Your True Tales
February 2004 – Page 27

Return from Hell
by Ray Johnson

I had a friend years ago named "Al". All I can tell you about Al was that he had some problems. The first one was that he was born with his arms sort of backwards. He had an operation that fixed them so that they were usable, but they were never able to rest at his side. He always walked around looking like he was striking a muscle pose. I met Al in karate class. He was in the midst of several problems. He had a run-in with the law and was facing jail time. He was also using drugs rather heavily.

Also, he and his best friend start dabbling in satanical stuff. They'd sacrifice animals, do odd rituals, drink their blood, all that crazy stuff. Al was really into it, too. I recall clearly the first time I ever went over to his house. Most people have pictures on their walls, but not Al. He had taken kitchen knives, some hachets and an axe and stuck them into the walls of his home. Then he had dripped real honest-to-God blood around where the weapons entered the wall so that it looked like the wall was wounded. It really weirded me out. Either way, Al was really on some dark road.

I remember his buddy Frank got ejected from our dojo and Al stormed out with him. That weekend they went up to the lake. They were planning on getting really drunk and doing some drugs. Well, they accomplished the first half of their plan. Then they got stoned. Frank decided to go swimming. He went out into the lake and after walking out a ways he hit the drop off. He was too hammered to swim. Frank began drowning. On shore, Al could only watch because he couldn't swim due to his deformity, plus the fact that he was drunk as well. He had to watch his best friend die.

Later, Al was really miserable. He quit karate and dropped his girlfriend. About three days after all of all this, Al was home in bed. He was just miserable. He said that just about 3 a.m. he heard a noise. It was a wet slopping sound. He waited a moment and heard it again so he sat up in bed, only to see Frank standing at the foot of his bed. He told me that Frank was dripping wet, and looked like he had been dead a few days.

Then Frank told him that he was in hell, and he had come to take Al back with him. Al said he screamed and ran out of the house. He didn't go back for a week. He then quit drinking, drugs and all the occult stuff he'd been doing. He came back to karate, and actually got his life back on track. I know he was scared by what happened and he said that he was awake and not dreaming. For whatever reason, Al did change his life radically for the better, but is still haunted by that vision of Frank to this day. He has confided in me that he can't sleep in the dark anymore and that he fears that one day Frank will return for him.

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