This is not scary, update 4

This is an update to the following posts:

This is not scary. I am not totally creeped out. Ah, FUCK.
followed by

This is not scary, update

This is not scary, update 2

and This is not scary, update 3

Last night, I started to have another nightmare. I finally got to see the owner of that male voice that gives me chills, and I wish I hadn't. He's really creepy, and the memory of how his eyes look made mine feel like I needed to rub the dryness out of them all day. I really do remember seeing that man before. I'm sure I've seen them both. I just can't remember where. It feels like it was a long time ago, maybe clear back to my childhood. I'm going to have to dig out my old dream diaries and see if they're still readable. First, though, I have to find what box they're in.

As the dream progressed into serious nightmare, the helpful friend from the party showed up again, in the oddest way, and helped me out of the situation. I had a temporary reprieve for the rest of the night after that, dreaming that I was staying in a place that my attackers couldn't get into.

I woke late this morning, and decided to once again put up defenses around the apartment, not because I think I'm stronger than whatever I'm up against, but because I want them to fully understand that I'm not giving up. I started as soon as I finished documenting the dream.

I found some interesting things when I got out my spiritual bug-out box. A lot of my stuff (that no one else in the house uses) is missing. I had to get into my cooking herbs, because I had no sage, no oils, and my purification incense was gone. My books are out of order, and some have been moved from where I keep them, including the one I wanted, Cunningham's book of magical herbs.

I was going to try to put together an exorcism incense. Almost none of the ingredients I was going to use were in the box.

Instead, I took some rosemary (purification/cleansing), ground cinnamon (purification/cleansing/incense potency), and ground cloves (purification/cleansing/exorcism) from my spice cabinet and used those, which meant I had to do my work outside, because ground cinnamon and cloves are really caustic when you burn them, even though they smell wonderful.

Inside, I put the ash from the burned incense on a leftover 40th birthday candle (black) and focused on the candle representing the ability of anything to cause harm to anyone in my home or under my care. I asserted that as the candle burned and dwindled away, so would that ability to harm also burn and dwindle away. I lit it, intending to let it burn down to nothing.

When I lit the candle, my air conditioner turned on.

I'm in Ohio. It's December. My air conditioner has been off for 3 months. To turn on, the knob had to be turned, and it does offer some resistance. It had to click past the switching point between "off" and "low cool." Force had to be applied to the knob for that to happen. I was home alone, and I was clear across the room from it.

I went over and turned it off, then returned to the candle. It had gone out, despite having a nice, tall flame when I had walked away from it. I re-lit it. The air conditioner came back on. So did the furnace. I realized what was happening, and ignored them. I sat and watched the candle burn. I focused on forcing harmful malevolence out of my apartment. I imagined the danger to my family and myself as a big, shapeless, mass of darkness that was shrinking as the candle burned away.

The dryer started running. Again, a knob has to be turned for that, but also a button has to be pressed. For someone to get to the dryer, a door has to be opened. I didn't hear the sound of any of that. I ignored the dryer and focused on the candle. It was half gone.

The stereo that is hooked up to the computer we run through the TV came on. A button has to be pressed for it to come on, too. It's got great speakers. When the computer and the TV are off, if the stereo is on, it buzzes loudly, and it did. I just about jumped out of my skin! Aside from being badly startled, I continued to focus on the candle. There was a quarter of it left.

I heard something stomping around my room upstairs. It sounded like it was going to come through the floor. I repeated my assertions about the candle out loud as it burned down to the container it sat on, and the puddle of wax at the bottom kept burning. The flame spread out across the whole bottom of the container as I spoke. "This candle represents the power to cause harm to anyone in my home or under my care. As it burns, and dwindles away, so does that power, until it is gone, and then so is the power to harm us."

I kept repeating that until the wax stopped burning. When the flame died down, the stomping above me stopped.

I put salt in the now dry little container. I left it in the middle of the stove, where it was at least 3 feet away from anything flammable, and therefore wouldn't light anything if it started burning again (as I've had candle containers do in the past when I missed a bit of candle or mistaken it for being done when it wasn't). I went around and turned off the stereo, the furnace, the air conditioner, and the dryer. Nothing turned back on. Everything remained quiet after that.

I got ready for work with no further incident, sat and had coffee and lunch, and then left. So far, there's been no further response to the effort. I guess we'll see what happens when I go to sleep tonight.

Continued here