Ghost Hunters – Have You Seen the Spirit of Resurrection Mary, the Phantom Hitchhiker?

(from the Magical Mysteries Collection – also previously published on Yahoo! Contributor Network, July 29, 2008, then posted on and removed from Persona Paper)

If you ever lived on or near the southwest side of Chicago, you probably heard about the phantom hitchhiker known as Resurrection Mary. The legendary blonde woman wears a long flowing white gown and walks the road near Resurrection Cemetery. Various websites list different addresses for the cemetery, but whitepages.com (as of July, 2008,) lists the location at 7200 Archer Rd. in Justice, Illinois.

Although numerous stories relate encounters with the woman, one story appears more often than others. Mary was supposedly born in the 1920s and loved to dance at the O'Henry Ballroom, later known as the Willowbrook. When she was in her teens, she left the ballroom after arguing with her boyfriend and walked home on a cold winter night. A driver passing her lost control of his or her vehicle, killed her, and left the scene of the accident.

Several years later, a man by the name of Jerry Palus, who frequented the ballroom, danced with a woman wearing a long flowing white gown. She barely spoke to him, but he offered to drive her home. After telling him her address, she entered his car and again became silent. On their way to her home, as they came upon Resurrection Cemetery, Mary asked to be let out. Before she waked away, she asked him not to follow her. As she approached the gates of the cemetery, Mary disappeared.

Other people, mostly men, have reported picking up a girl matching her description. Although she appears to be real, she is cold to the touch. One wonders how anyone, let alone hundreds of men, would want to dance with a living corpse. Does her beauty cause these dancing men an inability to tell the difference between a live woman and a dead one?

Jerry was apparently baffled by the experience, so he went to the address the next day only to discover that the girl he presumably picked up had died five years earlier.

Beyond the obvious ghostly inquiries, questions arise, not only because nobody has been able to ascertain exactly who the real Mary was, but why so many people claim to have seen her.

Over the years, other stories have been attributed to the apparition. In the 1970s area police received yet another call about a woman wearing a white dress who was locked inside the gates of the cemetery. Exploring the cemetery produced no woman, but evidence of something unusual appeared at the gate itself. Two of the bronze bars seemed to have been pried apart, and impressions of what looked like finger and palm prints appeared on the bars.

Whether or not she existed, nobody knows, but the mystery of Resurrection Mary prompts people to continue to search for her. She is one of Chicago's most famous ghosts. Devotees of the phantom lady wait in the early morning hours on days when the night's full moon lights the sky – awaiting the chance to give a ride to the lovely blonde lady wearing a long flowing gown.

The Ghost of Ted Bundy Still Haunts Me

UPDATE: Netflix is currently (as of January 2019) running Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes. Toward the end of the first episode, you'll see an area across a parking lot. Seeing that, for me, was frightening and convinced me even more that he really was the one who approached me. Read more below:

Before I reveal the Ted Bundy article you are about to read, I'd like to take a moment to focus on one moment in time – the memory that prompted the article in the first place.

During the Ted Bundy fiasco, newspapers ran photos of Bundy's victims. They all looked eerily similar to each other with their long dark hair parted down the middle. 

The moment I saw the layout of those photos, I suddenly – with profound impact – remembered in vivid detail meeting a man in the parking lot where I worked when I was only 17 years old who just might have been – Ted Bundy. The photo you see was taken of me at about the same time as the incident revealed below. Photos of Bundy’s victims can be found on Murderpedia.

Here then is the original article, Ted Bundy and Me, in its entirety:

Serial killers both fascinate and repulse us – Jeffrey Dahmer, John Wayne Gacy, Gary Ridgway, and Ted Bundy conjure horrific images of innocent lives destroyed. How did these gruesome characters become so adept at committing crimes so macabre? Imagine how creative these murderers must be to devise methods of deception so devious even the brilliant minds of their victims become impervious to self-preservation. 

