Vampires, Imagined and Historical

Much of the modern lore of vampires originates from a place called Transylvania, in part, due to the literary influence of Bram Stoker's original masterpiece, Dracula.  While many people know that, fewer know exactly where this is, and the history surrounding it.

Transylvania is located in what is now Romania, just to the west of the Black Sea in Eastern Europe.  The earliest mention of it as a political entity was in the 11th century, when it was a province under the Kingdom of Hungary.  It has also been a part of the Ottoman Empire, the Habsburg Monarchy, and the Kingdom of Romania.

The region of Transylvania is a temperate plateau, bordered on several sides by the Carpathian Mountains, and most well known for farmlands and castles, many of which have been the inspiration for literary works such as Dracula.  In German and a number of Eastern European languages, the region's name translates to English as "seven cities" or "seven fortresses," a tribute to the colonization of the area by Saxons in the 12th century.

The Hunyad Castle, Transylvania, Romania, © Wikipedia user Koponya25

While Bram Stoker's novel has influenced much of the English-speaking world's view of Transylvania, stories from the region itself influenced Stoker to write it in the first place.  A Hungarian writer friend of Stoker's, Arminius Vámbéry, is said to have shared with him much of the Eastern European folklore, legends, and mythology that formed the basis for the original manuscript of Dracula.

The name Dracula comes from the historical figure Vlad III, Voivode of Wallachia.  His actual name was Wladislaus Dragwlya, of the House of "Drăculești," or translated, Vlad III Dracula.  He was the son of Vlad II Dracul, the patronymic whence the name Dracula originated.

Dubbed "Vlad the Impaler" after his death in late 1476 or early 1477, he was both hero and villain, depending on source of the tales about him.  In Romania, he was revered for his protection and defense of the country; to his enemies, he was a terrifying conqueror known for torturing and executing those he defeated in the cruelest of ways.

Vlad Ţepeş, the Impaler, Prince of Wallachia, anonymous, 16th Century, Public Domain

Folklore involving the dead is quite common, and is the source of much of the vampire lore of today.  One tale that may have been related to Stoker by his friend Arminius Vámbéry is the tale of Petar Blagojević, an 18th century peasant from the town of Kisilova (now Kiseljevo), in northeastern Serbia.  Petar died in 1725.  His death was followed shortly by the deaths of a number of other villagers, each who died rather quickly after short, mysterious illnesses.  A large number of people died in the village the year Petar died, including over thirty children.  The survivors traced these deaths directly back to Petar as those who died claimed on their deathbeds to have been visited by him.

Most of the residents in the tiny village don't care to relate the tale.  To them, it's a stigma on the town that drives others away.  But some talk, if asked nicely enough.  As the story goes, the night it all started was dark and ominous, heavy with fog.  Nine people died in a span of just eight days, each claiming on his deathbed to have been visited by Petar, who had been the first to die.  Before they died, each victim said that Petar had come to their beds and had choked them during the night.  Petar's wife also claimed he had visited her in a dream, asking for shoes.  Other accounts say that Petar's son was brutally murdered after refusing to give him food when he came back to visit.  The mysterious deaths continued.

Village authorities finally ordered Petar exhumed, a full two months after his death.  He was allegedly found in the opened grave, still partially alive.  He had not rotted as a corpse should have; he was still lifelike, his lips still with fresh blood in them.  The villagers were so frightened by this that they demanded action be taken, even against the wishes of the local Austrian official.  They pulled Petar from the grave, stabbed his heart with a sharpened stick, and then for good measure, burned his body at the stake.

After Petar's death and the successive deaths of many more in the village, rumors of what was happening there spread to officials in the local Austrian government in Beograd.  Frombald, the Imperial Austrian head of the locality released a report to the Viennese newspaper, documenting the first recorded instance of vampires in Europe.  And at the request of Frombald, the Austrian military government dispatched a consignment of men to determine whether there were real vampires there, and if so, to determine if it signified the start of a vampire epidemic.

Ultimately, the Austrian commission could not make a determination, but that didn't stop the spread of rumors and tales of spreading, nor did it stop people from taking preventive measures against an outbreak of vampires, real or imagined.  Other such stories exist of vampires in the area at that time.  In each, the bodies of the dead were said to have looked alive, with fresh blood, and newly grown fingernails and hair.  A rash of such incidents of "vampire eradication" spread, where the newly dead were exhumed from their graves, staked in the heart, and burned.

