char *(null)="
slumber.party
slumber.party
Date: Fri, 24 Feb 1995 14:17:15 -0600
Sender: night-l@unicorn.acs.ttu.edu
From: Susananita@aol.com
Subject: The Very Last Slumber Party
During high school, it was common for me and my friends to
regularly rotate houses and throw slumber parties. Every few
months we'd kill a whole night talking, laughing and dancing to the
radio and rarely ever slumbering. Eventually just talking and
dancing got boring so to liven up the party, we'd fall into the typical
slumber party trap of; the 'two-finger corpse lift' and/or a seance.
The 'two-finger corpse lift' was only successful if the 'corpse'
weighed under ninety pounds and habitually every seance bottomed
out with everyone hilariously falling apart in laughing fits.
The very last slumber party was held at Terry's, who lived out in a
more rural area where there were dense woods at the edge of her
backyard and houses were spread apart. She invited my closest
friend Pat, myself, and the usual other seven. As luck would have it,
I came down with the flu that week-end and could not go.
When Monday morning rolled around, I got to school expecting to
find everyone in a jovial mood, but instead my friends were not
even talking to each other and just barely to me. I suspected there
had been a really big blow-up at the party, but was puzzled as to
why none of my friends would clue me in. Outside of plain bribery,
I pleaded, prodded and begged to be told the details, but doing so
removed them farther away from me. Never before had it been
impossible to get just one of them to crack under pressure and spill
the beans.
Slowly the friendships healed but it was never quite the same old
group and I was the only one who did not know why.
Years later, Pat owned and operated a craft shop and offered to
teach a bunch of us, still friends from high school, how to work in
macrame. We gathered at her store one afternoon to talk and work
on projects. Pat had the radio set to a rock channel and at some
point, a Jim Morrison song came on. Everything seemed awfully
quiet suddenly, so I looked up from my work to see my friends
sitting very still and looking damned uncomfortable. Something
about the way Pat got up and changed radio station prompted me
to ask, "Is something the matter?"
And so the beans spilled.
Apparently that very last slumber party started off as usual with the
typical talking, laughing and dancing to the stereo. Then it was
decided to have a seance. This time everybody had to solemnly
swear to take an oath and try hard to get something to happen.
They went through the usual ritual of darkening the room, lighting
candles and sitting in a circle touching hands. For an hour and a half
they tried to summon celebrities like Marilyn Monroe, JFK, and
the more recently deceased, Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin.
Nothing. Then somebody thought to provide more appropriate
mood music by putting Jim Morrison's '(This is) The End,' on the
stereo. This is a rather depressing nineteen-minute rambling ballad
about a killer who is about to end his life after having committed
violent acts against his family. Throughout the song's entirety, they
tried to summon the troubled spirit of Jim Morrison of 'The
Doors,' but when the song ended without any spirit manifestation,
they called it quits. Bored, disappointed and thirsty, they broke the
circle and put on more cheerful music. Pat and a few others went
into the kitchen to get sodas while the others remained in the living
room.
Pat was standing near the opened kitchen door which looked out
into the backyard and towards the woods. There, through the
screen door, and about twenty yards away at the very edge of the
line of trees, she saw a tall dark shape standing very still. The figure
stood quite close to the back of the garage where there were some
floodlights attached, aimed at the middle of the backyard. At first
she thought it was the silhouette of a black bear standing on its hind
legs but after a few more minutes of study, the figure more
resembled the size and shape of an adult male.
Something about the way it just stood there gave Pat the willies and
just as she was about to call out to Terry in the next room, the dark
shape, as if on cue, suddenly began to move towards the house. As
it neared and entered the edges of the floodlights, Pat saw that the
figure was wearing what appeared to be an oversized monk's robe
that was positively pitch-black. Although the face was obscured in
the deep recess of the hood, she sensed its eyes staring in her
direction. For some reason she was particularly disturbed by the
hem of the outfit and at first couldn't put her finger on what exactly
was wrong with it. Then it dawned on her. The monk-like figure
wasn't walking at all, it was gliding, and the bottom of the robe was
lightly brushing against the very tops of the high grasses in the
backyard. In fact, he was floating a foot above the ground.
The instant Pat realized the figure was not human, the girls in the
living room began screaming hysterically. Instinctively, Pat knew
they too were looking at the exact same figure out the window from
the next room. The dark figure advanced quickly towards the
screen door where she stood frozen in place, too terrified to move.
When the figure was about ten feet away, Pat found herself
slamming the inside door so hard that the screen in the screen door
popped out and the kitchen wall rattled, knocking several
containers off a shelf..
When Pat regained her senses, she was on the floor of a back
bedroom, huddled together with the rest of our shaking, sobbing
friends. Terry 's parents rushed around trying to calm everyone
down. Nearest neighbors had heard the screaming and called
the sheriff's department.
The police arrived, and Pat and Terry, each whom had been in
different rooms when they spotted the 'thing' in the backyard, gave
officers identical descriptions of a black hooded figure floating off
the ground and approaching the back kitchen door of the house.
The police searched the grounds but found nothing.
When our friends' parents arrived to take them home, the policemen
explained that the girls had probably gotten themselves into an
overly expectant state during the seance; so that when one mistook
an animal in the backyard for the walking dead, her screaming set
off the other girls as well. Although some of my friends objected to
the policemens' conclusion, some parents got irritated and a few got
nasty, so everybody thought it best never to bring up the matter
again.
Finally.
It had taken six years for me to discover what happened that night
at that last slumber party! Still, despite my friends obvious
discomfort, I really wished I'd been there.
Sue
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