Creatures on Jupiter: a Halloween story from nirvhannah's personal account

King Benses
(Ben as King Ramses, one of the better and more terrifying villains I've seen)

As far as being a loon goes, I've seen my share of oddities in the twenty-two years I've been alive on Earth. By oddities, I mean… things I can't really explain… unless I give it a good thought. I don't really like talking about this sort of thing because from my experience, hardly anyone will believe it, that and my imagination likes to spiral out of hand at times, and those who will believe it are weirder than me. But as far as ghost stories go, we all either have one or we enjoy hearing and reading them, whether or not we believe in the metaphysical and the paranormal.

There are so many metaphysical and paranormal things in existence that logic can explain.

I more or less enjoy astrology, but I must confess, it gets tiresome and even a little corny at times. Besides, I use it more as a tool to help figure out myself (see: referring to myself as a Martian because I'm an Aries, and Aries is ruled by Mars and to a lesser extent Pluto).

I've seen actual UFOs. Then again there is so much we have yet to know about space and not to mention, they have a lot of badass machines that they're not telling us about.

I've had dreams so real and so horrifying I thought they actually happened, like Andromeda Strain/28 Days Later type stuff. Then again, I know a number of people who have had dreams like that, so I'm not the only one.

I've seen those so-called “shadow people”, dark shadowy figures in forests that hang there for a few seconds but then vanish. Then again, our eyes and minds like to mess with us, and I can't see too well, I've had shit eyesight since the fifth grade.

I've had visions, like psychic visions: they were brief, about a couple of seconds, but they were actual visions. Then again, the ninety percent of our brain we leave out of the equation, our unconscious, is unbelievably powerful: we're all psychic to an extent.

But if there's one thing I've never been able to explain is ghosts. I can confirm so many times over that ghosts exist. I've felt ghosts walk past me. I never saw anything or anyone, but I could sense them and feel them brush past me. However, there was a time I actually saw an apparition right before me and my Renaissance brain still can't explain it.

(No, King Ramses doesn't count, or Spirit of the Harvest Moon, or any of the cartoon ghosts that legitimately gave me nightmares when I was younger)

First off, I actually had glasses on, so I can't hold my eyesight accountable.

This was the end of August into September 2012, about a month before I succumbed into my first official major depression, back when I was still in engineering school. I had moved out of my dorm and off-campus into my mom's apartment. She lived in this apartment complex about a mile and a half from school, and the complex was this three-story brick building called Blackburn Manor.

It was built in, I want to say 1912 or some time around the First World War, originally intended as a hospital. The hospital shut down for reasons I'm not allowed to say in the 1950s, and then briefly revamped as a fraternity in the 70s, until morphing into an apartment building in the 90s. Because Blackburn Manor used to be a hospital, and because I watch Ghost Adventures at every whim I get, there are stories—living proof even—of tenants seeing, hearing, and feeling two residuals who have haunted the building for nearly a century: an elderly man of about seventy and a young girl of about seven.

Hearing voices talking—and everyone would be sound asleep. Hearing a little girl crying—and no one in the building has young children. Feeling something brush past you—and you turn to look, and nothing or no one would be there. Seeing someone step into another room, and you'd go to look, and no one would be there. Feeling icy cold, chills surging up your spine, feeling it down to your bones suddenly—and there's no reason to because it's quite warm in the room. One kid about my age reported sitting on a sofa and feeling someone actually push rather firmly on his shoulder blade; he took a glimpse behind him and no one was there.

Things of which logic can't even begin to explain.

On this particular night, I was by myself. My mom's second husband travelled down to Central California to take care of something for his mom: he was down there for the entire month of August, and my mom went down there the last week, leaving me alone with my dog, a little Chinese crested hairless, and this basal apartment. This was about Wednesday: the two of them and his mom drove back up Thursday (an all-day drive of which I am all too familiar with), and returned to the complex Friday night.

I took my dog out for a walk before the sun set: it was pretty warm out that day, thus I wanted to wait until it cooled off a bit. Blackburn Manor sits on the corner of two fairly busy side streets, which cross in an “X”, and slopes uphill: a grass area resided across the intersection from the complex, leading way to a fairly good hill and another grass area, before crossing Pacific Terrace, the “rich people street.” Immense cottonwood trees dotted the walkway on both sides of the street, so taking a stroll up that hill on a warm day was not unbearable. A block over was another side street, which took the uphill path even more so and carried more bushes than trees: the reason why I decided to wait it out.

When the sun slipped behind the summit of Mt. McLaughlin and the rays of light made way for the night, my dog and I took to the outside and strolled up the second side street. There were two alleyways on the left side, both of which lead to the second grass area. My dog and I moseyed to the second alleyway, and we turned the corner onto pitted blacktop. A strange feeling then swept over me. The best way I can describe it is like walking into a room that is ten degrees cooler from the rest of a house. That sudden, significant temperature change, that wave of cool air sweeping over me… My dog sensed something, too (animals usually are the first to know, anyway).

I glanced down to him: he stood perfectly still, ears erect, nose twitching. I turned my head again and spotted a pair of deer about a foot away from the side street. Since the darkness began to creep over the area, and I didn't have my glasses on, out of the corner of my eye, the deer resembled a pair of shadow people. So figure when I turned my head the deer scared the hell out of me.

I lurched backwards and the deer galloped towards the street, disappearing into the darkness. Calming my heart rate down, I took another glance down to my dog, who had not budged an inch. I fetched up a sigh and we continued to the sidewalk. We took a left, heading down the sidewalk back home since the darkness truly began to beckon over us. We strolled underneath the trees, and the cold feeling sank even further over me. I'm still unsure if it was just the darkness causing a placebo affect on me, or if it was something else, something sinister…

No cars headed our way once we approached the crosswalk; the two of us were in a fast-paced walk by the time we reached Blackburn Manor. We sailed up the front steps to the door. I reached into my pocket and whipped out the key. I unlocked the door, opened it, crouched down and unharnessed my dog. I stepped inside the foyer and clicked the light on. I closed the door behind me and breathed a sigh of relief.

To the left was the master bedroom; next door was my room; directly in front of the front door the bathroom; to the right the living room and then the kitchen. The master and my room were both pitch-dark; the window in the master was open just enough so I could see out into the lamplit street. Between that window and my window was a tiny pinion pine tree: the branches never crossed view with either window.

I ambled into the kitchen to get myself a drink of water. I then sat down in the recliner in the living room.

If you've ever had a premonition of feeling of something bad is about to happen, you know what I mean. The feeling of coolness subsided to this very feeling. I directed my gaze to the book I had been reading, right next to the recliner, along with my glasses. I slipped on my glasses and then climbed to my feet to click on the ceiling light. Bright yellow light flooded the room and I had my glasses on so I could see everything clearly.

Including the little girl's face in the master bedroom window.

It was rather faint and brief (I only saw her for a handful of seconds) but I remember her face was pale and foggy, like shrouded with spectral mist. I could see the two slightly darkened holes: her eyes. I watched her duck down into the darkness and she was gone. I never saw her again. I never spotted the old man, either, for that matter.

But I witnessed her manifestation. I saw her shadow duck down into the darkness beneath the window. I had decent lighting, I had my glasses on, and I could sense the cold of a spirit manifesting, the proper settings in order to see a ghost.