Three Creepy Stories That Really Happened to Me

There is a park across the street from my house. Wedged between a county road and a former railroad line-turned bike trail, I walk the two-mile drive that snakes through the park every day, sometimes twice, morning and afternoon. I like taking pictures of the curious flora and fauna that catch my attention while I walk—mistletoe in the winter, squirrels in the summer, and the changing jewel tone leaves of fall.

At the very back of the park, the deepest turn along the drive, there’s a graveled lot where vehicles can park and unload their bikes for the trail. The transition from the asphalt driveway to the gravel is fairly level, apart from grass climbing through the cracks, the occasional cigarette butt, and a cracked pothole where, back in spring while attempting to capture a photo of two yellow butterflies flitting around my head, I tripped myself, stumbling forward. My face scorched with embarrassment, my breath tumbling through self-deprecating laughter.

The next morning, while rounding the backside of the park, I remembered nearly tackling the pavement and stepped wide around the pot hole.

That afternoon, I thought about that pothole again, but while climbing the hill that leads to the graveled parking area, something new caught my eye. A fresh stretch of asphalt had been laid over the area where the road meets the gravel, the new pavement darker black than the sun-faded driveway.

At about four feet wide by around 50 feet long, my initial thought was that the strip must’ve been laid in an attempt to repair the pot hole. And sure enough, the place where the gash had hollowed into the road was as smooth as new. I paused my walking, a series of letters snagging my attention. C, D, and M had been carved into the new pavement, and I tapped my toe onto the letters to see if the pavement was still soft enough that I might make my own mark. It wasn’t. It had already hardened.

On my walk the next day, I was listening to a podcast and after cresting the hill where the pot hole had been, where I almost tripped and fell, where the new pavement had been laid, I stopped walking. I pulled my earbuds from my ears and stood there, completely and absolutely puzzled. The pot hole was back, only it wasn’t a new injury to the fresh pavement. No, the old pot hole was back, and the new asphalt was gone. Vanished. As if it were never there. Gravel and weeds and cigarette butts stretched out where I had clearly seen the new pavement just the day prior. Where I had walked onto those letters, imagining that I might also carve the letters of my name.

Although the photos included in this story were taken recently so that I might illustrate the area, sadly, I did not think to pull out my phone and capture a picture of those initials—C D M—in that phantom asphalt. I wish I had.

But what was that? What happened? And HOW? These are the questions that keep tumbling through my mind since that bizarre experience. As they say around these parts, “Tell the truth and shame the devil.” There’s no advantage in lying about a walk in the park. No gain, for me, from deception by fiction. I SAW THE NEW PAVEMENT. I stamped on it with my own two feet, entirely new asphalt that was one day there and gone the next.

What do you think? Did I happen upon a blip in the matrix? A tear between this universe and an alternate where the Parks and Rec paved that pot hole so walkers would quit calling the office and complaining about near-misses with the pavement? One thing is for certain: my camera has never taken so many random photos while over there at that park just in case something like that happens to me again.

For several years in the 1980s my maternal grandfather, PawPaw, was the pastor of an Assembly of God church in Richland, Georgia. I’m not sure what Richland, Georgia, is like today, but back when I was a child, the place was a sleepy, one-redlight, blink-and-you-might-miss-it town. PawPaw’s church was situated off the main road that crept through the area, on a fenceless, grassy stretch of land dotted with four oak trees and three wooden crosses. The building had two rooms, the sanctuary (for Big Church) and the back room, which served as a multipurpose space—instrument storage, Sunday School, Children’s Church, etc.

Time and again when we were kids, my cousin Jason and I lived with Meme and PawPaw, so on Sundays, we busied ourselves for the hour-long ride to the little country church. After service ended—and PawPaw had shaken hands with, talked to, and prayed over the dozen or so attendees—we went to lunch, then for ice cream, and sometimes we would visit the sick and shut-ins.

Our Sunday School teacher was Sister Witt, and she was the sweetest little old lady. An octogenarian, her back hunched and her gait was calculated. I remember she liked wearing an apron over her dress, and she had long silver hair that she braided and fashioned into a bun at the back of her head. Sister Witt was always smiling, always happy, and always dedicated to her service to the Lord and His House. When she wasn’t leading Sunday School classes, she enjoyed cooking, baking, and hosting her family and friends at her modest duplex a couple of blocks from the church.

The first Sunday afternoon we were invited to Sister Witt’s home, Jason and I were thrilled to meet Snowball. “That’s my cat,” Sister Witt explained, opening the door wide and chiding the cat for weaving in and out of our legs. “Let ‘em git inside, Snowball, and then we can visit.” Jason and I knelt to play with the kitty, and I remember him moving from Jason to me, looking each of us square in the eye and meowing. Felt almost as if the cat was glad to meet us! “Ain’t had ‘im for long,” Sister Witt added, closing the door behind us. “But it sure is a good thing he’s here now...” The cat meowed up at her, turning a figure eight on the living room floor. The old woman sank into her recliner. “Snowball’s a guardian angel sent straight from heaven to help me.”

While Jason and I were eager to learn more about how on Earth that cat came from heaven, I could tell by the look on my PawPaw’s face that he thought the woman might’ve had “hardening of the arteries” or some such ailment that plagued so many of his elderly congregants. But she didn’t. Apart from her failing eyesight and hearing, Sister Witt’s mind was as good as anyone’s her age. As such, she commenced telling us the story about how Snowball slipped into her open door one day as she was coming home with groceries. “And the cat never left.” She explained how one time she’d left the water running in the sink while rinsing her snap beans, but what she hadn’t realized was that a kitchen towel had fallen down into the drain, blocking the water from going down. Snowball followed her into the next room, mewing and carrying on, turning and prancing back into the kitchen. “He jumped right up on the counter,” she said, “like he was showing me where that sink was about to overflow!”

