Other Witnesses

Often Bob and I look back over these events of the last 3 and a half years with some amount of disbelief. Sometimes we question our own sanity, or look back and think, “Could this really be happening?” We begin to doubt ourselves, and I sometimes page through my blog entries to re-read over past events and I know that I didn’t make it up. It is as “real” to us as anything “real” can be. But there is definitely sometimes doubt clouding our thoughts, and believe me, we do not talk much about this to anyone. I have a small handful of people that I discuss it with, but even some of them have stepped away from it, unable to either process, believe, or take in what is going on. Who knows what they really think of it. That is why, when something happens to someone else here at our house, it validates our experience, and we start thinking, “Okay, it’s not just us… maybe we are not ‘stepping off'”.

What I’m getting to, is an “event” that happened in early August. It was, to be precise, the week of Musikfest… a big annual music festival that takes place nearby in Bethlehem, PA. Kate and I go every year for one evening of the 10-day long “fest”, usually on a week night because of the crowds. This year was no different, but along with me and Kate, her boyfriend, “Nate” and a friend of his, “Matt” also came along. The plan was for them to all spend the night, because Musikfest both allows and encourages drinking, and they were going to do plenty of it. Besides a Lanta bus, I was the designated driver.

When we all got safely back, I set up sleeping arrangements for the guests, and gave them only 2 instructions, as I was going to bed: “Don’t smoke in the house, and don’t be outside when Bob gets up to go to work, because we haven’t introduced “Matt” to the dogs yet, and Bob will be letting them out. They might not react too kindly to strangers in the dark”. They agreed, and I went to bed. Bob got up without incident at about 3-something AM. Kate and I were up well before the 2 guys, and sat out on the deck having coffee. When the guys came out later to join us, I was to learn there had been an overnight “event”. Hmmmmmmmmm…..

I texted this to Bob, August 9th, 10:06 AM: “Nate and Matt had an ‘encounter’ last night.

Bob must have sent a reply text trying to guess what it was, but I don’t seem to have that text anymore.

I wrote back to him, 10:13 AM: “Nope. The ‘shadow family’ or Nuttah paid a visit to them on the deck. Kate and I had gone to bed.”

A figure walks by the lit up kitchen window, witnessed outside by Nate

Here is what ‘Nate’ described. They’d been sitting out on the deck, it was about 2 am.  They were outside, both because they were smoking, and because they didn’t want their talking to wake anyone up. Matt was sitting with his back to the house facing the creek, and Nate sat across from him looking toward the house and the lit up kitchen window. At some point, as they were talking, Nate saw a figure in the kitchen walk by the window toward the door to the deck. He thought it was me or Kate coming out to get them. That’s not a huge distance to cover, and at the point when the ‘person’ should have reached the door, nothing was there, but Nate kept watching, waiting for someone to appear. All of a sudden, Matt, who’d been facing Nate talking, suddenly turns his head quickly to his left as if someone has just walked up to him. There is also nothing there, but he shudders, says to Nate, “what was that?” Nate responds, “I don’t know, but I just saw someone walk by that lit window, and then nobody came out. At least I didn’t think they did.”

They looked at each other, thinking, “What just happened here?”, and decided since it was nearing 2:30 AM, they better wrap it up and go to bed.

The pups relax on the deck on a summer morning

It was not to end there though. Over several cups of coffee out in the August warmth on the deck the next morning, Matt was to describe a feeling of being followed and watched in the house when he came back in. He felt that he was followed to the bathroom. He felt the presence of ‘something’ as he laid on the makeshift bed I put on the floor of the ‘office’. He felt someone was sitting there, watching him sleep. He woke up a lot and felt the presence each time. He said he was not afraid of it, that it seemed to be female, and that it seemed to be harmless. Even ‘good’ in a way, not evil or with any bad intent. He also reported odd electronic things during the night: a light on and then off, a clock ticking, and then not ticking, a distant muffled conversation that he couldn’t clearly hear, but knew there was a conversation going on. He also admitted, although he had not felt comfortable commenting on it when he first arrived, that just walking into the house the first time, he had picked up on something that he just described as “different”. Some kind of “force” or “feeling”.

There was also the fact that when I finally did introduce Matt to the dogs for the first time, Niko completely accepted him without issue. (This is definitely not the case with everybody – there are some that will never get near him). I thought this was interesting. Another odd thing was that Matt was initially kind of judgmental about us having kept the dog that had bitten our kids in the face. I think he thought we should have given him up, that there was something wrong with keeping him. I’m okay with people thinking that, and I don’t try to defend what we did, I just know that it’s [going to be] necessary for us to have him here. But after Matt met him and interacted with him for awhile, he left here with his mind changed about that. Or at least that’s what it seemed to me.

I quizzed Nate later to get more details on exactly what he saw walk by the kitchen window. How tall? Male or female? What length of hair? He held his hand above the kitchen sink in front of the window at the approximate height of the being that he saw. It appeared that “she” was somewhat shorter than either me or Kate. “She had a lot of long, dark hair. Definitely a girl. I thought it was you or Kate coming out to get us”.

My thoughts? It was Nuttah. Bob has seen her once in our house. She appeared in a mirror behind Bob as he was looking into it. She is here much more than anyone actually sees her, so why show herself now? Or is it some ability in Nate that he was able to get the ‘visual’ part? Matt certainly had a sense of her being there, but did not ‘see’ her. Bob reported picking up on absolutely nothing all night. He was surprised by this interaction. I didn’t pick up anything either, but was sleeping pretty soundly. We are just left to wonder, why reveal yourself now? Did she have something in mind?

She brings flowers again – all is forgiven, I presume

Bob’s stone, atop a heart (and a wolf-pup in the background) appear on my clock radio.

I know, or at least felt, based on her actions, that Nuttah now approved of what was going on. Interesting how she expresses disapproval, and why. I still don’t feel as if I have to defend anything we did in July related to Kate’s injury and Niko’s behavior. Luckily, after 3 weeks, things were healing really well with Kate, the stitches had come out, and she was barely showing a scar, unless you looked at it in strong sunlight. Kate actually thought, “it gives my face some character”. So we escaped possible disaster with Niko, and Bob was committed, through Nuttah’s instruction, to work with him. And hopefully Red would help. It had been a rough month. A couple of things happened in the next week. One night, July 30, I came home to find a heart and Bob’s stone on my clock radio. A thumbnail of that picture is included here.

And then about a week later, on the evening of Tuesday, August 6, I came home to Nuttah’s character on my desk with a spray of flowers in front of her. I took a picture the next morning, shown below. This is directly to the right of my computer keyboard. It appears to be that yellow clover that I also got last year from her. I have to check the date of that, it could have been right around this time. I found it, the last time these appeared was June 7 of last year:

I come home to Nuttah sitting on my desk with yellow flowers laid across a heart