Spooky SEASON IS HERE!

Halloween is only days away. As I sit and drink my morning coffee, I think about the origins of the holiday, which is highly debated amongst religious folks and ‘pagan’ ones alike. Most people I suspect, just see it as a harmless holiday that kids dress up for and that we have to spend too much money on candy to hand out. Which, with inflation, was absolutely felt by me when I made those purchases. I have a large plastic Pumpkin bucket in my garage, overflowing with goodies to prove it!

It’s a fun holiday for a lot of people. And then there are the movies! We have a lot of options to watch, ranging from kid classics to the scarier variety. I tend to rotate between the classics, ‘Hocus Pocus’, ‘Practical Magic’, ‘Beetlejuice’ and ‘Sleepy Hollow’. But then I do like a good horror movie such as ‘Halloween’ and others like ‘Stigmata’. If you are a movie buff you will know a lot more titles than these. 

But do you have scary stories of your own? I certainly do. As I type this I’m already thinking of a few. Both happened while I was in the Army. And both were memorable enough to stick in my fractured brain all these years. The thing about true life scary stories you see, is they can haunt you if you let them. Even becoming part of your identity. Which is the most frightening thing of all.

My first story begins in Kansas. I used to work in a garrison unit, which meant I didn’t have to deploy, but stay on the base. I had already completed a 15 month gruelling deployment prior to being moved to that unit so I had already paid my dues so to speak. I worked in a huge chapel that held all the main services and even all the post memorials. It was busy and always kept me working. One early Sunday morning, when snow was covering the ground in winter, I went in to work and unlocked the main side door. Locking it behind me as it was only 5 am, I slowly went down the hallway and turned on the lights. Outside it was pitch black. Catholic Mass was at 6 am so I came in early to get things ready and set up. Once in the large sanctuary, I flicked on the lights only to be met with knocking on the back glass doors. A woman stood outside, crying. Quickly letting her in, I noticed that her boots tracked snow into the foyer. Promising her Kleenex, I walked to my office in the hallway to grab a box. When I returned though, she was gone. And so was all the snow that she had tracked in. The carpet leading back out to the door, was bone dry. 

The second story happened in Iraq, back in 2006. My unit ended up having the headquarters personnel staying on Speicher in Tikrit, Saddam Hussein's hometown. I was hardly ever at that base though, as my boss and I spent the rest of the deployment traveling around to see our guys (combat engineers) in other areas mostly. But the week or days out of a month that we were there, we stayed in old Iraqi buildings. In my building, there were quite a number of bullet holes on the outside and a lot inside as well. Every night when I would go to sleep, I would dream of a bloody man, standing by the door. He wore a white man dress with a black and white patterned head scarf. He would look at me, with dark eyes and blood coming down his face from a head wound. It was scary as hell and felt very real. I would never know if he had been killed in that building or what happened. But each night I slept there I would dream of him. Never at any other location. 

Do you have any real life ghost or scary stories? 

If you like things that make your spine tingle, be sure to check out my first and second thriller out now from Provoco Publishing. Links are on this website. Coming in 2025 is my third, which will prove to the most thrilling yet!