I was on High Street in my abuelita’s home at her dining room table surrounded by my
dad, my two uncles, and my aunt. I could see my aunt straight across from me playing with the red placemat in front of her. My dad was to the left sitting down with his favorite Mexican pastry, and my uncles were sitting on the opposite side of the table of my father discussing something I was too far away to hear. As I tried to make myself as least noticeable as possible, I sank as low as I could into my seat so that the design carved in the back of the wooden chair was above my head. I stayed as quiet as I could. Only observing, listening, and trying to make sense of their seemingly adult conversation. Maybe they thought it was fine for me to hear, because I’m sure if they hadn’t they would have told me to leave; however, I was young, and the stories they were telling scared me. I felt as though I shouldn’t have been listening, but I did anyways.
My dad who was seated next to me dipped his pink concha into his coffee, took a bite,
then sipped his coffee again. He swallowed the mouthful he had and then began his story about a time when he and my uncle Armando were helping their dad paint an apartment complex he worked for when they were in high school. I can remember him saying that it was a Saturday and they were in an unoccupied unit of this apartment painting for the next residents to take over. My abuelito had forgotten tools in his truck and he told my dad and my uncle that he was going to go get them, and that they needed to keep working while he went downstairs. While they continued working and my dad was on top of the ladder painting above the window, he saw someone, someone who he thought was his dad pass by the door and continue walking down the hallway. He turned to my aunt Daisy at the table, elbows touching the wood and hands in the air gesturing towards her as if he was going to put her head between them, and said to her that it was so strange due to the fact that he didn’t hear my grandpa come back into the apartment. After a few moments of his dad not saying anything to him or his brother, or returning to the room, he called for him out loud. His father didn’t respond, and then his brother out of confusion asked why he was calling for his dad since he hadn’t returned from the truck yet. My dad then decided to go check on my abuelito and walked into the empty room fully expecting him to be there. To his surprise, the only thing he found in the room was that the window had been left open, and a cold breeze was coming through. He looked around the whole room one more time, even going as far as opening the closet door and peeking in the empty and dark space. He walked the rest of the dimly lit apartment and found that it was only him and his brother inside. While he made this realization and feeling a bit puzzled, he turned to walk back towards the hallway when the front door to the apartment opened. His father walked in and shut the door behind him. He asked him if he had come back in and left a second time. My abuelito had told him that this was the first time he’d come back up from gathering his tools.
As his story came to an end, my aunt and uncles began commenting and sharing their thoughts on the story. I felt entirely way too afraid and lost in my own thoughts. I couldn’t get up to go use the restroom that was located in the hallway of the house and diagonally from where I was sitting. I couldn't see past the door frame leading into the hall. It was pitch black, and there was no way I could run fast enough to reach the bathroom and turn on the light before anything would grab me and take me away. However, as I found my way back to the conversation, my aunt continued to say how she had a similar experience inside my abuelita’s home. I wanted to get up and leave the table right at that moment and go watch T.V on the couch in the living room, but that was too far from them, and too close to the dark hallway. I had no other choice but to stay right in my seat and listen.
My aunt began her story and told everyone she was in her room at the time. It was one of the rooms that you can only get to from the hallway. However, the opening of the hallway was still visible from her bedroom. She remembers sitting on her bed reading a book and the tips of her toes being cold. She reached further down the bed to grab the blanket that was folded at the end, and out of the corner of her eye she saw her dad dressed in a black button up shirt with dark wash jeans, black boots, and a black hat. She said she didn’t look up at first until she realized her dad was paused in the opening of the hallway for a moment. When she raised her eyes completely to the doorway, no one was there. She thought she was the only one home, because her mom was at work, her brothers were at practice, and her dad wasn’t supposed to have returned from his trip from Mexico until later that night. She too called for my grandpa and waited, but got no response. She got up and went straight to the garage because that’s where he spent most of his time. No luck there. My aunt continued to look hesitantly in the back yard expecting to maybe find him sitting on his favorite lawn chair. Again, she found herself alone. She was so afraid because she was so sure she saw her dad, or someone who she thought to be her dad. She expressed that she couldn’t handle being alone inside anymore, and left the house, waiting outside on the front porch until her mother came home from work.
