Tingles

            Yesterday I read a blog by one of my new favorite bloggers, Susannah Bianchi and her blog athingirl.com, about the presence of otherworldly or ethereal beings. She’d mentioned she’d had experiences with the supernatural and so I commented that I too have seen things that I haven’t been able to rationally explain. She commented back that I should write about those experiences. I thought, that’s a fine idea.

            I’ve had a lot of experiences where the hair on the back of my neck and my arms has been stood straight up by a flash of something or an unidentified voice. It scares and thrills me all that the same time. The last thing I experienced for which I have no real rational explanation is from about a year ago.

            I was returning home from my local corner bar and was walking toward the front door of my apartment building. It was dead calm outside. There was no wind and there wasn’t a soul in sight. I was fishing through my coat pocket for my keys to unlock the door and let myself into the building’s lobby when I heard, very clearly and close to me, someone say, “Hello”. I turned around quickly and there was no one. I looked up at the building, thinking maybe someone had said something from a window, but the windows were shut against the cold winter air. I said Hello back, but heard no reply. I took a few steps out toward the sidewalk and the street to see if someone was about, but there was no one. I hurried back to my building’s door and let myself in for fear that something might follow me in.

            As a young man I used to hang out at one of the more famous haunted bars in Chicago. The Red Lion on Lincoln Avenue, across the street from the famous Biograph Theater where notorious Public Enemy #1 John Dillinger was gunned down. The Red Lion was on the Haunted Tours of Chicago and they made nearly weekly stops at my watering hole. I spent 11 years at this bar, socializing and learning and seeing a few things that can’t be explained.

            There were stories about a woman in the 1920’s that was strangled in the building and on occasion woman would get stuck in the ladies bathroom, unable to open the door or the faucets would turn on all by themselves. It was fairly regular to hear a woman yell and pound on the door looking to be let out. There wasn’t anything malicious about it, and it certainly didn’t stop us from drinking.  But there were a few incidents that all gave us pause.

            The first event was near Halloween, so things were already sort of spooky, and a few regulars and I were sitting at the L-shaped corner of the bar. There were perhaps five of us sitting and talking along with the bartender. At the opposite end of the bar, a good 20 feet away, a bar stool suddenly toppled over and crashed to the floor. No one had touched it or was any where near it. It just seemed to fling itself to the ground and crash. We all looked at each and foolishly asked, “Did you do that?”

            I walked over and picked the bar stool up off the floor and stood it back up and gave is a skeptical nudge, but it didn’t topple over again. We decided it was clearly moved by ghostly hands but that wasn’t enough to stop us from finishing our cocktails.

            The second event involved the Red Lion again and the owner and I were there a little late on a hot summer night. We were discussing his plans to close the bar and do some remodeling. The Red Lion had two doors, there was a main exterior door with a fire whammy bar that you had to press to open and an interior swinging door that led into the bar. On this particular summer night the exterior door was closed and the interior door was propped open in towards the bar. As the owner and I continued to talk the interior door began to swing violently back and forth. It would completely close and then swing all the way back open. It did this several times and the owner and I just looked at each other, open mouthed and awed. He finally said, “I think it’s time to go home”. And we did.

            The Red Lion also provided me with one of the greatest pictures of a ghost I’ve ever seen, and yes, that’s me in the picture.

                                                

Looks like what ever is in that photo is sort of leaning in to take the picture with me and my friend doesn’t it?

            So I’ve seen a lot of things I can’t explain and it sort of gives me hope that after this existence is through, there might be something far more wonderful waiting for us. In some way, we’ll go on, scaring the beejezus out of the living.