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Unusual Things

By John Addyman  |  john.addyman@yahoo.com

 

Do unusual things happen to you?

When I was 17, I was lying in bed, feeling deeply sorry for my friend, Skip, whose dad had just died.

Skip was taking it very hard.

I was disturbed for my friend and I was kind of talking to his dad’s spirit, trying to tell Skip’s dad how much Skip loved him, even though Mr. Smith was a very stern man.

It was really late at night and I had spent part of the day with Skip, so his feelings were very much in my mind. And I was saying, quietly but out loud, “I wish I could tell you, Mr. Smith, how much Skip loves you.”

And then it happened.

I heard it clear as day — the sound of someone coming up the dark stairs of our house, toward my room. I heard the sound your ankle makes when it snaps a little. I knew my parents and my sisters were sound asleep in their beds.

And I knew who was coming up the stairs for a talk with me.

“Oooooooooh,” I said to myself.

As much as I wanted to talk to Mr. Smith to tell him about Skip, I wasn’t ready for a dead guy to sit down bedside with me.

I was 17 years old and I sprinted to my parents’ bedroom at the other end of the upstairs hall, burst in and woke up my dad.

“Who is coming up the stairs?” my dad asked me groggily. I insisted I had correctly assessed the situation. He left me at the side of his bed, went out into the hall, into my room, down the stairs and through the dark house and came back upstairs. He explained that I had been dreaming.

I insisted I was totally and completely awake.

“Are you going to be able to go back to bed and go to sleep?” he asked me.

I was shaking my head vigorously and wordlessly in the dark. After a few seconds of my paralytic speech, he’d made up his mind.

“Let’s go,” he said. He gently led me back to my bed, lay me down in it and got in next to me — protecting me from Mr. Smith for the rest of the night.

To this day, I am certain that was the spirit of Mr. Smith — noisy ankle and all — coming up those stairs.

Move ahead 10 years and I’m a guidance counselor at a middle school in West Chester, Pennsylvania. The PTO had a great idea, a “skill fair” fundraiser where people would demonstrate their special skills. The venue was our round cafeteria that had a stage in the middle.

I had just finished two books on Tarot cards and had bought a set of them, after seeing them used in a movie. My contribution was that I’d read Tarot for someone, priced at one ticket. And I had takers.

The third person I read for, a woman, was stunned at what I told her the cards told me. Seemed I hit dead center on things that were going on in her life, though I didn’t know her at all. Just when I was swelling with a little confidence on what I was doing, she stunned me.

“Could I make an appointment with you to do this again?” she asked.

I never expected that. I couldn’t tell her she was dealing with a rank amateur — she’d just paid me one ticket for the reading. And I didn’t want to lie to her either or lead her down a path. Her reaction to the reading upset me a little — maybe I was better than I knew. Maybe I had a gift.

And maybe I was full of crap.

Somehow, I got her to accept that I did Tarot readings only occasionally and didn’t want to get into a regular schedule.

She left me her name and phone number anyway, just in case.

Two years passed. I was working as a sports writer in the now-defunct “Coatesville Record” newspaper in Pennsylvania. It was a Friday night. I had covered a basketball game a good distance away. I was totally alone in the newsroom writing my story and doing my stats.

And something caught my eye. The newsroom was on the second floor, accessible by steps in the front and the very back of a long row building. My desk was literally atop the stairs — if someone came up the stairs, I could see the back of their head as they climbed.

What caught my eye wasn’t on the steps. It was someone coming from the back hallway, which was only half-lit because I was the only person in the building and the back door locked automatically. I was sure I was alone in the building.

But this guy walked in. He never looked at me and I can’t remember seeing his face. What was clear was that he had on a Revolutionary War Continental Army uniform and was carrying a long rifle. He didn’t say a word and neither did I. He came out of the hallway that led to the back of the building, back where the composing area was where we put the paper together.

He walked right up to the only door on that side of the building — to the darkroom. It was locked. I know it was locked because I locked it.

So, he opened the door without effort and looked inside. Then he carefully closed the door, turned around and walked straight down the hall toward the back of the building. Apparently he didn’t see what he was looking for.

I jumped out of my desk — after a moment to compose myself and suppressing a scream — and followed him. He was, of course, gone. He would have literally had to fly to evade me. I got to the back door at the back of the building, on the ground floor. It was still locked.

Then came the night of Sept. 26, 2024, my latest big birthday with a zero on the end. My wife and I were sound asleep 56 minutes ago as I write this.

And an alarm went off.

We have an old house, built in 1927. It has two fire alarm systems, one of which no one has been able to explain to me. When it goes off, it sounds like a bell you hear when the water level in something is wrong — like an old boat. The system kind of rings.

At 2:13 a.m., that’s the sound I heard. That ringing. It was a short blast.

My wife, of course, was completely sound asleep. She’s accustomed, after many years, to letting me go check the bats who come to visit and the smoke alarms that go off and the funny noises the ground hog and raccoons make out in the yard…stuff like that.

I was sure the sound had come from somewhere inside the wall. We’d had work done on installing a shower in our old bathroom on the other side of our bedroom wall and I thought something might be amiss there. I listened for the alarm to go off again so I could locate it.

Quickly walking around the house, I couldn’t find the source of the alarm. I didn’t smell any smoke. I opened windows to check if I had heard something coming from next door, but all was quiet. The alarm had sounded just like the old system does when it goes off — which it has done once in the 16 years we’ve lived in Newark. Thankfully there was no fire.

Finally, I went back to bed and all of these thoughts were running around in my brain while I stared at the ceiling. So, I got up and wrote this, figuring someone might explain it to me after they’d read it.

Then, nestling back into my wife’s company under the covers, the alarm went off again. Right in my face. And it lit up this time.

It was my wife’s Fitbit on her wrist, the device she uses to measure her steps during the day and how well she’s slept.

What it didn’t measure tonight was how much it scared the crap out of her husband.