A Scrape at the Rock Piles

One summer when Harry and I were around 13 or 14 (it was around the same time as our subterranean exploration) we were riding our bikes around the rock piles behind my house. There were some younger kids (probably around 9-12 years old) also playing at the rock piles. I remember they climbed to the top of one of the piles and started yelling at us, calling us names, trying to pick a fight.

So after a bit we climbed the pile they were on and stood next to them. We didn't fight, we just talked really mean. But that was enough to scare them pretty good. They ran off saying they were going to get their big brothers. Whatever.

A little while later we were still riding our bikes around the rock piles and the kids came back. This time they had their big brothers! They called out to us, so we stopped riding and were now sitting on our bikes. The group walked up to us and one of the older (a couple of years older than me and Harry) brothers asked if we were picking on their little brothers. We explained what happened, but they didn't like that answer. The threats started flying and the tension was buiding.

They started to surround me and Harry (still sitting on our bikes). I looked towards the road that ran beside the rock piles and beside my house and was doing some quick calculations in my mind. Just when I thought getting physical was inevitable, I hopped up onto my seat, peeled out, and pedaled as fast as I could to get to my house! I can only imagine Harry's thoughts as I left a small dust trail as I tore across the rocks, "Is he crazy? Is he gonna die? And did he just leave me here by myself?"

I glanced back behind me and saw several of the kids chasing me. A few seconds later I made it to the road. As I raced down the road toward my yard they cut across some grass and caught up to me. Just as my front tire reached my yard, one of the kids grabbed the back bar of my banana seat and pulled the bike to an immediate stop. I'm still not sure how I managed to do it, but even though the bike stopped instantly, I didn't. I somehow flung a leg up and cleared the bike, landed on my feet, and continued on foot.

I yelled back to them "This is my house! Get out of here!" But it wasn't until I was safely on the back porch looking out the back door at them that they slowly turned around and walked away. I stuck my head out the door to let them know "I just called the police!", which I hadn't but it showed I wasn't playing around.

I don't think I have ever asked Harry what happened to him after I darted off on my bike. But apparently he made it through ok. I'm sure he eventually rode up to the house to see if I had made it.

It was a close call, but we had both made it through another rough scrape.

House of Pain Update

Since posting the House of Pain story on August 4, Harry has emailed me additional details that I had originally forgotten. I remember most of his additions, but some of the details have already been erased from my memory and replaced with newer data.

So instead of a new story today, click here for the updated House of Pain story.

Enjoy.

Camilla - Bonus

Since posting the original 3-part series on Camilla (part 1, part 2, part 3) Jill has emailed a part of this storyline that I never knew. This is her addition to the story.

The Camilla stories triggered my memory as to the origin of the name "Camilla". One day when Amy [one of her friends] was over and her and I were by ourselves I was telling her about our "ghost" when we thought we heard something (I don't think you were home). I doubt there actually was any noise, we had just gotten ourselves scared talking about it. Anyway, we ran outside and we were sitting near the street on the south side of the house. We were too scared to go back in and then Amy said she saw the ghost looking out the little window on the staircase. I think I actually believed her, too, but she said the ghost's name was Camilla. I had never heard that name before so I thought maybe Amy could communicate with the ghost (just like the spirit bird). Anyway, we continued referring to the ghost as Camilla for a long time and finally one day I asked her where she came up with that name. She said it was the name of Grover's pet chicken on Muppet Babies. I was pretty disappointed at that because it was silly.

I guess I had heard them referring to the ghost as Camilla, so when I did the ghost writing experiment that was the name I wrote down for the ghost.

So this brings to a close the saga of Camilla. If anyone else has any more information regarding this not-so-supernatural story, please send it to me at avatarmud@gmail.com.

Thanks again to Jill for her contribution.


*** In March of 2000, I recorded a song called "Camilla". It was about our ghost hunting while growing up. It talks about Bloody Mary, the Spirit Bird (as discussed in this previous post), and a dream Jill had of a white mannequin-thing eating marshmallows that scared her half to death!

Click here to listen to "Camilla"
Click here to read the lyrics to the song

The Secret Room

In December of 1986, Harry's family moved into their current house. The upstairs was one large room that turned out to be Harry's bedroom. We had many crazy times up there.

He had a walk-in closet in his room. So one day he and I were digging through old boxes and stuff in the closet and we noticed a piece of wood in a small alcove on the left side of the closet. We cleared the way back to it and slid the wood over. There was a hole leading to a small crawlspace.

So we immediately became Indiana Harry and Jason Jones. We were always ready for adventure. Harry crawled first, I followed right behind him. We crawled in just a few feet and the passageway turned to the left. It was very dusty back there. In fact, it had probably been hundreds of years since another human being had been back there! We couldn't wait to find the lost treasure.