Even today, the legend remains in the village.  Many of the younger generation are leaving, whether because of the tales or just to find work elsewhere, it's hard to say.  But the village is dying.  Few but the oldest denizens are left.  They remain, as does Petar Blagojević, who is still said to haunt the area.  A curse has even originated from the village: "Dabogda te Pera posetio!" - "May Peter visit you!"

The Premature Burial, by Antoine Wiertz, Public Domain

But is there scientific evidence vampires existed?  Maybe.  A while back in Poland, archaeologists found "vampire graves" on a construction site.  The remains buried there were decapitated, and their heads placed on their legs to ensure they stayed dead.  This finding is in line with the older, broader definition of vampires from the Middle Ages, but as with the story of Petar Blagojević, we find little in the way of empirical data.

In the field of medicine, there are a couple of interesting maladies that share symptoms with the more common legends of vampires.  Porphyria is one such malady, a genetic disorder that causes blisters, itching, and swelling of the skin when exposed to sunlight.  Other medical conditions which might lend themselves to such legends are catalepsy and catatonia, which cause states of unresponsiveness, something that without adequate medical training or facilities available could be mistaken for death.  Again, nothing that would indicate evidence of actual vampirism, but possible evidence explaining the root causes of such tales and superstitions.

The Vampire, by Philip Burne-Jones, 1897, Public Domain

So while there is no solid evidence supporting vampirism, the folklore remains.  The story of Peter Blagojević and others like it are quite common, and aren't confined to lore from Eastern Europe or the Balkans.  Vampire stories are rife throughout Western Europe, the Americas, and the rest of the world.  In fact, there are versions of the vampire found in almost every culture on Earth.

As with many such legends, most can be traced back to old wives' tales which attempt to put the inexplicable into terms which could be coped with, as strange as such terms may sound now.  Many of the signs of life as reported in these vampire tales can be explained by modern medicine as the signs of rigor mortis, or other common effects of death in a body.

But just as importantly, all such legends aren't likely to be completely disproved, leaving room for that one minute sliver of doubt in the mind, that one single thought in the back of the subconscious that allows us, every great once in a while, to believe they are true.

Quick note: several of the links in this post are in Serbian-Croatian, which is fine if you can understand them.  For those who can't, I suggest dropping the Internet addresses for them into Google and clicking on the "Translate this page" link.  It'll provide a rather shitty auto-translation that should get the job done for you.

Steve Hutchinson and the Deus ex Machina

Ok.  So everyone here probably already knows I'm a pretty big Seattle Seahawks fan.  And by "pretty big", I don't mean in a large-sized sort of way.  I mean it in an I'm going to have to get a bigger closet for all my Seahawks gear when I buy another jersey sort of way.  I live and breathe Seahawks.  Twenty-four friggin' hours a day.  Drives the rest of the House of Dalar up the walls at times, especially the times when there's a game on.  'cept the boy.  He's cool like that.  I'm raising him well.

The Greatest Place on Earth, © Jonathan Dalar

So when the news broke that left guard Steve Hutchinson would be visiting the Seahawks, I naturally assumed the Mayans were right about this whole "world is ending in 2012" thing.  The writer in me took over, however, and the first thing I did was start to think about plot twists in a story.  Well, no.  Technically that was the second thing I did.  I first checked the temperature in Hell.  Astonishingly, snow was not in the forecast.

For those of you who are not following, I'll bring you up to speed with a little back story necessary to understand why this would be so improbable.  Actually the back story is the story.  The visit is simply the climax at the end.

Hutch is an absolute beast, a high-caliber player that tremendously impacts the success of a team.  He's been to the Pro Bowl seven times, four of them with the Seahawks.  They picked him with the 17th pick in the 2001 draft, and he quickly became a cog in one of the best offensive lines we've seen in the NFL.  Between 2001 and 2006, he played beside Walter Jones, forming if not the best offensive line tandem in the game, certainly one of a select few great ones.  He was tremendously valuable to the Seahawks, and a big part of their trip to Super Bowl XL* after the 2005 season.  Ah, things were going well!

But then things went sour, and they did so quickly.  In 2006, Hutch was scheduled to become a free agent.  The Seahawks front office, then led by a somewhat discordant team of head coach Mike Holmgren and president and general manager Tim Ruskell, placed the Transition Tag on Hutch instead of the safer Franchise Tag.  The move saved the team $500,000.00, but cost them the ability to secure his services for another year while they worked out a long-term contract.

