Blackout

From: 
Story type: Ghost
Location: Backyard pool
Source: Form Submission
Date submitted: Sun Oct 23 17:06:04 2011

I was at my best friend Carol's house next door. She had another friend, Allison, over, and we were all spending the night there. It was 2:30 AM and kinda warm out so we were going to go swimming in her backyard. As we were making our way out the back door a locust flew in and hit Allison, then fell to the floor buzzing and screaming the whole time. As Carol kicked it back outside, she said old superstition believed a locust was a sign of death. We walked outside and plugged in Carol's iPod to some external garage speakers and turned on the hottub jets from the control box. Her older brother Mark came outside to swim with us. We started telling ghost stories, trying to freak each other out.

While Carol's brother was talking about the Antichrist, there was a loud, sudden, boom-like noise and the pool lights and jets shut off at the same time, leaving us in complete darkness. Allison screamed and got closer to me and Carol, while I pulled my knees up and tried to find Carol. She wasn't next to me anymore and the sudden loss of light left my eyes unadjusted to the darkness. I reached out and found her under the water. I pulled her arm, trying to tell her to come back up. She told me later that she went underwater in fright because if there was something there, she didn't want to see or hear it. She got back up and moved closer to where me and Aliison were. Mark was on the opposite end of the hottub, but even he moved to where us three girls were.

Too scared to move, Carol reached her phone on the ledge and called her other brother, Chris, who was inside to turn the outdoor light on. He wouldn't answer his phone. Too scared to move, we were silent for about five minutes before Allsion suggested Chris could've shut off the jets and light to scare us. Mark said that wasn't possible because the switch was outside in the control box and he couldn't have gotten there without us seeing him. Also, it was impossible to turn both off at once. When the jets are normally shut off or lose power, they slowly lose pressure. When they abruptly stopped this time, they were just gone. No pressure loss, just stopped going, period. It wasn't a power outage because the house lights were still on upstairs and the garage speakers were still playing music. Since all four of us believe in ghosts, demons, and the paranormal I wanted to get inside before 3 AM. We agreed to get out quickly and run inside all at once. We found out when we were back inside that Chris was asleep and that's why he didn't answer his phone. We never found out what caused everything to shut off.