Читать книгу My Walk To Jesus - Leah Hannan - Страница 5

One thing that I have learned through my assorted attempts at trying to find a place where I could feel comfortable and learn about Jesus is that there are unquestionably some things in this world that I’m not going to understand. I am certain that Jesus is the Son of God and He was sent to die for the sins of the ignorant and arrogant.

As I have had experiences in my life, which have brought glimpses of the other side in a positive way, I’ve always known that there is more than this life, but through my searching, I’ve also done things I should not have and messed with objects that resulted in exchanges with some truly terrifying things.

My first contact with something less than pleasant occurred when I was about thirteen. Although, I had moved forty-five miles away from my friend, Laura whom I had met at the Christian school, we remained extremely close. We attended different schools and long distance telephone calls were expensive at that time, so we spent most of our time apart writing letters to each other. We even reached a point where I mailed one to her and received a letter from her every day. Our parents encouraged our friendship and one of us was usually at the other’s house most weekends.

One Friday, I arrived at Laura’s house at about six o’clock in the evening. It was decided between her mother and my grandmother that I would be picked up on Sunday at about four o’clock in the afternoon. We made our way to Laura’s bedroom, and I put my duffle bag on the same beanbag chair that always served as my space when I was visiting. I wasn’t sure what was in store for this weekend. Maybe we would listen to records, or watch movies or listen to records while watching movies. Laura had another idea. She told me her mother had been complaining about how much junk was stored in the garage. She told Laura if she would help organize all the extra stuff, they could have a garage sale and Laura could keep half of the money. While Laura was excited about her potential windfall, I was thinking, too. I had items I wanted to sell, but where I lived was too rural to attract any garage sale customers. I explained my idea to Laura, and her mother agreed. I couldn’t wait to start looking through what had been collected in Laura’s garage through all of the years. We were ready to begin immediately, and Laura’s mother opened the garage door for us. It was cluttered, but there was ample room for us to walk around items and reach boxes in corners. I was excited about every box we opened. We found things from Marilyn Monroe collector plates to wedding dresses, which remained from the clothing store Laura’s mother once owned.

The next morning, we began our treasure hunt in the garage again. After several hours of going through items, we came across another box. Inside were board games of all types, and after looking through a lot of them, we were amazed that most of them had all of the original pieces needed to play the game. Then we came upon one that only contained two pieces. The board, and a plastic piece with legs and a clear lens in the middle. “Hey, have you ever seen one of these?” she asked me without taking her eyes off the box that held the game. “I’ve seen them on television and on the shelves in stores, but that‘s all,” I explained. I knew that they were considered to be a sort of spirit board. It was supposedly used to contact the spirits of the dead. I never thought much about it, and it was always obvious that the participants must take turns moving the disc around to spell something spooky and scare everyone into a good laugh. Apparently, my friend was not planning on being any different. “We’re taking this to my room”, she said. “Do you really want to fool with that thing?” I asked. It didn’t sound terribly fun to me. “We’ve got to try it out at least once,” she said.

We spent the rest of the evening going through boxes, and when we were bored with our exploring, we decided it was time to find something to eat and head for our teenage escape which was Laura’s bedroom. Laura tucked the spirit board under her arm, and we walked through the garage door that entered their kitchen. “We found this. We’re going to play with it, then I’ll put it back with the stuff for the garage sale,” Laura said to her mother, motioning to the box. “That’s fine,” her mother replied, and Laura walked to her room and placed the box on her bed. I’m sure that we had our usual Saturday night pepperoni pizza dinner that we had on most weekends. Pizza was easy to fix, and we could eat it without having to take much attention away from the music video on which we were usually transfixed. The music video industry had just exploded at that time, and we adored the fact that we could watch our favorite songs performed either by the artists, or the spectacular videos with massive budgets where our favorite performers showed us their acting ability in mini movies set to the artists’ latest hit. We had our favorites, and of course, those we loathed. We were lucky for about five videos in a row, but after two that we were less than thrilled to watch, Laura was ready to take another look at the spirit board. It was of little importance to me, but off to her room we went. I sat on the fluffy beige carpet that covered the floor while she grabbed the box and sat down facing me. She opened the box and removed an instruction sheet. She read quietly for a few moments and then placed the paper to the side. “What’s up with this thing?” I asked, removing the flat board from the box. It had the letters of the alphabet, the numbers 0 through 9 and the words yes and no on the board. “Well,” Laura began, “it says that we should place the board on our knees, lightly place our fingertips on the disc and then ask questions to the spirits on the other side and maybe they will come and answer us.” “Oh, brother, this sounds ridiculous,” I thought, but “Okay” is what came out of my mouth.

