Things That Go Bump in the Night: Chapter 1- A Transfer's Tale

I know I am due to share about my Adventures in Slidell, but I decided to take a little detour and tell of an old adventure I have wanted to share for awhile. This will be a multi-day piece, b/c as I started typing it up, I realized it was going to be quite lengthy. So, with my readers' attention spans in mind, I will be breaking up my story. I would hate for anyone to get eye strain. This first installment will still be a bit lengthy, and as it is full of the background information, is not very 'adventurous'. But it’s a worthwhile read, so hang in there!

The following take is a long tale. It is a tale of dark, sleepless nights, of fearful creatures, of desperation, and of Good triumphing over Evil. It is a tale of a girl, and the terror of things that go bump in the night….

It was the fall of 1999. I had transferred that semester to NSU the weekend before classes started. I spent most of that semester in what several friends described as a Fog, which I know is directly related to my spur of the moment move from my little private Christian university to a totally secular public university. Everything was so last minute. I had gone to visit the school on a Friday morning; by noon I was a student. My friend Mother Hen [name given for the awesome way she cares for and about the friends in her life] graciously welcomed me to live with her in her loft apartment. That was one interesting phone call, let me tell you--

Friday night in August before classes were to begin the following Monday:
Me: [really nervous for some reason, and questioning what the heck I just did] Hey Mother Hen, uh…..you know how you said I could move in with you if I were to transfer to NSU this next Spring??
MH: uh…yeah…
Me: Well, um….what if I were to transfer…. THIS semester. Uh, cause I am.
MH: WHAT??!
Me: Uh…yeah. I am…uh, a student now. Ha ha. I just got back from visiting NSU, and somehow I ended up transferring…uh…I am registered and everything. I need to move Sunday.
MH: You’re kidding me!
Me: haha, nope. So….can I live with you?
MH: Yeah, you can! Come on doen!! [with other Phrases Mother Hen is famous for thrown in]!!

So I was Head in the Cloud Girl, drifting through the semester with a deer-in-the-headlights look. The seasons changed, and the weather began to get downright wintry. Mother Hen and I began to hear slight scratching noises in our living room ceiling around November. It wasn’t very loud, so we didn’t really pay much attention.

Let me pause for a moment to describe the apartment: It formerly was the detached garage/apartment to a larger rock house located next door. It consisted of 3 stories, the bottom being a double garage [which the use of was not included in our rent and the landlord used for storage]. The door was on the first level, and a flight of wooden stairs took one up to the apartment. The 2^nd story had a ‘dining room’ space [more like a breakfast nook…], a tiny kitchen, living area, and bathroom. The third story was a finished attic-type loft space with a slanted ceiling. I could stand upright if I was in the center of the room; Mother Hen, being taller, couldn’t stand up straight at all. Our beds were just mattresses on the floor, and we had these neat drawers built into one wall along the floor for our clothes. At both ends of the ‘bedroom’ were these storage spaces built into the crawl spaces. The only closable doors in the place were the front door on the first floor and the bathroom door on the 2nd. Everything else was open. It was a small place, but neat, and eclectic enough to be sort of cool. And we had free cable for most of the year…

Now that you have a general idea to my living arrangements, allow me to continue. I am living in the Garage [from which my best friend, Shelli, got my ‘nickname’ “Sarah **My Last Name** lives in Garages”. It rhymes, sort of, if you say it out loud. Go ahead, if you know my last name, try it… See? Cute, huh…Yeah] and beginning to hear these scratching noises in the ceiling of our living room, or floor of our bedroom, however you look at it. The scratching isn’t very loud, and is not really that distracting. Mother Hen and I take an ‘ignore’ stance and hope the problem will go away on its own. How naive we were….

stay tuned for the next installment of Things That Go Bump in the Night, coming soon to The Green Eyed View!