Last night I watched a show I recorded on my DVR (love the DVR!!) about an exorcism of a young boy believed to be possessed by the devil.  The documentary was called “In the Grip of Evil” and it was supposed to be the inspiration for author William Peter Blatty‘s “The Exorcist“.  Of course the show gave an accounting of the events which took place (based on journal documentations of the exorcism) and included a commentary from a believer’s standpoint (one of the priests who took part in the exorcism) and a non-believer’s standpoint (someone supposedly more “educated” and thus more believable).  Actually, I think there were a couple of people trying to dispute the idea that possession can actually occur.  It really annoys me when people try to pass off strange events (especially those not easily explained) as a “hallucination”.  Really?  Isn’t life itself a hallucination?  So anyway…

What creeped me out a bit watching that show was the part where the bed started shaking.  You know what? That really does happen.  And it’s freaky as all hell.

I’m not sure how old I was when I experienced one of the creepy-odd events in that old farmhouse, but I’m going to guess I was about twelve.  I’d say it’s a pretty good guess because I was reading quite a bit by this point (all my mom’s Harlequin and Silhouette romance books), and I know it occurred before we accepted that the house was haunted … otherwise, I think I would have been terrified out of my freakin mind!

My parents were having a “get together” of friends and family (they liked to play guitars and sing).  The five of us kids were banished to the upstairs bedrooms.  Not in the mood to play, especially with my younger siblings (I was the oldest of five), I grabbed a book and headed for my parents’ room to read.  My rambunctious sibs played in the other two bedrooms and left me alone.

Although I got a little nervous sometimes while hanging out in my parents’ bedroom (you know, that spine-tingly, something-doesn’t-feel-right feeling), I really wanted to be on my own so I could read undisturbed.  I made myself comfortable on the bed, pillows propped behind me, and was soon lost in the story.  I have to tell you, when I’m reading, my mind is fully engaged and I don’t notice anything going on around me.  I’m not sure how long it was before the slight tremors in the bed made my hands shake and thus, interrupted my reading.  Curious, I lifted my head and took note.  The tremors were slight at first.  More like a strong vibration.  I wondered what could be causing it but I wasn’t scared at this point.  I was more intrigued than anything.  After a few minutes, I figured the shaking had to be caused by the kids running around in the next room and went back to my book.  The shaking grew worse.

Okay, now I knew something was definitely up.  Slight tremors I could explain away, big-time shaking…not so much.  As the bed shaking grew worse (they came in spurts), I immediately suspected that it had to be my brother (whom I will refer to as “J”) because he was always up to some mischief and the others were too small to make the bed do anything. My parents had a wrought-iron bed at the time…it was a heavy-assed bed…and it was up pretty high from the floor.  There was lots of crawl space underneath it (I know because it was always a favorite hiding spot when playing hide-and-go-seek). I set the book down, twisted around onto my stomach and then leaned over the edge to take a look.

While hanging there peering at empty space (definitely no visible bodies or anything else for that matter), the bed shook hard and I had to grab at the mattress to keep from falling off.  Now I’m scared.  What the hell?  No, I’m sure I didn’t think those exact words, but I sure am thinking them today!!  I pushed myself back up in a sitting position and considered my dilemma.  I wanted to get off the bed, but I wasn’t sure if it was safe to do so.  While pondering this, a spool of thread … green, I believe … started rolling across the floor.  I have no idea where the spool came from.  It rolled from beneath the window on the wall to my left toward the wall on my right.  I watched it with growing unease.  The spool rolled slowly at first and then gained speed, banging into the wall, bouncing off, going still then taking off for the opposite wall where it would do the same thing.  Sometimes the damned thing would stop just before hitting the wall…rest for a few seconds and then go flying across the room as if someone had just whacked the crap out of it.  The bed tremors continued but at this point I was more worried about the self-propelling spool of thread! Although I was scared to death, I somehow managed to crawl to the end of the bed so I could see if maybe one of the cats was causing the spool ruckus.  Nope.  No cats.  No kids.  Nothing. Which of course, it couldn’t be “nothing” could it?

