Day 6…Ever been in a haunted house for real?
It wasn’t a house, but it is a place I grew up in. Since before I was born, my parents have been church musicians. My dad played the piano and directed the choir, and my mom played the organ and led Sunday school. My first job was as a teacher’s aid in the nursery at that church.
Because of this, I spent a lot of time at this church when it was empty and quiet, and when a place is empty and quiet, things you didn’t notice before start to surface.
The odd thing (or not odd thing) about that church is that while I believe it was pretty haunted, there weren’t a lot of physical sounds and manifestations, but there were tons of “dark places.” Corners and specific locations in the building that felt stained with a specific feeling and impression, places that the eye is always drawn to for some reason.
My sister did experience one or two physical manifestations like knocking in the closet and such, but for me, all I got were feelings. The odd thing about those feelings, though, is that when I explained them to my sisters or heard them explain the places they were drawn to and what they felt there, it all matched up.
One of these dark places was the bench in the hallway by the restrooms. As I put out feelers to feel exactly where and what that dark place was, I was drawn to the very end of the bench and got the feeling of a little boy, very bored and mischievous, sitting there waiting, swinging his legs back and forth. He always felt seconds away from disobeying whoever had told him to sit there and running off to play. When I told my sisters about the little boy, they confirmed that they had felt the same thing there.
Another place was in the sanctuary near the back. My sister said she felt like an old man was sitting there waiting for church to begin. I had felt much of the same thing.
The strangest one that we all corroborated on, though, was in the Sunday school room. The corner by the closet and the rolling TV always felt dark, even when all the lights are on. I got an uncomfortable feeling from that place specifically and I felt uncomfortable looking at it for too long, even though I was always drawn there.
As I focused in on the feeling and location, it began to take shape, and not the shape I would have ever thought. It was large. So large that it reached the ceiling and had to hunch over. It felt cramped, like the space was too small for it, and it kept its arms close to its body in order to fit. It didn’t feel malicious, in fact it felt pretty benign. It just wanted to watch and to keep out of the way.
I told my sisters this and they were shocked because they had felt something big in that corner as well. One of them felt it as a pillar of dark smoke that reached all the way to the ceiling. The weirdest thing is that that closet is the same one my sister heard scratching and shuffling. When she had heard it, she had thought one of the kids was hiding in the closet and rummaging around in the Sunday school supplies, but when she checked, no one was there.
While I called these places of interest “dark places,” they only felt dark in an opaque sort of way, not an evil sort of way. I don’t think I’ve come into contact with very many entities that I actually felt threatened by. Most are just curious or minding their own business. The ones at the church were certainly in that category, if they weren’t just residual all together.
A/N: We’re almost done with this little series. It’s been so fun and has gone by so fast. I’ve saved the best for last. That’s right, tomorrow we’re talking about shadow figures.
Click here to read yesterday’s post, or here to read all the week’s prompts.
Diary of a Devoted Heretic 