Civilized humans with a conscience wonder how murderers justify behavior we deem not just abnormal but an abomination. And we wonder at what point it becomes part of their internal makeup. What steps do serial killers take to successfully refine their systems to such a degree that excitement builds and impulse replaces common sense? What compels them to repeat their atrocities again and again?

As their levels of depravity sink beneath a surface we can't even imagine, as each victim succumbs to their charms, these manipulators of their own consciences improve their methods, tweaking and adjusting them until they discover what works. It is the point before that realization hits them that arouses my curiosity. I want to know what didn't work.

I was 17 the summer and fall of 1968 just after Ted Bundy's girlfriend broke off their relationship. According to many sources, he traveled during that time, from the west coast to the east coast and to Florida.

I-80, 294, and I-90/94 take you east, west, and south, not far from the River Oaks mall in Calumet City, Illinois (one of Chicago's south suburbs), where I worked for three months that year.

Like many young women, I wore my dark hair long and straight with a part down the middle.

On my way to work as I exited my father's car in the Sears parking lot one evening, a tall thin man approached me. As if out of nowhere, he appeared before me, the sun stretching across the western sky, casting its light behind him.

"Your car is leaking," he said as he pointed under my car.

I leaned over and saw many leaks under the car. "That's OK. I'll have my dad look at it," I told him as I slung my purse over my shoulder.

"It will only take a minute."

"No, really," I said, "it's OK. I have to get to work." I started to walk away, but he kept talking. I forced a smile. I was trying to be polite.

He was insistent. He bent over to look under the car. "I can't really tell which leak is coming from your car, because there are so many, but if you drive it over there," he said, pointing across the parking lot, "I can take a better look. Nobody is parked over there. Less stains on the ground."

I hesitated, but "over there" was next to a thick grove of trees. I declined again, repeating that my father would take a look at it. He insisted again that it would take only a minute. I told him I really had to get to work, at which time we both walked away.

When he turned to walk, however, instead of walking into the store, as I would have expected, he returned to the parking lot, something I found strange even then.

Though the man was obviously trying to be kind, I felt oddly frightened. My body was trembling. I couldn't have articulated at the time why my heart was pounding so wildly in my chest – something in his demeanor, maybe – an underlying intensity along with his polite insistence. Still shaking, I called my father from a pay phone. I was afraid to return to the parking lot after work and I was afraid the car wouldn't run. My father assured me that nothing was leaking from the car and that the man wouldn't be there when I left.

I didn't think about the event again until years later when I saw photos of Ted Bundy's victims, all with long hair parted down the middle.

From 1969-1972, after he discovered that the woman he thought was his sister was actually his mother, Bundy delved into the academic and political arena. A political career in the late 60's and early 70's, before the world learned about corruption in high places, may have been what Bundy thought was a highly respectable career choice. He may have been able to hide his evil side. He may also have spent time thinking about how to perfect his strategy.

Bundy's first known victim, Joni Lenz, was brutally attacked in January 1974. Did Bundy suddenly become the psychopath the media exposed him to be, or did he progress, allowing his brain to assimilate psychotic impulses he would learn to justify (it's OK for me to kill her because my pleasure is more important than her pain). In all likelihood, he probably blamed his victims for his behavior (they asked for it).

Refining techniques takes thought and time. Failed attempts require creative solutions to insure success. Serial killers follow their impulses and force a transformation of their fantasies into their version of reality. Was the ruse Ted Bundy once used one of offering help to unsuspecting victims? And is it possible that after one or more failed attempts, he altered his technique and started asking unsuspecting victims to help him (as he did with his last known victims)? Did he confine his killing sprees to those areas that most assured him of success, perhaps leaving Illinois alone?

So many questions remain unanswered. What if I had agreed to drive my car to the grove of trees at the end of the parking lot? What if I hadn't trusted my instincts?

