Welcomed Bumps in the Night

The paranormal is often intimidating, confusing, terrifying. But strange knocks, dark entities and growls in the night aren’t always bad. The following are two stories of welcomed bumps in the night.

A mother’s touch
Jo Ann Miller, Texas, visited her family in Independence, Mo., in fall 2009. She went to the cemetery where her parents are buried, and drove by the house she grew up in, the house where her mother lived for 60 years. Later, at a party, Miller watched a family DVD with pictures of her mother, father and baby pictures of her son, who died in 1995.

“After we came back to Texas I was talking on the phone to someone about how nice it was to see those old pictures and how good my mother looked, how good my son looked, and also how nice it was to see a photo of my brother-in-law,” she said. “None of them are living.”

About 30 minutes later, Miller knew she was not alone in her house.

“I felt a hand resting on my right shoulder,” she said. “Such a light touch. It was almost like it wasn’t touching me, but it was.”

No one was there.

She looked for other explanations, such as a breeze from the ceiling fan, but the fan wasn’t on.

“There was no explanation,” she said. “It was just a nice feeling to have that invisible hand touching my shoulder.”

She believed the touch was from her mother. The next morning she was sure of it.

“I woke up in bed, rolled over, and happened to see the digital clock in our bedroom,” she said. “It had the numbers flashing that were my mother’s home address numbers exactly. I believe now that it was my mother – or an angel sent by my mother – that touched me. It isn’t something I would want to happen very often, that’s for sure. But it was a comforting presence.”

The Ghost Watches Over Us
When Krissy Mathers and her significant other moved into their Texas apartment in 2007 they knew they were not alone.

“This wasn’t the first time that my partner and I had ghostly roommates,” she said. “In our previous apartments there were specters. I felt (them) as cold chills and that feeling of being watched. She, however, could see them as clear as day.”

Footsteps from invisible feet began thumping through their apartment. Curtains would blow when the windows were closed, and bursts of cold air would shoot through the apartment.

“We’d have closet doors open and close,” Mathers said. “We’d have pots and pans fall on the floor out of the cabinets after being undisturbed, and picture frames that went flying off the walls.”

Mathers noticed these incidents occurred when she and her partner were discussing emotional issues.

“They get animated when we get animated,” Mathers said. “They especially get worked up when there is negative energy in the house such as in an argument.”

One night, a spirit appeared in Mathers’ bedroom.

“One dark night in a half sleep dosing off in bed, I saw the curtains move,” Mathers said. “I felt the cold winds blow and I heard the steps. My partner was frozen stiff and finally said, ‘Do you see that?’”

Mathers then knew she wasn’t imagining what was happening in the room.

“I clearly could see the figure of a shadow man,” she said. “Long, shaggy, shadow Cousin It-looking shadow man. He was like Cousin It, but with thick, nappy dreads covering his entire body.”

Then the entity spoke.

“My partner heard the shadow man say that someone was trying to break into our apartment,” Mathers said. “And just then there was rasping and noises at our back door. We hit the wall with baseball bats and whatever was there ran away.”

The next morning they discovered someone had tampered with their back door.

“Our back door lock had been unscrewed and almost removed,” she said. “It was barely hanging on, but we probably would not have noticed it before leaving the house for work. This was happening during a wave of apartment robberies and car break-ins in our apartment complex. We felt that we had the shadow man to thank for stopping either an attempt at a robbery or a set up for a future robbery.”

After that, their ghostly roommate has stepped back into the shadows, only occasionally making itself known by footsteps walking through the apartment.

“It kind of makes me smile,” Mathers said. “Now I light candles and incense for it so that the space is cleansed of bad vibes. But I guess our shadow man is still watching over us.”

Copyright 2009 by Jason Offutt

Got a scary story? Ever played with a Ouija board, heard voices, seen a ghost, UFO or a creature you couldn’t identify? Let Jason know about it: Jason Offutt, P.O. Box 501, Maryville, Mo., 64468, or jasonoffutt@hotmail.com. Your story might make an upcoming installment of “From the Shadows.”

Jason’s books on the paranormal, “Darkness Walks: The Shadow People Among Us,” and “Haunted Missouri: A Ghostly Guide to Missouri’s Most Spirited Spots,” at Jason’s blog, from-the-shadows.blogspot.com.