Ad Nauseam, Ad Mortem, Ad Infinitum

             Have you ever seen a ghost? I don’t usually ask that question because everyone will typically start telling their typical bullshit story of seeing an old woman in their peripheral vision, hearing voices that aren’t there, or maybe even picking up a phantom hitchhiker on a late night. I ask this question because I want you to have your spiritual encounter on your mind during my encounter with a wraith. My encounter with the afterlife wasn’t very typical and I doubt that after listening to my story that you’ll be able to see yours as ordinary.

             It all started in early 2001 when I was thirteen years old. My family had just moved to a new city after my father lost his job. He was lucky enough to find work in a small town in Michigan. The town, Kalamazoo, was a quaint and quiet community. We moved to Kalamazoo midway through the school year so I found that I had about six or seven months of free time before I could attend school and meet the other kids. My neighborhood was built for younger couples so there weren’t too many kids to hang out with during this time and the cold weather forced me inside most of this time.

             I was fine with being indoors. I’m an avid gamer and love survival horror games. I spent most of my time in my room, which was in the basement, playing games and talking to the friends I had left behind when I moved. I was a big fan of Resident Evil and was slowly getting into Silent Hill around that time. Just a small note about my house in Kalamazoo. It had a main floor with a kitchen, living room, and a bedroom/bathroom. The basement had a wide-open area, my room, and a room with a water heater.

The house was old. It was built sometime in the 1950’s and was refitted to be more modern. Asbestos was replaced by insulation, lead paint was removed, and copper tubing was put in. It reminded me of the old “Ship of Theseus” conundrum. At what point of repairing and replacing parts does the house stop being the same house and become a completely new house? Did I live in a house that was from the 50’s or was it now a completely new building? I’ve been known to wax philosophic from time to time, sorry about that.

             The house had its fair share of problems. It was freezing in the winter due to poor heating, particularly in the basement. Every now and then, I would wake up to find my breath fogging in the air. I slept with a heater in my room to combat this invasive cold. I accepted this drawback in exchange for the privacy that it afforded me and as a teenager, privacy was of the upmost importance. The house also made sounds at night. My parents told me that it was just settling on its foundation, but I wasn’t so sure. Looking back, I’m almost certain that what I hearing at night wasn’t the house at all.

             It started with the most innocuous of things. Whenever I was settling down for the night, the sound of a door lightly bumping into the door jam could be heard. At first I thought it was just a wind current or pressure change pushing a door in the basement closed. I told myself that the next few nights it happened. I told myself that when the sound persisted even after shutting all the doors in the basement. I figured there was just enough space when the door was closed to bump against its frame and cause the sound.

             Another sound that was almost always happening at night was the sound of my bed creaking. At first I thought it was me shifting in bed and making that sound. Then it started happening even when I wasn’t moving. I spent a few nights lying in bed without moving, waiting for the sound of my bed shifting. I would always look over at the other side of the bed, but there was nothing ever there. Eventually I began to get used to the sounds and they became the background noise.

             A few days passed with the persistent sounds, I would have forgotten about it had I not opened my eyes late one night. I had just heard the creaking bed and I drearily opened my eyes. I was greeted with the image of another person right next to me. My heart leapt into my throat and my stomach sank. I didn’t know this person. Her back was to me and her long hair ran down her back. She was wearing a white nightgown. I laid on the bed paralyzed and watched her. She was rocking slightly on the bed. She rocked back and forth for a few minutes before getting up. The bed creaked as she shifted into a sitting position.

             She had her hands in front of her face. She sat in that position for a few minutes before she got up and moved towards the door. She moved slowly. When she reached the door, her hand extended towards the doorknob. She didn’t open it, she just phased through the door and it shifted slightly with her passing through it. I didn’t sleep for the rest of the night.

             I spent the next couple of nights sleeping upstairs in the guest room. I lied and told my parents that it was too cold downstairs. I knew I couldn’t tell them what I saw. They were already worried about my adjustment to a new city; they didn’t need to think that I was going crazy. I stayed in the guest room for a few nights before they began to get suspicious. I went to bed in my room the next night and I saw her again. I didn’t just see her… I heard her as well.

             I tried to stay up that night, but I eventually drifted off. As I was about to really go under, I became aware of a sound softly repeating in my room. I opened my eyes and she was there in my bed. She was still rocking slightly and I realized what the sound I was hearing was. She was crying softly. She was doing her best to stifle her sobs, but they were audible. I should have been scared, but as I listened to her pitiful bawling; I felt nothing but sympathy. She rose to a sitting position and wept for a few minutes before leaving my room.

             I managed to go to sleep a few hours later on the floor next to my bed. The idea of waking up in the middle of the night and seeing her facing me, dead eyes looking right into mine was a terrifying thought. She didn’t seem to be aware that there was someone else in bed with her and I had no intention of making her aware of my presence. I slept on the uncomfortable floor in front of the heater the rest of the night.

             She appeared every night in my room for the next week. She always repeated the same motions. At the end of the week, I decided to try and make contact with her. I was beginning to feel like a voyeuristic creep, watching her at her most raw and unguarded moment. When she appeared, I let her cry for a few minutes before slowly reaching out my hand. My trembling hand slowly crept across the bed sheets. I was terrified that I might get her attention and provoke her wrath. My hand drew closer and closer to her should. I blew out a laden sigh and stuck my hand forward. My fingers slid right through her shoulder.

             It was the oddest sensation I ever experienced in my life. My mind told me that I wasn’t feeling anything, but it still felt like I had touched her shoulder. Later when I was older, I would come across an article explaining phantom limb syndrome. The article talked about how amputees would sometimes feel sensations in their lost limb despite the fact that it was no longer there. I think that is the closest analogy I can come up with. I was feeling something that was not there, or at least no longer there.

