Getting Spooked

“You’ve got to read this,” Gable implored.  “It’s in the official daily reports so it’s got to be true, right?  Got to!”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“One of the guards saw a ghost!”

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Sergeant Gable and I had met when we were assigned to guard duty.  He was a recon Marine and I was heavy artillery so our barracks were close, but we’d never met.  Like me he was a sergeant and, like me, loved to read, so we hit it off immediately.  We had a lot of good, in-depth conversations, and even worked out together now and then on our free time.  Needless to say, I gained a lot of respect for Gable, his intelligence, and perspicacity.

So you can see why I was surprised by his assertion of a ghostly visit…a real one.

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According to the log, a young Marine was walking one of our posts a few weeks before Gable and I rotated onto guard duty.  The Sergeant-of-the-Guard at the time did his regular radio checks and, when the guard for that post failed to respond, the SOG hopped in the jeep with the driver, backup guard, and Officer of the Guard and went to the post to check.

They found the assigned guard huddled in a corner where two buildings met, gripping his M-16 in shaking hands, eyes wide with fear.

The sergeant ordered the backup guard to walk the post and took the frightened Marine back to the guard shack for questioning.  When the young man had calmed down quite a bit, he was asked what had put such fear in him.

“I was walking my post and got up to the front, where I saw somebody walking within my perimeter, just in front of that building where you found me.  I challenged them, ‘Halt!  Who goes there!’ and they stopped, facing away from me.  They didn’t answer so I challenged them again, ‘Who goes there?’”

He took a deep breath and his voice cracked, “The guy turned around…” 

He stopped for a moment.  “He turned around and…he…didn’t…have…a FACE!”  He broke down again and was unable to continue.

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I’ve had some strange experiences in my life and many of them were so obviously true…well, true enough to convince anyone that ghosts, spooks, whatever you want to call them, really do exist.

Let me explain.

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I’ve told my readers before about the time when, as a child, I was lying in bed reading and the window above me began to open slowly…by itself.

Remember, I was alone in my room on the second floor of our house.  There was no one outside the window either.

I leaped up from my bed, slammed the window closed, and ran downstairs.

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I’ve told about the time some friends and I investigated the famous glowing
grave north of Campbell, Missouri.  As my friend’s car negotiated a curve on Crowley’s Ridge, we looked ahead to the graveyard where one of the gravestones began to glow with a bright light.  We were close enough to get a general idea what part of the graveyard contained the shimmering stone but, as we got nearer, the stone’s bright light faded away.

We had come to see the famous glowing grave to find out if it really did exist.  Now we had proven to ourselves that it actually did glow.

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I know I’ve also mentioned the decrepit old house we lived in as the parents of six small boys.  It was seldom quiet when the boys were home and awake but there were times when it was quiet, such as those rare times when one of us was there alone.

Annie and I were talking one day when an interesting subject came up.  My lovely and quite level-headed wife asked if I had ever heard music playing somewhere in the house when I was there by myself.

I paused, not wanting to sound like I was crazy.  I responded to her question with one of my own, “Why?  Have you?”

She nodded slowly.  “It’s weird.  I heard music playing quietly and walked all around the house to see if someone had left a radio on, or something.  I couldn’t find anything.  Besides that, I could hear it in every room.”

I cut her off, “When I’ve heard it and done that, I could hear it in every room but it wasn’t loud enough in any of them to identify it.  It played at the same, barely audible volume in every room.”

She nodded her agreement.  “How about, when you were home alone, have you ever had a light come on in another room?”

I nodded.  “And I’ve had a light go off later, after it had come on with nobody else here.”

“Weird, huh?” my wife echoed my own feelings.

I took it a step further, “Have you ever felt someone, uh, touch you?”

Her brows knitted in concern, “Heavens no!  I couldn’t take that.  We’d have to move!  Have you?”

I hesitated, then explained, “I was asleep, alone, in our bed.  I was on my stomach, sound asleep, when I was jolted awake.  My foot jumped upward.  It felt like someone had slapped it up.  Obviously it jolted me awake and, just as I woke up, I swear I heard a man chuckling.”

With our boys at home, even such an intriguing discussion as haunts in our home couldn’t hold our attention for long, and the conversation moved on, as did our lives.

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I’m also sure you remember the time my facility manager at New Madrid Bend Youth Center saw an ethereal, translucent figure moving around in the vestibule.  The boss was checking out the monitor to the security camera and witnessed the ghostly figure.  Other staff on duty were able to see it too and the specter quickly became the primary topic of conversation among employees.

The building, which was reported to have been built on the site of a Native American burial ground, had been rumored to be haunted from the time the doors first opened.

New Madrid Bend was a 24 hour facility and, obviously, the boys lived there full time.  Staff had to be there all the time to look after the residents’ needs and to make sure none of them left.

Several times, after the boys had gone to bed and the lights in the room were dimmed to facilitate their sleep, staff reported witnessing “things”.  The laundry room door would creak open or slam shut.  Someone could be heard moving around inside the building when there should have been no one else there.  Some staff said they had seen something or someone moving around in the darkness at the back of the room.  A couple staff even reported sitting at the desk when someone or something tapped them on the shoulder.

Yeah.