I picked up the disc which was about the size of a deck of cards and turned it around in my hands. I noticed the felt tips on the bottom of each leg, no doubt placed there to allow easier movement across the board. She placed the board on our knees, and I placed the disc on the board, and we both took a few moments with our fingers to adjust them on the disc to what we believed to be the proper amount of pressure that would constitute our fingers being lightly placed. We looked up into each other’s eyes, and she said, “You go first. Ask it a question”, and our eyes returned to our fingertips. “Okay. Is anyone there?” I asked the empty room. The disc stayed in the same location. I lightened the amount of pressure my fingers had on the disc and repeated myself, “Is anyone there?” Slowly the disc began to slide across the board, toward the word ‘Yes’ on the slick board. When it came to a stop, I looked up with what must have been some kind of accusatory look on my face because Laura meekly said, “I’ve heard that your heartbeat can cause the pulse in your fingers to move the disc.” “Maybe so,” I quipped, leaving my fingers on the disc. I decided that I would play along with the game. I asked the next obvious question, “What’s your name?”. With more than a little help from me, and I’m positive that Laura was moving it as well, the disc slowly moved to the letters M - A -R -Y. From that point forward, we went back and forth asking questions. Sometimes I would push the disc to spell out an answer, and other times I was sure that Laura was answering the questions with the disc. It started to become amusing as we began to make up questions. It wasn’t as exciting when I was supplying the answer, but I was enjoying what Laura would decide to be the answer for the questions that she asked the air. We ran the gamut of subjects. “How did you die?” “Did you die in this house?” “Are there others with you?” After our interview of the spirit that we had conjured, we asked for validation on our personal matters such as interest from boys we liked and what would occur in our adult lives.

We must have played with the board for about an hour and a half before the newness wore off of the spirit board and Laura put it back in the box. She placed it on her desk with the intention of returning it to the garage sale inventory the next day. Nothing more was mentioned about our contact with the other side. The rest of the evening we returned to watching music videos on the 18’’ television that she had in her bedroom. We threw pillows on the floor, we each grabbed a blanket, and we muttered back and forth commenting on how the choice of videos that the channel was playing was pretty decent in our opinion. A fairly lousy one here and there, but nothing that we couldn’t handle, waiting to see what video would be played next. All the lights had been turned off and the only light that remained came from the television and a clock radio that Laura kept on her nightstand. I wasn’t sure when Laura fell asleep, but I soon heard Laura snoring. “Great, she’s asleep, and I’m not the least bit tired”, I thought to myself. Noticing the time was approaching 2:30 in the morning, and I couldn’t just go wandering around like at my own house at that time of the morning, I decided that I might as well try to go to sleep.

I remained on my back for a while with my eyes closed, and tried to block out the faint music that came from the television. After a few moments, I became uncomfortable in this position. I rolled over on my stomach, with my face turned away from the television. “This is hopeless”, I thought after several moments and pressed my face into my pillow out of frustration. As I let out an irritated sigh, I began to hear something which seemed to be coming from under Laura’s bed. At the beginning, it sounded like papers shuffling and then it became louder and I could make out the sound of voices. “Close your eyes!” the voice screeched. I was terrified and complied immediately. I shoved my face so deep into the pillow that I could barely breathe. I was hoping not to hear the awful voice again. I wasn’t prepared for two voices. They were terrible, high pitched cackling voices. “Don’t look at your feet!” one of the voices screamed at me while the other laughed. I could feel hands around my ankles. I knew that if I looked toward my feet, I would see something that would terrify, if not kill me. I knew something hideous was at my feet, and I certainly did not want to see what was there. I prayed for the voices to stop. I was horrified by the whole situation that I was going through, but I wanted the voices to stop more than anything. The profanity that they spewed filled my ears and I cringed. I soon felt that if the voices did not stop I would go insane. Fingernails on a chalkboard would have been a welcomed sound at this point in the terror. “We’ll kill you if you look at us. We’ll rip your legs off if you look at your feet.” I knew the source of the voices took immense pleasure in my fear. The room filled with storm force winds, but I still felt as if I couldn’t breathe and, I hoped I would pass out either from lack of air or fear. The two voices continued laughing and chatting back and forth to each other in words I could not understand. To my horror, they slowly began dragging me across the floor. I tightly clenched my eyes. I was afraid to see what had a hold on me. “Please let me go!” I cried, but I seemed to be screaming the words through the winds of a powerful storm. Although, I knew that the words had come from my mouth, I could not even hear my own pleas. They laughed, and I continued to feel myself slowly being dragged across the room. “Don’t look at us!” they would half scream, half laugh. “Oh, please help me.” I sobbed, “Please end this nightmare.” I was sure that I was not going to survive the night if this lasted much longer and I was terrified of where they might be dragging me.

