Hauntings, Premonitions, and Things That Go Bump in the Woods

(Not really my trail, but it sure felt like it)

Definition of paranormal:

Beyond normal explanation.

That word, paranormal, sums up the tone of this week—and it's only Wednesday.  I'm a very logical person overall,  but I also believe in the...unexplainable.  Yeah, that word fits. I'm logical (the point of annoying sometimes), and I'm NOT inclined to be dramatic.  

I made this Facebook post on Monday: Just heard a door close—when no one else is home. ‪#‎hauntedhappenings‬  It was entirely true, but my method of dealing with weird is to just make a joke about things.  It wasn't a big deal—it still isn't.  We've had odd things happen pretty much everywhere we've lived, and we don't give more than passing thoughts to things like that after so many years.  Whether the door opened or closed, I only paused long enough to look up and then kept typing away on the keyboard.  

Monday night I stayed up too late went to bed at a decent time (*snort*) but woke up at 4:00 a.m. Tuesday feeling very anxious.  I don't mean I was stressed about something in life or had a bad dream.  I woke up with a full blown feeling of tightly knotted anxiousness smack in the middle of my chest.  I'm not prone to anxiety, I don't have panic attacks, heck I'm not even a worrier.  But I DO get "feelings" about things, and I have for most of my life. However, those are stories for another blog post.  This time I just had this terrible feeling like I was missing something that was just out of reach.  The feeling lingered for a couple of hours, and I never could grasp what it was that hung so heavily over me.  I mentioned it in passing to Wes and put it out of my mind.  

This afternoon I decided to drag my frumpy-feeling self away from my desk and hike the trails around the museum like I have many times over the last couple of years.  I've hiked with the kids, hiked with Wes, but most often I've hiked alone.  They're public trails - both wooded and concrete pathways that wind around the art museum.  I've never once felt unsafe. Don't get me wrong, I'm not stupid.  I keep a knife clipped inside of my waist band every single time whether I'm alone or with the kids.  Whether listening to audiobooks or music, I keep the decibel at a level that I can still be aware of my surroundings.

Instead of parking at the trailhead, I parked at Katlyn's school and walked for about 15 minutes to one of the entrances only to find an annoying signed marked Trails Closed For Maintenance.  It was annoying as I love walking the wooded paths the best—because trees, peace, and serenity, y'all.  I backtracked a little and headed another direction.  The Crystal Bridges Museum sits in a small valley surround by paths both of the wooded and concrete variety.  There's a very large courtyard with a few picnic tables, and all the way down the hill, near the museum, is a set of stairs that leads back up where you can choose to go back into the trees again or wind around the base of the museum to another entrance.  

I left the concrete path and entered the courtyard headed in that direction.  Halfway there I noticed a man sitting at the picnic table furthest from the entrance.  Normally there are people walking, eating lunch, or just hanging out in the courtyard, but today he was the only one.  At the same time I noticed him, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up, and that "off" sensation crawled up my spine.  An odd feeling hung in the courtyard that I couldn't quite place.  Call it oppression, call it intuition, but I felt the need to leave.  It was like walking through the film of a large bubble and realizing sounds are muffled, the air isn't right...time is distorted.

I couldn't see what the man was doing until the same moment I saw the entrance to the stairs leading to the paths were blocked off.  He was sitting at the picnic table closest to the blocked off stairs doing...NOTHING. His arms and hands were resting on the picnic table, and he was staring forward.  Just sitting while facing the direction I'd come.  No phone, no book, no picnic lunch. Just. Freaking. Sitting. I made a u-turn and headed back up towards the entrance to the courtyard, but the feeling settled between my shoulder blades, and as I glanced out of the corner of my eye, the man was following a couple of hundred feet behind me.  He hadn't moved a muscle the entire time I walked through the courtyard, but when my back was turned he closed the distance between us quick enough that I felt him behind me. The entrance was too far to comfortably walk with him behind me, so I decided to detour off the regular walkway and climb a small hill out of the courtyard up onto a concrete path that wound around.  There were always people up there, and I knew everything would feel normal again once I climbed up onto the sidewalk.

But the man followed me up the hill. It wasn't an easy way.  It wasn't a place people EVER walked.  I'd purposely taken an awkward way out in order to get away from him thinking he'd keep going towards the entrance.  He followed me. All of the oppressive sensations constricted into a cold knot of fear. Where were the people? There were no people on the sidewalk - there were always people on that sidewalk.  I should've been able to hear the sound of my heart pounding in my ears.  The only thing I could hear was the occasional scuff of his shoe. Shifting my phone and keys to the opposite hand, I felt for the knife and slipped it out of my waist band while walking as quickly as I could without running up the hill.   No matter how fast I walked, he was catching up with me. I tried to keep to the middle of the path and act as though I was glancing around so I could catch him in my peripheral vision. My heart was racing so fast, and the incline was enough, that I knew he'd be close enough to touch me if I didn't DO something.  But what?  Keeping my thumb on the knob that flips the knife open, I walked quickly over to the side of the path and angled myself so I could see him while acting liked I'd stopped to look down into the valley where the museum sat.  It felt like forever, but was in reality only a few seconds before he walked past.   He walked stiffly, not moving his arms, his upper body held tightly.  He never glanced over, but it felt purposeful.  I let him walk enough several hundred yards ahead of me before I stepped onto the path and walked a safe distance behind him.  

Suddenly, the bubble burst, and sound returned again.  There were people coming down the path.  A man walking alone, another walking a dog.  It felt like the hitch in time snapped back in place, and I watched him for a couple of minute until he walked, stiffly, out of sight not acknowledging either man who passed him.  People nod and smile to one another out there, but he stared straight ahead.  I veered off and eventually doubled back.  I had a very long walk back to my car, and for that half an hour this introverted girl wished she'd run into someone she knew.  I wasn't afraid anymore.  I'd made sure he was gone before turning around, but it just felt like such a long way back.

I thought the strangeness of the day was over until I was sitting at my computer this evening. Katlyn was in her room, and the boys hadn't made it home yet.  Outside the windows I could hear a chorus of howling and barking.  We have coyotes in the woods surrounding us, and it's normal to hear them at times when the windows are open.  Tonight the sounds were so loud that I opened the back door and stood listening to what sounded like every dog in the vicinity joining in with a pack of coyotes that had to be very close by.  It went on and on raising goosebumps on my arms.  A little while later, the boys came in and Wesley said three large coyotes were standing in the cul-de-sac in front of our house.  Just standing there -- until he pulled up and they trotted off into the woods.  They could hear them moving in the trees next to the house as they walked up our driveway. 

Maybe I brought home a bit of residual something from my walk today, maybe not.  Maybe none of the little things from the last three days are connected to the awful feeling I had today, maybe they are.  I didn't fully process how truly awful it was until I recounted it to Wes and Caleb tonight.  It feels oily, like film stuck to my skin.  

I'll think about it while I go nurse the ugly bruise that showed up on my leg this morning and wonder how that happened overnight.  Maybe that's not connected either.  *shrugs*  Maybe it is ...