Bundy chose to use his intellect and creative abilities to destroy his victims and their loved ones. Creative destruction – destructive creativity – two opposing words that worked together in Ted Bundy's mind – until he got caught. He was electrocuted fifteen years after the murder of Joni Lenz in January 1989. He was 42 years old.

I will never know if Ted Bundy was the man who approached me forty-five years ago (50 as of January 2019) in the summer or fall of 1968, but I will always wonder.

Do You Sometimes Feel that You’ve Been Cursed?

• (originally from the Magical Mysteries Collection, later republished August 5, 2008, on the ~now defunct~ Yahoo! Contributor Network, then published on and removed from Persona Paper with the title You’ve Been Cursed! How Do You Remove That Curse?, I finally decided to place this in my own blog)
• Nothing is more powerful than belief – YOUR belief. What you believe lays the groundwork not only for how you live your life but also for how you respond to anything that happens to you. If you feel that you have been cursed, for instance, and you walk into a darkly lit room to find a soothsayer who promises to relieve you of your curse, one thing and one thing only will unburden you from that curse – your belief that she knows how to remove your curse. But can you trust her?
•  Read this story:

He approaches the house with trepidation, looking over his shoulder as he enters the eerie abode. He has spent the last several weeks living in fear. He feels he has been cursed. After all, he is a descendant of King Tut, his last name is Kennedy, and he is a devoted Cubs fan.

He wasn't too concerned when his engine blew, but when his transmission exploded, and his house burned down, he couldn't help but wonder if he was the target of doom. And when he lost his job, he knew he had to take action. Today he visits a curse remover.

Let's listen in. The curse remover, after listening to his litany of complaints, gathers her materials, little statues she made herself, and magic wands she purchased from the local metaphysical shop. Repeat after me, she says. "Voodoo hoodoo boodoo – voodoo hoodoo boodoo." He repeats the mantra. "Again, " she demands. Again he obliges.

"Wait," she interrupts. "Where's the money?"

"Oh, yes, I have it here," he says as he hands her $3,000 in traveler's checks.

"Voodoo hoodoo boodoo."

"Done," she tells him as she escorts him to the door.

"That's it?" he asks.

"Yes, that's it. Well, almost," she whispers. "The curse removal will last only a month. You must pay me another $3,000 every month to keep the curse from killing you. And you mustn't tell a soul or the curse will strike you with a vengeance a hundredfold what it was before. Death will be quick and torturous otherwise."

And so it goes. People who feel cursed receive more than their fair share of calamity, generally on a regular basis and generally completely disproportionate to what they perceive the rest of the world receives. They are even willing to pay people to get rid of the curse.

But curses seem to belong only to people who believe in them. Curses become entombed within self-fulfilling prophecies that energize like little batteries that keep going and going. The continuation of bad luck confirms to the believers that they have been cursed.

Whenever anything bad happens to a member of the Kennedy family, the media jump in with PROOF that the Kennedy curse exists, despite the fact that other people have the same and sometimes more misfortunes than the Kennedy family. The only difference is that the Kennedy family lives in the public eye.

Does anybody remember the hoopla surrounding the notorious serial killer, or should I say series killer, the Cubs Curse ball? On February 26, 2004, at 7:31 pm, the Cubs hoped to put an end to the curse by destroying the ball that they believed cost them the World Series in 2003. Armed guards protected the death row murderer until its destruction that supposedly served as a symbol to signify the end of the curse.

So now the Cubs will win every World Series, right? I hope so – for the sake of the guy who just spent another $3,000 in Traveler's Checks. (By the way, an enlightened honest person will not ask you to pay them exorbitant amounts of money to help you spiritually.)

Photo Credit: Morguefile.

Dead Man Talking

(from the Magical Mysteries Collection – also previously published on Yahoo! Contributor Network August 1, 2008 – later published on and then deleted from Persona Paper)

Late at night, hours after having been put to bed, a little girl walks into the living room. She wipes her eyes and yawns to her mother, "There's a man in my closet." Gripped with fear, knowing she must rescue her baby who sleeps in that same room, the mother grabs a knife and heads to the bedroom, heart pounding in her chest.

