I’ve covered sleep paralysis recently as nothing more than a
sleep condition that more or less scares the shit out of everyone who ever has
it and how it’s exploited by paranormal shows and “investigators” who do
nothing to help the sufferers but instead pretend it is some sort of
otherworldly attack. Let’s entertain that “theory” for a minute.
Sleep Paralysis is possibly, as is everything, something to
do with evolution. Perhaps it’s nature testing something out, trying to
eliminate part of the sleep process, or kill us off in droves with shortened
lifespans due to bad sleep hygiene. We are also pretty certain it’s genetic, as
are most sleep disorders and disturbances, and possibly even hereditary
(there’s a difference.) But outside of the physical symptoms, and even
excluding the fact that most people hallucinate with it, the question needs to
be asked, why are the hallucinations so similar, some identical, across people?
Is the shadow or even darkness so pervasive in our subconscious as something
unknown or maybe even evil that we would all share the same exact hallucination
across beliefs, cultures, continents, etc.?
That’s a serious question. I have no answer. It could be
anything, such as global consciousness, or inherited memories. But since I
don’t know the answers, I’d like to go ahead and tell a ghost story I heard as
a teen. We all know that some people have wild imaginations. Nothing wrong with
that, and to be honest, their accounts of the paranormal tend to be more
interesting and entertaining than what really happened, so I’ll retell the tale
as I remember it being told.
The McCain house, as it was called when I was younger, was
obviously inhabited by the McCain family. They were working class people, and
since I didn’t change their last name, I guess I’ll be somewhat vague and not
describe them individually aside from saying one of their children, Troy, was
around the same age as us and that we hung out regularly. In traditional
fashion, their house sat adjacent to a cemetery. Personally, I’ve always wanted
to live next to one, or even in one, not because it’s cool, or out of morbid
curiosity, but because it would be exceptionally quiet, especially in the city.
And there house was.
They were cool parents, the kinds that let kids make their
own decisions, so long as it didn’t hurt anybody, had no problem with us
hanging out there on occasion, and even cooked us dinner a handful of times.
Despite that, and what, by all appearances, seemed to be a healthy familial
relationship among them, there was a certain gloom that hung around the house.
We all have intuition and gut feelings. No one can really explain them, but
some have them when around perceived haunted locations. It seemed like lot of
people had them around this house. One of them was Amanda.
She didn’t believe in any of that, but she did. We were all
hanging out in the living room after school one day, watching taped episodes of
Headbanger’s Ball. Outside of a handful of us, only one of the McCains, our
friend, was home. Within a few hours, we heard what sounded like someone
walking heavily up the stairs. They were carpeted, but that didn’t stop what
sounded like boots walking on wood. Everyone described them as the sound of
hooves, attaching a demonic, or Satanic, image to them. Their dogs went nuts,
barking at the stairs, looking at us, as if we didn’t hear it, too, but too
afraid to go up the stairs. Amanda sank into the couch.
As usual, we thought Troy was messing with us, but when he
looked at us, acknowledging that we did indeed hear something, he tried to
change the subject by turning up the TV and talking about the video that was
on. A few hours later, I walked Amanda home, just a few blocks down the street,
to her grandmother’s house, where she lived. I asked her along the way if I was
the only one that heard something going up the stairs. She said no, and that
she hated hanging out there because they would hear that, and other strange
rapping on the walls, more or less
typical “poltergeist” activity. That was the only thing I ever experienced
there. But Amanda later told me a rather strange story involving the dogs.
The McCain family finally moved but couldn’t take their dogs
with them at first because they had to get their yard fenced in, which required
building permits and other crap they were waiting on, but expected to have
completed by the end of the month. In the meantime, their dogs were left
unattended during the day, watched occasionally by neighbors. In the morning,
they would go and let them out, feed and water them, and then Troy would come
down after school to check on them, and play with them, and have an entire
house to himself, before putting them up for the night. When the new yard was
completed, and it was safe enough to bring the dogs to their new home, and the
McCains went to get them at the old house, the dogs were gone.
When I asked what she meant, she told me that the parents
had put the dogs up the night before the fence was going up, and then the
following day they returned to bring the dogs with them, but they were gone. There
were no signs of a break in, but supposedly the police were called to
investigate. Now while a more plausible story is that the dogs were rescued by
someone else, or that even the parents gave the dogs to someone else, but with
no signs of a break in, and the fact that the parents put up a fence in order
to bring the dogs to the new home, it makes it a rather mysterious
disappearance.