Like this:

Okay .  Before you become too cool to read this, let it be known that these stories are real .
However, I’m not saying the ghosts are real .  I mean, actually, some of these stories don’t even really HAVE ghosts !

They’re just experiences that, once upon a time, spooked me the hell out .

I call this article:

5 Real Ghost Stories From My Life PRESENTED WITH Crappy Kid-like Drawings Done in MS PAINT !

If we were around a campfire, here are the stories I would tell you .
And the eye-scarring pictures I would never want you to see .

1.  Ghost Baby

The Story

This one takes place when I was in the 3rd grade, random weekend at home .  I was tossing my lunch dishes into the kitchen sink and as I looked out the window onto my street, I noticed somebody looking at me .  It was a kid in the backseat of a car parked right in front of my house .  I didn’t really think anything of it, other than how odd it was that somebody left their kid in the car in this crazy heat (yes, my rational logic kicked in at an early age) .   After my cup and plate settled its place in the sink, without washing anything, I began to walk out of the kitchen .

That’s when it struck me .  Hey .
That was my mom’s car parked out front .

I went back to the window to double check .  And there it was .  My mom’s yellow corolla parked just right outside the house against the curb like always .  But this time no kid .  I hadn’t realized it was her car earlier because the first thing I noticed was the kid, not the car .  And I didn’t think much of either .  Until now that I’d felt the after-effect of enough spooks to clench my butt every time I looked out the kitchen window for the next three grades .  Perfect .

He's ... looking ... right ... at me .

What It Probably Was ..

It might’ve been somebody else’s car parked in front of the house for that second .  The owner must’ve driven off as I walked away from the window, and I came back only to see my mom’s car parked in front of the previous spot .  My brain must’ve associated it as being the same exact car I was seeing since they could’ve been pretty close together, and similar in style .  Hey it was the early 90′s, yellow Corollas were that popular .

Maybe I didn’t see the driver cuz he was bending down at that exact moment, trying to pick something up off the floor of the car, while his creepy little kid in the backseat had nothing better to do than stare directly at me, right into the cornea of my eye, from two hundred feetaway .  Sure, why not ?

What I Definitely Don’t Want It To Be …

The backseat of the car could’ve been haunted by the spirit of some weird kid .
Which eerily explains why during my ages of 4 to 9, I had an unexplainable habit of violently throwing up whenever I sat in the backseat .
Ummm .. whoa .

2.  Hallway

The Story

At a very early age, I had a horrible time trying to fall asleep .  Around the time I was 5, I remember laying in bed for hours, staring into the hallway from my room .  Nothing much to look at .  The hallway was never dark, for some reason we always kept the light on (back in the day when California actually needed to get rid of surplus amounts of electricity) .  So I would stare into a brightly lit hallway, laying in my bed with the covers up to my neck, not being able to get a wink of sleep .

However, when I finally would, weird things would happen .
Or rather, the same weird thing .  The same exact weird thing .

This huge shadow of a person standing in my hallway .  Leaning against the wall .  If this was a human being, then it was definitely Yao Ming  who time traveled back to 1988 to chill out for a breather in my hallway .  The thing was a towering figure .

It would just stand there, inching closer and closer to my door .  Ridiculously slow .  Like a bad unconfident extra in a feature film .  It would stand, lean on the wall, inch forward, stand, lean on the wall .  Rinse and repeat .

But before it got to my door, it would always turn and go into my sister’s room or the bathroom, which were located left and right in that hallway .  It would never come into mine .

Creepy now .  But of course as a kid, I totally accepted this weirdness as part of what makes the world logical .

But here’s where it gets slightly weirder .

On the fourth time that i witnessed this, the big shadowy figure had a friend .
And it was this puffy little creature, also draped in black shadow .  It was round like a big koosh ball, and walked like it was a dog but obviously couldn’t be since it looked more like a hairy globe scale model of Jupiter waddling through my hallway .  It followed behind the big guy .  And this time they both stopped in front of my doorway .  And I stared at them until I fell completely asleep .

Exactly like this .

If you think it’s not that weird, because hallways are dark and people’s eyes tend to create all kinds of retardedness in that condition, remember what I said .  The hallway lights were completely on .

So the weird thing you have to imagine, is seeing a jet black shadow figure walking in a perfectly lit hallway .  Walking with total awareness that you are looking .. right .. at .. it .

What It Probably Was …

Me just making up weird shit as a kid .  Cuz I was so bored to death, I created something even more boring to put me to sleep .

Or it could’ve just been my dad, who got a lot taller for some reason and decided to roll a big trash bag around the hall real slowly .
I’m guessing the first one is the psychologist’s pick .

