Saved from endlessly watching the latest hurricane on the Weather Channel, along comes “Ghostly Encounters” on the Biography channel. I love this show. Not much spooks me anymore, but so far, this show has managed to give me a good “creep” twice. Relieved that something can still spook me, I watch the program with delight whenever I catch it (or later on, as I have it recording on DVR).

One of the best stories was a tale told by a Greek woman about her experiences as a young person in Greece. Greek legend says that when an evil person dies, their soul will stick around for a bit if something is unfinished in their life, or if there is some revenge they didn’t get while living, etc. A woman in the town who was alleged to be a practicioner of dark magic died of a disease (cancer, I think) but she was still angry about the man she’d wanted to marry having married someone else. The man in question’s daughter (the lady telling the tale) went to the water pump after dark to get water for the family, and she saw an apparition coming at her slowly through the brush around the pump. She said it looked like a dark moving lump, and made weird sounds, seeming to be crawling laboriously. Then it paused and what turned out to be its head lifted to look up and hiss at her. The girl dropped her water pitcher, frozen with horror a moment, before turning to flee back home. As the camera returns to the storyteller, she explained that the fear and horror had eminated from the apparition, and she had had no doubt that it intended malice toward her if it could have touched her. When she said the thing’s face resembled the woman who had died, I felt the hair stand up on my arms. Good stuff!