SPIRITS, & ANGELS, & DEMONS - OH MY!

Photo: Tanya, Bo, Ramona, & Dee Dee (AKA Skitch) Tanya is my niece, Bo my nephew, & Ramona my favorite cousin and a childhood best friend.

THEN:

 

Spirits, & Angels, & Demons - Oh My!

Have you ever studied the connection between superstition and spirituality? Or the difference between spirituality and religion? I am fascinated by these subjects. Some people consider all three terms to be synonyms. They claim it's a bunch of hogwash, the whole lot. (Well, if they're from the south that may be how they put it.) And other people, like me, draw a definite line in the sand between these ideas. I consider them not only different but very different, one being based on logic and the other two being based on the lack thereof. Yes, you can find a grain of truth in many of the superstitions, and some good points in religious ideas. Common sense, for example, might tell you to avoid walking under ladders or opening an umbrella in the house. "Do unto others," is a common belief embraced by many religions and many cultures. Both seem like great ideas to me. Most superstitions and many religious ideas (like most rumors, and stereotypes) involve a grain of truth. Even skeptics will usually admit that spirituality also contains it's share of truth. Things do happen that science, as yet, cannot explain. Anyone that says otherwise is either supremely arrogant or has been living under a rock. The difference is how someone reacts to the, as yet, unexplainable. A person of spirituality takes that grain of truth and is humbled by it, tries to understand it, tries to build upon it in order to make sense of the world around them, and in the long term admits that they don't know everything. It is the essence of "I don't know what the future holds or what is possible." It is often an admittance that they believe Someone or Something other than themselves is in charge. Superstition and religion take the same grain of truth and are frightened by it, they try to understand it, try to build upon and around it in order to make sense of the world around them, but in the long term they come to the conclusion that they understand what caused that truth, and furthermore, how to avoid or repeat it in the future. The superstitious are in essence saying, "I've got it all figured out, and I know how to bend the future to my liking. I am in charge." And the religious seem to believe, "I'm not in charge but I know exactly who is, what they want and don't want, so let's go on a crusade."

So, even though these ways of thinking have many similarities, they boil down to arrogance and humbleness, which are complete opposites. Therefore to me one of these is seen in a much more positive light.

I am a spiritualist, and by that term I mean, I follow a philosophy emphasizing the spiritual aspect of being. I believe in God because I am a spiritualist, but, for that same reason, I can admit that I don't know all the details of Who and Where God is, let alone What God wants or How I am to please him or her or it. For a spiritualist there are more questions than answers. Maybe I'm completely wrong and God is someone human beings make up so that death doesn't frighten them quite so much. I don't have all the answers, but I have found so many of the questions! I can only tell you that I "think" and "feel" that God is out there, that God loves goodness, and that God loves me. That is what I believe but my beliefs are not the only ones, and hey are not the only ones that count. I can admit that I could be wrong. Spiritualist can do that. It is the religious that seem incapable of admitting they could ever be wrong about God. Of course, most of them claim their book (full of contradictions, and atrocities, truths, and acts of love and sacrifice) cannot be wrong. And, of course, the superstitious are also loath to admit they may be wrong about anything. It isn't repeated that you should "probably" avoid black cats or that Friday the 13th "might" be an unlucky day. Any superstitious person will tell you there are things you simply should or should not do. They maintain that a bride absolutely should wear something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue. And although many of them will add, "Just in case," they will surely say you "should" wear those things. A spiritualist will likely say something more akin to, "Wear whatever you want. If wearing blue, borrowed, old, and new makes you feel more connected to the brides before and after you or an any way happier then by all means wear them." My first wedding I wore the rules to placate my mother-in-law and grandmother-in-law who were both very superstitious. My second wedding was an elopement and I wore a green dress and didn't even remember the rules of blue, borrowed, old, and new.

