Stranger Than Fiction

Okay, what the actual fuck. 

(This was the first line of the entry, and I want to try and keep it as close to the original entry as possible to portray the things I felt, without compromising reader comprehension.)

I got my daughter to sleep and went to the backdoor to stargaze. It is about 10:15 pm now, and when I got her to sleep, it was around 9:45 pm. In the sky, there was not much cloud cover, though it was supposed to storm later. A few dark clouds hovered over my neighbor’s house, but this was not too odd in itself, since the storms were due, but it seemed as though they were, for lack of a better way of putting it, “odd-shaped”. (In my memory, it was almost spherical and dense, floating without other clouds nearby.)

Within minutes, multiple lights much like those I have seen before appeared in the sky. Then, I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me. Small flashes of light appeared along the edge of the property line. My first thought was fireflies, however, it only took a few seconds for me to realize that it was too chilly and early in the season for fireflies. Before I could process what I was seeing any further, something/someone ran through the illuminated glow of my neighbor’s window. My scalp immediately felt prickly all over, as if my hair would stand on end! It moved much too quickly to have been my neighbor, in my opinion, and had my neighbor been running through her house in that manner, she would have run into the wall on the other side of the window. There is no way that I can convince myself that the movement of shadows seen was that of a human.

I watched the sky for a few more minutes, heart racing yet unafraid — more enchanted by the encounter, than anything —, and more lights passed through.

Then, there was some sort of red flash, again in the neighbor’s window. My first thought was that it was some sort of red fabric, but it was high up in the top right corner of the window. I remained standing at my backdoor, unwilling to move yet. In a few minutes, I heard what sounded like voices, though I could not make out what was being said from inside my home, so I thought that maybe the neighbors were indeed awake and outside. Then, I heard what sounded like footsteps on tin.

I turned my attention to River’s — our pomsky — pen, since he has a tin roof on his dog house and there is an unfinished project in his pen. I thought that perhaps he was walking on a sheet of tin that was lying on the ground. However, he was on the opposite side of his pen, lying down.

There was something white and small near the edge of the pond. I started to relax when the possibility of it being a cat crossed my mind. Then, I realized that the white thing was outside of the pen, so that could not have been what was walking on the tin to make the noise I had heard. Suddenly, the reflecting white top of one of the fence posts caught my attention. As if the thing was made of rubber, it seemed to bend. I could see the reflective part of the post moving! It moved for a few seconds, then the movement and the sounds stopped. The white thing in the yard again grabbed my attention, and it crossed over into the neighbor’s yard. (That is, the neighbors on the opposite side from where this encounter started. Did my neighbors being outside scare some supernatural thing into fleeing across the roofs of my dog houses and into the adjacent property? This thought actually did not occur to me until much later.)

It was all so bizarre that I immediately went to my bedroom and began to journal. A few moments into writing, my dogs started growling outside, so I went back to the window to check things out. The light in the pond appeared, and they all started to howl. (This is not uncommon, as they do this when they hear sirens, etc. However, they usually do not growl when they hear sirens, so I found that odd.) They only howled for a few moments, then everything quieted back down.

I can’t help but feel as though something bigger is coming. Again, it almost feels as though they are testing me, trying to see how close they can get without scaring me to death. Completely in awe. (I wrote a heart-eyes smiley face here.) Freaky, reality shifting, and way freaking cool.

(This ends the original journal entry.)

It was not until a few weeks later that I started to remember what happened after journaling that night. Despite having felt more excited than anything to have had such an amazing encounter, I had trouble closing my eyes and falling asleep. I thought it was only the adrenaline, but now, I have memories of trying to wake up during the night and being unable to open my eyes and roll over to see the side of my bed. I was lying facing the middle of my bed, and I could hear what seemed like the pitter-pattering sound of my dog running from the end of the bed to the head of the bed. This is not usual behavior for her, and I wanted to see if she needed to go outside to use the bathroom, but I could not force my eyes open or make myself roll over. I remember feeling frightened. The noises were behind me and I could not force myself to look at the source.