"Ghostly Encounters - The Dark Room" by Gwenivere Stephan

Writing
has pretty obvious therapeutic properties, in my mind. It relieves
tension and stress. It’s almost like dreaming while being
completely awake.

Or at least it is for
me. I’ve written some things in the past, especially in high
school, which was a very stressful time in my life. Nothing big. Just
some short stories, some poetry. Nothing great. Mostly just
descriptions and images that came to me in dreams.

I was reluctant to
write about the more… unnatural aspects of my life at first.
My greatest friend, her name is Miranda, got me to do it the first
time. I had been feeling down and upset and was having reoccurring
dreams about an experience. She is a psychologist-in-training,
although I usually ignore the "in-training" part because
she is so good at what she does. So I took her word for it after
little persuasion.

I wrote the experience down
and Miranda and her brother (also my friend and coworker, Jonathon)
let me use some of their notes on the trip in my story.

It happened almost
immediatly. I felt better and the dreams stopped. Writing got the
poison out of me.

So I decided to do it
again. Which is what I am doing now. Actually, I’m just
rambling for the most part, but I will get to the point eventually.

What I have been avoiding
saying outright, for the skeptics out there who have stumbled on this
somehow, is that these experiences I am talking about have to do with
ghosts. That’s right. The lingering dead, spirits, ghouls,
whatever.

Personally, I believe in
the Christian God. I believe in Jesus and miracles and Heaven and
Hell. I believe in an afterlife. But I also believe in ghosts. I
think there is room in Christianity for ghosts, certainly, but I also
think many people are afraid and don’t want to see it.

I don’t believe in
alien abduction, werewolves, vampires, or government conspiracies (at
least not elaborate ones that have to do with the other things I
listed). I won’t try and persuade you away from those things,
but I find them… unbelievable. I am not sure how I feel about
fairies and nature spirits. But I think they fall in the same
category. I do believe, however, that anything a person thinks to be
true is true. Which is a very strange thought and makes me feel
floaty and small so I’m going to back away from it now.

Not only do I believe in
ghosts, but I see them. I feel them. I hear them. I try and send them
on their way. I also try to document them for people who can’t
see them. That’s where Jon comes in. He runs the technical part
of the group. He keeps the EMFs, EVPs, and all the other letters
straight. So far he has gotten some interesting evidence.

Miranda works with us as
often as she can. She helps the people afflicted with the ghosts. She
also helps me keep my head on straight.

They’re the brains of
the operation. I’m the paranormal brawn. I am in my
mid-twenties and I try to keep the press off of me. Therefore I have
changed all the names in this story, and in all the other stories I
write (or plan to write, really). My "name" is Janet. Jon
and Miranda call me J.

This experience happened
when we were all in highschool. You think highschool's bad? Try
cheating off hundred-years-dead students and being distracted by
over-dosed hippie teachers. Not fun. As I mentioned, this is the
second story I have written about ghosts. It also happens to be about
my second experience with ghosts. It happened shortly after the
first, which was unnerving enough. You know what they say about first
impressions? Well, it's all true. When you have experiences like this
right away, you want to hide under the blankets for the rest of your
life.

All right, enough talking.
Let me take you back in time…

-~-

"Jesus Christ on a
crutch," I whispered, or something to that effect. I had just
opened my locker and slid my hand over the latch. A crisp, biting
pain ran up my arm as the latch caught my skin, kissed it
not-so-tenderly, and then let it go with only a faint red lipstick
mark to show of the quick fling. I sucked in a breath and bent down
to grab my Geometry book.

I was not getting much
sleep those days and had grabbed the wrong book three times in the
last month. It was getting old and I was ticked. Being the mature
person I was, I slammed my locker as hard as I could to relieve my
anger. It shuddered and clanged and actually did make me feel much
better.

I turned around and was
surprised to find that I was not alone. The hallways were usually
pretty empty during the middle of a class period, but for some
hustling people now and then. But standing about three yards away was
a man, dressed in a dark suit. He was glowering at me. My eyes darted
down to his chest. He was not wearing an identification tag, a safety
precaution pressed upon all the students and staff.

"Are you looking for
the office, sir?" I asked, my voice shaking only a little. He
did not reply. "It’s down stairs, sir."

He took a step forward and
my heart sank. Something about the way that he moved, his silence,
and his glowering eyes all put together made me realize he was a
ghost. My hand tingled and the pain cascaded all the way up to my
shoulder. Perhaps I hadn’t scratched it after all. How long had
he been standing there?

