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Seeing Isn't Always Believing You know that feeling you get when something happens that sends a shiver up and down your spine? It's the moment when you know what you just saw, felt, heard wasn't your imagination. What's more you know it would be useless to share the experience because seeing is believing isn't just a pointless expression. I have always been aware of strange things going on around me that couldnn't be explained and I couldn't share because, well, I couldn't explain. So to get to the point of this epistle. I am about to break my no sharing rule. Last Thursday as I walked along the old dirt road toward the stone bridge that crosses Sabre Creek I heard sounds in the distance. I'm not talking about a vehicle, or the sound of voices or even a wild animal. These sounds were different. They were eerie, almost musical, pulsing waves of sound that were nothing like I had ever heard before. I seemed to be able to feel them as well. I was afraid yet I felt compelled to continued on. vivian posted on 2018-04-20 at 22:37 Central Time. - link to this story -

You would think, as the child of overprotective parents who had grown accustomed to tracking my every movement as modern-day parents are apt to do, I might be a bit leery of following strange sounds. I had certainly heard enough stories to scare the bejesus out of any child of the 21st Century. But no. It may be that children will always find seams in which to escape the protective net. I know I did. I followed the sounds. As I walked, I tried to listen closer, tried to decipher what it was I was hearing. The eerie not-quite-music not-quite-voices beckoned, and I followed, deeper into the forests beyond Sabre Creek. I remembered the legend of Sabre Creek, the stories that kids tell one another. Not one to believe anything without seeing it with my own eyes, I had long ago dismissed the stories. Now, I wasn't so sure. Dogtrax 2018-04-21 at 13:15 Central Time.

The stories were based on historic texts but it was so long ago that no one really knows for sure how much of it is true and how much is from tales around the fire. Our teachers say a group of settlers found the creek while searching for a place to put down roots. The creek ran clear and fresh and the land was fertile. They were travel weary and running out of supplies. The 20 wagons that had begun the trip had dwindled to 15 and only five decided to continue the search. We don't know the exact layout of the settlement but judging from artifacts found it was within walking distance of the old stone bridge that still crosses the creek. I once asked my grandfather why the creek is called Sabre Creek. It seemed like such an odd name. He shook his head and said, "It's not a story for children you will have to wait until you grown up." When I was 12 my grandfather died and so did my chances to find out about Sabre Creek or so I thought. When I was 18 I received his diary. vivian 2018-05-04 at 03:54 Central Time.

The diary was not something I imagined my grandfather keeping. I didn't imagine him a writer. I always remembered him as the active explorer. It took me weeks to finally open up the diary, remembering how curious I had always been about Sabre Creek. What was odd about his journal was that along with some typical daily entries -- what he was doing, thinking -- there were strange scribbles and cribbed notes in the margins of different pages. The more I read, the more I began to think that maybe he had left behind a map of some sort, a historical guide to Sabre Creek. There were references to events I remembered him referring to, doodles that seemed to be incomplete maps, geographical coordinates of unknown spaces. My grandfather, six years dead, was sending me on a treasure hunt. The question was: was I ready to go? Dogtrax 2018-05-05 at 09:59 Central Time.

With all these thoughts spinning in my brain I continued to walk away from the bridge deeper into the forested area listening to the voices of the wind or maybe of those long ago settlers. As I neared a clearing in the trees I thought I saw something move. It might have been an animal or just the wind moving the undergrowth. When I walked into the clearing it was as if I had opened a door into some other reality. Though I tried to convince myself there was nothing supernatural going on I knew better. The music beckoned me to the center of the clearing where I could see a circle of stones each adorned with a glyph that I had seen in my grandfather's diary. vivian 2018-05-06 at 13:44 Central Time.

I felt myself being drawn forward and in fact I did not want to resist. I slowly walked to the center of the circle of stones. The music became discordant and jangly. Was I really hearing it or was it just in my head. I spread my arms and began to spin around. I could feel the energy flowing from my fingertips. The music got louder and then suddenly it stopped. So did I. I stood there dizzy from spinning around. My vision was a little blurry. As my vision cleared I had even more reason to doubt my senses. Standing by each rock was a man, a woman, or a child. And they were all dressed in archaic clothes. Either this was an elaborate prank or I was seeing the ghosts of the original settlers. hairylarry 2018-05-10 at 16:12 Central Time.

"Seeing Isn't Always Believing" started by vivian. All stories are licensed Creative Commons-Attribution. You can attribute the writers like this. These writers contributed to "Seeing Isn't Always Believing" on Collab - Dogtrax, hairylarry, vivian