When I was a little girl, I always knew there was something strange about me. I never fit in with my family and always preferred to be by myself. My parents and siblings seemed to be exactly alike, the perfect little family that always did everything together and, to my dismay, always dragged me along with them. I wore different clothes, my hair was a different color and I always isolated myself with headphones on and the music turned up to eleven. I didn’t know why, but I always just wanted to drown out all of the outside noise I was hearing, even though most of it was in my head. I thought it was in my head anyway, because all of the sounds and voices I was hearing, no one else could hear. If I tried to talk about it, I would get told it’s nothing and that I am just imagining it. Eventually, my parents got me into therapy because they believed I was crazy, I mean, I was hearing voices after all.
I thought I was crazy too, because what I didn’t tell anyone was that I was seeing things that no one else could see either. I could see people that would disappear the second I turned my head. I thought I was just seeing reflections, or my eyes were playing tricks on me, until the day that one actually touched me. They appeared right next to me as suddenly as I turned my head, and next thing I knew, I could feel a hand on my shoulder. As quickly as it came though, it was gone, leaving a lingering cold throughout my body. I had grown accustomed to seeing them in my peripheral vision, but with that touch, it made everything so real. I don’t know what they wanted from me, but it started to happen more frequently, leaving a chill behind every time, a chill only I could feel.
I started to seclude myself even more when they started to make physical contact. If they didn’t believe that I was hearing these entities, there is no way they would believe I could feel their touch too. I started researching everything about the paranormal, finding as much information as I could. Some of the things I read seemed more like conspiracy theories, not legitimate information and with that in mind, I pressed on. I dug deep into the internet, determined to know what was happening to me for as long as I could remember. Almost everything I found suggested that I might me a physical medium, and somehow, for whatever reason, I now became “open”, meaning I was letting these spirits or entities in even though I didn’t invite them. What I couldn’t find, though, was anyway to shut it off. No suggestions, no advice, and anyone I tried to contact for help couldn’t be bothered to answer. I don’t know if they didn’t want me to close myself off, or just didn’t care that this was ruining me; I just know that they didn’t answer me.
For months, I dug around the internet and even stared spending a lot of time in the library with all the books I could find on anything paranormal and supernatural. This particular day, I stayed at the library until closing, something I had never done. As I was packing up my stuff, the librarian went to the back room to out something away and I was alone up front. Suddenly, I noticed that the papers on the front desk started to blow and shift around, but there was no source of air movement to blow them around. Then books started falling off the shelves next to me and I felt a cold breeze as I heard my name being spoke in a loud whisper. I froze, not knowing what to do, but then I heard my name again, this time right next to my ear. “Wha…what do you want?” I asked, still frozen in place. The loud whisper came answered “HELP!”