Nightmares aren't Always Scary

I'm pretty sure everyone had nightmares every now and again. Sometimes they're genuinely terrifying, other times...not so much.

Let's give some examples.

Things I've had nightmares about:

• someone tricking me into giving away one of my couch cushions.
• climbing around with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
• James Bond being tricked by bees.
• Husband coming home from work at an unusual time.
• doing laundry.

None of those are actually scary but you can bet I woke up terrified, sometimes actually screaming.

Let's go into detail!

So Dream #1, I was invited to a huge house party and when I arrived I was informed that I could go anywhere in the house except the ballroom.

I was like what the heck why not and snuck off immediately to find said ballroom, only to discover that one of the bad guys from 101 Dalmatians and a side character from Game of Thrones had kidnapped my ugly couch and were holding it hostage. We bargained for my couch's life but they took one of the cushions anyways.

I woke up in a panic and grasped spastically for Husband's arm in the middle of the night, waking him up in the process.

Dream #2, come on down! This one was in conjunction with the kidnapped couch fiasco. This time though I met up with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and they showed me how to maneuver through the building using a series of hidden pipes in the walls. 

I was just about to get my couch back when I woke up crying, and again woke Husband up in the process.

Dream #3 is one that's haunted me for many years. When I was just a little Erin I remember watching part of a movie with my dad, and somehow that triggered a (at the time) horrific nightmare of James Bond being tricked into falling in a hole by giant bumble bees.

I don't remember the outcome or if I cried or screamed or not but it's highly likely. I was just as weird as a child as I am now.

Dream #4 was actually frightening and had the most dramatic reaction from me. Husband was away for work and wouldn't be home for at least a week, that I knew for certain. So when I "woke up" hearing the front door unlock and someone come into the house alarm bells went off. 

I was like "Oh, Husband is just home really late no big deal--WAIT A SECOND" and then the shadow intruder came into the bedroom and I could see him but not look at him and he had a winter coat on and then I actually woke up. 

This time I woke up screaming at the top of my lungs, and transitioned into yelling "WHO'S THERE" and the like while turning every single light in my apartment on and waking my bird up as I stalked around the house ready to fight off any intruders.

Of course there was no one actually there but it was very scary.

And finally, Dream #5, the laundry mishap. This one is along the lines as the one before, as far as seeing something but not being able to move. Except this time instead of a potentially deadly intruder I was very slowly tripping over a laundry basket and just fell in slow motion forever. Woke up screaming.

Horrifying. 

Another omen...unfortunately.

I thought I had successfully warded off the demon with my new addition to the family, Foo.

I know, what an original name, a foo dog named Foo. Whatever, he's guarding me from demons, he doesn't need a fancy name.

Anyways, even after multiple candlelight tributes to encourage him to protect my apartment, I fear my small statue can only do so much.

It's pretty accepted that one thing crows symbolize is death, or the coming of death.

I mentioned before that the birds have returned to my yard. And for a while I would see new species all the time. First a wren, then a cardinal, then a bluejay, etc etc. Then after a while the songbirds started being replaced by crows. Big crows.

So the abundance of birds that returned after the introduction of Foo has turned into an abundance of crows that now sit outside my window

They don't sit in my backyard, but in the tree on the edge of the parking lot that my window looks over. That's about 5 parking spots away, or about 35 feet.

(Assuming the average car is 6 feet wide and then adding some extra feet for bigger cars. Math, kinda!)

I think the reason they don't get closer is because Foo is doing his best to keep them away from us. What a good little lion dog.

I guess I'll keep burning candles and drying flowers for him to encourage him to keep it up. Meanwhile, if things start happening away from my apartment I might have to hit up the little eclectic shop in the mall near me and see if I can find a little mini-Foo to keep on me when I go places.

Gotta keep them demons away. At this point I'm pretty sure I've just pissed the Megaphone Demon off, much less actually gotten it to leave.

Oh well. I'm not entirely sure why I'm being haunted, but demons probably aren't really that keen on explaining their motives, and I'm not too keen on speaking to one in the first place.

Like I said, I'm content with the demon lurking like a stalker with a restraining order. If it acts up when I'm around town though I'll look into mini-Foo.

Until then I think I'm still okay.

Warding off the Megaphone Demon

After the first night with my demon I became highly suspicious of the noises and things that moved around outside.

About a week after the original incident I realized I may be cursed.

Let me explain the two reasons why:

First, my yard backs up to a wooded area, and it is full of birds. Tons of birds. My bird Gwen will sit and peep at them during the day and they sit on my balcony when it's snowy.

Ever since that fateful night the birds have disappeared. The weather has been consistent, so I've ruled that out.

The only explanation is the birds know I'm cursed and they're staying away on purpose.

Second, I was walking from my apartment to the laundry room, It's not too far, but I do have to walk around the entire length of the building.

