Write about your strongest memory of heart-pounding belly-twisting nervousness: what caused the adrenaline? Was it justified? How did you respond?
So this memory is from a time when I was much younger… when my ex-partner and I used to own a grand mansion in the mountains of San Francisco Bay Area. We had been remodelling our home for about a year at the time; it had everything, it was a dream home. I will always remember this evening well, the house was so close to being completed. Many rooms had already been decorated with new furniture and newly installed light fixtures that day throughout the house. With one notably large fan light installed in the main living room. The house was finally feeling like our home, everything made to our comfort. With Christmas being so close we ended up not buying a tree this year due to the construction, but that didn’t stop us from purchasing plenty of gifts. That evening we went to bed early, our huge master bedroom was our sanctuary. It happened to sit above the kitchen and living room.
We watched a little television in bed, and then I guess we had fallen asleep. In the twilight hours of the morning, we are both awoken by strange sounds coming from below and vibrating bedroom buzz. At first, we weren’t sure if it was an earthquake? Or something out of the ordinary. The noises continued on, and with each sound, it honestly got creepier, and at that hour of the night, it was just too scary to think about. My mind was rushing thoughts like what can it be logically? Is it something to do with a new house? Or much worse… it’s a new area, and people might have assumed we probably had a lot of good stuff in this house. So I don’t know… but the thought of being robbed made me cringe.
Oh goodness, it was a horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach, the fear of it all was telling me to stay upstairs while my mind thinking why us? It started to get intense… next, we heard the skipping scraping sounds against the walls like something was tearing pieces off and this all was coming from under us still. Our dog started barking, which is never a good thing. It’s progressively got worse… next, a very a loud crash and we knew things were being broken. I seriously jumped out of bed, trying to figure out what to do? The power had gone out in our room while the open door alarm is set off and at this point, we had come to terms that strangers are in our home robbing us and are carelessly destroying what they don’t like. It sounded like our stuff was dragging out the door. We didn’t know what to do… the house phone was dead, and I just wanted to stay in bed.
Forget them I said, let them have what they want, nothing in that house was really worth fighting over. My ex wanted to go downstairs and see what was going on. I doubt they would have come upstairs to this wing of the house, it was such a large home I honestly wasn’t worried about that part, hopefully, of course, I was definitely crossing my fingers and toes. I argued with him not to and eventually convinced him to stay upstairs in the master bedroom. He had turned off the alarm by this point, no reason to have it going, when we didn’t have it connected to the police station yet, figures the one time we actually needed it and we didn’t have it set up because we are new to it. Eventually, the noise dies down, and we had decided to make our way to the downstairs wing of the house. I was very much happy to see the dawn, the sun had brought the light to the darker parts of the house, and everything seemed pretty calm as we slowly and quietly crept down the long hallway and down and around the stairs to the lower central section of the house. The downstairs was very chilly, remembering that it was December it didn’t make it feel any better.
As we approached closer, we saw broken glass scattered all over and some stuff from the counters on the floor. The back doors were open…we reached the main living room and found a massive hole in the ceiling where our bedroom sits, the sizeable new fan light fixture that we just had installed ripped the ceiling. Before it came crashing down it somehow had shot the wings into other parts of the house knocking the phone of the hook with glassware off the counters. Then somehow hitting the backdoor just right to where it had opened to set the alarm off. Eventually, the fanlight came crashing down onto our brand new all glass coffee table shattering it with the alongside glass dome and glass candle holders that were on top of it. What a mess it was… come to find out it was improperly installed… clearly, some electrical glitch made the fan go haywire and pulled all the electrical wiring out of the ceiling and killing the power to our bedroom above and the rest… is the shock of history.
— Leo Ferreira
The human mind works in strange ways under late-night stress. Between the room vibrations, strange noises, dog barking, door alarm, power outage and dead house phone it was only logical to assume the worst, that we’re being robbed at the time. Then once that fear settled in the classic signs appeared… adrenaline, racing pulse, sweating and of course anxiety making it all even worse. Even though we weren’t robbed that evening, I still feel that night was the closest experience I had come to it. It all stemmed from the Power of Mind.
How would have you acted in my shoes? Would you have done the same? It can be easy now, hindsight is 20/20. Without pointing the obvious consider you are caught off guard in that moment of fear and feeling trapped. So I’d love to hear thoughts of what you would do if you were indeed in your home experiencing something like this or if you have any real experiences, what did you end up doing when it all came about?
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