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Close Encounters of Another Kind

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By Don Wyatt

Most of you have seen programs on television about ghosts, haunted houses, and other strange happenings. If you are like me, you have a lot of interest in these things but in general you view these reports with a lot of skepticism.

Despite my disbelief, I have always found these shows to be entertaining and have often gotten a goose bump or two when watching them.

Regardless, I always believed these people were "off their rocker" or publicity seekers. These types of things really didn't happen. Or did they? My views began changing quickly once I began experiencing some unusual happenings myself.

I could fill an entire newsletter with some of the strange things that have happened to me. The scariest by far was one of the first.

I remember it was the first part of 1986 and I was a college student in my senior year. I woke up suddenly one night with the feeling that someone was watching me. I looked towards my bedroom door but saw no one. Then I looked towards the foot of my bed. What I saw wasn't someone. It was some-thing.

It was a short creature whose head was about doorknob-high. It had a long, pointed nose and very wrinkled looking skin. Its eyes glowed dull red and it wore what appeared to be a hooded robe. It did not appear to be solid.

Its appearance was more like a dense fog. The body of the creature did not stay consistent but seemed to move about and swirl within its shape.

At first I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me. But even after rubbing my eyes and looking back several times, the "creature" was still there. I could not help but stare at its eyes. It did nothing but stand there silently and stare back at me.

I probably saw it about 20 seconds before I closed my eyes, drew a deep breath and looked back again. It was finally gone. You want to talk about being spooked? I was for sure.

At this point, I still did not believe. I figured that this was actually my mind playing tricks on me. Maybe I was just extra tired. Perhaps I had eaten something bad or was having a reaction to some kind of medicine.

Even though I was not convinced what I had seen was real, I had many nights of tossing and turning before falling asleep of sheer exhaustion. I am ordinarily a deep sleeper but for a long time the slightest noise would wake me up.

I didn't dare tell anyone of my experience as I thought they would think I was crazy. After all, that is how I felt about others with similar claims. Little did I know there was more to come.

In the meanwhile, my mother got a better job and she and my father moved away. I moved into their bedroom for the extra space and the half bath that was attached.

I had been there a few weeks when another remarkable thing occurred one night just after I had settled into bed. It was the middle of summer so I had turned off the lamp on the ceiling fan but turned the fan on for comfort. I wasn't sleepy yet so I turned on the lamp on the night stand, grabbed a book and started to read.


I remember starting to feel a bit cold and considered turning the fan down. Being the lazy person I am, I just pulled up the bedspread and kept reading. Seconds later, a sudden clinking noise caught my attention.

I looked up to see the chain for the light fixture on the ceiling fan swinging back and forth erratically. Since there was nothing for the chain to catch on, I was puzzled as to how it started moving. I had barely looked back to my book when I heard the distinct sound of the chain being pulled. All at once, the room was flooded with light.

Needless to say, this scared the living daylights out of me. I immediately thought of the creature I had seen just a few months before. Was it back? Once I finally came out from under the covers, I got the courage to turn the lamp off - again. I tossed and turned for a long time trying to figure out what happened. Was there something wrong with the switch or was there some unseen force at work in my bedroom?

I finally convinced myself that somehow the switch wasn't completely off and slipped back into the on position. It had to be that. There was no such thing as a ghost. But what made the chain swing like it did beforehand?

After a while, I put the lamp incident out of my mind. It took a bit longer this time as I now had two things to think about. Things were mostly peaceful until about a year later.

It was a Thursday night and I was cleaning the house. My brother, with whom I shared 28 the home, was out so I was there alone. I picked up a pair of his shoes, took them to his room, and walked back to the den. I realized that I had left his bedroom light on and went back to turn it off.

A few minutes later, I started down the hall and saw the light on again. I was sure that it had been off because I had to go back to turn it off. Puzzled, I turned the light off again and went to check on the bathroom.

After cleaning part of the mess and hiding the rest, I returned to the hallway to find his bedroom light on again. I was beginning to feel a little spooked! I slowly stuck my head into his room and looked around. I didn't see anything so I turned the light off, again, and went to the kitchen to wash dishes.

Not too much later I had to go to the back of the house again. Once more, my brother's bedroom light was on. Half scared and half disgusted, I yelled out, "Would you please stop?!" The light stayed off until my brother came home and turned it on himself.