Superstitions have one up on religion, in my opinion. They are very entertaining. We had some highly superstitious guys for neighbors when I was growing up, John, Tim, and Joe. (You may hear more about them in the future.) One of my favorite past times when I was about 14 was to ask to see their knives, open them, and refuse to close them back. Those guys all believed that to close a knife that someone else opened was asking for bad luck. I was a mean 14 year old and my father (whom I got my mean sense of humor from) would laugh until he could barely breathe when those boys begged and pleaded with me to close their knife. They eventually became so aggravated that they threatened to throw their own knives away. Dad usually gave in and closed the knives for them. I was too mean, too stubborn, and too annoyed by their idea. I wanted them to close the knife so they could learn that nothing bad would happen as a result. I know now that they would have watched for "bad luck" and every molehill would have been turned into a mountain for weeks, but at the time I really believed they could learn something from it if they would just close the stupid knife!

My favorite superstition is this one: "It is bad luck to chase someone with a broom." Well, yes, I think we can safely say they won't take it well if you chase them with a broom, especially if that someone is me! You chase me period and, unless you're joking and I'm in on the joke, I can guarantee you will someday and somehow regret it, unless you kill me with that broom, which I will not make easy for you.

And I told you all of that to tell you this: I personally believe in God because there are things I cannot explain but the existence of God could explain. I believe in God because good and evil exist in the world and a great battle is ever waging between the two. I believe in God because people wear clothes even in the summer when it's 102 degrees outside. I believe in God because babies share and because giving makes you feel so good. I believe in God because I have always felt watched and loved beyond any words. And I'm a writer. When something is beyond words to me, that's saying a lot. I like words. I like to put every thought and feeling I've ever had into words, but words cannot reveal the love I've felt around me, the effect goodness has had on my soul, the way I feel when I see a sunrise or watch a thunderstorm. And there are many other reasons that I believe in God. I believe in God because I've seen genuine miracles. Not "the preacher touched them and they fell down and laughed hysterically and said they felt healed" miracles, but the genuine "he was on the way to the hospital and had been vomiting blood from bleeding ulcers and now there are no ulcers to be found in this man's stomach" type of miracles. I believe in God because I know there is something more to me than flesh and bone. I believe in God because I've seen goodness and felt evil. I believe because I've been haunted.

When I was 12 we moved from a house my father had built on top of a mountain into a house out town. We had called the mountain home "Up on the Hill" but that was a typical hillbilly understatement, much like when it was sub zero temperatures outside and my father called it "nippy". The home I'd lived in the last four years was built from two houses that my father and my adopted uncle, Crit, had torn down. Our home had the sounds that seem to come pack and parcel with old wood. The floors creaked and groaned as the warmth of the sunlight died in pitch black nights. The tin roof would whine when branches brushed across it or clang and whistle with the wind. The home had three to six rooms. Pop would sometimes tear down and put up walls, wall in porches, and so on, so it was hard to say it had an exact number of rooms. It was not uncommon to hear a panther or a bob cat, but the only "boogers" we had ever heard were some sort of night bird, probably an owl, that country people call a "freezing booger". In the summer nights it sounded like the house was completely enveloped in layer after layer of crickets. I kind of liked most bugs and I was a pretty brave lady, but sometimes I thought running out to the outhouse in the summer night could be a bad move. What if those zillions of crickets realized they had us vastly outnumbered? We'd heard a lot of odd things there, but we'd never heard a single thing we could not explain.

The house out town had been built and then added onto. The addition, which ran all along the entire length of the house, was straight. The older section sloped  toward road, and all the wood was old. If anyone had asked us, I'm sure we would have said we expected the same sort of creaks and groans that we'd heard in our other home. But that is not what I discovered in the town home.

