A Smattering of Weird Things From My Life
The maternal side of my family is rife with weird things. Here are a few for you.
Ghosts or Aliens?
When my mom was young, she lived on the family bee farm in Las Animas, Colorado. One day Esther, her mother, came to her carrying a basket of laundry from the clothesline. “Did you see the lady wearing gray?” Esther asked my mother, Norma. My mom said, “No, what lady?”
“I was getting the laundry,” Esther answered, “when a lady wearing a gray dress walked in front of me. She didn’t say a word even though I asked, ‘Can I help you?’ I thought she was coming this way. You didn’t see her?” My mom shook her head and shrugged before heading down to play at the edge of the Arkansas River. Esther, a practical woman, probably dismissed the entire encounter.
Early in my parents’ marriage, they were living in a small apartment over someone’s garage. My mom woke up in the night to a sight that surprised and disturbed her. “There were several ‘people’ standing around my bed looking at me,” she later told me. When I asked her what they looked like, she said, “I don’t know. They were just gray all over, and I did not like them much.”
Could these two encounters have been the infamous “grays” in UFO culture? Did the minds of Esther and Norma attempt to change the memory of what they saw into something resembling human forms? Or were the apparitions just run-of-the-mill ghosts?
Definitely UFOs
On a drive from Denver to Boulder, Colorado, my mom saw a UFO and was intrigued enough to pull over to the side of the road. She got out of the car and watched it for quite a while. What she didn’t understand was why no one else was pulled over and watching as well.
It has been theorized that extraterrestrials often follow families for generations. I have seen a number of UFOs throughout my life.
Once, my brother and sister-in-law were in two different cars returning from a music gig around two in the morning. They were on a dark country road when they became aware of a silent UFO that kept pace with them for miles.
Ghostly Friend
I vividly recall a recurring event when I was young — sometime before third grade. It is the only memory I have of those early years in my life. After my mom would tuck me in and leave for the night, I was often visited by a short dark figure. It would peek around the door and peer in at me. I don’t recall being frightened by it; I think I was more curious than anything else. A fantastical conceit of my young mind? A ghost as curious about me as I was about it?
Parties From The Past
When some members of my family lived on the Washington Coast, we would all experience a phenomenon that we dubbed “The Hum-a-nahs.” The Hum-a-nahs sounded like a cocktail party in an adjoining room, and it was impossible to detect where the voices were coming from or what they were saying. My mom’s house was on three acres in the woods and we only heard our closest neighbor when he was shooting guns from his deck.
Back in my acting days, when I was in a party scene, we always had to pretend that we were chatting without having actual conversations. In stage plays, the common thing was to repeat variations of “peas and carrots” quietly over and over to simulate talking so we didn’t distract from the main actors. The Hum-a-nahs sounded much like that, but more ghostly.
We could never hear actual words, only murmuring. The word “hum-a-nah” comes from the effect of hearing them if you were to say it low and fast. Almost words, but not quite.
The Hum-a-nahs had been quiet for a long time, but about 18 years ago, I woke up hearing them. At first I thought there was some sort of party going on outside. I got out of bed and went to the window but saw nothing. I could hear glasses softly clinking amid the low hum-a-nahs.
Paranormal Investigators would probably call the Hum-a-nahs “residual hauntings,” which are a type of phenomena that are imprints of energy from the past that replay over and over like a recording. They do not respond to questions or try to interact.
Just Passing Through
At the townhome I’m currently living in, there have been ghostly interactions and an experience that made me reconsider my desire to connect with entities on the other side.
One morning, I heard a high-low hello whistle. I whistled back, thinking it was my mother coming downstairs, but when I looked for her she was still sleeping.
On another day there I heard a distinct “Yoo-hoo!” Again, I thought it was my mom before discovering once more that she was fast asleep.
I often heard footsteps in the hall. I would get up to greet my husband only to discover there was no one there.
The townhomes here are well insulated. The only time we hear a neighbor is when a child is crying, a dog is barking, or someone is pounding a nail to hang a picture. Our neighbor remodeled, and we barely heard any of that work. I felt confident discounting them as the cause for the auditory experiences I had been having.
Often when I was cooking, the burner I was using would shoot up to red-hot high even if I had it set on low or medium. This only happened when I was in the room, which was thoughtful if you think about it. If I had a pan on low heat and I was in another room, the burner heat remained low. Obviously setting the house on fire was not the intention. It seemed like “something” was merely asking for attention. If I took a moment to acknowledge the spirit's existence, it wouldn’t happen for a while.
These experiences seemed more like spirits stopping by briefly — nothing especially scary.
Be Careful What You Wish For
I cavalierly decided that I wanted to communicate with a ghosthunting app because there is a theory that ghosts can more easily communicate using certain frequencies. This turned out to be alarming and certainly not the Casper the Friendly Ghost experience I was anticipating. My first attempts did turn up a word here and there, or a name, but then things became dark and concerning. Ultimately, there were violent words and finally a voice that said, “Stop recording.” You don’t have to tell me twice!
In a sense, the app resembled using a Oujia Board, which some believe might be dangerous. The theory is that its use could potentially open a portal to allow malevolent things to come through. Therefore, I will leave attempts to contact the other side to the professionals. Spirits should never be trifled with. They are not a dog and pony show.
I ultimately decided that perhaps we corporeal types aren’t meant to try to pull aside that curtain and pester those on the other side. Unless they come to me, like the Burner Ghost, I think I’ll let them be.
Thanks for stopping by, Humans!
For more weirdness, check out the links below.
https://readmedium.com/a-glitch-in-the-matrix-or-my-sister-is-an-alien-5d150d68d2bc