Unearthly Realms

by Ron L. Carter

Ty realized it would be a while before he was able to try and make contact with his mom through the medium, since he had to wait six weeks. It was during that time Ty asked Markus and Holly if they had ever had any experiences with ghosts, spirits or the supernatural when they were still on earth. Markus told them that he never had any personal experience, but his friend’s dad and sister did. He told Markus the entire thing was just a weird experience with something they couldn’t explain. He said his friend told him his dad came home late one night from work. He had recently gotten a divorce and was living alone in a small old beat-up house. He told Markus that one night his dad was through working and it was around midnight as he made his way into the little house. Just as he entered, he heard something banging loudly on the outside walls. He said it was so loud he thought whoever was doing it had a couple of baseball bats hitting the house as they made their way around the entire outside perimeter of the house. He couldn’t figure out why someone would be doing that and especially in the middle of the night. He went to the door and quickly opened it, hoping he could catch whoever was making the noise. Just as he opened the door something rapidly swished by him and it happened so quickly that he couldn’t see what it was. He looked around the kitchen to see what had come in. There was a creature, which could only be described by him, as a short hairy troll looking thing with red eyes, scary long teeth and long arms almost touching the ground. It was only about three and a half to four feet tall and it was standing right in front of him only about eight feet away. His dad said he was frozen in shock for a few seconds as they stood there just looking at each other. His dad was looking down at the creature trying to figure out what it was. Neither seemed to know exactly what the other one was going to do next as they stood paralyzed for what his dad said was several seconds. Then, in an instant and without hesitation, the creature quickly turned and made a dash for the outside. His dad said it made a high screeching growl sound as it left.

  He told Markus that wasn’t the only encounter his dad had with the hairy little creature. It showed up again a few years later at another house when he lived in the middle of an orange grove with his daughter and her family. One night while his daughter’s husband was working, and they were sitting in the living room watching television, they heard the loud beating sound on the outside of the house. It was so loud that his daughter and her two kids put their hands over their ears. He told his daughter it was the same sound as he’d heard before when he saw the small troll like creature at the house. Everyone had a hard time believing his first story, but then it was happening again and this time he wasn’t alone. He had witnesses. As the pounding continued his daughter, who didn’t quite believe the small creature story the first time, grabbed a baseball bat and went outside to confront the person that was making the noise. What she saw next frightened her so bad that she started screaming and yelling and ran back into the house. She yelled to her dad that she saw the creature pounding on the walls with its fists. She quickly locked all the door and windows and cowered on the couch with her two young kids. She was shaking, when she said it was the same harry little creature her dad had told everyone he’d seen. After she saw it, the creature stopped beating on the house and ran into the dark. It didn’t torment them anymore that night. She was so freaked out by the experience that within a few days they moved back into town. Neither his friend’s dad nor his sister ever found out what the creature was or why it showed itself to them, but that was the last time they ever saw or heard from it again. Markus and Ty agreed it had to be some type of demon.

  Holly said she had a story of something strange that happened to her family when they had an encounter with a ghost. It was when her cousin, Jodi, first got married and purchased a mobile home and her parents let her move it in right next to their house. The mobile home’s living room was only about two feet from Holly and Rebecca’s bedroom window. “Jodi’s husband worked nights and she was left alone in the mobile home during that time. She always got scared of something happening in the house and complained to everyone that she heard noises when there wasn’t anyone else in the house with her. She would constantly come crying into our house and spend the night on the couch. She always seemed frightened to death. She said she heard the sounds while she was all alone and sleeping in her bed at night. She claimed someone or something would flip the lights on and off, open the cabinet doors, thumb through pages of books, and walk back and forth in the living room while she was trying to sleep. She said the sounds would always wake her up and she would get out of bed to see who or what was doing it. She was never able to see or find anyone that was making the noises.”

  Holly told them she was only a freshman in high school at the time and she would sometimes make fun of Jodi, until one night when there was no one in the mobile home and she was lying in bed with her bedroom window open. She said she and Rebecca heard loud footsteps pacing back and forth in the mobile home. They were loud and clear and no mistaking them for something else. Holly called her dad into her bedroom and they listened to the footsteps for several minutes. They wanted make sure what they were hearing was real, before deciding to do something about them. Thinking there was an intruder in the mobile, they made up their minds that they were going to catch the person before he or she escaped and put an end to this unbelievable “haunting” once and for all. She said they quickly ran to both exits of the mobile home and could still hear the footsteps pacing back and forth inside. Holly’s dad took one end and she and her sister took the other end, along with baseball bats. They entered the mobile home from both ends at the same time. The footsteps immediately stopped as they entered, but they continued through the entire mobile home from end to end, checking all the closets and possible hiding places. “We didn’t find anything.”

