All About MEme - tales from the darkside

If you read the posts this came from, you'll know that I am not alone when I say I am a major scaredy cat - scared of my own shadow! When my husband and I were dating, we were walking in Georgetown and a rat (a rat!!!) ran over my foot - did I mention I was wearing sandals? So I felt it's disgusting little rat-ness running over my bare toes?! I jumped about a mile! I maintain that this is not scaredy-cat-ed-ness, but completely reasonable. But what might be less reasonable is... my husband saw how quickly I jumped at what went bump in the night and is able to make me jump any time we are walking down the street or hiking just by yelling - rat! Or snake! or even - watch out! It's a terrible weakness to have around him...

But ironically, while I am easily startled, I'm also very good at logic-ing away the boogie man. Nope, that was my imagination. It never happened. I didn't see anything. I wasn't really awake yet. I don't really go in for ghost stories that much and always think - well, there has to be some logical explanation. My husband is sort of the opposite on this end. He doesn't freak easily, but he definitely believes more strongly in the paranormal and doesn't talk himself out of those experiences. He had several strange stories about the last house he lived in, which he and his roommate both agreed was haunted. But this story is actually about the condo where we used to live (until this summer).

This happened a few years ago (maybe 3?). It was the middle of the night and we were both in bed asleep when he woke up to go to the bathroom. For whatever reason, he started to head out of our room to the guest bathroom (rather than the master). When he opened the door, there was a very bright light in the hallway that shone for just a moment and then was gone, though he hadn't turned any lights on.

My husband describes his reaction to this light as - rushing back to the bed in a panic like a little girl - all 6'4, 250 lbs of him. We both sat freaked for a minute - what on earth was that?! I tried to suggest it was headlights from the parking lot - but those would have had to have come from the window in our room and this came from the center hallway (nowhere near a window). I thought maybe there was a power surge and a light had flashed brighter. But that would have made a noise and broken the bulb - and this wasn't the right type of light. It didn't flash like that. It was just a pure white for a moment. My last ditch effort was to say that I wasn't really fully awake and it hadn't really happened - except that we both saw it.

We never did figure out what it was. But my husband decided to use the master bathroom that night - and I lay wide awake while he did staring into the blackness unable to relax.

So not exactly a scary ghost story - but then again, I don't usually believe in ghost stories so knowing that I saw this did sort of freak me out.