GEORGE

George

Submitted by CC

The United Kingdom

 
When we were teenagers my sister and I used to hold séances in our room. To be fair, we never had any clear results, this was obviously a game to us and never really took it too seriously, however, on one occasion, something rather unnerving happened. As you would at any respectable séance we started by concentrating and invoking any spirits to come and communicate with us. We then asked the usual “Is anybody here? If so, make yourself known to us” and proceeded to ‘let the spirit guide our hand’ on whatever card from the Countdown game we had placed in a circle on the floor. To my surprise the ‘spirit’ spelled the name George Bernard Shaw. Of course my sister had quite obviously cheated! And yet, suddenly, the temperature dropped and we both saw the long white curtains lift up and gently fall back down again, as if a short gust of light wind had come through the window. We knew the window to be shut but we checked anyway and yes, it was shut. We both became a bit frightened and left our room in a hurry.

That same evening I started to see around the apartment what I can only describe as a silhouette of white light, shaped like a man but with no features whatsoever. I was the only person to see this, and I only ever caught a glimpse of it for a fleeting second or so in various places, mostly going past outside the kitchen door, in the hall, at every evening meal. I kept asking everyone if they had seen it also, but they never took me quite seriously. The strange dealings between my sister and me over the years, the creepy stories we used to read and then discuss, the horror films, the books we had, our séances etc had made our little impressionable brother very frightened, to the point that he was very scared of sleeping on his own. My parents thought I was making this vision up to frighten him further and forbid me to ever mention this again in his presence. I never once felt this vision menacing in any way, I became used to it and learned to just keep it to myself. My sister was the only one who believed me, and we ended up naming the apparition ‘George’ from our séance of that night.

During the time of these visions some strange unexplained things happened around the house. Small objects disappeared, only to be found in the strangest place of the house a few days later or mysteriously make their way back in their original place. However, the strangest and extremely unnerving occurrence is on a tape recording, which I still possess. During one boring summer my sister got into the habit of recording our conversations, or she would make me sing, do and say funny things, without my knowledge of her recording me on cassette tapes, and then she would replay the recording for a laugh. I’d fall for it every time. One evening we were both in our beds, reading and chatting before going to sleep, when my sister played back the conversation which she had just, again, recorded without my knowledge. I hadn’t finished rolling my eyes to the ceiling when we both froze in terror because we heard a scream which I have no words to describe. It sounded human but also like a growl. My sister stopped the tape immediately and we were both alert and looking at each other confused and frightened because it sounded as it had come from within our room. We soon realized the scream was on the tape...! We played it again and there it was: a ghastly, beastly scream, loud and clear on top of both of our voices. Useless to say neither slept much that night. Nearly two years passed, I had just turned 16 when a chilling night, which I remember quite vividly, put an end to the apparition of George.

My sister and I had gone to bed at a normal time when the familiar noise of the lounge doors woke me up, indicating my dad who had been watching telly was retiring for the night. It was my father’s habit on his way to bed to come and check on us to make sure the lights were off. Indeed I heard the door opening and pretended to sleep. After a few seconds though it was clear that he was still there, peering in, or he had left without closing the door, and so I turned and sat on the bed only to realize that the door was in fact shut. A quick glance at the clock and it was apparent it was way too late for my dad to be still awake, and I started to feel very eerie. It was past 2AM, my sister was fast asleep on the other side of the room. I lied back down, facing the ceiling, trying to calm down: I knew I was definitely awake and I had heard the noises of both doors clearly.  Immediately I became aware of a presence right behind my bed. I turned my head in terror and I wanted to scream or run, but found myself stuck, pinned down to my bed, my body heavy and pressed down into the mattress, unable to move or even whimper. Right behind me was the familiar white apparition holding a baseball bat, the only clearly visible item since the ‘thing’ that was holding it was, mercifully, just made of the usual strange white mist in the shape of a person ... The ‘thing’, George, was terrifying, obviously not because it looked scary, but because I perceived its intentions and they were very malignant indeed. George was holding the baseball bat over his ‘head’ and was about to slam it right down on mine with brutal force. Right when the bat was supposed to hit me and most definitely kill me, George and his bat vanished, I felt free to move again, my head was spinning, and I don’t know if I lost consciousness or just softened into a deep sleep. I woke up in the morning not remembering.  

It was only during a mid morning break at school when, walking along a corridor with a friend, I saw someone walking towards us dressed all in white and I suddenly remembered!

Back home I told my sister what had happened the night before, and we were discussing what it could possibly signify when our brother came into the room and asked “Have you seen my baseball bat? I am late for practice and I can’t find it anywhere.” The bat was found, after searching the whole apartment for it, abandoned, on the floor, in a corner of the terrace.  

  

I never saw George again after that night.