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got paranormal activity?

Once, I was sleeping at an aunt and uncle's house, in their wood-paneled, cabin-like spare room. My sleep was heavy and dark, and I slept with a hand pressed flat on the cool wooden wall against which the little cot bed was cozied. I had one of those fevers of childhood that hold on viciously, and dry out a little body faster than juice or cold milk can replenish. Something roused me, and I felt eyes boring into me from behind, near the room's door or the bookcases leaning on the adjacent wall. Holding my breath, I turned my head on the damp pillow, and found standing in three-quarter turn before the thin line of light from under the door, a life-sized, cartoon-like, but perfectly drawn figure, like an illustration from a book. It was a centaur. I knew what they were from mythology stories. He had a full beard like my young uncle, a bare chest, and the body and sturdy musculature of a chestnut horse. Across his chest was slung a strap, and I could see sheath of arrows. There may have been a bow affixed to the strap, too. The centaur had a beautiful male face, and bright blue eyes, with long wavy dark hair, like those calm-eyed portraits of a very Caucasian Jesus. The centaur stared with such a calm, and I stared back, my head feeling as light and dry, and echo-empty as a balloon trailing out its helium. If I breathe or blink, he will go, I thought, with perfectly reasoned intuition. The centaur stared and glowed, seeming to agree with this conclusion. Don't go, I ventured silently. I will count to ten, but then I'll have to breathe or blink, and you will stay. I counted, and felt my lungs squeeze and my eyes stretch and begin to tear up. I blinked. The centaur vanished. Analysis: Children have hallucinations all of the time, and this was not my first (another time during a fever, I had seen a large "space worm" in a silver uniform, posed in front of a console full of buttons and gauges in my open bedroom closet). Though I ate little for dinner on the night of the centaur, there was relish on the table, and sodium and fat-filled boiled franks, foods known to cause nightmares and vivid dreams. The house was unfamiliar to me, which fuels a young imagination. I was sick. In the wood-paneled spare room, there was a pencil sketched portrait of Jesus. The most remarkable aspect of my vision was the sharpness of outline and detail of this figure. Perhaps he'll return tonight, this time with something to say, less picky about blinking ;)
— October 17, 2009 2:25 a.m.

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