I sat quietly at the table and I remember them all looking at each other wide eyed and appearing frightened. It was as if they had seen a ghost in that moment. Maybe it was the face of encountering something more sinister.. This scared me as well, but I tried to keep my focus away from my fear. It didn’t matter though because my thoughts had become interrupted by my father saying “in the name of the Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Amen,” as his hand followed in the motion of a cross in front of him. I watched as my father touched his forehead, chest, left shoulder, right shoulder, and then ending by kissing his hand. Immediately following my father both my uncles and my aunt did the same cross motions across their chest. In this moment, I wanted to do the same, repeating the motion so fast I guess it caught my dad’s gaze, which made him realize I was still sitting at the table with them. He smiled down at me and reminded me that there was nothing to worry about, and that they were all there with me. I gave him a weak smile, and then looked down to play with the string on my sweatshirt because I wasn’t so sure I believed him. As the string was intertwined between my fingers, I couldn’t help but think of how they both saw my abuelito. Was he really there? If he wasn’t really there, what did they see? Was it a ghost? Do ghosts exist? How could it be a ghost if my grandpa was alive? Was a ghost pretending to be my abuelito?
As I sat and pondered this to myself, I realized that I had no idea what really happened in
their stories. What I did know was that I was afraid. I couldn’t comprehend why this would
happen because at the time I believed that only people who are dead are ghosts. I sat there sipping my Abuelita hot chocolate through my orange colored straw, and then twirled it around in my cup. I can remember this as being the first time I had any real thoughts about ghosts, dead people, what happens to people after they die, or if other ghosts can look like people you know in real life. I made a mental note to myself to look more into this tomorrow during the daytime. I wouldn’t dare continue to talk about this now that I could tell the sun had set, and I could only see as far as the cement patio through the screen door due to the one light that lit up that space.
I can’t remember now if I ever went to actually look into this topic the very next day, but
I do know that this experience is the reason I started to believe in the supernatural, and why I started to discover my own faith. While I was a child, I had heard of ghosts in snippets of scary movie trailers I wasn’t allowed to see, or from kids at school telling me their own ghost stories, but I never truly listened . But after this experience, after hearing these stories told from people I one hundred percent trusted, I couldn’t completely ignore it any longer. From then on I became fascinated with ghost stories, movies, shows, books, you name it. I was always looking for an answer, or proof that could solidify what I had heard at my abuelita’s wooden dining table that night. What scared me the most, and made me believe even more in these stories is that the fact that everyone at the table had blessed themselves after. They were unsure of what to make of the situation, and could only lean on the safety of blessing themselves. I think I connected the ideas of needing the good, to protect me from the bad. I had been to church numerous times by this point. I had gone through the motions of blessing myself before. This is the night which made me think about the supernatural being connected in some way to God, or that I needed God to protect me from the supernatural. I can say now as an adult, that that isn’t the entirety of where my own faith in God lies, but it’s ultimately where it started. I find it hard sometimes to separate the two ideas. Even in my own research about the supernatural, other’s experiences somehow led them down the path of the supernatural and faith in some way or another. The only difference I found in my research and my own experiences is how religion and faith can possibly shape what kind of supernatural experience you may have. Most of the reading I’ve done individuals usually have no religious connection at all, or are entirely engulfed in their own faith and belief. So I think, what does that say about my own encounters, or my family’s encounters with the supernatural. While sitting on these thoughts, I was brought back to my own memories with the unexplainable, and what I believe to be a supernatural experiences.
What keeps me revisiting these moments the most is that to me, the experiences seem to be connected in some way. The first experience is one I can’t seem to forget because to this day, I can’t think of an explanation for other than something I really don’t feel comfortable with.
I was in my two bedroom apartment, alone in my room. I sat on my bed as I heard my roommate tidying up from what I thought was him making lunch. I tried to decide what I wanted to do that day. Was I going to go out? Or was I going to stay in and enjoy the comfort of a silenced apartment? My roommate that home this day was pretty quiet compared to my other two roommates who were gone that day, and I knew that if I chose to watch a movie in the living room, I wouldn’t find myself too distracted by anything else. As I scrolled through what felt like an endless list of movies, I came to one I had been dying to see. The Conjuring. I sat there and watched the trailer, and then moved it over to a different selection so another trailer would play while I decided whether or not I had the guts to watch the movie alone. I thought to myself that technically I wasn’t alone, and that my roommate, Abe, would be in the room next door. I felt this was enough comfort to continue with this selection in the middle of the day while the sun shined through the crappy blinds of my apartment.
