One Night on Vegas Drive...

.I have a ghost story to tell...It's a real one, and it's a Looooooooong one, so grab your cigs if ya smoke, and get something to drink. It's gonna be a novel.

Anyone who knows me should know that I like weird stuff.  Some of my more strange fascinations are ghosts, hauntings, exorcism and demonology, and other general occult stuff.  I can read tarot cards with pretty decent accuracy, and fancy myself an amateur herbalist when I have the mindset.  These things became interests after I experienced a series of odd recurring incidents that culminated into a violent and rather scary situation while living in an apartment in Las Vegas, NV.  More or less, I guess you would say that it's a ghost story...at least that's what I believe.

I was about nineteen at the time, and I was living with my best friend, Ida, in her rather bland but homey apartment on the East side of town on a street called Vegas Drive.  I had been living with her for about a month and had settled in quite nicely.  I remember it being April when I moved in.  The strange things started happening about two months later, just as the Memorial Day weekend was starting.  We had some friends that lived two doors down from us...I'll call them "E" and "D" to protect their anonymity (I've always wanted to say that...LOL!), and they had invited us down to their apartment on Sunday night for dinner and a little holiday weekend type get together thingy.  I remember that "D", the lady of the house, was often lonely, as "E" worked a lot.  She always liked to entertain if she could.  Now you have the necessary background, and here's the rest of the story.

It was a Thursday night when an odd tapping sound started up inside the house.  I remember that Ida and I were sitting on the couch watching Madonna roll around on the floor as VH-1 introduced her newest video "Lucky Star".  We both heard it, the tapping, and that first day we more or less just laughed it off as bad pipes...the place was a dive after all, and we figured that it was just something that might be finally going bad.  That night we didn't give it any further thought and we didn't really even notice when it stopped.  We went to bed in our respective bedrooms, and all was forgotten.  The next day, Friday, we left for work, and having both just taken showers we laughed about the pipes behaving themselves that morning.  There was no longer any tapping.

We arrived home after work around 5 pm that night and all was fine.  We did our usual routine of dinner and sitting down to watch TV and videos.  At about 7pm, the tapping started up again...this time, it was just a bit louder than it had been the night before--almost loud enough to distract us, but considering we were drinking our Friday night away together it wasn't too hard to tune out.  In fact, we kind of got used to it as it droned on for at least an hour of continuous "tap...tap...tap...tap.    I don't remember the exact time now, but I do remember that we about crawled out of our skins when the tapping finally stopped abruptly with what sounded like a much louder "Bang!"--it sounded like someone had slapped the wall.  There was a feeling of discomfort in the room when tapping ended that way, and the hair stood up on the back of my neck.  It was the first time in my life that I'd ever felt that shiver of eerieness take me.  We laughed about it uneasily, and that was the first time that we pondered it being ghostly and strange. Little did we know just how strange things would get, and how fast they would get that way.

Saturday morning, same routine.  Showers and off to work with us.  We were still pretty young, and still had to work on Saturdays and Sundays if needed.  Ida always dropped me off at work when she could, but I usually found my own ride home.  We got home at about the same time too, usually within fifteen minutes of each other.  That particular Saturday night we had a surprise when we got home.  There was an ambulance sitting in the parking lot by our stairway, and "D" was being taken to the hospital.  We were able to talk to her as they took her off.  Her foot had been cut pretty bad, and she was bleeding pretty good.  I felt bad that no one had been there to take her to the hospital other than by ambulance, and that she had needed to spend that extra money to get help.  My first question to her was of course, "What happened?"  She wouldn't tell us right then, but said she would tell us all about it when she got home.  About then, the ambulance took her off and we headed on up to the apartment.

