Quicksand Fans

Hey gang! My Lady Wife and I have been watching a bunch of these "paranormal" shows on TV lately. Our current favorite is "The Dead Files" on Travel Channel.

Just curious if the folks on the forum have any cool stories of the unexplained you'd like to share. I'll start by sharing one.

For a natural skeptic, I have had more than my share of unexplained experiences. Twice I've seen aircraft that were outside the configuration and performance envelope of anything I am aware of, and the house we live in seems to actually be haunted (multiple independent witnesses with no foreknowledge.) But none of those makes a good story. Now, the land our house sits on- that is where things get interesting.

There are places on the property where a compass either won't give an accurate reading, or will actually spin (again, multiple independent observations.) I had heard a couple stories of people getting "lost" on the property despite obvious landmarks and it being divided into neat boxes by stone walls- you have to cross/pass through a wall to get from one section to another. Even had one experience like this myself - ended up about 1/4 mile south of where I intended to go, but I dismissed it as an overactive imagination on my part.

A few years later, on a beautiful sunny fall day I was out doing trail work in the back woods. I was opening up an abandoned but formerly well-used trail- it was easy to follow since it was worn into the ground. I was using a machete to widen the opening to roughly three feet wide and seven feet high. I had just cleared a particularly overgrown section and came out into a section of light woods- no underbrush, good sight distances. I was a little winded, so I stopped to rest for a second. I leaned my head against a handy tree and closed my eyes for a second. When I opened my eyes, the trail was gone.

Okay, no problem. I'm no babe in the woods. I stopped and took a good look around, figuring I was just disoriented. Still no trail. Again, the trail was so obvious before being cleared that a kindergartner could follow it, plus I had been opening it up, leaving lots of obviously fresh-cut branches on the ground and the bright white cut ends on the trees. So, being very logical and methodical, I started from the tree I had been leaning on and made a circle. Still didn't cut my back trail. Bigger circle- still no trail. I kept making bigger circles until it was hard to keep track of the tree I was using as a reference point. Still no trail. Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot? I finally gave up on finding the trail, took a bearing on the sun, headed south until I hit our south boundary fence, followed it west to the county road and then back north to the house. No problem- Nachtjaeger 1, weird woods 0.

Next day, I went back out the same way I originally went, to figure out what in heck had happened. Yeah, I took a compass with me, and a survival pack just in case. I retraced my steps, following the well-worn trail and the signs where I had done my machete work. And then the signs where I had been clearing the trail just- stopped. I had never cleared the trail as far as that open section of woods- hadn't gotten within a hundred yards of it. How in the name of Charles Fort had I traveled at least a hundred yards, part of the journey through thick brush, in the blink of an eye, without any memory of having done so? Looking back on my previous experience, how had the dog and I gone from our north-center woods to behind the property two houses down the road to the south, with no memory of having crossed any of at least three intervening stone walls, and in far less time than the walk should have taken? And (as she related the story to my wife) how had my wife's mother gone from the blueberry patch far out in the woods to behind the old house in a single moment of dizziness, with no time having elapsed on her normally functioning wristwatch? I have no logical or reasonable explanation.

Fun!

I have two of these stories. One is not much of a story, but is genuinely supernatural (or, as the locals here call it, chicken skin). The other is a good story, but has a perfectly rational explanation. I'll tell the good story this time.

I was a newly-employed manager-level type at a PEG access television station in Hawaii, the new head of the Training Department. The building was a 3-story glass-and-steel edifice; a glorious, shiny, modern cube. Every exterior wall was floor-to-ceiling glass.

I had a cubicle in the middle of a center area. No big whoop, I was the new guy, right? But my newly-revamped department was bringing in 2-3 more FT people, and there was no space for them. So I started looking around for alternatives. There was a corner office, CORNER OFFICE, being used for storage. A corner fucking office, floor-to-ceiling windows for TWO WALLS, and it was being used for storage. I started pushing for a re-evaluation of that space. Not that I expected to get it, mind you... but I figured a ripple move of 2-3 people more important than me would result in me having an actual office and my cubicle being free for my subordinates.

