Steve Stockton - My Strange World

Beyond The Fray Publishing, a division of Beyond The Fray, LLC, San Diego, CA

www.beyondthefraypublishing.com

Ive always had an interest in the paranormal, although it might be safer to say that the paranormal has always had an interest in me. I feel that the great unknown sought me out first, and I repaid the favor in turn. From my first sighting of an apparition at age six, to a haunted house Ive lived in recentlyone of many, I might addthese are my stories.

In 2013, I published a book of other peoples true, weird encounters called Strange Things in the Woods. These were stories that I had collected since childhood from the spectrum of immediate family, distant family, and family friends. The subsequent volumes have included stories from a wider circle of friends, acquaintances and even those who read the first book and/or listened to one of my many appearances on radio broadcasts as well as podcasts. Throughout it all, I would often have show hosts or interested readers ask me about my experiences. I would usually demur or offer a condensed version of an experiencebut it finally dawned on me that I did, indeed, have enough experiences to fill a book. When I first began writing them down, I felt as reluctant as some of the storytellers in my first volume. However, just like they did, the more I began to write, the easier the writing came, and I had to eventually agree that, yes, these would make for an enjoyable read.

So here lie my personal stories, warts and all, of my experiences with the paranormal, the bizarre and the unknown. While you wont find anything in here as wild as, say, the Amityville Horror, the Dover Demon, the Flatwoods Monster, Mothman or Nessie, there are some unexplained encounters that have shaped my outlook and beliefs.

I would like to thank all those who encouraged me along the way, including my family, friends and fellow paranormal enthusiastsI dedicate this book to you.

Steve

Portland, OR

August 2015

MY FIRST GHOST

[I thought Id open the book with this story, since not only was it my first paranormal experience, but also my first sighting of a full-body apparition. This happened in the Solway community of west Knox County in East Tennessee, just across Melton Hill Lake from the Atomic City of Oak Ridge. If youve heard any of my radio or podcast appearances, youve probably heard a condensed version of this story I present it here in its entirety for the first time in print.]

The first ghost I can remember seeing was when I was a small child. I say the first I remember because I had other strange experiences as an even smaller child, but unfortunately do not remember a lot of those details.

In the summer of 1969, my mother and father and I lived in a brick rancher-style house, which my father had contracted to be built in 1964. Also that summer, a new house was built on the property adjoining ours, and the occupants had a son (Ill call him John) who was a year younger than myself. I was overjoyed at having someone next door to play with (although, since this was in the country, next door was actually several hundred yards away, with an old growth of dark woods between our houses).

John and I became best friends and had already made plans to go trick-or-treating in the fall. We played together every day when I got home from school. I was in first grade, and back at this time the area in which we lived in Tennessee did not have a state/county kindergarten, and as such it wasnt required by law. I had gone to a private church-run kindergarten the year before, but Johns parents elected not to send him to kindergarten, so he was always home during the day.

This particular day, Im assuming it was the early part of September, as I had been to school that day and John and I, as I stated above, had already made plans for Halloween. So, as near as I can remember, this happened sometime in September or early October.

I had walked over to Johns house, but his father told me he had gone to the grocery store with his mom and would be back soon. I walked back home and began playing in my own front yard while waiting for John to return. Since our street was a dead end into the lake with only one way in or out past our house, I would be able to see their car when John and his mom returned.

Being out in the country (in what was then a semi-rural area), our house sat quite a ways back from the paved road. In fact, our gravel driveway measured exactly 212 feet from our garage door to the paved street. I eventually measured this out using a surveyors tape when I was older and holding bicycle sprint races from the garage to the road and back.

Our yard had originally been a rough, wooded area, but had been cleared off before the house was built. At the time of this incident, it was mostly old-growth pine trees and a rolling landscape of small hills and trenches, which my father had sown with meadow grass. It was a boys dream of a place to playjust enough trees to make it interesting, and enough dips and hills to provide for exciting off-road bicycling (this was in a time prior to the popularity of mountain biking or even BMX, but I am here to tell you that my Schwinn Sting Ray was a ferocious beast in the dirt as well as a speed demon on the asphalt).

Off to the sides of our yard, there was heavy undergrowth and dark, spooky woods to explore. Our property consisted of about twenty or so acres, with less than five even partially cleared. For small boys like we were, full of life and fun and adventure, the bucolic countryish setting provided for an idyllic childhood.

On this early fall day, I busied myself awaiting the return of my new friend. I was a little over halfway into the yard from the house, so it was a distance of ninety yards. I was well beyond the pines that shaded our house, and I had a very clear line of sightI made sure of it so I could watch the inverted T intersection, which was right in front of our property. Since the road we lived on dead-ended into the lake, past this intersection, there was only one way in or outat the intersection, of course, there was two ways in and out, and I had a perfect vantage point to view bothI would not miss the return of my friend regardless of which road his mom drove in on.

Shortly, Id guess it was fifteen minutes or so that I had been quietly surveilling the road, I watched in anticipation as a car came down the hill, in the center of the inverted T where there was a STOP sign. As the car rolled downhill to the intersection and came to a stop, I had already begun to walk toward the road, as I believed it was John and his mom returning. Suddenly, without warning or with any doors opening on the car, I observed a small child run from behind the car and then dart across directly in front of it. I knew immediately that it was not my five-year-old friend, but rather a toddler, maybe only a year or so old. My first thought was that the child was going to be run over, because the driver wouldnt be able to see something so small directly in front of the car.