The blasted tapping was already going on the moment we entered the apartment.  Again, it was louder.  Not thunderously loud or anything, but just about like the sound of a pen tapping on the wall...constantly.  This third day I remember that it was getting on my nerves and at one point I got mad enough to slap the wall to see if it would stop.  To my surprise it did--but only momentarily, as if something had stopped long enough to listen to it, and then the tapping resumed again.  Another uneasy laugh toward Ida, "Maybe we should start tapping and slapping it back?"  Right when I said that, the tapping stopped, and the phone rang.  Weird. 

"D" had returned from the hospital and with only a couple of stitches in her foot.  We were worried that something much worse would come of the cut, so it was kind of a relief.  Once again we asked what happened, and she told us that she wanted us to come over--she would show us.  We left immediately, but not without first noticing the return of the incessant "tap...tap...tap" as we closed the door behind us.

"E" and "D"s apartment was so close that we were there within a matter of seconds.  What we saw in the poor girl wasn't what we had expected at all.  She answered her door with a 32 oz tumbler of Southern Comfort on ice in her hands, and told us to sit down.  She hesitated frequently as she told us her story of the days events, which started with a series of what she thought were prank phone calls.  Every time she answered the phone, all she would hear was "tap...tap...tap...".  She had tried talking on the phone to who was calling, but to no avail--just "tap...tap...tap..." (please note...this was in 1984, and there was no such thing as *69 back then.)  It seems that right before the accident she was hanging up the phone from the last prank call she had received, when the butcher knife that was on the counter "flew off of the counter and stabbed her in the foot".  She had just been using it to cut up stuff for salad for her and "E"s dinner that night.   Both Ida and I looked at the counter, and the butcher knife, which was a heavy one with a sturdy wooden handle.  There was a lip on the formica counter top, which should have prevented the butcher knife from doing exactly what she claimed that it had done.  I remember the phone ringing in the apartment, and "D" moaning, visibly shaken before finally picking it up.  It was "E", who claimed that he had been trying to call her all day.  He never got through to her though, as all he could hear when the phone picked up on her end was this "tap...tap...tap" sound.  We left her alone to explain her very rough day to her husband, and headed back to the apartment again, where thankfully the tapping had stopped.  But not for long...

Sunday morning it woke us up.  It was louder than ever, and you could hear it all over the apartment.  I slapped at the walls several times that morning to try to make it stop, but I would only get a moments silence before it would start up again.  At about ten o'clock, very loud pounding began on the door to the next door apartment and there was someone outside screaming for "YOU SON OF A BITCH" to "LET HIM THE F*CK IN!"  Peeking out the window, I saw that it was "E".  He was out there bellowing that he knew "YOU TWO ARE IN THERE AND YOU BETTER LET ME IN!"  The apartment was vacant, and had been for months.  I'd never seen such a look of rage on "E"s face before, and quite frankly it scared the hell out of me.  He could stand out there and pound all he wanted to, I was going to try to stay the hell out of the way! 

Surreal is the only word that can explain what happened next, it was such an unreal blur of horrifying events.  Ida and I went and hid in the kitchen out of view of the windows and the door, trying to figure out what to do.   I remember the tapping becoming faster and faster, and getting louder and louder while this bizarre scene was unfolding right outside of our apartment door.  The tapping got faster and faster again--almost like a snare drum--a "tatatatatatatatatatat" on the wall of our apartment, increasing in intensity as "E" continued his tirade, howling and wailing on the door of the vacant apartment next door.  The whole scene crescendoed after what seemed an eternity, with a tremendous "SMACK!!" on OUR front door. 

Then, nothing but silence--on odd, final feeling silence that once again made the hair stand up on the back of my neck.  The tapping had stopped--at the exact same moment of the impact on the door.

We took "D" back to the hospital about an hour later, after receiving a phone call from her tell us that "E" had beaten her up pretty bad.  She told us that she had been sound asleep when he sat bolt upright, waking her, and demanding "WHERE THE F*CK IS HE?"  and "I KNOW YOUR SLEEPING WITH HIM YOU SLUT"! before proceeding to beat the hell out of her.  When we asked her where "E" was at that time, she told us that he was back upstairs in bed.  "D" stayed at the hospital. 

