G. Michael Vasey's Blog: The Wacky World of Dr. Vasey, page 71

Poltergeist

In the run up to Halloween, here is another true and strange tale of the paranormal. I will post a new strange true story each day so don’t miss them.

up in my house was on the whole, pretty good. We had great parents, almost every weekend we were gone camping somewhere, we had two proper holidays each year and I have no complaints at all. Just a bunch of heartfelt thanks to my parents and a growing sense of awe as to how they did all that with three small boys and not a lot of money.

When I was eleven, we moved. It was a good move to be honest from a terraced three up, two down in west Hull to a rather nice semi-detached outside of Hull. It meant a better school and a nicer environment back then. It stretched my parents’ finances a bit too. It is funny though that my brothers and I really did not like that house the first time we saw it. It had terrible wallpapers, it was gloomy and ill lit, very cold and damp without central heating. Between the three of us, there was no excitement at moving there.

Of course, within a few months, that house was completely different. Central heating had been installed, old fireplaces blocked up and replaced with modern gas fires, new wallpaper and décor and new curtains. To make it seem more homely, a couple of internal windows had been added letting much more light enter into the rooms as well. It was transformed. All was well in the Vasey household. But it wasn’t to stay that way.

The first incident was the Cavalier ghost and after that, I swapped rooms with my little brother giving me the smallest bedroom at the front of the house but also the privacy of my own room. I gradually came to loath that room. It started with the noises; strange noises at all times of day but mostly in the dead of night. Scrapping sounds and scratching sounds. Dad put it down to maybe a squirrel in the loft. I wasn’t as convinced.

Things would also move around. I would place my watch by the bathroom sink to get washed and find it in the kitchen. At first, I thought it was Dad having fun as he was always a great practical joker but it soon became apparent that it was not him. Keys went missing. Money too. These would then just as mysteriously turn up in the strangest places like on a window ledge or under the sofa cushions.

The next developments though were what eventually had me relieved to leave and go to college. It was what kept me awake at night in total fear. Have you noticed that silence is loud? I mean when you are really really focused on listening to nothing it is very, very loud. I would lie in bed, head under the bedclothes, bedside light on and listen. The scratting sounds, scratching sounds and the sounds of doors opening that I knew were locked, the sounds of footsteps and breathing. It was enough to make the hair stand up on the back of your neck.

I would actually dread coming home from college for a weekend or the summer because of this. By the way, this only happened when I was there! Just for me apparently. I would literally go out and get drunk to stay there. The best example was one night close to Christmas. I was home from college and had been out with my friend and had a few. I was sleeping on the floor in my brother’s room that night. I lay down hoping to pass right out but instead I was cold stone sober and scared half to death by the sound of the front door opening. Now, the first thing I thought was that somehow I had left the door unlocked but I knew that wasn’t the case as I had checked it on the way up the stairs. The key was in the lock and that door was locked.

The front door opened and closed as I listened sitting half up in bed. There was a deep sigh and a little cough. Ice-cold fear ran through my veins. The silence was so loud it was unbearable. Then, the first foot step and creak of the bottom stair. My heart was beating as if to burst. Another long sigh and another step. And another. I was now fumbling for the light but my hands were shaking so hard I couldn’t find it. By now, the steps seemed to be at the top of the stair and moving along the hallway. The floorboards creaked and there was that sigh again. I was frozen to the spot but what I actually wanted to do was run. Run and anywhere. There was a moment’s silence and then I watched in disbelief and horror as the bedroom door began to slowly swing open.

I screamed. I screamed so loud you probably heard me in London.

A few moments passed by and then the door flew open and there to my utter relief stood my Dad in his pajamas holding a very large spanner in one hand and a flashlight in the other. He switched in the light and my brother looked about him in a state of shock through two sleepy looking eyes.

“It’s OK, I heard that too,” said my Dad. “I heard it too.”

We sat Dad and I and my brother for quite a while but all was quiet. Whatever it was it had gone. I eventually fell asleep and my Dad went back to bed checking the doors in the process.