But her search is in vain. No man.

Or is there? Is it an apparition, a dream, or a figment of the child's imagination?

The fourth possibility, of course, is that it's real.

Not since Rod Serling's Twilight Zone episodes in the 1950s and 1960s has the world been so intrigued with subjects rife with superstition, curiosity, and fear.

Metaphysical subjects are not a new phenomenon. Since the beginning of time, people referred to as "sensitives" (individuals who rely on more than just their five senses to validate the world for them), feel or "sense" things. They are more naturally tuned into what is referred to as a sixth sense than those who don't experience those same sensations. For the sensitive person, awareness of things unseen is commonplace. Belief in things unproven is also common.

One hundred years before Rod Serling mesmerized us with intriguing perceptions of reality, Mary Todd Lincoln, President Abraham Lincoln's wife, organized séances at the White House to channel the spirit of her son, Willie, after having lost him in 1862. Her husband and other prominent members of society attended those séances.

Thirty years after Twilight Zone, when Whoopi Goldberg's character, Oda Mae Brown, in the 1990 movie, Ghost, pretended to communicate with dead people, the voice of an actual deceased person drew out her natural talent, that of a medium.

Nine years later, Cole Sear (Haley Joel Osment) was haunted by visions of departed entities in the 1999 I-see-dead-people movie, The Sixth Sense.

More recently, through the medium of television, soul communicators, such as John Edward and James Van Praagh invite audiences to participate in connecting with the other side.

Medium is the singular form of the word media. Media - newspapers, television, radio, and the Internet - work as channels of information, forms of communication. In the occult sense, a medium is a person who channels information from the dead.

In the television show, Medium, psychic crime investigator, Allison DuBois, tapped into the afterlife for solutions. Patricia Arquette played the role of the real-life psychic investigator.

According to a recent Gallup poll, one third of Americans believe in ghosts. On what do they base their beliefs? And does believing in ghosts mean believing in communicating with them?

How is it even possible to communicate with somebody who has no mouth to speak and no hands to gesture? But do we not gesture in our sleep while our hands lie firmly by our sides? And do we not see rainbows with eyes closed and listen to music that has never been recorded?

Our physical forms die, but our spirits live on. As disembodied spirits we no longer concern ourselves with clothing, housing, medical expenses, stealing, coveting, lying, or cheating. If our spirits live on, awareness of being, of existing in a different form might be somewhat frightening for some of us. If we died, and were aware of our death, we might try to communicate with loved ones. But our form of communication would have to change.

While many police departments shun the use of mediums because of the controversy they invite, many use them anyway. The case of Christopher Meyer, the 10-year old boy abducted from the Kankakee, Illinois, area in August, 1995, is a good example. Psychic investigators zero in on thoughts and images that may not be accessible through ordinary routes.

A former program, Psychic Kids: Children of the Paranormal - (2008-2010) – hosted by Chip Coffey, Psychic/Medium, and Lisa Miller, Ph.D., cast a new light on the previously frequently heard comment, "Children should be seen and not heard." When dead men talk, those children listened. And now we're listening to them.

Three Weeks in the Hospital – Two Near Death Experiences: A True Story

Previously published on Associated Content / Yahoo Contributor Network January 12, 2011

In September of 1977 I came down with a cold. I was in the process of moving into a filthy apartment and my allergy to dust was tested as I cleaned thick layers of it from every shelf, window sill, and counter top.

I stupidly contributed to the lingering cold, because, even though I was an asthmatic, I smoked. I also lived with a cat (I didn't know at the time that I was developing an allergy to cats).

By October the cold had become so bad I could barely breathe, and on October 17 my mother drove me to the emergency room. I was given shots of epinephrine and aminophyllin.

Even as I left the hospital I knew I would be back. When you've had asthma for as long as I have, you know your body well enough to know when the symptoms are not subsiding and when you are in danger of dying.

