I would like to share the story of an experience I had when I was 13 years old.

Now, let me preface this story with an ongoing strange coincidence. I moved around alot when I was a kid, and even as an adult have lived in several different houses across three states. In each place I have lived I have found out, sometimes in passing discussion with the home owner, other times from a neighbor, that the bedroom I have chosen as my own has had someone die in it. I never seek the info out, I never seem to remember it until someone says "hey, you know what happened here?" Now thats not so strange in and of itself. Any older home has probably had at least one person pass away in it at one time or another. I just find it sort of odd that every time I have chosen a room for my own, it just happens to be the one where the death took place. Most of the time it is completely uneventful, but there have been a few times that I have had experiences that I couldnt really account for. One of the most unsettling experiences I have ever had occured on Ironwood Street, Davis Monthan Air Force Base, Tucson, Az.

My mother, stepfather, our two cats, and I moved into a three bedroom duplex on the base in the summer of 1980. I picked the corner room facing the street. The place was made of cinderblock and had two windows with screens, no carpet, and a closet adjacent to the door. At first the strange things happened, not when I was there, but only when I left the house for any period of time. It was only me leaving that made the difference. When I was there, at first, nothing happened. But I would go to visit my father for a week and all hell would break loose. One time I was away for winter holidays and my mother came home. all the windows, which had been closed and locked, were thrown wide open. The screens were lying all around the house on the ground and if they had been blown out. This happened several times. There were times when her and my step dad would come home and there would be a thick fog in the house like someone let off a smoke machine. The cats would be huddled on top of the refridgerator meowing in terror. The freakiest thing, and keep in mind, this is Tucson, so it is hot and DRY... I was gone for vacation in the summer. My mom had closed up my room, and one day she went in to put something away. The door had been closed for quite a while. When she opened the room, the walls, bed, curtains... everything... was covered in a thick, black mildew... now this is the desert! There IS NO mildew, at least not that we ever saw anyplace else. She had lived in the southwest all her life and never seen anything like it. My mom also said she had trouble sleeping, that she always felt afraid and uncomfortable. When I returned from that summer, things started getting strange for me. Most of it was just a general feeling of fear and anxiety, especially at night. The windows stayed shut, I never saw the fog or the other things my parents saw. The only thing I saw was a young man of maybe 23-24. I would see him when I was lying in bed, sometimes if I woke in the night, and sometimes before I went to sleep. He was always standing at the foot of my bed, which faced my closet. I could never really see his face, just his outline, and he had no clothes except white fruit of the loom style underwear. He would just stand there and it would scare me so badly that I would squeeze my eyes closed and then he wouldnt be there when I opened them. It took me a long time to tell anyone about him, heck, I am not sure why I worried, what with all the other things that happened in that house, but I was afraid no one would believe me. He never moved, or talked or anything, just stood there. 

 

Finally I told my mother. We were not religious people, but she did have a freind who was a comanche medicime man, my stepfather was Native American and this man was a freind of the family. She asked him to come over, and he spent a long time in the house burning sage and doing other things to try to determine what was going on and how to take care of it. His assessment was that a young man had committed suicide in my closet and was now unable to move on. He performed a ritual. I dont know what he did, but after that, nothing ever happened again.

 

My step dad was a military police officer. He asked around about our house and found out that ayoung man had indeed killed himself in the house.

 

I cant explain what we saw, or what happened. I just know it was pretty freaky. Oh, by the way, the house I just moved out of here in Colorado, I never found out if anyone died there, but that is the other house where I had really freaky experiences... I will write about them sometime.