Radiohead and Ghosts: Redux

Yesterday I was sifting through the archives, looking at some of my favorite posts for a project I'm working on. As I read entry after old entry, I stumbled upon one of my favorite posts that I had forgotten about. Radiohead and Ghosts. I really liked the whole setup of the (true) story, they way the Radiohead segues into a ghost story.

Back when I originally wrote I didn't give it the time and effort it deserves. So last night, I gave it a complete re-write and I think it's a zillion times better then before and I'm very proud of it.

So, ladies and gentlemen, may I please present to you:

Radiohead and Ghosts: Redux.

I don't know about you, but I absolutely adore Radiohead. They deserved every bit of critical praise they got for OK Computer. They’re one of those bands that don’t necessarily fit in to any sort of musical genre. The fact they can go from a rock number to an electronic synth song to a jazzy piano based song, in a single album in my mind, makes them perhaps the greatest band of all time

Ok, I’m done ranting.

OK Computer was on of those albums that sort of changed my outlook on music, it was the album that taught me that everything didn’t have to have a ton of distortion or that a piano could rock just as hard as a distorted guitar. I bought the album when it came out and listened to it once or twice and forgot about it. Put it away to collect dust on my metal rack filled with other CD's. This was during my “if it didn’t sound hard, then it sucked” phase.

When my mom bought me my first iPod, a huge brick with a tiny storage space by today’s standards anyway, but at the time it was the coolest thing ever. I still have that iPod sitting in a drawer somewhere in this house.

I remember coming home and plugging in my shiny new toy in to my iBook and waiting for my wonderful new music player to fill up with music. It didn’t take very long, seeing as I had no music on my little laptop. One of the first CD’s I imported was Radiohead’s ‘OK Computer’. I unplugged the thick firewire cable from the iPod and firmly planted my Grados over my ears and heard something I have not heard in a long time.

Good music.

For some unknown reason, every song on that album took me back to another time in my life, as I sat in my dark room, listening to Thom singing about an airbag saving his life. I realized that I grew up with this album. Let me explain.

Paranoid Android forever reminds me of cracking up with Mitch on the phone at 2 A.M. while watching the video. Karma Police reminds me of the time we all went to Bridgette's house the day after Halloween, sitting with Michael JP’s and Tom (Not Thom, Mutsy Tom.) in the car he had just bought. It was a mid-seventies Mercedes, cream color with matching interior. All the while Karma Police was playing on the radio as we drank vodka straight out of the bottle talking about life, girls and our futures.

It was also the first time I’ve ever encountered something that I couldn’t explain. That night I had a paranormal experience.

Mutsy, Michael and I were coming back from the gas station down the street from Bridgette's house. They’d run out napkins and paper towels so they sent us feeling that we would be able to fulfill such a menial task with the least amount of commotion.

Let me mention that Bridgette lives at a place called 'Devil's Slide'.

As we walked back, paper towels and napkins in hand, it was dark and yes, we were semi-drunk. Stopping dead in our tracks it was there, standing in front of the driver’s side window of that old cream color Mercedes, was a tall black shadowy figure peeking its head in the window. Our bodies had become paralyzed with fear, frozen like deer caught in headlights. I had never felt such a chill go up my body as I did when I the shadowy figure. I still get chills thinking about today and, yeah, I just got ‘em just now.

As we stood there frightened by God-knows-what standing between us and the house, we looked at each other
and looked back to the cream color Mercedes and in and instant, it was gone.

I turned my head to Tom and Michael, barely able to get the words out of my mouth, I cracked a nervous smile "Did you see that?!" I said.

Their silence assured that my eyes were not playing tricks on me.

We were so petrified that we didn't know if we should run away, run back to the house or stay still.

We ran.

Like scared woman, I don't think I’ve ever ran so fast in my life. We ran into the kitchen and stood there, looking at each other, knowing that the three of us had seen something that we would never be able to fully understand or explain. We stood there for about three minutes, panting and shaking, until I started laughing. The nervous laughing broke the uncomfortable silence that had been permeating since we had seen what ever it was that made its presence known to us that night.

As the tension eased off, we started talking about what we just witnessed. We agreed that we seen the same tall, dark shadowy figure. Over six-feet tall and dressed in all black, its back was slightly hunched over. It seemed as if it was trying to break in to the car. I remember at the time I was explaining it as the fisherman from “I Know What You Did Last Summer”. I suppose there could be some sort of logical explanation to it, high EMF’s (Electro-Magnetic-Fields), random group hallucination, semi-drunkenness. Hell, I don’t know. And I probably never will. I know I chose to believe what I saw that night and what I saw was not of this world.

The thing that made it so bizarre and assures me to this day that it was a real paranormal experience, was that three of us saw it, showing it self to us just long enough to make us think there something else out there in this world, then it was gone.

Poof.