That same night, before my parents went to bed, I asked them to drive me to the hospital. I was afraid I wouldn't make it through the night. I was right in believing this asthma attack was dangerous, because, though I didn't know it at the time, I also had a severe upper respiratory infection. I was admitted that night.

For the first time in my life I feared I would die from an asthma attack. I prayed to God that if he allowed me to awaken in the morning - alive - I would quit smoking.

When I awoke, I heard angels singing and my eyes flashed open in fear. Still unable to speak because my breathing was so labored, I peered around my room to find a woman in the bed next to mine who claimed to be an evangelist.

At this point, I would like to interrupt this article to inform the reader that I consider myself to be a very spiritual person. Though I am not religious, I firmly believe in God, and I try to live my life in accordance with the teachings of Jesus Christ and other religious leaders who live and lived exemplary lives.

The evangelist spoke incessantly and relentlessly over the next week and a half about saving me. Her eagerness to force me into her religion contributed more to my extended asthma attack than it did to my spiritual progression. After a while her voice sounded like nails on a chalkboard.

I turned my back on her and looked outside my window where a giant maple tree presented me with leaves of gold, brown, rust, crimson, and an assortment of other fall colors. I focused on one leaf that sat at the end of a branch barren of all other leaves. Silly as it may sound, I felt a connection to that leaf. "If you can hang on until I get out of here," I told it as if it could hear me, "I can hang on too."

Hanging on was difficult though, because twice during my stay, my asthma had become so bad, I was hanging over the edge of the bed struggling to get a hairline of oxygen into my lungs. I'm sure my lips were purple, because every nurse on the floor was in my room.

One nurse rubbed my back and my shoulders. Another caressed my arm while another soothed me and assured me that everything would be OK once they got a hold of the doctor to approve a respiratory treatment. Two other nurses stood by the door.

The respiratory therapist stood by my bed waiting for the doctor's approval. Nobody could find the doctor. As my anxiety increased so too did my fear of dying. I could see fear in the nurses' faces too. They thought I was going to die just as much as I did.

When the respiratory therapist was finally given the OK, I didn't have the lung capacity to breathe in the much needed medicine. I felt like crying in frustration and in fear, but the tears would have to wait. Crying might have killed me.

Finally the medicine started working, but my body wouldn't wait the required four hours for the next treatment. Two and a half hours later I was struggling again. And again nurses had to find the elusive doctor.

After the attack subsided, the voice from the other bed continued to spout her "you shoulds" over and over. I felt as if I were listening to a sermon that never ended and that, instead of being sent to save me, she was there for the sole purpose of torturing me.

At one point I wrote a letter to the nursing staff (because I was still having so much difficulty breathing that I couldn't speak) and asked them to PLEASE move her or me so that I could concentrate on getting better. A week and a half into my hospital stay, she left. I never did find out why she was there or what it was about her roommate she felt needed saving.

After my second scare when the nursing staff once again stood around my bed awaiting approval to utilize the breathing apparatus that would save my life, I returned my attention to the maple tree. The leaf clung on and so did I.

I learned a lot about myself during that hospital stay. One important lesson was that I had to admit how stupid I was to begin smoking in the first place. Another lesson was to stay away from things that caused an allergic reaction.

The third very important lesson I learned was not to trust all doctors. It never occurred to me that I might die only because the doctor who was responsible for administering drugs I badly needed didn't feel it was necessary to inform the staff of his whereabouts.

I also learned (and expected) landlords to clean any apartment I rented before I moved in.

And I learned to never force anybody to believe what I believe. If I want someone to live a spiritual life, I will show my intentions by my actions; not by my words.

On the day I left the hospital, nearly three weeks later, I looked out the window one last time. The beautiful maple tree had lost all of its leaves, except for one, the one I had asked to hang on. God heard my prayers.

Karma - Cosmic Justice or Cosmic Joke?

