The deathly hand

I did my now customary 10 mile long run, and (gasp) could it be that it's getting easier? Well, perhaps not so much easy, as that I'm getting used to it. I just know that my legs don't ache afterwards, no aspirin necessary, just a nice ice shower does the trick. I'm hoping that by keeping a 10 miler every week I'll stay within striking distance of doing an occasional half marathon now and then.

So, in honor of the holiday, I will share my one and only first person scary story, circa 1974. I was 19 and living with my family in a very old, very isolated farm house in the middle of a walnut orchard on the outskirts of town. Now, while I do in fact believe in aliens, the Loch Ness Monster, and zombies, I am not as a rule subject to fanciful or capricious thoughts. So I did not believe our old farmhouse was haunted. I knew that the doors swung open and shut on their own because the floors were uneven; and the sounds I heard in my bedroom closet were merely wayward mice.

Late one night, while the rest of my family was asleep, I was sitting on the floor in my bedroom trying to find Dr. Demento on the radio. There I sat, completely alone, fiddling with the radio, when I felt a hand on my shoulder. I remember it clearly; the weight and warmth of the hand, the fingers gently curled round my right shoulder, and I thought that my younger sister had come in to my room. I turned around, and....THERE WAS NO ONE THERE! My bedroom door was still firmly shut. the entire house was deadly still, and the hand on my shoulder disappeared. Was it a ghostly appearance, or merely the imaginings of a solitary teenager? You be the judge. As for me, I spent the rest of that night in my sister's room.

Sleep well tonight, faithful readers. Sleep. IF YOU DARE-BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA!