Death's ghost stories

the begining

You cats know I’m a firm believer in the unknown, right? Ghosts, Bigfoot, UFO’s, all that good go bump in the dark shit. Cause a muthafucker’s gotta know; the worlds too big not to believe. Way back in the day I lived in this old ass apartment just off the Plaza. The place just screamed Bogart and had a Murphy bed to boot.

Oh, a Murphy bed was a guest bed that folded up into the wall when not in use. Back then I had no TV, just books and this huge stereo. Whenever I went to bed at night I usually left the stereo on cause it gave me something to listen too while reading in bed. So I’m in bed sleeping when something woke me out of a deep sleep. I knew I was awake cause next to the bed was a nightstand with a digital alarm clock on it, and I could see the seconds flashing on and off. The clock read 4:15 in the AM. Suddenly the stereo in the living room cranked way the fuck up then just as sudden, shut it’s self off. “What the fuck”? I’m lying on my side facing the doorway and I could still see the seconds on the clock flashing.

I figured I’d get up and check out the stereo but when I tried to move it was like I was being held down by something. I couldn’t even move my head, only my eyes. Once again the clock came into view; I noticed twenty minuets had past. Out of the corner of my vision near this dark walk in closet, I saw a small glowing pinprick of light. As I watched the light blossomed into a white ball of light about the size of a bowling ball. The light had no features that I could see and it hovered about five feet off the floor. Now here’s when it gets kinky.

I could sense the light smiling at me, and as it moved closer to me, somehow it seemed feminine, don’t ask me how but it did. Now get this shit. Something fuckin touched me. I swear to God I felt a hand pass through the sheets and touch me on my bare fuckin shoulder. I freaked, but I still couldn’t move. The hand kept touching me and poking me with its fingers. By now the clock showed that half an hour had gone by and the damn glowing ball was still here. I guess the ghostly little bitch got tired of feeling me up and started bouncing me up and down in the bed. To my last breath I truly believe I was wide-awake cause through it all there was no stereo to be heard and I watched the minutes go by on the clock next to my bed.

Around 5 AM the stereo started playing again and the Glowing ball was gone. I got up and turned on every light I could find. I just set on the edge of the bed catching my breath and trying to figure out what just fuckin happened. I know what you’re thinking, too many drugs baby! Whatever! You’ll believe when you read the rest of this.

Mary

I decided to give my female ghost a name, so I started calling her Mary. I know you all think I’m a fucking nut but what else could I do. As time went by I became more and more convinced that I had a real-deal spirit of the dead thing going on here. I never saw the glowing ball again, but every so often the paralysis would kick in and I knew she was in the house. After a while the fear went away and I started viewing her as a bad roommate. She had a nasty habit of waiting till I was asleep, then she’d start shoving furniture around. Being jerked out of a deep sleep by the sound of dining room chairs falling over had a tendency to ruin a lot of shit.

I’d go out and get my smooth-on, bring someone home, and I found myself explaining to the girl about Mary the ghost. It goes without saying that I never slept with the same women twice. And now that I think on it, this might explain some of the other weird shit that went on in that apartment. My friend the Violent Stripper Chick even got involved. Besides doing the pole dance thing and stabbing drunks, she belonged to a real deal Witches Coven. I know, I know. Get the fuck out of here, right? Well, if you’d ever seen her apartment or some of the shit she did, you’d believe me too. Hey, I said it before, the little girl was extreme and ahead of her time, or missed her time.

So she always said she could sense the supernatural just by walking around and touching things, and I figured what the hell, come over and feel around my place and see what pops up. We decided to do this on a Sunday night. She shows up with her cat and a bunch of incense and off we go. Now I’m not a big expert on Ghosts and Witchcraft and all that good shit, so when she had my apartment full of incense smoke and the cat was bouncing off the walls, and she told me to get buck nekked, I figured she knew what she was doing. Plus she got nekked too, which wasn’t altogether a bad thing.

So here’s the picture. My apartment’s full of smelly incense. There’s this black cat running underfoot, and there we are buck nekked walking through every room. I’m just glad the shades were drawn. That sight would ‘a sent a bunch of people to hell. She had this great tattoo on the back of her shoulder. It was of a black cat, but where the cat’s eyes were supposed to be, there were two small green jewels set into her skin. So when I was following her, the tattoo’s eye’s seemed to follow me.

Freaky. In my bedroom was this huge walk-in closet. The Violent Stripper Chick took two steps into it then just fucking fell out. It was like someone had cut the strings to a puppet. I grabbed her and carried her to the living room, but not before I took notice of the cold breeze coming from the back of the closet. Oh, did I mention it was the middle of the summer when we did this and I had no air conditioning? After she had come too and calmed down she told me that something ice cold had touched her, and told her to get out.

