11: Electrifying Night
1998
The different entities we’d encountered in our home had taught me to see them in much the same way as we see each other. I was learning that, like us, they each had their own unique personalities. With each passing incident, it was becoming easier to tell which ghost was doing what, but just when I thought I had it all figured out, a new ghost showed me I still had a few things to learn.
Every summer, Keshia and Troy attended a one-week session of church camp. Most years they were able to attend the same session, but because of their age difference, they occasionally had to attend separately. Being one such year, Wes and I decided to do something special with whichever child was left at home.
During Keshia’s week to be “stuck with the parents,” she chose to get dressed up and go out to a nice restaurant. At the time, Keshia was almost thirteen and I was beginning to see having a teenage daughter might not be so bad after all. I, for one, was enjoying her adultlike choices, with nothing involving video games, cold pizza, loud noise, or a ball pit.
I was getting ready to go out for dinner. After I got out of the shower, I headed to the bedroom outfitted in a fluffy towel. As I came through the living room, I saw Keshia sitting in the middle of the floor looking a little troubled. She asked me if I felt anything. I stopped to readjust my towel and told her I felt wet and half-naked.
She didn’t find my answer amusing. She told me she was serious as she asked me again if I could feel anything. She said she didn’t think we were alone. This wasn’t an unusual topic between Keshia and me, but she seemed upset about it and that was unusual. I told her to hang on a minute and let me get my clothes on and I’d be right back. After getting dressed, I came back into the living room and saw Keshia still sitting in the middle of the floor. Something was definitely bothering her.
As I sat down on the couch, I noticed the air felt charged with electricity. The longer I sat there, the more ominous the feeling became. The air was heavy. Living in Oklahoma, I was familiar with what the air felt like when a storm was brewing. Looking out the window, I could see there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. There was a storm developing all right, but it was in my living room.
When I asked her how long the room had felt this way, she said it had started as soon as I went to take a shower. She said she knew it was going to sound weird but she’d seen the shadow of a hand streak across the ceiling and then the room grew heavy. There was no denying that the air was heavy. It was actually getting hard to breathe. Keshia stood up, told me she couldn’t take it anymore and that she was going outside to sit on the porch.
As soon as she went out, the heaviness left. I’d never experienced anything quite like this and I wasn’t sure what to make of it. After sitting there for awhile, I reassured myself that whatever had been there was gone. Walking out to the porch, I told Keshia I thought everything was okay and we should go get ready for our night on the town.
When we went back into the house, we went into our own bedrooms to get ready. As I started to put on my makeup, my room filled with that same heaviness I’d felt earlier. I turned around and saw Keshia standing in my doorway. I started to wonder if this thing was following her around, and if so, why? I didn’t want her to know of my suspicions until I could be sure. I tried to act casual as I told her again to go get ready. Once more, when she left, so did the heaviness.
I was feeling very uneasy about this ghost so I waited only a few minutes and called her back to my room. When she came in, the heaviness followed. I then told her I wasn’t trying to scare her, but I thought whatever this thing was, it seemed to be following her. She agreed. She said the heaviness had followed her outside and to her room. Her lips trembled as she told me she couldn’t get away from it.
Trying to sound braver than I felt, I told her I was sure it wasn’t anything to worry about, but that we should probably stick together. She nodded as she sat down on my bed. Over the years we’d encountered so many different ghosts in our home that it had somehow become normal, but this was different and we both knew it. As we talked, the lights in my ceiling fan and the lights over my vanity started to flicker. These two lights are not only on separate switches, but they are also on separate circuits. Looking at Keshia, I knew the fear I saw on her face must have looked much like my own.
When the lights stopped flickering, I addressed the ghost. “Was that you?” There was no response. Keshia and I stared at one another as the silence hung in the air. I took a deep breath and tried again. “If that was you, make the lights flicker again.” On cue, both sets of lights began to flicker. I bolted out of my chair and told Keshia we should probably wait in the living room for Wes to come home from work.
When we returned to the living room, the lights in there started to flicker. After a few minutes of sitting in silence, I asked Keshia if she was getting any feelings about this ghost. Usually one, if not both of us, would get impressions, which allowed us some insight as to who we were dealing with. Neither of us was receiving any information. That added to the level of fear, because we knew nothing about who this was or, more importantly, what it wanted.
When Wes pulled into the drive, Keshia and I jumped up and met him at the door. When he walked in, we greeted him with, “Let’s go.”
Keshia and I continued to crowd him in the entryway as he pushed past us to set his stuff down. “What’s going on here? Are you two that hungry?”
It was all I could do at that point not to burst out in tears. I tried to remain calm as I asked him again if we could just go ahead and leave. When he complained about needing to take a shower, Keshia joined in and pleaded with him as well.
Looking back and forth between the two of us, he knew something wasn’t right. With the stipulation that we’d tell him what was going on as soon as we left, he finally conceded, saying he’d forgo the shower, but that he at least needed to change his clothes.
