A Haunted Homecoming
Homecoming is a glamorous Saturday evening that I always look forward to. I love dressing up, taking pictures, and then going out for dinner with friends. I had fun continuing all of those traditions this year, but the evening took a scary turn into a series of events that only worsened as the night progressed.
Everything started at dinner. Sam, Charlie, Nate and I went out to eat at The Bread Company, a Swiss restaurant on Goodwin Ave by Krannert. The topic of paranormal activity came up naturally through conversation, and we shared scary stories while we ate a wonderful dinner of filet mignon, a margherita pizza, and chocolate fondue. We took a slice of pizza to go–this will be important later in the story.
Charlie drove us to the dance. As we came to a stoplight, he glanced in the rearview mirror, his gaze resting on the backseat where Sam was sitting. All of a sudden, his face went blank. He looked utterly terrified and confused. Sam remembers staring back at him through the mirror and wondering why he looked so lost. He snapped out of it a few seconds later. As we drove off, he said, “Guys, I just had the weirdest few seconds of my life. I saw a blonde girl in the backseat who didn’t look anything like Sam. I actually thought there was someone in my car.” We just brushed it off, like, “Sure, Charlie. You saw a blonde girl in the car.”
As we were getting close to the Urbana Country Club, the homecoming venue, we took a wrong turn. As we pulled into a dirt road to turn around, I looked up from my phone, and screamed. Somehow, we had driven into the middle of a cemetery, and none of us had noticed. It frightened all of us, but we quickly forgot about it once we arrived at the Country Club. Until…
I was talking to DJ at the dance. Out of nowhere, he said, “I have this weird feeling that something bad is going to happen tonight.” DJ says these sorts of unexpected, semi-prophetic things sometimes, so I just brushed it off. And nothing terrible did occur at the dance, so I went up to him at the end of the dance and said, “See! Nothing happened!” Little did we know that his prophecy would come true.
As we pulled into Sam’s driveway after stopping at Steak ‘n Shake on the way home, my heart suddenly froze. “Charlie, stop the car.” Confused, he did. “The door is open,” I said quietly. “No it isn’t, Sarah. It was locked. There's absolutely no way,” Sam replied. But I could see the light in the living room through the opening in the door, and when they looked more closely, they saw it too. “I’ll go in,” Nate offered. “No, are you crazy?” we snapped back. We sped away, and as we did, we almost got hit by a car running a stop sign. We dialed 911. Four officers arrived, and we stayed in the car with the doors locked and watched the shadows of their flashlights move around through the windows of the house. The officers came back out after ten minutes. “There isn’t any sign of a break in, and nothing appears to have been moved around. I think you kids left the door open. Nothing to feel bad about, it happens all of the time.” And with that, they left.
“Guys,” I said, “I am sure that I closed the door. It was locked. I went back to double check.” Nate agreed, “I remember seeing you go back to check.” By that point, we were totally freaked out. Then, Charlie went back out to the car to get something, and when he came back inside, he hesitantly said, “Guys this isn’t going to make things better, but…”
Good start. He continued, “There is one slice of pizza sitting face up, like, untouched by the car.” It definitely hadn’t been there before, and the one piece of pizza that we had taken to go at dinner, which had been perfectly wrapped up in a box that said “happy homecoming” on it, was nowhere to be found. Only the pizza remained, and had somehow ended up on the driveway outside of the car. And since that day, Charlie has found the trunk and windows of his car to be open on multiple occasions.
The blonde girl, the cemetery, DJ Nelson’s prophecy, an open door (even though we’re sure we locked it), and the pizza. What does it mean? I’m not convinced that we’re being haunted by a blonde girl. That’s probably because I don’t want to give into that, so I’m telling myself it’s only scary if you’re scared of it. And all in all, it was a fun evening and will be a good story to tell about my junior year homecoming.
What do you think? Have you had similar experiences?
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ReplyDeleteI was about to wright: This is a load of baloney, but all of the sudden my cursor on the screen started to going crazy and spazing out. Once the cursor finished having it's seizure it landed on the tab which was your blog post, A Haunted Homecoming, and that scared me. I then tried to restart my computer but for some reason the power button wasn't there. Whenever I tried to change tabs the tabs would close and I couldn't open an app or anything. In the end I had to just shutdown my computer and start it back up again. I hope this blonde lady doesn't come after me.
ReplyDeleteGoing back to your story Nate should have gone in there, he's the hero that this town needs and deserves. He could've gotten to the bottom of this. I'm also wondering if Sam has cctv (security footage) or if any of her neighbors do I'm sure there are plenty of paranoid people in Champaign. Although I think that the police officers are right and a lot of this is fiction is getting to his brain there is something weird going on. I'm thinking of ways you could check if someone had entered your house. Also the part about DJ seems a little flimsy, there were some questionable people at the dance and I think maybe the dance being shut down by the club would've been what he thought of as a bad thing occurring. The pizza thing I can't really explain this is all weird, I'm suspicious of one of your friends, probably Charlie since he initiated it with seeing the blonde woman in the back seat.
I've never believed in supernatural things of any kind, but I hear stories like this all the time and whoever is telling the story always seems genuinely freaked out. I've actually never had anything like this happen to me before, but sometimes I wonder how I would deal with it if it did happen, like if I would start believing in this sort of thing. Anyways, I really enjoyed reading this, and at least your homecoming was exciting!
ReplyDeleteGuys I was there and it was wild, everything she said was true. I always hear weird stories like this and never believe them but experiencing it was INSANE. I literally thought I lost my mind. Anyways, the experience made up for the uninteresting dance! And as always Sarah your blogs are super well written, and I'm sad that this is the last one.
ReplyDeleteOkay don't worry, I'm calling an exorcist.
ReplyDeleteI do believe that your story is true, but your writing style makes it sound even more dramatic than it probably was. That's a good thing! Sometimes I struggle trying to make things sound dramatic without making it sound corny and unrealistic, but you did a really nice job of it here. Phrases like "his gaze resting on the backseat" blended dramatic, serious, and realistic in a perfect way.
I don't believe in the supernatural, and would usually explain a very logical reason about why all of this probably occurred to you, but I think you did such a good job of writing this post that I will refrain from doing so. Like Asante' said, your writing style makes these events sound really dramatic and I was often surprised at how suddenly the story changed, for example when you suddenly drove into the cemetery. Great post!
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