  The next day Holly and her sister decided to sleep alone inside the mobile home to see if they could catch the ghost, but they stayed awake as long as they could and eventually fell asleep, but didn’t hear or see anything that night.

  She told them another strange thing that would happen with the mobile home is that almost every night their German shepherd dog would run from one corner of the mobile home at exactly midnight to the back side of the six foot fence, like it was chasing someone. It was growling and snapping at the air, like it was after a person, but nothing could ever be seen. That strange activity continued almost every night until Jodi finally decided she had enough and was through with the mobile home and sold it. Once it was gone they didn’t have any more encounters in or around their house with anything supernatural.

  A few months after Jodi sold the mobile home to the new buyers the woman that bought it saw her downtown and asked her if she had ever heard or seen anything unusual or strange in the mobile home. After a little apprehension on both parts they then exchanged stories about what they had both experienced. They came to the conclusion that the mobile home was haunted. Holly told them she knew that what she heard pacing back and forth inside that mobile home was not something or someone she could see, but it was just as real as the sound of any footsteps she’d ever heard.

  Markus and Holly asked Ty if he ever had any experiences of his own and he told them about the two encounters he had while staying at his cousin, Craig’s house and another encounter that happened to his Uncle Charlie over a period of years.

  His Uncle Charlie told him about his own bizarre encounters with ghost one evening after a family barbeque. Ty had just graduated from high school and it was just the two of them sitting out on the back patio and talking. He’d heard about Ty’s experiences with ghosts when he was younger and wanted to talk to him about them. Ty had the feeling that his Uncle Charlie felt compelled to let him know that he knew Ty wasn’t crazy for believing in ghosts. He told Ty, he too, had some experiences with ghosts. He told him his most memorable encounter with a ghostly entity started when he was around twenty three years old and had just gotten married. It started out as something
just trying to get his attention. He said it would come to his bed in the middle of the night and shake him or touch him to wake him up. It would always touch his legs, back or some part of his body. He knew it wasn’t his wife because he would always look over at her to find that she was still sleeping. Realizing he wasn’t alone, he would jump up and sit in bed shaking with fear as he observed a dark figure in the shape of a person standing next to his bed. The first several times it happened to him he thought it was a real person. The next move the dark figure would make was to run and hide in the closet. He said it was so real to him that he would jump up, turn on the lights, grab his shotgun from next to his bed, load it, and go through his coat closet looking for what he thought was an intruder in his house. When he couldn’t find it in the closet he would then search the entire house, and of course, he never was able to locate the elusive entity. He told Ty that experience happened to him over and over again for several years and at least three to four times a month. After a while, the entity seemed like it got braver and it began to come and sit next to him on the bed, while he was sleeping. It would come and sit down right next to his left side and he could actually feel the indentation of the bed as it snuggled up right next to him. Once the entity was sitting next to him it would start to rub his back, as if in a tender caressing motion, from the top of his shoulders down to the middle of his back. Sometimes when it came and sat down next to him he would wake up and pretend to be asleep. He tried to figure out what was haunting him. He even woke up several times jumping out of bed and taking swings at the entity when he thought it was right in front of him. Sometimes he would lie in bed and try to rationalize what was happening to him. He said he finally came to the conclusion that it was something paranormal and maybe a ghost spirit.

  He said his experiences with the entity progressed to the point over several years that after a while it would come and sit next to him almost every night and sometimes he would wake up and be soaking wet from fear. He said it followed him every time he moved until he got to the point where he actually felt like it was tormenting him and he didn’t want it around anymore. One night, when the entity came and sat down next to him, he knew that he had enough of its torment and was going to try and get rid of it. He sat up with his back against the headboard of the bed and looked right at where he thought the ghost spirits was and said, “Look, I don’t know what you are and I don’t know who you are, but I denounce you in the name of Jesus Christ. I want you to leave me alone. I don’t want you to bother me anymore, so in God’s name leave this house and leave me alone. I don’t want you here and you’re not welcome here.” He thought he heard a voice faintly say, “I’m sorry.” After that night the entity pretty much left him alone for the most part, but he said it occasionally will still let its presence be known by rubbing his feet or trying to wake him in the middle of the night. At that point Holly spoke up and said, “That’s just creepy.” Ty replied, “Yea, I know. Before that night I never knew that about my Uncle Charlie. It was interesting that happened to him. Now I believe it was his guardian angel.”

  It was at this time Ty asked Holly and Markus what they would like to do during the six week period they would be waiting for him to meet up with the Medium. Markus said, “I have an idea. When I was in high school I had this little old science teacher by the name of Ernie Potts. He was a bachelor and always seemed to be grumpy or angry about something. He was short and bald headed and everyone used to call him “Pot head.” He was real funny to watch when he got angry about someone in class, his entire head would turn red and he would stammer around like an excited little rooster. It was a little intimidating, but funny too.

