The Haunting

In my third year at UNI, when I dated Carol, I often stayed in her room. Of course you did, you think; You, Tim, are a skeezy sexfiend. But when I stayed in her room, I often stayed on the couch. This is because the couch was sculpted of whipped marshmallows and upholstered in the skin of young Armenian women who had never known the touch of man—it was deliciously comfortable.

I also stayed there because of this knocking in my room. Most nights, around two or three in the morning—just when I'd be going to sleep—something would knock at the wall, about chest height. The knock would sound again twenty seconds later, an inch higher. Most nights I'd make it to the fifth or six before either leaving to stay in Carol's or just falling asleep out of exhaustion. One night I couldn't sleep, and listened to the knock travel slowly up the south wall, over the ceiling, past the midpoint, down the north wall to behind the mirror, then back up and across and down to the origin.

Anyway: this morning at 5:30 I woke up to a double knock, like a delivery person. Except it came from just above my head. I was a bit freaked out but really strangely tired/euphoric, and laid back down, and then heard the knock duplicated in the next room, but muffled. So I checked and found the apartment, of course, empty. Alyssa was elsewhere. Then I went back to bed and listened to the muffled knock against the ceiling of the living room again, and then it sounded in the bedroom.

I turned on the ibook, so that its loving blue glow would scare away any ghosts or clowns that might eat me. Then I drifted off to sleep. At the very point before I slipped over, there was a furious knocking on one of the walls—not sure which one—a repeated agitated fast knock, like when you hear your girlfriend having sex and that damn flower delivery guy's car is parked out front and your own door's locked. I went to the hallway but no one was there.

So…I'm assuming it was a hypnagogic hallucination.

Damn this sleep tomfuckery! As I've pointed out before, when you sleep sober you sleep at your own risk.

Today's image theme is ghosts/spirit photography.

Oh, Andy and Ryan--I know you want me to stay at your place tonight. I just know it.