We later discussed this and compared notes on things that had been happening around the house. We had both experienced an occasional cold spot in the hall that we couldn't figure out. On separate occasions I had a watch and a ring disappear from my night stand as I slept.

One time, I felt something brush through the hair on the back of my head. Both of us had heard noises during the night that we believed to be the other. It turned out that neither of us had been up during any of these times.

Things just weren't adding up in my logical mind and I was beginning to wonder if maybe ghosts did exist.


I wasn't surprised when the red-eyed creature roused me from my sleep one more time. Again it just stared at me as I stared back, unable to move. I was scared as hell this time. I still hadn't told anyone about it but I soon would.

It was shortly before I was to get married and my fiancee and parents were visiting for the weekend. I gave her my bedroom and slept on the sofa in the den. In the middle of the night she awoke suddenly when the bed started shaking. She was extremely scared and got out of the room quickly.

She started down the hall to get me but went into the bathroom first. As she reached across the wall for the light switch she collapsed. When her knees hit the tile floor she woke up. Apparently she had fainted.

When she regained her senses she came into the den to wake me up and told me what happened. She refused to spend the rest of the night alone.

The next day I told her some of the things that had been happening around the house and included the sightings of the red-eyed creature. Thank goodness she still wanted to marry me.

More time passed and small events continued to happen. A while after we married, my wife and I bought a house of our own.

It was there that we started experiencing cabinet doors that would slam with no one around. What I thought was strange became even stranger when I noticed the reaction of my cats when this happened. Whether they were together or apart, I would often see them staring wide-eyed at the same spot just after one of the slams.

My wife and I tried our best but could not spot anything out of the ordinary. There were no bugs, cobwebs or shadows in the direction they were looking. Could they see something we could not?

Better jobs brought my wife and me to central Arkansas after a couple of years in that home. We found a rent house to live in while we searched for something to buy.

It was there that things really began to heat up. Besides an occasional cabinet-door slam or a lamp turning on with no one around, we started seeing physical events.

One evening while watching television, I noticed a single branch on a silk tree moving up and down as if someone were pulling it by the tip and then letting it go. After getting my wife's attention, she and I sat in wide-eyed amazement as the branch moved several more times before stopping. I tried to find a logical reason for the movement but could not.

The heater was not on and there were no fans running. There were no open doors or windows. If the movement had been caused by air, the rest of the limbs would have been moving too. There had to be some other reason.


Nothing could prepare my wife for what was about to happen next. One rainy Sunday morning on our way to church, I rescued a stuffed Mickey Mouse from the middle of the road. When I got home, I squeezed most of the water out of the soaking-wet rodent and put him on top of the upright deep freeze to dry.

A day or two later as I was watching a ball game, my wife yelled for me to come to the kitchen. When I got there she asked me in a very anxious voice, "Where's Mickey?" I spotted him about eight feet behind her in the middle of the kitchen floor. She told me he sailed by her head as she was cooking.

Needless to say, she was not happy! I figured that most likely that the poor mouse had simply tumbled off the deep freeze and rolled. Despite my best efforts to duplicate the journey, the plush toy never even made it more than a couple of feet.

Shortly after that, we found a house to buy and have now lived there over eight years. Our cabinet doors still slam on occasion and have even done so for visitors.

The cabinets are almost 50 years old and have absolutely no spring left in the hinges. If we don't push them all the way closed, they will stay open forever - or until some thing helps us out. This is not bad during the day but when it wakes me up in the middle of the night it tends to be irritating.

I have seen another type of apparition several times at this house. It appears as an irregularly-shaped black blob about the size of a baseball moving across the wall near or at the ceiling.

Its shape is not consistent -- it's almost like it is flowing. Because of the way it is moving, slowly at first then speeding up, it appears to be attempting to sneak through the house. Each time I have seen it, I have noticed it in my peripheral vision and had to turn to see it directly.

It disappears within a few seconds after that. Its behavior is almost like it knows it has been seen and it scurries away like a roach when you turn on the light.

I've grown comfortable with all of these things over the years and when they happen I tend to shrug my shoulders and dismiss them. Nothing has ever happened that I would consider dangerous or evil.

Almost everything I've encountered has been more playful than bad. With the exception of three pieces of jewelry that have disappeared overnight or a few hours of lost sleep, I can't really say there is anything negative about my experiences.

I don't often share my stories because I know that many will view me as I used to view others - some kind of a nut case or publicity seeker.

Trust me. I am neither of these. I am just someone who now has an open mind about the supernatural.