PART ONE

When I was 6 years old, in 1970, we moved to a house for free, that a friend of my father's owned. We had just been through a serious house fire in our previous home. At first things seemed normal enough. But soon odd things began happening, like lights going on & off seemingly of their own accord.

One day I had "pink eye", so my mother walked me to the hospital in the next town. The doctors were mean, & told me if I did not allow them to put drops in my eye, they would have to take my eyeball out. They stood around me menacingly. When I left their office, I had a patch over my right eye & they told my mother, "Make sure she keeps her dirty hands out of her eyes!"

We walked home. I sat on the edge of a bed as my parents argued in the next room. My brother (4 years old) sat next to me. The TV was nearby but off. When I looked at the floor beneath the TV, I saw the layers of dust move towards each other as though alive. A small cow's head was formed before my very eyes. I was astonished. I turned to my brother & said, "Wow! Do you see that?"  & immedietly realized that he was not seeing it. (Later, when I was older, I wondered if I had been given LSD.)

From then on, the images & sensations continued weirdly.  I do not recall everything in chronological order, but I will try to convey what it was like for us, not just me, but for my family, too.

One day, I saw a deflated balloon on the floor...the wrong color, it was a rich BROWN.  I was shocked to see a balloon that color, as I had never seen a brown balloon before, nor have I since. Another day, I felt the skin on my hand being pinched & pulled upward. I could see the skin being pulled up by some invisible force. I often saw colors, like fogs,  floating around too. Once I tried on a new dress, but it started strangling me & I screamed & ripped it off.  I started seeing images floating around, for example, one day I saw what looked like a pencil drawn picture of a woman sweeping, on the plaster hole in the wall, but it floated off the wall & into the air. Another time, I saw what looked like the reflection of a mustached man in the toaster, but no such man was in the room. Every night I heard a gobbling noise, which I imagined was two dead people eating eachother & never being satisfied. As for my other hallucinations, I had not come to any conclusion about them, what they meant or why it was happening. I knew *something* was wrong though.

I was poking at a piece of plastic bag just for something to do with my hands, & my mother warned me, "You are poking holes in Jesus' body." She became very religious in a bizarre way, as she often did when "manic"....she tore out pics of Jesus from her Bible & hung them on the walls. She read Bible verses to me. And she started staying up all night dancing to Beatles albums & getting delusional in her wildest manic phase ever. She was bi polar, but was never so sick as this. She was afraid to sleep, thinking death would claim her. She thought the Beatle's Album, "Rubber Soul" was about her soul being in danger.

Meanwhile, my father (his name was Albert, & that is what we kids always called him) started thinking that Satan was in the walls...so he took an axe to many walls, chopping them completely down. It must've been hard work, but he was addicted to amphetamine at the time, so had loads of energy. Now each floor was very spacious. My father created swings for me & my brother, which hung from the ceiling on the 2nd floor so we could swing right inside the house.

One night my mother thought she was pregnant so decided to walk to the hospital by herself. I may be mixing up three different nights in my head into one, but I will put all these events in one night for brevity. These things took place while she was away. First, there were the pounding noises coming from the attic. My father did not think it was a branch with the wind against the house, cause we had never heard this before. We all heard it that night, my father, Albert, my brother Bernie, & myself. BANG....BANG....BANG !!! My father tried to talk to It: "Come on down & have some coffee with us!" No reply, but pounding. I could tell my father was scared.

Then suddenly there were different colored balls of light filling up one whole wall. We all saw that, too. (I am explaining which things were shared & which things only I experienced.) It was scarey, it seemed like some kind of thing from outer space or something. We were in a panic, wondering what the hell was going on!

After that stopped, there was a knocking noise from downstairs, coming from the front door. My father yelled out, "Who is it?" No answer. He called out a few more times. No answer. He moved to go downstairs. I warned him, "DON'T GO!! THEY DID NOT ANSWER YOU!" But he went downstairs anyway, & opened the door...He came back upstairs with a huge gash in his forehead, blood pouring down his face. (He had a big scar there for the rest of his life.) He got his rifle to be as safe as possible & sat down to wait till my mother got home. I sat on his lap. Then I started hallucinating again. I looked at his face & his cheek was purple. I looked accross the room at the coats in the corner & they were spinning rapidly, their wrinkles changing into a new grotesque face with each spin.

My mom finally got home & we all went to the hospital so Albert could get stitches.

(MORE OF THIS TRUE STORY COMING SOON! NOT QUITE FINISHED YET, MORE TO COME NEXT EDITION, HOPEFULLY!)