(from the Magical Mysteries Collection)

Originally published in the Daily Journal – later published on Associated Content / Yahoo Contributor Network August 15, 2008

Isaac Newton, a 17th Century scientist who defined the laws of motion wrote, "For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction." Newton's Third Law of Motion bears a striking resemblance to the law of Karma that states, "What goes around comes around." Reaping what you sow is another form of Karma.

The word Karma has its beginnings in Sanskrit. It means "deed." The Hindu and Buddhist believe a person's actions determine his consequences - cause and effect. But according to the laws of Karma, consequences can occur in this life or in the next incarnation.

Without proof, though, how can we believe in Karma? How do we know that somebody like Hitler will meet the fate we believe he deserves? And what about people like Jeffrey Dahmer and Ted Bundy, murderers who were both executed (one by his former prison mates, another by lethal injection)? Do executions prove Karmic justice or do expectations of reward or punishment prove to be one big cosmic joke? Apparently it matters not how many people murderers kill; whether they ended one life or destroyed twenty, the murderer's life ends with one swift death.

Without Karma, according to most religions, we are left with only two ultimate choices, Heaven or Hell. In some religions, if you break one of the Ten Commandments you are forever condemned to Hell. What that means is that a man who robs a bank is just as likely to go to Hell as is a woman who murders her children or a psychotic leader who commits genocide.

But what if the man who robs a bank has a child who will die without expensive drugs? In his lifetime, with the job he has, with insurance that has run out, and with the hospital refusing to treat his child, the father is left with what he perceives to be no other choice. He knows he will never be able to pay his medical bills and he knows he is not eligible for any government aid because he makes five dollars a month more than the minimum allotted allowance. With no relatives to rely on, and no hope for a raise, he feels he must choose between letting his child die and robbing a bank.

Martin Short's character in the movie, "Three Fugitives," was faced with such a problem. The movie, of course, was fictitious, and I'm not advocating robbing banks to solve problems, but we all have to admit that no matter how religious we are, situations arise that challenge our beliefs and determine our choices. Some might say that the man mentioned above should trust that God will take care of the matter, but nobody can truly understand the torment of any human being without experiencing exactly what another person experiences under exactly the same conditions. Maybe, at the end of his life, the man would ask forgiveness for robbing the bank.

How many times must God forgive him? If you believe in the Bible, according to Matthew 18:22, "seventy times seven." So what is to stop somebody from committing a crime, or even several crimes, and deciding to apologize a minimum of 490 times at the end of his life for every wrongdoing?

Perhaps the answer lies in the conscience. Most religions teach us that we are all sinners. Sinners know, because they have a conscience, when they have broken a Commandment. Some sinners care about their behavior and make amends. Others justify their behavior and make excuses. Unless they are completely apathetic about their crimes (antisocial personality disordered individuals, for instance), they carry their guilt with them their entire lives.

If Karma is absolute, why can we not know what it was we did in our past lives so that we can rectify our past misdeeds in this life? Some people attempt to find out by having hypnotists regress them into their past lives. Perhaps, though, if we were aware of the torment we caused others, we might become so focused on the past that we would be unable to change the course of our destiny. Does Karma provide a link to our destiny or do we determine our futures by our actions in the present?

Jesus recommended that we "know" ourselves. If our spirits have inhabited other bodies, might we benefit by knowing what we did in our pasts to effect a change in our futures?

People who believe in Karma feel responsible for their actions. They care about their behavior. Everything they do, every thought they have begins with choice because they know that at some point they either reap rewards or suffer consequences as a result of their actions.

To believe in Karma, in light of the aforementioned scenarios, requires a belief in reincarnation, an opportunity to return to Earth to make amends. To those who believe the life we are currently living is all we have, faith drives them to believe that only God can know the true nature of any deed or action. And if God resides in our consciences perhaps we, along with God, at the moment we depart this life, determine our own rewards and consequences.

Full Moon in the ER: Craziness Accompanies the Full Moon

Republished from my previously published Yahoo Contributor Network article originally posted on July 8, 2010.

