24 September 2018 | Your Stories, Your True Encounters
When I was a young child we moved into a house in a pretty bad part of town. We were homeschooled, which was basically illegal in CA so we weren’t allowed to just run around the neighborhood during the day, and we weren’t really doing very much school during the day, of course, meant we were bored. Add to that the fact that my parent’s marriage was in a terrible place, my father was a minor drug dealer and my mother was seriously depressed, our life was a certain type of hell. So, simultaneously as an outlet for frustration, a way of rebellion, and natural inclination, I and one of my older sisters became very interested in magic and witchcraft. I went the way of my ancestors, who were of Norse decent and began worshiping the old Viking gods, especially Freja (Frey-yah). My sister also practiced magic and started out by worshiping Freja, but ended up venturing down darker paths. It was right around this time that I started to have hallucinations. The most frequent of which were these hordes of dark figures, which at the time I called “Zombies”, but I think that was just for lack of a better word because looking back on my visions they were just black and menacing beings. There were times I heard voices or felt someone touching me. My little sister would see a recurring “thing” in her closet, which she said looked like a cross between a man and a vulture.
My sister and I were avoided because we became known as witches in our neighborhood. Which wasn’t entirely bad, because that meant our bullies and harassers would leave us alone if we threatened spells cast upon them. I truly believe that the house became haunted or inhabited by demonic forces because of our actions. As time went on things outside of our control forced my family to move from CA to KY to live with my very religious Aunt and Uncle, which is where I became converted to Christ, renounced and ended my affair with witchcraft. My life took a very drastic turn, and I’m now a fairly happy person with a family of my own. I feel I still retain a tiny amount of magic, only because I’m able to tell when those I love and are close to are near. I can tell when my husband is going to be home early without him even calling me to let me know, I know it’s my mother in law on the phone before the caller ID says it’s her. The day my mother had a stroke I had to leave in the middle of a church meeting because I became overwhelmed my an unshakeable feeling that something was wrong, minutes late my sister called me to tell me that they were taking her to the ER, and that they didn’t know what was wrong, but that we shouldn’t worry because the EMT’s were sure it wasn’t anything serious. But I knew it was. When the ER Doctor said he didn’t think it was a stroke, I knew it was. Then they called in a neurologist just to be sure, and it was, in fact, a stroke. Afterward, I felt terrified, but calm at the same time, I knew we weren’t going to lose her, but that it was going to be a long and hard road. Today, she’s walking unassisted and is learning how to write with her right hand (she was left-handed before, and her left side was the side affected). She can read still and is just as quick-witted and mentally strong as she ever was.
I can also tell when my children are lying to me, or in trouble. Of course, that last bit can be chocked up to a mother’s intuition, but isn’t that a bit of its own magic?
Submitted to Weird Darkness and My Haunted Life Too by Ilsa Beauchamp
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