The Little Boy Who Wasn't & the Ghost in the Machine

Preface:

Most, if not all of us are familiar with the paranormal in one form or another. It's one of the few things in this world that are cut and dry: you either believe OR you don't. You've had an experience OR you haven't. I respect a skeptic, I honestly do. However, I believe skeptics exist due in part to the fact that they haven't been open to having the experience. Now, some of you are probably thinking, "But Reigny, how can you be open to something you don't believe in?" To that I would say, being open to something and believing it are two different things.

Let me explain. You can totally not believe in ghosts, but at the same time be the "but if you're here, prove me wrong" person. Even if it feels silly or asinine, live in that moment, and give the experience a chance to happen. From that point, it's up to your mind to rationalize the event and determine if it can be logically explained away, or if you then have to come to grips with the fact that you witnessed something that you just can't explain, something by definition, paranormal.

The "believers" on the other hand, don't run on rationalizations. They're open, in tune, and just know. It sounds crazy, but until you have personally been in that situation, you know the difference between "do I need to give myself reasons for why this happened" and "holy shit, please tell me someone else..." It's weird, and exhilarating, and hard to put into words how you feel when you first encounter such phenomena, but just like you know the sky is blue and the grass is green, you know you just experienced something incredible and unexplained. After that, you're hooked! You're a believer.

As you can probably tell, I fall into the "believer" category. I am a self-proclaimed "spooky chick", and have an insatiable love for the paranormal, macabre, and all things Halloween. I'm fascinated by it. I also love to share my experiences with others. While my personal experiences don't contain tales of telekinesis or Stephen King-esque type tales, they are incidents that truly had me frozen in fear.

With that being said, and all the technical stuff out of the way, may I present to you my two most memorable unexplained moments I like to refer to as "The little boy who wasn't" and "The ghost in the machine".

Part One:

I had gone to visit a friend of mine who had recently rented a new home in my area and we had decided to go out for a few drinks that night. When I arrived I was greeted by her daughter playing Nintendo DS on the couch, and the sound of my friend getting after her young son who was undoubtedly up to his normal heathen behavior. I had just caught the tail end of her telling him to stay in his room until his father arrived. She was about to send her kids off to spend the weekend with their dad, as they did every weekend since the two of them had separated. After the kids left she was bitching about how she should probably clean up the house a little bit before she left, but it was already super late and we weren't really trying to close down the bar. I told her to go ahead and get ready, and I would clean up a little bit so she could leave and not feel bad about not having adult-ed. She headed upstairs, and I proceeded to start cleaning up the kitchen. I gathered up some trash, wiped down the countertops and oven, and then started to wash the few dishes she had in the sink.

She had been upstairs for about twenty minutes or so by the time I was finishing up with the dishes. As I was rinsing off one of the last dishes, I had heard some movement in the living room. Nothing notable at the time, I had just assumed she was finished and had headed back downstairs. With my back to the entryway that led into the living room, I turned ever so slightly to my right to put the last dish in the drying rack when I heard the movement again, but this time it sounded like light running. Because I was already sort of looking towards the direction of the sound I glanced into the living area out of the corner of my eye and was able to catch a glimpse of her son just kind of hanging out in the doorway. I went back to cleaning up the water on the counter, and as I did I said out loud "Sylas, you better get your butt back in your room! Your mom told you to stay..." at that point the words on the tip of my tongue, the completion of my sentence, did somersaults back into my throat. I stood there motionless as the reality rushed over me in waves. Sylas left with his Dad and sister over thirty minutes ago. I was the only person in the lower level of the house, or so I thought.

Hesitantly, I made my way out of the kitchen and into the living room to find it completely empty. My friend still upstairs. I stood there, and just kind of took the past few minutes in. I had just seen and heard a little boy playing in the living room, who wasn't there. I was stone cold sober. We hadn't pre-gamed in the slightest. I wasn't imagining this. It's one thing if it was JUST sounds, or JUST a quick glimpse of imagery. It was BOTH! It wasn't even like the sounds alone spooked me, and my rattled psyche concocted the sight of the boy out of fear. I literally thought my friend had just come back downstairs. "What the hell just happened?" I thought to myself. Needless to say, I was dumbfounded. I sat down and lit a cigarette to calm my nerves a little bit while I waited for my friend to come back.

She must have seen on my face that I was a little uneasy, because as she exited the hallway she said, "What's wrong with you?" I looked at her, opened my mouth, and only a slight laugh devoid of much sound came out as I shook my head. Quizzically, she looked at me again and said, "Did you get bad news or something?" Her statement confused me, and I asked her what she was talking about. She said "I heard you down here talking to someone, and now you look all riled up. Who called? Who were you talking to?" I was almost embarrassed to say anything. She was my best friend, and she enjoyed the paranormal as much as I did. However, I was still wrapping my head around what had just happened, not to mention I wasn't fully convinced she would buy it. Even more so, if what I encountered was real, she was the one who had to live there. I was able to go home after this. I'm still sitting there silent thinking about all this while she's waiting on a reply, and she impatiently says to me "Dude, are you fucking stroking out on me, or what?! What the hell is going on?!"

