Wilmont 2

This is a true story and in true stories you have more twist then chubby checker.

I was in my 20's and was way to trusting. I know better now and learned the hard way. I am headed into my mid 30's and I can't even think what I was thinking.

It’s hard to find exactly where to place the reader in my viewpoints. I will remind the reader this is the short version of this time of my life. It’s hard to take ones life in events and set it into just one story.

Every place has a true story if you look for it. No one is immune to tragedy, drama, or odd events. Places are just like people in that regard.

My story is nothing new. In everyone’s life we have dramatic events that shape us for who we are.

Do I continue start from before the beginning? The start of the door of the dreaded home people have came to hear about. Do I open up more history on the area?

I will give you a bit of my history before going deeper into story. I feel circumstances leading up to the story are important.

I think people need to understand where I am coming from. So much to remember.

I lived in Panama city Fl. I am sure they would not want there city to be tied with the supernatural but there plenty of strange events in that town.

I call it beautiful and quite mysterious at the same time. She hides her secrets well. Most never see beyond her mask. Stories people talk about in excited quiet voices after to many beers out on a wooden deck on a humid night where the fog comes in from the sea and makes the swampy places look like dancers in the moonlight as they dance to the song of night creatures.

I will not bore you with everything.

I will give you highlights of the 3 years before. I feel life causes chain reactions that lead one to end up in some situations so it is necessary for you to see the domino effect.

About 1993- 1994 my best friends parents where in the way intentional. This is of course a cult as listed in countless books and websites.

I liked my friend and would attend with him a few times. I even took the classes. I had problems there being I did not agree with everything. I am of a Pagan and magick background. I went being my friend had concerns for me being he said what I do is real. He had seen me first hand do several things that disturbed him greatly. Funny a Pagan occultist attending a Christian cult. I am not anti belief and can go anywhere and not catch fire. “I still read the bible being I think it’s interesting.”

I think you need a Idea of my friends background being he was raised in this organization.

“I was told this information even by his mother ….”

His mother had lived a dangerous life going from relationship to relationship drugs, drinking and alterative beliefs. When I knew mike in high school she was with a strange ex car salesman who sold insurance.

They all lived in a apt. in the forest park area of Panama city where all my friends had lived there. It was the 90's and my generation only saw a black hole future. The 90's a time of aids, crack, Pointless, TV shows and grunge music. If you had sex you would die they told us. I would watch animaniacs and tiny toons every afternoon and my life was rather simple. It was about video games, magic cards and my interest in everything odd. I was in my early adulthood but very much ignorant to everything. I had lived a charmed life. I had even left home a few times to seek out elders and see the world via greyhound. Nothing had never happened to me.

I remember the end of kurt cobain's life and the birth of the internet. Life was fun.

Anyhow mike's mother was told by Charlie the Twig “local group” leader to move to Columbus Ga and leave my friend in Fl. because God said so he needs to stay here. I thought this was demented. “I would let you know in detail what goes on inside but that is another story. I will go over facts.” I did learn a lot of amazing things to say the least. Anyhow, it was a warm August day and they packed up the rental truck. Everyone was very calm it was quite strange. I could tell Mike was upset. At that moment I noted a change in him.

My friends grandfather had gotten him a 93 ford tempo out of auction. He was to live with the old couple next door for a 100 a month. I enjoyed his landlords. I helped them and helped pick Pecans they grew at a farm in Alabama that was about 40 miles away in Alta.

Mike had his window work where he clean windows of local stores. This is where it started to

go down hill. He was in school but dropped out of the local university.

I felt my friend descended further into darkness when his cult he attended went out of control.

The meeting of course had no church. They believed in meeting out of the home. That was fine but I got a weird vibe every time I went into the home after a while.

One of the married people where starving there twins to death and the father was beating his wife.

They went to jail if I remember. It was very disturbing. I felt bad for the mother but it was almost like she was trying to kill her babies. They where very pretty children and the whole thing made my skin crawl.

I hope she got the help she needed.

You had many a eccentric person in this group not counting me. Some seemed the reality train never made a stop.

The teachings had gotten quite weird plus the homeless people who would show up. The limb “All the groups” was disbanded. It was looked at as a tree you see in the way they operated as a type of foundation.

The core the trunk was headquarters, the branches where the state,

the limbs where the collective of the area the meeting places where twigs and the leaves the people. A great deal of the hippie culture was also mixed in. I found it quite interesting. On first visit I said look at all the yahoos...