Well, in my head that sounded pretty cut and dried to me. At least now I knew it wasn’t just me. You probably figured I moved out, right? Wrong. Ain’t no way in the world I was gonna move out. I had a great location, the rent was super cheap, and the utilities were fucked up. For all the years I lived there the electric bill never got over five bucks a month. I found out years later the meter was fucked up, and always gave a false reading. So hell no, I wasn’t going nowhere. I did end up moving. The Man forced me out. The property got condemned to make room for office high-rises. I was so pissed that when I moved I left some things behind.

I figure about two months after I was forced to move I ended up driving by the old place. The demolition had already started and my building was mostly rubble. My old apartment faced east with a big window looking onto Main Street. As I drove past I could see the pile of rubble that used to be my home. The front of the building was a partial shell and through this large gap I saw into my old apartment.

What I saw made me stay off that part of Main Street for a long time. Through the gap I saw one of my reading chairs that I’d left behind. The chair stood in the midst of all the rubble looking as clean as it did when I moved out. The overcast sky was breaking up and here and there the sun was shining through. Just as I drove past a ray of sun lit up my old chair. And that’s when Mary saw me. Above the chair was a dust swirl and as I drove past the dust swirl seemed to track me up the street, I knew that it was her.

the basement

Just another ghost thingy I wanted to share with you muthafucker’s. Some years after the apartment episode I owned this huge old house on the west side. If you’re a regular reader of the column you’ve heard about the house before. I shared the house with “keep up with me here” two strippers, four cats, one dog, and a rabbit. Trust me, the Partridge Family we wasn’t, but that was one of the happier periods in my life.

I was traveling a lot with the MAN and when I was in town I spent all my nights bouncing at the Lone Star. On top of all this I had this huge house I was trying to redo and there we were, my odd little extended family trapped dead center in the middle of this old residential neighborhood. The house was built in 1904 and the rumor was that the house was once a Nunnery, and that if I were to dig up the basement I’d find the bones of aborted fetuses.

I blew this off to the neighbor’s giving the new guy on the block a ration of shit, you know? I never told any of the roommates cause I knew how they were when they got noisy. The last thing I wanted was the two of them trying to dig up the basement. Which by the way, was a whole world into it’s self. In the ten plus years I owned the house I never ever saw a bug from the first floor to the third. The basement was the reason why.

When you entered the basement it was like walking into a crypt. The whole place was strung with these hugeass spider webs, and the spider’s hanging from em had to be the size of my fucking hand. They were the reason I never had a problem with bugs, or mice. At least it was that way in the house. If you were to walk into the garage it was another thing, you’d see rats so big they had butt cheeks, I fucking kid you not. The area I lived in was perched on top of a huge network of underground caverns. I’d been in these caverns before and seen the rats that lived down there. They were kissing cousins to the same ones I’d see in my garage.

But it all kind’a worked out. We all had this strange mashugga (crazy) kind of understanding. I don’t fuck with the spiders and they don’t fuck with me. The rats with the big asses would stay out of the house and I wouldn’t throw the cats into the garage. Though between just us, I wasn’t so sure the cats could take em. But ghosts, they were another thing all together. One night the roommates were both out working and I happened to be home by myself, or I should say I was home by myself with four cats, one dog, and a rabbit.

I was on the second floor watching this fucked up movie. Remember the movie “IT”, the one that had the Clown named Pennywise scaring the crap out of people? Yeah, that was on the TV that night. Normally I don’t watch scary shit cause when your head works like mine does, the last thing it needs is a push. But for some fucked up reason there I was, you know? I was sitting on this huge couch and next to it was a doorway that leads out to the second floor landing. If you were to look out the door you’d see three more doorways and the stairwell leading to the third floor.

So anyway I’m watching this movie and shit starts happening. Up until now I hadn’t given much thought to Mary the ghost or any other ghost for quite some time. Everything’s been fairly normal on the supernatural front and I figured that she never found me and I was cool. But you know how shit rolls. I’m on the couch when all of a sudden all four cats come into the room. Or I should say they backed into the room. You gotta figure, as a whole, cats don’t usually walk backwards. They acted like they were trying to move away from something in front of em.

They got halfway into the room then stopped. Then what happened next made my balls shrink. I felt something sit down on the couch next to me. I freaked, get me the fuck out of here, but I couldn’t fuckin move. The cats were sitting on the floor in a perfect row staring at something just to the right of me. No matter how hard I tried I couldn’t turn my head to see what was there. But I could feel something staring at me. In front of the couch and behind the TV was this big bay window, and I could see my reflection in the window, I could see part of the couch I sat on and part of the wall behind me. But that was it, there was nothing showing from my right side to the end of the couch. This lasted for maybe three minutes or more then the fuckin phone rang.

