Greetings!
I'm not sure if I really believe in 'Evil', or not; Good and Bad Timing and its Consequences, well, maybe that's another thing. I'm sure that a lot of you folks saw and heard 'things' when you were kids. I did, and as I grew older, I would just chalk it off as being kid-stuff, being that a kids mind is developing and interpreting information differently as it grows.
We used to camp out in the desert a lot before my pre-teens; I loved it then, and still do. We'd go for walks with starlight as our guide, I, five or six years old, charging ahead of Mom, Dad, and sis keeping about a twenty foot lead. I don't really remember what I saw, heard, or didn't; but now and then, I'd freeze, staring off into the dark. A moment later, I'd be off again, as if I'd seen nothing. Dad told me about this some years ago, and how much it freaked Mom out.
A Native American gal that I recently got back in touch with once told me that she would occasionally get panic attacks in some parts of the SoCal Desert. Raising the subject with one of her Elder People, she was advised to stay out of certain areas that had been referred to in the past as burial grounds. I don't know if this was 'talk', or not; she saw no reason to dispute it, and I don't either.
Several years back, I was at a remote San Gabriel Mountains campsite with about a score of other friends and buddies; normally, I won't camp with a crowd, but many of these people had come some distance to join in, and I knew it would be a long time before I'd see them again. One evening, I crawled into my hand-me-down GI A-Frame Tent, and settled into my bag for the night. It was late, and the camp Fire Crowd slowly quieted down. I heard the whoosh of the fire being doused, and the soft crunch of the the last revelers walking to their respective tents.
I was awakened twice by two "dreams" in very quick succession: in the first, I 'awoke' to see a large spider web inches from my nose, gently undulating with my breath. Strangely, this spider web, inches from my face, didn't disturb me at all, and I went back to sleep. Moments later, I distinctly heard what must have been a branch scraping against the right wall of my little tent; opening my eyes, I found myself face to face with a Black Bear. I calmly {!} looked up at his fuzzy face, and simply said; "Well... Hello There!". We quietly regarded one another for what seemed to be fifteen seconds or so, and he slowly pulled his head back out of the vertical tear in the canvas wall; as he did so, the tear got smaller and smaller, as did his immense head, until both the Bears head, and the tear, had both vanished.
I reached over to the tent wall, and felt for the tear; there being none, I settled down and quietly told myself that I needed to remember this 'Dream' in detail for the coming morning's breakfast.
The following morning, I was stopped by my two closest fellow campers, and asked if I had noticed the Bear Tracks alongside my tent... Replying to the negative, they walked me back to my tent, pointing to the tracks, as well as to the fang marks on my neighbors thermos.
Some 'Dream'...
Be Well!
M.T.Marfield