What I Definitely Don’t Want It To Be …

Yao Ming who traveled back in time to chill out and take a breather in my hallway .  And I guess decided to roll our trash bag around the hall .

3.  Gnome Crush

This story doesn’t even have a ghost .  And I’m probably not even going to draw a picture .  It’s just stupid as hell, and recent as hell .  If you’ll believe hell can amplify the intensity of both those things .

The Story

A little over a year ago, I was in the car with Victor, and we had just arrived at our house after a long and rewarding day of probably nothing much .  I pulled over near the curb to park, when the weirdest most unexplainable thing happened .

As I threw the car into reverse, and began to slowly back up, we felt the car run over something .
And the sound we heard can only be phoenetically described as “EWWWUHHHH”

Which, in case, you can’t tell, is the closest thing to what normal people imagine a gnome being crushed, would sound like .
We crushed a gnome !

We seriously looked at each other in disbelief, and decided to get out and check for gnome guts .

Nothing .  The little scamp must’ve squirmed his way out from under the tire and made a break for it .
We sat there and literally went over the facts, and conclusively decided that the situation was grossly inconclusive .

That damn gnome is still out there .  Making his ewwuhh sound all over the underside of people’s tires .  Inconsiderate bastard .

Pretty sure my drawing of Victor is scarier than the gnome .

What It Probably Was …

Some dumb cat .

Or Victor being an amazing passenger seat ventriliquist .

What I Definitely Don’t Want It To Be …

An evil gnome .  The kind that swore revenge on me and has been hiding in my car’s wheel well, waiting for the perfect opportunity to slice my axle and have my tire come right off the car while i’m driving, causing the wheel to bust out the front of my bumper, therefore shifting the car to weigh down at the driver’s corner, scraping the underside abrasively enough against the concrete to potentially cause a fire so horrific, I would be left with the choices of ‘burn to death’ or ‘jump out and die to death’ .

*sigh*

Oh, by the way .

That ridiculous axle example ?  That’s an incident that ACTUALLY mysteriously happened to me, a few months later, right next to the spot where we previously ‘gnomed it up’ .

Really effin creepy to think about .  Eff that effness .

4.  Behind the Mortuary

Here’s where you get creeped out by story number one, just a little bit more .

The Story

As a kid, I used to go to church at this place right next to a mortuary .

The church and the mortuary were unaffiliated, so there was a big wall right in-between the two .  I guess to keep the church kids from being idiots and ditching evening service to check out dead dudes .

Can’t believe any single kid would be THAT much of a dumbass .

Which is why I got a bunch of friends to do it with me .  (C’mon, I was like 12 !)

We jumped the wall and ended up at the back of the mortuary .  It was a closed-off parking lot that didn’t seem to have any street access .  Apparently they didn’t have any need for the lot, since checkin out dead dudes wasn’t so popular anymore, but we kids were bringin it back in style .  There wasn’t much to explore, except for one thing that caught all of our attention (which is hard to do with kids) .

Guess what was back there .

An exact, EXACT, make and model of my mom’s car .  Yellow 1982 Corolla .  The same car that I was talking about earlier .  The one with the creepy kid in the backseat .  All by itself, at the corner of the rear parking lot .

Now I know what you’re thinking, but that joke I made in the beginning about that car being common, was made in complete and total sarcasm .  I’ve seen a total of two of those my whole life .  And yep, it’s THOSE two .

You also might be thinking, it can’t be the same car .

It can’t be .

Well you’re RIGHT .  This car had one major difference .

It was BURNED completely through .

We went up to the remains of the car and it looked like it experienced a crazy engine fire at one point, the kind of fire that nobody was around to put out .  It was completely junked, chock full of all kinds of random garbage and disgusting bugs living inside of it .  For a second I got worried, and really thought that this might be my mom’s car .  And that something happened to her today while I was gone .  Perhaps I just stumbled onto the remains of some horiffic thing that had been done ?  I looked all over the car for more proof that it wasn’t my mom’s .

And I’m not even at the scary part .

Remember how I said the car was burned all the way through ?  I exaggerated .  The one thing that was perfectly intact was the backseat .

Other than that, you had overcooked char-broiled Corolla on all sides, with the exception of hints of yellow exterior paint on the outside .  Not much to work with .

But why the backseat ?

As if things couldn’t get any creepier, one of the other kids yells out to us, telling us he found a ‘clue’ .
See, at the time, we used our imaginations to make this a mystery case, like in Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys books .  The kids were all building up the situation to make it seem like more than it was .  However, to me, I didn’t need to do any building .  When I saw this kid’s clue, I totally freaked .

The car was left close to a nearby wall .  One of the kids found something written there and signaled for the rest of us to come see it .

