When Halloween Gets Spooky

When I was a little girl everything went spook in the night. I could see lions and tigers coming after me. I am not sure why, but I did, and I was terribly scared of all animals and darkness. When I was little I would carry a broom about my grandmother's farm to protect me from all the animals like the chickens, the ducks, mean old roosters, cows and hogs. They all seemed to be after me. A rooster actually jumped on my back and tried to spur me, and I tripped on a stump and scrapped my knee. You might say it was a phobia in extreme personification.

As I started to get older, then things began to make themselves known to me. I could hear things in the room around me. Scratches on the floor like a dogs paws going around my bed after the death of my Chihuahua. I was a college student, when he died. He left the enclosed fencing and went across the road. He never ever did that before, but this time cost his life. I found him in the road, and he was in horrible shape, and I put my hand on him before he died. Maybe I made contact with his spirit, but I will not know. I remember having to get my mother to go and bury him, because I was too close to the dog. Oh yes, it was the "Fear Factor" type event, when something seemed to be after me or coming around at night. I could not see anything at that time, but I could hear it. I would even change rooms with my sister to keep from whatever it was from being around me, However, it would follow me to whatever room I was sleeping in. My own sister could hear it in my room. This went on during my young adulthood, and until it reached a point of climactic fright within me.

As some of you know I had professors in the college of art, and who somehow thought there was an art form in taking crayons and rubbing graves. That was a gross experience at first, but later to find out that I evoked something I had not bargained for. Something strange had happened that day. It was Halloween, and I was about 18 years old, and about 5:30 in the afternoon and in the graveyard in Valdosta, Ga. At that time I was attending the University there. That night I had seen running across the road a young girl and a cat, but they did not exist in real life. She did not look normal to me, but like a glimpse in the light of an automobile at night, when she ran in front of me. Somebody told me that was the ghost of the graveyard. I did not believe I had seen a ghost, but it was Halloween, and I was thinking that anything is possible. To rub graves you must visit graves in the graveyard. You look for unique designs on the headstones. You would take paper and crayon and rub the surface of the paper so that you pick up the texture design below it. It was done all around the country as an art form, and no one questioned your professor of art. You really wanted to graduate.

My professor had studied under Hans Hoffman the Fauvist, and he often remarked how my art looked a lot like Hans works. He said I noticed you used patterns and bright colors like him. He was kinda into the whole Fauvist movement that had started in Europe and ended up in New York. So he was just not a person to question his authority on anything. I was honored to think that he saw me like Hans Hoffman, a well known New York Fauvist artist. Hans Hoffman was around with other famous artists like Andy Warhol as well.

Somehow in the process of education, I had to transfer to another University to study. I change my major to Pre- Med, and in the process of the season, then it started to happen once more. Surprise my second year in Pre- Med was a new experience. I got to learn the art form of taxidermy and dissection of animals, birds, and other creatures. I never saw myself doing that, but I did it for the grade. There was a joke going around the campus that as a zoology student that I had dead animals in the trunk of my car. Of course, that would come out in my English class, when I had to pick up a road kill animal and dump it into my trunk until I could get it to the Zoology lab or my home. I was in a large class and in that class was only three Pre Medical students. The rest were not expected to do what we were asked to do. We were given like assignments of 50 animals to taxidermy, and to label in all the categories of classification. Each and every skull and to be boiled, and cleaned before mounting and classifying. This was the "ick" of the job that I had to do. Think of this little girl that came along toting a broom for fear of animals. Well, I was not afraid of them at that time, but did have one frighting experience.

One day along side of the road was a barn owl that had been shot by someone. So on my way to college that was thirteen miles from my house, then I picked up the owl and stuffed it in my trunk and took it home. As I started to taxidermy the animal, then I got a fright. The animal all of a sudden rolled his eyes wide open at me. I was holding his talons at the time. I thought it was coming alive again, but the muscles had just caused it to open its eyes. Spooky....spooky.... and it felt really spooky. That was definitely one of my unusual times in Zoology class in Texas. I made it through the class, and I got my A that I needed as a Pre Medical student.

