A Randoom Halloween Mystery

 Greetings, fellow bloggers! It is I, Shockgrubz, who bring you a mystery filled with sorrow and intrigue. This time of the year, things go bump in the day as well as the night. Here's the set up.

 A few years ago I was searching around on a database of unsolved crimes. I'm not sure whether my investigative mind or my lack of funds was the motivator in looking, but in any case, I delved into one that was near my location and over ten years old.

 A woman who worked at a local school was coming home from the grocery store one fall evening. Her attacker came for her as she was unloading the bags of food. He shot her and fled.

 That is the whole account. No description of the shooter at all. I had nothing to go on, so I thought of what I could do.

 I'd dabbled in photography and spirits both separately before, but this time I decided to mix them together to see what I could find out.

 I went to the building to take a few hundred snaps. The structure was foreboding on that winter day. From the ground, the five stories seemed like ten, looking through the viewfinder of my camera. I chose my shots to include as many windows as possible. I thought that I'd capture a clue there.

 After checking only a few of the pictures, my eyes started glazing over and I would close the photo editor. Minutes later I would remember having closed it and not realized why. Then I would open it back up. This happened seven times before I left the whole thing alone for a long time.

 Until yesterday. I wanted to make a nice Halloween picture to put on my blog. I remembered the creepy feelings I got when I took a pic of the windows at that building and started messing around with it.

 I must describe how I messed with it, because of the shapes in the windows. They were there before I did any editing of the picture. I selected a box within each window and messed around with the colors. That brought out the shapes you see, that were already there, just blended with the colors before the edit. Before I discuss what I think each window holds, I'll put the picture here.

 Through the first window, we see the woman, possibly in a flowing nightgown. Here is where my perception might stray a bit from yours. I see her chewing on a balding man's ear while the man is holding a rapier between his teeth. I cannot for the life of me discern what this would mean in relation to the initial crime, but the ghosts hardly ever give hard-line clues.

 The middle window contains an imp of immense destructive power. From far away he looks kind of cuddly, like an ewok, but get up close and you see his three faces. Each one laughing, grimacing, or howling with maniacal laughter. His presence was there the day of the shooting, I'm sure of it.

 The final(rightmost) window seems empty, which is what I come up with when trying to pinpoint the killer. I may never get to give that woman's family closure, or obtain a reward for my investigative fruits, but we can be sure of one thing. It makes for some good RANDOOM mystery!

 What do you see in the windows?

Part Three: Ghosts

 I used to get really freaked out at horror movies and ghost stories because I was sure they were the closest thing to reality one could get before actually seeing a ghost. That ended when I started having night terrors. They eclipsed everything I had watched in movies, tv, and the internet. The dreams would involve vampires, zombies, and lots and lots of gore. Not to mention storylines that closely tied me to the unwanted action unfolding in my REM's.

Dreams are the only place I can actually say that I've seen 'ghosts'. I know they were only figments of my imagination, but they were very real to me when they happened.

 The closest thing I've ever gotten to a sighting while awake was a few months ago. I had gone camping with some family members and took my camera. I ended up taking around one hundred pictures. Most of them ended up being of the campfire that we had made, just because I liked the effect I could create by moving my camera around while leaving the aperture open for a while. This amused me for hours that night. I would look back at the pictures and see images of flaming dragons, magma spewing horses, and hot as hell wood nymphs in them. I did this so much that the battery of my camera went dead on the first night.

 When I came home three nights later, I started uploading all of the pictures to my computer. After doing so, I began messing around with them in my favorite graphics editor. I started by taking a seemingly nondescript photo of my tent, which had a camper in the background. I then stacked a layer of a different picture of the fire over that one. I messed with the opacity some, then put another picture of smoke on top of that. After reducing the opacity on that one, I noticed something that looked creepy.

 I zoomed into the window of the camper in the background, and there he was. It was a figure of a man who looked to be in his fifties. He was fat, balding, and had beady eyes. Those eyes spoke of grave misdeeds. He was wearing overalls and was holding a dripping section of meat in his hands. He was grinning as if to say "Look what I've done!". I was freaked out, to say the least.

 I started looking at the individual layers to see if there was any such man in my shot. None. Just the camper window, flames, and smoke. I showed the people who were there at the time. They all saw it, except for one guy that refuses to see anything his mind won't allow him to. I think he saw it, but he was too proud to say it.

 Before I could save the work, the power went off. I've since tried to reproduce the effect, but have not been able to choose the same two photographs that I superimposed onto the camper window. I'm still working on it today, maybe I'll get the right ones and be able to post it here.

 To make sure you don't leave empty-handed, I'll post the picture I think most looks like a flaming bird drinking a bottle of magma-brew.

 Have you seen or heard any ghosts or spirits?