A true account from the perspective of Brianna Thompson.
Jamey and I nearly collapsed in giggles. This wasn’t unusual for us…we had a friendship connection that came few and far between. Jamey had a younger sister, and I a younger brother. When the four of us went out we could almost pass for siblings. In fact, we often found it highly amusing to pretend to be siblings and see who around us we could convince. It was the type of friendship where it felt as though your souls were somehow intertwined, bound by a pact of shared experiences. Similar yet ever-changing energies that are built and evolve rapidly when one is becoming less of a child every day. The type somewhere in between present and past-life soul memories.
On this particular day it was warm and muggy enough to be uncomfortable indoors, but not quite hot enough to convince my mother that the air conditioning needed to be turned on. Sticky and humid, as Missouri summers tend to be towards the end of August when the promise of cooler days are just far enough away to feel as if summer may last forever. The windows were open in our home, and in my room the sound of the crickets chirping mingled with the ceiling fan’s drole tone creating a sleepy, sluggish energy throughout the house.
Jamey and I often spent the night together. If it were up to us we probably would have spent every night together, but even so we always made our sleepovers last as long as we possibly could. At her house we were able to share her bed or “camp out” in the basement falling asleep to movies. I had a twin-sized bed, which we had attempted to share before in efforts to avoid sleeping on the floor. However, this night we decided to move the extra mattress from the guest bedroom onto the floor along with my own. Comfortable and a bit exhilarating. After discussing our brilliant sleeping arrangement plan, we stood up to walk to the other room and were instantly startled. A balloon had floated out of my closet to follow us. Now, we were creative and somewhat odd children, so it wasn’t unusual to have random objects lying around. Two balloons, one purple with a flower and one that read “congrats” were being stored in my closet. As we walked to the door, the latter had followed us.
Of course we were already in a giggly mood, as we usually were when we were together. So after exchanging a wide-eyed glance we laughed it off and Jamey brought it to the corner of my room away from the closet and doorway. As she walked to rejoin me at the door, the balloon came with her! Our laughter increased as she again attempted to keep the balloon still and on the other side of the room. Being young Capricorns, we immediately attempted to rule out any variables (static electricity, air flow, etc.). We closed the window and faced a portable fan blowing directly on it, in order to make it stay. We prepared to leave the room again, a bit more skeptically this time and still finding the situation rather hilarious.
Again, the balloon came towards us. Against the current of the fan. Our mouths gaped but this time we stepped outside and closed the door before the balloon could follow us any further. Giggling a bit more nervously now, we got the other mattress and pushed it along the floor back to the room. When we opened the door to reenter my room, the balloon was floating directly in front of the door, at eye level with us. It seemed to be anticipating our return.
Now it’s important to note that we had both been raised in the type of midwest family who adamantly doesn’t believe in ghosts, spirits, or anything else paranormal or unseen (with the exception of The Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost of course). In fact even entertaining the mere idea that something unseen could be at play in this way was met with an eye roll, a shaking head and a redirection to what other explanations there could be because of course, ghosts aren’t real “yano?”.
So we decided to make a game of it. We turned the fan off (the heat suddenly became much less of a priority). Standing at opposite corners of the room, we placed the balloon in the middle to see what it would do. After assuming position, the balloon drifted slightly down and directly at Jamey. When it reached about a foot away from her, she sprinted to a different corner and the balloon began floating quickly in the other direction, towards my corner. When it got close, I ran to where Jamey had originally been. We carried on in this way for some time, dodging to different corners when the balloon got close, trying to “fake it out”. As the “game” went on, I could feel my heart beating faster. We began to squeal out of something that was a mixture of astonishment and mounting fear. We began joking about it being a ghost or a demon. Eventually we noticed that although the closet door remained wide open, the purple flower balloon had not moved. It stayed in the closet just like the non-possessed celebratory decoration that it was made to be.
Looking back nearly a decade later, I do wish we had recorded what was happening; tried to get it to follow us out of the room, or at least tried to get the other balloon involved. At the time though we did what was natural, we yelled for my younger brother to come bear witness to what we were experiencing.
He sauntered in, eyeing us doubtfully. We positioned it near the door and each picked a corner. The balloon didn’t move. It floated unassumingly right where we had left it. Eric rolled his eyes and left, obviously distrusting our antics. He could not have been more than three steps away when the balloon floated swiftly directly at Jamey. We screamed and she quickly retreated to join me in my corner of the room. Upon hearing us, Eric came rushing back and knew instantly by the sight of our faces and the position of the balloon that we were no longer joking. Having balloons in his room as well, he made the quick decision to take them into our mother’s room as opposed to risk having a haunting story of his own.
We raced down the hall and pounded on mom’s door (as it was often locked while she chatted with her friends on the phone for hours). She answered, obviously annoyed at our interruption. We spilled our whole story, loudly talking over one another in an effort to not leave out any details. When we finally stopped to catch our breath, she was not amused. Shaking her head, she accepted Eric’s balloons and closed the door, dismissing us with the idea that there was an explanation we were clearly missing in our childish excitement.
We were not convinced. Back to my room we went. Standing in the doorframe, arms crossed and eyes squinting, the three of us stared at the balloon. Maybe mom’s right. Ghosts aren’t real. Spirits aren’t real. What are we thinking. We tried to brush it off but shared a knowing that nothing about what had just happened was normal.
We put on pajamas, made ourselves a snack of microwave popcorn and MnMs, and plopped down on the mattresses. Although we never let more than a day or two pass without catching up, there always seemed to be endless things to talk about, as it is with one’s “bosom buddy” (a term we had borrowed from Anne of Green Gables, which we deemed to be most fitting to describe ourselves). We moved our conversation on to other things. Even so, our heightened awareness of the strange object now calmly floating around the room was still quite prevalent. Eventually we began to yawn and our eyelids became heavy. We brushed our teeth but we could not bring ourselves to turn out the lights while that thing still occupied the room.
We snatched both balloons and trapsed down the hallway once again to my mother’s room. This time when we knocked there was no question that she was exasperated. Even so, she let us leave the two balloons next to Eric’s in her room.
Laying in our double mattress bed, fans once again on full blast, we stared at the ceiling. We considered ourselves reasonable, inquisitive, and far from gullible. Until tonight, we would have paid no heed to the idea of the paranormal, just as we were taught. Never had such ideas seemed so real and so tangible. Eventually, we drifted off to sleep.
Although we currently live fifteen hours away from each other, Jamey recently reminded me of our story through writing it out and sending it to me. It triggered within me a memory that feels like it has been pushed in a dusty shelf in the back of my mind for years. Nearly a decade later, she has inspired me to also write my account of what happened that night. Perhaps between us we will finally acknowledge the truth of this shared experience and give it the credit that it deserves.
There would be many times in the future when we recounted this night. As we grew up, both of us developed our own sense of what is true and what entities and beings we know to surround us. Strangely enough, as we age we have only become more convinced of what we experienced, as opposed to less so. It is now 2020, and the collective consciousness of our world is waking up to what lies beyond. Stories such as this one make me wonder how often things like this go unnoticed within our daily lives. We know as very young children, humans are able to see much more than meets the eye, a gift frequently forgotten as we grow and our third eye is molded closed by society. I have a small handful of other stories that took place both before and after The Balloon, which I firmly believe were gifts – glimpses of or visitors from the other side…beings we live in parallel with, never truly knowing. We were lucky to witness this experience so late in childhood, and while we were together. Although perhaps not the most spooky ghost story to ever be told, it is our own.
So I must beg the question: What’s your balloon story?