OH MY GOD. YES. I TOLD YOU SO. I'M NOT INSANE.

OH. OKAY. OKAY. OKAY. AAAAAH MY GOD THIS IS THE BEST BEST BEST THING TO HAVE HAPPENED.

This doesn't sound coherent at all! But you know what happened today? Agh, let me calm down...

     Today during PE Rhiannon and I were just walking around the track like usual, and then I decided I wanted to see the Slender Man, darn it! And so I started screaming for the Slender Man to show himself and appear right that instant, and taunting him, and we went round the track once with all this with Rhiannon holding her head and freaking out and saying no, no, don't call him, it's a bad idea, and then nothing happened and she's like, see, nothing happened! But then up ahead there's this break in the fence and then trees and then suburbs, and in the trees I SEE A VERY TALL FIGURE MADE JUST OF SHADOWS AND DARKNESS AND NOTHING ELSE and it didn't seem right and then I pointed to it and said, no I see him! And she did too, and then I ran up to it and then when I came to it it was gone and then she's saying are you a proxy now and I'm like no, I'm just curious and I SAW THE SLENDER MAN. I SAW HIM WITH THESE EYES. Rhiannon's not insane and she's not making it up and I'm not insane either! Or else it's a folie a deux, which seems really unlikely because I -- saw  -- him!

-- Elizabeth de Angelis

Hantu Galah

I really should be asleep right now, but my insomnia's keeping me up, so here I am. I just saw a comment on a blog post about our friend Slendy, and it was from a person in Malaysia who said something about a supernatural creature called the 'Hantu galah', or bamboo ghost, that seemed very similar to the Slender Man. Finally! Finding cultural parallels to a formerly completely unknown entity is progress. So anyway, I looked for it, and Wikipedia (yes, I know, such a reliable source!) says a way to get rid of it is simply picking up a twig and breaking it. Well, if only it was that simple, but I'll try it. I also found a full article on it, but it was in another language, I think Malaysian but I really don't know. So, I used Google Translate. And it's kind of a ridiculously weird sounding translation, but here it is. 

-- Elizabeth de Angelis

Old Hag

Tch tch tch.
Okay, so I'm still not sure where things are heading with the Slender Man. He's been seen a few times since I last posted, but nothing out of the ordinary (--wait, the ordinary..?). But I have something interesting to record.
     Ever since I was a very little girl, like six years old, I've been having dreams about this old woman with a distinctly supernatural presence. The first time I can remember she was sitting in the porch of a decaying old house, with grey hair pulled back in a bun, a plain dress, your typical misanthropic-looking spinster with a mangy brown dog beside her, but she had just a sense of otherness and it was creepy. I had that dream for six nights, every night, and on the seventh night I kind of percieved her as not really threatening or an evil entity. So I didn't see her again for a while, until last December, when I saw her. It was the same being, but a different form. She wore some kind of floating black dress and had tentacle-like appendages -- sort of like our friend Slendy -- all around her, and her hair was like that too. She looked younger, maybe my mother's age or so then, not an Old Hag, with olive skin and she was smiling, and just conveyed the word 'nocnitsa', which I didn't understand and thought of as gibberish.

      This summer when I was in the hospital after a surgery (looong long story), I was almost delirious from painkillers and I was on my laptop, and somehow I came to a wikipedia page on 'Nocnitsa', God knows how I came to that. It's a hazy memory, like I said, I was kind of rambling to my mother and really feverish. This is the article:

"The Nocnitsa, or "Night Hag", in Polish mythology, is a nightmare spirit that also goes by the name Krisky or Plaksy. The Nocnitsa is also present in Russian, Serbian and Slovakian folklore. She is known to torment children at night, and a stone with a hole in the center is said to be a protection from the Nocnitsa. Mothers in some regions will place a knife in their children's cradles or draw a circle around the cradles with a knife for protection. This is possibly based on the belief that supernatural beings cannot touch iron.

          [...]

The Night Hag is known to sit on your chest and draw your life energy, drawing it until you can not go on (because of this many refer to Nocnitsa as a type of vampire) and she will continue visiting. To stop the Night Hag, you have to fight back and do not give in to her. Many say she visits when you sleep on your back with your hands on your chest. This is called sleeping with the dead. The night hag is made of shadow but the most noticed part of her is the eerie red glow of her eyes and the horrible screech of her voice, the part below her waist all shadow. Her smell is of moss and dirt from a forest said to be where she lives, and at times her stench can infiltrate your dreams, or linger in the room after her visit. She is also known as a demonic spirit who feeds off your darkness (namely, depression and sadness), this makes the night hag stronger, more powerful and makes her harder to get rid of.
She is known in Bulgaria as Gorska Makua.
The Night Hag is almost certainly linked to the common apparition seen during the hypnagogic state of sleep."

