Black Stick Men

The world of the paranormal sometimes seems unending. Supernatural beings spring from folklore and urban legends and chance encounters on dark roads at night.  Sometimes, these stories seem so real they can be unnerving.  The stories that people tell of encounters with black eyed children, ghosts, demons and shadow men are chilling and make you reluctant to wander alone at night.   Other times, the stories of paranormal beings just leave you scratching your head.

I feel this way about black stick men.   I keep an open mind, but the stories I've heard of these paranormal entities leave me wondering.  Black stick men are a relatively new phenomena.    According to witnesses, these men are unnaturally tall and so thin that they are two dimensional.   They look like stick figures drawn by a small child in kindergarten class.  They have no facial features and are a blank slate.  They are said to watch people.  They don't move fast or attack their victim, but instead slowly follow behind them from a distance.   Those who have seen them describe feeling overwhelmed by fear and indicate that ignoring the creatures seems to be the fastest way to get them to leave you alone.   One gentleman described seeing one of these stick men on a walk at night.    He glimpsed the stick man with the light of a flashlight.  He didn't describe any fear or action on the part of the figure.  He only described it as there, watching him.  This tends to be the standard description of these phantom creatures.  They watch and they wait and what their purpose could be is as mysterious as the creatures themselves.

There are many theories as to what these stick men are.  Some say they are ghosts or demons and others say they are alien visitors sent to observe us.   I'm not sure what they could be, but this is one paranormal creature I tend to think might exist more firmly in the mind of the observer than in the real world.  Of course, I am often wrong.

Abenor: The Ancient Word for Love

My father used to call my grandmother a witch.  I never listened to him because he never had anything nice to say about my mother or her family.  I took what he said with a grain of salt.  It wasn't until much later that I realized their was a grain of truth in what my father said.  

The women in my family have always had a strong connection with the paranormal and this connection was at it's strongest with my grandmother, Kay.  Kay was a passionate and needy woman who was afraid of being alone.  She was a beautiful woman that was used to being adored by the men around, so after the first few years of marriage ground the edges off of my grandfather's, Raymond's, adoration, my grandmother found herself lost in loneliness.   Raymond was a good man, but he never knew what to do with his beautiful and slightly melodramatic wife, so he retired to his study at the end of every day to find peace.  

Kay couldn't stand her loneliness and she turned to the ouiji board to find some answers to her condition.   In order to use the ouija board she enlisted the assistance of her young daughter, my mother, Robin.  It started slowly.  My grandmother would ask the spirits questions and they would answer.  Robin hated it.  She fought it.  She felt that something was wrong in the core of her being and the ritual terrified her, but Kay persisted.  It wasn't long before one spirit in particular started a dialogue with Kay.  His name was Alonk and Kay and he spent their lonely evenings together with little Robin trapped between them.   Every night the two met  and spoke over the ouija board and every night they drug Robin with them.

Alonk loved Kay and he told her that the ancient word for love was abenor.   Abenor was their secret word for love, more powerful than any English word.   So the lovers met as often as they could, but Kay was encountering a problem.  Little Robin hated Alonk.   Little Robin hated the ouija board and refused to play.   Kay was not deterred.  She turned to her youngest daughter, Kathy, to play with and the love affair continued with a frantic passion that consumed Kay and her new assistant.

My mother still remembers my aunt, a little girl of five, sitting on the bay window looking out, waiting for Alonk to come for her.  She still remembers little Kathy speaking with fire of her mother's love.   Life moved on and even little Kathy grew up, taking with her Kay's connection to Alonk.  Raymond and Kay were divorced and Kay remarried.  She married a man that adored her and gave her the love she wanted.   Alonk vanished. 

But Robin's scars remained in a deep fear of the supernatural, especially the ouija board.   Kay is old now, very old ,and alzheimers has taken many of her  memories.  She forgets who I am and who Robin is.  She forgets everything, but she insists that she was married three times and she remembers Alonk and the ancient word for love, abenor.