We didn’t talk much about it the next day. It was simply something that happened in that house when I was home. My Dad said it was poltergeist activity and it was centered around me. I think he was right. We didn’t really know what to do about it but we did discover one thing. If I got angry, the phenomena stopped. So, that is what I would do. I would get angry and shout at whatever it was to get lost or perhaps using even more choice phrases. If a door started to open, instead of screaming, I pulled the door open with a verbal challenge. It had the desired effect.

The activity followed me though. It followed me to Aston University until I met Anantha. But that is another story.

If you enjoyed this story you will also enjoy my novel – The Last Observer – great price on Kindle all winter!

Tagged: Childhood memories, imagination

Just A Game?

In the run up to Halloween, here is another true and strange tale of the paranormal. I will post a new strange true story each day so don’t miss them.

If there is one game that most certainly is not a game it is the Ouija board and I have avoided that board like the plague most of my life. However, one night, in my late teens, my friend and I went to visit an ex-teacher of his. Well actually, we went on the pretext of visiting her but actually, it was her daughter we really went to see but that really is as they say another story.

It was quite late by the time we arrived. We had already been for a beer at the pub and then had the idea to visit as we drove home. Their house was a huge home in a well to do area outside Hull. It was four stories and must have been well over a hundred years old. A beautiful home.

Inside, we were told that the daughters were playing in the kitchen a board game with some friends. One look told me all I needed to know. It was an Ouija board.

“No, that’s not for me,” I said immediately.

My friend decided to join them and so I sat next door in the TV lounge with the teacher and we watched a movie in near silence. I guess about 40 minutes had passed when I seemed that next door, pandemonium suddenly broke loose. The door opened and my friend cam running out, through the room, out into the hallway and up the stairs followed by the girls. We were stunned. My friend was streaming tears, sobbing, as he ran. For the next 5 minutes or so, we all chased him around the house. He sobbed and ran, we chased. It was simply bizarre behavior.

In the end, it was I who caught him on the stairs. By now, I suspected that someone or something was in control of my friend and, as my arm caught him on the staircase I said, “Come into me.”

I don’t remember much of what happened after that. Apparently, the entity took my invitation to heart and did indeed enter me with the result that I too started running around the house sobbing being chased by everyone. After around 30 minutes of this, I ‘woke up’ at the bottom of the staircase with wet cheeks and a bunch of concerned faces all staring down at me.

It would seem that the family thought that their house was haunted by a specific entity and in the kitchen, they had started to try to converse with this entity. Thinking that the conversation was simply one of them playing games with the others, my friend had demanded the entity ‘prove it’ with stunning results. Apparently, the entity was looking for something that it felt it had lost and was searching the house crying as it searched. Somehow, both my friend and then I had tapped into this and began to exhibit the same behavior.

The funny thing is that I do not recall anything of that 30 or so minutes. It is as if I had vacated the premises for that entire time. Though where I went to while the entity used my body, I do not know. It only confirmed my suspicions that Ouija boards are best left well alone.

If you enjoyed this story, you will love my novel – The Last Observer – buy it here.

Family Bible

“Come and look at this,” my father said with a tone in his voice I recognized as meaning it was something interesting.

I walked over to our kitchen table curiously. He had a book. It was actually a huge book and leather-bound.

“It’s a bible,” explained my Dad.

It was a large and heavy, black, leather-bound bible. It looked quite old too.

“It belonged to neighbors of mine when I was a boy,” explained Dad leafing through some of the pages. “Here, look at this.”

The inside cover of this huge family bible was written in and once I got used to the old fashioned hand writing, I realised it was a four generation family tree. Did it mark the path through the family that this bible had taken?

As if answering my mental question, Dad told me that the Bible had been acquired in the 17th Century and passed down through several generations of the family. That family was now extinct. It had died out with the recent death of the old lady who had given Dad this bible for safe keeping.

I found this bible fascinating. It’s age, the smell of the paper, the strange typeface used, the binding and leather cover that was embossed in a strange design. It was a mysterious book in many respects.

We examined the book for quite a while and then my Father packed it in paper and took it up to the attic where it would stay at least for the time being. We thought nothing more of that bible.