We'd only lived there a few months when I announced, rather ho-humly, that the house was haunted. I wasn't the least bit afraid. Legions of bugs might give me pause but sounds I was not afraid of, and I was pretty convinced these 'hauntings' were just sounds. My mother laughed it off and told me she was sure the noises I was hearing were explainable. It was the reaction I expected and the subject dropped for the time being. Several weeks later though, I had mentioned some odd noise again and my mother's voice got that edge to it. "Dee Dee, for the last time, this house is not haunted." When my mother said 'for the last time' you were on thin ice. I waited the span of a few breaths before asking in my best little-girl voice, "Well, what do you call it when you hear noises that can't be explained?"

"Just because YOU can't explain them doesn't mean they can't be explained." She now had the tone she reserved for stupid children, and I had to take more than a few breaths before I spoke again. Sometimes the pauses were for her and sometimes they were for me. Most of the people in my family had hot tempers and I was included among the "most".

"So, then will you do me a favor? Will you sit on my bed with me for 30 minutes and explain them, because if you can explain every sound we hear then I'll understand and I'll promise to never call this house haunted again."

"You'll never call this house haunted again anyway if I forbid it."

"Right." I was quick to agree, "Okay. Well then..." I delayed by taking a tiny bite of my cheese sandwich, chewing, and swallowing, all under the guise of considering the situation. Conversations with my mother were tricky. The words that threw her anger were hard to predict. With my father, I could say whatever jumped into my mind as soon as it jumped there and he would either laugh or scowl but he had never been enraged by any of the words that fell out of my mouth. He was much harder to anger, but when he was angry he was the angriest person in the world. At least the angriest I'd ever seen or heard of, even on television or in books. I'd watched him cut the bed off a truck with an ax once once and beat a horse with a 2 X 4 on another day. He had the worst temper in a family full of hot tempers, but words never seemed to set him off and even at his angriest I felt safe. Getting along with Dad was easy, 'Do what I say, as soon as I say it, or die trying' seemed to be the rule with him, and it was the sort of rule I could wrap my 12 year old head around. With mom it was "Watch what you say because you just never know what is going to make me angry," and that was a much harder rule to follow. Dad was action and mother was words.

"Well, will you do it for me, just so I don't think of the house as haunted?"
It was also wise to end as many of your sentences as possible with question marks.

My mother stared at me, and I began to breathe again as I watched the anger slip off her face. "Okay. After supper I'll go sit on your bed and tell you what all the sounds are." She still seemed annoyed, but not angry.

I felt the tension drain out of me. Later I would decide that she had been concerned that I was afraid.

My mother was unpredictable, but she loved me.

After the meal Mom went to my room with me and we sat on my little cot. For all of about three minutes we listened to nothing other than each other breathing. Then we heard a faint tinkle as though, in the walk in closet I shared with my sister, the wire hangers were being ever so slightly disturbed. The closet had two bars hanging the considerable length of it. (I later put a bed in that closet and made a room out of it.) One of the bars I used and it was about half full with my dresses and blouses. The other one my sister used and it only had about ten or twelve items hanging on it. Sandi has never been a clothing hog. Empty hangers took up much of the rest of Sandi's bar.

Mom, cast her eyes my way. "The wind."

I started to argue that the only window in my room was closed and that, even if it had been open it would have had to be a pretty good blast of air to move the hangers deep inside that big closet. But I rethought it and just nodded, giving her that one. Chances were good that this was only the beginning, especially if I kept quiet. It seemed the quieter the room was the more often I heard the odd sounds. Mom had only whispered but I still didn't want to add to it.

Only a few seconds after she stopped talking we heard the undeniable sound of a dog's toenails on a hard floor. The sound actually traveled as though a ghost dog had walked from one side of the room to the other.

"Feisty," my mother said, but she looked less sure this time. Feisty was my sister's Chihuahua.

I took the risk to whisper, "She's outside with Sandi."

"Maybe they came back in and are in the other room?"

I very slightly shook my head and whispered, "Would have heard them come in, and the other room has carpet."