I did find some spiritual people there who where very nice. I am happy to say they are doing fine. They would tell you it was like a nightmare after a bit.

I have to say after my friends beliefs where shut down he became questioning of everything and seemed disillusion and embraced a seedy life in a white trash epic.

He then started on a string of places to live… I felt his transient moves helped start the move towards Wilmont AVE.

Anyhow he moved out from the old couple got roommates and moved into a prefab home near the beach. The house had no real furniture. It was a small 3 bedroom house. I had liked it even had a fenced in yard.

I had found some things and gave him a chair, a lamp, a bed, and pictures and a TV.

While he was 19 he met Jennifer she was 15 but was pretending to be 18 and liked Mike. When they where deep in love She told the real age and he was dumb enough to stay with her.

I felt this killed her childhood. I felt bad for her being she had a promising future.

This consisted of picking up his girlfriend from high school. Was not to big of a deal being I got out of school 2 years before.

Still at the time.... She was also the mayors daughter....

This was a small town… You can guess what her Father felt.

During this time…..

I had always felt this hurricane somehow connected me to the hurricane that took out old St. Andrews being I understood the energy. I felt it had something to do with waking the house.

Hurricane opal then hit of October of 95.

Before it started I saw the most beautiful sunset I had ever seen. The clouds looked like you could touch them or use them to stuff a pillow. Such a high price to gaze upon beauty.

THE NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER IS ISSUING ADVISORIES ON HURRICANE

OPAL CENTERED ABOUT 45 MILES SOUTH OF PENSACOLA FLORIDA...AND ON

TROPICAL STORM NOEL LOCATED ABOUT 920 MILES WEST-SOUTHWEST OF THE

AZORES.

SATELLITE IMAGES INDICATE THAT A LOW-LATITUDE AREA OF DISTURBED

WEATHER ABOUT 700 MILES SOUTHWEST OF THE CAPE VERDE ISLANDS HAS

BECOME BETTER ORGANIZED AND A TROPICAL DEPRESSION MAY BE FORMING.

IF THIS TREND CONTINUES ADVISORIES ON THIS SYSTEM WILL BE INITIATED

TONIGHT OR THURSDAY. THIS SYSTEM IS MOVING WESTWARD ABOUT 15 MPH.

ELSEWHERE...TROPICAL STORM DEVELOPMENT IS NOT EXPECTED THROUGH

THURSDAY.

It hit us more then Pensacola. We got the eye and backside. It sort of sat on us.

Over and over I would see that and hurricane warning for all day on TV and radio. All my neighbors had left I was alone. I felt I was the last man on earth. Hurricanes just don’t hit they are a event.

For days it was hard rain and the day looked like night. Almost everyone left. My family had went to Las Vegas for vacation. I was stuck alone. I don’t drive because I have no def perception.

I had stayed in Fl. It fact I was a prisoner in my home.

Sounds funny to me they where in Vegas where I live now and I was in the mouth of hell. I remember the day before the landfall. I saw the paper in the drive way the black sky the wind

and the rain at ten in the morning. Looked like night time. I felt rather alone and disturbed.

I wanted anyone to tell me it would be ok. Just one voice. I never got that.

I loved my parents house. It was modern but it was very opening warm and inviting. It was a one story. The living room had a very high ceiling about 30 feet or so and had 3 windows on the top of it in a row they call it a shadow box. I would watched those windows in the storm with lighting, hard rain and black that looked at me in the afternoon. The house had a horrible history and my mother got it cheaper but that’s another story. It’s still my home when I think about it.

I picked up the paper and took it into the house. The paper read, Hurricane opal is coming. It was like a movie that says the end of the world is here. It was unreal. My friend Mike battled the storm stopped in with his roommate “A” a white pick up truck in and told me to go to his house being mine was in the swampy area. He was near the beach! Hurricanes come in at he beach! I did not want to be alone so I agreed.

I got into his roommates truck and we went off with my dog and bag.

It was like a bad dream. So we went by his girlfriends house and got her.

Her father was out of town and her mother worked for a airline. “Tells you allot about her Parents.”

The inside of her house reminded me of a tomb. No life of normal living just things set up like museum where you would not want to touch anything. I like my home to be interactive so people can enjoy it. I vibe in her home was a cold.

I remember looking at the lake next to her house that had eaten the dock and now was headed towards the garage. So what do we do? We stopped by the Block buster place get movies stop by the store and get some booze.