In the days and weeks that followed, strange things began to happen in the house. It started with creaks and groans, unexplained bangs and crashes from the attic. “Just the heating and cooling of the rafters,” my Dad told us reassuringly. But things didn’t improve and if anything, steadily got worse. Nights were filled with strange sounds and sudden crashes that woke us all up. Added to some of the other things that I was experiencing at the time, it meant I hardly slept through fear. I would lay there waiting for the sounds to start and then when they did growing more and more jumpy and afraid as they continued through the night.

Unfortunately however, other sounds began to emerge from the attic. Deep sighs that sounded as if the most depressed person you had ever met just let out their last death rattle. Then there were the slow, dragging footsteps punctuated with those horrible deep sighs of despair and followed by a few more footsteps.

I wasn’t the only one hearing these sounds every night and I met my father on one or two occasions armed with flashlight heading up the vertical pull-down ladder into that little square hole in the roof at the top of the stairs. He was investigating those sounds although mostly he just muttered something about me getting back to bed.

The sounds were truly scary. Imagine if every night it sounded like some one or some thing was slowly moving around your attic amongst crashes and creaks, sighs and groans. The hairs stood up on the back of my neck hearing those sounds as the cold hands of fear seemed to clasp around my neck slowly strangling me.

As abruptly as they started, they stopped. I noticed almost immediately and finally slept. No noises that night nor the next or the next. In fact, the noises were gone and never returned.

It was only several years later that I happened to be talking to my Dad about the noises that an explanation emerged.

“It was that bloody bible I am sure of it,” said my father somewhat to my surprise.

“Bible? you mean that big family bible you showed me that day?” I asked.

“Yes, that one. It always did give me a bad feeling and that family never really liked us so I had wondered why we were given it. One night, I went up in the attic and found the damn thing. I took it down, placed it in one of those old biscuit tins and then the next day, I buried it at the bottom of the garden. Seemed to work,” he added looking at me with a grin.

Who knows if it was that bible or what the sounds really were but one thing is for sure, if you one day happen to dig up an old biscuit tin that contains an old leather family bible, throw it away as quick as you can.

The Voice

Thinking about the haunted jacket incident has brought back a few other memories and, in the run up to Halloween, I think I will develop a theme of ghostly experiences over the coming days. In that vein, here is today’s true scary story.

It was the summer of 1981. Bryan Adams was playing on the radio, the sun was shining and I was driving a brand new Ford Mustang. I was in Nova Scotia, Canada where I was doing my first season of fieldwork for my Ph.D. thesis. Things could not be better.

I had applied for a couple of Ph.D. programs earlier that summer. The one at Strathclyde University in conjunction with the British Geological Survey in Leeds was the one I wanted for all sorts of reasons. Firstly, it involved traveling to Nova Scotia, second, it was a topic that interested me and finally, I thought unlike many others that seemed designed to turn you into a university academic, this one might actually help me get a job. Even the trip for the interview had been fun as I left my parents caravanning with my brothers somewhere deep in the Yorkshire Dales and jumped on train to Glasgow. Back in 1981, this was still major travel and I reveled in traveling. Prof. P. Mcl. Donald Duff seemed a nice man and we got along very well. I had a funny feeling I would get the gig and I did with one proviso…. I needed a drivers license as otherwise getting about in Nova Scotia might be a serious issue.

Back at home, my father patiently instructed me in driving in the Mark 1 Ford Cortina he had purchased especially for the purpose – although I do think he liked the car too. I vividly recall the end of one lesson in which I had done quite well and as I pulled up outside the house, Dad invited me to drive into the driveway. I tried. I took half the front brick wall with me and later that night listened guiltily from my bed as my father hammered the car back into some semblance of shape.

My driving test was booked and there would be enough time to take a second attempt if necessary before my adventure to Nova Scotia began. I had a couple of proper lessons with a trained instructor and he agreed that I was ready. Fingers crossed then. The problem as I now look back was opting to use the Ford Cortina to take the test. It was old and it looked old. It was also sluggish to take off. I drove well but still failed the test due to ‘undue hesitation’ – I was never sure whether it was me or the car that caused that but yes, knowing the car, I was careful pulling out into the main road.