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My readers know that I am an inquisitive man…one who believes in the immutable rules of nature.  I believe that even the most incredible things can be explained when one considers the evidence and keeps an open mind.

With that said, I have to admit that I have no concrete evidence as to why the frightened guard in my first story thought he saw the trespasser on his post – the man with no face.  I never met the young Marine and thus never interviewed him.  However, I had walked the same post myself as a younger Marine and never saw the faceless apparition.  Neither had I heard any reports of the faceless man’s existence.

On the other hand, I had heard of some guards using stimulants, legal or otherwise, to try to stay awake.  Those chemicals could sometimes alter the user’s grasp of reality.

Besides that, young Marines often saw themselves as invincible.  They would sometimes show up for guard duty after staying awake all day or partying most of the night.  Then, when darkness surrounded them, they would fight sleep until their grasp of reality would begin to slip.  Then…

I’d also witnessed a guard or two sleeping on post.  Once I found a young man hiding behind a shrub next to a building.  When I shined my flashlight on him he opened his eyes and stammered something about hiding so that he could watch his post without being observed.  He had, he said, been watching me as I approached.

He, of course, wasn’t able to explain why he had been so startled by my flashlight.

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You will recall that the time the window above my bed began to open was after my parents had commissioned me to cut the trees that had grown up around it, and then had a roof built to keep rain from filling the outside basement stairwell and flooding the basement.

The time the window opened was during a drought year and the wind out of the west had blown up the new roof and continued upward under the window.  The wooden window frame had dried and shrunk so was loose in its frame and was gently lifted by the upward wind.

Once the rains returned the window didn’t open again.  Of course, the pencil I’d jammed between the window and its frame held it tight too

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When my friends and I investigated the glowing grave, we looked at the situation a little differently than others.  Others had simply driven by and seen the grave light up, then fade out as the position of their vehicle changed relative to it. When we checked it, however, I had my friend drop me off in the graveyard, then drive by until he could see the grave glow, then he directed me to the correct stone.

The grave stone was dark to me at the same time it was glowing for him.  Thus it must be the smooth stone reflecting light from some farmer’s all-night yard light.  With a little more research we were able to identify which yard light caused the spooky effect.

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At the youth center, my experience as a photographer proved useful for me to identify the ghost in the vestibule as a moth flying close to a fixed focus lens.  That lens caused the moth to blur so much that is seemed translucent.  When it flew on the other side of the little room, it reached the lens’s focal point and once again became a moth.

As for the laundry room door, the improperly installed ventilation vent for the dryers allowed air flow on windy nights and changes in the air pressure would push against a door which hadn’t been closed correctly.

How about the people moving around at the back of the room at night?  We were not allowed to watch television at the time so staff who had nothing to do would sit in the darkened room fighting sleep.  To a mind half awake, things seen out of the corner of the eye can seem to move.  I’ve experienced it myself.

The sound of someone moving around in the building could be attributed to a lot of things, including the mice that moved indoors whenever they could.  Heck, I had a baby mouse climb up inside my pants leg one night!  Where someone else might have leapt to their feet screaming, I swatted the thing, then grabbed it through my pants and held my leg up over the trashcan.  Then I dropped the deceased rodent into the receptacle.

Another ghost bites the dust.

The staff who reported being tapped on the shoulder?  I’ll get back to that.

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The old house Ann and I lived in obviously had old wiring.  It also had a healthy population of bugs, some of which crawled inside the electrical junction boxes…and died.  It is possible that some unfortunate bug had shorted out a switch, causing a light to go on, then burned away enough to break the connection and cause the light to go off.

It’s a wonder the old place hadn’t burned down with us in it.

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Now, back to the staff who were tapped on the shoulder.  One of them swore she was wide awake at the time and said there was no way she was going to look around to see who had sought her attention.

The other staff now freely admits that he was having a tough time staying awake that night.  The tap on his shoulder startled the heck out of him, instantly bringing him fully awake.  He looked behind him where he saw…no one.

Yeah it was me.

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In the old house, the night I was awakened by someone slapping my foot was actually a day.  I was working nights at the time and was in a constant state of sleep-deprivation due to trying to sleep in a house full of wide awake rambunctious boys.

Annie and I knew the parents of the owners of the house had both died in it.  The man was named Charles and was well known to be a jokester, often playing tricks on friends and family.  When I kicked my foot up in my sleep, it awakened me and my first thought was that someone had swatted it.  The obvious culprit would be a joker…like Mr. Charles.  The chuckle I heard in my semi-consciousness was thus a logical figment of my imagination.  With the passing years and every recounting of the experience, my memories have become stronger and more realistic.

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You see, I believe that ghosts live in a world of semi-consciousness, whether due to sleepiness, especially if accompanied by the effects of darkness and, let’s face it, fearful expectation.  Seriously, have you ever noticed that the people who most often report experiences with the paranormal are those who already believe in it?

Yeah, me too.

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Astute readers will note that I have thus far managed to avoid talking about the music my wife and I both heard in the house when we were there alone and we were both wide awake.  What is my logical explanation for that?

I…don’t…have…one.

Weird, huh?

So it must have been ghosts, right?

Happy Halloween!

Muah ha ha ha ha!

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