old, my parents and I moved into a house across the street from our old one. On our first night there, my mother and I slept on the floor in the bedroom of the new house (the mattress hadn’t been moved over yet).

Late at night, I was awakened by something. I looked out the bedroom door into the living room, and I saw a large golden retriever, accompanied by a beam of light that looked exactly like the type of raster you see on a television screen when it isn’t set to a channel.

I woke my mom up in a panic, shaking her and yelling, “Mom! There’s a dog in our living room!”

My mom looked up, looked into the living room, and replied, “It’s just an Angel, go back to sleep.”

I did go back to sleep, but the memory stayed with me for years.

Recently, I brought up the event to my mother, asking if she remembered it.

She blew my mind by admitting that not only did she remember it— she had seen it, too, (my mother is very no-nonsense and doesn’t believe in ghosts and sprits!) and didn’t know how else to react at the time! All these years, I had always figured that I might have been dreaming, or just seeing things. But no, she confirmed years later that my eyes hadn’t been playing tricks on me.

Children at play in the house of the Dead

We had just rented a beautiful house very close to my mother’s home, while still staying staying with her temporarily. I spent the entire 2 weeks prior to moving in painting walls, laying carpet, sewing curtains, and running back and forth between the two houses. The new office was already furnished and my typewriter (no computers yet back then…yeah, I’m old) was waiting for me to finish some long overdue correspondence.

I left my mother’s house after dinner and went to the new “office” in our not -yet-lived-in new house to take care of the correspondence.

I kept getting distracted by the sound of teenagers and children outside playing soccer in a field behind the house. Their constant shouting was getting to me. I also thought that 11:00 p.m. was a bit late for all that noise.

There were soccer games going on all day long on that field; the shouting and yelling was constant throughout the day, but at this hour of the night?

I grabbed a cigarette and opened the door to the little terrace to see whether I could tell them to shush a bit and to settle down. I stepped outside to a clear, cold, perfectly silent night. There was nobody in that field, nobody at all.

I didn’t quite “get it” right then, but when I went back inside, and sat down to finish the last letter, the yelling started again.

Sitting there and realizing just what I was hearing, I shot out of the chair, flew down the stairs and out the door, running towards my mother’s house. I almost fell into the kitchen where she was with my husband and two neighbors playing cards. One of the neighbors took at look at my face and asked my mother “you didn’t tell her”?

Apparently everybody had been hearing stories about this house, but nobody mentioned it to me because my mother thought it would make me even “stranger” than I already was.

We did not move into the house. I refused.

Fast forward 20 years. I was living in the US. My father had remarried after my mother’s death and was visiting me with his second wife. She asked me whether I remembered the house we had never moved into. Of course I did, it still sent shivers down my spine! She then told me that an American couple had bought the house, installed beautiful windows and doors, remodeled the kitchen and the bathrooms and the day before moving in, the husband fell down the stairs and broke his neck. The widow never moved in.

The house stood empty for a few years until it sold to another older couple. They had a big swimming pool built in the backyard, a “real” swimming pool, not just a plastic-lined hole in the earth. The day of the pool inspection, the lady of the house fell into the empty pool and broke her neck.

I think that house just didn’t want anyone living in it.

It was razed several years later and since it was at the end of a subdivision they built part of the highway over what was once the property the house stood on.

Diane is listening...

My friend Diane and I often talked about our belief in an afterlife, and how neat it would be if whoever died first could let the other know that even after the body dies, the soul survives and retains it’s memories of the life/lives that ended. We were not even 30 years old back then, so of course talking about our own eventual deaths was not something we were afraid of.

Diane was a few years older than I and had a 9 year old daughter. She had recently remarried and was looking forward to having more children.

We didn’t see each other often, but the last time I saw her she had lost a lot of weight. She looked radiant and told me that she had just had a complete physical and was told that she could go ahead and plan on getting pregnant.

Not even two months later I got a call from her husband, telling me that she was in hospice care, dying from stomach cancer. The cancer had already spread to her kidneys, her liver, her intestines, and there was nothing anyone could do for her. Diane died 2 or 3 weeks later.

A week after her funeral, her husband came to dinner and while sitting down in the living room, we reminisced about Diane. Her husband mentioned how a few days before her death he asked her to remember the conversations she and I had had about “coming back” and letting each other know that we were still alive, after our body had died. He asked her to let HIM know, to give HIM a sign. Diane apparently smiled and joked “who do you think YOU are that you should know more than anyone else?”

We sat in silence for a few minutes and then suddenly a big glass bowl on the coffee table, a clean glass bowl without any cracks, chips or breaks, fell apart with a loud crack, as if split in two by an invisible axe. The silence was….deafening.

All I could say was “well, there is your message.”

Her husband agreed.

Mother's Conversion

My mother is not a religious person. She never believed in an afterlife, ghosts, etc. All that changed one night while she was in the bathroom.

My father grew up in the house his great-grandfather built. The house had seen its share of death and tragedy and the entire family has had weird occurrences there. My mom’s was the most profound.

The underground railroad ran all under the town they lived in and many of the houses and businesses had secret passageways, trap doors, etc, including my dad’s childhood home. The secret room sat underneath the basement.

My mother and father were still dating at the time and my mom went to go to the restroom. she was sitting there doing her thing and she felt a cool gust of wind against her face and clear as can be she heard a voice of what she said sounded like a little girl and she whispered; ‘help me, please please help me.’

Mom never felt comfortable in that house again. If she ever had to be there alone she would go sit on the front porch.

I can’t say I blame her.

A brief encounter...

It was late, and the power was off. We were sitting around in an upstairs room, singing and playing guitar by candle light.

I got thirsty, and started down the stairs to the kitchen when the cooler of soft drinks was.

Part way up the stairs there was a door, as was common in farmhouses of the period. For some reason, I became very afraid to open it.

Deciding that fear was a small price to pay to quench my thirst, I forged ahead.

As I got to the bottom of the stairs, and looked across the hall to the kitchen, the hair stood up on the back of my neck.

A very tall man was standing there. He was elderly, slightly stooped, and I can tell you to this day exactly what he was wearing, as he stood there in the moonlight. I could also tell you what was behind him, because I could see right through him…

…And then he turned his head and looked at me.