Early in the afternoon, "E" knocked on our door wondering where "D" was.  Standing at the door wringing his scabbed over and bruised hands, he looked like a very confused, whipped puppy.  He claims that he didn't remember a thing, and wanted to see her right away.  He didn't understand why she was in the hospital, and he didn't understand what happened to his hands or face either, which had been scratched.  They broke up that day, and we never saw "E" again.  We saw "D" briefly as she started moving her stuff out of the apartment about a week later.  By then, we had a story to tell her.

After the strange incidents of that afternoon, Ida and I decided to give a call to the apartment manager, just to tell him what all was going on.  He was a strange, older man who we never actually saw very much.  We told him about what had happened, and he kind of laughed it off.  Three days later he brought us a ten-year-old newspaper clipping from the "Las Vegas Review Journal" newspaper, which told us a nasty tale of a married couple who used to live in "E" and "D"s apartment, and how the man who had lived there at the time had beaten and stabbed his wife in their own bed, leaving the apartment with a gun and going down the way to the apartment next to mine and Ida's place, breaking into that apartment and killing the guy in there, and then finally shooting himself in the head at the doorstep of our apartment.  The speculation was that the wife was having an affair with the guy in the apartment next to ours, and the husband found out about it and decided on getting some kind of justice.  It was a very tragic story, and as Ida read it out loud to me I once again felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.  All the pieces fit together.  

We never did have any more tappings.  "E" and "D" never did get back together, and I moved out of that apartment complex the following December to persue a new love interest.  I've never since viewed a ghostly historical reinactment the likes of that one, and I never hope to again.  

Bringing Entities Home.

I don't know why I've decided to share this.  Many of you who will read it will decide that I'm some sort of nutcase, or a freak.  I guess it's to get it off of my mind and to perhaps get some feedback on what actually happened that lead me to the situation.  Perhaps its just because I want to tell a ghost story of my own.  Whatever the reason, there is a lesson to be learned in the story.  I'm telling you only MY part of the story here.  There are many other people involved in this though, each person with their own version and/or experiences to tell.

Before we left Iowa and after the split up of Diepart, the paranormal group that I had been a part of for many many years, Dana and I had the opportunity to investigate a small ranch outside of Carbon, Iowa.  The woman lived there alone.  She had moved there originally with her two children, and all three of them complained of activity in the house.  She had called us because of a bunch of strange happenings that resulted in the death of several of her animals.  Due to legal reasons I am unable to discuss the actual investigation, however, what happened to me at my own home after the investigation is MY story and I will discuss that here.

Having been what I call an "Armchair" demonologist, myself and another demonologist decided to try to do something that we knew probably wouldn't work.  We decided to attempt to exorcise the house where this woman lived.  We used verses from the Bible that are most generally used in exorcism's of human beings.  For at least two hours we prayed and commanded the entity in this home to leave.  At the end of the session, the house seemed lighter.  Little did I know what was to happen next.

I remember it being a very long drive home, and I remember being more exhausted than I usually am after an investigation.  Of course, this wasn't just a simple investigation, but a sort of attempt at a cleansing, which was new to me.  Because of that, I didn't worry about the severity of the exhaustion, or the quiet sense of anxiety that had settled over myself.  That night when I went to bed I had a startling dream.  It was a dream of the scariest face that I'd ever seen in my life, and it shocked me awake.  I began to wonder at that time what could have caused this, and if I had been followed home.  Correction:  I suddenly KNEW that I had been followed home.  The face has faded in my mind now after so much time having past, but I still remember the fear that it put in me, and how the face originally lingered in my mind for weeks and weeks after the dream.

I began to feel as though I were being watched all the time.  Out of the corners of my eye I would catch things moving.  I would see what I thought were spiders, or bugs climbing up the walls nearly all the time.  Everything that could go wrong in my life went wrong.  Problems started at work.  Hell, my dog even came down with a case heartworms.