  Sometimes we would pull pranks on Mr. Potts. One day, just before his class started my best friend Pete, and I decided we were going to bring a six pack of beer to class with us. We each drank one of the beers on the way to class, but we each still had one in our pants and one in a container when we went into the room. When Pete’s turn came to get up in front of class and give his speech he stood up and it looked like he had a big boner in this pants. Everyone started laughing and he immediately grabbed the container of beer and hurled himself out the second story window to the ground. Everyone ran to the window to see what happened to him. He landed feet first on the ground and took off running. Mr. Potts just about had a cow, but he wasn’t quite sure what had just happened. He was shouting and running in circles in the room trying to figure out what he should do as he ordered everyone back to their seats.

  It took a couple of days before Pete would show his face in class after that embarrassing ordeal. He wasn’t worried about everyone laughing about the boner thing; he was worried about having the beer in his possession. He didn’t want to get kicked out of school because his dad was a doctor and he didn’t want to have to face him. Fortunately Mr. Potts never found out about the beer or if he did, he never said anything to anyone about it. Maybe, after thinking about it, he thought the entire episode was funny? He did send Pete to detention for a week for jumping out of the window.”

  Mr. Potts didn’t believe in God or any type of after-life spirits or ghosts. He always told his class that he believed in the big bang theory and that our time on Earth was it and there wasn’t anything else once we were buried in the ground. He believed once you were dead it was over for you. He always said, “You better make the best of what time you have here on earth because that’s all the time you get. There isn’t anymore.” Markus told them he knew where Mr. Potts lived so he thought it would be good to go to his house and try and prove to him there are such things as spirits. He told them that maybe they could use their new abilities to show him that there is an after-life. Ty thought the entire idea sounded a little childish, but figured why not, they didn’t have anything else to do. This was one guy that truly needed to know there was more to life than just the short time he believed we had. Ty also felt like Markus and Holly needed to try some of their new abilities he had taught them to see if they could make them work.

  When they first arrived at Mr. Potts’ house it was exactly as Markus had envisioned. It was a small tract home, about fourteen hundred square feet. The rooms all seemed small because they were cluttered with boxes, papers and books stacked everywhere. When they went into the kitchen there was just a small table and two chairs but it was clean with only a salt and pepper shaker and a napkin holder in the middle of the table. There were a few dishes in the sink from his evening dinner. It appeared that his last meal was one of those microwave dinners with a glass of milk and some fruit. Even though Mr. Potts made good money as a teacher at the high school, he didn’t spend much on the way he lived. The living room was small and the television was one of the old box types from the 1980’s. By the looks of things he did more reading and listening to the radio than watching television. Ty took a look around and said, “Let’s not stick around here very long. I don’t like the looks of this place and it’s messy and cluttered.” They all agreed, but they weren’t leaving until they could find a way to get Mr. Potts’ attention and try to make a believer out of him.

  After slowly going through the house, they found Mr. Potts sleeping in the master bedroom and decided this was as good a time as any to start pulling their pranks on him. Markus spotted a radio on a table next to his bed. It had one of those old knobs that you had to keep turning clockwise until it came on. Markus said, “Watch this, I bet this will wake him up.” When Markus first turned on the radio it made a small clicking sound and he then turned it up as loud as it would go and it came on blaring. When Mr. Potts heard the loud voices on the radio he woke up instantly and sprang up in bed. He looked around the room starry eyed and confused, until he finally realized it was just his radio that had come on for some reason. Somewhat bewildered, he reached over and turned the knob counter clockwise until the radio was off. In an angry grumbly voice he said, “What the hell was that? How did that happen?” He was lying in bed and thin
king about how it could’ve turned on by itself, but quickly fell back to sleep.

  After a few minutes and Mr. Potts was once again in a sound asleep when Markus turned the radio back on to full blast. This time Mr. Potts woke up and he was convinced that someone was in his house screwing with him. He got up and grabbed a baseball bat and starting looking around his room. Markus was standing next to him and Mr. Potts shivered as he felt the cold spot go up his spine. Not finding anyone, he went through the rest of the house looking for the culprit. Still not finding anyone, he checked all the locks to the doors and window and searched the entire house. Everything was locked up tight, just as he had left before he went to bed. Feeling a little uneasy, but and not quite satisfied that his house was empty of an intruder, for the rest of the night he decided to sleep upright in his lounge chair in the living room. He was holding the bat across his chest as he went back to sleep. Markus was giving Ty “knuckles” and very proud of his first experience with using his new abilities. Holly was excited that Markus was able to make contact because she wasn’t used to seeing him so enthusiastic. Usually he was the shy, timid and cowering boy hiding in a corner somewhere. This gave him a lot of confidence in himself and his abilities. He couldn’t have been more proud of himself.

