Cavtatportal.com: Of Some First-Hand and Of Some Second Hand Experiences by Nino Martinović

It is interesting to note one’s reactions to the experience of something they perceive as strange. Namely, one does not quite know how to react (this goes for me, at least). Even as the years pass, one doesn’t cease to think about that occurrence and repeatedly ask oneself something like, “Did that really happened?” As the time passes, the memory of the event slowly fades, though, naturally, its main elements likely remain well ingrained in our brain cells. As the details seep away from one’s grasp, the remaining memory becomes blurry, begins to seem not real. In addition, probably as the direct result of the process of forgetting, the remaining memory evokes a feeling similar to that a memory of a dream does.

Be that as it may, a sane mind can still - and rather quickly at that - penetrate all such prosaic thoughts and impediments and, once again, bring to one’s thoughts a clear, vivid, and detailed recollection that confirms the weird experience seemingly long forgotten. Whenever I attempt to accept the fact that I also experienced such an anomaly (which remains rationally inexplicable), I begin to feel a sense of unease, sometimes even downright horror.

I was hardly (if at all) aware I exist when I first experienced such an weird event. Barely born, my instincts defined when to get restless, when to smile, when to sleep,… when to let out a ‘nice’ cry protesting the lack of immediate attention either to myself or to my dippers. Without a doubt my biggest struggle was figuring out when my dippers would get changed. Like most any other baby’s, that’s what my world pretty much consisted of. Of course I don’t remember anything about it!

It is not any less unfortunate that I do not remember what (may not have been a who) took me off the bed and tenderly laid me down smack middle of the floor (of a large bedroom). Naturally, that gesture, whether by some unknown force or not, didn’t really impress me much, I suppose. But I did let the world now I was quite displeased about helpless lying on the floor business. Hearing my sudden loud scream, the whole family stampeded over one another as to reach the bedroom in the shortest time possible assuming something must have happened to me. They stood puzzled at the site of me lying on the spot that I simply could not have reached on my own. Yet they knew none of them placed me there.

The whole event took seconds tops. In the interest of being better understood, let me explain it a bit better.

That day, my whole family was visiting my maternal grandparents in another town. I was the first grandchild and as such enjoyed quite a privileged status. It goes without saying, I was showered with attention, proudly shown off to folks, etc. Doubtless, the whole thing brought great joy to all parties included.

Soon after we arrived, I was lulled to sleep and laid on the bed in my grandparents’ room. Their bed reached high off the ground leaving no room for thought if a fall from it would have been very harmful, possibly even fatal to me. The bed was also rather large and over it hung a huge religious painting. This painting would delight me throughout my whole childhood as I really enjoyed the site of its central figure (Virgin Mary with baby Jesus in her arms, I think) surrounded by beautiful praying angels.

It might be worth noting that my grandparents’ house always had an air of strangeness about it, possibly due to some genious’s idea to raise it on the hollow ground. The house was literally built on the land that was once a cemetery. That cemetery was, of course, moved, but more about that later as we should get back to the events of the day…

So, while my tiny self was peacefully sleeping on the huge grandma’s bed under my mother’s watchful eye, the rest of the family was either preparing lunch in the kitchen or mingling in the dining room. Some others were on the terrace. Then, someone had called my mother to come help (with something). No one I spoke with can recall what exactly she had to assist with nor does that really bear any importance here, but - importantly - they do recall that it was something (probably something trivial which because of its triviality fails to be recalled), and that she did leave the bedroom for a few seconds.

Only moments later my scream was heard and an unbridled influx of souls from all meridians of the house ensued. To my mother’s surprise (and, soon after they learned the details of the event, everybody else’s), they saw me lying on the floor, still wrapped in my blanket but far off the spot where my mother had left me. Other than a bit agitated, I was in my normal baby-state.

This story may not seem like much at first. However, my whole family - even today - is convinced that ‘something’ impossible had occurred. Occasionally we’d touched on this event, but without exception failed to find a satisfactory explanation. Its rung of weirdness never really got lost on me and I could now easily bring forth quite a few ideas as to the nature of the event … Those would all, of course, be purely speculative, so I’ll skip them. All in all, it seems the event that took place on that beautiful day during Anno Domini 1972 will remain beyond our understanding.

Let me now relay a few interesting ‘adventures’ by the members of my family. Of course, being that I’ve known the people who told me about those adventures my whole life and can discern the truth from embellished tall tales, I vouch that what I will now relay to you were the real experiences by the real people.

At the time my mother and father first got to know each other, his family lived in a large house. Since the house was occasionally used as a vacation rental - not a full blown business, rather just something to supplement the regular income - when the rental season came the youngsters would move in to the basement. The basement-chamber my family owned was made into a bedroom. It just happened to be at the very bottom of the basement.

I still clearly remember this house, even though we moved out of there by the time I started elementary school. I even better recall its huge poorly lighted basement that you accessed through a spiral staircase. To me, those stairs represented the stairs to hell. Doesn’t least surprise me that I scarcely went down to those frightening ‘catacombs’.

