Infrid, page 1

okay, Nola seems content to be eating cheerios and watching cartoons right now, so I’ll take this moment to jot down some of the particulars of the other Infrid events.

The first encounters were probably childhood and I write them off as childhood stuff… the memories are too vague anyway.

The first adult encounter was in 1989, which made me 24 years old. At that time I was living in a barn (no electricity, no running water, and in the middle of Nowhere) To get to said barn you had to go some miles off the beaten path, down three miles of really nasty dirt road, and said road was festooned with signs that said things like “warning, man eating chainsaw” “trespassers will be shot (written with bullet holes, not paint)” and other, less pleasant warnings.

The owner of the property was a crazy old gun guy. ‘nuff said.

He had lots of livestock, cattle, horses, pigs and chickens. Pigs and chickens were up by his place (about a mile from me) Horses and cows were my immediate neighbors.

First incident was the owner asking me what the hell was I doing running around in the pasture with bare feet. I told him I hadn’t (pretty stupid thing to do, actually) He showed me the footprints, I put my foot next it, my foot was a lot bigger, ergo, not my print. Wasn’t his print either. We’re both woodsy farmy guys, so we track the prints. The prints dance around in the middle of one of the cow pastures, but they don’t Come from anywhere, and they don’t Go anywhere, they just Were. It was a muddy time of year, if someone had tromped in on boots it would have left marks… even if they had Tip Toed in, it would have left tracks.

No other tracks accept the ‘dancing’.

Somebody Might have been able to fool me, but not him… he was an OLD woodsy guy, lots of hunting, war stuff, this man could Track.

Some months later, at about 0400 in the morning, he wakes me up, guns blazing and reading me the riot act. Sometime between midnight and four A.M. all of the cattle in one pasture and all of the horses from another pasture switched places.

ALL of them.

There were No holes in any of the fences, none of the gates were open. This was done literally under my very nose while I slept. I was close enough to these animals to hear them chew their cud and fart in their sleep. If I put my ear to it I could hear them flick their ears and swish their tails… remember; I was living in Their barn, and security was Part of the reason I was living there.

He was going to kill me for it and cut me up for pig food, that’s how ticked off he was. I’m positive he wasn’t playing some stupid kid joke (he was definitely an old prankster, but Not when His livestock were concerned).

Third event was again some months later, warm weather time.

The part of the barn I lived in was the upstairs part, ten feet wide, thirty feet long… picture a railroad boxcar on stilts. I had a sofa on one of the ten foot sides, so when I sat on it I sat looking the thirty foot length of the barn. As I sat on the sofa there was a small coffee table against the wall to my right, across from it was an old stuffed chair. On the wall behind the chair (and on most of the walls) was white butcher paper I had put up during the winter to help stop the drafts.

On the coffee table was a kerosene lamp (my primary source of light). I was reading a book by lamp light. (a collection of Sherlock Holmes stories). I looked up from my book to reach for my coffee cup which was sitting on the coffee table next to the lamp. I caught something out of the corner of my eye that didn’t sit right, so I looked to the left:

There was a very clearly defined human sized shadow falling across the chair and onto the wall behind it. I looked at the lamp. No moths, no bugs, no flickering flame, no soot on the chimney. I looked to the left. Very Clear Shadow. Head, arms, torso, and they moved. A profile showed wings coming out of the back. Bat type wings, demon wings, not friendly feathery wings.

The way the lamp was sitting on the table, the edge of the table cast shadow across the bottom part of the chair and the floor, so I couldn’t see where the demon shadow hit the floor, but it didn’t take an ‘A’ in physics or Sherlock Holmes to figure out that Whatever it was, it was standing about three feet in front of me.

Super Terrified Freek Out would be an understatement. Not knowing what to do in the above situation, I do what I pretty much always do when in super terrified freek out mode; I said in a very loud, very calm, very measured voice: “I Don’t Know What You Are, But I Have A Gun And I Am Very Afraid”

To wit the shadow moved towards me, not fast, not slow, just moved. There was a brief coldness on my left cheek and shoulder, not a breeze, just a coolness, and then it was gone.

I sat scared spitless for quiet some time and tried to rationalize what I had just experienced.

After the fact I decided that whatever it was, it was female; the shadow had bumps on the chest and (I think) hips.

Those where the only encounters in California, the next ones took place in Alaska, many years later. However that will have to wait as the cheerios are gone and whatever cartoon is on must be boring because I’m being told in no uncertain terms that I have to stop typing now.

All the stipulations of my original post apply to this one as well. Make of it what you will. I’m going to go play with legos now.

rock on
twj