The Minnesota Vikings were quick to take advantage of that situation, and offered him a huge poison pill-laden contract, at the time an unprecedented amount of money for his position.  The poison pill was two-fold: first, the contract stipulated he had to be the highest paid lineman on the team (on the Vikings he would be; on the Seahawks, Walter Jones deservedly earned more), and second, he could play no more than a half a dozen games in Washington State (the Seahawks play eight home games a year).  If either of these provisions were not followed, the entire $49 million contract was guaranteed.  Of course, that made the contract impossible for the Seahawks to match.  They took it to arbitration, but lost, and Hutch became a Viking.

It was a divorce straight from the script of The War of the Roses.  Hutch, frustrated with the Seahawks' dysfunctional front office, had very little nice to say about the split.  Seahawks fans everywhere took affront.  Hutch instantly became one of Seahawks fans' most hated players in the game.  He was branded a traitor, and much worse.  "It was all about the money!"  "What a greedy, selfish bastard!"  "Huck Futch!"  The insults came hot and heavy, and sentiment regarding Hutch didn't really change, even as the years passed and memories faded.  His money-grabbing move crippled the Seahawks' front line, triggering the team's sharp downward spiral just a season away from the Super Bowl.  He took something away from us.  Seahawks fans had every right to be pissed.

Or did we?  Hindsight is 20/20, so they say, but we don't have the luxury of hindsight when we're in the middle of a story.  We read it as it plays out, and react accordingly.  But what we see isn't necessarily all that's going on behind the scenes, and it's only at the end that we start to figure out what's really going on.  This has never been more true than with this story.

Self, © beholder via Flikr

We fans were still quite enamored at the time with Tim Ruskell.  He'd come to the team at the beginning of the 2005 season, and a few key moves that year were what propelled them to their best season yet and a trip to the big dance.  It appeared he was the mad genius, the final missing cog that brought the team to glory from a rather dismal and emotionally draining past.  "In Ruskell we trust" became many fans' byline, almost overnight.

In the years since, that façade has crumbled away, as decisions made then did the exact opposite of what we expected.  The team plodded to back-to-back horrible seasons, mired as ineffective moves came back to haunt it.  We've come to understand that there was far more dysfunction and discord in the front office than we realized.  Ruskell, no longer the hero, was now judged by his track record, and it wasn't a pretty record at all.  The decision to assign the Transition Tag to Hutchinson is viewed by many as his worst, the fatal blow that ripped the team from playoff contention and mired them once again in mediocrity.

Since those dark days, the team has had an entire reboot.  An entire new front office was installed, and the team no longer has a single player from that magical 2005 season left.  Not one.  At least not until Steve Hutchinson re-signs.  It's definitely not your daddy's "Same Old Seahawks".

Re-signing Hutchinson may be just what the team needs.  He's older, but he's still a great player, and would make an outstanding mentor to the younger linemen on the team.  As an emotionally involved fan, I'm split.  I still vividly feel those feelings of betrayal and letdown when he scorned us for better pastures.  It still hurts.  But I also realize he'd be good for the team.  This is not the same Seahawks team he left, and there's no reason to assign correlation to the old front office.  Business is business in the NFL, and this is no different.

So how does this story apply to the concept of deus ex machina?  Simple: it's the perfect example of how to write a story and avoid having to use it.  Thinking your plot through a little deeper allows you as a writer the ability to create wild, unexpected plot twists, without having to sideswipe your readers with something out of the blue, something that only serves to shove your plot in the direction you want it to go, but can't get your characters' actions to get it there.

So what if that bad guy wasn't really that bad a guy after all?  What if actions earlier were done for completely different reasons and motivations than were assumed?  Suddenly the dynamics of your plot shifts naturally, without the need for a character epiphany, or sudden change of heart, or mandate from an outside force.  In Hutch's case, he isn't having an unexpected change of heart.  He's not repenting, coming back to a team he spurned before.  He's operating exactly the same way he always has.  He's staying in character, making a move that's aligned in his best interests.  This new front office is looking for a capable, talented guard, and he could well be the man for the job.  It makes perfect sense now, even if such an ending would have been viewed as completely absurd halfway through the story.