"Please go away,"
I said in a quieter voice. He took another step forward. "Please,
just leave me alone. I can’t help you here."

I saw a woman coming down
the hall and took a deep breath, preparing to turn away from the man
and ignore him. I barely moved half of an inch when he came rushing
forward.

His hands were around my
head faster than I could breath, pressing on either side of my skull.
Intense pain shot up my arm and suddenly my head was filled with
images. Blood. Darkness. I heard far-off screaming and itchy, static
sensations flooded my body.

I felt the ground and my
knees collide as I hit the floor. I was getting a double image –
the hallway and a dark room. The walls in the room were dark and
painted with strange symbols. It seemed to have a dirty, bloody glow
about it. There was a table in the center of the room, the tablecloth
on it white and stained with darkness that made my stomach turn. And
then, a lurch, a twist, a snap and my vision fell into place...

I was not Janet. I was
red-lipped, beautiful, terrifyed. Heavy leather straps bit my
shoulders, my knees, held me down as I struggled. The walls seemed to
spin, endless dark red with pale symbols, symbols that meant nothing
but made my heart squeeze with fear. The room smelled musky, with a
dull strange sent underneath that I could not place. A tight gag
across my mouth, blood caking my tongue.

I fought and kicked
but nothing gave. The only lights in the room were candles, red and
black, casting shadows of my writing body against the walls, as if
catching me among the symbols. I could see the stairs, could see the
light under the door. I could see a window, covered with black
curtains. If only I could get to them...

And then the light
moved, shadows under the door jamb, feet. It opened, spilling harsh
sunlight across the walls. I tried to scream but my voice was
swallowed up. And the Man was walking down the stairs. Walking
towards me, smiling pleasantly. And in his hand... oh God...
glittering silver, quick cold pain scream blood red dripping ripping
heart thumping dark walls closing in... screaming, screaming,
screaming!

The screaming was getting
louder and I felt hands on my arms and shoulders. I pushed away from
the hands, my back striking the lockers behind me. The coolness of
the metal brought me to, pushed the images from my head. The dark
clouds folding over my eyes scattered as the bright fluorescent sun
banished them.

The woman I had seen, her
black Teacher’s ID dangling before my eyes, was grasping my
shoulders and staring down at me. The door to the classroom across
the hall was open, the students all pouring out to see what was going
on. More doors were opening along the hall.

The man was gone but the
pain was intense. My legs felt weighted and my left arm was tingling
as if I had touched an electric fence. My hand was throbbing and the
scar, still fresh, was bright red. The scar a ghost had given me, the
mark that brought them to me, the curse of my life. My head was
pounding and my eyesight slid in and out of focus. A strange sense of
longing came over me and I wanted to see the dark room again, to know
more about it, how many people had seen it and watched the dark
shadows in the light of the door.

"J," I heard a
familiar voice say. It was Jon, kneeling beside the woman. He had
come from the class, pushing his way through the crowd to get to me.
I was relieved to see him.

"What happened?"
the woman asked. "We need to get you to the nurse!"

"Oh, Jon," I
whispered, my eyes trying to make his face stand still. For a moment
there were two Jonathons, then one, then two again. "It was the
strangest thing."

"J, I’ll call my
dad. He’ll pick you up," Jon was saying. Then he was
helping me to my feet.

"The nurse first,
young lady," the teacher was saying. She was pushing gently on
my lower back, guiding me forward. My feet didn’t want to move
but between her gently prodding and Jon’s arm around my
shoulders I took a shaky step forward.

And almost fell again. My
knees had gone weak. The man was standing before me, smiling faintly.
It was not a nice smile.

His smile was broadening
and I suddenly had a sense. I thought, no, knew that those teeth had
bitten flesh, had torn skin and muscle. That his tongue had tasted
blood and that he had killed like an animal in that dark room, using
his fingernails and his teeth and his fists. My stomach churned and I
could practically feel the sensation myself.

"What do you want?"
I asked, unable to help myself. I could feel the staring eyes of
students who were resisting being herded back into their classrooms.
"What can I do?"

You’re completely
insane, fat cow, I thought to myself. It was a startling thought that
made no sense in my head. I had thought once I was crazy, but I was
sure now that I was not. And I never thought of myself as fat, or
even chunky. In fact, I was sadly scrawny.

"Don’t say
things like that!" I cried, feeling fearful. He was in my mind,
he was in my mind! I could feel cool buckets of terror splashing down
my spine. "Get out of here! Get out of my head!"

