Awaken

When I was about 12 years old I was very interested in magic, witchcraft, etc... As all young kids are bewildered by these things. I was a Boy Scout (of all things) and went camping often in northern Michigan. Anyhow, I brought along a book that I had gotten out of a foot locker at my parents’ house that was supposed to have belonged to my Great Uncle who I was told had been a fortune teller of sorts. The book was rather odd now that I think back about this. It was hand bound and all the writings in it were (what appeared to be) hand written. The title was "Craft ". This was perfect to take up to camp for a campfire reading I was sure. My intent was to be cool and claim I had written this book and state that I was some type of warlock in training. Things couldn't have gone worse.... Now, before I go further, I wish to confirm that the following is one of many very, very strange events that took place over a period of 2 years. This is not, and I swear, a fictional story...

It started about 9:00 or 9:30 pm, because it was fall and it had been dark for some time already. The campfire had been lit by the adults and they had retired to the cabin to play cards as they always did. I then became the biggest show off by pulling this book out of my bag and spewing some bull story about how I was next in line for generations to receive this book and the powers it had within... The six of us huddled around each other and thumbed through a few pages until we caught a page that was titled "Awaken". I began to read from this book softly at first by fire’s light. The more I read the more I felt drawn to each word following another... The words were reflected from the light of the fire as if written with metallic ink. About half through this four-page chapter, screaming from one of my friends stopped me. His eyes were wide and fixed on the sky above us and his scream fell to a whisper from fear. As the rest of us looked up, we saw what appeared to be an open hand made from a cloud coming down towards us. We all broke into a panicked scream, rushing to our feet. The book fell and closed itself and the campfire shot up in a rage for about 2 seconds, then down to nothing but cinders... By this time, the adults had come rushing out to check on us all. By now, the cloud looked only a little like a hand and the fire was out completely... This was dismissed as over–active imagination of children by the adults. We didn't speak to each other about this for almost a year... None of us could explain what we saw, but the images were clearly engraved in our minds.

D.P. (9/28/98)

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