Mom looked a little shook up and I found it hard not to smile or even giggle. I dropped my eyes from hers, not wanting to annoy her and lose the chance to prove my point. The sounds didn't scare me. I actually found them interesting, but Mom looked a little scared.

It was about two seconds later that the empty hangers in the closet tinkled harder and longer. The sound went from one end of their length to the other, exactly as though someone had ran their hand across the length of every empty hanger on Sandi's bar, making them jingle together. I leaned and peered into the closet and you could even see them moving.

My mother jumped up and left the room quickly.

I followed with a smile.

In the kitchen, she sat holding her coffee cup in shaking fingers. "Okay, I won't say this house is haunted because I don't know if that is what is causing that." My heart fell a bit and I fought to keep the scowl off my forehead, "But," She took a drink of her coffee, "I won't complain if you say it anymore because I can't tell you what those sounds were."

Mark it down on your calendar. I had won one with my mother!

Some time later I woke up to the sound of my dad's voice, "Time to get up, Dee Dee." I rose, and dressed, and sat down at the kitchen table for my breakfast. Dad had fixed my food and sat my plate in front of the chair I usually sat at. I was trying hard to work up an appetite early in the morning, which had never been easy for me.

All of a sudden I had that funny feeling, like someone was watching me. I turned my head to the left and, right beside the pencil sharpener on the door frame was the face of a young girl. She was leaning around the doorway and looking at me quizzically like I was not supposed to be up so early, or not expected to be eating my breakfast. Looking at her made me feel safe and happy. It was like she emanated pure love. She looked like me but everything about her seemed exaggerated. Her chin length hair was a lighter blond, maybe even white, her eyes were bigger and a brighter shade of blue, and her lips were a deep red. I realize it sounds stereotypical, but she was wearing something that looked for all the world like a white pull-over floor-length nightgown or robe. I'd barely had a moment to absorb all that when she suddenly realized that I was looking right at her. Later I would wonder if maybe she was used to me looking through her, not at her. Her eyes registered shock instead of confusion, and then she disappeared. She didn't draw back her head from the position of leaning through the doorway; she simply disappeared.

But, I mistrusted my eyes. I convinced myself that maybe I'd blinked and she'd moved very quickly. People don't just disappear. Right? I sat there a moment, wonder if I should go into the living room and tell my dad.  I decided against it. I wasn't sure he'd believe me. I wasn't sure I believed myself, but I wanted to know if she was back there somewhere. I wanted to look at her again and feel that safe, happy feeling. I got up and searched my parents bedroom and the other rooms, none of which had a doorway outside except the one in my Mom and Dad's room and I could have seen her if she'd gone out of it. I even looked under the beds. My mother was asleep in her bed, but no bright eyed girl of happiness was under it. Nor under mine, or my sisters. She wasn't in the closet or the bathroom. I even checked in small areas because she could very easily hide in my wardrobe, or behind my mom's dresser, or a dozen other spots in those rooms. When I couldn't find her anywhere, I had to admit that she'd been something like I'd never seen before and that she had indeed just disappeared.

Eventually, I went back and finished my breakfast, got on the bus, and went to school. I missed her all day long and for several days to follow. I felt like my best friend had moved away. It took a while to tell my family about the girl. I was a very introverted person and lived all alone inside my head. I had many secrets that I didn't even know how to express. I was also a little concerned that no one would believe me, but after thinking about Mom admitting there were noises she couldn't explain I finally told them in the plainest form I could manage.

"The other morning, I was eating breakfast and a little girl leaned around the door and looked at me like she didn't understand what I was doing, and when she noticed I was looking back at her she disappeared."

After a few dozen questions the whole story came out including why I hadn't told them, but "I was afraid you wouldn't believe me" came out "I don't know." I really wasn't good at articulating my feelings yet. No one challenged me, but their eyes were swimming with doubt. I was pretty wishy washy about it all myself. I had seen her, but I had no idea who or what she was, so I felt at a loss to prove anything. But my mother had no idea who or what she was when she saw her a few months later.