I don't know about other Seahawks fans, but I think I'd be willing to root for him again in blue and green.  The unlikely story will have come full circle.  What was once thought impossible is now possible, because things weren't quite as we once thought they were.  It's not exactly ironic, but it is about as unexpected a plot twist as one can imagine.

And is it just me, or is it poetic justice that it's all happening on the Ides of March?

Update:  So we don't get our happy ending.  He's accepted a three-year contract with the Tennessee Titans, reuniting him with former teammate Matthew Hasselbeck, at least for now.  Still, the sentiment stands. And of course, your story is your own.  You can write the ending any damn way you please.

The Most Terrifying Night of my Life

It happened back in 1990, when I was living in Montana.  My buddies and I used to hike the trails and wilderness areas of the Bridgers, the Gallatins and the Absarokas, year around.  We were well familiar and perfectly at home there, no matter the time of day or year.

One meadow in particular, below the 8,300 foot Mount Ellis, in the Gallatin Range was a favorite.  I've climbed the peak itself hundreds of times if I've climbed it once, and I've been to that meadow many more times than that.  My high school, named after the peak, holds an annual race to the top.  I won the race four years straight, from 1985 through 1988 primarily because I knew which exact routes were the fastest to the top.  I knew that whole wilderness area as well as my own backyard.

The meadow was beautiful, nestled between the surrounding mountain tops, with pure, ice-cold water gushing out from several natural springs into a small tributary of the trout-filled Bear Creek below.  It ran northwest-southeast, at the base of the ridge between Mount Ellis and the lower Mount Wilson to the north.  It was the idyllic place to camp, relax, and enjoy the beautiful Big Sky wilderness.

Google Earth image of the meadow, looking north, with a snow-covered Mount Ellis at the lower left.

And then it changed.  I don't know when it did, but it was palpable.  Somehow it was completely different.  It happened gradually at first, so gradually that we initially ignored the nagging feelings of uneasiness we felt there.  The feeling grew stronger though, until it could not be ignored.  It was a feeling that something just wasn't right, that we weren't alone up there anymore.  We were being watched.  We were intruding, and whatever was watching us did not like us very much.  We couldn't put our fingers on it, but it was impossible to disregard.

Topographic map of the meadow, looking north, with Mount Ellis at the lower left.

I distinctly remember trying to hike up to the meadow that summer, only to find myself running back down the trail, scared to death.  There was no physical reason for it; I just couldn't do it.  There was something malevolent up there, and I knew somehow I was in danger if I stayed.

As summer turned to winter (there really isn't much of a fall in Montana), it turned more palpable, more deadly in its intent.  The boys and I talked about it several times together in the "Dwarven Bowling Alley", the low, long attic hangout that also served as my bedroom.  All of us had felt it, and in the same way.  None of us could put our finger on just exactly what it was.

Google Earth image of the meadow, looking south, with the slope to Mount Ellis at the upper right.

And we weren't the only ones.  I know a girl who tried riding her horse up the trail and was bucked off when the horse first refused to go up it and finally bolted in fear.  I know of several other people who came back down from the area and wouldn't go back up under any circumstances.  There was something up there, and everyone who ventured into its radius felt it.  Inexplicable, irrational fear was the common theme.

We had a lot of different theories about what it was, but since it wasn't anything more than a mutually shared feeling, it was hard putting any amount of accuracy to them.  We speculated it might be some sort of human ill-intent.  A recent bust in the area had shed light on the fact the mountain was being used as a drop point for drugs.  We also thought it might be a wild animal such as a mountain lion, as the big cats were quite common in the Gallatins.  It could possibly be rabid, or otherwise unsound of mind.

Cougar, © Wayne Dumbleton

Supernatural activity of some sort could not be entirely out of the question either.  Just down the road from the trail head to the mountain we knew of a field littered with arrowheads and chippings.  It was at least an old Indian encampment, if not a religious place or burial ground.  These were all theories, though, and none of them could explain what we felt.

It came to a head one cold November night in the strangest of ways.  Nothing about the incident served as concrete evidence, but when you take everything in perspective, coincidence seems like a pretty bad bet to take.  In fact, the odds of everything happening as it did would be astronomical.

We'd made plans to go up camping in the meadow on the weekend.  Mitch*, one of my buddies, was off on Friday and wanted to go up a day early.  Both I and another buddy, Rick, had to work, but we'd join Mitch the next day.  I had a job slinging sliders on the mid shift in Bozeman then, so I was able to take Mitch up to the drop off point that Friday afternoon before work.

