[lookout123]

i've witnessed (first hand) a couple of things, but one event still makes my skin crawl. this is the short version with some of the freakier events left out.

friend, who we'll call Rocco, was having marital problems with his wife, who we'll call Gladys.

Rocco is driving home from work and gets run off of road by a car no one else saw. it looked like the police car from The Andy Griffith show, so everyone thought he was stupid, drunk, or both. Rocco falls down in shower, splitting head open - swears he felt like he was pushed. Rocco sees the same police car driving next to him on road. old time mexican cop, not looking too healthy is driving. Rocco has come to me after each event and i think he is losing his freaking mind. drugs are an absolute impossibility, so he has to be going nuts i figure. all this stupid crap in the period of a couple days?

i get phone call at 3 am from "gladys" telling me to come quick - it's the baby and she is afraid of Rocco. i get dressed and drive over afraid that my friend got drunk and did something stupid. i get there and gladys lets me in.

neither she nor Rocco had called me as they had just woken up.

Rocco is sitting in corner shaking and incoherent. turns out that Gladys woke up with Rocco screaming, gasping, and physically trying to push someone/thing off his chest. she sees "something" leave him and go into the crib next to the bed. Rocco hysterically explains that the crazy looking cop from earlier was choking him and swearing that he was going to kill Rocco.
and then i knocked on the door.

they go into the other room to get the dazed Rocco cleaned up so i am alone with sleeping baby on couch across the room from me. i have not been drinking, don't do drugs, and am only vaguely confused, not really buying the story - not freaked out. until this 2 month old child goes from sound asleep on his back to sitting straight up without using his arms (which a 2 month old couldn't do anyway) and turns his head and just stares at me. the moment Rocco and Gladys walk back into the room the little bambino falls right back into the previous sleeping position, sound asleep. my jaw is on the floor.

things got a bit freakier from there with various noises, items moving, shaking, no access back into bedroom where the crib. an unlocked door that just won't budge. not an inch. not a milimeter. it may as well have been rock. sounds of a violent argument in spanish from behind the door. and three adults sitting speechless staring at a baby sleeping peacefully.

daylight rolls around and i go to work just dumbstruck. they called their family priest over. i don't know what all happened from there, but here is the gist of what they found out over the next few days.

gladys's (birth) father was a cop who'd been gunned down years before in mexico. Rocco didn't know about this. old mexico story, didn't exactly get passed out to people who didn't already know. Gladys didn't even know the whole story. or the fact that her grandmother was a self described "witch" who had taken the time to pray and speak with her dead son through the last photograph taken of him(in his police uniform) for 20 years before giving it to Gladys as wedding gift.

grandmother threatened to rain hell down upon rocco, gladys, and family if they destroyed the picture. she was satisfied to remove the photo back to her home. they let her, under the condition that she tells dead daddy to leave Rocco alone. apparently it worked out because there were never any repeats of the strange events.

yep, i know it sounds like a campfire story. i wouldn't believe it either if i hadn't been there. it wasn't imagined or exaggerated.

skin crawling now. that was 10-12 years ago, and it is all still crystal clear in my memory.