I looked at her and laughed again, took a breath, and just said it. "I saw a little boy in the living room." She looked at me blankly. I repeated myself, but with more detail. "When I was in the kitchen I heard a noise and then saw a little boy with blonde hair in the fucking living room. He had on a blue shirt and jean shorts. He was standing right god damn there" as I pointed to the kitchen entryway. "I thought it was Sylas, and I told him to get back in his room, then I realized Sylas wasn't even home" I continued. "So, that's who I was talking to. The fucking ghost boy in your living room. Can we leave now?" The look on her face was priceless. She sat on the couch quiet for a second, and said: "You're serious, aren't you?" I could tell by her tone that she was genuinely asking, and not asking to make fun of me. She believed me. The feeling I was getting from her reaction was a bit bothersome in and of itself because I was starting to think maybe this wasn't his first appearance.

I went out on a limb and asked her if she had seen him too. She noted that she had never seen anyone, but had heard the sounds in the living room. We compared notes on what we had heard, and it was very distinctive, without a doubt the sound of childlike running or playing. It had gotten to the point she had thought her son had gotten out of bed and just started messing around in the living room in the middle of the night. Come to find out, she too walked into an empty living room, while fully expecting to find her son in there. After our short exchange of ghost stories starring her newly rented home, neither of us could bear to be in there any longer. We grabbed our things, and headed out for a VERY stiff drink!

Some time had passed, and although we had occasionally joked about the ghost boy, neither of us really ever experienced much else after that while in the house, nor did we ever speak about him to anyone else for fear of freaking out her kids if they would happen to overhear. That is, until we were several hours into our annual Halloween party that we co-hosted together every year. It wasn't anything over the top, 15-20 people had come and gone that evening without incident, with the exception of one guest. She and I were in the kitchen grabbing some more ice and beer to take back outside to the party when our friend Jordan had entered through the back door. She appeared to have a somewhat confused look on her face (mind you, it's roughly 1 AM) and said, "The kids are with their dad, right?" Laughing, my friend replied, "Yes, I'm not THAT bad of a mother!" My heart stopped. I think initially what Jordan had said went over my friends head, but I caught it immediately. "Do the neighbors have kids?" Jordan continued. "No" my friend responded. I could see that as soon as she said it, it clicked. We exchanged glances and reverted back to Jordan for further explanation. "Why, what's up?" I said, already knowing what she was going to tell us. "I'm pretty sure there's a little boy in the driveway by your car." The kitchen started to feel slightly off-kilter, and it wasn't the beer. He's back. That's all I kept thinking to myself as I exchanged glances with my co-host, while Jordan described to a T what I had seen in the living room only months prior. "I almost didn't notice him at first, because it's almost like he was hiding. He kept peeking out from behind the back passenger side of the car" Jordan continued. We handed off the beer and ice to Jordan to take back out to the other guests in exchange for us to go out front and check things out. Jordan obliged, and we watched her walk out the back door before we both looked at each other and squealed "WTF" in unison. We hustled out the front door, and down the steps to the driveway to find nothing but cars upon first glance. As we got closer to the driveway, my friend gasped in disbelief as she bent down behind the passenger side of her car. I wasn't yet aware as to what caused the reaction until she turned to me after standing up. In her hand, a matchbox car. Old, dinged up, and very much played with. Found in the exact spot Jordan had claimed to had seen a small boy popping in and out from behind the car.

That was the last night we ever had a visit from the little boy. Surprisingly, for reasons other than our ghostly encounters, she no longer lives in that house. We looked into some things after she moved out, but were never able to find anything that would have insinuated a young boy died on or anywhere near the property. No explanation for our tiny visitor, or his disappearance. I drive past the house often, as it's on the way to some areas of town that I frequent, and I wonder if the new tenants have ever seen the little boy? If they have ever found toys, or heard unexplained noises? And if not, why did the little boy decide to show up when we were there? I guess some things really do just have to remain a mystery, very much like the little boy, who wasn't.

Part Two:

It was rather late one evening when I had decided to turn off the television and head to bed. I am generally the last one in my house to hit the sack on any given night, particularly in the summer while the tiny human is on break from school. I had caught myself dozing off in the recliner, and figured I had better get in bed before my heavy eyelids got the better of me. I drug my dead ass up, did a once over of the house making sure doors were locked and lights were out before hitting the off switch on the television on my way down the hall to the bedroom.