There had not been a Halloween since the time of the one in Georgia, when I was rubbing graves in art class. One week before Halloween I had some strange things begin to happen. I call it the haunting before Halloween. Somewhere out of the ordinary, a golf ball hits the side of my house with a boom like something had been thrust against the wall. At that time everyone was talking about UFOs being sighted in the sky around there. I was not sure what had happened. I went outside and there on the ground was a ball jumping around and spitting something off it. I had no idea what it was. I thought something had fallen out of the sky. I still do not know how that hit my house. I called the police department, because I had no idea what it was in my yard jumping up and down and spitting around. The police officer took it like it was real and unknown spooky thing and it was not until he started to mess with it that he found out it was the inside of a golf ball. Talk about embarrassing, oh my gosh..................that was embarrassing for sure. Then, things started to happen that week. I started to hear at night footsteps above my ceiling in the attic. It would go back and forth, and act as if it was dragging it's feet. I had a condition called a heart murmur in which as I grew up causing my heart to beat abnormally. One the first night I was scared of what I heard above my head in the attic. So I pretended it never happened at all. Next night, I was hearing the sound again, and it was getting more forceful and definitely a little louder. I was really getting scared by then, and I felt like my heart took a thumb beat and stopped for so many seconds. Call it fright or just a bump in the night. Whatever was happening, then it just made my fear get worse. I hid under my covers and kept this to myself. I was sure that no one would believe me anyway. After five nights of this happening above my bedroom, then my mother yells out from her room which was around the corner and down the hall away from me, that I had some ungodly sounding noise coming from my room. I am thinking this is real, and when mom heard it, then it is getting really loud. I sat down with my family the next day, and I told my dad how spooky it had been. I went around the house trying to find bushes beating on the house to make that sound. I found no bushes beating on the walls. My dad went up into the attic and found nothing that would have made that noise. That was the night before Halloween. Then, on Halloween, it all stopped. No more feet walking up and down above my room. I was sure after a week of this that something was haunting me. Did the something come from the other state and follow me, or could this be another incident of a ghost living nearby. I tried to research the area, but nothing was found and no legends turned up.

I completed my Pre -Medical program, and I got the news that we were going to move and my dad was about to retire from the service of his country. My dad had been a career soldier for 20 plus years. So I was use to the moves and changes in my life. This time I was going back to the University where I started my art career. I decided to change my major, and I actually went back to become a teacher. I think destiny chose me to do what I should do in life. I again had a professor to deal with that had a fixation with graveyards. This time it was not at Halloween, but another time of the year. It could have been fall, but it also may have been in the winter or spring. What I remembered most was this had started my spiritual contact with the unknown the two years before. I went to the graveyard and this time had to sit and paint the gravestones like a watercolor painting of architectural structures. I thought it odd that my professor saw this as art. This was still creepy stuff to me. I happened to notice a few things about the graveyard and one was a whole line of about 40 young children's graves. All these graves were old. They appeared in my mind to be possibly an epidemic of great proportions. How they died I was not sure. Then, I also saw other things that I had not noticed before. All of this made me think about my haunted memories. I think that I actually may have been haunted, because an entity or spirit wanted me to know something, or that they were around for some reason. I can say I was really happy, when no other professor chose to send us to the graveyard again. It just so happened the graveyard was near the college. So it was always around the campus. Maybe that is why they sought interest in the graveyard. I will never know why, but I assume that my art career does not need a trip to the graveyard to become aware of any new events. Peace be to those that died, and may your spirits always rest in peace and not haunt me anymore.

Truly that might have been the end of my haunted Halloween adventure, but by no means did it end my unusual experience of being contacted in a variety of ways by the spirits, angels, and unknown entities. I guess you can say by the time that I was older, then my fear had lessened to the point that I would not be frightened to death. My experiences with the unknown are other stories waiting for me to write, but I thought maybe you could see how Halloween is more than trick or treat to me. If I were sitting around a campfire with a group of people, then I probably would have you on the edge of my suspense.