I like to joke with my more supernaturally inclined colleagues that I’m waiting for my first ghost encounter, but the ghosts are like, “Meh. Don’t bother with her. She doesn’t believe.” The scary things I write about are all corporeal—creatures with teeth and claws—so while I appreciate the unseen, I don’t spend a whole lot of time thinking about it.
I do love hearing about others’ experiences—the Snap Judgement Spooked series is fun, and Jezebel’s True Life Spookiest Stories definitely keep me up at night. I think what shakes me most are less my own would-be encounters with a spirit realm and more what other people say about it, like that time my mom—the ultimate skeptic—mentioned having her own moments of meeting the other side.
Well, in a way.
My mom’s ancestors include clairvoyants who were ostracized for their spiritual leanings and folks who cheated death and came back obsessed with near-death experiences, so it seems fitting that she’d be open, at least a little, to spooky things.
I asked her, “Have you ever seen a ghost?”
She paused to think on that, and I waited. Hold on a minute…she had definitely had a slight brush with the supernatural, yes?
She said, quite simply, “There have been a few moments when I felt as if something in the room was…out of time.”
I immediately got chills. Something out of time. What is THAT?
I asked her to elaborate, but she left it there. Like a shrug. Oh, you know—things out of time.
It made me think of dreams we have of people who have passed away. I’ve never thought of these as visitations, just people who are out of time, slipping into my dream. Once I dreamed my grandmother was sitting at the breakfast table, complaining about the traffic in the afterlife. It was all very ordinary.
What about you? What does it mean to be out of time? Have you ever felt this in your own life? Or explored it through a character? What could that signify for a person or place?
Let’s muse on places/people that are somehow misplaced in time for this writing prompt.
Ready to write? Let’s go.
Let’s start with place. Have you—or your character—ever experienced a place that has some kind of extra-special energy to it? A place that hinges on a border between the seen and the unseen? A place that has a different feel to it (interpret this as widely as you like)? Describe that place. Tell us everything about it. Write for seven minutes.
Pause to wrap up your writing before moving on. Ready? Okay.
When have you—or your character—felt that you’re not in the right time, (out of time, as my mother put it)? If you write from your character’s perspective, write in the 1st person POV. This may or may not overlap with the place you first wrote about; if it does, fine! You can interpret this notion of feeling out of time as widely as you like. It could be that a character is dropped into the wrong time period altogether, or feels that they never fit into the time that was given to them. It could be a time when you or your character slipped into another time/realm/home/body/story. Describe the physical sensations associated with this experience. Write for nine minutes.
Pause to wrap up the thoughts above before moving on. Now, final writing prompt…
How were you, or your character, changed by this experience? Describe how you or your character moved past the place where they experienced something out of time and came back into the “real.” Write a scene in which you or your character interacts with a friend or family member after the out of time experience. How do they treat each other differently? How are you or your character emboldened/shaken/altered in this conversation? Write for 14 minutes.
Thank yourself for taking the time to write, reflect, and dream up weird + cool stuff. Seriously! It’s a big deal.