The Blue Church

Or: The Only Home a Ghost Ever Had

De: John McGinnis

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

Some say the El Dorado is haunted. I doubt that. Ghosts are not real. Hotels are not alive. They don't have memories. The El Dorado is just a dwelling of brick, wood and glass. In that sense, it is just like every other hotel in the world. It's just uglier. That doesn't mean it's haunted. The only home a ghost ever had, was in somebody's head. "There is a rational scientific explanation for everything and there are neither ghosts nor gods." That's what mom taught me, and I believe her.

I know that there are many who disagree. Some even claim to have seen a ghost. I will not call them all liars. I do not doubt that many alleged hauntings are reported by those who truly believed themselves to be witnesses of the paranormal. Sometimes our eyes, ears and minds can deceive us. When this deception occurs it can be quite convincing. I should know, it happened to me.

Without going into too much detail, I thought I saw a ghost myself when I was five. She was a little girl about my age dressed in white. This ghost looked just like a normal living being with one exception. Her mouth was missing. In its place was a gaping dark cavity. Upon looking directly into the brown eyes of this apparition. I heard her voice speak to me, inside my head. This voice spoke, "Children are better seen and not heard." I screamed and wet myself.

My mother flew to me like a phantom. For the life of me I could not explain why I screamed, and I could not explain to mother why I had wet myself. Fear of the little girl without a mouth tightened my vocal cords. Fear of my mother froze my lips into silence. The smell of my urine burned the inside of my nostrils. A wooden spoon burned my ass.

My encounter was nothing but a hallucination. It occurred during the night following my first day of kindergarten. My first day of school did not go so well. Even though I was afraid of my mother at that age, I was terrified at having to leave her side to spend the day among strangers. That one day in my life could be summed up in a single word, 'fear'. Once fear gets into your system, there is no telling what it is capable of. It is like a tempest that throws the seas of human emotion into chaos. It drowns logic and short circuits reason. The fearful are prone to see things, that do not exist.

That is what happened to me. I saw something that did not exist. I went sleep walking that night and ended up in the hallway leading away from my room. That is where I encountered my ghost. I was half awake walking. I was half asleep dreaming.

In my dream I saw a girl without a mouth. And what do I see now as I stand before the El Dorado? I see a disfigured face, three floors high with many glass eyes looking back at me. It makes me uneasy, but I know there is no reason for me to feel the way I do. My unease is just a natural response, to the uncanny.