My second attempt was scheduled already and I decided to use the much newer vehicle provided by my professional driving instructor. It was a good decision and I drove straight through the test into a spanking new drivers license. I was now qualified to start the Ph.D, fieldwork.

I took the train to London lugging a huge suitcase. I then took the tube to Heathrow and was really terrified I wouldn’t make it on time. Of course, I did. I do not recall what sort of plane it was but it had a standing bar at the front where you could drink and smoke….. bizarre. I had never flown before and as the wheels left the ground I wasn’t sure if I really liked it either. A couple of gin and tonics later, I decided that I did.

I was met on arrival by the Prof and his wife and for the first week or so he drove me around. At the end of that period, we went to the rental company and rented my car – a brand new red Ford Escort. I couldn’t believe it – I mean, what could possibly get better? Nova Scotia, brand new car and whole new world to explore…..

The Escort lasted a day. On my first day on my own, I stopped for lunch at a burger joint. It had a front car park and I pulled up, parked, pulled on the handbrake, got out, closed the door and stood watching as the car rolled slowly forward and then down a 4 foot drop into the front garden of the house next door! Apparently, in an automatic car, you are supposed to leave it in PARK, not neutral and everyone knows that handbrakes are useless in automatic vehicles I was later told…. Was it a premonition of things to come?

So, now you know how I ended up driving a 2 liter Mustang down a grit road in Nova Scotia. The only replacement that they could offer was that beauty and, let me tell you, it was a beauty. It went very well and it looked great.

Off the main roads in Nova Scotia – at least back then, the roads are gravel and grit. So there I was driving a beast of a car down a gravel road, Bryan Adams full blast on the radio, the sun streaming through the retractable top enjoying every second of this freedom. I was going very fast. Very very fast indeed. Why not? It was fun.

“Gary – slow down!” said a voice behind me.

I swiveled around, the hairs on the back of my neck had jumped to attention and my heart was beating like crazy. There was no one there. I slowed instinctively anyway as I was as you might expect, very puzzled and just a little scared.

“SLOW DOWN!” said the voice again – louder this time.

I hit the brake quite hard in surprise and started to slow down abruptly. The tires spun in the gravel and the car started to drift in a skid. I steered into it and around the hairpin bend that suddenly appeared in front of me. I just made it around that bend with one wheel hanging over the edge momentarily before the skid ended and the tires engaged again pulling me to safety.

“Told you,” said the voice behind me.

I stopped. I was shaking like a leaf. After a while, I got out, lit a cigarette with shaking hands and went back to the hairpin bend. It was a sheer drop perhaps 40 to 50 feet into a lake below. There had been no road sign, no warning except for the voice. Had it not been for that voice, I would have been dead or badly injured in the lake below.

I think I looked like a ghost. But what or who that miraculous voice was I will never know. But it saved my life.

If you enjoyed this story, you will adore my sci-fi, occult horror story – The Last Observer

Four Wheel Eroticism

Here comes trouble

Masquerading as adventure

As compelling a mistress

As there could ever be

Temptation without trepidation

It’s a sexy little package

A delight to behold

All dressed up in leather

All fur coat and no knickers

Excitement or maybe entrapment

Step on that pedal

To get A to B very fast

Low slung wide tyres

Tightly hugging the road

Automobile all shiny cold steel

Designed as a turn on

Drop your wallet

And run real fast

Four wheel eroticism

With an appetite to last

The Haunted Jacket

Many years ago I was just a poor broke student at a UK University. At least back then, research students got grants that allowed them to subsist and which could be supplemented with a bit of teaching or other part-time work. I was quite lucky in that I was teaching a geological mapping class to non-geology students for the amazing sum of ten pounds per hour in addition to a subsistence grant from the NERC (if such a thing exists anymore). However, I can tell you life wasn’t easy financially!

