- FIRST PLACE
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- $50 cash & Brad Steiger's book
Real Vampires, Night Stalkers & Creatures
From The Darkside
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- A WATCHER AT BEDSIDE
I am writing an account of my experience partly because my son submitted a splash
art to the Halloween splash art contest trying to depict my description
of the event. He did a wonderful job, but I don't think anything is ever going
to come close to what I saw! I'll try and keep this short, as the
events leading up to my main experience goes back for months. Suddenly
, when I would be asleep at night, I would be awakened by a horrible feeling,
I would lose all control, it is very hard to describe. Like something was
rising, or trying to get me, and when it would I would just have to suffer
through it until it let go. I know I sound crazy. I don't have the words
to describe what it felt like. I would be aware of my surroundings,
and I could hear what was going on around me, NOT DREAMING. I would be
fully awake and aware and could only wait till it passed.
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- For instance , once I went to bed early and my husband was still watching
a movie in the living room, when I suffered an "attack", I could
fully hear what was going on two rooms away, the movie playing, his cough,
everything, but I was unable to do anything to call out to him. At first
they were small and quick, each time leaving me fully awake after
it passed. I would really wonder at what in the world it could be. Finally
they began happening with enough frequency that I finally mentioned them
to my husband. He was startled and said to me he thought they sounded like
seizures. He was concerned and told me I needed to see our doctor. I was
very embarrassed at the idea of trying to describe what I was going through,
as I was afraid I would sound like a nut. This was mostly because they
(the attacks)had changed a little, and a few times during the experience
I felt for all the world that I was being lifted into the air, and could
actually feel the inertia. This to me , was a disturbing turn.
I would fight and try SOOOO hard to speak or move or get my husbands attention.
Mostly they would occur when I was alone in bed, but once or twice he was
right next to me. He sleeps like a rock.
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- The last straw was a Saturday morning. My husband had to be at work
by 6am and I had to be in at 7. He left for work at 5:30, as it was a bit
of a drive for him. I remember falling back asleep. Then one hit. It hit
so hard and fast I remember thinking , Oh my God, this is a bad one. I
fought tried so hard to do anything to resist. I could do nothing but lay
and suffer. Slowly , while I was suffering through this, I began to realize
that my head was slowly being pulled to the left. Slowly and painfully
like moving through molasses. I was wondering the whole time "what
is going on?" When my head was turned and I could see the side of
my bed, there standing right beside my bed, right up against it--
was a man. His eyes were looking dead straight into mine. His hands
were folded neatly in front, almost resting on the mattress. (My bed is
a sleigh bed, with a really thick mattress, and is very high.) He was wearing (
I am embarrassed to say) a dark long gown/cloak, with a hood. (Not very
original I know, but it's what I saw.)
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- His face was very white, but not bone. He had skin, but very tight.
His eyes were ALL black and without emotion. His expression was , almost
a detached quizzical expression. Upon seeing him, my mind just fragmented.
I had many thoughts all at the same time. I was terrified. But at the same
time I distinctly felt my stomach become so nauseated , I wanted to vomit
so bad. My brain of its own accord, (best way to describe) actually said
" I don't want to know that is there" I also had the distinct
thought, that "he is just watching me go through this". And slowly
, I forced my eyes away , which is exactly the opposite of how I
would think I might react to seeing a man/thing next to my bed. Suddenly
the thought occurred to me to pray.
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- I am Catholic by upbringing, so I began a prayer to the Blessed Virgin
Mary (sorry if I offend anyone, its my belief.) No sooner had I said the
first few words of the prayer, than I suddenly heard a CHORUS of other
voices pick up with me, happy, excited, encouraging voices that said
the prayer word for word and louder than any sound I had ever heard. Its
like someone turned up the volume for the first time. I didn't know sound
could be so clear and vibrant. I remember listening in awe, and every thing
melted and stopped. I was exhausted and fell asleep.
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- I have no sense of time, but sometime, I awoke again, and it was coming
again. This time I felt myself once again rising from the bed. I hated
it, it was a horrible sensation, and I remember thinking that I REALLY
need to go to the doctor, just let me get through this. And I don't remember
much, I was getting so exhausted. After it passed, I fell asleep(?) again.
-
- And then a third time. The last time I could hear my cat, (a large
male black cat who is very attached to me and is very expressive) hitting
my door and meowing sharply. He has the habit of throwing his body against
the door when he is earnestly trying to get my attention, like if he hears noises
outside,or if there is an animal in the back yard. This is what he was
doing. I felt so bad, because he sounded very alarmed, but I couldn't utter
a sound, or move or do anything. I don't remember much after that. When
I woke it as past 7:30 and I was late to work. The rest of the day I was
sick. I was felt very thick and slow. I had a horrible headache and anytime
some one spoke to me, I found myself having to ask them to repeat themselves.