There was an awful lot of resistance to the idea of a person using that office, which I didn't understand. Then someone confided that the last person to inhabit the office had died.

Really? That's it?

Further research confirmed the fact, the former inhabitant had died. Three years after leaving the company. Of a heart attack. While paddling a kayak between islands. In his late 60s. Jee-ZUS! Give me a break!

I pushed and pushed and pushed. Finally, the boss relented and actually offered ME the office. Holy shit!

Then I got the truth. As I walked through the halls and passed co-workers, these intelligent, technically skilled, highly educated television professionals all took every opportunity to find me alone, pin me to a wall, and warn me: that office is where the Night Marchers enter the building.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nightmarchers
For your convenience.

Seriously, I must have been pulled aside by more than 30 people in the weeks leading up to my taking possession of the office. They offered advice on what to do should I meet a Night Marcher. They pleaded with me to change my reckless plan. They placed hands on me and blessed me.

The boss made plans to bring a Kahuna, a Hawaiian holy person, to bless the room. When it turned out that Kahuna don't do such things for free, she decided to bless it herself. The other employees were not impressed.

I moved in just as Summer was handing the torch to Autumn (which is a subtle change in Hawaii). And people constantly, CONSTANTLY, dropped by to check up on me. Well, most of them did. Some began avoiding that corner of the building, or avoiding the first floor entirely. No one, and I mean no one, congratulated me on my fortune landing a giant corner office, and no one would stay to visit.

As part of my conditions when I accepted this job, I had decreed that I would work a four day week, taking Tuesdays off to teach classes at a local private university to which I had ties. As a manager, I could set my hours, so I would come in at a leisurely 9am (to avoid traffic) and stay a minimum of 11 hours (10 hours, plus a 1-hour lunch), which put my earliest departure time at 8pm. Being a salaried manager, it was usually later. Pretty much everyone else in the building went home at 5, and the doors were officially locked at 9pm, so being there alone wasn't uncommon.

Being alone in a building can be a little unnerving. Being alone after dark can be a little unnerving. And being alone after weeks of every single person in the building being convinced you are about to die at the hands of vengeful spirits can be a little unnerving. So I was probably a little unnerved the night I heard the sound.

It was the sound of the dead rising, en masse, from their graves.

You know this sound, you know it in your soul. It is a low sound, almost too low to hear, so low that it vibrates in your chest and rattles your bones. It's an all-pervasive sound, coming from everywhere and nowhere. It's a loud sound, not a half-imagined one, something that cannot be ignored and cannot be dismissed. It's a groan that only could come from the souls of the tortured damned.

It's a terrifying sound.

My mind fragmented. That's the only way to describe it. "Huh, I wonder what that was?" asked my calm rational mind as the lizard brain engaged the feet. "Hey, what am I doing?" pondered the rational mind as I hurried down the hallway and into the stairwell down to the parking garage. "Wait, I didn't log out or shut down my computer!" protested my rational brain as the lizard brain stuck the key into the lock for my car door. "Well, I guess I'm going home now," observed my rational brain as the lizard brain handled merging onto the freeway.

I didn't mention the event at work the next day. I was slightly embarrassed about my behavior and too proud to admit there might have been any truth to the supernatural concerns. And there, right around lunchtime, surrounded by friends and coworkers on a bright sunshiney Hawaiian day, the sound repeated.

It's funny how much circumstances change perception. No one freaked, no one ran, no one did anything other than glance up from what they were doing.

Remember the details. The building is a 3-story cube, glass and steel. Floor-to-ceiling glass on all exterior walls, all three floors, held in place between steel ribs. The seasons were changing which meant (do you see it yet?) that the direction of the prevailing winds were changing. What I had heard for the first time, alone in the dark in my "haunted" office, was a gust of wind hitting the building at right angles, causing all of that glass and steel to flex, and to groan.

Once I moved on with my professional career, changing PEG access for higher education, the Training Department lost that corner office to a Director. I guess that since I survived my several-year tenure there, it was deemed safe enough for someone truly important to occupy.