Thursday, January 22, 2009

Seeking your weird memories...




Because weird things happen and people love it. I'm collecting more weird memories--to hopefully start a recurrent thing in my Medusa's ladder column. Anything goes--anything that falls into the category of "what the hell just happened?" Or, "Could this have really happened the way I remember?"


Stories don't necessarily have to be paranormal or spooky, just weird. Take a look at some of the things people have previously posted here and here. Some of the better stories are in the comments sections. The "typewriter head" has haunted me a little bit.
So, either post your stories with the comment section of this post, or email them to me at cemeterylegends@yahoo.com
Unless otherwise specified I will be using just first names, or user names. Keep in mind they may be used in my column here.

14 comments:

Clint Gardner said...

Just oddities, eh? Do they have to be personal narratives?

richelle said...

Any oddity will do. Anything but urban legends.

Clint Gardner said...

Ok.

When they were about 10 years old two cousins of mine (who were also cousins to each other, not sisters) were in the basement of the first cousin's house. The rest of the family was over at the second cousin's house for a family reunion. They lived on farms abutted to one another--with the houses about a 1/4 mile away. They were playing with Barbies when suddenly from the top of the basement stairs they heard a loud voice calling their names. "Go find your mother!" the voice shouted.

Frightened, they ran up the stairs and straight to the second cousin's house. There was no one at the top of the stairs, nor anyone around the house. To this day they have no explanation of this event.

richelle said...

weird! This falls into what a lot of people would classify as a ghost. Do you know the provenance of the house/farm itself?
............

I don't know why this story reminded me of something that happened to me once--definitely not a mystery about the voice's origin, but of motive. I was probably about 11 or 12, and my parents were not home. I answered the phone, and a guy with a very strange voice--sounded like an older man, very deep voice, and it didn;t sound like someone trying to mask their real voice, or an affectation of any sort. He asked if my mother was there, and I said no, can I take a message? He then said "Could you just tell her that Elvis Presley called?"
I was so surprised, I just said, "ok" or something.

Clint Gardner said...

Did you give her the message?

richelle said...

I did, and she went up to the attic, came down with a big suitcase, made a phone call and said "the penguin leaps at midnight" left for an hour, returned, and was never quite the same.
Really, though, yes--I did give her the message, and my parents just kind of chuckled like 'what the...'

Anonymous said...

I am four yo and there is such a fuss at my grandma's house. She won't let me go with the man who is to be my husband.
My mother told him and his parents to come get me at a certain time but my grandma decided to come home for lunch and found them here.
My grandma throws them out, but my future husband is screaming as his parents drag him away. "She is mine!"
His parents throw him into the back of a station wagon and drive like crazy. My grandma and mom fight for hours.
I have asked my grandma if this ever happened and she tells me no but she won't have let it happen anyway if it did. It was a dream maybe she tells me.
I had nightmares for years about this event that never happen. I would wake up to his face and screams. I knew in this memory that he loved me.

Anonymous said...

I was probably 10 years old and staying at my grandma's, which i did while my mom was at work. My grandma opened her front closet door (which opened opposite the front door of the house in her living room) and shook out a jacket she was going to put on to go outside. The front door was open a bit and the screen did not meet the bottom of the door exactly so there was a space. As she shook out the jacket, out of the pocket fell this gold lizard. I am not talking yellow, it was gold, shiny, like it was made of brass or actual gold. The lizard took off underneath the screen door as fast as it could go, and my grandma and I looked at each other like, did we just see that? Nothing was ever said, i haven't ever told anyone that, because i am still not sure what i saw!!

Anonymous said...

The Most amazing weird memory I have is awe inspiring. When I was 8 yo and staying at my grandparent's house in a mobile home park, I would get up very early sometimes and usually I would sit on the front "patio" which was a ground level slab of concrete about 12 ft long X 4ft wide, coverde by a metal overhang on metal concrete anchored thin rails. But I sometimes would go to the beginning of the park to the entrance where there was a beautiful fountain tha adorned the entrance on the right side, however I walked down to it on this particular day from the left side of the street, my grandparent's were on the right side of the street so this was odd for me to do, as I would have to cross the street upon starting out my walk. On the left side of the street next to the sidewalk were hedges about 5 and a half feet high all trimmed and they were pretty solid, you could not see what if anything were in those hedges from the side walk. But all of the sudden I had this strange unavoidable urge to peer into the hedges at some point almost to the midway point of this row of hedges. So Of course I had to move leaves and branches aside to peer into it and I made quite a lot of noise, so I was absolutely awe struck when I met face to face with a beautiful light grey owl peering straight at me. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen and what was amazing is that all my noise only awakened it, but had not scared it off. And it just stared at me as I stared at it. I then smiled and said "good-bye I have to go now" as if it could understand or even care. But I felt compelled to part it with words for some weird reason. Then as I grew up I became interested in the pagan religion and their beleifs, and I found that Athena, A greek Goddess is often represented as an owl and was sometimes beleived to appear to mortals as an owl, and I remembered this strange incident and wondered if it had been Athena leading me to the spiritual path I was to take.

