The Devil's a-knocking.......

So, I have worried and worried for the past few weeks over how in the world i am going to come up with things to write about. I know i have the stories - but putting the on paper is difficult. Sometimes, it brings back memories i don’t want to have. This particular story is a-pecking at my brain…so i guess i will throw it on the table.

I married my first husband (yes….first….there are three…so far…) when I had barely turned 18 years old. I thought, in my little naive head, that getting married would get me “out of there”. I’ll come back to this in a minute. Let me back up a smidgen.

I loved high school. It kept my mind busy and kept me away from home. It was like i was in a book i was reading when i was at school. So, when I was a senior and everyone was talking about applying to college, my first thought was, well, i reckon i ought to do that too. More school couldn’t be all that bad. Besides, it would be that much more time I was gone.

I had wanted to go to school for Interior Design. I loved taking old things no one else wanted and turning them into things they weren’t originally supposed to be used for - nowadays called flea market flipping and the like. I did it back then because we were poor as dirt and couldn’t afford new things. Now, it’s considered cool. So, i snuck and applied at a school in North Carolina. Low and behold, but i got a letter pretty soon that said, come on down, we’d love to have you. I was soooo excited! That didn’t last long though. I was soon enough told that i was not allowed to go to one of them “high-falluting fancy schools”. In our world, there were only two choices at that time. You either got a job or got married. Folks didn’t much believe in “higher education” - and especially not for women. We had gardens to tend and babies to raise. I was told that we didn’t have the money for that “foolishness” - and the best thing for me to do was to get a job and not think about that stuff. it’s taken me years to admit it, but boy-o-boy did i get pissed off! I was madder than a wet hen. My family promised to help me get a job - trying to put a little salve on that sore. I dropped the subject at the time - but it festered in the back of my brain every day after that.

Skip ahead a little bit to prom time. The last big deal in the life of a country girl besides graduation. I had a boyfriend at the time. I was sporting that big ‘ol class ring on my finger every day - so proud cause he had been my crush for years. It was just automatically assumed that if you had a boyfriend, y’all was heading to prom in the spring. I bought my dress and all the fixins’ - marking off them days on the calendar. Bought 2 weeks before prom, someone asked my boyfriend if he was going to prom and who with? I was listening with one ear while yacking with some friends. I heard him say yeah he was and he was taking this other girl - that was not me. My mind went kind of blank for a minute - then i saw every shade there could ever be of red. I’ll go more into that story at a later date.

So now - I’m dateless for the prom. I don’t drive, so i can’t just take myself. All of my friends have dates so I don’t have anyone to just show up with. A lady i worked with at the time hated every minute of my situation and took it on herself to do something about it. She had me hooked up with a date in 2 days! Now, the feller she hooked me up with….I knew. We had rode the school bus together….often sitting together and laughing at stupid jokes. He was four years older than me…..and not exactly what i would call “my type”…..but he agreed to take me. He had not been to his own and thought it would be fun. And that is how i ended up with husband number one. There are a ton more stories there…but again, they will wait til a good ‘ol rainy day.

I’m married and playing house. We lived in his granny’s house for the first two months or so. She was staying with her daughters for the winter in another state and that gave us a bit of time to find a place to live. We rented a house of a family friend. The folks the house belonged to had passed away. A bunch of the furniture was still in the house and we were allowed to use what we wanted to use. I was tickled pink! An old country house with a big ‘ol yard - room for a big garden even. We knew our neighbors and we were smack dab between my momma’s house and his momma’s house. Perfect!

Playing house is not all that it’s cut out to be - and lawdy mercy, but that’s whole lot of blog posts to come, I am sure. For right now, we are gonna talk about a time about six months into it all. Husband was going to work every day and i was staying home, cleaning and cooking - and watching soap operas! I never was allowed to watch them when i was home so of course that was one of the first things i did! I would get up before him, wake him up, pack his lunch and fix his breakfast while he was getting ready. Kiss goodbye and my little butt would go right back to bed and sleep until around 10a.m. I had it made in the shade.

Well, this house, y’all - it was just an ‘ol farmhouse - two story - two doors into it from the front porch. One went into the living room and one went into the bedroom. Big ‘ol kitchen in the back with two doors going to outside back there. Two bedrooms were upstairs - and i never went up there. I felt ok downstairs on most days - but upstairs? Nope - I didn’t understand at the time why I couldn’t go up there. I told everybody it felt too “heavy”. If hot breath on your neck and feeling like you got slapped across the face with a wet dishrag is heavy, then heavy it was. I couldn’t even open the door that went up there. It terrified me for some reason.

I always felt watched - every move, every breath. I never really told anyone but my husband - and he made fun of me for everything - that included. One night, i had to get up to go pee. It was around midnight or so. There was an old metal, two-door cabinet sitting against one wall in the far end of the kitchen, closest to the bathroom. As i walked towards the bathroom, one of the doors on that cabinet starting flopping back and forth. Evil laughter came out of that cabinet. I can’t even begin to make it sound as scary as it was to me. An evil sounding voice kept saying things that i don’t even remember today. I screamed like a little girl and flew back to the bed, forgetting all about peeing. I woke husband up and told him - and he laughed at me, told me i probably had another nightmare (I had them back then - all the time) and to go back to sleep. Let’s just say that sleeping was not on my mind the rest of the night.

