I Want to Believe…

After a long, long time, I've decided to start blogging again. And for no particular reason, I decided to begin with this recent anecdote.

Anyone who knows me knows I love supernatural themes and horror stories. Since I was a teenager, I’ve searched for opportunities to experience strange occurrences, without success.

When I lived in Miami for six months in the early 2000’s I had an experience anyone else would have attributed to restless spirits, but which I am fully convinced was the result of a very stressful period in my life.

We were renting an apartment in Fountainebleu Boulevard and I recall going to bed and hearing a woman’s voice calling my name from the bedroom door, and one night when I lay facing the night table, I felt what I thought was my wife embracing me from behind. Only the embrace suddenly turned into very violent heaving and shoving (and it was not my wife, believe me!). Both times I rationalized I must have been suffering from stress and was probably half asleep (I had just moved to the States without a job, my wife was about to have a baby and I barely had enough money to pay for the medical expenses and our own basic needs) so I don’t count these as “supernatural” experiences.

So up until a few days ago, whenever conversation turned to these themes, I usually told the only story I could about the only inexplicable experience I had as a very young child. Back then I slept in a crib in my parents’ room and I could see a mirror from a big wall to wall closet. On that mirror I seemed to recall every night watching strange silhouetted creatures moving around and interacting, it seemed as if they were whispering to each other: they were human shaped, black clad and spidery limbed, with pointy hoods and a blank face (it seemed like a white oval with undistinguishable features).  I believed I shouldn’t stare at them too long or they would realize I was watching them. One night I dared to do so for too long and one of the creatures seemed to jerkily jump out of the mirror and approach my crib.

I perfectly recall what it looked like up close, and it’s easy to do so, because even back then I knew where that face came from (even so, imagine how something like this looming over and staring at him would scare the bejeezus out of a 2 year old):

Yes, if you grew up in the ‘70s you probably remember the infamous Angel Fink, one of the model kits designed by Ed “Big Daddy” Roth, the creator of Ratfink.

So, I figured these beings could take a familiar shape that would scare me. But I still wanted to believe all these years that they were not the product of my imagination, but actual creatures from another plane of existence that only my innocent child’s eyes could perceive through the mirror.

That is, until last week, when I found in my YouTube account a suggested link to an old Lone Ranger cartoon (circa 1966, not the ‘70’s version). These shows re-ran on Mexican TV when I was very young (1972-’73) and I particularly remember this episode (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHEiGqvMMpI). It was called Cult of the Black Widow. I had never seen it since those years and when I saw it last week something struck me like a bolt of lightning.

Without going into detail, the story involves a mysterious female witch-like character (her greenish face revealed almost at the end of the story) robbing banks with the aid of two nefarious minions. And to my surprise, this is what the goons looked like:

So, a personal years-old mystery has just been unraveled, the supernatural experience turned out to be a trick of my almost sleeping subconscious mind.

Too bad. For a lover of horror and ghost stories such as myself, it was exciting to have a small piece of the supernatural to hold on to. But alas, up until now I haven’t had the fortune of experiencing anything beyond the typical "paralysis", "hovering presence watching you" or "thing sitting on the bed", all of which always happen when you are already falling into sleep (and most probably during periods of stress).

But I don’t discard anything yet. As Fox Mulder’s X-Files’ office poster said, “I Want To Believe”.

Have you ever had any supernatural experiences? Or have you experienced these “near sleep” occurrences?