It was laundry day, so I had already done this walk twice.

I'm about halfway there when I see a black cat come crawling out from around a corner. Now usually I'm not superstitious but bearing in mind the events of the week before and the fact that my neighbors still refused to let me sleep more than a few hours each night, I was a little wary.

Of course the cat then decides to cross in front of me, sealing my fate.

Let me describe this cat to you. It didn't look especially thin, and at first I thought it was a pet. But as I got closer I realized it was horribly scraggly and had big chunks of fur missing. It was just a generally unnerving cat.

Then, because being cursed once isn't enough. It turned and crossed back in front of me.

AND to seal the deal, once I had walked past it I turned to see it and it's gone, it didn't leave and paw prints in the snow either.

Basically I'm dead already.

So I did what any logical person would do.

I bought a foo dog statue.

This is what it looks like:

I think the dramatic lighting in my bedroom really adds to the atmosphere and the fact that I bought a statue to protect me from demons.

Here's a little snippet from Wikipedia about foo dogs, or "guardian lions":

Statues of guardian lions have traditionally stood in front of Chinese Imperial palaces, Imperial tombs, government offices, temples, and the homes of government officials and the wealthy, from the Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 220), and were believed to have powerful mythic protective benefits

I'm not Chinese in the least bit but I think it'll be okay. So far since I've built a little shrine around this fella nothing else bad has happened, nor have I received any more omens.

Also the birds have come back to my yard, so I think it's working.

Erin: 1 Demon: 0

Why I Don't Try Things (spoiler alert: it's because I'm bad at them)

Okay.

I like to think I'm a pretty creative person. I like to doodle things and I like to choreograph little dances and sometimes I try to cook things.

Sometimes.

Unfortunately, this is one of those times.

I wanted to make dinner. I had made pretty okay turkey meatballs the night before, they were alright, I didn't like them so much but Husband did.

So, because I had done okay the night before, I went to the grocery store and picked up sandwich supplies:

• Tomato
• Red onion
• Lettuce
• Turkey
• Cheese

Perfect! And to top it off I was going to make homemade bread, from scratch! 

I'm such a good wife.

I had all the ingredients except yeast so I picked up some, and also some chocolate milk for fun.

I found a really basic recipe online, no fancy cornmeal or honey or other things that more food-inclined people put in bread to make it more...more bread-ish?

I followed it to the letter. And this is what I got:

In case you're still confused, my bread didn't turn out. It's cooked all the way through, moist and soft, but dense as a brick, and noticeably pale.

Turns out when the recipe says "Yeast: 1 package, OR 1/4 tsp" it actually means 1/4 oz, which is more like 1/2 tbsp. One half of a tablespoon is about one and a half teaspoons. So I used significantly less yeast than what was needed.

It's not my fault. I'm blaming it on the recipe. It's their fault.

Gwenny liked it at least. 

Sandwich night was ruined. Husband got a burrito from a mexican place near us. I had potato chips, blueberries, chocolate milk and Dr Pepper for dinner.

How grown up of me.

A Haunting

12:00 AM

It has been a full two hours of slow and deliberate ice scraping beneath my window as I try to sleep. My goal was to go to bed earlier than normal to try to be soundly asleep by the time the elephants got home. This is making that impossible.

 I am too afraid of the original demon encounter to go check what the noise is, fearing this is a trap to lure me out.

12:12 AM

The elephants returned from circus training and are joyfully adding to the already droning noises. Alas, I will not rest tonight.

12:35 AM

The constant scraping seems to have gotten the attention of the elephants, as the pacing stopped doing endless circles and instead went to the window above mine and stopped.

12:57 AM

What sounds to have been a large bucket or garbage can has been thrown against the building. I will now brave the demons that lurk outside my walls to see what the actual hell is going on. Wish me luck.

1:00 AM

My suspicions were incorrect. I was also not eaten by demons.

The sounds appear to have been a large plastic shovel being tossed angrily around the parking lot. As I peered through my blinds the man and cause of this ruckus looked up at me. I have a sneaking suspicion he is working with the demon to lure me outside.

Against my better judgement I continued to watch him. It would appear as though he had managed to get his car stuck in the ~3 inches of snow in the parking lot, and his solution was to free it at 1:00 AM by spinning the tires in place very slowly and opening all the doors to his vehicle (including the trunk) while taking breaks to walk around it in circles, pretending to know what snow was and how to deal with it.

This makes me think that if he isn't working with the demon, he too is cursed. How else could you get your car stuck in a snowbank that's a foot wide and three inches deep?

I turned my lights off so I could keep watching him without him seeing me.

Class A creep status: achieved.

1:20 AM

The man freed his vehicle, drove it approximately ten feet, then returned inside. The elephants have been graciously quiet, presumably transfixed by the events unfolding outside.

