The Grudge freaked me out for quite a while; and at the time, it was just me and my 2 yr old in a tiny apartment all by ourselves--but, that was all just imagination (which I have a lot of).

I'm pretty certain I'm an "energy sensitive" person, or at least I was--it seems that being married/living with my hubby, a very pragmatic person and sacared only of snakes, has kind of dulled my receptiveness--anyway, my stories are mostly scary ones.

When I was about 13 or so, a friend of mine moved into a house in Westpark, Leadville (CO), one of those that had been brought over from the Climax town when it closed (Climax is a huge molmolybdenum mine about 15 mi SE of Leadville, and at one time, it boasted over 2,000 workers--it had it's own town of 1,500, mostly families). Anyway, Natalie was/is a strange one, and from the time we became really good friends, she was always telling me she thought I was "sensitive" and could see ghosts if I wanted to. I told her she was full of shit--Natalie was a little different, and she'd told me once she saw a vampire at the foot of her bed, and I snorted and thought "loony"--and thought nothing of the feelings I'd have in Leadville (it's an old mining town, and has seen happiness, but it's seen more horrors--greed, murder, rape, etc) when walking into certain houses or places. I'd get chills in some buildings, and when my mom worked in the Delaware hotel (I was 7 or so) and I wandered it at will, I got chills in certain rooms--I'd also see shadows out of the corner of my eye, and once I got stuck in a room, when I couldn't open the door--though I could see the lock open--and I felt it getting colder and colder, and I was just sure something was going to eat me; I was crouched against the door, eyes squeezed shut, and then one of the maids threw herself against the door and it opened and she pulled me out and shut it again. She was an older Mexican gal, and she believed whole-heartedly that room was haunted--she wouldn't clean it after 2 pm, because she thought whatever was in there started getting stronger as day wore thin.

So Natalie had a slumber party, and we were all giggly and goofy, because Nat had been telling us she's seen a man's shadow pass on the wall, and she'd seen a mist, and felt this edging cold moving past, and I poo-pooed it all, saying nothing was going to scare me. Which was true--at that age, I was incredibly brave, and nothing really bothered me. Soooo, we went downstairs. Now, the rumor--and this was from the adults as well--was that this house had been moved in the '80s, and a small Satanic cult had procurred it after moving; they had performed rituals and sacrifices in the basement, which was unfinished, and there was a small cubby under the stairs that was still dirt--in that cubby, the previous tentants to Nat and her mom had found small animal bones.

It was me and another girl who was "unafraid" who said we would climb into that cubby and swore there was nothing to it, it was just a crawl space--I like small spaces, always have, and I didn't think much of it, until we go to the stairs. It was like there a wall of cold that started at the top of those stairs and as we (7 of us) descended, it got colder. In the basement, we all shone our flashlights on the walls, and just as Nat had said, there were still symbols painted in red on the concrete walls--whether that was paint or blood, I don't know, though I'd lean towards paint, because they were still visible after numerous scrubbings. Then Liz and I declared that we were fine--even though my blood was trying desperately to run out the top of my head, and my skin trying to crawl off towards my feet--and we clambered into the cubby. I was the first one in, of course, and I still remember running into a wall of chill; it was tangible, I could put my hand forward a few inches and it was cold, pull it back and it was warmer (not much, but there was surely a difference). I passed it off as the difference between dirt and concrete (even though this was in July, which in Leadville was 80 degree temps) and kept going. I crawled all the way to the opposite wall, about 8 ft, and was almost suffocating on panic. The air had grown heavy and fetid, with what smelled like rotting meat, and the darkness was oppressive--though my friends were only 8 ft away, and shining flashlights at me, along with the naked basement fixture turned on, I could barely see them. And I felt, truly felt on my body, hands--no, claws--tugging at me, meaning to pull me into the dirt and beyond help. I screamed--but later, no one said they heard me--and wrenched myself away from that wall, and basically ran and threw myself out of the cubby space. Liz had just barely gotten inside behind me and then backed out, so I was all alone in there, and I really thought I was going to die, or worse, if I didn't get out.

The other girls were very worried about my panic--as I said, I was generally the "tough" one--but I said I just got claustrophobic and had to get out. Later that night, as we all lay on the living room floor--again, I was dubbed the "brave" one and got put on the end of the row--I saw a man-shaped shadow slink across the wall, crouch by where I was--and I felt that cold again--then move on disappear.
Later, I asked Natalie what she'd felt in that house, and she said she'd seen an actual ghost--a man, middle-aged, with receding hair and narrow eyes--and she'd climbed out her window because she felt so threatened. There was also the odd way her house was always cool; it was always 10 degrees cooler than outside--and that cool started on the front stoop, just a concrete block, without any shade or air-conditioning.

That's one story. I also had encounters or feelings on prom night, held in a 100 year old high school remade into a musuem, and on tours of that same museum. I've felt badly when I entered certain houses in Ft. Collins, which in a century-plus old town, I've refused to live in certain houses because of what has gone on there--there was one, build in the 20's, that had seen a suicide, and I walked in and walked out two minutes later, knowing that if we took it, I would see a man with his brains blown out every time I walked into the master bath--and I've had houses that the "energy" of made me mad, made me yell and scream--but I was fine once I was out of the house. Currently, we live in an '02 doublewide that was home to a couple who found love again in their '50s, and it has been a happy place.

I believe in everything--ghosts, energy, demons, aliens, monsters--because I've seen it, even if I couldn't ever prove it.

"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe."
Albert Einstein


"A politician is a person who can make waves and then make you think he's the only one who can save the ship."
Ivern Ball

Why do most liberal political arguments boil down to someone shoving their pointy little nose in my face and saying "Well, you see, we've decided that personal responsibility, self-reliance, and independent thinking are old-fashioned and very passe'--not to mention dangerous and problematic!--so we insist you desist on all of the above at once!"