At fourteen, trying to impress my friends with the paranormal was a bad idea… a terrible idea!
I was young, and I lacked experience and knowledge about the paranormal. I watched a horror movie and was impressed with the ‘summoning of the spirits.’
I started repeating the lines from the movie repeatedly until I learned them by heart. I got carried away and began to believe that I knew what I was doing, so when one day, friends from school came around, I found a perfect opportunity to impress them. I told them I could summon the spirits, and they laughed. I repeated it, but they started ignoring me. I stormed out of the front room and into a bedroom, where I began repeating the lines from the movie very loudly. This was at an attention-seeking age, and I was about to get attention, but not how I expected.
“GARO!” they shouted from the front room. “COME QUICK!”
I ran to the front room and found all of them staring up at the chandelier, which appeared to be gently swaying. I told them I knew they were trying to prank me, and they swore it was not. My brother was present, and I asked him, and he confirmed it was not any of them.
I felt sceptical and uneasy, so I steadied the chandelier with my hand to stop the swaying, and it did momentarily. I looked at my friends and smirked “nice try, guys” When I looked back at the chandelier, it started swaying again right before my eyes. This time, the swaying was more substantial than before. It immediately became evident that something was causing the chandelier to swing that way, but I was not going to wait to find out. I hurled myself past everyone and was the first out of the front door.
Later it occurred to me that we left the lights on in our panic, but there was no chance of me going up there again. The following day, I summoned courage and went up with my grandfather, who scolded me for leaving the lights on. I could not keep my eyes off the chandelier; it was not swinging, but I still felt very uneasy in its stillness.
Lesson learned!