  The next morning when Mr. Potts was getting ready for school, Markus kept messing with him. He moved his car keys from the hook by the door, to the middle of the kitchen table. Mr. Potts was in a hurry to get to work and when he went to the hook and the keys weren’t there, he stood for a minute wondering where they could be. He hesitated for a moment, thinking that he always left his keys on the hook by the back door as soon as he walked through and hung them up. He looked around and finally spotted them in the middle of the kitchen table. He was shocked to see them there and just shook his head in disbelief and grabbed the keys. He said out loud, “Someone is definitely screwing with me. I know I didn’t leave my keys on the table. I’d never do that.”

  That evening when he got home from school he made a conscious effort to hang the keys back in their usual hanger by the door. He also made sure by taking the extra effort in saying; “I know that I’m hanging my keys on the hook so if they get moved again I know I’m not crazy.” He went into his master bedroom and took off his clothes and while he was busy in the bedroom Markus moved his keys back to the kitchen table once again. When he came out of the bedroom he saw the keys lying on the table and jumped back as if he had been hit with a bolt of electricity. He knew, beyond a shadow of doubt, that he had just left his keys on the hook. He even took the extra effort to remind himself that is where he left them. Now they were lying on the kitchen table once again and he hadn’t put them there. He knew someone had move them and he believed there was someone in his house. He hurried over to the living room and grabbed his bat once again and starting checking all the exits of the house. After he spent several minutes looking around and was convinced that everything was locked up tight he started looking in all the corners of each room, including every closet. He looked under the bed, in closets, behind boxes, and even in the attic and still couldn’t find anyone. He couldn’t understand what was going on because nothing was out of place and there wasn’t anyone in his house. There were just weird things happening to him that he couldn’t explain. He decided to sleep in his bedroom that night with the door closed and locked.

  The following night while he was sitting up reading in bed, he was interrupted by the loud footsteps of Markus coming down the hall and stopping at the entrance to his bedroom door. Markus then turned the door knob and jingled it a few times as Mr. Potts watched in fear. Expecting to get an answer, he shouted, “Who’s there, what do you want?” Markus didn’t respond to his question as he just kept turning the doorknob. After just a few minutes of not getting a verbal response Mr. Potts quickly jumped out of bed, grabbed his bat and opened the door. Much to his surprise there was nothing there. He was sure he heard and saw the doorknob move but now he was starting to question himself, wondering if he was just imagining things that were happening or possibly losing touch with reality. He knew that he didn’t believe in ghosts, but he was starting to wonder what it was that was in his house and haunting him. The very idea of ghosts was against every conceivable idea he’d ever believed in and against what he taught his kids in school. As he stood there perplexed, he wondered, “Could there possibly be such a thing as a ghost! If so, is it in my house? How else could I ever explain to someone the strange things going on?”

  Markus continued to keep Mr. Potts awake from the television and radio going on and off, lights being unscrewed, moving things around and making footsteps sounds down his hall until their six weeks at his house was just about up. In a few days it would be time to go back to Ty’s mom and dad’s house to meet up with Carla Johansson. Mr. Potts talked to a few of his collogues at school he knew that believed in spirits and ghosts and he even consulted a physiologist friend and told him about his experiences. A few of his colleagues told him they believed he had ghost spirits in his house and for some reason they were haunting him. Not being able to find any other logical explanation, Mr. Potts was finally starting to wonder if there might truly be something paranormal that had been haunting him.

  Holly was thumbing through an old newspaper of Mr. Potts and found an article with headlines in bold print and it said, “LIFE GOES ON.” On the day they were leaving, and just before Mr. Potts left for school, she tore out the words from the newspaper and gave it to Markus. She told him she thought this would be perfect to put the paper under his keys where he would see it. Markus agreed and did as she instructed. As Mr. Potts was leaving for work he reached down and grabbed his keys on the table, knowing full well that they were not where he left them. He saw the piece of paper with the bold print under his keys and picked it up and read it. His eyes widened as he read the message. He was finally beginning to understand that an unseen spirit entity was in his house and it was trying to tell him that ghosts do exist. After weeks on hearing noises and being tormented, he was convinced as he looked around the room, and believed he wasn’t alone. He strained his eyes to see if he could see something or someone in the room with him as he said, “Okay, I get your message, there are ghosts, spirits or something that I can’t see. You’ve turned me into a believer so can you now please just leave me alone?”

  Besides making a point and just having fun with Mr. Potts, Markus was very happy with himself as he said to Holly, “Dude, did you see his face when he read that headline? That was so cool!” They all believed that maybe Mr. Potts would possibly take another approach to teaching his class after all the ghostly encounters they had put him through. Even if he didn’t teach his class differently, Markus believed that he now knew the real truth about life after death.

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  Chapter 11 – Ty Meets the Psychic Medium