What really scares a person about ghosts and the supernatural? Is it just the unknown? Is the fear based in something deeper, some spiritual DNA question? Or, does a person only show fear of the supernatural when it happens to them directly?
My family has had lots of encounters of the supernatural: ghosts, Ouija boards, automatic writing, voices, and premonitions. In growing up, I was never afraid of the unknown, not afraid of death, and no fear of the monster under the bed. Perhaps some families, mine for example, of some sort of spiritual DNA, which makes some of us closer or able to see supernatural events or beings. Like my Mom and sister, I have read and watched all kinds of scary, horror and science fiction movies. Well, I never was able to watch the Exorcist and other movies which show children being possessed. My sister sure made up for what I lacked in courage: she was all into Nightmare on Elm Street, the whole Jason Vorhees movies, and some really gory scary movies I couldn’t even look at the video covers or watch the commercials.
My Mom’s grandmother, on her mother’s side, had premonitions and openly talked with her daughter and grand-daughter about them. Now we are talking like 1920’s, a time when people who lived on a farm didn’t really talk of these types of things: supernatural was considered evil. The Gatsby girls in all of high society, and as usual, the younger generation, all talked of the supernatural. For the younger more citified group, séances and Ouija boards were a great entertainment. But, for the farm folk, Christianity was the rule lived by and supernatural events were of the Devil. That is probably why my Mom didn’t have a lot of information with regard to if the premonitions were accurate, or any other spiritual events.
My Mom’s mom, my grandma, well, let’s just say, I am not sure what was really supernatural or what was a screw loose. She claimed, and this was later in her life, to be able to contact spirits via automatic writing. Mom thinks she was just a little off by this time, and she was kind of seeing things that weren’t there and hearing voices.
What I specifically remember about all of this time period is one time when she scared the b-Jesus out of me. I was younger, probably about 7 or 8 years old. We had went to Grandma’s little one bedroom apartment, where you had to share the bathroom with about three other people on the same floor. She was talking to Mom about what this entity had told her. I was ease dropping, as I continue to do quite well, and just said out loud how I didn’t believe it. Grandma decided she needed to prove it to me, prove to me she had conversations with this spirit. She picked up this steno book, with green lined paper in it, placed her hand with the pen in it on the paper, and just kind of went into a trance writing. As she was writing, I was reading it, what I could read as it was real hard to figure out what some of the words were.
The entity in which my Grandma was talking to apparently choose to take the form of a moth at times and at other times, was invisible but acted like a fairy. This particular time it was invisible, and was upset because there were non-believers around. When challenged by what I was saying, “he” told Grandma that he was on the TV antenna and was going to move it to prove he was there. I was a little freaked by this, went and checked the antenna to make sure there were no little creatures there, and then sat back down. Then, as I sat there watching, the frigging TV antenna moved. Now I don’t remember how far it moved, or even exactly what it did, but I was scared, sure there was some evil little fairy there, and wanted to go home. As memory serves me, I think my sister who is five years younger than me, was crying. Mom gathered our little butts up and we went home.
Mom tells me now that Grandma used to tell her she was talking to a moth, which was supposedly this creature. She would hear voices, or him talking to her, so it wasn’t just in writing they communicated. Mom said she never liked it, always felt like Grandma was kind of out of it, coming from way left field, and that there was probably something psychologically wrong with her at this time. She died years later of lung cancer, smoked all her life, and for her, it killed her.
Mom also tells of when she was younger and lived in Butler, Missouri. Her Mom and Dad moved into this big two story house. The second floor was ideally supposed to be where Mom’s bedroom and playroom were. She is an only child, thus didn’t have to worry about sharing space with a sibling. Mom hated the second floor, more than she hated the basement or any other part of the whole property. She said she would follow Grandma around the house, when she was younger, while all the chores were being done, but she would never stay on the second floor when Grandma left.
