Sleepovers

My oldest daughter stayed at a friend’s house last night. Three 10-year-old girls trying to scare each other. And one of the girls was talking about the story where wolves were stealing babies from a village in India. I remember seeing the story somewhere, Discover, or whatever. Anyway, Autumn was scared by the story, in a good way. She said it was the freakiest story she’d ever heard.

And I said it wasn’t the freakiest story I’d ever heard.

She wanted to know what that story would be. And I remembered an old tale from when I was a teenager.

When building their house, some cousins of mine found some bones. They believe they belonged to someone who was traveling during the old west times, you know, the time of the covered wagons. When the house was built and after, there were incidents. They saw a ghostly figure. Radio dials went from one end of the dial to the other. Hammers flew through the air. They called their ghost, Lisa.

Well, when I was about 13, I would stay with my aunt and uncle, who lived in the house next to my cousins. And my aunt had recorded tapes of her saying the various incidents that had happened. Sort of an audio documentary of the hauntings. I remember listening to my aunt’s voice on a warm summer evening on the porch of her old white farmhouse.

That same summer, they decided to have a psychic come out to the house. They wanted to find out if she felt a presence at the house. And she read tarot cards and told futures. I remember sitting in the front yard of my cousin’s house with a bunch of other women as we waited our turn to have our tarot cards read.

I was young. The tarot card reader said it was difficult to read my cards because of my age. I don’t remember what she told me, although I wrote it all down (at my aunt’s insistence) on a notecard that I still own. I’ll have to dig it out and see how accurate it was.

So I started telling my daughter about all of this, although I skipped the part about Lisa the ghost, because the cousins still live in that house and I don’t want her to be worried if we go there.

The psychic said she felt I had lived past lives. She said my life immediately previous to this one I spent as a dog. She added that I had died a violent death suffering from rabies. My owner beat me to death with a stick , breaking my neck, and that if I felt my neck, I’d still fill the bump.

Autumn reached behind my neck to feel the bump and as she touched my skin, I growled at her.

The poor girl jumped a foot in the air and looked at me, tears shimmering in her eyes, and a questioning tone, “Mooomm?”

Maxine had also started to feel the back of my neck, but Autumn touched me first. Both girls jumped, as did Amanda on the other side of the room.

We all started laughing and I fessed up that I hadn’t lived a past life as a dog and that everyone has a bump on the back of their neck (the bone where the neck meets the spine protrudes well).

Now she wants me to tell her another freakier story. I’m fresh out. But that was fun.

And for those wondering, this story is true up to a certain part and then it all becomes fiction (well, except that I really did scare my girls today). But how much is true?