Not cause I couldn't hear them, but because I just could "get"
what they were telling me. In short, I ended up going to the doctor after
that morning, about a week later.
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- He immediately suspected seizures. They performed a series of MRI's
to rule out any possibility of scar tissue on the brain, or tumors. Nothing
was found. I had to do an EEG, but nothing came of that either. I was so
embarrassed at having to describe what was going on, ( I never did tell
him about the man) I was even more embarrassed when they couldn't find
anything. When the doctor who was still concerned suggested I see a Neurologist
I drew the line, with promises I would consider it if I found the issue
to be getting worse or bothersome. I have often wondered what could be
the answer. I am certainly not against considering that these were seizures,
and actually I was so convinced that is what they were. And was really
worried about the possibility of brain problems like scarring or tumors,
and relieved to think I wasn't a nut or fruit cake. But not a single night
goes by , ever that I don't think of that man/thing I saw. Every time I
lay down, I think of him and worry I might ever see him again. Seizures?
A night visit? Demonic in origin? I don't know, but I think I will ponder
it for the rest of my life. Seeing him/that was one of the worst
experiences I could ever imagine. It was very hard to go through, words
will not describe it.
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- Submitted by Anonymous
- SECOND PLACE
-
- $25 cash & Brad Steiger's book
Real Vampires, Night Stalkers & Creatures
From The Darkside
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-
- THE CHILL WINTER NIGHT
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- This is a true story of perhaps the only time in my life I might have
seen a real ghost.
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- During the winter of 1969/70, I worked at Frankfurt Main Airport in
Germany.
- I lived in the tiny, picturesque village of Schwanheim, (Swan Home),
a few miles away through the dense, dark, German forest.
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- One bitterly cold winter's night, coming off work at 02.15 in the morning,
I boarded the company bus that took late-shift workers to our various destinations.
- As we emerged from the forest, I asked the driver to drop me at the
crossroads on the edge of town. I did not want the bus to pass down the
little street where I lived and awaken its sleepers. On this night, the
older part of the village, along the forest's edge and to where I lived
almost half-a-mile away, was simply far too lovely and peaceful, its old-style,
homely little German wood-and-brick houses too gently restful under their
mantle of snow and a cold, starry, winter sky, for me to wish to disturb
that peace that seemed straight out of a Brothers' Grimm fairy-tale.
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- Also, It was a beautifully clear Winter's night under twenty degrees
or more of frost, and I wanted to enjoy the walk home, a quarter-mile or
so along the forest to my left, and then a right down another quarter-mile
of old town to where I had a room with a wonderful German family.
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- The first leg of my walk was backed to my right by the loveliest little
old wood-and-brick German gingerbread houses, each with its tiny garden
lovingly tended behind a carefully-painted wooden picket fence.
-
- The night was so still, I could hear the hissing of the old gas-lanterns
under which I passed, set on ornate, century-old, cast-iron lamp-posts.
To my left, across the narrow road, loomed the dark, always-mysterious
forest, all whitely hung with blades of hoar-frost that occasionally broke
and fell, tinkling, through leaves and the thick, tangled, thorny dense
undergrowth at the forest's edge, now all frozen bare and solid by grim
Winter's grip. Their broken-glass tinkling was counterpointed by the quietly
admonishing, hissing of the lamps. I breathed deeply, exulting in my frozen
breath on the so-still winter's air in the sleeping little story-book town.
-
- Suddenly, around fifteen paces in front of me, a white, long-sleeved
shirt, facing me full-on, shot out from between two houses on my right,
swaying in its passage through the air, over the picket-fences, and on
across the street, at the speed of a running man. I wondered where his
legs were, and also, why no head? How had the runner jumped the fence?
-- and why and HOW -- was he running sideways, facing me full-on?
And why in Heaven's name in only a shirt, on a night like this?
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- These thoughts ran through my head within the first two paces the man
would have taken ... if it had been a man ...
-
- Within a microsecond, my brain had solved the puzzle! -- it was obviously
only a man's white shirt on a washing-line, being run out on one of those
European washing-lines, an endless loop with a little crank to string washing
across streets and alleys, like you see in Italy. The next microsecond
told me : this is not Italy! -- this is Germany! -- and who would hang
out washing on a night like this? -- and there ARE no washing-lines across
a public street -- at man's height!
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- Fine! -- said my brain, -- it is a giant seagull, flying sideways to
me, wings vertical
- -- and my brain came back? -- Seagull? -- here in the middle of Germany,
on a cold winter's night? -- and sideways?? -- Oh, no! -- this is a light!
-- someone behind you is shining their flashlight from right to left across
the wall in front of you! -- WALL?? -- across a public road?! -- ABSURD!
