I would love to talk to Will Smith about it sometime..when he has time. Do you have time? Do you kill time, or buy time, or cheat it?
Einstein said it was possible...some have said that there were time machines, and they were destroyed because of the danger they posed, that's science fiction for us, but this story I am about to tell you isn't.
Nobody cheats time. Nobody. I learned this the hard way. I tried to. I tried to walk away from who I really was and become another person. I remember it like it was yesterday, because its one of those things in my life that I wish I could forget, but it haunts me and here we are are once again looking down upon a day that never fails to shake my whole understanding of reality to the core.
Some sort of space oddity happened to me on the ninth day of the ninth month in 1981, and to this day the only person who has ever come close to touching on it, was Dan Akyroid speaking of his Alien experience, or the " Men in Black " movies.
How many times have you seen this tell me-- ( I make a sign of the cross- and ask for strength) ( I have been unable to publish this before- because SOMETHING stops me-I will be amazed if this works..)
Picture me as a freshman in high School, sitting alone on a City bus, at a station known as Fourth and Heatherton. I am waiting for the bus to take me home, but I have to wait at this transient place, for at least 20 minutes, but that tiny stop feels like an hour. I still avoid and have 'fear" of transient places, Buses and me ah no. No more.
The freedom of my Summer , in marvelous Marin is paradise. Filled with sunshine, wealthy people and rich houses right out of Architectural Digest, everyone drives a Mercedes and the kids drive BMW's. We walked to a safe summer pool and frolicked with surfer guys and got tan and shed pounds like a retreat so far away from my Mothers house in foggy Berkeley I thought I was one of these elite bronze beauties. But my summer is over and its a muggy hot August afternoon in downtown San Rafael. I return from my private school in Kentfield in a way that no one else did, some kids had a Limousin pick them up, some Rolls Royce' s, most had their own car. I took the bus, well this day I did. This one day....I sit perched on the sticky plastic isle seat, in my Marin Catholic Uniform, as naive about the spirit world as the day is hot. And I gaze over my left shoulder to look at the busy street and the buses on the other side. This spot is shaded by the large and looming Freeway overhead, it never feels safe to anyone who lives in California, ask me about earthquakes sometime Ill tell you how they can take a structure like a highway and turn it into an instant cemetery. Weary from my day that was not at all normal, I just want to get home...My head wonders why did those girls say to me, "this is my class, no one runs faster than me " But when I stood up to her and said shut up I can run as fast as I want! she acted like I should have been afraid of her and looked genuinely terrified of me. Why did the kids try to taunt me during lunch, that I had to actually-work in the cafeteria, and yet the boys looked at me more like I was a caged exotic wild animal then a freak. It felt like I was Alice and I was on the other side of what ever glass that everyone else was living in. I didnt want in though, that was the weirdest part, none of them really knew me, not one of those kids, knew anything about me. I had only one boy that friend-ed me, and turns out I would know him pretty well later in life, strangely enough!
I was one of the popular group of girls at my old-school when I left, too popular for my taste. I wondered if anyone wanted to learn and get smart sometimes, or was it all about the party. Also, I had had enough of the boys groping me as I walked in the halls, and the bullying from the African and Mexican girls that completely misunderstood me. I was born this way! I am the Jessica Rabbit of the day, and sorry I cant help it! I thought I was safe from everything at this Catholic school, I was determined to be the quiet shy girl. The one that just studies and gets good grades, and....yea, no boys. I had been close to few, and even that scared me. I pretended that I was a different person, and I had really believed that I had done it. I escaped the scene, and I was well on my way to forgetting the girl from Berkeley.
That is until the ninth day of the ninth month in 1981, when my whole life turned upside down, and I was never ever the same. The radio said it was square root day, and it was like a portal from some kind of supernatural place, ( Have you seen Hell BOY well that story wasn't out yet...) My step brother had a dentist apt, and my step mother would take him, so I would be fine, I was a big girl I'd take the bus. I was not worried. I had been in Berkeley and done it. I had roller skated that far before, ha! What is there that can happen. What did happen, I ask you....
Back to the naive little freshman on the bus: I looked over my shoulder, and there she was. This large women, shes at least six feet tall, shes wearing all black suit, white shirt and tie, shes a white looking adult and has reddish hair and also wears black shoes. Her looked is topped off with a brief case and Wayfarer sunglasses. I think that's unseasonable clothing, its way to hot to wear that today, I look at her superficially, and decide- shes odd. Shes walking back and forth, shes pacing. It seems like shes impatiently waiting for someone, shes looking for ....shes stopping, and now shes looking right at me. Shes turned and stopped, and now shes starring at me. From my perspective, I think, how can she even see me across what is easily a 50 foot street? I am shaken, and say to myself, what a freak! I wish a bus would come and hide, her. Right then , a bus did arrive and she was hidden for a second. But less than one second she is not gone, shes is now getting on my BUS.... And wait, she doesn't pay, she walks on, and doesn't pay! what the hell? She saunters past me, starring eyes like daggers. Yea, IF LOOKS COULD KILL. She sits at the back of the bus. I am freaking out, mortified, skin is crawling, cold sweat. AND my head is spinning as I write this it is so hard to deal with still! I look behind me like a fool, yes she is still there and staring at me. I can feel her looking at me, I can feel her presence, my whole being is not able to move and I just look over my shoulder and wish she was back across the street, and I want her badly to be back over where she was before== so far away. Then at that very moment, the bus moves, and
there
she
is, again. Back across the street.Wish Granted? Naive no longer I being to believe I have entered the Twilight zone, lunatic fringe, the black hole.! What is this strange place that brings people dressed in black able to time travel back in forth in a second? You tell me.