Right there on the wall, written in what looked like a thick red crayon, was the word, “INNOCENT” .

Call me van gogh .

…

Want to know the creepiest part ?

The word was scrawled like it was written by a kid .  And as I was standing at that wall, I turned and looked back at the burnt car .

I had a perfect perpendicular point of view to the broadside of the burnt Corolla .
Just like I would, if it was parked in front of my house .
Right outside my kitchen window, to the front curb .

Instant shivers straight through my spine .

What It Probably Was …

A whole lot of coincidence .  A WHOLE WHOLE lot of creepy coincidence .
Put together in conjunction with playground-style imagination .

What I Definitely Don’t Want It To Be …

There are a lot of ways that I don’t want these two stories to be connected .

It would just be way too eerie .  But rather than share with you, my own creepy conclusions on this one, I’ll leave the creativity up to you .
Don’t get carried away .

5.  Aris’s Little Girl

The Story

When I first met Aris back in 2001, I used to visit him at his old house in Montebello .  One day we were sitting around the living room and I saw a piece of paper on the coffee table .  It looked like some kids were drawing on it, so I asked him what it was .

He didn’t seem to excited to tell me .  It was more like a reluctancy; the kind of hesitation you apply when you don’t want to get somebody involved in a negative situation .  But I put on my macho voice and acted like I didn’t care anyway, so he told me .

His story began as a normal night, with him laying on the living room couch watching TV .
He started to doze off, but woke up to the sight of what looked like a little girl standing several feet away in his living room .

She had on a puffy sleeve white dress, almost like what an antique children’s doll would wear .  I was expecting him to add in the ‘red glowing eyes’ feature just to put some more spice to the scare, but he described her as an average sunday-best-dressed little girl .  The figure of the little girl starts to get closer to him, almost like she’s curious about him .  But Aris, realizing this is no normal nightly situation, pulls the blanket over his head and cowers until he falls asleep .

I laughed at his story .  I thought it was so typical .  Little girl, white puffy dress, shadowy figure .. heard it all before .  It’s been done and I wasn’t impressed .  That’s when I took a look at that paper on the coffee table again .

Hello .

Yeah, that made it a bit creepier .
Aris told me, the first thing he did that morning, was draw exactly what he saw .

But I went home that night, and didn’t think about that story much anymore .
However, that feeling of confidence wasn’t going to be there in the morning .

I woke up in the middle of the night .

And something was standing at the foot of my bed .  Perfectly still .
I remembered Aris’s story, and I still scoffed at the thought .  I knew that my mind was playing tricks on me, because Aris had shown me that stupid picture he drew, the image was taking over my thoughts .  And being half asleep, I knew I was manifesting some kind of delirious illusion .  It was the same girl as the picture, puffed sleeves and all .  Doll-like hair, everything accurate to the story .  She was standing there, and scooting over slowly to meet me at my side of the bed .

I still thought it was bullshit, and that my mind was getting the best of me .

But here’s the part of the story where I get serious .

In my bedroom at the time, I had one of those old boxy stereo systems .  It was a Panasonic tape and CD Changer deck that sat on top of my work desk .  If you can remember anything about these big ol’ monstrosities, it’s that they were decorated with flashing lights all over the place, for pretty much no reason more than glitz and glamour in the pseudo-high tech sense .  It practically lit up my room at night with neon strobes and blinking dials .

And here’s why that’s significant .

The figure of the girl started to move closer to the stereo system .  Which was pretty much the last thing in between her and me .  And I started to notice something odd .

The lights from the stereo were reflecting and bouncing off of her .

As if she were real .

My confidence started to drain away .  And I figured this couldn’t be right .  Is my imagination really that strong, where I know I’m completely awake, but I’m still seeing a product of delirium this accurately ?

And on that very second, when I told myself for the last time, that this wasn’t real .  She took one more step .

And covered the entire stereo system, blocking out all the lights .  And making the room completely dark .

As if to convince me of the one thing I was afraid to admit .
It was almost like she knew .

I covered myself with the sheets, and laid there whispering OH SHIT more times than I’ve ever previously said .
I waited for what felt like hours for some kind of touch .  Also terrified that this little girl was going to end up underneath the covers with me somehow .  My mind went into a nervous panic and eventually shut down .

So I fell asleep .

Woke up .

Went to Aris’s house .

And said

FUCKIN ARIS !

What It Probably Was …

My mind getting the best of me .
I should’ve talked myself out of believing that nonsense .
Kind of like how I’m doing right now !

What I Definitely Don’t Want It To Be …

A ghost that gets passed around by drawing it and showing it to people .

Hmm .. in that case ..

Good luck with her .

. ryan