If you’re having a bad day, read this. Or just read it. What the hell.

This will hopefully become the first of a series of posts concerning the various supernatural happenings that occur at my job on a semi regular basis. Of course we all know how good I am at updating….

I have personally experienced several weird things in one specific stockroom. This stockroom opens directly to the sales floor, and has the added appeal of a door directly opposite which leads into the back area. This has proven to be a handy shortcut to the freight elevators (I’m a lazy bastard and can’t deal with the exercise required to walk to the escalators), as well as the rooms containing the switches to the air handlers.

When I close–which is too damn much and a different rant entirely–I turn off the air handlers on the second and third floor. Since third is my domain, I take care of those first before making my way down to catch the ones on second. By this time, most of the lights are off, and the stockroom I use for a shortcut is pretty dark and creepy.

One night I’m doing the usual run, and while I was walking back to the door leading into the stockroom and back to the sales floor, I start to hear children giggling behind me. It wasn’t loud, but it was distinct. I look behind, and of course there is no one there. Just great. So I walk through the door I left open wanting to get back to open spaces and living people when the door behind me closes slowly with a soft creak. Mind you, the door was open, I know the air isn’t moving–air handlers are off–and I did not touch the door while passing through it. There was no reason for it to…son of a bitch.

I take small comfort in the knowledge that a number of other associates have confessed to being uncomfortable in this stockroom. The number one complaint seems to be the feeling of being watched. Or followed.

A second occurance which happened a few days ago may have been worse. Same routine, only this time, no giggles, no moving doors. I felt pretty good and had almost made my escape when a baby began crying directly behind me. Loudly. I spun around right when the sound cut off mid-sob. Again I faced an empty stockroom and a silence broken only by me.

“Goddammit.”

Next up: “Tales of the third floor women’s restroom”

I have a neighbor who lives two houses down from us. He owns a pack of dogs, and does not keep them confined in any way. As a result, they wander the neighborhood at night, getting into people’s yards and killing their pets. Our immediate neighbor has had several of his cats literally torn apart (my mom witnessed one of them being killed, and was unable to stop the dogs in time).

The dogs have come into our yard, and have killed most of our chickens. Last night, they killed Ethel, a hen that I had raised by hand.

Numerous calls to the Humane Society have done nothing. The neighbor himself was spoken to several times, and at first he said he would pen up his dogs, but didn’t. Now he won’t even take responsibility and gets all nasty, “How do you know they are my dogs?”

Because we live higher up the mountain than you, jackass, and can see you with them in your own goddamn yard.

Calls to the police only get us redirected to the Humane Society, a organization which has proved itself to be useless.

At this point I am open to suggestion. My next move is to go to the Humane Society personally on my next day off, and ask if there are any complaint forms I can file, and ask them the exact procedures concerning a pack of wild dogs in the neighborhood. Maybe with me in front of them and not on the phone, they will give me a better answer than, “We’ll look into it.”

…And said “yes.”

I’ll let you folks know when we set a date.

I’m getting married! Whoo-hoo!!

I caught a centipede in the house today. It was crawling across the living room floor, and as soon as I saw it, grabbed a pair of scissors and trapped it between the blades.

Normally at this point, I take it outside and cut it into pieces until it is dead. But this one gave me a rotten feeling, an impression of malicious intent. It was black and shiny, and I could actually hear the clicking noise of its mandibles attacking the scissors. So I carried it over the sink, lit a match and set it on fire.

The fucker screamed.

Growing up, my dad taught me that if someone is trying to send negative energy at you, a sign of it is a centipede in your house. The way you can find out if it is a regular centipede or a cursed one is to set it on fire. If it screams, then it is a bad one. We’ve found numerous centipedes in the house before (hello, we live in a desert), and my dad has torched the really scary looking ones. But not one has ever made a sound.

This fucker screamed.

It wasn’t loud, but was still very distinctive. It was like a sharp squeek that lasted for nearly a second. It stopped, and the insect went still. Chicken skin ran up my arms, and I felt sick. I had no idea what to do–what was the protocal when you actually came accross a screaming centipede? I ended up taking it outside and lifting out a half-buried rock to make a hole. I dropped the centipede in and covered it with Hawaiian salt, then repaced the rock over everything.

Afterwards, I went to my dad’s shop and told him what happened. When I came to the part of the centipede’s scream, he became very still. He told me, “I was kind of expecting something like this.”

For the past several days, he went on to explain, he’d been feeling some bad vibes and his sleep has been broken and restless. He was wondering if someone was wishing evil on us. Dad was told by a close friend who is well versed in local mythology that if something negative comes at us, we have to tell it is not welcome.

Hell, yeah, it’s not welcome. My own sleep has had its share of weird dreams, but nothing too terrible. I wonder if the bad juju hasn’t bothered me as much because I had warded my window and door with salt when I first moved in. Hm. Might do that for the rest of the house.

Fuck. Goddamn screaming centipedes. Stay the hell out of my house.