I just read an older post of yours that said something about "Civil War ghosts at my junior prom to childhood fae-related trauma to hooded figures in the backyard." I'd love to know these stories, if you wouldn't mind telling them.
Oh man. Well, there’s not really much else to them beyond what I said, to be honest.
The (Probable) Civil War Ghost
First of all, it wasn’t actually MY junior prom. It was a friend’s junior prom that he asked me to and I accepted (just as an excuse to be at the biggest local Super-Haunted Historical PropertyTM after dark. there was a battle in my town in 1864, and as a result the whole place is now extremely haunted)
If you're horrified by plantation weddings, get ready for Plantation Proms: Definitely A Thing In Southern Towns With More Historical Sites Than Hotel Ballrooms
I probably should not have gone to this prom but, while already progressive, I was rather less self-aware as a teenager. thank the gods, it was not a themed prom. although then I probably would have realized how messed-up using that space for a prom was
My friend and I were hanging out on the huge back porch of the mansion, which has a ton of rocking chairs for people to use while waiting for tours
There was no wind that night, and while we were free to use the porch and the chairs, nobody else had been up there for over an hour
You probably see where this is going
I was leaning against the railing, feeling very dramatic and elegant in my poly taffeta prom dress, when I remarked to my friend that I’d been visiting this place on school trips for years but never encountered any of the famous ghosts
“Um, Marzi?” he said. “You might want to turn around.”
One of the chairs was rocking on its own
Have you ever been in a situation you knew could theoretically happen but always kind of figured wouldn’t? Like you almost don’t believe it, even though it’s Definitely Happening? This was like that. I wasn’t scared. It didn’t feel real, even though I was seeing it and my friend clearly was, too
Being the rational firm ghost believer that I am, I tried to consider all logical possibilities first. “Maybe it’s the wind,” I said, knowing as I said it that the air was totally still. This did not, again, feel scary or portentous. I just felt kind of stupid.
The chair rocked forward and balanced on its front rockers. It was a position no amount of wind could have forced that chair into without blowing it over. A long moment went by. The empty chair stayed balanced, as if held in place by someone sitting in it
The chair fell back and rocked to a natural halt, as if someone had gotten up from it and walked away
We both looked at each other and quickly decided to go back to the tent where the dance was taking place. I asked him about it again back in college and, unprompted, he recalled the story exactly as I remember it
The Fae-Related Childhood Trauma
I don’t talk about this one in detail. I just. Don’t.
I saw Something. I ran into my neighbor’s garage and stood in the corner crying for a solid 20 minutes, screaming at anyone who got close not to touch me
Maybe it was a hallucination, though other, less traumatic things I’m inclined to believe happened in my neighborhood.
But every time I even come close to describing what I saw, I just- I can’t. I physically could say or type the words, but it feels like an uncrossable mental barrier of wrongness. It’s Not To Be Discussed
I had plenty of neutral and even positive-seeming fae-ish experiences growing up; most of them I don’t even remember exactly. that was the only really bad one, but it was (as you can tell) a doozy
My mom and sister and I were watching Phantom of the Opera (2004) one evening and the sun began to set.
I got up to close the blinds on the French doors to the porch
I saw a hooded figure- not like a Grim Reaper; I got more the vibe of a tall woman wearing a hooded cloak -slowly walk behind a stand of trees in the neighbor’s terraced garden
I saw the figure pass behind the trees, apparently on a straight trajectory across the terrace
The figure never came out the other side. The outline behind the trees just disappeared. From that angle, there was nowhere a person could go that I wouldn’t have seen them. But I never saw her(?) again
There you go. Hope that was what you were after!
