Well the weather could not have been worse that year. December 1970. I'm stuck in New York, my ship home was not going to sail! My Mother tells me on the phone, you are on your own young lady! (You see, she never was thrilled that I wanted to go to New York in the first place). She wasn't going to help me with a ticket to get back home. I knew that meant I was staying in the frozen north until I could get the money for a ticket myself.
I don't know why my Mom was so hard on me, It sure was going to change my life to be left in Buffalo! If I had only known then what I know now!
This presented a conundrum for me. No where to live, no job and I was getting a little hungry. I asked my new found friend who resembled the floating head from my Florida apparition, if I could stay at his mothers home in Blasdell, as he had mentioned that could be a possibility if things didn't go well with my Mothers phone call. It was looking like just about all I could do. I ended up staying with his Mother for 2 months along with all his siblings as well. It was getting crowded fast. I called this friend by his name but I won't share that name here. Now, there was no fear whatsoever being around him. He seemed normal, just like any other friend I had ever had. Our friendship turned into a relationship after 3 months, and we got an apartment together. I was singing for various groups in the Buffalo and Tonawanda areas. I was doing very well. I had done so well in fact I got a call one night from a man who said he had seen me at Hearthstone manor where I sang for a very large group (500) one night and he said, Lena Horn is very sick with a sore throat and can't sing or make her show tonight, will you sit in for her. I was so blown away, I accepted the job and had a wonderful night singing with a full orchestra. My singing career was doing very well.
I can't say that about my living conditions however.
In the apartment my friend and I shared things were starting to get strange. Very strange!
I kept thinking I was seeing something out of the corner of my eye all the time. It was unnerving. I would hear strange footsteps on the stairs leading into the flat we were renting. I would hear someone talking, but I was the only one home.
One night I came home from work rather late after a night of singing my heart out and I fell asleep immediately. I had a strange and terrifying dream of an old man named "Joe" who previously lived in the apartment we were renting. He was upset that we were there and wanted us to leave he told me. I woke up and saw a shadow hovering over me in the room and screamed out load. My roommate said what happened? I told him about the dream. He laughed it off and went back to bed. The next morning while I was cooking breakfast my roommate was taking a shower. When he was done showering he came to the breakfast table and I ran into the bathroom to brush my teeth. I noticed the mirror had a name written on it, and I was very upset with my roommate as I confronted him at the breakfast table, "very funny", you had to make fun of me didn't you? He said with a very honest look on his face, "what are you talking about"? I said, "the name on the mirror in the bathroom". He pushed his chair back and went into the bathroom and he was actually shocked as he saw written in the steam from his shower, the name "Joe". He went white as he saw it and said, I did not put that there. I would not do something like that. I knew you were upset about your dream last night. I promise you I did not write that there!
It was then that I told him for the first time about the floating head and the resemblance to him that it had. I told him how weird things had gotten. He didn't seem to think it could have been him. (I was sure that it was him). But what do you do with something like that?
And now terrifying dreams and voices and sounds?
A week later we came home and noticed the rocking chair in the front room was rocking at a steady pace. We both were a bit spooked by that, but tried not to think about it. It had been happening from time to time. I kept trying to figure it out! I was feeling more and more unhappy being in the flat. But what happened next made me very sure Joe was haunting this apartment.
I had a neighbor who had a young red haired daughter named Shannon, about 7 years old who always smiled at me when I would come and go from the flat.
She always wanted to come up to the apartment and hang out with me. I was actually happy to have her company from time to time.
One day as Shannon was sitting enjoying a cookie at my kitchen table with me she said, "who is the man who lives here with you both"? I said, "What"? She said, she had come over the other day because she thought I was home and said she saw a an old man sitting in the rocker through the keyhole in the front door, she was peeping in. I really got upset and asked her to describe the man, and she did. I didn't let on that I was freaked out by her. She said she has seen him more than once here. I was speechless. I was also terrified! I didn't know how to respond to that, I didn't want to scare her, but I was scared out of my own wits! So I got up from the table and we both left the apartment immediately. I waited outside downstairs all day at the laundry mat until my roomy came home. I explained what the neighbor girl had shared with me. We were both very apprehensive about staying in the apartment much longer. We decided we'd get another flat to rent as soon as we could. This meant breaking the lease and loosing our deposit.
I didn't like being alone in the flat for any length of time so I had Shannon come over more often during the day while my roomy was at work.
Shannon told me this one day as she was looking at my Florida drivers license laying on the table that she could see my picture starting to move. She went on to say, she saw me in a white car with a young man with shoulder length brown hair, she said I was driving the car, she told me this as she was starring at my license!
That was extremely freaky!
She said she could see something dangling from the rearview mirror in this white car. It looked like it was a basket. I absolutely was frightened beyond belief at this point. She was describing my previous boyfriend, and my car, and it's color, as well as the basket woven talisman I had hanging from the rear view mirror.
How could she know that?
The spirit of Joe had possessed this kid and she was speaking to me of things she could not have possibly known!
Here is a little girl sitting in my kitchen telling me she could see all this from looking at my drivers license? The hair was standing up all over my body. I wanted to scream but I didn't know what to scream! Her face was so innocent looking. Her long red hair and big blue eyes, her milky white skin! And she sees all this?
HOW?
It creeped me out! It was so unreal. I asked her to stop. She acted as if nothing was out of order. Again I waited all day downstairs at the laundry mat until my roommate came home. That was it !
I wasn't going back into that flat again except to get my things to move! And no more visits from that sweet possessed child!
I found out from another neighbor after asking around about the apartments tenants, that there was an older man who lived in our flat several years earlier. She said he was a very nice man that kept to himself. He was often seen sitting by the front window in his rocking chair there most of the day. He had in fact died in the apartment and his name was "Joe". The woman said that she felt he died of a broken heart as his wife had passed a few years earlier as well and he lived in the apartment alone.
There is so much we don't understand about this life. I will always look back at this experience as an opportunity to open my mind and accept there is so much more to us as humans than we actually understand. I understand it all now, but back then I was living through the fear of it all.
I am sure that the floating head relationship was NOT for me to indulge in. I made wrong choices and bad judgements living on my own back then at such a young age. Wiser now, I will share that when we are guided away from something, take note of that!
Don't go there! There's a very good reason for it.
Sometimes as with me, it's just not going to go well for you.
And never forget, truth is always stranger than any written fiction!
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