I hiked with Mitch to the meadow so Rick and I could find his shelter easily the next morning.  He decided to camp under a cluster of large trees on the lower side of the meadow, not far from the trail leading into it.  I left soon after, still with that same uneasy feeling I'd felt before, and if memory serves me correctly, I ended up running most of the way back down to the trail head.  All the way back, I had that same uneasy feeling of being watched.

Gallatin Range, near Bozeman, MT circa. 1990 © Jonathan Dalar 

Later at work that night the feeling hadn't gone away.  It usually wore off after leaving the meadow, but this time it intensified, and was to the point where I was on edge and jumpy, my skin crawling with fear.  It seemed like there was something behind me, watching, waiting, no matter what I did.  Finally I was going out of my mind in stark terror.

I worked for a while, but something was terribly wrong.  I could feel it.  It was a feeling of sheer paranoia, and I couldn't shake it, no matter how I rationalized it.  It finally got so bad I'd had enough.  Mitch was in danger and I had to go get him.  I told my boss I was quitting early for the night.  She didn't want to let me off early, but I finally informed her I was leaving no matter what she said.  I told her it was an emergency, even if I had no idea what kind of emergency it was.  I was scheduled to get off work at two that morning, but it was just past eleven thirty when I left.

As I drove home, my hands actually shook at the wheel.  At one point I was trembling so badly I could hardly function, but managed to get my winter clothing on and get my gear.  I was going up that mountain if it killed me, and the more I thought about it, the more I was certain that was exactly what would happen.

I headed out the door, armed and loaded to the teeth.  We hunted every year then, and going out into the Montana wilderness, let alone at night after some unknown danger, was unheard of without several guns, knives and assorted hardware.  I pulled out of the driveway in a cloud of dust, starting out to rescue Mitch.

I got the rest of the eerie story from Mitch and Rick that night in the attic.  Seems I wasn't the only one with such premonitions.  Mitch said he'd gone to sleep early that evening, somewhere close to four or five in the afternoon.  Darkness comes early in the mountains there during the winter, and it was dusk when he'd turned in.

He'd bedded down for the night, but hadn't made a shelter as we often did while camping.  There was no need for one that night, so he'd cleared the snow away, laid down some pine boughs and stretched his sleeping bag and bedroll out.  As he'd drifted off to sleep, he looked out from his bag over the crust of accumulated snow and noticed a red glowing light, like a candle, but still and steady.  He dismissed it at the time, thinking it was a light from one of the houses down the canyon to the north.  He said afterward that before falling asleep, he'd felt peaceful, so strangely peaceful in fact, that he'd wondered about it.  He later told me it was the most tranquil feeling he's ever experienced.  It was pure ecstasy, he said, like nothing in the world was amiss.

Darkness vs Candle, © Ankur Sharma

Later that night he awoke, all signs of his earlier peacefulness replaced by sheer terror.  He told us he'd never been that scared in his life, and has never been since.  He didn't know what was causing this terror, but he couldn't fight it no matter what he did.  It was more terrifying a feeling than anything he'd ever felt.  Whatever was there wasn't just watching anymore.  It was after him.  He could feel it breathing down his neck.  He grabbed his rifle and fired several shots into the side of the hill across from him, thinking to scare off whatever it was there.

Instead, his actions had the opposite effect from what he'd intended.  "It was like whatever it was said, 'oh, there he is,'" he told me later.  "It was like the sound of the shots drew its attention even more and let it focus directly on me."  He threw his stuff together, grabbed his rifle, and began running for the trail headed down to civilization.  He said all his gear had been packed, and he brought it all back out with him, but if he hadn't, I'm sure he wouldn't have cared.  All he could do was run for his life.

Now this is where the story gets really weird, as if it wasn't enough so before.  Rick said later he had awakened in a panic that night around ten thirty or so.  He really doesn't remember many details anymore, so all we've gotten from him is that he knew Mitch was in trouble and he had to go get him.  He's a real lunch pail kind of guy, not given to any sort of unusual flights of fancy.  He's a mechanic and a heavy construction equipment operator, with little room for any sort of such strange nonsense.  It was completely out of character for him to respond in such a way, but respond he did.  He dressed and sped across town and out to the trail head shortly after, and began hiking up toward the meadow.