That happened when my sister Sandi, my cousin Wesley, Crit, and I were playing cards at the kitchen table. My mother was in bed napping and she called out in an unsteady voice. "Dido, where are you?" (I have a lot of nicknames.)

I shrugged the tone off. She often wanted to know where I was. "I'm in here, Mom."

After a pause she asked, "What are you wearing?"

Now that, she didn't often ask. I looked at my sister with my brows up. "I've got that red and white stripped shirt on and my jeans." I too paused, hoping she would elaborate. When she didn't I added, "Why?"

"No reason..." But her voice was definitely shaky this time. I got up and went into the bedroom and asked softly, "Momma, what's wrong?"

She sighed and sat part way up in the bed. "I swear I was awake. I was awake and I saw it, and I'm not losing my mind! Surely I'm not losing my mind?!"

"You're not, Momma." When she failed to elaborate I added, "I saw something too, remember?"

She looked at me and the distrust slowly fell out of her eyes. "I was awake," She said that forcefully, "And I was listening to you'all play cards, and I was wondering if I was going to be able to go back to sleep or if I should just get up for a while." In those days my mother spent a lot of her time in bed. "Then some girl that looked so much like you that I thought it was you came out of your room and she had your brown dress on. She walked over to the mirror and I thought, 'How did she get past me without me seeing her? Did she crawl through my room? How could I miss it when she left the kitchen and went in the back room?' I wouldn't put it past you to crawl through, trying not to wake me. She twirled around and around in front of the mirror a few times, and I thought it was kinda' strange because you wear that dress all the time and probably know what you look like in it. Then as she was walking back out of the room and into your room I heard you speak in the kitchen! It gave me the hebbie jebbies!"

Mother was petrified and I was delighted! Someone else had seen her, and I found that wonderful! Now I doubted my own sanity less. And whoever or whatever she was, she looked happy and was trying on my clothes. I was glad to hear she was still out there somewhere. I smiled to think of her playing with my wardrobe and being happy. "She won't hurt you, Momma." I was surprised at my mother's reaction.

She swallowed and rested back on her pillow. "No. I don't guess she will. She felt like a good good girl. Didn't she?"

I never doubted that she was love and light and all things good. Not even when something else tried to frighten the life right out of me. It never occurred to me that it could have been her. Not for a minute. I only know that others may wonder because they've asked when I told the story, "Do you think that might have been the same little girl?" The answer is a strong and resounding, "No." If you had seen the joyful, sweet face I saw. If you could feel the peace and love she emanated you would never imagine that this might have been her.

But the next thing that happened, other than the daily odd little noises, wasn't petrifying, it was annoying. I was sleeping in my sister's bed, which I did nearly as often as I slept in my own bed, when I was awakened by ice cold water hitting me right at the hairline of my forehead and pouring down my skull. I woke with a start and my sister jumped up and got a towel for me. The glass of ice water that my dad had brought me at bedtime (a nightly ritual of ours) was lying on it's side on the combination headboard and bookshelf of the bed we called a 'Hollywood bed', directly above my wet pillow. Sandi asked me if I had knocked the glass over reaching to get a drink? I told her I had been sound asleep and she scowled. She knew that I slept as still a stone. No tossing or kicking. Often I kept the same position all night long, but if I turned over I usually woke up and turned over, slowly and deliberately. I was famous in our home for sleeping so still that my bed looked undisturbed when I got up the next morning. I still do that, and I still blame it on Sandi for training me to "Hold still!" and "Stay on your own side of the bed, will you?" She looked at me unhappily for a moment or two and then grasped at the only obvious straw, "Did you knock your water off the headboard while you were asleep?"

I gave her the 'get real' look. "You know I don't do that stuff. You quarrel at me if I wiggle. And besides, my arms won't reach the headboard when I'm lying down here. I flopped down and thrashed my arms deliberately, showing my sister that my arms would not reach the glass above me. "I'd have to sit up and pour that glass over my own head."

