TheBanyanTree: Ghosts

[trebro at att.net]

It was supposed to be just another normal sleepover party--if you can call any party where odd Japanese Anime, old British TV series, and canned Octopus appear normal.  Hang out for a while with friends, crack jokes, maybe play a game or two, then, when you simply can't form one more coherent one-liner, pull up stakes and head up to the loft floor for some shut eye.

And for the first few hours, it was.  We watched a very silly Anime called "Excel Saga", chatted a lot, watched a more serious anime (which still elicited a few good one liners, particularly about how you must wear Japanese school girl uniforms to fight in outer space), and then switched over to 'Allo, 'Allo, a personal favorite I haven't seen since they stopped operating one of our public television stations.

It was around that point in time that one of us saw the ghost(s) in the bathroom.

He came downstairs frozen stiff, unable to form words.  My initial reaction was "okay, what's the game?" and I still felt that way a little bit for the first few minutes.  We gathered around him, and our host finally got out what the problem was.

It seems he'd gone to the bathroom, and three faces had decided to join him there.

Ok, I admit, still skeptical at this point.  But then the host started to take him seriously, and question him as to what it looked like.  He gave the three faces description, and that's when I asked the question I knew I had to:  Are you really serious.

I could tell from the look in his eyes that he was.

Ok, NEXT TIME TELL ME I'M VISITING A FREAKING HAUNTED HOUSE, HUH???

At any rate, we finally got him calmed down by imbibing entirely too many glasses of wine, which had the effect of getting him positively trashed and somewhat self-loathing, but that was preferable to totally shocked and barely breathing.  We all kept an eye on him, and refused to let him drive home (he kept inisting he should go home).  He was kinda funny drunk, not in a mean way, just in a "I don't care what I'm saying" sort of way.   I can relate to that.

We watched some more videos, and the last few people who decided they'd rather go home than sleep over--worried, perhaps, of ghostly sightings?--staggered out the door.  It was time to go up to the top floor, where the red-yellow ghost lives.

Our host has the entire top floor to herself.  It's more of a loft than a room, with several beds strewn about--perfect for a sleepover.  I took the one with Emma Frost hanging overhead, and after the requist continued conversation despite the pretense of actually sleeping, finally nodded off.

It was a few hours later that I saw--or didn't see--something.

I dream a lot.  And when I dream, it's never your garden variety.  Some people dream of falling from the sky.  I dream of helping President Bush take care of an ailing Condi Rice.  And that says nothing about my nightmares!

So, there I was, dreaming.  At a certain point, I was dreaming--or so I thought, of someone sitting on my bed.  Then I woke up---and there was someone sitting on my bed.

It wasn't any of my friends, or any of the other housemates.

It was an androgenous figure, dressed somewhat like a man, but possibly also like a woman.  It had long red-yellow hair.

I admit it.  I screamed.

The whatever-it-was dissapeared.

Apparently, it was a very silent scream, as I woke no one else up.  It took me a little bit, but I managed to get myself back to sleep again.  In the morning, I debated whether or not to tell anyone.  After all, I could have just still been dreaming.  Finally, after thinking it over, I could stand it no more--I had to tell someone.  I bared my soul to my hostess.

My description and the ghost's were a perfect match.

We watched some more TV and then went our separate ways.  I'd had a lot of fun, and perhaps my very first haunting.  As I got ready to leave, I looked down at my shirt, and pulled off a strand of long, red-yellow hair.

-Rob
http://www.livejournal.com/users/trebro