As I fumbled my way down the dark hallway, I made it about halfway before I realized the television was back on. Chalking it up to being tired and missing the button I turned around and went to properly turn it back off. Once again, I hit the button and groggily headed back to my room. Once more, I made it halfway down the hall and could hear it turn back on and the light from the screen illuminated the hallway. "Seriously!?" I said out loud. As I headed back to my living room to turn the TV off for a third time, I was very much awake, and quite frankly kind of pissed. I turned on the living room light, hit the same switch I knew I had hit two times before, turned the light back off and headed to bed yet again. Got a little further than halfway down the hall this go-round, and BAM! That fucking TV turned back on AGAIN! "Are you fucking kidding me!!?" I once more said out loud to an empty hallway. Aggravated beyond all belief, I whipped around and headed up that hallway like I was going to war! I remember muttering under my breath something to the effect of "I got you, motherfucker" as I ripped the plug out of the outlet. I even stood there for a second afterward, as if to silently taunt the television over my victory.

As I accepted my win, I walked back down the hall to finally go to bed. When I hit the halfway mark, what happened next can literally only be described as the first and only time I have ever experienced being truly frozen in fear. A woman's voice said my name so clearly, and at a volume so audible that it sounded as if whoever she was, she was right behind me!

I'm less than five feet from my bedroom door, in the complete darkness, and I hear "Reigny"! I actually don't know how I didn't piss myself, I was that scared! I thought someone was in my house! I felt like I was frozen for hours. It was like nothing I had ever experienced before. When my brain finally started working again, actualizing the possibility that someone was in my house my gut instinct was to reach for the door handle to my immediate right. That room contained the only readily available weapons I had which were a 90 lb pit bull, a 75 lb black lab, and my 4 lb hit 'em low Pekingese. I thought: I'm just going to open the door and fucking book it into the bedroom to get my husband. I decided against booking it, but opened the door anyway, and just held my breath. I knew if someone was behind me, as soon as the dogs saw them they would go apeshit! The dogs had zero reaction, aside from "Cool, Mom's up!" I could not believe it. Not a soul was in that living room, or hallway. Just me and three super excited, yet mildly confused dogs hanging out in the hallway at 3 AM.

To their displeasure, I rounded them all back up and got them back in their room for bed. I ran four feet to my room, jumped into my bed and laid there entirely to freaked out to sleep. At some point, however, I guess I did actually doze off and was woken up by my husband the next morning asking me why the TV was unplugged? I knew he wouldn't believe me, so I didn't even tell him what had happened. I just made up a bullshit reason, and that was the end of it.

The next morning I thought about it from the time my feet hit the floor. Just going over it in my head. I had to tell someone, so I called my mom. After making her promise she wouldn't think I was crazy, and assuring her I wasn't on drugs, I told her about it. Her initial reaction was the same as mine after I had woken up and thought about it with a clear head. "Well, there's only one female in the family who has passed away, maybe it was Yvonne?" My mom also believes in the paranormal, so I knew she wouldn't think I had totally lost my mind. But I was surprised to hear her say maybe it was my aunt. When the thought occurred to me, I thought it might be reaching, but she thought it too, and she's not certifiable, so it was a viable option. We both just thought, maybe she was trying to get my attention? But, for what? Maybe just to let me know she's around? Hell of a way to make your presence known, but okay.

A few weeks later I had this fucked up dream. My uncle, Yvonne's widower, was dating a super unsavory, extremely shady woman, whom the entire family HATED. I remember waking up from the dream being really pissed off at her, but not knowing why, and also having this nagging feeling that I was mad at her because of something to do with my uncle. It was the first dream I had ever had where I was so in the dark about the details of it, but SO over-aware of the emotions surrounding these events that I couldn't seem to remember had taken place.

Two days later, my husband wakes me up and hits me with the most out of left field shit ever. My uncle was dead. Details were limited because the family had literally just been notified, but his girlfriend was suspected of killing him. What. In the Actual. Fuck? Was this what my dream was about? Was the voice I heard really my aunt, and she wasn't just trying to say "Hi" in a super fucked up way, but she was trying to warn me about this bitch killing my uncle? Would I have gotten the whole message if I hadn't freaked out and let my dogs out?

After that, tragedy struck two more times. Both of my cousins, my uncle's boys, Aunt Yvonne's boys, had died. Both from an overdose. The investigation into my uncle's death concluded with the coroner ruling it a "suicide", but my family is convinced otherwise. The circumstances of his death don't add up. The drugs in his system were drugs his girlfriend were on, they had been fighting for a while, and we had just seen him the day prior to his death, as well as every day leading up to it and there were ZERO indications that he was headed down such a dark road mentally.

My mom and grandmother were convinced that the event in my hallway and my dream were a sign from my aunt. She could see that things were getting bad, and she was reaching out from beyond the grave in an attempt to save her family. I suppose we will never really know. What I do know, is that what happened to me was very real. Someone was trying to get my attention for whatever reason. And to that point, I am much more aware of the potential signs from the other side. Maybe you should be too?