All the time this was happening I would continue to have dreams at night, horrible, graphic, and intense.  I had dreams of standing at the bottom of a well full of blood and human body parts, picking up entrails and stuffing them into my mouth, as if eating them.  I screamed in rage and fury as I did this, not in disgust, as I would have if it had really been happening to me.  It was as if I were a different person living in some sort of unimagined hell.  I had dreams like this for weeks and months that would start out as really pleasant experiences and would turn into the most horrible of night terrors.  It came to a point where I was afraid to go to sleep at night.  One day I decided to start keeping a dream journal, and I still have it, somewhere.  I had decided that if I was going to be haunted at night, I was going to keep a log of these dreams and turn them around into a creative outlet...to start writing stories and novels about the horrors that I had been witnessing.  After having made that decision, the dreams ceased significantly, almost as if my subconscious had decided that it wasn't going to have any part of me becoming a successful author!

I did tell people what was happening to me.  I asked people to pray for me. It was embarrassing, and difficult to do, but it didn't matter how many folks I asked for help.  All that they would do is shake their heads and look at me like I had lost my mind.

The dreams continued off and on until we finally decided to make the move down here to Texas.  Even the last night in the house I remember having a dream.  Then, one day while we were driving down south, in my minds eye I saw something waving goodbye to me.  I knew that whatever had been going on, that it was over, and ever since that time I've been able to sleep fitfully at night.  Once in a while I get a nightmare, but it seems more normal...induced by indigestion, or something else.

Now you are asking:  What was the point?  What was the lesson in all of this?

Well, it's pretty simple.  Remember to say your prayers when you do this kind of work... these "paranormal investigations".  There are things out there, have no doubt, and you can attract them to yourself by your words and actions.  If you forget to take precautions, you could wind up bringing something home with you.  I was lucky that I didn't have children.  If we hadn't been careful, I could have even lost my dog.  I used to tell people that I loved nightmares.  I loved the excitement and the adrenaline rush of waking up from something that scared the hell out of me.  I don't do that anymore.

Be careful out there.

Peace.

Why do people burn haunted things?

Last night I watched a couple of episodes of "Dead Files" on the Travel Channel.  In one of the episodes the duo were investigating a prison in New Mexico.  The had been contacted by an actress who had done a short film or something there in the past and had found a hat in the prison and for some reason had taken it home to her children.  Since the time she brought it home, she's been having problems with paranormal activity of the most negative kind in her home.  When she realized that it could very well have been the hat that had started the activity, she decided to burn it in her fireplace.

My question:  Why do people think that burning things is the answer to solving paranormal problems?  Do they think that fire is just so purifying that it will solve all of their problems with the nether worlds?  If so they are sadly mistaken!  I mean really folks, think about your actions for a minute...

You've inadvertently brought an unwanted entity into your home by taking in an artifact that you may think is cool.  The entity is now roaming in your home.  It's connected to the artifact, but it's not living in the artifact!! I had a friend who brought an unwanted entity home via a leather Harley-Davidson Jacket during the first decade of the new millenium.  They burned the jacket because they were being terrorized, yet the haunting continued to the point where the girl committed suicide.  She did this because the entity convinced her that ending it all was the right thing to do...and she told me that straight to my face.  She took a bottle of Tylenol. her death was very slow and caused by cessation of liver function.

This actress on "Dead Files" last night did the same thing.  She burned the hat she found, but her haunting continues and grows.  She's now sick all the time, fears for her childrens safety, and could be dying.

When you burn a haunted artifact, you are in essence FREEING the entity from it's ties to the artifact, thus giving it more freedom to roam and grow.  It can even become more powerful after losing it's tether to the artifact.  It's really a simple thought process...so why don't people put two and two together?

