It's Halloween all month long, and you know what that means: it's time to get SPOOKY SPOoky spooky spooky ("Cha-Cha Slide" beat plays in the distance)...
Cha-cha real smooth. (Source)
Alright, let's go to work.
As I've probably mentioned in previous blatherings, I live in a house once owned by my great grandparents with my wife (Kelsey) and my best friend (Cade). That's three semi-rational adults living together under one roof (to say nothing of the cat, two dogs, a bearded dragon, and about a hundred billion house centipedes for some unholy reason). So it's pretty peculiar that, within a month of moving into the house, we all reported the same experience.
We were all seeing cats that weren't there.
For me, it started when we were first moving in. I was unpacking art supplies in the study when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a black and white cat, much like the actual black and white cat we have (Jasper). Except we hadn't moved Jasper in yet.
In the blink of an eye, the not-quite-Jasper was gone.
This sort of thing kept happening, both before and after we moved Jasper in. I'd glimpse a smaller black and white cat slinking around a corner or dashing across the hall, always at the very edge of my vision. I mentioned it to Kelsey and Cade, who said they'd seen something similar, down to the coloration.
It wasn't long after we'd moved in that I had the dream.
I'd only experienced sleep paralysis once before. I was a freshman in college, sharing a room with Cade in an old funeral-home-turned-student-housing-unit. Our beds were both bunked, and our desks fit neatly beneath the raised mattresses. Because I'm the human equivalent of a brown bat (they sleep 19.9 hours a day, which is #goals), I was snoozing in my bunk with the lights on while Cade studied at her desk below.
I had been asleep for a bit, and then suddenly, I was awake. Or, I thought I was. It was difficult to tell, because I could see the edge of my pillow and the wall beyond it, but when I tried to turn my head to check on Cade, my neck didn't respond to my instructions. My instinct was to ball up like a frightened armadillo (they sleep 18 hours a day, by the way), but my limbs didn't so much as twitch. It was as though a lead blanket had settled over me, trapping me against the mattress, smothering me.
My heart began to race. I tried to call for Cade, but my voice was locked somewhere deep in my chest. By now, I was sure I was awake, and that something terrible had happened to me. This was all because of how often I cracked my neck, I was sure of it. I must have done permanent damage to my spine. Oh, what a fool I'd been!
But then my hand clenched. In a matter of seconds, control returned to my body. I'd been spared.
(You would think that would have taught me not to crack my neck so often, even if that wasn't the cause of the temporary paralysis. You would think that, but you'd be super heckin' wrong about my capacity to learn things or to correct problematic behavior.)
Eight years (dear gawd, eight years) later, sleep paralysis came for me again, but in a much weirder way. I was sleeping on the edge of the bed with my back turned to my wife, because human contact is for chumps, and somehow... I split. One part of me remained in bed, paralyzed. The other part sat up.
You know those waking dreams you have, where reality warps in your not-awake, not-asleep mind? For a brief moment, you're part of the waking world and the sleeping one at the same time, and those worlds haze together, like water and oil might when they're whisked together, straining for inevitable separation. That's where I was: aware that I was asleep, but aware that I was awake as well.
And I was very aware that my body was immobile in the bed, and my dreaming self was heading out the door to go to the bathroom. And I was very concerned that my dreaming self was trying to pee, which might cause my physical self to wet the bed as a 25 year old woman.
Look, my brain and my body have historically maintained a terrible relationship, so this was a real possibility.
Fortunately, my pee-destined dream self never reached the bathroom.
As I (meaning my consciousness for the sake of this encounter) entered the hall, I saw something move at the opposite end. Now, there's a mirror at the far end of the hall, which is great for scaring the crap out of yourself at O dark thirty when you think some ugly little goblin-person broke into your house just to stink-eye you and then it turns out to be your own reflection.
But I didn't see myself in the mirror, and the thing that was moving was in front of it.
A huge ginger tomcat was crossing from the living room, headed toward the study, where most of the cat sightings had occurred. He was bulky and had a stub-tail, giving him a lynx-like appearance.
He saw me an instant after I saw him, and he immediately arched up. His eyes were bright disks reflecting some light that I couldn't see, and I was transfixed by them. My heart - the real one beating in the adjacent room - began to pick up its pace, and I felt the tickle of adrenaline in my chest. It was as though I were staring down a real, living intruder, not merely a figment, or even a simple animal that had wandered in through a window or unlatched door.
Then, I was no longer in the hall. I was back in my body, but I was frozen, just like I'd been back in college. My eyes were open and my heart was thumping and I knew I'd been dreaming but it had been such a touchable, unsettling dream. It took me a few minutes to shake off the invisible shackles. I woke up Kelsey with my panting, and told her I'd had a nightmare.
After that, we all started seeing the ginger cat around. Or, maybe we'd been seeing him before. But that's the thing about memory... It can be just as fleeting as a spirit.
I don't know what we're seeing in this old, old house. Most likely, we keep expecting to see the real cat that lives here, and so our brains conjure up the image of a real cat, even if it's not quite the right cat. So much of our perception is dependent on expectation.
That said, I like to think that on the other side of the veil, there's a ginger cat who tells a story about seeing a ghost human in his hallway one night. I bet his cat buddies think he's crazy.