Okay, back off work finally.
To address your questions, we each told part of the story, and we remembered it the same. I felt like I hadn't slept at all and could recall no dreaming. Nothing in fact, not even restless tossing and turning.
On to the poltergeist story.
A little over a year earlier when I was sixteen, my parents stopped making me go to church with them. I was ecstatic as the youth group had tormented me since we'd starting going to that church eight years earlier. It was a Wednesday night and they were getting ready to go. My sister was leaving with them so she could meet her boyfriend at her best friends house.
We lived in a six bedroom, three and a half bathroom house with a thirty-two thousand gallon in ground pool. The deal was my father would remodel the house and we would get to live there so I could attend school in that school district (a much nicer neighborhood than the one where we'd lived before). The people who had the house before us built it in the early '70's and raised six kids in it, although one had died in the house of some childhood illness. When the agent showed us the house she claimed the owners had a big dog that had dragged a dead animal into the room upstairs; this was to explain the disturbing black stains on the walls and floor. There was no explanation for the odd dark stain at the bottom of the basement stairs.
Anyway, my sister was always leaving a mess wherever she went and that night I decided to teach her how easy it is to clean up after herself. This was 1990, so as she finished doing her hair I lectured her while I wrapped up the cords and put away her thin curling iron, her fat curling iron, her curlers, her bendy curlers, her hair dryer and her various cans of hairspray and perfumes. I turned off the lights and followed her down the hall to her bedroom (the one that had been stained), and went around the room turning off her two clock radios, her stereo and her two boom boxes, as well as the four lamps. I thought about putting the phone back out in the hall where I could get to it more easily, but the hassle was too much so I followed her out.
At the top of the stairs there was a double light switch for the hall and the stairs. I've always been a bit obsessive compulsive so I turned off the hall lights making both of the switches be in the off position, then at the bottom of the stairs I turned off the stair lights to set those switches the same as well. Walking in the dark to the entryway I said good bye then stood in the living room while watching the car pull out of the driveway and head down the street.
When they were almost to the second corner I thought I heard a bump. This house was old, and it had it's sounds; several times I'd heard what sounded like the dog chasing the cat upstairs only to find them both downstairs sound asleep. The idea that the house was haunted was a comfortable explanation for the oddities there. Never-the-less, I went to the base of the stairs to investigate. Before I reached them I could see that the hall light was on upstairs and wondered if I hadn't turned it off after all. But when I got to the top of the stairs I could feel all the blood draining to my feet as I looked into the bathroom. All of my sisters things were back out and plugged in, and the water was running in the sink. I looked into my bedroom and saw that my alarm clock radio was on, my lights were on and my ancient TV was warming up. Looking down the hall, I could see that my sisters lights were on and I could hear her radios as well.
I quickly turned the water off and ran downstairs to the family room to grab a log from beside the fireplace, then planted myself with my back to the front door. After a few minutes I said aloud "SCREW THIS!" and abandoned the house to go to a friends down the street, where I stayed until my parents called me home.
I'll save my fire-in-the-sky story for another time, I've got to get up for another 12 hour day at work tomorrow in six hours.
-Mike
