Not So Nice

I went back to the house I mentioned (see "The Runner") as a sort of follow-up. There were a couple of incidents, but though the ghosts there are usually benign, this time they did not seem friendly. Actually, the entire evening was unsettling. I heard a low rumbling sound several times throughout the night but instinctively ignored it. Finally the homeowner heard it too and it freaked him out. It was a big noise, like furniture falling, but softer, heavier. Also the animals were again wary of the stairs. The dog was very frightened when she went outside and kept staring up at the hill. My host told me the dog never really like going outside since he moved there. We heard several odd noises on the third floor, one of which was so distinct I was sure it was the cat. When I was told the cat was upstairs I didn't believe it -- I actually got up and checked, but it was true. I'd felt a little creepy on the ride up there, but driving away I felt downright scared. And on the way home, when I passed the place we'd seen the Runner, I was very, very uneasy. I didn't really feel "safe" until I turned onto Sunset. I'm not sure what that was all about, but there was definitely activity. It just wasn't very nice.

One More Thing

One other thing of note happened the night I saw the Runner. It was the end of the night, about 1 AM, and we were packing up to leave. Jeff left to say good bye to the home-owner, who was on the bottom storey of the 3 storey house. I was on the top floor, bent over my bags of equipment. So essentially Jeff had gone downstairs and I was alone.

As I packed up I got a slighly weird feeling, which I assumed was because I was alone. But when I straightened up and looked out across the dim living room, I saw a person, a man, walking toward the stairs. I assumed it was Jeff, or at least I told myself that I assumed it was Jeff, even though he walks fast and I knew he should have been down the stairs already.

I looked around the living room and then I walked over to the top of the spiral staircase and looked down. I saw Jeff was at the very last step on the bottom floor, just stepping off them into the room. That made it sort of equivocal, but I really felt that he was too far downstairs for me to have just seen him in the living room.

So we left and I mentioned it to Jeff in the car. Turns out that not only was I right about him going downstairs right away, before I'd seen the man; but he'd actually lingered for a long time on the bottom step before he walked into the room on the bottom floor. He said as soon as he got to the stairs he felt uncomfortable and so he'd paused at the bottom for a long time to sort of collect himself before he entered the room.

What all this means is that I probably saw an apparition of a tall man in a light colored shirt crossing the living room. It is a bit equivocal compared to the Runner, but I do think it was a paranormal event.

The Runner

Last night we went back to the house we're investigating in Benedict Canyon. It was on the drive there that the most impressive thing of the night happened: Jeff and I both saw an apparition! It was very exciting, especially since we weren't even at the house yet, so it was totally unexpected. I was at the wheel, Jeff was riding shotgun. We were on Benedict Canyon road, right by Hillcrest, where a drainage ditch runs along the left side of the street. Since I was driving I didn't want to take my eyes off the road, but I glimpsed what I assumed was a jogger in a black running suit. I saw him very briefly as I had to turn my eyes back to the road, and I wouldn't have given it another thought except that a second or two later Jeff said, "I just saw a guy running on the side of the road!"

The interesting thing here is that Jeff didn't think it was unusual at first, either -- and yet he felt the need to blurt that statement out. As soon as he said it, I said, "I saw it, too." And then we both knew what we'd seen. Or at least, what we'd not seen. Because there was no one there and there really couldn't have been.

As I said, the left side of the road, where we saw the jogger, features a storm drain that runs for a block or so down Benedict Canyon. We parked the car and walked the area to be sure: there was no ground for anybody to run on, because the ditch is too deep. The person we saw would have been running on empty air, though this would not be apparent from the road if you didn't know there was a ditch there.

Since he wasn't driving, Jeff had the opportunity to see the jogger for a longer amount of time and had observed more details. But our descriptions of the jogger mostly agree with one another. I saw a young slim man in a black running suit with a hood. That was it, he just flashed by. Jeff saw a slim young man in a navy blue jogging suit or sweatsuit with the hood up, but he saw his face in profile under the hood. He had dark hair, a youngish face and a "pointy" nose -- he later clarified "pointy" as meaning refined or narrow as opposed to broad or hooked.

He felt sure the suit was dark navy blue, I saw black; it was 7:30 PM, twilight, so maybe that explains the color difference. I didn't see the face because I didn't look long enough, and since I didn't know it wasn't a "real" jogger I didn't try to see a face. In fact, the reason I felt he'd been wearing a hood was because I didn't see any distinct features, just a black blur.

As will happen in these situations, once the mind understands it's been deceived, it recognizes more problems with the picture. We wondered about the hood. Why would you be jogging in warm weather with your hood up? And then Jeff said, "You know, I don't think he was jogging." And I agreed, because the word I had used to decsribe what I'd seen was "darting" -- I'd seen a guy darting away from the road. He'd disappeared so quickly, and when he didn't reappear from behind a tree or the overhanging vines, Jeff had been prompted to blurt out his sighting before he consciously knew what he'd seen.

As I said, we'd driven around the block and got out and looked around on foot, and not only was nobody out jogging, but nobody could have been where the jogger had been! And since we both intuited that he probably wasn't a jogger, what was he and what was he doing? We both agreed that he'd been running, and Jeff got the sense that he was a runner, like a scout or messenger. So I call him the Runner. And even though the hood is disconcerting (one person we told about the incident said it sounded like a burgler) we both agreed, too, that he was completely benign and not a thug or a thief. The hood was like part of a hooded sweatshirt, not an executioner's or grim reaper's hood!

Whoever he was, he made quite an impact. We were all set for an eventful investigation, but as it turned out, that was it for the night. At the house it felt very charged, but there were a lot of distractions and noise, which is not condusive to any investigation. So the Runner and his purpose remain elusive, but it was a pretty incredible experience.

See Addendum published January 2010 as a follow-up to this story

KAW

[KAW]

Hello World. Here's My Blog.

Welcome to Ghostblog, phase two. Yes, I started Ghostblog a couple of months ago, but had to scrap it and start over. Back on track, though, and I'll be updating soon!