The next morning, I got busy with outside chores and kind of forgot about it all. About a week later, i had gone back to bed after husband left and was snoozing away. All at once, i woke up to the feeling of someone getting in the bed behind me. This someone came up close behind me until they spooned me (you know, that sweet little cuddle up you do with your sweetie when you are going to sleep) and threw an arm across me. Breath was hot against the back of my neck. I was completely frozen. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t scream - heck, I didn’t think i was breathing. I could hear birds outside, the radio playing in the kitchen, cars on the road outside - but I couldn’t move. i laid there until some time or another, i fell back asleep and dreamed crazy, weird dreams. When i woke up, “whoever” had cuddled me up was gone. This same thing happened several times, almost in the exact same way every time. Each time, i would be frozen in time - completely aware of what was going on but unable to move. The weird dreams continued and brought more than one night of screaming nightmares.

After around two months of this business, husband and i decided to attend a revival meeting on a Tuesday night at a neighbor church. The pastor was a young feller about our age. He was very charismatic and had quite the reputation for fire and brimstone preaching - and of being a young Elvis look-a-like. Well now, let me tell you, I reckon he was both. A little feller, bout 5’5”, but he sure was purty - dark, black hair and blue eyes. And he run around that church, slinging verses and pointing his finger, all the while shouting, “a-haa now my brothers and sisters, this is the word of God, a-haa”. I was entranced with that little preacher man and after service was over, when husband said, “"Let’s go talk to him a minute”, I went along willingly.

Once through shaking hands and commenting on the sermon, husband started telling the preacher man about my nightmares, the bed company, the metal cabinet devil and all the weird stuff that happened to me. The preacher man swung those pretty blue eyes over at me and stared what felt like all the way into the bottom of my soul. He said, “Well, sister, it sounds like you are being chased by the Devil. Do you listen to rock music??” My brain kind of tipped upside down - I couldn’t understand why he was asking me that question. I said, “Why sure i do!” and grinned from ear to ear. He started shaking his head really hard and went into this big long speech about how the world was going to hell and rock music was going to take us there. He had played in a band before The Lord saved his rotten soul - saved him from what rock music was doing to him. He had me tell him my favorite song at the time (Born in the USA by Bruce Springsteen) and tell him some of the lyrics. He took those lyrics and said, “See sis - that song is destroying your soul. It is coming to life in your mind. The Devil is taking over.” He told me the best thing to do was to get rid of all my music and turn to the Lord with all my heart - and things would change. Well, needless to say, I left that little church completely confused. I had given my heart over to Jesus when i was 8 years old - done everything them church folks told me to do. Did that mean i had to do it every few minutes? And i loved my music - listened to everything, not just rock-n-roll. So i wasn’t supposed to listen to music either?

Husband threw away all my cassette tapes (that’s what we used at the time - wasn’t no such thing as cds back then) and hid the radio. I still listened to the radio in my car and dared him to touch it. I never had any more bed company, but the heaviness increased in the house - and the nightmares and crazy dreams just got worse. Over the years, i have listened to every kind of music you can imagine and still enjoy it all. Music has never affected the choices i have made in my life. Instead, it has soothed my wounds and helped heal my heart more times than i can count.

What i now know is what was actually happening to me in that house. I have always had a little “voice” inside my head that told me things. It told me the difference between good and bad people, told me which direction to go when i was lost, told me where my keys were when i couldn’t find them. That little voice had been with me ever since i was really little. I thought everyone had a little voice - until i got older and realized real quick that you are not allowed to talk about such things or folks will think you are either touched in the head or evil. There were spirits in that house - either spirits of folks who had lived there before in the same house - or spirits of the land that might have passed many, many years before that time. They were not nice spirits. They took great pleasure in torturing a very naive, confused 18-year old girl. I really really thought i was crazy for the longest time. When we moved out of that house, all the dreams, the nightmares, the bed company, the heaviness - it all went away. I never much thought about it for the longest time. It’s been on my mind a lot lately - hence this dang post. Those spirits knew that i could connect to them - even though i had no clue. They were using me as an open doorway - and i didn’t know how to slam the door and lock it. Even if the old timers around me about this stuff, no one came to tell me I was sane and what to do. I’m saying all of this to say - you ain’t crazy. If any of this type of thing has happened or is happening to you - you are NOT crazy. You just have a direct line that folks can tap into from the spirit side of life. There are different levels of spirits - most go on and cross when they leave their flesh suit - ready to enjoy being “home” again. Others are not good spirits. They may not have been good people here - and they ain’t got no better after leaving. They are considered lower level spirits and enjoy nothing any better then torturing some poor soul for their pleasure. You can protect yourself - you can send them packing.

If you have any experiences like this, I would love to hear about them. If you need help to protect yourself or send somebody packing, holler at me and we will see to it that they go to the light and cross that bridge. Nobody needs the Devil to come a-knocking - even if it ain’t the Devil and is just a trickster spirit.

That’s enough jawin’ from me today. I’ve got to go think on the next story to tell y’all. Peace of heart and lots of blessings to you’ins!!

Love, Granny Lou