      Afterward I drew this on a computer programme, which may be related:

    
     ...and I started asking my mother if "her face is all distorted for you as well" and saying she was always watching. My mother doesn't really want me to say much at all about it, but she has seen her many times herself her entire life.
     I saw the old hag again in July, when I was asleep in the living room. I saw her, floating with long white hair in a greyish silvery dress, very old, but I couldn't see her face, because she turned away when I saw her and floated into my mother's room, and looked at her face very closely -- I'm not sure how I know that, but I kind of saw it in my "mind's eye" or something. I don't think she had a malicious intent, but she was just watching us.
     Then, just a few nights ago, I dreamt -- it was like dream-walking, so to speak, it felt like I was at our new house. My new room there is very poorly lit, empty, with dark grey walls and the only things in it are a shelf with a record player and old records, a dim lamp, and a mirror on the wall. I was standing in front of the mirror, and behind me in the mirror I saw her. I got a closer look at her this time, and she was petite, about my height, and she wore a pale slip dress thing and had bare wrinkled arms. She looked very old, with messy white hair that was very long, and she had a pinched wrinkled face. She was smiling, but it was really tight-lipped and you could see her gums and all her teeth, and her eyes were bloodshot. She looked angry, but I didn't feel the anger directed at me, I think -- but at whom? I tried to ask her questions, but then she disappeared, and I started running around the house looking for her, and then I woke up and I was really nerve-wracked because I had no idea where she went.
     All I know about her, and I've done extensive research on her, is that she's been around for, well, ever. I think she is or is connected to Lilith, the night hag and whatnot, and I think she's a banshee. I'm sure she's a banshee. She's kind of become like the creepy ancient Lovecraftian vampire aunt in the attic, so to speak. She's always hanging around the family, even when the family was in England, and she just seems to watch us and occasionally make herself noticed.
    
-- Elizabeth de Angelis

Things have been peaceful for a while

Not much has really happened in the past week or so. It's a relief, but the stupid, excitable part of me that wants to bite off more than I can chew is a little disappointed. But Rhiannon saw the Slender Man just standing there a couple days ago, and now, here we are again. This isn't over, is it? I don't know if things are going to get worse or better. Probably worse. This is a horror movie, after all. Anyway, my family and I are moving into the house my mother grew up in. I kept asking her if she had any paranormal experiences there, and I know she did, but all she hinted at was something about not liking mirrors in that house. Ohohoho, this sounds kind of interesting. On an unrelated note to the scarier things, I'm going to start growing kind of a witch's garden of plants there, I'm very excited. But the soil is horrible, it's all dry and sandy. Florida soil is awful for growing things.
   

Coast to Coast on the Slender Man and Hypnagogia

Agh, I'm so tired. Last night I went to sleep at about ten, with my cat, and everything seemed pretty normal. So then about half an hour later when I'm falling asleep, I hear this meowing sound coming from the other side of the room. I look around, and my cat is asleep next to me, and our other cat is not in my room. So, I just kind of shrugged and went back to sleep, because I probably dreamt it, and if not, I'm okay with having a little cat ghost hang out with me.
     So I fall asleep for a little bit, I think, and then all of a sudden I feel like I'm awake, and I stare at the ceiling half-asleep, and I think I see some kind of red mist swirling around on the ceiling. I didn't really get a negative impression from it at the time, but I didn't feel like going back to sleep with that so I went to sleep in my mother's room...because I'm terrified of demons like that, ha ha.
     While I'm awake at this godforsaken hour, I might as well write about my other experiences with misty apparitions. Okay. A while back, maybe a few months ago, when I had first left the hospital after being deathly ill after eating a poisonous flower, I was feeling better a bit and went to bed early one night. That night before I fell asleep I saw this red mist on my ceiling, thought nothing much of it for some reason, and went to sleep right away. That night I dreamt ordinary dreams, like I was sitting talking to my friend Alex, but then all of a sudden the dream just...changed, like it felt just wrong and different. All the colour drained out of the image in my dream and where she had been laughing, her mouth stretched unnaturally wide and it looked like very sharp animal-like teeth. And it felt like it wasn't her anymore. Then in my dream I saw a red key of Solomon, and I was like, no, just no, that's not staying here for long. So then I woke up, and in the dark next to my pillow was a sheave of dead lavender flowers. At which point I got annoyed and started yelling at whatever it was, but when I turned on the light, they were gone. Nightmare, or paranormal activity?

Just More Poltergeist Activity

Nothing much has happened recently, since the last time I posted. I put up a psychic shield, kind of, around the person the Slender Man conveyed that threat to, kind of channeling positive energy around them and keeping it there without even thinking of it. So, I'm not freaking out like I was last time, ha ha. It looks like a white mist enveloping their aura.
     This is most likely unrelated, because we've been having poltergeist-like activity for a long time in my house, most of which I don't notice, like heavy drawer handles lifting and dropping, book pages turning by themselves, and my sister's electric toothbrush turning on and off. So my mother was just playing the Hail Mary on her laptop, and the toothbrush started by itself again, and her laptop made a whirring sound. Coincidence? I don't know, but at least things seem to be getting less...nerve-wracking.
     Oh, and I found an awesome South Carolina paranormal investigating organization, I want to do that when I'm eighteen! http://www.scprai.org/index.html

-- Elizabeth de Angelis