             My attempt at contact galvanized me. I shot out of the bed and walked around to the other side. She had just risen to a sitting position and was now facing me. She was a few years older than me. If I had to guess, I would say she was sixteen or seventeen. She had relatively plain features, but there was an endearing quality to her simple style. I was shocked and a little embarrassed to be thinking of her like that. I was busy mentally castigating myself when she stood up and moved right through me. Trying to touch her felt odd, ‘feeling’ her pass through me was the oddest sensation I ever felt. I had to sit down and catch my breath and still my heart.

             The next night I tried to make contact again, but met with the same results. Instead of watching her leave the room and make the sound of the door shifting in its frame, I decided that I had to follow her. I had to figure out what happened to her. She moved slowly through the basement, but wasn’t heading in the direction of the stairs; she was instead heading towards the boiler room. I followed her to the door, but as soon as I got within reach of the handle I felt my blood turn cold and my skin prickled. She shifted through the door and I stood outside. I was afraid of what might happen to me when I entered that room, but I was more worried of what I would find when I entered that room. I didn’t enter the boiler room until a week before class began.

<p class="MsoNormal">             I won’t lie. Those first few months in Kalamazoo, Michigan were some of the loneliest of my life. My friends back in Simsbury, Connecticut were moving on with their lives and I felt like I was being left behind. I didn’t have any friends in Kalamazoo yet and to tell you the truth, I was beginning to see this nightly wraith as a friend and kindred spirit. She was alone and sad just like me. Every night, I would wake up to the sound of her suffering and I would follow her to the boiler room. A week before class began for me; I entered the boiler room with her.

<p class="MsoNormal">             I had stood outside the door for a few minutes, trying to steel myself for what I might see. My entire body was screaming at me to run back to my room and never go near the boiler room again, but I had to know what happened next. I drew in a deep breath and blew it out. I grasped the doorknob and turned it. The door swung into the room and I was at eye level with her feet. They swayed back and forth like a pendulum. I stifled a scream when I realized that she wasn’t levitating like a ghost. She was hanging for a beam in the ceiling.

<p class="MsoNormal">             I left the room and went back to my bed. There was nothing more I could do and I had no intention of spending any more time than necessary in that boiler room. I laid in bed and slowly curled up into a fetal position. I prided myself in not being the kind of person who cried openly, but at that moment, the floodgates broke and I wept. My throat felt raw and my eyes stung with tears. I wept for a few moments before I realized I was not alone. She was in bed across from me and weeping in that same position she had always been in.

<p class="MsoNormal">             I tried to find out who she was, but the realtor was tight-lipped about it. I pressed her for more information and she finally caved and told me she didn’t know anything of the house’s history. She confessed to not doing any real research on its past. I went to the library, but I failed to turn up any information. I even tried asking the neighbors about the previous owners, but the two previous families that lived there didn’t have a daughter or had an infant daughter when they occupied the house. I had no idea about the girl who appeared every night and hung herself in the boiler room.

<p class="MsoNormal">             It was now a routine for me. I would wake up in the middle of the night around the time she would appear. I’m ashamed to admit it, but sometimes I found myself waiting for her. I was hopeful that someday I would break through and tell her what I had wanted to say ever since I saw her. I would tell her that she didn’t deserve the fate she was suffering. I would tell her how lonely I was, how desperate I was for someone to talk to. I would tell her… I don’t know.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in">I always stayed behind when she left the room. I had walked into the boiler room during the day once and I saw her hanging there. She was gasping and clawing desperately at her neck as she slowly asphyxiated. She rocked back and forth in the room and her feet frantically kicked around, looking for some purchase to save herself. I did scream then. I had to make up a story about seeing a shadow for my mom when she came downstairs and saw me.

<p class="MsoNormal">             I started class and began to make some new friends. I even had a few friends over to hang out. I remember one time we were playing Silent Hill and the girl passed right through him on her way to the boiler room. My friends couldn’t see her nor my parents, only I could. I wondered for a bit if I was going crazy, but I’m not sure that’s the case… Well at least not going crazy back then.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in">She was repeating, always repeating her last moments. She would start out weeping on the bed, then she would rise to a sitting position for a bit before going to the boiler room and hanging herself. This happened almost every night, but on a few occasions, I did catch her walking through the doors on the way to her demise during the day. I must have seen her hundreds, no thousands of times during my time in Kalamazoo. Sometimes I would try and talk to her, sometimes I would cry, sometimes I would do nothing.

<p class="MsoNormal">             It took me a few years to try and figure it all out, but I finally did. I realized what she was doing. I realized what the afterlife was like. There isn’t a Heaven or a Hell. (At least not in the literal sense.) There are only those last few moments of your life. Repeating like a broken record. She was reliving those final moments, maybe trying to make sense of it all, maybe she wanted to choose another path, but always came around full circle to the boiler room.

<p class="MsoNormal">             This is why the concept of death scares me so much. H.P. Lovecraft said the oldest emotion is fear and the most powerful of all fears is our fear of the unknown. I think he’s wrong about that. I know what is waiting for us all when we die and that is the scariest thought I can think of. I am so terrified that when I die, I will stay behind on this earth, repeating my last moments ad nauseam. Trying to make sense of my last moments. I know that this is what is waiting for us all at the end and I know that the end is inevitably approaching.

<span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Cambria;mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria;mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin;mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;mso-bidi-font-family:"TimesNewRoman";mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-ansi-language:EN-US;mso-fareast-language:EN-US">                                                                        Ad Nauseam

<span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Cambria;mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria;mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin;mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;mso-bidi-font-family:"TimesNewRoman";mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-ansi-language:EN-US;mso-fareast-language:EN-US">EmpyrealInvective (talk) 01:12, December 15, 2013 (UTC)