Jus a Little Insane...

I have had a lot of strange things that have happened to me in my life..Visions, visitations, floating bodies, spilling of blood and so forth...Many of them were, and still are, unexplained and will doubtless remain so. Some I have discovered to be cautious about sharing because there are those people out there who will love to give you lithium and Prozac all manners of drugs to make you 'Well'...

...They tried but I have a sister who challenged them every step of the way.

Anyway...My father came from an old fashioned Pentecostal family with the speaking in tongues, miracles and all the rest and my mother, my mother was a child of the Earth, the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter with a load of stories to tell that defied all logic and entranced me from the beginning. Personally, I found the 'Church' a problem in a lot of ways (Which would seem to be a major problem when I went off to 'Bible School', but that's another long story we'll get to later) and I honestly believed in the supernatural...Especially after walking through a Ghost and seeing another (With several witnesses) floating down a street one fourth of July as we sat outside on the roof watching fireworks. I had questions with no answers.

Then there was the whole who was I as a person. The trip to San Francisco was incredible and opened a lot of doors, but I was suddenly back into the same old secret life when I came back to Casa Grande. I knew there was something I had to do...Just didn't know what.

Then Ray, an old friend from high school, called and asked if I wanted to go camping with him one weekend (I think this was early 72). Quick history of Ray. One of my best friends, great artist in the making who fell in love with an underclassman and when she said no to his marriage proposal he shot himself...And lived. They got married after high school. I said yes, really wanted to see him though I knew squat about camping, but he said his uncle gave him directions to a place and early one Saturday morning we headed out toward Gila Bend, made a turn at a truck stop, found a cattle gate and took his 56 Chevy behind Table Top mountain. We brought a bunch of junk food and my father's British 303 sniper rifle...I was pretty good with it and there wasn't much those bullets wouldn't obliterate.
We ended up in a place that was once a small community of some kind. There were cement foundations, a broken windmill, a few buildings with partial walls and that's where we set up camp. We talked about everything and nothing, staying away from his whole trying to kill himself thing and when darkness happened all hell broke loose.

Here's a thing about Ray that is relevant. He didn't trust his wife so he always wrote down the mileage when he got in the truck and when he stopped the truck so he could keep an eye on his wife. Darkness fell and then the sounds began. We had never heard anything like them...They weren't animal, weren't human, just....Strange. Then there was movement all over and so I shouted out a warning and had my rifle ready to fire.

Then we saw the eyes.

And we panicked. I started firing off as Ray tossed everything back into the truck and the last thought, the last memory, was jumping into the truck and everything went...Black.

We woke up in his apartment, our faces had dried blood and neither of us knew how we made it back to Casa Grande. Just to get where we'd been we had to go through several cattle guards and I don't remember the trip back. Day light gave us courage so we went back out to the spot, found it and I discovered I'd fired an entire box of shells at...Something. Questions, lots of them, no answers. We headed off and saw a large sign on the ground. I got out and turned it over: 'Barry Goldwater Military Reservation'.

We didn't talk about it again...But something was different. I discovered a burning desire to head to college and that next week went out and registered, took the SATs I passed in high school and had saved enough to pay for my own way. I'd never had more of a burning for understanding...Everything...Than after that night.

Summer classes got me a head start and a couple of months into actual classes I was given an Art Scholarship. Art was always on my mind, always my goal in life, but so was trying to understand the mysteries of the ghosts I'd encountered, the floating heads that had haunted a home we lived in, and this inconvenient knack of getting in trouble.

Well, it wasn't boring. And I ran into a group that claimed to have the answers to my occult questions.

First rule of anyone looking for answers: Someone tells you they have them, they don't.

I lived two separate lives in college...I'm surprised as hell I made it through.

(continued)

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