I've heard stories of people doing the same thing with Ouija Boards.  They use the board, which opens a portal to another world...be it heaven, hell, another dimension...whatever.  When you burn the board, your destroying the passageway that was created by it, and whatever you brought through that is answering your questions is now trapped in our world with no way to return to where it came from.  If you've somehow managed to bring through a powerful demon, then you've created one helluva problem for yourself!

My final word on this:  If you encounter an artifact that you think is haunted or you have a friend who is experiencing something like this, I encourage you to contact an experienced reputable paranormal group or some sort of medium and ask them how it is best to take care of this problem..  There are usually no simple answers for taking care of something like this.  One thing that I can assure you of though....burning it is NOT EVER the way to go.

Peace.

What's wrong with me?

Hope you don't mind if I use this space to try to figure out what in the hell is going on with me.  Lately I've just not been myself.  I've been listless, depressed, and not wanting to do much of anything at all.  Strange thing is, I can't really think of a single reason as to why I've been feeling like this.

If I had to pinpoint when this feeling started, I'd have to say about three weeks to a month ago.  That leads me to the point where I started to see this new pain doctor, Dr. Somerville.  Dr. Somerville, while a great guy, I think has too many patients and has found a way to dissociate himself from listening to their problems. When I visited his office, I was initially suspicious of the sheer number of patients in his office.  I waited until after 1pm to see him when my appointment was fo 9 am!!  I knew when I first went to see him that there was a problem simply judging by what he prescribed me upon sending me home....He increased my narcotics by at least 60% over what they were at previously.  At that time, he also virtually insisted on having me do some sort of procedure on my back, and when he did that I sort of put my foot down.  He stated that his only rule was that I had to do what he prescribed, and that I would feel better by following his regime.  For that reason and that reason alone, I agreed to have some simple facet injections done on my back.

The month following my appointment with him I started feeling like this...all draggy, and with a serious lack of interest in things.  Unfotunately this was around Christmas time.  I missed out on a lot of the joys of the season this year because of this feeling.  I finally decided that the reason for it was the increase in dilaudid.  Previously, I think that the best that I've felt since I was orignally hurt was the few months before that, when I was on the fentanyl patch using dilaudid for breakthrough pain.  I shouldn't have even needed the change, but for some reason every doctor needs an ego stroke or something and just cannot stand to keep his/her client on the same medications, no matter how well they are working for the client.  It's really maddening!

Well, I thought this was going to help me sort myself out, but I don't think that it's really made any difference.  I have no new insights on this subject, which means that tomorrow when I walk in to that appt, things could very well hit the fan.  Whatever happens though, wish me luck.  I need to start feeling like a human being again.

The National Day of Prayer and my Christian Beliefs

Lately I've been having some mental health issues...or in guess in this case "spiritual" issues. Almost to the point of calling it a crisis of faith, but then again it's really not about me at all, but rather the rest of the world. 

About two weeks ago, I was talking to my Aunt about politics. She's not generally a conservative Republican, but she stated to me that she isn't voting for Obama this year because she's certain that he's NOT a Christian. When I asked her how she knew that, one of the things that she stated was that He refused to support the "National Day of Prayer" this year. She said that it had never not been supported by a president, and that Obama was the first. She knew that was true because "Franklin Graham" said so, and that Franklin Graham wouldn't lie...that he had no reason to. I had a hard time with this, but accepted what she had to say and decided to do some research into it. Where it lead me was somewhere I never expected it to.