1:36 AM

It would appear I spoke far too soon, and seeing as now the elephants have nothing to distract themselves with, they have returned to their nightly patrols.

1:56 AM

I believe the elephants are worse than my megaphone demon. After just enough time has passed quietly for my tired eyes to close and my grinding teeth to relax, they begin again. They taunt me, and I fear I will soon sacrifice myself to the megaphone demon to end my suffering.

It has been approximately four hours since I originally tried to go to sleep.

As I sit now, listening to the sounds of bowling balls being rolled across the floor above me, I look down onto the man's car, sitting two parking spaces over from it's original prison, and I can't help but think to myself:

Is this my life now?

The Elephants

My upstairs neighbors only woke me up twice last night so let's talk about them.

At 12:36 AM they got home, I didn't hear them go up the stairs but oh boy did I hear them get home. There was minor cracking and shuffling from the floor above me but overall it instilled a hope in me that maybe, just maybe, tonight I would sleep through the night.

Granted, they had already woken me up once, but I was still hopeful.

At 1:14 AM the pacing began. See, the floors are so creaky that I can follow each individual footstep as they walk around. First the circles began in the bedroom above me, seemingly tracing the place where my own bed sat, as if to say "We know you're sleeping but we don't care." After a while the pacing changed to walking from the bedroom, through the living room, and into the kitchen and back. Repeat.

I had the good fortune to fall asleep here.

At 2:17 AM until 2:25 AM they did their nightly patrol. It's so regular at this point that I expect it. They got up and walked a few circles, went into the hallway, then the living room, and back into the bedroom, this time neglecting to check the kitchen for whatever spookies they patrol for.

There was a short pause, then at 2:29 AM they did another few laps around the bedroom before I was more tired than I was irritated and fell asleep.

This is a pretty standard night. I can count on my fingers how many nights I've not woken up even once in the two months that we've lived here, and I'm pretty sure at this point it's because they didn't come home those nights.

I don't know why they patrol, but one of my theories was they had a massive nervous dog that was the cause of all the noise. Until last night that would have made sense, but last night the footsteps were so loud and heavy you could tell it wasn't a dog, but an elephant miraculously walking on two legs. Amazing!

They're nice people and the floors aren't their fault but oh my god just once I'd like to sleep the whole night.

I'm fairly sure they are working directly with the megaphone demon that's haunting me to make me miserable. Or maybe they're not walking around at all, maybe it's the megaphone demon trying to trick me into murdering them.

Well I won't. Too smart for you, demon.

The Megaphone Demon

I like reading scary stories. I think they're fun and time consuming and keep me entertained. But I only read them during the day, more specifically mornings and early afternoon.

Why?

Because I'm afraid of anything spooky, and with living alone in a second floor apartment facing a wooded area with ground access, I have a tendency to work myself into anxiety attacks.

But that's only partially relevant.

Anyways there I was, sitting on my chair and reading stories. Gwen was happily chirping to the birds outside and hopping around the living room doing bird things. Like I said before, anyone could walk right up to the sliding glass door on my balcony because of the stairs. My balcony is also connected to my neighbors.

We've never had issues with privacy and everyone here keeps to themselves.

So it did catch my attention when I heard voices that sounded to be somewhere in my backyard. I didn't pay too much attention, assuming it was just someone outside on their phone (although looking back, it was cold and snowing, and they were out there for a while...) so I went back to reading.

The voice eventually died off so I forgot about it.

Fast forward to six pm, the sun has been down for around an hour now.

Usually if I look out the back door at night I can see the outline of the trees behind the building but not tonight. Tonight it was pitch black. I even cupped my hands and face to the window to try to see out, but it was just a void.

That's not scary to me. That's just dark, so whatever. I had just made brownies so I was far more concerned with that.

Then the voice started again. At first it crept up, very softly and gradually increased in volume. It sounded both close and far away, making me think it might be on the other side of the trees.

Let me try to explain how it sounded:

Imagine a megaphone, it sounds hollow and echoed, right? Or a police intercom, the kind they use to project their voice over the speakers outside their vehicles. Now, we live next to a fire station, so I thought maybe it was someone parked in their driveway or their intercom system, but we're actually quite a ways away, on the opposite side of the complex from the station.

That's what I thought it was though, maybe someone talking over a radio in the backyard or something. I just listened for a while, and tried to pick out actual words, but it was just a mangled mess of sounds.

Curiosity was nagging at me so I walked quietly to the door. At this point, all the stories I had read that day were sneaking into my brain, stories of ghosts and monsters and psycho killers, so I was a little on edge, especially knowing how dark it was.

I hesitated for a second, but the voice was in full swing and I decided I was just too curious. So I flipped the lock and cracked the door about an inch.

