Over the past few months, I’ve gotten into the routine of listening to podcasts while I’m working. I’m always on the look out for new, interesting podcasts to listen to, so I’ve found myself searching for topics and just randomly listening to some in the hopes that they will catch my interest. One of the ones I’ve recently come across has been quite entertaining. It is called Haunted AF.

Hosts Julie Fisk and Rebekah Black present real ghost stories as shared with them by their listeners. For anyone who likes a good spooky story, this is a fun podcast to check out.

While listening to the stories this morning, it had the effect of jogging my memory about a few experiences that I’ve had over the years. One in particular came to mind that I thought I would share.

This story happened to me on an early evening in the Spring of 1996. I was living with my mother and brother, both of whom were out at the time. One of my friends was over and we were hanging out in my bedroom. As with many teenaged boys, I was interested in counter-culture things and had started reading things on Aleister Crowley, H.P. Lovecraft and other magic and horror topics.

Among the books that I had purchased was the Necronomicon. In truth, the Necronomicon was a fictional “spell book” that was invented by H.P. Lovecraft in some of his horror stories in the 1920s and ’30s. Throughout the decades since , the book took on a life of it’s own, with stories of this evil grimoire being real. In the late 1970s, a copy of the Necronomicon was published, written by an unknown author known only as “Simon”. (This book is readily available at all fine book retailers near you.) This is the book that I had.

While in my room on the second floor with the door shut and listening to Black Sabbath (naturally), my friend spotted the book on my desk. He asked what it was and I gave him a quick overview. Being a skeptic, my friend kind of chuckled at the prospects of a book of magic spells being available at our bookstore. He randomly opened it up to a page and started reading one of the spells out loud.

The book has spells in a mixture of English and ancient languages. My friend started reading one of the spells in a mock-serious voice. As he kept going, he got more and more into it, standing up, his voice rising as he went. You could tell that he was mocking the whole notion of the book, but was very much into finishing the “spell”.

As he neared the end of the incantation, his voice kept getting louder and louder until he was shouting the last few words. The next day, following the events that I’m about to describe, I went back to see which incantation he was reading. While I no longer have a copy of the book, the incantation ended with words along the lines of “Gates of the Sun, open! Gates of the Sky, open! Gates of Power, open! Open! Open!”

In a synchronicity that I could not have planned, as he said the final “Open”, the sound of Ozzy’s ghostly laughter rang out of my speakers. But this wasn’t the scary part. At the exact same time, the lights in my room flickered and my bedroom door swung violently open and slammed against the wall.

In a scene reminiscent of Scooby-Doo, my friend and I looked at each other, eyes wide open in pure terror, screamed and bolted out of the room. We ran immediately downstairs to the living room where we stood back-to-back in the centre of the room for what seemed like 15 minutes. Once we calmed down, we started laughing off the event, or at least outwardly we did. I can’t speak for him, but I know that I was putting on a brave face and trying to downplay what had just happened as some weird confluence of events that coincided to happen at precisely the same time.

Maybe a draft blew my door open. And maybe there was a minor power surge that caused the lights to flicker. And maybe it was a huge coincidence that it happened at the same time as Ozzy laughing and my friend reciting the words from the Necronomicon. Maybe.

Deep down, I felt that it was more likely that the spirit world was irritated by my friend’s mocking tone and wanted to prove a point. I can say that in all honesty, I did not fool around with any of the incantations in the book following this event.

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What do you think? Teenage folly? Overactive imaginations? Mystical happenings?

Have you had any strange encounters or happenings in your life? Tell me your stories!