Have you ever had something happen that scared you so badly, and was so inexplicable that it took every single brain cell you possessed to manage to convince yourself that it surely wasn't REALLY a supernatural occurrence?

Seriously guys! This is kind of long, but I hope it’s interesting enough….

I swear this is a true story and it happened just this way: This was in about 1996. I was vacuuming along in my house, minding my own business. I wasn’t even thinking evil thoughts, but that didn’t matter. I started in on this long hallway and SUDDENLY, out of NOWHERE a black devil-bat suddenly appeared and came screaming toward me, at chest level, at about the speed of light!!! It was unbelievably, horrifyingly, supernaturally fast!!! And it had claws, and fangs dripping with blood, and its wings were flapping and flapping madly!!! And it was coming to get me!! It was going to rip my eyes out and…and…do whatever demon bats do to people who aren’t even thinking evil thoughts!!!! (You know. Regular old demon-bat stuff.) But before I could react at all it suddenly went into a screaming dive….and with a chilling screech it disappeared into my vacuum cleaner!!! I let out a chilling screech of my own and, in one leap, jumped about 20 feet away from the vacuum and stood there staring at it and trembling in sheer terror! My heart was just pounding out of my chest! If I hadn’t already been a Christian I would have become a believer on the spot!

So the the machine was still running and running and clanking and rattling from the bones being broken up and stuff, and I’m staring and staring in terror and disbelief. Eventually my mind started to clear a little and I realized I couldn’t leave it running forever. But….if I turned it off the thing might come crawling back out and attack me again!! Maybe the only thing keeping it inside were the beaters going around and around!! It was horrible. I did NOT know what to do! But, after a long time I started to get a even a little more rational and I thought that there just had to be a logical, rational explanation…... (? but, then again, maybe the logical explanation WAS that a demon bat had just flown into my vacuum cleaner……?)

I finally gathered up the courage to slooooowly inch toward the vacuum, and I reached waaay out and quickly switched it off and jumped back again. A while passed and nothing happened so I crept forward again and reached waaaay out and quickly knocked it over on its side and jumped back again. And still nothing happened. After a long, long time of nothing I carefully snuck around so I could peer inside without getting too close….and saw a bit of the wing sticking out. It wasn’t moving but….well, I probably should have called 911 since I actually had evidence at that point, but I figured they were tired of my stupid calls to them (like the time Chris got stuck in the mailbox…and the time Corrie got glued inside the fridge) and they’d probably ASSUME this was stupid too, so I didn’t. I finally gathered up the courage to crawl over there (literally crawl!) and cautiously touch the part of the wing I saw. It was hard and unyielding. “It must be a claw,” I thought. “And the thing must have been killed” (but demons can’t die, can they? I was so confused!) So, after a while (it was 1997 by this time) I carefully pulled on it, and when nothing horrible happened I pulled a little harder and it began to unwrap from around the beater brush…...along with about 15 feet of (invisible) fishing line… and….oh OMGosh!......It was one of those long, black, flexible, plastic hair things that you twist around your hair and then clip the ends together. It has those poky teeth, you know, so that it’ll stick in your hair.

What had happened, obviously, was that somehow the fishing line had wrapped itself around the exact center of the thing and somehow the end of that fishing line had ended about 15 feet away from the comb, towards the end of the hall! And thar the whole contraption lurked, waiting for some unsuspecting idiot with a vacuum cleaner to come along. Well, when that fishing line started wrapping around the beater brush it jerked the comb up into the air at about 4 feet high and caused it to fly along at, what….what’s the speed of a beater brush? A million miles an hour or thereabouts? And the speed and the position of the line on the comb caused it to flex exactly like it was flapping! All the split second impression I had was of wings flapping and teeth and claws!! The blood part was just my imagination (but the rest wasn’t…well, not exactly.) It was just absolutely insane. It was the insanest thing to ever happen to me!

Don’t try this at home.