Like most students then, I also kept an eye on the second hand clothes outlets for any bargains and one day, I spotted a beautiful tweed jacket that looked like it may fit me. I forget how much it was but perhaps it was on sale for 1 pound or thereabouts. It was a sports jacket – something that would always go with a pair of jeans and T-shirt and that would serve as an autumn coat at a push too. It looked good on me and was almost a perfect fit. This was also surprising as I was very gangling – thin and tall with long arms and legs. Usually, if something was wide enough, it wasn’t long enough and vice versa. Jeans were a particular problem – try looking for a 28 waist and 36 inside leg! Of course, these days the waistline has progressively expanded and I may just have shrunk a bit too! Anyway, I digress. The jacket was a perfect fit and it looked very good. I bought it.

I wore my new jacket that night. I had a date. As the evening wore on however my mood began to change. Initially happy and excited with the new jacket and a that date, I began to become more and more morose as the evening wore on. I decided that it must be a combination of the weather (drizzle and dull) and perhaps one too many beers on an empty stomach. However, by the time I got home, I was feeling very agitated and depressed. It was as if a little cloud had formed over my head and was following me around.

The next day I was fine. The day went quite well and when I got home, I decided to do some grocery shopping and then for a beer at the Student’s Union. Of course, I wanted to look dapper and so I put on my new jacket. The shopping proved to be very frustrating as little problems emerged one by one and by the time I got to the Student’s Union, I was in a foul mood that got progressively worse as the evening wore on. My date from the previous evening joined me later and was very unimpressed by my mood – again! That little cloud was back and following me around again. She walked with me to my flat and accepted the offer of a coffee. I recall putting on the kettle but not much after that.

The slap was hard and meant to be. It stung my cheek. I had no idea where I was or what I was doing. It was as if I hadn’t been there at all. In fact, as it turned out, I wasn’t. Someone else was however, and my date was not particularly thrilled with this morose, verbally belligerent and semi-violent persona. As I tried to take in my surroundings and the anger of my date I decided I was very confused. I guess at some stage I took off that jacket and sat and discussed the incident with her. I told her I had blanked out and she told me I had essentially become someone else. My accent and voice had changed along with the look in my eye. I had started swearing using words I would never use and I had become threatening and not at all nice. It was as if I was a drunk she told me. I was puzzled. I had no memory of behaving that way – none at all.

“That jacket,: she said pointing to my beautiful new jacket.

“What about it?” I asked somewhat puzzled.

“Every time you put that on you change and the longer you wear it, the worse you get.”

I had to admit, it did seem that way.

I picked up the jacket and set it on my knee meditating on it and I knew abruptly that she was right. Whoever had owned that jacket was still wearing it. The jacket was in a sense haunted by the persona of its past occupant. I could in fact see him and I did realize that this alcoholic man had died recently and his clothes had been sold in the second hand store. I could sense him and his unpleasant odor too. Why had I not seen or sensed that before?

The jacket went into a trash can as far away from my flat as possible.

I never bought second hand clothes again.

It’s A Mystery

There is so much that we do not know and probably can never know. I have to be honest and say that that pisses me off! Among the first thoughts that I can recall thinking were things like who am I? What am I? and things have not changed. I still ask such questions on a daily basis and I am still frustrated in the knowledge that I may never know the answers. I know that I am something – I think, I feel – I am. But what am I? Will I die and simply cease to exist? What is at the end of space? What is it all for? Is there a reason for all this – the out there – what is it anyway? It’s pointless I suppose to continue thinking and asking such questions but if you knew me you would know I cannot simply ignore these questions.

Perhaps there is no out there at all? Maybe it is all inside me and my mind and I am simply alone imagining all of this? If so, why?

These are the things that I write about, obsess about and explore through magic, meditation and my imagination.

The Stream of Life

Bobbing along the stream

Sometimes fighting

Other times alighting

For a longer look

Checking out scenery

But no real choices

Except to go with the flow

I go where I need to go

Can only slow

The inevitable

As I start at the beginning

I must end at the end

That’s the way it really is

Life is like a stream

Winding its lonely way

Always just passing through

Never sitting still

Ripples speak to movement

Movement is my destiny

One day, I will reach the Sea

And that, my friends

Will be the end of me.