She scowled a bit more and said she was going to go to the bathroom. With my icy head wrapped in a towel I complained, "I don't see how you can. I think all the water in the whole world just went right through my hair!"

Another night, I was again lying in her bed only this time I wasn't asleep yet. I was trying to go to sleep. I've had insomnia most of my life, and that night, like many nights, I wasn't having much luck with the sandman. Sandi had fallen asleep telling me a story and I didn't want to wake her by crawling over her, which was often the case, so I stayed in her bed. I was against the wall, and the lamp on Sandi's nightstand was still on. I'd turned my face to the wall so that when I closed my eyes it was darker, hoping I could sleep soon. I liked the dark and was annoyed by the lamp. I didn't understand how Sandi could sleep with it on when I had so much trouble sleeping with it off. I was daydreaming; telling myself a story to lull myself, when a feeling of dread pulled me out of my thoughts. A moment later, I heard a hard footstep on the threshold of our bedroom and then heavy breathing. The closest I can come to explaining how I felt then was that it was the exact opposite of how I felt in the presence of the little girl. It was as though a fog of fear and evil spread across the room and settled over me. I sucked in my breath and stayed very still. Suddenly, I was too afraid to turn around. No one in my family was the 'I'll spook you' type, so it didn't even occur to me that it might be my Dad, or Mom, or Crit. They'd all gone to great lengths to raise me to be as courageous as I could be. Whatever or whoever it was stood there breathing heavily for a couple of moments, long enough for me to start praying. Then it walked with it's heavy tread across the room. It was practically stomping. I was afraid for myself, afraid for my sister. I was praying she'd stay asleep and whatever it was would go away because it occurred to me that all it really wanted was to see someone terrified. Otherwise, why would it exaggerate it's breathing and it's footsteps? I tried to withhold my terror from it. If I didn't respond, pretended to sleep, and Sandi slept through the heavy breathing, maybe it would just go away in defeat? The sounds didn't bother me, but that feeling of evil and hatred, that was what had me shook up. Whatever it was stopped right beside my sister and the breathing grew louder and louder. The sound seemed to lean in and hang in the air over my sister's body, less than a couple of feet from me. I closed my eyes tightly and prayed harder. "Lord, please don't let it hurt Sandi! Lord, please don't let it hurt me!" Then the cord to the lamp which stretched around the headboard of the bed and plugged into the wall right in front of my face suddenly erupted in a fit of violent shaking. I broke. I gasped, yelped my sister's name, and turned over as quickly as I could, which was very quickly. And no one was there. Sandi woke up grumpy, which was her usual state when startled awake. But she talked calmly to me after realizing I was petrified out of my mind. After I'd calmed enough to think she might not die if she put her feet on the floor, she got up and looked under the bed because I was afraid that whatever it was had ducked under the bed. Where else had it had time to go? But of course, there was nothing there. That was one night that I slept in my sister's bed very deliberately, and one night that she stayed awake until I was asleep.

When my Aunt Nancy and Uncle Leslie came to visit, my mother told my auntie about the strange goings on. Aunt Nancy seemed especially interested in the dress the little girl was wearing from my wardrobe. She suggested to my mother that maybe the little girl was somehow attached to the dress, maybe it had been the little spirit-girls' dress at one time. It was a used garment, after all. My mother agreed that I'd gotten the dress about the same time the odd noises started. My dress eventually disappeared, to my great dismay as it was my absolute favorite dress, and the noises did lessen, though they never went completely away.

There is a photo from about the same time, showing my cousin, my niece and nephew, and myself at my twelfth birthday party. This was before I cut my long hair. In the background, framed in the window of a door, you can see a child that looks just like me. Perhaps it is just a double exposure, but on that day I was all smiles and the figure looks so solemn. The family calls it the "ghost picture."

