Here's a totally true spooky story, except for the ambulance part

It was a dark and stormy night . . .


Screeetch! First rule of telling spooky stories: never never never begin by saying it was a dark and stormy night (or, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times, or beam me up Scotty).


Take two:


I've often wondered if evil spirits ever get desperate and try to squeeze themselves into lower life forms like bugs. And if they do, is it possible to exorcise an evil bug?

Well, a few nights ago I found out that even in the bug world evil just breeds evil if you don't exorcise it right away (aka, stamp it out by stamping on it).

It all started with a frantic knock at my front door. Picture this:

An old friend is standing on my front porch in her nightie with her garments hanging well below the hemline. She's not really standing there, she's more like wincing frantically there. Her teenage daughter is beside her with wild eyes and a cell phone. My scantily clad, old, frantically wincing friend is clutching. Clutching tightly. Clutching tightly to her left ear. Or maybe it was her right ear. It depends on which way you're looking at her.

(Here's a tip for your ghost stories. When you want to build up the tension at the climax of your story, use short. choppy. sentences.)

They ask if my husband is home because he is a P.A. which means if anyone wants free medical advice or treatment or scout physical forms signed, they come to him.

I tell them no and begin to shut the door when suddenly the daughter bursts into tears.

"Let's just go to the emergency room!" she says.

I could tell they wanted me to ask what was wrong, but being the firm respector of privacy that I am, I didn't. Besides Dancing with the Stars was on.

"A bug flew in my ear!" shouted my scantily clad, old, frantically wincing friend. "Do you think it will start burrowing into my brain?" (Mary look away for this part. Oops, I meant that last part.)

I immediately led her into my house where I proceeded to perform an emergency bugendectamy to her left/right ear. All the while her daughter is yelling "Let's just go to the emergency room!"

Despite her daughter's lack of faith in my abilities to deal diplomatically with lower life forms (I'm a former bug whisperer) I was successful in whispering the lodged bug out of her ear.

It was a roach! And it could fly. And it flew down my hallway and banged into my doorbell and then did a few loops until it landed on my husband's Work and the Glory Series

Suddenly! (Suddenly is a good way to begin a sentence if you need a startling effect. It's even more startling with an exclamation point!

Suddenly! I heard footsteps racing down my front walk. Heavy footsteps. And heavy breathing! (heavy footsteps and heavy breathing are the spookiest kind of footsteps and breathing--I learned that from Scooby Doo.) It was a man. It was my scantily clad, old, but no longer frantically wincing friend's bishop.

I laughed. "Why is your bishop here?" I asked, and then I laughed some more.

The daughter was not laughing. She was not even smiling pleasantly or relievedly when she said, "I called him."

(If you think about it, it's kind of cute that a bishop would come racing to my house to rescue a member of his ward in her nightie with a roach in her ear. Maybe he was going to bless that roach right out of that ear, but I had already done it without any priesthood power at all.)

Suddenly! A car came speeding and squealing around the corner and zoomed to a screeching halt in front of my driveway. A man darted out of the front seat and rushed recklessly towards us, his eyes wide with alarm.

I laughed again! It was her husband. He had dropped everything and pushed his kids out of the car as he zoomed past their house on his way to mine. I laughed and laughed. Was this for real?

"Did you call the ambulance too?" I said. And then I heard the sirens. Sure enough . . . I laughed again. (That was the part I made up.)

When my friend and her daughter and her bishop and her husband finally removed themselves from my front porch, I waved and said, "Hey, thanks for leaving your crazy cockroach at my house. It'll will probably burrow into my brain now."

You probably think that's what happened, huh? I can see you trying to jump the gun on the punch line right now.

PSYCH! That was called foreshadowing. I'm planting a clue to make the punch line more believable. Stay with me.

You know how it just takes one contentious person to stir a whole pot of people up to anger and discontent? I think it's the same way with bugs. I think this crazy ear roach brought out all the dormant dissatisfaction in the other bugs at my house. Within a few hours they all seemed completely disgruntled.

Around 10 pm my daughter and I saw movement near my husband's Work and the Glory. Around 10:01 that movement materialized and magnified until it was swooping down around us and whizzing right past my ear. TWICE! People, I am not lying. I wish I had never told a single lie on this blog so my credibility would not be shot-to-he@@. But I know that cockroach was trying to get into my ear too. Maybe he is a people whisperer. Maybe he had something he needed to tell me! But what? Don't go through with the contest? Stop putting the roach baits under the stove? Your fly is down? (Not talking about my zipper, people. Talking about my manic depressive fly.)

My daughter then took a shower. I heard screaming. I made my way. to where she was. dripping. and drying. and crying (no, not crying, but it rhymed nicely). A filthy dirty old cockroach (with a gray beard) had landed on the shower curtain rod and looked upon her inappropriately as she was cleansing herself.

Later than night I went to the ladies room. As I reached for the toilet paper roll . . . AAAACK! There was a big hairy cane spider staring me down. His creepy eyes met mine and I swear he winked at me before I shrieked and knocked the ethernet cable out of the wall. (This really did happen, but not this week.)

The next morning another cockroach landed on my daughter's cereal bowl, my son woke up with a gigantic swollen bed bug bite on his eye, my husband sustained 25 mosquito bites and my dog had fleas. (I don't have a dog, but if I did, I'm positive he would have had fleas).

A house of possessed bugs is managable, for the most part. But what really got me thinking that something not-of-this-world was at work was when I was driving my son to soccer practice tonight. A jet black cat jetted right across the road in front of me. (This is true.) It happened so fast I almost missed it. It made me swerve and catch my breath.

If a black cat crosses your path, it's bad luck, but what would happen if you smooshed the living daylight/nightlight out of him? Flattened him like a pancake? Would that be super-duper-double-looper good luck because you killed the bad luck. Or would that be super-duper-double-looper bad luck, because you released his little black spirit into the universe?

Who was that little black spirit anyway? And what does he want from me?

Was it fate . . . tempting me. . . to temp fate?


Something to think about.

btw, you know what's really cute about Jami, besides the fact that her blog address spells super misc? She still says TTFN (ta ta for now) How cute is that? Doesn't she know that's old school? No one watches Winnie the Pooh anymore.