When she got a little older, about 9 years old, she really did try to conquer the second floor. She stayed one night up there, was scared to death, and never stayed up there again. Mom would take toys up there to play, trying to fight the fears she had, but would get scared and decide to leave. When she would get to the stairs, she would feel this force try to keep her upstairs, but once she would take a step downwards, she would feel a push as if she was being pushed down the stairs.
There were dreams of an old man, with an evil grin, who would sit on a bed and offer her a cherry pie. She said she always felt the man was evil, had evil intents. Later, after trying to interrupt this dream, she came to the conclusion that the man wanted to “bust her cherry”, thus the cherry pie, bed, and evil intent.
In the same house, but in her regular bedroom, Mom felt there was a black panther who lived under her bed. She had an old hospital bed, so it was a little higher than a normal child’s bed. At night, she would feel the animal move out from under the bed, see him pace back and forth at the end of the bed, and then feel him go back under the bed. There were a couple of times she actually saw his green eyes and felt his hot breath on her, but he didn’t come that close often. She always felt a sense of fear of him, but also that he was there to protect her. The Black Panther was only in this house, never seemed to follow her or show up anywhere else. To this day, she is very emphatic about the reality of the cat, and does not entertain rational explanations of a child’s vivid imagination.
Thus far, I have a Grandmother who was hearing voices and talking to moths, and my mother who lived in a house where an evil old cherry pie eating man lived with a black panther with a bony back. Have I established the spiritual DNA for my family yet? No! Continue to indulge me further and perhaps I can convince you yet.
Eventually my mother grew up and became a working young adult. She moved to Kansas City, Missouri, as there was really no job market for anyone in Butler past the age of 18, fast food or the local grocery store, or anyone who couldn’t make a living with a skill, such as her father who was a mechanic with a garage on the property. Kansas City is about 66 miles from Butler, a good day journey on the local Greyhound.
Mom’s favorite grandfather was dying of prostrate cancer. For a while, he was staying in Mom’s old bedroom, yes the one where the Black Panther used to visit her. He stayed there because her Mom was able to take care of him during the day. While he was at the home of her youth, Mom came home to see him. At the time, he wasn’t that bad, no one knew when he would he would die, and there was not a hospice facility around. Her grandfather stayed in her room until it was obvious he was going to die and needed constant medical care. When Mom visited she didn’t think he was going to die any time soon, she never said her “goodbyes.”
Mom had returned to Kansas City, at the insistence of her job demands. She had been back to her adult life for about a month, keeping contact with her family in Butler the best she could. Remember, we are talking 1950’s here, no cellular phones, in fact, she didn’t even have a phone in her apartment, had to use a payphone. So, she didn’t keep daily contact with her family, and even if she did, she couldn’t leave immediately and be with her grandfather before he died. To leave would take coordination from work, with money, and a bus schedule. Thus, her grandpa died without her being there to say her farewell.
She attended the funeral, way easier to prepare for and to get time off of work for, and then stayed in her old bedroom she shared with a black panther. While sleeping one night, she awoke feeling something was looking at her. Fully expecting to see her old friend/monster-under-the-bed black panther, she was surprised to see her grandfather. He stood at the foot of the bed, just looking at her and smiling. His smile was not the same as the evil-cherry-pie-eating-old-man-upstairs, his was a warm smile.
She was awake immediately, and moved the covers off of her. Her grandfather walked out of the room, towards the living room. Mom rose from her bed, and followed him to the living room. Upon leaving her room, she realized he was gone. When she returned to her room, she smelled the cancerous odor he had while he stayed in her room. She inspected the floor around the foot of her bed and discovered a wet spot, it smelled vile, and she is convinced the spot was the cancer left by her grandfather. So, in her own way, she did get to say fare the well to her grandfather: there was closure if you will.
Mechanic Street, Kansas City, Missouri, was the sight of another very frightful experience for my Mom. She rented a second floor of an old house with a friend and her husband. The trio lived there in relative harmony. There was no funny stuff: no drugs, no wild parties, and no sexual liaisons. Mom always slept with her door shut: her room was at the end of the hall.