So we turned left and crawled for several feet and it opened up into a rather large attic opening, large enough to stand in. We were on the other side of one of the walls of his bedroom. This open area was right above their kitchen. It was a section of the house lost to ancient times. Or some would say it was unusable space. But we considered this our secret room.

We only went back there a few times over the years. And then on January 14, 1995, after Harry had moved out and his younger brother had taken over the upstairs bedroom, his brother and I took a camcorder back into the area, revealing the secret to the rest of the world. And for those who didn't learn about it from that video know about it now!

We never did find any treasure back there.

Camilla - Part 3: What's In A Name?

This post will conclude the story of Camilla, the "ghost" that haunted our house when we were young. You can read Part 1 here and Part 2 here.

So how did we find out the name of this "ghost" that was haunting our house? After Jill had the dream about it, we knew what it looked like. But we wanted to learn more about it. So we did the standard tape recording of the upstairs. When some explainable noise did turn up on tape, of course that was the ghost communicating with us. So then we knew it was real!

Then one day I saw a paranormal television special that showed a piece of paper with writing on it that people claimed was the actual writing of a ghost. So I told Jill about this new experiment. We set a blank piece of paper and a pencil in Mom and Dad's closet and left it there for a few hours to make sure the ghost had plenty of time to write. Later when I went back to get the paper, I may have scribbled the name "Camilla" on the still blank piece of paper. And I may have claimed that the ghost had written it. After all, I didn't want Jill to be disappointed.

Years later we made a homemade Ouija board and used it at our dining room table. We asked Camilla many questions, and when it came time for her to spell her name for us, I secretly helped her. So this faked experience reinforced the faked experiment from years earlier. It didn't get much more professional than that!

So in conclusion, one could say that the only ghost we ever had hard evidence of was me. And I have no idea where I got the name Camilla. Maybe a real ghost planted it in my mind. . .


*** In March of 2000, I recorded a song called "Camilla". It was about our ghost hunting while growing up. It talks about Bloody Mary, the Spirit Bird (as discussed in this previous post), and a dream Jill had of a white mannequin-thing eating marshmallows that scared her half to death!

Click here to listen to "Camilla"
Click here to read the lyrics to the song

Climbing the Water Tower

Behind the garage of the house where I grew up was the town's water tower. I have several water tower stories, but this particular one involves me, Harry, and our grandpa.

Harry and I had always played around the water tower. The water tower served as base in many games. It was also a popular spot to ride our bikes and perform stunts. We would even climb a few feet up one of the water tower legs occasionally and jump off.

But one day we looked up one of those long silvery legs and we had an idea. I don't know about Harry, but I actually heard its cold, metallic voice whisper "Climb me". I can imagine the two of us looking up, then slowly looking down and turning toward each other, and without uttering a word both start heading up the leg.

Harry went first. As soon as he was a few feet above my head I started climbing up after him. We were going for a new height record. And who knows? Maybe we would make it all the way to the top! In the top picture above, you can see the two horizontal rings that go around the legs at 1/3 and 2/3 the way up. We soon made it to the lower ring. Wow, what a view! But there was more. So we continued the climb.

Upon reaching the upper ring, I noticed I could look over our garage and see into our back yard. I could see the sidewalk that led from the garage to the back patio. I could even see the back patio. And who was that sitting there on the patio in a lawn chair? I think he's looking up at us. Uh-oh, it's. . .

Our grandpa, with cigarette in hand, who had been watching us for a couple of minutes noticed we saw him. I will never forget those six little words he clearly shouted, clear even from our high altitude: "Get your a--es down from there!"

Without hesitation, we took his advice. And that was the highest I have ever climbed on the water tower.

Camilla - Part 2: The Dream

This post will continue the story of Camilla, the "ghost" that haunted our house when we were young. You can read Part 1 here.

In our house, all the bedrooms were upstairs. Mom and Dad's bedroom had a doorway connecting their room to Jill's (my sister). My room was across the hall from both of their rooms. I may have been around 8-10 years old, Jill was 6-8 years old. Dad was working nights, so it was just Mom asleep in their room. Jill was asleep in her room. And I was asleep in my room. At the time I had two small pewter figures that I carried everywhere, one was a knight and one was a viking. They both had sharp points, the knight had his sword and the viking had the horns on his helmet. And this particular night I had both figures lying on the floor by my bed.

So we had all gone to bed. I was sound asleep. The next thing I knew Jill was standing beside my bed screaming at the top of her lungs. My first thought was that she had stepped on those figures and hurt her foot, but that wasn't it. Mom came running in. Jill was crying and by now I was crying too, I didn't know what was going on. Later Mom said she thought Jill had fallen down the stairs.