Charlotte Corday said...

When I was six (1956-57), we lived in Medellin, Colombia, where my daddy worked as a helicopter pilot for the United Fruit Company, spraying vast banana plantation crops, and living 14 of every 28 days camped on mountainsides and in jungles (him, not us). In fact, everything about my wonderful father, and us living in Colombia, was far more colorful than what I vividly recall my father DOING once. To entertain me (as daddies do), he held up his hand, bent his wrist, and used his other hand to turn his hand around. ALL the way around! Reapeatedly! Like turning a screw! I SAW him do this. I kept saying, "How do you do that? How CAN you do it?", and trying to do it myself with my hand, then with his hand. I couldn't duplicate it. Every time I failed and gave up, Daddy showed me again: he bent his wrist and used his right hand to turn his left hand all the way around, and around and around, just like the girl in The Exorcist spinning her head around, only BETTER. I swear he did it. Years later, I asked him about it, and he didn't know what I was talking about. He only remembers turning his hand back and forth. But if that's all it was, why did he show me THAT? That's not special. That's not something to entertain a kid with. Why was I so sure of what I was seeing? I KNEW he was doing something impossible. It's not as if being only six, I believed it was possible to do that.

And then there was the time when I was 11 or 12 (maybe 13?) and saw a cigar-shaped UFO amidst some roadside trees in Oklahoma as we drove past (going 75 at least) in our old blue station wagon. It happened awfully fast. But I saw it. It was hovering above the ground, among the trees, looked like an airplane fuselage, but featureless, silver colored, no wings or windows or marking or tail or propeller.
It made me gasp. For years, I wished there'd been some way to stop and go back to look. But kids have no power. I'd have been laughed right off the planet for asking to stop and go back for that.

I miss being a kid sometimes anyway.

:^/

Anonymous said...

I was 10 yo , living in Dallas TX. The day before, my mother explained to me she would be helping her good friend across town with a garage sale and she told me that she would give me the house key and told me to call her as soon as i got home.(it was the very 1st time I'd come home with the key) I lived across the street , around the corner down 3 houses to my school; rather close. I did how i was told and found cookies awaiting me and the phone number to call to tell my mom i was home. A few minutes after i'd called my mom the phone rang. A man asked how i was and wanted to know if my mother was home. I told him she wasn't home but quickly said my sister was here studying (My younger sis was with mom.) He knew i was alone and said he was coming to get me and laughed . I called my mother, scared to death , she told me not to leave the house and as i put down the phone down someone was banging on the front door yelling . I looked at the door and i hadn't locked it. I turned around , ran out the back down the alley across the street towards my school where i saw a lady my mother knew , i was in tears terrified and tried to explain everything. She literally dragged me home-i was so scared. by the time i got across the street and to a point i could see the front of my house the police and my mother were already there. The sheriff told my mom i might have made it all up and needed more attention. Luckily my mother told the sheriff off. I was terrified .No one was at my home when the police got there .

Anonymous said...

A late spring evening, many years ago. My friend and me were driving (in her car) to her home where I was going to sleep over (Sat. night). We'd been visiting at another friend's house. No drinking and no drugs, just pizza and soda.

It was shortly after midnight when we took a turn onto a winding country road which on one side faces a rocky cliff and the other side has a drop off to a stream on a rockbead.

We sudenly saw road workers all lit up with small trucks, waving to us to stop, about 60 yards ahead of us. We were confused - why would there be workers on the narrow road on a Sat. night? There didn't seem to be an accident - no ambulance or firetruck. Just these shiny,silvery, brightly lit workers and small trucks.

Then my friend couldn't apply gas with the pedal and became extremely upset. Immediately following that she lost the power stearing and had an impossible time manuvering the car (an AMC Javelin). I then looked at the men again and felt an electric zip of panic from my solar plexis right up through my heart and mind and went into a complete spontaneous panic attack, laying myself back on the passenger seat.

The next thing we knew we were pulling into her driveway and it was shortly after 1 a.m.(we had only been about 5 mins. from her home).

I vaguely remembered we both crashed on the oversized couch, not even bothering to wash up in the bathroom (weird for us girly-girls). The next morning we could barely move, had terrible headaches and I had a fever (took some aspirin). We thought we were sick from the pizza.

Later that day we spontaneously 'remembered' the brightly lit workmen on the road and her car giving out. We couldn't figure out what happened.

Weeks later we both began to dream of bugfaced (actually mantids) beings staring very close to our faces - forhead to forhead.

Many years have passed and we rarely mention it, but when one of her daughter's complained to her about "flying saucer dreams", she immediately thought of that night, so many years ago.

Anonymous said...

My parents had a typewriter like that back in the 1960s. Manufacturer name was "Underwood."

Unknown said...
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