The Head

I have rarely been afraid of the dark. But, once when it happened, I was beyond terrified.

In the late seventies, I was staying in our log cabin in northern Minnesota.  We inherited the long neglected cabin in the mid-1970s and began to make repairs and upgrades right away by restoring the exterior of the logs and building a bedroom addition. Don’t get me wrong, running water and electricity were not in the improvements.  We still brought water up from the spring at the water's edge, boiled water for washing dishes, lit kerosene lamps at night, and made trips to the outhouse.

The new addition had three bedrooms without doors and a loft above the middle bedroom.  The loft was claimed by Andrew who climbed the built-in ladder with a flashlight in hand along with a multitude of comic books.  

I was alone with the kids for about a week when the incident occurred on what seemed to be an ordinary night.  Once the kerosene lamps and flashlights are out, pitch black blankets the cabin preventing seeing anything but magnifying hearing everything. 

I was sound asleep and for no apparent reason, I awoke suddenly with my heart pounding.  My blinking eyes saw a reddish orange, luminous head high in the room.  It looked like a blood moon, not on the horizon, but incandescent and floating above my bed.

 

Could it be a dream? I wondered as I sat frozen, unable to move.  It hovered on a low vibration and glowed from red to orange, and created a menacing image convincingly real.

Since I felt it probably was not a dream, I did the most logical thing I could do, I tried to yell for help in the dead of night in the middle of the woods.

At first my voice wouldn’t make a sound, and when it finally did, it crescendo-ed with each repetition. “Andrew-ooooo” “Heeeelp!  The head!  The head!  Andrew-ooooo!” Fortunately, the loft was right above me, and I heard, “Help is on it’s way!  Help is on it’s way!” as Andrew bounded down the ladder through Megan’s bedroom and into mine.  

The head disappeared as we lit the lamps and flashlights, but I wasn’t certain it was gone permanently.  In order to protect ourselves if it appeared again, we dragged the mattress from the middle bedroom to Megan’s room, so we could all sleep in safety together.  It took at least three nights before we moved back into our own beds.

To this day, I’m not completely convinced it was a dream, but it hasn’t reappeared in over 50 years.