 Thanks to my partner Dana, I was able to find out a LOT of very scary things about the National Day of Prayer this year. Not only is it sponsored by Franklin Graham, but it has some interesting Keynote speakers: Kirk Cameron, and Tony Perkins from the Family Research Council (FRC). The FRC is the organization where one of it's office workers was recently gunned down by a militant (for lack of a better word) who broke into the office and started shooting. They are considered a Christian based organization that is very political. They are also a well known hate group, and are listed on a number of hate group lists along with Westboro Baptist Church. Now, before I get to my main point and what's causing my faith crisis, allow me to paste a few tidbits here of things said and done by the FRC and Tony Perkins, courtesy of the Southern Poverty Law Center...
__________________________________

 “If President Obama and the powerful homosexual activist groups he is aligned with get their way [on marriage equality], it will be disastrous for America.” — Tony Perkins, FRC fundraising letter, October 2011

 “The videos are titled 'It Gets Better.' They are aimed at persuading kids that although they'll face struggles and perhaps bullying for 'coming out' as homosexual (or transgendered or some other perversion), life will get better. …It's disgusting. And it's part of a concerted effort to persuade kids that homosexuality is okay and actually to recruit them into that lifestyle." — Tony Perkins, FRC fundraising letter, August 2011

 "Those who understand the homosexual community—the activists—they're very aggressive, they're—everything they accuse us of they are in triplicate. They're intolerant, they're hateful, vile, they're spiteful. But I understand that and certainly our response to them should be one of love and of compassion. But let me tell you why it's not love to be silent in the face of those who are advancing an agenda that is both destructive to our society and more importantly destructive to the individuals involved. To me, that is the height of hatred, to be silent when we know there are individuals that are engaged in activity, behavior, and an agenda that will destroy them and our nation." — Tony Perkins, Speaking to the Oak Initiative Summit, April 2011

 "We believe the evidence shows … that relative to the size of their population, homosexual men are more likely to engage in child sexual abuse than are heterosexual men." — Peter Sprigg, "Debating Homosexuality: Understanding Two Views." 2011.

“While activists like to claim that pedophilia is a completely distinct orientation from homosexuality, evidence shows a disproportionate overlap between the two. … It is a homosexual problem.” — FRC President Tony Perkins, FRC website, 2010

"Homosexuals cannot bear one another's children. They are not complementary, as are men and women. And they are, as a rule, highly promiscuous. …Other studies suggest that children raised in homosexual homes are much more likely to be exposed to violence than those raised by a mom and dad." — Tony Perkins, Address to the Faith and Freedom conference, Sept. 13, 2010

 “[A]llowing homosexuals to openly serve in the military would likely result, for the first time, in heterosexuals being forced to cohabit with those who may view them as a potential sexual object.” — Peter Sprigg, “Homosexual Assault in the Military," 2010 _______________________________________________________________

 There's more...but that's enough for now.

 Dana continues to follow the yellow brick road of hate speech that this man has polluted our air with to find out that this so called "Christian" organization has also sent money to Uganda to support an anti-gay legislation there calling for work camps and death penalty punishments for people practicing homosexuality in that country.

 Now, before this all comes off as a "Mike Advocating Homosexuality" page here, I want to state that this really isn't my issue, although all this other stuff does enrage me. The real issue to me as that there is this much hate in a so called "Christian" organization. These are not the actions of real Christians...Are they??? Since when has God called us to judge? To pronounce sentence? And since when has Homosexuality become an unforgivable sin? I understand what Paul said, but he didn't say that it was any greater or worse than any other sin. God hates the sin...not the sinner. I take all of this into perspective and realize that Franklin Graham is using this man along with Kirk Cameron (No prince himself in this area) and I'm starting to see a very interesting picture forming around our "National Day of Prayer." It's really not a "National Day of Prayer" anymore, but rather an Anti-Gay Christian Right Wing Bitchfest!

 I love you Dearly Aunt, but not even I can advocate the National Day of Prayer anymore, so how can I blame President Obama for not supporting it? I agree that a National Day of Prayer is a good thing. But this isn't a Christian thing that they are getting ready to do...mark my words. If the word Homosexuality comes up during the day even ONCE, then its not about Prayer...it's political.

 This is how Christians are behaving in this day and age. It's not very Christian, is it? How can I not be embarrassed to call myself one? I'm not going to waste my time defining the word Christian here either. If you don't know what a real Christian acts like, then you don't know what it is. Read your good book and find out.

