Spooky Season Part Two: The Crash

Hello fellow humans! In this, the second creepy but true story, I'm going to go way back to when I was a wee kid. Okay, well I was about 14 and not so very wee by that age, but it was still a long time ago. The internet didn't exist, but my insomnia still did.

It was mid-summer and we'd just moved into a new house. I occupied what had originally been a den or rumpus room on the first floor, while the rest of my family all had rooms on the second floor. Being that I was a teenager, I considered this really cool and hoped to eventually meet friends so I could take advantage of the fact that my room was tailor made for sneaking out. This was, of course, years before I would become old, jaded, and a bit paranoid and realize that being the only one on the first floor meant that I was easy pickin's for ax murderers and serial killers.

As such, it never occurred to me to be even the least bit concerned about leaving my windows wide open while I slept. After all, it was the middle of summer and we didn't have central air. Nor did I take into consideration that with said windows wide open and my lights on, I was basically treating any serial killer who happened by to the knowledge that I was awake, yet oblivious to my surroundings thanks to whatever cheese-filled hair metal was pumping into my ear holes from my Walkman as I flipped through the pages of Seventeen or Rolling Stone when I should have been sleeping.

Holy crap the eighties were a trusting decade.

But fortunately for me, ax murderers and serial killers didn't come around. Or if they did, they weren't interested in me. But that doesn't mean nothing weird happened.

Like I said, I was a junior insomniac in training, so I would often stay up well past a reasonable bedtime. Given that we'd just moved into a new house with a new set of weird creaks and groans to get used to, I was even less inclined to sleep when I was supposed to, so I would generally stay up reading until about 2am. After that, I'd turn off the light, flip my cassette, and fall asleep to the dulcet tones of Def Leppard, Europe, or some other band for whom I'd have severe  hair envy.

Rather, that was the plan.

Instead, just as I was drifting off, I'd hear the unmistakable sounds of tires screeching, metal hitting metal, and glass shattering. The first time it happened, it was jarring, but not exactly noteworthy. The house we'd moved into sat right up next to a major highway. I think I waited for the inevitable sounds of sirens, but when they didn't come, I fell asleep.

When the exact same thing happened at the same time the next night, it was weird, but again, highways are loud and accidents happened. By the time it happened every night at the same time for a week straight, it was time to admit something strange was going on and I might have been a little freaked. I might have even asked the rest of the family if they'd heard any crashes, but I don't remember anyone replying that they had.

Obviously, I was freaked out, but still naive enough to not think of closing the windows and deal with the sweltering heat (Texas me is laughing at what was likely nights in the 70, but Texas me also has central air). Instead, I got a fan, put it in the window, and blasted it as high as it would go. Between my Walkman playing the likes of Yngwie Malmsteen (good lord, I'm serious about this) and the rattling box fan, I figured I could easily  drown out any weird ghost accidents.

Yeah, no. Even with fresh batteries and better than garbage headphones I still heard the crash every night for the entire summer. It finally ended around the same time school started. At least, I think it did. It's possible that the crash continued to happen, but with school, I'd made an attempt to get to bed earlier, so around 2am I'd be deep in REM sleep (Coincidentally, REM would be replacing screaming vocals and guitar shredding virtuosos on the ol' Walkman within the following year) and miss the incident. For all I know, it's still happening today.

Nah, just kidding, it really did stop. I know this because despite the exhaustion that comes with being a teenager in high school, it didn't take long for my insomnia to come back. I never heard the crash again. Only a few years later, in approximately the same area as the ghost crash, I'd get my first speeding ticket. Coincidence? Probably.


Comments

  1. Could maybe what you heard have been the sounds of the pile drivers building Walmart at the time? They always seem to bang really loud at night and it did sound very annoying. But not sure why it would have stopped when school started unless it had something to do with noise regulations in the fall. Anyway I like the story

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. This was years before they built that area up. It was definitely a car crash noise and it was the exact same noise every night. That house had a LOT of weird noises.

      Delete

Post a Comment

All comments are moderated. Please only post once.