Suddenly, I felt my face buried in my pillow. Although, everything seemed still and quiet, I kept my eyes shut and remained still for what seemed like an eternity. I tried my best to feel my ankles, and now I was not sure if hands had ever grasped them or not. Was the pressure still there? I could only wait and see if the horrible voices returned. I waited and waited. Finally, I could hear the faint sound of the television, and after a while, I managed somehow to muster up the nerve and slowly raised my head, and finally to even more slowly open my eyes. The television still played, and the clock radio still glowed. I had to begin wondering if what had happened to me had occurred at all. The thing that I couldn’t get over was that according to the numbers on the clock, only about seventeen minutes had passed since I had taken, what I thought would be my last glance at the time, for the night. I told myself that I was being ridiculous. Had I had demons attacking me? I certainly felt that I should not tell anyone what I experienced when I was trying to make myself believe such a thing had to be nothing more than some kind of hallucination or maybe it was a nightmare. The incident seemed just as real as anything that had ever happened to me in my life, and although I thought about it night and day for weeks, I was extremely happy on the day of the garage sale when someone was willing to give Laura three dollars and take the spirit board away forever.

I had decided that I would call it a dream, but I had no desire to be in the same room with a spirit board…. but you know, young love will make you do some pretty stupid things. The source of my stupidity was named Greg. He lived at the end of the same road on which I lived at the time, and he was the cutest guy I had ever seen.

I was driving at the time but didn’t have a car of my own. I was allowed to use my grandmother’s car for quick trips to the local convenience store which was about three miles away. I wasn’t sure if Greg had graduated or had quit school, but I had never seen him at the school that I attended. I was turning back onto our road from a trip to the store, when I noticed Greg jogging towards my car, waving his arms in the air. I pulled off on the side of the road, and looked around to be sure he was signaling me, and rolled down my window. “You live in the third house down, don’t you?” he asked. “Yes”, I managed to say with my voice cracking, “I live at 198 with my grandparents.” He mentioned that he was interested in hanging out, listening to some music and maybe playing some games. I was receptive to the idea, and we exchanged telephone numbers.

I was surprised when he called a few days later. My grandmother had already approved the visit, and said she would spend the afternoon watching television in the living room. We could use the den which had a record player and television. He was bringing games and music, and I had snacks and drinks. I thought it was going to be a fantastic afternoon. Greg had walked to my house and rang the door bell that was at the den door. I opened the door, welcomed him in without noticing anything that he had tucked under his arm. He walked in and placed his stack of belongings on the table. “I have this,” he announced holding up an album cover for me to see. It was the most popular album at the time. “I like them,” I replied, and that was the truth, but my next statement would be a lie. He showed me a few games he had with him, then he picked up a box, pointed the box cover in my direction and asked, “Hey, have you ever seen one of these before?” He smiled. “I can’t believe this,” I thought, but my mouth said, “No, what is it?” I was staring straight at a spirit board.

No one forced me to lie. Greg didn’t force me to play the game. I again reaffirmed my decision that I just had a nightmare the last time I messed with one, and there was no way that I was going to give my crush any reason to think I was weird. I’d even managed to box myself in to where I certainly couldn’t say anything about my unbelievable story because I’d denied even knowing anything about Greg’s game.

What I didn’t know at the time was while I was lying to this boy, I was about to invite the same type of demons that had attacked me in my friend’s bedroom a few years ago, back for another visit and this time it would be a worse attack than the first.

I allowed Greg to go through his whole presentation. He introduced the box to me and said that it was a fun game that was used to talk to ghosts. He began unpacking the box, showing me the familiar smooth wooden board. There were the letters, numbers and the words yes and no. He removed the small plastic disc with the circular see-through window and short legs on felt tips. I tried to appear interested as he explained the object of the game. He placed the plastic piece on the wooden board and instructed me to place my fingertips lightly on the very edge of the disc. He did the same on the opposite side of the plastic piece and instructed me to ask a question. He said that a person asks a question and spirits use the plastic disc to answer the question. I’d already decided that I would not move the disc myself. There wouldn’t be any questions answered by me. Making up an excuse, I replied, “I don’t know what to ask, you ask the first question.” Looking up into the air he calmly asked, “Is someone here with us?” Soon the disc began to move in a circular motion, floating smoothly to the word ‘yes’ printed on one corner of the board. I was so nervous, I think I almost giggled at the results, believing that Greg was moving the disc a little quicker than it should have moved. We spent the rest of the afternoon asking questions and receiving replies. Greg was enthralled with asking spirits questions. As Greg prepared to leave, we realized we hadn’t listened to a single song from any record. We discussed that we would save those for another day and Greg left.

From the moment that Greg left, I began to have the feeling that he wasn’t as fabulous as I had originally thought. I don’t know what may have happened to make me start feeling this way, but my opinion of Greg was that it actually didn‘t matter if I ever saw him again.