Thanks for allowing me to rant, and to clear my head a bit.  This has really been distracting me in all facets of my life lately...almost to the point of depression.  I'm hoping that writing about it will help.  I've not done enough writing lately I guess...It's always been my own personal therapist.

Is Anyone Else NOT done with Christmas Yet?

Ugh. This has been one EXHAUSTING Holiday Season (and I don't say it that way to be politically correct). It seems like this year I had to have a supply of "Ho Ho Ho" that would las a little longer than usual. Lucky for me I had a back up supply of it, but then I ran out of Season to get it all done in!!

I had such great plans for Christmas. I was going to send off packages of goodies to my friends. I was actually going to do Christmas cards for everyone. Some of these things I still plan to do, but I have no idea where the funding is coming from. You see, I ran out of time and money! Between Dana's total hip replacement and Mom's illness, I was left doing shopping for 4 people this year, and while I didn't mind in the least, it somehow shortened the season for me and I didn't get done! LOL!

So, those of you who I told would be getting a Christmas card, I'm still planning on that, but It's going to be late. Please accept my apologies. For those of you who I told I would send goodies, please hang in there. Finances are an issue right now so it may take me one more week or so... It could be as late as the 3rd of Jan! Sorry!

Just try to keep that Christmas Spirit going!

Mike totally blows his stack at the landlord.

I didn't plan to write about this in the third person, so I won't. I'm just going to leave the title like that so people know what the post is about.

I am so embarrassed, and yet rather pleased with myself, even though I may have possibly put myself in even more danger with this nut case crackhead across the complex than I was before. As you all know, I was waiting to have a "come to Jesus" meeting with my landlord today and he finally decided to show his face at about 5pm this evening. When I finally realized he was out there, he had surrounded himself with the new neighbors from across the way AND the guy that's freakin' me out so bad, so I didn't feel comfortable talking to him.

The time came though that the landlord started making noises sounding like he was going to leave, so I knew I was going to have to speak or lose my chance. I didn't quite know what to say, so I did what my gut told me to do. I went to the man and told him that if that man was going to stay, he was not allowed to come near my apartment, my backyard, my neighbors or anywhere around my building. I told him that the man was a thief and a crackhead and scary and a threat to my personal security.

The landlords response? He forced the confrontation between me and the man. He called the man over and asked him if he was doing the things I had accused him of, specifically treating the complex like his own scavenger ground, and the guy denied it. Of COURSE this was all done in Spanish so I wouldn't understand. That infuriated me all the more.

I think in the future he will avoid taking for granted that I will always act like a reasonable man, because I did not. I only know one person who has ever seen me explode like I did right then, and that's Brian...he used to work for me. And this was way worse than I ever remember yelling at anyone in my life.

I said "What?" and then I started Screaming at him at the top of my lungs calling him a "thief and a liar. I went and I got the metal folding chair that he stole from my apartment and went back out waving it at him...Does this look familiar? You are a LIAR because I went into your house and TOOK IT BACK...from your house. You sat at your door glaring at people for three days trying to figure out who it was...I did it, and NOW you are going to stay the hell away from me, my house, my family, my neighbors and ANYWHERE around this apartment."

The whole thing didn't last much longer than about 15 minutes, but I had built up so much stress and so much rage that it just exploded out of me. (BTW...I'm not a thief, but I did go and get my chair back. I knew it was there, and he was only supposed to be staying the one night back then...cleaning the apartment in trade for staying the night...he had nowhere else to go.) It certainly wasn't the brightest way for me to handle this, and I'm certainly embarrassed about it now, but I think the man got the point that he needs to stay away from my side of the apartment complex! I am shamed that so many people witnessed this though...not just my landlord, but two sets of other neighbors did as well. I have apologized to all of those who saw me acting like an insane man, so hopefully now the landlord will listen to me and I'll be able to put all this craziness to rest.