Although I was quite young, I knew…I KNEW…that a spool of thread shouldn’t act the way that one was acting.  The fast and slow rolls, the bounce off the wall into an abrupt stop.  No, it wasn’t normal.  When it once again bounced off the wall on my right (the furthest wall from the bed) and then rolled slowly toward me, my trepidation grew in one heart-pounding leap.  The spool rolled slow and steady until it was under the bed.  Then it stopped.  I waited.  Nothing.  Finally, I HAD to know…and I forced myself to lean over the bed to look, though this time I had a tight hold of the foot rail.  No WAY was I getting tossed off that bed!  Honestly, I thought it showed an extreme act of courage to do that!  I STILL think as much!! As soon as my eyes found that stupid spool, it shot out and hit the wall to the left, bounced off, stopped and then rolled slowly toward the open bedroom doorway.  It stopped just at the threshold.

After a few seconds of waiting (the spool rocked a little but it stayed in place), I found my voice and called out to my siblings.  It was J who came to the door.  I was holding the wrought-iron foot-rail and praying for dear life at this point.  “Go get mom!”  It took some convincing…okay pleading…but something (probably my terrified expression, or perhaps the panic in my voice) told J I wasn’t playing around and he finally took off down the stairs.  The bed shaking had stopped as soon as J came to the door and the spool remained still.

After a bit of convincing (my mom didn’t want to respond to J’s summons at first) she finally came up the stairs and stood in the doorway, “What?” Although she was quite annoyed to be called upstairs, thank God she came!

I pointed to the spool of thread.  “That spool was rolling around the room all by itself.”

Mom looked down, saw the spool and picked it up.  “One of the cats was probably playing with it.”

“There aren’t any cats in the room.  And the bed is shaking.”

“Well it’s probably vibration from the music.”

Really?  Then why did it stop?  The music was going strong downstairs…no vibration to be had.  I scrambled off the bed and exited my parents’ room before Mom could disappear down the stairs.  I was afraid to go in there after that but I would do so if someone else were with me.  It seemed the bed wouldn’t shake if there was more than two people in the room.

I tried an experiment after we started communicating with the spirits (about a couple years later) and actually went to my parents’ room to see if anything would happen.  When the bed began to shake, I was “gone, baby gone” … out that door in no-time-flat.  No more experiments for me!  My mom had similar bed-shaking experiences.  As for my dad, he never complained about the bed shaking but he did complain about something shaking him!  Once he joined the “this house is haunted” band-wagon (something he resisted for quite some time as my dad was a hard-core, no-nonsense sort of person), a move to a new place became imminent.  None of us wanted to be there anymore.  I hadn’t wanted to be there since the “monster” incident I wrote about in Part II so I was pretty ecstatic about leaving.

I can’t say at what point we began to blame the ghosts for all the strange things happening in that house but I can tell you, once we became aware of such a possibility, we really started noticing things. Yes, I know…our imaginations could have been fueled by our beliefs but even so…that doesn’t explain HOW some of the things that happened there, happened there.  To this day I wonder.  Why?  What was the point in it all? What do they want? Where are they?  Why are they still there? (the house is gone, but they are still there…I KNOW it).

So, that’s my shaking-bed story.  What say you?  Ever have anything like that happen to you?  I tell you, I can’t look at a spool of thread and not think about this story.  It’s as freaky now as it was then.  But it wasn’t just a spool of thread that developed a life of its own…no. Heck, freakin no.  I’ll leave those stories for future posts.

That’s it for now!  Tune in again for Part IV if you dare! (smile)  Thanks for stopping by.  Until next time, Blessings to all and Peace Out!

Related articles

• Living With Ghosts, Part II (deborahjhughes.com)
• My personal true ghost experience – Part 2 (spookypics.com)