Mitch and Rick met on the trail just above the split, where the trail to the right sheered off and headed up New World Gulch.  Mitch says he saw something coming up the trail at him, and in his terror did not even recognize it as a person.  He saw it as a threat.  He felt the dangerous presence closing in from behind and steeled himself for a last stand, sure he would not make it out alive.

As soon as he saw Mitch, Rick began yelling at him at the top of his lungs, screaming that he was in danger, and needed to get out of there immediately.  Finally Rick's voice cut through and Mitch realized who it was.  Even then he could hardly lower his gun out of the terror that still surrounded him.

Gallatin Range, near Bozeman, MT circa. 1990 © Jonathan Dalar

Mitch finally lowered his gun as realization sunk in.  "You've got to get out of here now!  Throw me your pack and run on ahead of me," Rick told him.  He grabbed Mitch's pack and shoved him down the trail, following as fast as he could.  They ran down the path, still feeling that ominous presence, following, closing in.  Hunting them.

They made it back down to the car, tore down the gravel road towards home.  They rounded the corner to my driveway a short while later, just as I was backing out.  We almost collided.  Any longer and I would have already been gone, driving up there to get Mitch myself.  Rick and Mitch tumbled out of the pickup, scared out of their minds.

That night in the attic, we put the jumbled pieces of the story together.  As far as we could figure out the timeline, all three of us felt the same panicky feeling that Mitch was in danger at almost the exact same time.  All three of us felt so strongly we were obliged to instantly do something about it.  I begged off work over two hours early, Rick got up out of bed and drove there from clear on the other side of Bozeman, and Mitch knew he had to get out of there as fast as he could.  The coincidence of all three of us simultaneously feeling the exact same terror was certainly unusual.  And the timing was impeccable.  While I had a slight delay responding, that delay was due to an obligation to work.  If I'd have left when I first felt it, I'm convinced we'd have all met at exactly the same time and place on that mountain trail.

We stayed up into the early hours of the morning, talking about what had happened.  What had happened was so staggeringly impossible it couldn't nearly be coincidence.  There seemed no way in the world all three of us had felt such strong feeling of peril for Mitch at the exact same time that we'd done what we had.  Some force more powerful than we knew was at work here.  The only problem was we had no clue what it was.

Even talking about the experience was terrifying.  It seemed the more we talked about whatever it was out there in the mountains, the closer it came.  It felt like it was still on the prowl, hunting for us.  And we felt even talking about it allowed it to focus and narrow its search.  Finally we agreed not to talk further about it for a day or so, even though we wanted to figure out what it was.  Enough was enough, and we weren't taking the chance that talking about it allowed it to find us more quickly.

Afterward, the old timers in the area started coming forth with their stories.  Seems we weren't the first to experience something like that around the Gallatins.  There was even a tale of someone who hadn't had the luck we had.  Rumor had it, a few years prior, a man had been pulled off the mountain just to the north of the meadow a couple of days after he'd gone missing.  He was stark raving mad, and was taken to the asylum in Warm Springs where he spent the remainder of his days.  And he hasn't spoken a word since.

Now I don't know if that last story is true or not.  It's what several older residents of the area have told us.  I do know our story as I've told it is completely true.  Every single word of it is true, or at least accurate to the best of our recollection.  None of us knew what caused our terror, but there was clearly something at work there beyond our understanding.  I don't believe any of us have gone up that mountain or into the meadow since.

We still don't know what it was that night that so terrified us.  Nothing can completely explain it.  Mitch is convinced it was spirits from an Indian burial ground, that something was done to disturb them and cause them to haunt the meadow.  He swears he's seen the place bookmarked as such a burial ground on Google Maps, but when we looked recently, the bookmark wasn't there anymore.  It wouldn't be a stretch to think that though, as we know there are remains of an encampment just down the road a few miles, and the whole area was once their home.

"The Frog", Northeast of Mount Ellis, looking Southwest into the Gallatin Range, near Bozeman, MT circa. 1990 © Jonathan Dalar

I've used the experience as inspiration for stories before, but until now, I've never recorded it with words.  I have a hell of a horror novel outlined, based on what we felt that night and the months leading up to it, but I haven't written it yet.  Mitch begged me not to write it until I was good enough a writer to do the story justice.  I think I'm there now, and as soon as I can work up the courage to address it head on, I'll write it.  Until then, I'll do what I've done for over twenty years, and that is push it to the back of my mind so the nightmares go away and I don't risk it finding me again.

*The names have been changed to protect what little innocence may be left.