Now I'm not kidding when I say it stopped immediately. I listened hard and didn't make any noise, thinking if it was someone on the phone is the yard or something they'd start talking again in a moment. I only stayed there for about three minutes before I slid the door closed and locked it, this time making sure to put the security bar across the door as well.

My rational brain says it was coincidental that whatever I was hearing stopped when I opened the door, but my anxiety brain was screaming "YOU LET IT IN! YOU OPENED THE DOOR FOR IT AND LET IT IN! NOW WE'RE HAUNTED AND WE'RE GOING TO BE EATEN BY A DEMON GOOD WORK"

I tried my best to brush it off and went to bed a few hours later, listening intently for the voice again and telling myself if it started up again I would spring to the door and open it to listen.

It never did come back.

The next morning I was opening the blinds so Gwen could look out and saw someone walking through the trees. We recently got a lot of snow and there are buildings on both sides of this wooded area, so there would be no reason to walk through the trees in the first place. I watched closely waiting to see it move again but it had disappeared.

Rational brain says "Just someone in a black coat walking, who cares"

Anxiety brain says "I knew it. We're going to die"

So far I haven't been possessed or anything, though I have been more keen on closing the blinds and locking the doors. The demon does come back later on though, and I think he's in cahoots with my neighbors.

The Apple Tragedy

I love apples. I eat like three a day if there are that many available.

I'm also really stuck up about them.

I know it's a strange thing to be stuck up about but I am an apple snob. I was on the phone with my dad, returning home from the grocery store explaining this to him. I have an unfortunate taste for the expensive apples, and so I don't buy them very often and when I do I'm super picky and rifle through the whole pile to get the most perfect, unblemished, unbruised apples that are available.

Local markets are torment to me because the apples are always bruised or have holes or nicks in them. Alas.

Anyways, as I'm telling my dad this I'm unloading my groceries. I had purchased five perfect honeycrisp apples, shining, glorious examples of what apples should be.

As I'm telling him how stuck up I am about apples I reached into a bag to retrieve them and put them into the fridge.

I lifted up the thin produce bag and time slowed.

Before I could even process what was happening, part of the bag slipped from my hand. I tried desperately to get the bag in the fridge before disaster struck but I was far too late.

As the bag neared the shelf it would ultimately destroy itself on, my perfect apples started to do what round things do.

They rolled to the unheld edge of the bag, and in my panic I tried to swing them over the shelf and set them down.

I was so close, but I couldn't stop the inevitable.

The apples rolled out of the bag, each of the five bouncing down onto the shelf, then rolling and bouncing down the front of the fridge drawers, before bounding out onto the kitchen floor with a crunch and rolling away.

If you'll recall, I am currently on the phone with my dad when this is happening.

Mid-sentence I screeched hysterically at my apples now rolling around the kitchen before transitioning into a wailing "NOOOOOOO!!"

Realizing I had just screamed into the phone, I spluttered out a miserable "I dropped my apples!" to my dad.

He laughed at me.

The apples were effectively useless at this point but I put them in the fridge for Husband to eat.

Introducing myself, and also my neighbors.

Okay, first post here we go~

I just wrote about myself not five minutes ago but I figured I'd incorporate a little bit more detail in a real post.

I'm from North Dakota. It's pretty ok. It's nice and the people are nice and there are a lot of places to eat but it's flat and gets really cold and also really hot and sometimes floods so is occasionally underwater.

I live in Connecticut now. It's also ok. The roads are confusing and the people are quiet and suspicious and no one knows how to deal with the weather, regardless of what kind of weather it is. Unless it's a hurricane in which case everyone is like "pshh no big deal we got this" whereas a prediction of three inches of snow is enough for half the state to lose their minds. (See this video for a typical reaction)

Let's talk about my apartment. It's old and smelly and noisy but it's cheap to live here so oh well. My downstairs neighbors are nice and let me borrow their shovels so I can dig my car out and they like Gwendolyn and think she's "really cool and interesting" so I like them. They're gonna be called the Cat-Shovels, because they have a cat and loaned me a shovel and I don't actually know their names.

My upstairs neighbors are affectionately referred to from this point on as The Elephants. I've never met them but their floors are very very creaky and they keep me up all night just by moving around. They are key players in many of my stories and you will hear more about them later.

When we first moved in we were really loud and obnoxious so I got all my neighbors little treat bags full of chocolate so they wouldn't hate me. The Elephants wrote me a nice thank you card and The Cat-Shovels thanked me in person.

I haven't met any of my other neighbors.

I work at a flower shop but don't really know anything about flowers. I just follow instructions and clean a lot of buckets. I really like it. The people I work with are the only Connecticut friends I have so if you were wondering about my social life there isn't one. I spend a lot of time in pajamas at home. I like it that way.

Anyways I have to take Gwenny to a vet check up so I need to go get dressed and maybe comb my hair or something. bye.