The bus starts to move to the corner, and now she is walking to the corner, the bus stops, she stands in front of the bus, and time stops. EVERYTHING STOPS> it is so surreal I can see only her, I cant speak, and she takes off her sunglasses stands still and look at me like shes the only person on the earth. She says nothing, no words were uttered by her, I can feel something so moving about her and she seems to blurr and fade, ( see the book "Gideon," the time travel series by Elizabeth Buckley-Archer ) and at the fearful moment when think I may faint, with all that is in me I close my eyes, and decide that I wont open them for at least a count of 100. The bus takes me to my station, no one says anything to me, no one saw her but me, not one person on the bus looks even remotely like they have just witnessed something unnatural or supernatural. I am so shaken and afraid I go into the house, and lock myself in my room. That's not the only naivety that will be she that night, the worse it truly yet to come.
First oddity that I try to forget: My Step-brother had brought home a new cat, and it would find its way to ask to be let out my door, over and over, but I never let it in. It so happened to be black.
I also, vividly remember, that I did not do the dishes correctly and was subject to severe corporal punishment gone very wrong. Bleeding and bruising is not supposed to happen from the hand of a parent lovingly guiding you to the correct way to do dishes. Needless to say, I have a different look at dirty dishes to this day. Childhood lost, hell hath no fury like an angry parent.
I tried to run away that night, and of course my Mother was called and I was given a choice...What would you do?
This would begin a chain of events that I would eventually chalk up to "the 9th day" .
Including the last day at my beloved Marin Catholic, where a book called the Devil followed me. From class to class, and even when left it on the ground in the hallway. It would end up inside my locker. I was numb, I was in shock and I was torn from my house and my Step Brother and Sister and placed back with my Mother, real Brother and Step Father. I would start School at Albany High, just three days late; MC started a full month earlier, and I had not missed much school at all. It was as if it never happened. No one knew, that I had just been in this horrific traumatic ungodly experience, and I felt evicted from Paradise. Back to where I belonged,(?) my old friends all greeted me and I went back to the person I was before. So everyone thought...I had this little secret, and when I even thought about telling even a part of it, I knew it was too weird, and I wanted so badly to be a good girl. A perfect family, and nice girl. So I hid it. I pretended it didn't eat me up inside and make me this oddity. And I was no longer the naive little girl, I was going to have to handle much more intense ghosts to come.
I will be able to share more of what happened after that first ninth day, when I feel that this one has passed, but it sure feels like this one is going to hurt me as badly as any of them. This week I will do my best to pray and be positive. But I look for the odd people, I see the strangest things, and I often think, I see dead people. If you read this, have mercy. I hope that you have enough compassion to NOT copy it or sell it, I have never ever published this before. I fear that it will be used against me, and someone will use it for the wrong reasons. Its not a joke or a hoax. This is not a fictional story, it really happened to me, and I have some answers to what it is. If you think that taunting me with strange comments will gain you favor or power of something let me tell you what happened on the day of 9 -11. I was eating dinner with my estranged father at the time, and he asked me for the key to the house back since I was no longer living at his house. I had known that this was a sore spot for me, and I had lost my key, and then my step brother had given me his key, and then I finally had been given my fathers key. I was more than shocked when I reached into my purse and pulled out the key ring that clearly had three keys on it...and it was then that I knew. We live in a illusion of control, and this spirit was messing with me. I was going to have to be stronger than I ever wanted to be, I didn't ask for this, and I didnt know why it was happening to me. But I was not deceived by my eyes, now I had a witness.
What started there, didn't stop. I can list some of the strangeness, but it has never ended for me, developing into what are clairvoyant dreams of natural disasters like the Burning Oil Wells in the 89 Iran War. Loma Preata earthquake, the Bombing in Atlanta, the Earth Quake in LA and in Japan, the Twin Towers and more... some so deathly scary I cant begin to know why I should see such things.
Yes I am a Church going believer, because I have run for protection. My life was dark before the lady on the bus as I call her, and I have sought the light to make a choice, to say that I believe. Today this day I struggle with my life, supernatural events never cease to amaze me, and I need everyone who loves me to lean forward and say a prayer for me.
I am not telling you what to believe, you tell me
....pennies really do fall from heaven.
Peace be with you, today and always. In Christ our savior.
Lafate Smith (
American Red Cross (
Ferrari Tribute (