Kith & Kin

Dear Readers, I will vouch for the fact that each of the stories below is true based on my personal knowledge of the character of each person relating the events. Unlike most “true stories” involving the supernatural, these don’t start off with, “This happened to a friend of mine,” or, “I knew a guy once who said this happened to his cousin.” These stories are told here as accurately as possible by those who experienced them. Each story is creepier than the one before it. You might find some of the events so disturbing that you won’t want to finish reading the post. That’s up to you. I promise you, though, that these events happened as they are related here. This is not a stunt or a hoax. My only regret is that none of them happened to me. Rats. Happy Halloween! Steve Sandi Duncan: “Bunny” NOTE FROM STEVE: Sandi is my first cousin on my dad’s side, daughter of his brother Leo. My mother’s name was Bonnie, and the grandchildren all called her “Mimi Bon.” But when great...

I mentioned in an earlier post that, starting in childhood and continuing even today, I love juxtaposing the feeling of fascination with the feeling of horror. (“It’s so scary but I can’t look away and I’m getting such a rush from this!”) That’s why I’m a sucker for YouTube videos from sites such as Mr. Ballen and The Why Files with headlines such as “Who Are the Dark Watchers?” and “Ghosts of Flight 401.” Most of the time I watch these out of curiosity with a large dose of skepticism mixed in, but even when I don’t believe the stories, I’m like, “Well, thanks, you did a good job of combining fascination with horror!” But in spite of my lifelong fascination with creepiness, I’ve never experienced any sort of paranormal event myself. I’ve never spotted a cryptid looking at me through the backyard fence. I never walked by an abandoned house and saw a shadowy figure watching me from an upstairs room. I never heard a voice speaking when there was no one present. Shoot, I was rai...

Uncle Tony Thompson, Nov. 1987 Uncle Tony was a family legend. Uncle Tony was my father-in-law’s brother. His name wasn’t actually Tony. It was Charles Thompson Jr., and, as it was explained to me, he was referred to when young as “Junior.” At that time, many sons in Italian families were called “Junior,” so since “Junior” sounded Italian, someone decided to call him “Tony,” a more official-sounding Italian name. And it stuck. He was what we in our family call “a real character.” He exemplified the kind of person a true follower of Christ should be—but he was also one of the funniest people you could ever meet. And he wrote fascinating letters, many of which my mother-in-law has kept. Quotations below are all excerpts from letters Uncle Tony sent to his brother, Paul (my wife’s dad) and Paul’s wife, Kathy. The letters are generally typewritten and rife with creative spelling and punctuation choices (which I’ve reproduced when quoting him below). SIBLINGS Dad Thompson (Paul) and...