Having barely woken up, so not quite fully awake yet, she didn’t immediately react. She doesn’t remember being shocked or feeling confused. She was certain that the web wasn’t there when she went to bed, so she just looked at it for a few seconds wondering what it really was and where it could have come from. She thought it possible she was still dreaming, so she rubbed her eyes really well. She then looked toward the ceiling. But again, she saw the surreal site. The strange looking web was still there. Now she started to get quite anxious, but decided to get a hold of herself and to give the eye-rubbing another try. She was shocked to see that now the web had simply vanished. Gone without a trace. The ceiling was again plain white and free of anything foreign on it. My mother could never understand nor explain what had actually occurred. Much like herself, the rest of us can only ponder, guess at best.

The next strange event occurred while my mother and my grandmother were in the kitchen talking. Suddenly, their dialogue was interrupted by a loud detonation followed by a sound of crashing of, seemingly, a huge amount of glass. According to them, “it sounded as if one of those dump-truck was unloading some 50 tons of glass right on top of the house.” Thank God, both my mother and my grandmother are alive and well and can testify to the details of this strange event.

Apparently, they were not the only ones privy to this, almost fortean, event. ALL the tenants must have heard this disturbing noise, since they all ran out of the house to see what was going on. The house also quaked for a few moments. If there were any people reluctant to leave the house, this could have been just the incentive to find their way out.

Noticing nothing unusual at first sight, they started searching for any clues as to what may have caused the disturbing noise. They found no broken glass around the house. They also found nothing of sort in the house or on its roof. They searched the local garbage disposal area just to, in disbelief, again find nothing that could have caused the noise they heard, let alone produced the seismic effect. Whatever that was - it remains a mystery.

Moving right along…

When my father was a baby, like the babies do, he enjoyed sleeping in his crib. One day, my grandmother was tending to her bed and also to his crib. Immediately after, she went on to change my father’s dippers. While she was in the midst of this task, her ring slipped off her finger. Not only that she felt the ring slide off, she clearly saw it come off. She can’t recall hearing even the faintest of thuds, but this may have been due to the fact that the ring was light or that it had landed on the bed rather than on the parquet floor. Be that as it may, the ring was never found.

I could now go to some length about all the effort put into finding that ring - and not only by my grandmother - but I think it’ll suffice to tell you they even went as far as taking the bedroom set apart and, what must have been a funny site, micro-searching for possible ‘deep lesions’ in the floor. Those, much like the ring, were never found. Funny what people are willing to do when desperate.

Have no delusions, though - you and I would have done the same. Later, I would often wonder if they searched the fridge, too (wouldn’t surprise me if they did). All jokes aside, my grandmother did feel and did see the ring come off her finger and fall. How it managed to get lost in such a limited space, even today - after 56 years - continues to baffle.

The last ‘case’ (that I know of) connected to this house has to do with my aunt (father’s sister), a person known to herself and others as very rational, even skeptical in all matters unusual. A few years ago she opened up to me and told me of a strange event she witnessed as a child…

When my aunt was little her friends’ father had died. During his life, the deceased neighbor was known as a nice, good-natured, good-humored family man. When the tragedy struck, the unfortunate children came over to spend the night. My grandmother made the bed, lined up the little kids like sardines and, soon after, they were asleep. Sometime during the night, my aunt awoke. To her horror, she saw the deceased sitting on the edge of the bed, right next to her feet.

As if seeing a ghost of a man just passed away was not enough, the apparition gave off an evil aura. To my aunt - other than in the body - it did not seem at all the good-natured family friend everybody knew. The apparition stared straight at her and let out a muffled scary laughter of a man getting ready to do who knows what evil. She ran her hands over her eyes, then looked toward the spot where it was sitting just moment ago, but saw nothing was there.

My aunt doesn’t remember if she was dreaming of the deceased prior to waking up as to postulate that she perhaps had a lucid dream. She described to me every detail of her experience and, after we reviewed it, we both concluded that, though horrid, the whole event after all might be soundly and rationally explained.

Namely, everyone - children, of course, as well (perhaps, even more so) - obviously experienced a certain dose of psychological shock due to the sudden passing of their beloved. It is, then, quite possible that my aunt had, in fact, had a dream about the deceased, though she can't recall she had.

At the very point between dreaming and wakefulness, her mind could have simply projected the dream image outwardly making it seem real. Such cases are certainly not unheard of. Some similar (same, perhaps) mechanism could have also been operating when my mother saw the (non) existing spider-web as real.

My aunt believes that behind those ‘visions’ is precisely this sort of dream mechanism. I, too, lean toward accepting her hypothesis. Even so, “I saw the deceased in front of me as I now see you”, are words spoken by a rational person and a skeptic and chilling enough to leave room for discussion. Without further evidence, I am afraid, I cannot render a fully conclusive judgment to this one.

That the mentioned people experienced the above events is beyond question. It is also beyond question that those were not your everyday experiences. I am quite pleased I shared them with you today. You yourself can decide what to make of them.

At the very beginning of this article, I stated that the text wouldn’t run for endless pages. However, I felt I needed to describe the aforementioned events properly and so I opted to take a bit more space than originally intended… But, whatyagonna do?!… Errors in estimation do happen…