This is an account of a childhood experience that took place around the age of 8 or 9 years with a childhood friend (Ricky Joe: another post altogether). Even though it happened close to 4th of July it's worth a tale to tell for Halloween.
Growing up in my childhood there were many times of sleep overs with friends. This one night I spent the night at Ricky Joe's house and a sleep over wasn't just always a play in the house but the midnight venture out (sneak out) of the house just to say we did it. This one particular nite, after Ricky Joe's parents were well asleep, we snuck out and sat on the back stoop to listen to the night sounds and gaze at the stars. Ricky Joe's house was adjacent to the grade school we attended and the main part of the playground was right across the street. It was always one of the main play places for most all of us to congregate for the swings, jungle jim, tether ball, baseball and football.
As we gazed at the stars and listened to the night sounds my eyes glanced over the playground area where I saw apparition-like figures (people) playing football about 100 yds off in an open area of the playground. I didn't say anything because I thought it was just my imagination until Ricky Joe said, "do you see what I see"? When I aske him what he saw I couldn't believe it! He described exactly what I was looking at. Apparitions running and throwing a football, actually playing football.
We started to get a little scared but decided to sneak across the road to the playground. We began to crawl towards the apparitions (they were white moving bodies) very slowly so not to disturb whoever it might be. We got half way towards these apparitions when the fear really sat in and decided to crawl slowly back and get back to his house. Since it was close to the 4th of July we always had fireworks available so we silently slipped back into the house and got what was then called a buzz bomb. Ricky Joe snuck upstairs to get one of his dads cigarettes. We sometimes would use cigarettes as time bombs for special occassions and this was one.
We went back outside and the apparitions were still playing football. We lit the cigarette and placed it on the fuse of the buzz bomb. We then crawled back into the playground about 25 yds and placed it on good level ground then went back to the house and hid behind one of the big trees and waited. It usually took about 10-minutes for a cigarette to burn down and when it did the buzz bomb went flying into the night sky and made a big explosion.
The apparitions disappeared and we hurried back into the house so we wouldn't be caught in case his parents or any of the neighbors woke up. Needless to say, we had a hard time getting to sleep after that night.
I've never really shared this story with anyone but Ricky Joe since no one would have believed us especially at our ages then. Even to this day I sometimes wonder, but to have Ricky Joe confirm seeing what I was seeing was just to real not to be true.
They just disappeared! They didn't run off and disappear! They just disappeared!! A True Story.
Happy Halloween
God bless and God speed
