My Woo-Woo Experience in Oregon (While Getting Ready for Happy Hour)
Photo of eerie woman - by Steinar Engeland
I was getting myself presentable for our evening happy hour yesterday, because I always like to dress up for that pre-dinner time. It makes me feel special to dress up, for one thing, and I want my husband to feel special from seeing my efforts. Even though we don’t have guests for happy hour often anymore, since COVID put the kibosh on inviting friends, it’s still an important time. That hour makes me literally happy, whether we are entertaining others or I’m just having a drink with my husband, and we celebrate that hour every day, no matter where we happen to be.
But this isn’t about happy hour. That explanation was just an opening, a reason for why I was standing in front of the mirror when the ‘woo-woo’ event happened.
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I had gone to my closet to put on the dress I had chosen for the evening before I began the process of applying make-up, then stood looking at myself in the mirror. I had a sudden feeling of a change in the atmosphere that surrounded me. My reflection began to look as if a translucent, brownish cloth had been placed in front of the mirror because my entire surroundings looked that same brownish tint, but without definition. I felt displaced, as if I had been moved to another dimension in time and space.
That sensation lasted only seconds, though, before things began to clear up and look normal. I thought I was experiencing some kind of vertigo, but I didn’t feel dizzy. I was ready to let it go as a fluke until a few seconds later, something even weirder happened.
When my thoughts began to return to the task at hand…applying makeup…I felt something bump into my elbow. I turned to look at the nothingness in the vast space of our bathroom and saw exactly that…nothing. Then, coincidentally, I heard a big thump on the glass of the window to my left, with the clatter of the venetian blind having been bumped.
A bird hitting the window from the outside? I wondered. It sounded like one might have hit the glass hard enough to knock the bird out so that it fell to the ground, dazed. At least that’s what it sounded like. But I hoped it was able to fly away. When I looked out the window, I saw nothing outside to tell me conclusively that a bird was the cause of the noise.
As I thought about the bang and clatter, I realized that, even though the bang on the window could have been explained, if it was a bird, what about the bumping of my elbow? It was not just a brush or a tap; it was a bump like a person had passed me too closely, and my elbow was in the way. But no one was there but me.
Strange, I thought. But the mystery became even stranger when I remembered that the clatter of the blinds was a nano-second sooner than the bang on the window.
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I went outside to check on the bird theory. There was no bird lying on the ground, which is a good thing, or a mark on the window that a bird had hit it, because that’s usually the case with our large living room window, I remembered, but still, that leaves no conclusion.
While I was outside investigating the bird theory, I walked up to the window and hit it hard enough to make the same loud bang/thump sound I had heard inside. The bang was about the same loudness, as I’d remember, maybe even louder, but it didn’t make the blinds on the inside so much as quiver. I hit the window harder and in a different place. Same results: a bang on the outside of the window had no effect on the blinds on the inside.
“Mmmmm! That’s scary,” I muttered. “What the hell happened in there?”
Because our master bathroom is large and sunny with a skylight, two windows, and a reflective mirror that spans the length of the long cabinet that holds two sinks, I could not have missed seeing someone lurking in the room with me.
Okay, I told myself, I need to think this through. I could have had a dizzy moment from putting on my dress, and then when I looked into the mirror, it was with fuzzy eyes. That’s an easy enough explanation.
“But how can I explain the bump to my elbow? It wasn’t just a muscle twitch; it was a bump that caused my arm to move,” I stated to no one.
At first, I thought the bang on the window had been an easy explanation, but what about the rattle of the blinds? I could explain nothing that happened in those few minutes of time with any kind of logic. And that haunts me. I need an explanation.
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Ghosts, if any happened to live in our house unseen and unfelt during the eight years living there, would not have made noise by banging into windows or into a person to have their touch felt, would they? And if so, why come out of hiding now, after all these years? I thought ghosts were more subtle…their wispiness not allowing them to touch someone and have that touch be felt strongly. At least, that had been my impression when I saw movies or read a book about ghosts.
I actually saw a ghost in an old 1800s saloon-turned-restaurant, and it left me quivering in fright, or at least left me feeling astonished. I’ve always been open to that kind of supernatural experience. I have natural precognitive abilities at times: knowing in advance that the phone will ring and who will be calling, for example, and I can often predict a happening in advance. I can read people well and will know in my gut when a person is a good person or a bad one, or whether someone is lying or being truthful. My intuitions have been reliable, up until now.
With this incident, I have no intuitive feelings whatsoever, no fears, no guesses, no emotions or thoughts other than what the hell! I’m perplexed. Totally. I like answers, or even mere possibilities. But today, I have nothing with which to explain my woo-woo moment, and that is disconcerting. I wish I had an answer to this puzzle besides wondering: ‘Am I turning into a Looney Tune?’