My Paranormal Experience (with pictures!)

Last night, I was feeling a little down in the dumps, but I wasn't going to let that ruin my day. I decided to take these feelings and channel them into something artistic. I knew I wanted to take some photos this weekend, so I figured I'd go down to the woods after work and take some cool, edgy pictures to match my mood.

As it would turn out, they turned out a bit more... haunting.

The woods are on the complete opposite side of town, but I decided to walk there anyway because I thought I may happen across a cool photo op.

In order to get there, I had to pass the Thornton Distillery. Now, I love this part of town because not only is it attached to a building left unmoved since the 1800's but it sits along Thorn Creek. This creek used to be 5 feet deep and 40 feet wide back in its prime. 

To fully paint the picture, the creek, now a shallow stream of water, runs under a bridge that is attached to the main road, E. Margaret St. Me and my sisters would walk this road every day to and from school growing up, but seldom have I ever really been down there. I knew it would produce some pretty sick photos, so after documenting the distillery - my favorite building in all of Thornton - I staggered down the steep and muddy bank; tumbling over rocks and sticks, and trudging through overgrown weeds.

Muddied and out of breath, I perched myself on a wobbly rock for a good angle. I managed to snap a picture of the creek, with the bridge to my back. After an uneventful photoshoot, I decided to continue on my journey. 

I turn around and I'm surprised to see a green silo towering over me. I'm not sure what the heck it is or if it's even still operating, doing whatever it was made to do, I figured it was unique enough to document.

As I examined the structure, the silo began to speak to me. It wanted to be left alone. It's hard to explain, but I felt its presence. I thought, "Surely that's not possible! There must be someone else here."

I craned my neck, expecting to see a paranoid pothead or an adventurous hiker. There was no one except me and the silo. I took one last picture and proceeded under the bridge.

The faded graffiti told me that I am not the first person under here but that I was the first in a very long time. I don't think that petty vandalism was the worst thing to have happened under this bridge. I don't know how, but I knew it had an insidious past. After all, this creek used to be pretty powerful... If someone were to have fallen in "on accident" it would have been a death sentence.

As my intuition began uncovering the bridge's forgotten memories, the presence became angry. Unease developed into anxiety. With each and every picture I took, it became clear that some force did not want me sticking around.

CRACK!

What the fuck? What was that? It must be a critter, it has to be.

Whatever it was, my gut was telling me I didn't want to find out. I hoisted myself out of the creek and headed toward my final destination.

Shaken, but still determined, I took the short walk to the woods. I arrived at my childhood home, which sat on the outskirts of the forest. As I reminisced of these days, I wondered if this place always felt this... inhabited.

Just then, I unlocked a core memory. In my childhood imagination, I concocted there to be an old, witchy recluse who made her home amongst the trees. She lived in a cobblestone cottage where she would make wild mushroom stews, far out of sight from anyone passing through. She liked her solitude and I was unwelcome.

I entered a clearing and started taking photos of Brownell Woods. It was around 5:45pm at this point and with Winter on the horizon, the sun became sleepy. I rested on a log as I waited for total darkness to fall. The trees and the cackling leaves kept me company.

As I meditated in the night, I took notice of the oxymoronic weather. It felt like an early Summer's night juxtaposing an October evening. I looked out into the woods, seeing no sign of life. There was only the carcasses of trees and leaves. I noticed the silence became louder and louder, clouding my thoughts.

How can silence be so deafening?

I was close enough to the street so that I was able to peer into people's houses. I don't usually do that, but I think I was searching for some source of life to comfort me - something to let me know I wasn't alone.

I don't think I was.

As the scenes from every horror movie I've seen rushed through my mind's eye, goosebumps prickled my arms. My chest tightened, my breath shortened. Blood rushed through my legs, telling me to book it the fuck out of there.

"Am I really gambling my life for some lousy pictures? No, calm down, there's nothing out here. Ghosts aren't real. But my gut can sometimes see more than my eyes."

I was stuck in a paralyzed dissonance. These fears that rushed through my body turned out to be a great distraction because I noticed the sun had finally gone dormant. It was finally time to take the photos I had committed myself to taking.

I went to work experimenting with flash, shutter speed, and camera angles. I would review my picture, make insignificant adjustments to the settings, and take another. By the 6th or 7th photo, I see an interesting artifact in the top right.

I believe to have caught a ghost orb on camera. As a skeptical believer, I tried to recreate the photo. Maybe there was a reflector on the tree that picked up my flash? I tried and tried again, but to no avail.

Maybe I wasn't alone after all. I picked up my jacket and made my exit

I walked along the road with only the soft orange glow from the street lamp to light my path below.

As I turn onto the main street, I think I'm out of the woods, metaphorically and literally. But I still had a bridge to cross.

As I approached the bridge, I felt I was a safe distance from the presence underneath. I placed my foot upon the concrete overpass and my head began to spin.

That's just a coincidence.

I kept walking. Every step I took, I became dizzier and dizzier. Anxiety turned to panic. The presence that was watching me now began to attack. My vision blurred and my legs became wobbly. My mouth began to salivate and I'm overcome by a tsunami wave of intense nausea.

Sweat forced itself from my pores, engulfing my body in tiny pin pricks.

I think I may pass out. I place my hands on my knees, swaying back and forth. On my right was a busy street and to my left was a 25 foot drop into a shallow creek. Either way, this does not end well.

Darkness began to close in on my vision from every direction. No matter how much I squint, no matter how much I breathe, no matter how much I focus, I could not stop keep my consciousness from slipping out of my grasp.

Tunnel vision swallowed me more and more in waves, as though propelled by my heightened heart beat, each one quicker than the last.

I take note of what I believe to be the last thing I may ever see. Through the narrow blackened haze, I recognize a green silo. 

Then, as though flicking on a light switch, my vision returns to normal. My knees straighten and my stomach settles. My heart is as calmer than it has been this entire photo walk. The only remnant that remains proof of my experience is the sweat on my skin.

It could have been a normal panic attack, I recognize that. All of this could have been a fabrication of an overactive mind. But you know that feeling of being watched? That unnerving feeling of being followed? You look back and see nothing, but there's something in you that just knows?

Something didn't want me there anymore and it gave me one, final warning that night. 

I just know it.