I’ve been wanting to write about this for a couple days now but haven’t actually sat down to do it, which makes it very hard to read.

But here I am taking a few minutes of my precious time to get this out there. Finally.

It’s nothing huge, just a thing that happened that was weird and creepy, and just, well, strange.

So it was like 3:13am last Thursday. Earl and I were asleep, for the most part, I guess. See, I turned over towards him and kind of sort of woke up a little, or at least enough to open my eyes, but I’m still not sure why I even did that except that it just goes along with the rest of this strange story –

I found him lying on his back with his arm extended straight up, index finger pointing at the ceiling.

He was quite asleep. And I apparently was not far behind, because in my brain, he was not just pointing at the ceiling, but he was also holding a rifle.

That’s right. That’s what I saw. He was holding it horizontally. So naturally, I was curious.

Me: What are you doing?
Earl: What do you mean what am I doing?

In that second, I realized I must be asleep. “I’m sorry. I’m asleep. I thought you were holding a rifle”, and then I rolled over.

Surprisingly, he was not as curious because he didn’t comment back.

As I lied there falling back to sleep, my brain was trying to sort out what exactly just happened. I mean, I was pretty certain he wasn’t holding a rifle. The fact that we don’t have a rifle to hold, much less have one to be in bed with us, was proof enough - but I was pretty darn sure he was in fact, pointing at the ceiling – But when you’re asleep, its very hard to rationalize these things so I was stuck trying to determine which part was real and which part was in my head. I mean, was his arm even up at all? Did I imagine everything?

It is a very strange thing to not be able to remember what is real and what isn’t. It was just like coming out of anesthesia – or going into it - and not knowing what the hell is going on.

I was however, determined to remember something about all this to ask about it in the morning. My mouth at the time was just too asleep to say another word out loud. So I tried to go over it and over in my head, but I keep falling into unconscious land and never got through the whole story. Not even once.

I slept deep and hard for about 30 minutes, when something else woke me up. This time, it was a noise. It was coming from my side of the bed - my corner and a little bit under my corner, to be precise. The one thing I can tell you for sure is that I was most definitely awake for this one. It woke me up right out of a deep sleep, and kept me awake until it stopped about 40 seconds later.

It was the sound of bed springs – rrree rrree rrree rrree – over and over and over again. The best way to describe it would be to imagine a little kid jumping up and down on the bed. At least that’s what I pictured at the time. I sat up, heard it loud and clear, looked around the floor, even poked my head under the bed.

Of course, there were no little kids to be found.

Like I said, about 40 seconds of this passed, and it stopped. Not much for me to do about it, so I went back to sleep.

In the morning, I asked Earl about the whole arm thing. He indeed, was pointing at the ceiling. He remembers doing it, but he has no idea why. He just kinda found himself pointing. And we both found it was odd that I woke up because of it.

He was not however, holding a rifle. That one I pretty much figured out myself.

I then told him about the bed springs rree-rree’ing, which he did not hear, and blamed it on too many scary movies too late at night.

The strangest part of this wholeee story is that for once, Earl The Skeptic, was set back a bit with his own personal experience that evening, which after a brief spell of not being able to really explain it to himself, eventually confided to me.

Earl had gone to bed a few minutes before me that night. While he lied there, he felt what he assumed to be a cat, jump up on the bed, and walk across his legs.

Me: But there weren't any cats in the room.

Earl: Exactly.

That's why it was very wrong feeling. We had been purposely locking the cats out of the room ever since the air conditioner we put in the bedroom window had no faceplate.

He said he dismissed the sensation when it happened because he’s used to cats being around – but as soon as he realized that he knew there were no cat bodies in the room, it became disturbing.

He also admitted to hearing what sounded like the clicking of the closet doorknob latch as it was being opened.

So that was that night.

Last night, Earl and I were having a hard time staying asleep. It was 4am and we were both tossing and turning. I got up to get some water from the bathroom. As I was standing there, I heard what sounded like Earl yawning.

Now, Earl yawns pretty loud so it didn’t seem weird that I could hear it from the bathroom. But something struck me odd in that it didn’t seem to be coming from the direction of the bedroom.

I came back to bed and just threw the question out there, “Did you just yawn?”

Earl: No, why?

Me: Because I heard you yawn, but you were like, somewhere else.

Earl: It was probably the neighbor.

Me: What?

I’ll have to remember to ask my neighbor if he was yawning at 4am.

So all this could be nothing. But it could also be something. Who knows. I need a tape recorder. I need to catch me some EVPs.