I lived in that same home many of my years. I was there from age 12 to 18 and moved back in again years later when my sons were little. I lived there again, much of my years from the age of 25 until I was almost 33, and my parents lived there all the years between age 18 and 25.

I didn't tell the boys the story of the girl or the scary whatever-it-was until they were almost grown and the house was long gone. I raised my boys by the same rule of, 'Don't petrify your kids or they may grow up to be jumpy' standards that my parents had used when raising me. If it ain't broke don't fix it, right? But when we were living there, we did hear things sometimes that could not be explained. And one morning, one of my sons told me that he'd seen a "little monster" looking at him. I didn't dare tell him he hadn't seen it, but I did suggest that maybe he was still asleep when it saw it and it was a dream. He denies that possibility to this day and still remembers what the little monster looked like.

Once when my boys were snug in their beds and my friend Julie was staying the night she saw something that I couldn't see. I don't recall ever telling her the stories of the little girl and the evil thing, but she saw her own unexplainable thing there. There were only the boys beds and mine, so Julie was bunking with me while my husband and her boyfriend were off driving tractor trailers. If we sat up talking very late she would just stay the night so she could get to work quicker the next day and therefore get a bit more sleep. We were in my room, pretending we were trying to go to sleep but mostly we were laughing and acting like "girls" when suddenly she said, "Oh! What is that?"

I didn't see anything at all and told her as much. She suddenly freaked out and started swatting at something in the air that apparently she could see and I could not. She dug under my pillow, practically hid herself behind me, and then peeked out a few minutes later. I didn't see anything so I thought she was pretending and I laughed at her. She told me that she wasn't kidding, she could see a light bobbing toward her, and that it kept getting closer and closer. As I recall, Julie didn't spend another night in that house.

One evening when my first husband Greg was home from his trucking job, we were hanging out in the living room, just talking. He got up to go get a drink and a balloon that one of the boys had left hanging in the living room began to move. It traveled, bumping against the ceiling about every foot or so, until the long string hanging from it rested across my foot. I thought little of it myself, but I thought Greg might find it freaky if he would believe me. I looked up and he was standing in the doorway with wide eyes.

I kept my attention on him as I said, "You are never going to believe this, but the minute you left the room that balloon bumped it's way across the ceiling until it was hanging right over my feet."

His eyes were still wide as he glanced away from the ceiling and at me for a second, "Oh yes I do believe it because it's going right back where it came from."

I looked up and sure enough the balloon was bumping it's way back across the ceiling. I grinned and Greg sat down beside me. We watched together as the balloon traveled back and came to rest, exactly where it had been when he left the room a few moments before.

Greg looked at me and said a phrase that starts with holy and ends with feces... so it isn't holy at all.

In the years that followed those initial incidents, I've pondered long and hard about what the little girl I saw and felt and the presence and heard and felt might have been. It would have felt good to have an answer. I've always been inquisitive. I've told many a person that I want to know everything in the world that there is to know, so the uncertainty tormented me for years. I like answers! But I eventually decided that I just needed to get comfortable with the fact that I can't, right now and right here, know everything I'd like to know. And that there is a possibility that I will never know. I have lots of guesses. Maybe they were spirits, or ghosts if you will. Maybe they were aliens, or visitors from another time. Maybe they were something I'll never understand or even be able to consider. The girl in particular, has intrigued me. I've wondered, in turns, if she were my sister Patricia that died as a baby, or myself in some sort of place or time (though I certainly don't remember hiding from me after I watched me eat breakfast) or, along that same line, if it had been my niece Shana. She too was a petite blonde. But the idea that sits down and makes itself comfortable, the idea that makes the most sense to me is that the noises might have been spirits, but that the girl and the scary presence were most likely an angel and a demon. That seems to explain them and the feelings they carried with them quite a bit better. So, if angels and demons exist, probably God does too... Don't you figure?