Novel excerpts: Supernatural – Part 9

OLIVIA DEAN: THE WATCHER

CHAPTER 1: THE SUICIDE?

What appeared to be just another sweltering Georgia afternoon ended with a questionable suicide and the birth of my supernatural existence. If you think this is a dramatic way to begin my story, you’re completely right. But you have to understand two truths. The first, and by far most important, is that I am prone to theatrics. Secondly, the events of August 29, 2006 violated every natural law I had learned in my almost 11 years. So you’ll have to excuse me if I embellish a little here and there.

Honestly, I shouldn’t have been surprised by what happened. Unforeseen disasters preceded my birthday every year for as far back as I could remember. I don’t know why I thought that year would be any different. I may have been fooled into believing I could be normal for a change, since I was on the cusp of my preteen years. Or maybe I was so anxious to experience great adventures and unforgettable firsts, like everyone promised, that I forgot to be cautious. Whatever the case, only two weeks separated me from the chaos-free life I deserved. And I couldn’t wait to claim it.

That Tuesday morning, my mother, brother and I were buying school clothes. If you’d ever wondered what type of people actually visit those gazillion store outlet malls, you now know. People who, like my mother, wait until the state declares a tax-free holiday to purchase clothing and supplies, even if it happens to be less than twenty-four hours before class began, shop there. My parents are both first-rate procrastinators, but this was cutting it close even for them.

We arrived at 7:00 a.m. and combed the entire strip in under four hours. Mom made my brother, Calvin, and I model clothes in just about every store we visited. Since the tax suspension kicked in at noon, we asked the stores to hold the stuff we wanted to buy and went back to pay for it after lunch. Shopping that morning was long and tedious. I didn’t mind though. It gave me a break from agonizing over the first day of middle school.

“No way,” Mom said with an arched eyebrow and wrinkled forehead.

She shook her head disapprovingly as I admired myself in the triple mirrors. I was tall for my age, about 5′4″, and lanky. My brown hair clumped into curls down my back and fell inches below my shoulders in the front. The well-lit department store highlighted red and golden streaks I’d gotten from too much outdoor swimming.

Photographing ghosts – Part 4

To be or not to be, is a question

Are ghosts in existence or are they fallacy? This question will remain a subject of conflict between believers and non-believers. But, ghosts and fear of them will never be erased from human mind.

On the terrace of a five-storey building, there was heard loud stamping, animal like cries, moving shadows were seen by others from neighboring buildings terrace. This continued every night, making flats residents of that building passing sleepless and dreadful nights. The flats started getting vacated, residents of that building started leaving their flats and living in some alternate places, because “life is precious”.

This scenario was being closely watched by the Station House Officer (Police Department) of that locality. He called a meeting of his team and a discussion at length was held. One of his subordinates proposed that they should take the photographs of the moving bodies of that terrace through infra-red camera. If they got the snaps good, they were not ghosts and if there was no body in the pictures, then they might be spirits. The SHO liked this proposal and the same night the pictures were taken from the near terrace of another building. The pictures showed long- haired persons. A raid was planned next night, and all those “ghosts” were apprehended. The investigation revealed that it was the plan of the building owner to get the building vacated, which otherwise was not possible in law as the the help of his “ghosts”. residents of that building were promptly paying their rent. The owner was booked and locked up with

Supernatural activity: True or false? – Part 2

Supernatural activity – does it really exist? To me that seems like an unnecessary question to ask, since the answer is rather obvious. There are thousands and thousands of observations of and stories about the supernatural, and to claim that all of these merely are products of people’s imagination can be compared to saying that the Earth is flat.

From our point of view the world looks relatively flat, even though it’s not. A person that hasn’t had a supernatural experience has never got any hard evidence that there’s such a thing called supernatural activity. But do we need proofs to believe it still takes place? Although most of us actually can’t observe that our world actually is round, we still accept that it is. Shouldn’t we also be accepting an existence of the supernatural even though we can’t encounter it?

I think we should. With an open mind, we’ll also become more receptive to the other side, and thereby learn to accept the diversity and complexity of reality.

Testimonies: Angels among us

For some people Angels are fantasy. Angels are merely an idea, a concept. They are something that bring a warm and fuzzy feeling and then a sigh of reluctant disbelief. Then there are others, people like me, who have been touched. People for whom the reality and presence of angels is so incontrovertable, that to deny their existence would be akin to denying their own life.

As to what exactly is an Angel? I have no idea. Scriptures from all over the world tell us different things. But they only give us a hint. A small glimpse as to what the ancients thought of Angels. However when people ask me if I believe in Angels, I steadfastly look them in the eyes and say no, I don’t believe, I know.

When I was younger, I must have been twelve, I was visiting my grandparents farm in Terre Haute Indiana. A large sixteen acre place with lots of greenspace and open land. It was a haven of sorts for me. At that time I had been questioning the reality of Angels and the supernatural. One day my grandfather went out to work in the greenhouse and being a loyal grandson I of course followed him. That day he had decided to burn old boxes and refuse, so he had me gather up the materials needed to build a bonfire. When I had gathered enough materials we put them in a pile on a patch of dirt and started the fire. I have always been and still am transfixed with fire. I love it. Soon my grandfather had other errands to take care of around the farm but I decided to stay and watch the fire for a bit. By leaving me there my grandfather was in no way “endangering” me. He was always very responsible and he had already gone over what “not” to do near a fire. So he left me trusting full well that everything would be ok. However as I sat tending the fire, I noticed that part of the pile had not yet “caught”, and as part of the fun of large fires is their size, I decided to throw the box onto the pile. However as I bent down to pick it up, I tripped. Now the fire had been built on level ground as the land was used for farming in the spring and summer, however at the time it was unplanted and merely dirt. I had been standing above the fire where there was a slight incline so when I tripped it was more then just a stumble. As I was falling literally into the fire, I felt two hands in front of me literally shove me back. This was not a gentle push but a full hard shove. Hard enough, that I fell backwards in the opposite direction and landed on my butt. My grandfather had always been sort of mystical so when I told him what had happened he smiled knowingly and said he was glad I was ok. My family has a long of history of supernatural events and mystical happenings. But to directly experience it is far removed from hearing or reading about it. I know that If unseen hands had not shoved me out of harm’s way, I would have suffered very bad burns and possibly worse.

That is why if people ask me why I believe in God, or Angels or anything supernatural, I can tell them this story. I can tell them that I dont believe. I know.

TV show reviews: Supernatural – Part 8

Of all the suspense/horror movies/series I’ve watched, I still think Supernatural has lived up to it’s name the best.

I started watching the series from the very beginning of the episode (as a horror movie lover, I have high expectations), and to be honest, Supernatural has kept me rooted to my chair every week at the same time waiting eagerly for the show to start.

One thing I like about the show is the realistic in it. It features all those things that can actually happen on us or in reality and this actually creeps me up. It sort of managed to bring out the ghost in us. Some of the episodes actually showed something that resembles to my fantasies though the demon’s face might be different.

One episode that actually got into me is the one where they have to eliminate the ghost that was eventually found out to have existed because everyone believed in it’s existence. I remembered Sam asked Dean “how many we’ve eliminated do you think exist only because people believed in it?” (not the exact words but almost similar meaning). It keeps me wondering, though, if I believe there’s spirits around us, then will it really exist?

One thing for sure about the series, the post-watching period can be creepy. You will wonder if the thing will be right beside you – will there be spirits in the mirror that you are looking into now, will there be a shyriga at my window tonight and things like that.

All in all, Supernatural sure gets its message to me alright. So looking forward to the next episode.