Brian. (Spring, 2003, Kingsbury NY)

I've written about this (although heavily masked for certain peoples privacy) years ago on my other blog. I will retell it here briefly and coldly with some dates and names slightly changed to maintain that privacy.

Kingsbury, NY is mostly farmland. Patches of trees and brush outline large and mostly empty fields.

I was living in a modular home with my then girlfriend (we will call Lynn), her parents, her sister, and her sisters boyfriend, Brian.

On the night of April 8th, 2003 Lynn and I had the house to ourselves. Her parents were out on a date night, and her sister and Brian were line dancing in Saratoga NY. We made a bed on the living room floor and watched a movie. We fell asleep and just before midnight Lynn shook me awake.

She was sweating and distraught. When I asked her what was wrong she recounted a dream she just experienced;

She woke up (in the dream) and saw Brian sitting on the couch behind us. He was all black. Like ashes, and not shadows. He looked at her and said it was okay. Then she woke up.

I assured her it was okay, and then ten minutes later the phone rang. Lynn answered it and it was her mother.

Brian and the sister had been driving back from line dancing. It was freezing rain on the interstate and their defroster wasn't working. They pulled off to the right on the interstate and Brian had stepped out of the car to scrape the windshield.

As he did a car tried to pass between them and the guardrail and hit Brian. He was thrown into the air over the car and hit the pavement. He was rushed to Albany Med.

Lynn cried and I assured her he would be okay.

We got dressed and drove to Albany med.

Brian was brain dead. He was bruised, swollen, and though alive, gone.

We wept around him for two days until they took his body off of life support and declared him.

I am skipping over personal and private details.




The activity began almost immediately, though I equate much, if not most to mourning. Grief is a monstrous emotion and wreaks havoc on sensibility, reason, logic, and even perception. However;


It began slow. Lynn, her sister, and I would sit either on the back porch or in her car facing the dark if the nights were too cold and talk. It wasn't a few days after the funeral that we began to see Brian. At first only a shape of a person in the field behind the house in the dark. The first night we were scared it was something more nefarious, a person staking out the house was an early thought. The shape stood in the field, then walked into the dark. It moved like Brian.

We brought it up to Lynn's parents, who thought as I do now that it was a trick of the brain.

This "trick of the brain" continued.The shape would be seen in the field from time to time.

A week or so later Lynn's sister came into our room crying because she had walked into the kitchen for water and Brian was standing behind the counter. She ran and when we got up to look nothing was there, of course.

Then, leaving the bathroom, I saw Brian walk from the living room into the parents bedroom. Only a glimpse, and at this point, I could easily chalk it up to me becoming wrapped up in the excitement and grief.

Lynn saw him in the house.

Her parents.

The dogs in the house began to act oddly. For example one would be in the living room and begin rolling and shaking her leg as if someone were playing with her.

Then Lynn's father felt someone grab his shoulder. When he turned around he said he saw a glimpse of Brian and then it disappeared. By the time he relayed that story it had already been a few days since it happened.

We were all seeing him.

However, I still contend that this could all be grief and hysteria.

To that point.

A couple weeks had passed and now it was the end of May.

We were all home and just going about our normal routine. A phone rang. A ring unlike the normal ring. More of a bell sound than a digital ring.

In the house there was a landline connected to two wireless handsets. One in the kitchen, one in the parents bedroom. We were unable to find the kitchen handset and so Lynn's mother went to the bedroom to get the other. She came back out confused and holding the extra handset. It was not ringing or lit up, but the ringing continued. She even went so far as to answer the handset, but of course was met with a dial tone.

Soon, Lynn's sister realized it sounded as though the ringing was coming from her bedroom and as she led the way there, we all followed, first Lynn, then me, then the parents.

The ringing was in the sister's room, buried somewhere in the closet. She pulled laundry out, boxes, everything. Eventually finding a box and opening it up and emptying its contents all over the floor. The ringing was louder.

She pulled out an old regular wired telephone, wrapped in a phone cable, unplugged, and it was ringing loudly.

She unwrapped it quickly and answered it.

She asked hello twice, her face went white.

She handed the phone to Lynn, who seemed to be listening intently but confused.

Lynn handed the phone to me, and on the other end was silence.

Not as though I were listening to an unplugged phone, but as though someone on the other end was just remaining quiet. Their was an atmosphere. Then it clicked off, as if they hung up.


There was never any more activity.