Salon.com > Real Scary Stories

When I started to believe in ghosts

Sat, 30 Oct 2010 00:30:00 +0000

I've only once woken up screaming. It was because I'd seen a ghost.

About 10 years ago, I was lying in the bedroom of my house in Cheyenne, Wyo., an old place that used to be workmen's lodging down by the Union Pacific railroad station. I wasn't in a deep sleep, more like that murky in-between state as slumber comes in for a landing. I opened my eyes halfway. In the doorway of the bedroom, a young man stood staring at me. Was he 15? Was he 20? Dressed in work clothes from the 1930s, of humble posture, he was there -- I will never forget those eyes -- yet I could see straight through him. Frightened to my core, I sat up, screaming until my boyfriend shook me. "What? What?"

"There was a boy over there! He was standing right there."

"No one else is here but us," he told me. "You were dreaming."

But I wasn't. The shock and fear left me shaking, but most disturbing was the physical sensation. I hadn't just seen this ghost boy; I had felt him. Sorrow, loss, loneliness. It was as if he was saying, I'm lost. Help me. I need to be seen.

I kept the bathroom light on all night for a month, maybe more, my eyes trained on that doorway. If I was going up the stairs in the dark, I would climb quickly, two steps at a time, as if someone, or something, was chasing me.

Scared to death in a Mexican cemetery

Fri, 29 Oct 2010 17:10:00 +0000

In 1990, I had just turned 24 and was living in El Paso, Texas, with a woman about 11 times better than I deserved. (For the purposes of this account, I'll call her Charlotte.)

Charlotte was a freelance writer and a lover of Mexican culture, its folk art in particular. She was the one who suggested we vacation in Mexico City. We knew a couple of folks down there, including our glamorous friend Dave, who ran the Latin American bureau for a major daily newspaper and -- get this -- had a maid.

We spent much of the week wandering the lovely shaded streets of his neighborhood and debating whether any physical record of our copulation would be detected by the aforementioned maid. (I, being male, argued no.) But Charlotte was determined to escape the city and Dave said we were in luck because we'd arrived in time for Day of the Dead -- Dia de los Muertos, at the start of November -- and did we want to travel north to Michoacán, which just happened to be the capital of Mexican folk art?

So up we went with Dave at the wheel. Our destination was a small city called Patzcuaro, ground zero for Day of the Dead celebrations. Charlotte and I stayed in a room in a private dwelling -- more of a cell, really -- that smelled of kerosene and things decomposed. Charlotte's reaction was a familiar blend of disappointment and suppressed rage.

The man who watched me sleep

Thu, 28 Oct 2010 19:01:00 +0000

Scientists and psychologists will tell you it's a normal, albeit somewhat rare, phenomenon -- nothing to worry about, something that happens to most people at least once. The sane, sober explanation of what happened is called sleep paralysis. Stanford University's Sleep and Dreams site says soothingly, "Sleep paralysis can be a frightening situation, but rest assured that it is not uncommon and typically not a cause for concern." But the Stanford researchers weren't there for the months I woke up in the night, afraid to open my eyes, because the man, the evil man who never moved except to tent his fingers or incline his head, was sitting in the chair, watching me.

Perhaps it would have made more sense if it had started right after my roommate moved out, but it didn't. It took a few months for the man to begin making his nocturnal visits. Besides, I had already lived in the small apartment for over a year, and I was used to sleeping alone and being on my own, and more important, I liked to sleep. I have always found sleep, with its comfy mattresses and fluffy pillows and warm cozy blankets and dim lighting and hushed tones, luxurious. I liked being in bed, liked sleeping. That's why I was always late for work.