The rest of the evening was the same as most others. We ate dinner, and watched whatever shows my grandmother preferred on television. I took a shower, and I readied myself for bed. My grandparents went to bed before I did and I watched one more show before crawling under the covers.

Everything seemed normal at first. I was lying in my bed with my cat, Ginger on the foot of the bed. The lamp was turned on, and I picked up a book that I had been reading. I couldn’t have been reading more than a few minutes when I began to feel sick to my stomach. I closed the book, laid it on the nightstand and closed my eyes, hoping the nausea would pass. Suddenly, the voices I had heard several years ago returned. “Don’t open your eyes,” they hissed. I knew I had to prepare myself for another attack. I rolled over on my stomach, shoved my face into my pillow and clenched my blanket with my fist. “Don’t look at your feet,” they screamed and I obeyed. I was terrified to see what was at the foot of my bed. I could feel myself slowly being dragged off of the bed. I felt as if I were paralyzed, which did not matter at this moment since I never considered trying to fight against my demonic attackers. I could feel myself dragging across the floor and slowly I began to move up the wall toward the ceiling. I felt myself land on the ceiling with a thud. The wind in the room blew at hurricane force as the demons cursed, laughed and taunted me. Still heeding their warnings not to look at my feet, I somehow managed to open my eyes this time. I found myself in complete darkness staring straight down on myself still lying in my bed. I was horrified, my head was spinning, and nothing was making sense. Everything in the view below me remained the same. The lamp was on, Ginger was curled up on the foot of the bed in her normal resting spot, and I was lying on my stomach. I could even see the cover of the book that I had been reading, and I was easily able to read the title. The room was still, and the winds only seemed to be bombarding me on the ceiling. It seemed the room was divided into two different halves and the world below that I was seeing knew nothing about the torture that was being thrust upon me above. I began to scream for help, but it seemed as if no words were coming out of my mouth. I stretched my arm down towards myself, trying to wake myself from the nightmare that I knew I must be having, but I was unable to reach myself. It seemed as if the harder I tried to reach, the further away my body was from me. The demons held my ankles tightly, laughing at my terror, but I managed to drag myself a few inches on the ceiling and tried desperately to grab at Ginger. I tried to struggle to get myself to my knees, and I began stretching my hand toward my cat. I felt that I was getting close when she slightly raised her head and halfway opened her eyes. “She knows I’m here!” I thought to myself. The idea brought some relief, but just as quickly as she had raised her head, she rested it on her front paws and closed her eyes again. I wondered if she had felt me reach out toward her. There was too much that I could see with my eyes wide open that a dreaming mind cannot. I could see my desk in the corner. I could see the sliding door to my closet was standing slightly open. I could see the baby blue bedspread that covered my full sized bed. It was too much to be a dream.

The demons who were tormenting me either didn’t care or didn’t know that I was trying to reach Ginger. They kept chanting the same messages over and over. “Don’t look at your feet. Don’t look at us. You’ll die if you look at us.” They would call me terrible names and laugh. I decided that I would try to reach my bedroom door and call to my grandparents for help. I began trying to claw my way across the ceiling, but I knew that I was not going to be able to make it out of the room. Whatever had the hold on me was much stronger than I. I then clenched my eyes shut and asked God to have mercy on me. Although the winds remained, the voices stopped and I slowly began sliding toward the wall. I gently glided toward the bed and felt myself float into the position in which I had been lying on the bed.

Suddenly, I opened my eyes, and I was lying in my bed. I looked down toward the foot of the bed. I had never been so happy to see Ginger in my life. I sat up in bed and scooped her up in my arms.

I opened the drawer to my nightstand and grabbed my wrist watch. It had been about twenty-five minutes since I’d gotten into bed.

I slept with the light on the rest of the night, and I slept remarkably well once I did manage to drift off to sleep. If I dreamed when fell asleep, I certainly didn’t remember it.

There were two things that remained with me after that day. First, I never regained the interest in Greg that I had once. I tried to avoid contact with him, and although I would return his calls, I always managed to worm my way out of any invitations from Greg to get together at all. Eventually, I’m not sure if he moved or if I just stop seeing him as I passed by his house. I don’t know what had happened to me that afternoon, but even at the time I knew I was the one treating him badly, but I was also scared. I always hoped that he would somehow know that I was sorry for my lack of interest in pursuing a friendship.

Secondly, I know there will always be skeptics, and it’s terribly easy to pass my experiences off as just some dreams influenced by the power of suggestion, or some sort of subconscious glitch, but I am now positive these events happened to me.

I know them to be extremely well deserved warnings from God about my behavior, and He’s not going to have to go to the trouble of correcting my behavior again. You will never see me around a spirit board again, and I have something important to say to God, “I love you very much and lesson learned, Father.”