From the Moon Whispers collection of poetry

This need to know and that I am always asking questions is a part of who I am. When I was born, I sneezed myself to life and breathed by myself as if in a hurry to get started. I have been hurrying ever since wondering why everything is. What makes this all a tad worse is that I have a distant memory of knowing. It is as if one day I will wake up and remember what I had just forgot. As if, one day I will realize that I knew all the answers all along but had momentarily forgotten.

The Story

I am going to tell you a story

Although it has a beginning

It’s ending is yet unwritten

And maybe has no ending

Once upon a long, long time ago

A boy was to a woman born

He sneezed and started his life

He was the family’s very first born

He grew and grew and grew

Tall and thin but quite bright

And off to college he went

Seeking out truth and inner light

He looked and searched all about

Examining all manner of places

Never finding what he sought

But he covered all the bases

One day in despair he sat

Quietly contemplating naught

Tired of seeking, he took a rest

And lost his train of thought

The inner vision grew and grew

Discovering very strange places

Filled with even stranger men

And their weird eyeless faces

He journeyed on and on afar

Deeper and deeper he did travel

Until he met a beautiful queen

It was then all began to unravel

The Queen you see embraced

Our weary and worn out hero

And he drank her kisses deep

While floating as if in limbo

I have the answers that you seek

Said the loving yet listless Queen

I am your eternal polar shadow

Living life somewhere in between

I am the answer that you seek

She said between those kisses

I can make us both complete

But our hero became suspicious

Tell me then, he said to her

What is the meaning?

And why am I here at all?

Because surely I am simply dreaming

The Queen hearing this did smile

And began to sing a familiar rhyme

About rowing a boat down a stream

And when he heard that final line

That life is but a dream

He knew

Do you too?

The Story from Best Laid Plans poetry collection.

 

For some reason and for right now it is all a mystery but perhaps one day I will wake up and all will have been revealed?

Poetry Featured in Writers Wheel Magazine

I am pleased to have a couple of my recent poems featured in Writers Wheel Magazine. The magazine is the FREE online creative writing magazine from Compass Books an imprint of John Hunt. another imprint – Roundfire Books – is the publisher of my novel The Last Observer. Take a look and my poems are on page 20.

Enjoy.

The Devil Rode Out

When I was a teenager, I was experiencing all kinds of strange things that really scared the hell out of me. I have documented a lot of that in my book – Inner Journeys: Explorations of the Soul including the poltergeist-type activity and the visitations by some ghostly presence. It’s all in that book! However, I remained really interested in magic and the so called ‘occult’ at the time devouring many books on the subject. In the midst of the activity and the interest, I watched a film on TV one christmas that both enflamed my interest but also scared me very deeply. Looking back on the movie now the effects are pretty poor by comparison to modern movies but back then – wow! More important though was that in some ways this film has influenced my life in many ways that I would not have believed at the time.

I found the trailer on Youtube for the movie and I post it here as you can in just two minutes experience some of the horror and thrills of a hammer house of horror movie and the occult themed story telling of the maestro himself – Dennis Wheatley….

Imagine then how thrilled I am when several readers compare The Devil Rides Out to The Last Observer!

Here is my attempt at a book trailer for the Last Observer which is available on Kindle at a great price – Turn up the volume and enjoy another scary trailer….

Fall – My Favorite Season

To me there is no more beautiful a season than Fall or Autumn. Even as a young boy, the beginnings of winter always appealed to me when we used to go to the banks of the River Humber to celebrate Guy Fawlkes night. There is something about it – the colors, the smell of dampness and the coming cold, the leaves heaped in piles and blowing in the wind, the fog that often occurs at this time of year…..

With that in mind, we set out this weekend to tour a bit of south Bohemia here in the Czech Republic with stops in Jindrichuv Hradec and Ceske Kromlov being particularly spectacular. We were blessed with almost perfect weather – foggy mornings and sunny days – and sitting on a boat touring the world in Trebon (the Lake there is called the World in Czech!), I could actually feel my face burning in the sun! It was one of those weekends were you drag yourself reluctantly home knowing that the weather couldn’t last and neither would the wallet.

Here are one or two selected photos to demonstrate what I mean about this the most beautiful part of the year….

Ceske Krumlov

Jindrichuv Hradec

The World – Trebon