-
- By this time, less than two seconds, whatever that shirt was, fluttering
and softly glowing a pinkish-blue phosphorescent white, it had crossed
the street and was flitting through the frozen tangle to my left ... without
a sound ... as though the brush were not even there at all. -- What?!
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- Running forward to follow it, I found myself stopped by the tangle.
I saw the shirt a few dozen yards away from me, fluttering and glowing
and rapidly receding at the speed of a man running fast between the forest's
trees and expertly zig-zagging to avoid them while making no sound at all.
It grew more distant and then was only a thinly edge-on sliver of pale,
shining white, finally disappearing entirely between trees at a range of
I guessed around 300 yards. I watched for a while, but it never reappeared.
-
- I was not frightened, only intensely curious : Was this some newly-liberated
soul escaping its mortal shell, confused and frightened, perhaps, by its
freedom and, lost, careening off into the night like the proverbial wailing
banshee? Or was it some still-living sleeper, dreaming deeply as we all
do, of taking steps that become longer and longer to finally lift us off
our world altogether like a balloon, to amaze the few in the streets looking
up to notice us, and wondering what we might do with our newly-found abilities?
Or was it some unhallowed, restless spectre of grim ages long past, rising
from its tomb again to some unimaginable secret tryst with its own kind
or on other un-dead mission incomprehensible?
-
- I listened to the hissing gas-lamps, the falling frost, and decided
it might have been some sort of warning to me to take the other road instead,
so returned to the dark crossroads, and walked home the other way.
-
- To this day, I have no explanation at all for this incident, only that
it happened, and that it happened to me.
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- Submitted by George Paxinos
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-
THIRD PLACE
-
- $10 cash & Brad Steiger's book
Real Vampires, Night Stalkers & Creatures
From The Darkside
-
-
- DREAMS & SPIRITS
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- At the age of 17, my best friend moved into newly built suburb. Over
the course of three months, I began to notice his neighbor coming
and going from his residence. He was in his 50's, quiet, reserved and not
a particularly friendly individual. If I said hello to him, the most acknowledgement
I would receive was maybe a head nod. After a while, I stopped trying to
be cordial and no longer noticed his presence. Those brief encounters were
the extent of my total interaction with this person.
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- One night I had a very disturbing dream (to say the least). I dreamt
my best friend and I were having a riotous party with many people
and copious amounts of libation. However, to make matters strange, the
party was at the above-mentioned neighbor's house. During the party, the
loud revving of a street racer motorcycle interrupted the atmosphere. I
made my way through the crowd to the front door. There was a young man,
late teens, tearing up the sod in the front yard by making a stationary
"donut" figure with the back wheel of his bike. He had on a skid
suit complete with a visor helmet. Suddenly the young man leaped of his
bike and came towards the entrance o f the house. He threw aside his helmet
and began yelling my name. As goes the detached nature of dreams, no one
else in the party seemed to notice this guy stumbling around, calling for
me. He then walked towards and embraced me. He held on to me tightly and
then began sobbing very hard. The young man was inconsolable.
Finally, after a moment he stammered in my ear "I'm so sorry, I'm
just so sorry, please tell my dad I love him and I'm sorry." He was
so repetitive in his message that I had total recollection of his statement
to me after I awoke.
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- I felt very uncomfortable and fearful that night due to the seemingly
nonsensical yet vivid imagery of the dream. I just chalked it up to just
another weird dream experience. Some time later, while with my friend,
I nonchalantly related the dream to him. I still clearly remember the startled
look on his face as he stopped cold in his tracks. "Are you kidding
me!" he asked incredulously.
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- What he recounted next froze me to the ground and caused my hair to
stand on end. Apparently, my best friend's dad had a more genial relationship
with the gentlemen next door to him. The man had sadly told my friend's
father that his son had passed away about 3 years ago. That, in and of
itself, is not necessarily odd but, unbelievably, the man's son was killed
in a motorcycle accident while intoxicated! What made this truly a fortean
event was the young man wrecked his bike on the way home from a party!
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- Now say what you will; something extraordinary happened. Obviously
a skeptic will say that perhaps I had overheard the father speaking of
this tragedy and my subconscious cued the strange dream later (and
so on and so on). But rest assured there was zero discussion about any
of the details regarding the neighbor's personal life, not to mention it
would have been entirely inappropriate. For all I knew, this man simply
lived alone with his wife.
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- To this day, I still shudder when I think of the sudden upheaval of
emotion I felt upon di scovering that my dream, incoherent as it originally
seemed, was a possible encounter with a spirit from beyond. I am a reasonable
and logical individual, yet this occurrence completely defies any explanation
I can conceive.
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- Submitted by BEN
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