So after Jill calmed down, she told us she had seen a ghost. It turned out to be a dream. And the dream caused her to sleep on a cot in my bedroom for the next few months. The dream was this (to the best of my memory):

She had seen a white, bald, faceless mannequin type figure coming into her room from Mom and Dad's room. And it had a similar-looking friend behind it in Mom's room. And they were looking for marshmallows to eat.

When Jill dreamed this she thought it was real. We're not sure if she then walked in her sleep or just came into my room half-asleep, but regardless it scared all of us that night!!! And it was the basis for many ghost hunts in the years to come.

Tune in next Friday for Part 3 of the trilogy of posts regarding Camilla. It explains how we found out what her name was. . .


*** In March of 2000, I recorded a song called "Camilla". It was about our ghost hunting while growing up. It talks about Bloody Mary, the Spirit Bird (as discussed in this previous post), and a dream Jill had of a white mannequin-thing eating marshmallows that scared her half to death! Tune in next Friday for the conclusion of the Camilla story.

Click here to listen to "Camilla"
Click here to read the lyrics to the song

House of Pain

Harry and I went to an old house in the middle of nowhere a few miles outside of our town with another boy from school. He was a year or two younger than us. We knew him, but never hung out or did things together, so I'm not sure why we were with him on this particular day. Harry must have been at least 16 because the house is too far out of town to have ridden our bikes. So we were a little older for this story.

This house had once been a large two-story farmhouse (if I remember correctly). And no one had lived in it for years. So what were we doing out there? Speeding the effects of time on an abandoned building, of course. We were throwing bricks, kicking things down, just causing harmless damage to an old object that didn't mind.

And then this boy's face went white as he saw a vehicle driving up the lane to the house. Harry and I did the natural thing, we ran and hid behind something large (a fallen down section of wall if I remember correctly). The vehicle stopped and it was this boy's dad. They didn't live too far from there. And then the terror hit me and Harry.

This boy's dad got out and started yelling at him and cussing. I don't think he was happy that his son was there. And then we heard his dad hitting him. Ouch! There was no way we were showing ourselves, we just hoped the boy didn't say anything about us being there too. After what seemed like eternity they both got in their vehicle and left.

Needless to say, as soon as the dust from their vehicle was gone we were in ours and headed home! I haven't been in that area for a LONG time but I doubt the house is still there. And when we saw the boy at school again we never did mention that day to him.

Monday, August 25, 2008 - UPDATE

After reading this story, Harry provided these additional details via email:

Harry and I had a friend with us that day. We three had been out presumably looking for trouble when we found this abandoned farm "complex". In addition to the house there was an old barn and possibly one or two sheds. There was a U-shaped driveway and we hid the car behind the last building. The boy in this story lived near there and rode up on his bicycle and joined us in our "destruction fever". So Harry, our friend, and I were in the barn when we heard another vehicle pull up. And that was the boy's dad. You can read the original story above for what happened next, but the way Harry put it was "...his dad turned into Mr. T on a pissy bad hair day!"

Harry's epilogue: Harry talked to the boy at school the next Monday. Harry nervously mentioned the incident and the boy said it was no big deal. Nothing was ever said again about that day.

Camilla - Part 1: Bloody Mary

While we were growing up, the upstairs bathroom at my house contained a portal to a dimension full of ghosts and spirits. It was a doorway to another realm. A room in which we dared not sit alone in the dark. Well, that's what Harry, Jill, and I thought anyway.

It was the hub for many of our ghost hunting activities. But one ritual in particular that stands out in my mind was Bloody Mary. I think it's a standard urban legend, but when Harry brought the idea from St. Louis I thought we had stumbled upon a portal to the afterlife. It was usually just me and Harry doing it, but I think Jill found the courage to join us a couple of times.

We would sit in the bathroom with the lights off (and it was pitch black with the lights off). Then we would say "Bloody Mary" three times and look into the full-length mirror on the wall and we would see the face of Bloody Mary!!! I saw it almost every time we did it. It was amazing, and scary, all at the same time. And so were our imaginations.

We did various other ghostly things in the bathroom, but Bloody Mary is the one that stands out in my memory.


*** In March of 2000, I recorded a song called "Camilla". It was about our ghost hunting while growing up. It talks about Bloody Mary, the Spirit Bird (as discussed in this previous post), and a dream Jill had of a white mannequin-thing eating marshmallows that scared her half to death! Tune in next Friday for the continuation of the Camilla story.

Click here to listen to "Camilla"
Click here to read the lyrics to the song