After a quick change, we all loaded into the car. When the last door clicked shut, he asked what had caused us to be in such a rush. To his credit, he listened carefully as Keshia and I told him everything that had happened.
Even though Wes didn’t believe in ghosts, seeing my and Keshia’s reactions to the experience had him curious. Over the years, he’d heard us talk about different things we attributed to our ghosts, but he’d never known us to be scared of one, so he had a lot of questions. We continued to talk about the incident all the way to the restaurant. Arriving forty-five minutes later, it was Keshia and I who wanted to drop the subject and go on with our evening as planned. Trying to keep it from our thoughts, we managed to have a good time, but as we got closer to home, the tension started to build. As we pulled into the drive, we expressed our uneasiness about going into the house, but Wes was anxious to go “check it out.”
The minute we walked into the house, I knew it was still there. The living room had that electrically charged feel to it. I went straight to my room on the pretense of putting my shoes and purse away. In truth, I was hoping to escape that awful feeling, but Wes, Keshia, and the heaviness all followed me. Wes stood in the center of our bedroom and looked around. I expected him to say something like, “see, there’s nothing here,” but to my surprise, he commented on how the air felt heavy. He surprised me again by addressing the ghost. When the bedroom lights started to flicker, Wes sank down on the edge of the bed.
Keshia and I had told him earlier how we thought the ghost was following her around, so we weren’t surprised when he asked Keshia to go into another part of the house. When she left, the heaviness lifted.
Wes looked very surprised as he asked me if I’d felt the air change. He waited a few minutes and called Keshia back into our room. As she returned, so did the heavy feeling. He asked Keshia if she felt the heaviness go with her when she’d left. After she told him she could, he asked her to leave again. Just like before, when she left the room, so did the heavy feeling.
For the first time I wanted him—needed him—expected him, to tell me this was all in my head. He didn’t. He felt it too, which did nothing to ease my fears. Unsure of himself, Wes looked at the ceiling and asked, “Is there anyone in here?” We heard Keshia yell that the lights were flashing.
Wes and I both ran to the sound of her voice. We found her standing in the bathroom. The lights weren’t flickering, as in going off and on, but they would get very dim then go back to normal, then get dim again. Each time they dimmed, they emitted a buzzing sound.
Not knowing what else to do, we all went back to my and Wes’s bedroom. Sitting there, Keshia and I finally started getting impressions of the ghost. “It’s scared,” I said.
“What?” Wes asked.
As the impressions flooded my mind, I told him I thought I’d had it all wrong. The ghost wasn’t trying to scare us—he was scared.
“That’s right,” Keshia said. “He’s scared. I think he has trouble understanding us, like maybe he speaks a different language.”
At the same time, Keshia and I both said, “He’s an Indian.”
Wes was having a little trouble comprehending all of this. He knew Keshia and I “claimed” to receive impressions from ghosts, but he’d never experienced it before.
Keshia tried again to explain to Wes that we’d been wrong. She told him the ghost hadn’t been trying to scare us, but that we had picked up on his fear and had misunderstood that for our own. I nodded my agreement when she told him the ghost was a young Indian, probably in his late teens or early twenties.
Wes didn’t know what to think. He’d never experienced anything like this before. He’d felt the heaviness and he’d seen the flickering lights, but still …
Feeling better about the circumstances, Keshia told us she was going to get ready for bed. “Wait, wait, wait, and hold on a second.” Wes said. Obviously, he wasn’t feeling any better about the situation, at all. “I uh, I want to try and talk to this thing.”
“Him,” Keshia corrected.
“Okay, him.” Wes cleared his throat. “Okay I’m going to ask you a few questions,” he said to the ghost. “If you can understand me, I want you to make the lights flicker once for yes and twice for no. Is there someone in here?”
The light flickered once. Wes’s eyebrows shot up. “Okay, are you an Indian?” The light again flickered once. “Are you a male?” Flicker. “Are you a female?” Flicker, flicker. “Have you been following Keshia around the house?” Flicker. “Do you plan to hurt her?” Flicker, flicker.
“Dad,” Keshia laughed. “He’s not going to hurt me, he just wants a friend.”
No longer having any apprehensions about this ghost, Keshia went to bed while Wes and I stayed up discussing the events. Finally getting to bed ourselves, I’d hoped this encounter would help him come to terms with the fact that ghosts did exist, but it just wasn’t to be at the time. By the next morning, Wes had come up with a logical explanation. The heavy feeling was probably just all of our imaginations and as far as the lights flickering in response to his questions, well that was just a coincidence, but we obviously had some serious electrical problems.
Being concerned with our “electrical problem,” Wes replaced the breaker panel a few days later. I once made the comment that ghosts were the perfect guests. They didn’t eat, so they didn’t cost much. The young Indian never ate at our house, but he did cost us quite a bit with the price of replacing the breaker box.
This ghost stayed with us for several years. He had a friend in Keshia; he was generally found wherever she was, and of course wherever the lights were flickering. To Wes’s disappointment, replacing the breaker box hadn’t helped with our “electrical problems” after all.