When that phone broke the silence I freaked, the cats freaked, and we all screamed like little bitches. One cat freaked so bad he crapped himself. I yanked the phone to my ear and this Darth Vader voice said; “go look in the basement”, then hung up. What the fuck! Look in the fucking basement! After what I just went through I wasn’t in the mood for fuckin prank calls. I tried to think who would call me pulling shit like this, but nobody came to mind. I figured fuck it; I’d go to bed and try to sleep it off. But around three AM the phone rang again.

I thought it might be one of the roommates needing a ride so I grabbed it up. It was the deep voice again; “go look in the basement”!! Screw it; I’ll just stay awake the rest of the night. When the roommates got home there I was sitting on the front porch with the four cats, one dog, and the rabbit. When the sun came up I got my gun and headed into the basement. But I played it safe, I shoved the dog and a couple of the cats in first then slammed the door. I waited till my cigarette went out then opened the door. The pets came out so quick they damn near knocked me down. I peeked in and slammed the door. I thought it over and figured what I don’t fuck with can’t fuck with me. So I slapped two deadbolts on the basement door and left well enough alone. Mama didn’t raise no fool. I hoped.

the MAN

People were talking about ghost stories again and I got one more I can pull out. This is an odd one cause it’s related to the Job. If any of you muthafucker’s are familiar with the Northeast area of Kansas City down around Independence Avenue, you’ve all seen the large fenced in group of old buildings around Independence and Hardesty. Those buildings are what’s left of a military complex dating from sometime around the second world war. Most of the buildings are unoccupied and what you see above ground is duplicated below ground as bomb shelters and warehouses and shit.

The way the base is built a cat can enter a building near the front gate and come out of a building at the far end without ever seeing the light of day. The complex is stupid with underground tunnels. I first became familiar with the place when the MAN had me working out of it back in 1990. Then I had to go back in 1993 for some years and sometime in 2001 we shut down our part of the place for good and I locked the doors behind me for what I hope is forever.

We used to operate a lot of our shit out of cause it had a nice central location plus it was easy for the MAN to guard and shit. At one time during the mid-nineties when the MAN had over 500 hundred muthafucker’s working out of that complex. So as a result I have more then a passing familiarity with the stinking place. The main area we were in was rumored to be the old Graves & Registration building during the Vietnam War. This was the place where all the soldiers who died in combat had their personal effects shipped to be sorted out.

Part of the area was also thought to be a morgue too. So as you can figure, a lot of muthafucker’s had the shitting willies while working down there. Plus you had to see some of the shit that crawled through the tunnels. There were these cockroaches down there that looked like they just walked out of the fuckin wild kingdom. Nothing sucked worse then being in the middle of a good deep shit when you’d see bug antenna poking over the top of the fuckin stall door and you suddenly find yourself trying to hit the off button in your ass so as to get the fuck out’a there.

Cause you know on the other side of the fuckin door is a cockroach the size of a fucking newborn kitten! I shit you not; these cocksuckers were so big that when you stepped on one you could still feel it moving under your fuckin shoe. For shit and grins we’d lay double-faced tape on the floor and wait till half a dozen got caught. Then we’d sit back and wait for the fun, cause after a while when they couldn’t get away the muthafucker’s got hungry and would start up to eating each other.

Now like I said the whole complex was all underground and full of tunnels. If I walked into the unused part of the complex then shit really got fucked up. There were certain areas that would stop me dead in my tracks cause I would keep hearing footsteps coming up behind me. But I knew full well that I was at least two hundred feet from anyone else. But there I stood, feeling my freak come on as these invisible footsteps came closer and closer then stop! So after I started breathing again I figure I must be fucking hearing shit, so off I go again walking.

By this time I’m next to this huge indoor firing range, which was rumored to be the morgue back in the day. Fuck, there’s the fuckin footstep’s again! And now to make shit really go south there’s someone screaming at me to get the fuck out. I don’t see em, I don’t hear em, but inside my head I feel em louder then shit. GET THE FUCK OUT! GET THE FUCK OUT! Over and over and over it repeats. GET THE FUCK OUT!!

By this time I’m in full “get the fuck away” mode. You know that fucked up walk people do when they’re expecting a blow to the back of the head or a knife between the shoulders? That was me all the way baby! It’s some hard shit walking whilst doing a 360 every couple steps too. But by then it didn’t matter anyway, cause my fat ass had broke into a full on sprint. I can count on one-hand things I’ve backed off of or run from in my life. But I was doing my best to run from this muthafucker. Dead vets or my imagination, it didn’t fuckin matter. I hope the MAN never send me back down there again.