Snowball was housetrained, too, and I don’t think even Kid Mandy would’ve believed Sister Witt had I not experienced the sight for myself. While the adults chatted in the living room, and Jason and I sat “seen and unheard,” that cat darted for the hallway bathroom. “Look,” Sister Witt said, tilting her head in the direction of where the bathroom light spilled into the hallway. Water started running and the old woman added, “Hurry! Go see...”

We didn’t have to be told twice! Jason and I darted from the living room sofa and into the hallway where we halted at the opened bathroom door. Our jaws hung limp at what we saw: Snowball squatted over the toilet, a stream of urine pouring down into the water.

Every visit to Sister Witt’s home, Snowball demonstrated a new way of thrilling us. Once, when we sat for Sunday supper, the cat meowed relentlessly, causing Sister Witt to get up from the table and follow him back into the kitchen. When she returned, she swiped her brow and exhaled. “I’d left the stove top on.”

Another time, Sister Witt chuckled, shaking her head and explaining how the cat wouldn’t leave her alone and let her eat her black-eyed peas. “My eyesight sure has gone bad!” she giggled. “The whole pot was full of worms.”

I can’t remember how or when Sister Witt passed, but I do remember being worried about that cat. “What will happen to Snowball?” I asked Meme.

“Shhhh...” She raised a finger to her pursed lips. “Wait ‘til PawPaw gets off the phone.” He’d called Sister Witt’s family a few days after the funeral to check on them, and I remember waiting patiently for him to end his call so he could tell me Snowball’s fate.

PawPaw returned the phone to the kitchen wall, turning and grinning. He shook his head with what I now understand as disbelief. “That cat really was a guardian angel!” He laughed, flanking his hips with his hands. “The family said after the funeral Snowball slipped out the open door and ran off. Nobody’s seen him since.”

Over a three-day weekend in March of 2019, a couple of friends—for the sake of privacy, I’ll call them Sasha and Jane—and I went on a ferry ride from Ft. Myers, Florida, to Key West.

We stayed at a bed and breakfast on Fleming Street called Marrero’s Guest Mansion, a confection of a house with a sprawling front porch, and the yard lined with palm trees hitched with orchids, bromeliads, and wild fern.

Because the place looked really Victorian, and thus really old, I asked the concierge if it was haunted. “Oh, yes,” she chirped. “The original owner’s wife was Enriqueta, and her presence can be felt throughout the home. She loved lavender, so you can sometimes smell the lingering scent.” The girl went on to explain that purple was Enriqueta ’s favorite color, and at the time of our visit the color was a consistent theme throughout the mansion. “If she doesn’t like you,” the young woman added, “she will mess with the chandelier in your room or steal your personal items.”

Both of my friends gasped, while I swallowed hard, my skin erupting in chills.

Our room, Number 13, had been a dining room just off the first floor hallway that was converted to a bedroom with two queen beds, a private bath, and a balcony. The space was large enough to hold a sitting area with a Queen Anne sofa, gilt dresser, and coffee table, above which hung a chandelier glowing with six small bulbs. After settling our bags onto the beds, we set out to explore the island. We walked Fleming, Duval, and several other streets, shopping and taking in the sights, we snapped photos at Mile Marker 0, and then we toured Earnest Hemingway’s home. We met the ancestors of Hemingway’s cherished cats, and even peeked into his writer studio. My friends and I had delicious street tacos for dinner before heading back to our room.

While Sasha and Jane chatted on our room’s private porch, I prepared for a shower. The bathroom had a pedestal sink, so because there wasn’t any room to leave toiletries I set my hairbrush on my beside table where I could return to it and brush my hair. After I showered, I dressed in my nightgown and stepped out into the bedroom. Jane and Sasha were still on the porch, the door opened so they wouldn’t get locked out. They were laughing and talking about the wild roosters and how they crowed all times of the day and night. I sat on my bed and released my hair from the towel. I reached over to the bedside table for my hairbrush, but it wasn’t there. I glanced around, making sure I hadn’t already plucked the brush and laid it onto the bed. I stood and searched, but the brush wasn’t anywhere.

At that very moment, the thought crossed my mind how horror movie-ready the situation seemed. The brush wasn’t anywhere, so I had no choice but to look under the bed. I leaned over, my long wet hair falling like a curtain to the floor, and there it was.

My hairbrush was under the bed, all right, closer to the center than the edge. As fast as I could, I lunged my arm beneath the heavy wooden frame and snatched the brush. As I stood, the room went pitch black and I screamed. “SASHA! JANE!”

I stood there in the dark, my heart racing, my fist brandishing the hairbrush like a sword. The lights slowly flickered on, and both of my friends held onto each other in the doorway, the three of us gawking up at the swaying chandelier.

Marrero’s Guest Mansion was constructed in 1889 by Francisco Marrero, a prominent Cuban cigar maker, as a token of his love for Enriqueta Hernandez, a young woman he’d met back home in Cuba. The two married, set up their home in Key West, and had eight children together. While Francisco was away on business in Havana, he died of curious causes, possibly murdered by a rival businessman. Six months later, a mysterious woman showed up to claim the Key West estate as her own. Maria Marrero had been Francisco’s first wife, and she’d been living back home in Cuba, unaware that her husband had established an entirely second life there in Key West. Because Maria and Francisco were still legally married at the time of his death, Maria put Enriqueta and her children out on the street. After settling legal matters surrounding the situation, Enriqueta returned to the mansion and shouted from the front porch, “This is my home forever! I will always remain in spirit!”

“Holy crap, Mandy,” Jane said. “Look at what Maria Marrero looked like...”

Sasha gasped, “Oh, Mandy! No wonder Enriqueta didn’t like you!”