A current asthma attack triggered this memory: I had the pleasure of entering an emergency room one full moon day because I was having an asthma attack. Until you have experienced the electric energy that surrounds and penetrates each person in an emergency room on a full moon, you have not yet fully lived.

Back in the mid 1970s I worked at Billings Hospital. Lucky for me I worked in the lobby next to the emergency room, because every cold winter morning, I began my day there on my way to the office - not working, but receiving shots of epinephrine and aminophylline after having walked the distance from one end of the Midway Plaisance at the University of Chicago to the other. Since the age of five, asthma has been a problem for me and cold winter air constricts my lungs to a point where I cannot breathe.

During my time at Billings Hospital I befriended a couple of ER doctors who used to tell me about the lunatics they knew would be visiting them every full moon and about how they would mentally prepare themselves for those crazy full moon days. I had to wonder though - can you really prepare for lunacy?

Before I explain to you what happened to me that full moon morning, I should explain a little about the word, lunatic, as it relates to the moon. A Lunar Cycle consists of 29.53059 days. The Full Moon is a phase of the moon in which the illuminated portion of the moon is visible to observers.

Lunar cycles have been credited with causing humans to shape-shift into werewolves of super-human strength. It is my belief, after my experience in the ER that full moon day, that shape-shifters do indeed exist and they periodically visit emergency rooms - on days and nights of the full moon. Let me now tell you why.

On this particular full moon morning, the emergency room was already packed - so packed, in fact, that people were on gurneys in the hallway. I was on one of those gurneys sucking in oxygen, which wasn't helping. As I attempted to draw air into my lungs and looked around at what appeared to be an insane asylum, I searched my co-workers' eyes with a silent plea to get to me first. They were too busy to notice.

A wild-eyed crazy looking woman sat on the gurney across from me. Her penetrating stare was unnerving me. I tried to ignore her, but her bulging eyes looked as if they would explode from her head at any moment.

The odd gyrations and unsettling stares of everybody else around me made me feel even more uncomfortable. The man next to me was playing with himself while humming, and I was surrounded by several other looney bird patients, who were either sitting or lying on their gurneys, lost in their own little worlds, probably escapees from the mental ward.

My uneasiness made my asthma symptoms worse and the oxygen was having no effect at all. My wheezing worsened.

As I continued to attempt to breathe in oxygen until doctors could administer the drugs that would help me breathe, I was painfully aware of how much time was going by. I needed to get to work, but I needed to be able to breathe first. And I needed to get away from what could only be described as the real Dawn of the Dead cast.

The wait was long that morning and the wild-eyed woman across from me became so agitated because nobody took immediate care of her, that she started screaming. "If somebody doesn't f'ing take care of me I'm gonna f'ing kill all of you!" Like a scene out of The Exorcist, her head spun in every direction until it settled upon me. "Starting with that f'ing bi*ch over there sucking on that machine."

I felt my lungs constrict even tighter. Back then anybody could have walked into an emergency room carrying a gun. Was she holding one? I didn't know. Would she leap from her gurney onto mine and attack me?

If you know anything about asthmatics, you know not to escalate their emotional well-being. My emotions went into overdrive as my eyes matched hers in bulginess (yes, I made up that word).

I sucked harder and prayed that I was just experiencing a mad hallucination.

One of my co-workers finally removed me from the hallway and brought me into a room. "Yes, it's another full moon," she sighed. "Approximately every 29 days, all the crazies find their way into the ER, and it becomes a loony bin in here."

So what did that make me? I prayed I would never get another asthma attack on a full moon day. So far I've been lucky.

The next time you consider visiting an emergency room, check the Moon Phases by clicking the link. You will know when NOT to visit one. Or, if you are curious about the lunacy that takes place in an ER during a full moon, go, but beware!

(Except for the part about the woman's head spinning like Linda Blair's character's head did in The Exorcist, everything in this story was true.)