The first of these stories takes place when I was like...uh...thirteen or so? Anyways, my brother was a very timid little tyke back then, so it did not come as a surprise when I noticed one of his strangest fears.  We used to share a bed during sleepovers at our grandparents and the guest room had this television that was set at the foot of the guest bed. I would wake up to see my brother sitting bolt upright in the darkness of the early morning staring at the blank TV screen. I asked him what was wrong, he said that he had a nasty nightmare in which a humanoid monster came out through the TV screen and dragged him inside the TV. In fact, he never slept in a room with a TV unless there was a blanket covering the screen. Years later, I decided to talk to my Mom about it, she said that there was "negative energy" that was nicknamed "Adam" who terrorized my little brother. There were even strange incidents that happened while I was at school that involved objects being moved around, doors being left open when Mom or Dad knew they closed, and even cold spots. Mom never told me about it because I was very prone to nightmares, which is pretty reasonable. 

I never truly encountered anything until one night, I was coming back to my room after a glass of water and peeked into my little sister's room after I heard some giggling. I wondered why she was awake at this hour, so I peeked inside and saw my sister sitting up in her bed staring at a single corner in the room. She was smiling as if she was staring at a friend of hers. I went back to bed slightly unnerved but the same thing happened with Mom, she asked what she was staring at. My sister only giggled, she was not able to speak so well back then.

Here's another story, this one concerned me. 

You see, I am not a very social person, the events of 2020 did not help things at all. In fact, this was one of the darkest times for me in a deeply psychological manner. This prompted me to create imaginary friends in my mind in an effort to escape my mind-melting loneliness. One of my imaginary friends resembled a character from my book Cobalt, I've had many lively conversations with her. But I can't escape my troubles forever, the lockdown took its toll on everyone in the house. About five family members (including me) crammed into a house for weeks on end, so angry arguments were commonplace. During one of these arguments, I was punished for something I did not do. I was very angry about quarantine in the first place, but this made my blood boil. The next day, my Mom told me about a strange event that happened only ten minutes after I went to bed.

Mom was grabbing coffee in the kitchen and felt a hand on her shoulder. Thinking it was her husband, she turned around only to see no one was there. She then felt a burning sensation in her left calf she discovered what appeared to be scratches in long pink lines.  

Once she was done telling her story, I felt a chill that went up my spine. It also felt like someone was staring at me from behind, but that could just be my anxiety. Anyways, after Mom heard about my imaginary friends. My normally logical and grounded mother gave me a strange warning...

More or less, she figured that some negative energy could be feeding off of my emotions and lashed out at her because of my anger that night. After a week of daily sage burning and disregarding the presence, things seemed to calm down. And that's where we get to my last story...

Just this year, a cousin of mine became my step-sister and moved into the house. She was 19 at the time and she left toxic relationships behind by moving into the house. But I still had a lot of emotion bubbling under the surface because of past trauma, depression, and an easily irritable step-father who made everything I do feel like a mistake.

One night, after a particularly nasty argument, my new step-sister was preparing something in the kitchen when she saw something weird and creepy. We had one of those wind chimes made out of wooden spoons that kinda looked like this... 

   

The weird thing was that when she glanced at the pantry, which the chime was hanging next to, she saw that one of the spoons was spinning...as if someone wound up and twisted the spoon on its string before letting it go. She then heard what sounded like male laughter from my little sister's room, yet no one was there.

On that ambiguous note, I thank you for sticking around to the end of this strange series of true stories.

See ya in the next dose!