It was brought to my attention that I had started telling you one of my own true ghost stories but never finished it. I wrote a part I but not a part II. Needless to say I am mortified (no pun intended) at this oversight. So let’s start at the beginning and try this again, shall we?
PLEASE MEET ROBERT, MY DEAD ROOMMATE.
I was living in a small two bedroom duplex with my then boyfriend Herman* on Haynes Street in San Marcos, Texas – a small college town about 25 miles south of Austin. We had spent the last two years on the road as rennies and were settling into our non-nomadic life, trading in life in a van for a proper house with a front door and back yard. It didn’t take long for me to notice something was off in our new home.
TO QUOTE BILL AND TED, “STRANGE THINGS [WERE] AFOOT AT THE CIRCLE K.”
Whenever I was home alone it felt like I was being watched. It’s a sensation that’s hard to describe completely but if it happens to you, you’ll know it. You know how you can feel someone staring at you from across a room? How you can feel their eyes on you? It’s like that times a billion.
It was an absolutely overwhelming sense of paranoia unlike anything I had ever experienced before. The sensation was so pronounced that I wouldn’t have been the least bit surprised if I turned around and found myself nose to nose with someone.
IT WAS THE HEEBIE-JEEBIES TO THE MILLIONTH DEGREE.
I ignored my intuition (as I so often do when it comes to my own life…silly thing for an intuitive, don’t you think), chastising myself for being silly and having an overactive imagination. Herman reinforced this by telling me I was crazy. He never felt the way I did in the house so obviously I was cuckoo. But no matter how much I tried to ignore it the feeling persisted…and intensified.
OBSCENELY EARLY ONE MORNING WHILE GETTING READY FOR WORK THE WEIRDNESS GOT WEIRDER.
As I stood in the bathroom fixing my hair, the door ajar, I saw a pair of men’s legs clad in khaki pants walk past. No torso, only legs. I promptly flipped the f*ck out. It’s not every day you see torsoless legs wandering about the house.
I told no one what happened to me that morning (save Herman, who was sweet enough to once again assure me I was batshit crazy). Shortly after I witnessed the ghostly legs our friend Bob* came for a visit. Bob, due to our work schedules, was left to his own devices (which consisted of sitting on the couch smoking weed and watching TV) during the day.
One evening several days into his stay Bob informed us we’d had a visitor while we were away.
“Oh. Who stopped by?”
“No one.”
Bob proceeded to tell us of a pair of legs, men’s legs, with no torso and wearing khaki pants that had walked through the living room that afternoon while he was watching a movie.
“Son of a bitch! I told you I wasn’t crazy!”
I felt vindicated (and more than a little relieved that I wasn’t completely bonkers). But this news, while reassuring, raised more questions than it answered. Who was this man? Why was here? Would he stop leering at me and creeping me out if I asked nicely? If asking nicely didn’t work, would being a colossal bitch work? And what was with the khaki pants?
It would be four more months before these questions would be answered (except the leering…I immediately asked him to stop and he politely obliged) and how they came to light, how it all unfolded was surprising to say the least…
TO BE CONTINUED…(I PROMISE THIS TIME. X MY HEART.)
Kisses & Chaos,
Alli Woods Frederick
images :: stories from the great beyond © alli woods frederick :: no title III – juha helttunen :: . – FREDERIC DESMOTS :: guest(s) – yves lecoq :: HOW TO INITIATE A REVOLUTION – WALTER BREIDENBACH ::
*not their real names