"J, just ignore it. It
can’t hurt you if you ignore it," Jon was saying in my
ear.

"It does hurt, though,
Jon!" I said to him, too loudly. "And he won’t move
away!"

"What is going on?"
the teacher wondered aloud. "Stop this. You’re causing a
scene."

I looked around at the
people and then back at the man. No, back at where the man had been.
He was gone. "I’m sorry."

"Let’s go,"
Jon urged, somehow knowing the man was no longer blocking my way. I
walked away from the crowd of confused people with him. The teacher,
who was a history teacher that later got blessed by my presence in
her classroom (I use blessed sarcastically) and privileged by another
of my "freak-outs" (that's a sarcastic "privileged",
too), stayed with us until the bell rang. Jon picked up my stuff for
me and we called my mom to get permission for Jon’s dad to come
pick me up. Both my parents were working. Of course, so was Jon's,
but picking me up was something of a bonus for him.

Jon’s father was
eager to talk to me as he drove me home. We were neighbors of sorts,
although we lived farther away then most neighbors. We lived in the
country but I rode my bike to his house often to talk to him.

He was an unsuccessful
paranormal investigator, driven from his high-paying old job to this
not-paying new job by his wife's death. He found me fascinating and
was full of "What happened, who did you see, did you recognize
it, did it hurt, are you okay, do you want to talk, maybe we should
record this somehow, please don't throw up in my car."

I did not tell him about
the experience, though. I did not speak at all (any more than "thank
you" when he dropped me off at my empty home). I went into the
house and sat in the living room, watching the clock. For a while I
dozed but did not dream.

A knock on the door woke
me. Before I could get up, Miranda and Jon barged in.

"Tell me what
happened!" Jon cried. Miranda came straight to me and hugged me.

"Are you feeling
okay?" she asked. She was senior and was two years older than
Jon and I. Still, she had become very close to me in a short period
of time (closer than I was to her at the time) over the summer.

"I suppose. I feel
tired but I don’t hurt anymore," I said.

"I meant emotionally.
Jon told me you were screaming," Miranda said, sitting down next
to me.

"I don’t
remember that part," I said. "I heard screaming but I
didn’t realize it was me."

"Yeah, you were
screaming all right," Jon snorted as he toppled into a chair.
"Loudly."

"It was the strangest
thing," I said. "I don’t want ghosts to come to me at
school."

"You don’t want
ghosts to come to you ever," Miranda pointed out. I nodded.

"Exactly. I just
turned around and he was there!" I quickly described what had
happened to them. They were amazed, Miranda more so than Jon. Jon had
been with me during my first experience and was more used to the idea
than Miranda.

"This is amazing,"
she breathed. "I’m so sorry."

"Everyone’s
talking about you," Jon added. "Everyone knows that the new
girl is crazy."

"Thanks," I
muttered. "I hope he doesn’t come around again."

But he did. I saw him off
and on the rest of the year. However, he did not touch me. He
sometimes put nasty thoughts in my head that didn’t belong,
often making me think to myself about how crazy I was. But other than
a few headaches he didn’t cause me physical pain.

I didn’t sleep well
for almost a month following the encounter. The dark room plagued me.
Every time I dreamed about it, a new detail was added. By the time I
was watching the man walk down the stairs to the red-lipped woman I
had been for that short period of time, I was staying up as late as I
possibly could.

The school population had
an odd idea of me after that. I only reacted in a similar way a few
times the rest of my life there, but they all seemed to expect it at
any minute the first month after any one of those times. They were
too polite to me, polite enough to border shunning. Jon was as nice
to me as he could be but he had friends of his own that took his
time. I made my own friends in time, too, but for a while I was mad
at him for ignoring me.

The encounter was the first
of many to come to me in the open. It was also one of the most
painful and memorable in my life. I dream about the dark room from
time to time. I don’t know where the man came from or why he
was in my school. But he was an intelligent ghost who seemed to be
happy with what pain and annoyance he could press upon me.

I dreamed about the dark
room a few nights ago and have been thinking about the encounter. It
shaped the way I looked at ghosts from then on. My first experience
had been so strange that I had almost grown to think it never
happened. From that point on I looked at every ghost I met almost as
an enemy. Even ghost-children I saw through a tinted shield. Only
after I had discerned that they were not going to harm me did I let
down all my barriers and try to converse with them.

That’s why I took the
time to write this down. It may not be the most impressive
scientifically of my encounters, but it was the most marking to me.
The most important.