The actual experience of watching this movie wasn’t so bad. Sure, I was spooked enough to probably keep the lights on a little longer than I usually do at night, but I felt fine. That was until the credits of the film began to roll, and right then Abe walked in the front door of the apartment. My eyes widened in the realization that he wasn’t home the whole time. I immediately asked him, “did you just get home? Were you here earlier?” He told me he wasn’t with a confused look on his face and that he’s been working all day. I then was brought back to the moment in my bedroom believing I was hearing him making food and noise in the kitchen. “Did you come home for lunch?” I asked hoping his answer would calm the fear running through me. “No,” he responded holding up a taco bell bag, “I haven’t eaten all day”. I jumped up to him and told him what I thought I heard earlier and we both knew this was odd because both of our other roommates had left to Phoenix two days prior to visit their family, and have been snapchatting their days since. Including one Snapchat story at their home of the time I was in my room. Abe and I were more than a little freaked out. We searched the entire apartment together. Every cabinet, closet, or any space hidden. We came to the conclusion that there was no one else in the apartment with us. We didn’t have any explanation once we called to check and make sure neither of our roommates had been home. Abe then questioned me about the door being locked, and maybe someone came in. I told him “that’s impossible,” because It was locked when I first woke up this morning, and it’s been locked since you walked in the door. I didn’t leave all day, and I thought he didn’t either. He explained that he also locked the door when he left this morning since it was still pretty early and wasn’t sure if I was awake or not yet. I then went and took my Holy water inside a Catholic saint printed bottle my grandparents had given to me before I left for college and blessed myself with few drops on my hand. Till this day, I’m still confused as to what might have happened that day. Who was in my apartment making food, turning on the sink, banging pots on the counter, shutting the cabinet doors? I have no sure idea.
Weeks had passed since this previous incident, and I was now at my other two roommates’ family home in Phoenix just taking a break away from Flagstaff for the weekend. We had just went to another party thrown by their close family friends, and made our way back to the gate of their small farm land. My friends and roommates’ parents weren’t there with us yet, which is why we were waiting outside the gate because they had the key. We knew they would be there soon since we all left the party around the same time. As we sat outside on the back of my roommate’s maroon truck, we talked about the party and what we would do once we got inside the house and our plans for the rest of the night. I was laughing and enjoying myself until I realized that on this early summer night in Phoenix as the dirt around us was settled on the ground, and the temperature had drastically dropped. I didn’t say anything at first, until I immediately noticed that a horrid smell engulfed the air around us. Asking my friends if they smelled it too, one of them responded with: “it smells like rotten meat!” My heart immediately dropped as my mind found its way back to the film I had watched that day alone in the apartment. Since The Conjuring is supposedly based on true events and people, I could not get the lines of the main paranormal investigators in the movie out of my head, whose job was to decide if the spirit haunting the home was demonic or not, and that the smell of rotten meat in a supernatural active home was a bad sign due to the fact that this smell was closely linked to demonic spirits.
I was so afraid in this moment because even though it was dark, the lights from their surrounding gates lit up pretty far in front of us. There was nothing. No movement of any kind of animal, no signs of dead carcasses . The worst thing I noticed is that the temperature and smell of rotten meat came with no wind. It wasn’t carried from anywhere, it was simply just there one second. My friends did joke about the temperature being related to ghosts, but they were all just kidding, and no one even mentioned the rotten meat in relation to spirits. I chose not to share my thoughts that night because I didn’t want to bring attention to it. Mostly for the sake of anyone trying to prank me later on, and the idea that maybe bringing attention to it would make it worse if there really was some kind of spirit around.
I went on with the rest of my night as planned, but I could not keep the idea out of my thoughts. It lingered there and stayed all the way up until the moment my friend and I were in her room laying on the bed about to to go to sleep. As she rearranged her blankets next to me on the bed, I looked up to find a large painting of the Virgin Mary on her wall. I’d seen it before, but I guess I had never paid any attention before then. Maybe I felt as if I didn’t need to.
As I laid there staring up at the painting, I found some comfort in it. I closed my eyes, closed my hands together, and prayed. I prayed to God, I prayed to her. I prayed to watch over me, keep me safe and protected from any bad spirit. I asked for protection for my friends as well. In doing so, I gained attention from my friend and she asked if anything was wrong since apparently I began praying in the middle of her story about some coworker at the convenience store she worked at. I wanted to tell her, but I kept my mouth shut until the morning. It felt safer that way. I just told her I was thinking of my family back home. Before we turned off the lights, I made eye contact with the Virgin Mary one more time, and said “Amen” to myself. I reached over and turned out the lights, and tried hard to fall asleep.
Recounting these stories, I try to find some meaning in them besides the fact that I was scared with them all. Why was I scared? Was there a reason these things were happening to me? Could I explain what could have happened? This last question is the one I can never find any answer to, and still can’t. I always find myself reaching to religion and faith for safety and comfort; the same way in which my father, my aunt and my uncles did that night around the dining room table. Maybe I’ll never find out what really happened, and I’ll always just continue to calm myself down by blessing myself with the sign of the cross and sometimes taking out my Holy water. Continuing to lean on my faith. Maybe this was the reason, and the explanation.
Isabella Mendoza is Kansas Native who graduated from Northern Arizona University with a Major in English during the Fall of 2019.
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