Last night, my brothers and I somehow drifted into one of those late night conversations that toe the line between ridiculous and unsettling, the kind of talk that leaves your skin crawling, even if you want to laugh.
My brother started telling us about something that happened to him a while back. He said he couldn’t sleep one night because his room was too hot, so he went outside to catch some fresh air. It was quiet, obviously because it was past midnight. He said he was reclined on a chair, eyes half closed, until he felt the urge to take a piss. So he stood up and made his way toward the plantain plantation and that’s when he saw it, a shadow, not quite shaped like a person, not quite formless either. Just there. Accompanied by a strong, cutting wind that came out of nowhere.
He said his body went cold immediately. Not the kind of cold that comes from the weather, but the one that seeps into your bones and paralyzes thought. He didn’t even run. He just froze, waiting for something to happen until, just as swiftly as it appeared, the thing was gone. And then instinct returned, and he bolted back inside.
His story left me thinking long after the goosebumps that spread on my skin disappeared. And somehow, it brought Ed Gein to mind, the Butcher of Plainfield. You know, the man who made furniture out of human body parts, who dug up graves and treated corpses like raw material for his art. The stuff of real horror, not ghost stories.
What I can’t wrap my head around is that why are we the normies the ones who claim to see apparitions, feel strange presences, or hear whispers in the dark? Why not the Ed Geins of the world? Why not the ones who live knee-deep in the horror that should naturally attract the supernatural?
Maybe ghosts don’t bother with people who’ve already crossed the line between sanity and madness. Maybe evil recognizes evil and passes it by, like two shadows nodding in mutual understanding. Or maybe it’s the innocent, the ones still capable of fear, who attract the unseen. Maybe fear itself is a kind of beacon, a trembling light that draws the strange things closer.
Sometimes I think the world doesn’t run on fairness, but on irony.
The people who do the most monstrous things rarely seem haunted, while those of us who flinch at shadows feel watched by something we can’t name and it baffles me.
Anyway, I’ll be avoiding that plantation my brother mentioned. I can’t take such chances.
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STOPThanks buzzy
Awesome job @teknon! You've been super busy and published a post every day of the week. Keep up the fantastic work!