Luis Rivas – Opinions Editor

My family, both my mom and dad’s side, is from the state of Zacatecas in north central Mexico. My grandmother had a terrible childhood. My grandfather was physically and emotionally abusive toward her and their kids (my aunts and uncles). Unfortunately, he concentrated his beatings on my mom. A culture of terror and fear haunted that old single-story Spanish colonial house for the majority of my grandmother’s life and my mom and her brother’s and sister’s childhood.

One deathly quiet night, steadily interrupted by the recurring sound of crickets, my grandmother and grandfather were lying down in separate beds with their bedroom doors open to the patio. Their normal way of sleeping. My grandfather’s eyes shot open with the sense of a presence in the room. His eyes slowly looked down to the foot of his bed. There he saw the dark, nearly silhouetted figure of a giant owl. Its eyes glew red. He tried to scream or move but was paralyzed by his fear, feeling an invisible weight holding him down on his chest.

He told my grandmother about the owl. She said, in her catholic interpretation, that it wasn’t an owl but only the physical form of an owl – taken on by the devil.

The presence of the owl that night was seen as an omen. If he didn’t stop abusing his wife and their kids, it would come back and take his life. The abuse stopped after that. But years later his health began failing and he slowly began to lose his mind. My grandmother found him a couple of times complete naked, babbling to himself. He was eventually diagnosed with dementia and died shortly after.You are told to treat your loved ones with compassion and care. If you break that loving and sacred trust, the devil, in whatever form he chooses to take, will find you. It’s only a matter of time.

Megan Diskin – Multimedia Editor

This may not be the creepiest thing that you’ll read in this section, but it definitely weirded me out. Back in high school, I went to my Dad’s house for the weekend and I was getting ready for bed. I just finished replacing a light bulb that had gone out in my room when I turned on my television. That’s when I noticed that the purple lava lamp on my dresser had been moved from the left to the right. I just chalked it up to the housekeepers moving things around and I moved it back to its original spot. But suddenly, the lights started to flicker. It wasn’t just an electrical malfunction and the Santa Ana winds weren’t blowing around the electrical wires that run alongside our house either. These lights were turning off and on like a strobe light for about 30 seconds and it messed with my  eyes. When they stopped flickering I noticed that a light bulb had gone out in the process. It was the same light bulb that I had just replaced. My television started flipping channels on its own and then it turned off by itself. Now here is the kicker, when I went into my closet to get some slippers so I could run out and tell my family about the freaky things going on in my room I found a picture of my stepsister and her ex-boyfriend.

There is NO reason for that picture to be in my room let alone placed in my closet. I was not a fan of my sister’s boyfriend and I was happy to hear that she broke up with him two weeks prior to this supernatural event. The whole thing was odd. But who knows? Maybe he’s a witch who blamed me for their break-up and he decided to stick the spirits on me.

Loren Townsley – Editor In Chief

It was dark. The only light that illuminated the street was a single light coming from a school. I always got a weird feeling about this place at night. The street had two lanes, one going in each direction, a school on one side and an abandoned property on the other. No other cars around. No other people.

Driving home from work, making the turn onto this street I saw from a distance a dark figure standing in the middle of road. At first I felt like I wasn’t seeing this right. Why would someone be there at this time of night?

My car got closer and still I saw the dark figure in the street. I could only see the outline of his body; his face was silhouetted making it impossible for me to identify him.

Getting closer, the dark figure still did not move out of the street. It was clear to me that I might run this person over so I started driving into the other lane. When I got to the spot where the figure was he was gone. As if nobody was ever there.