Mike had starting working at that Block buster to make extra money a month before.

Others who where trapped soon joined us in the weird little duplex much closer to the beach then my house. The storm raged on. It sounded like a woman howling and someone pounding at the window from time to time. We went outside at one point to see a palm tree fall over. That convinced me to stay in.

We had power till ten at night. It went out during the movie I picked out that made the crowd clap it was so bad. When the lights went out all you could hear was the scream of the wind and the pound of the rain. We tried to listen to the radio.

Most of the stations where down and it was impossible to hear anything. For fun and boredom, I pretended to be Fred a old southern man who really wanted a biscuit and complained of the new fabled dances. I was told I was more scary then the storm. I went outside when everything got quiet one more time. It was the eye. It was a black swirling

mass. To go a bit further out would to be never to be seen again. All I could think is how many have seen this? I went back in and all at once it was the loudest storm I ever heard.

I thought the block house would cave in. I fell asleep being cradled by the noise. No dreams no anything. Just silent sleep. The next day the sun raised into the sky. The first sun in days was in the window. I had no Idea what was waiting Everything was in chaos.

I went outside there was a tree hanging from the center of a billboard cars where flipped everything was a war zone. Peoples homes wrecked. I have no idea why I am here.

I felt very alone as if we where the last people on earth. I could see no one outside. I could not hear the birds.

We have to go out and look I said. We turned the radio on could not get anything. We had no power no TV no phone or water. I called my parents on the cell phone they left me. The cell phone was a giant contraption that was nothing like we use now. I told them to stay in Vegas till I knew more.

I felt a feeling of horror. I wanted to see if my house was still there.

First what about our town? We went to downtown. I saw store fronts that had everything washed to the sea and streetlights down and live wires flopping about like fish. It looked like a bomb had went off. I also saw a news crew telling people to stay home and not to wander.

Some areas of the beach where completely destroyed. One house may sit among ten blocks sometimes a house would hang over a edge looking like it might fall into the sea.

I could not see my home nor get there. I lived inland but not to far from the bay.

I wanted to go home! I needed to go home! I packed up my dog and stuff and began to be driven home. My friends took the back roads till we got around the blocks. When we got to Boatrace road it was shocking. It was more like a Disney ride then anything.

We drove down the road with all the old houses by the bay you had to drive under trees that fell leaning on other trees across the road and see boats in people yards. Boats in trees. Yards dead from the sea water.

One boat had crashed into someone’s front door. The salt water had killed there yards dead. You could see all the dead plants as if no one was there years.

A wreck was out in the bay that sat there for years after this storm somewhat submerged. I am sure they fixed it by now.

You could see people walking about like zombies in shock. There where looters of course picking up whatever they could find and people at war with one another over things.

Trailer parks where smashed and moved in weird places. I think whoever was in those trailer parks where doomed. At least the graveyards did not set the coffins free. I was told that happened before in a large storm.

That morning I got home.

The front of my house was covered with tree branches and the carport was still there leaning to the left. It was a huge mess.

Trees where down everywhere. Several people had there houses smashed by trees.

Inside my home part of the dining room had flooded and the side yard was in shambles and the carport was wrecked.

There was not enough water in the dining room to wreck it and we where lucky. Our house was upward on a manmade slope to make it 8 feet higher.

Much of the garden was washed to one side. A window was broken in the back and the garden and pool looked like swamp. The water was murky and black.

The back of the house roof was slightly smashed in and a 150 year old pine had smashed the fence.

We where under marshal law. I started cleaning things up without power. Got my house contained. Then the looting began at some of the houses near by to stop it the army brought out tanks to contain the area and had patrols. I sat on my porch with my shotgun that night by a oil lamp to keep people away. It was marshal law.

If it met I had to shot some idiot from trying to steal from me I would shoot.

Someone did come by I pointed the gun at them in the dark and they ran away.

It felt like a zombie movie.

I remember how odd it felt. More like you feel in dream then real life. I went to put the dog out and she was barking her heart out. I went into the back yard saw two yellow eyes looking back at me. I knew it was a gator that came in from the broken fence.

I has seen small ones before but never a big one. I think my small dog thought she be a hero. She almost became a snack. It was only a year after one of them had eaten a 3 year old playing to close near a lake. They seem slow but they are very quick.

I had to call the cops, I was put on hold.. They thought I was kidding. I am on a dyeing cell phone yelling Alligator into the night.

They came and got him away and I remember waking the next day to something that was my house but did not feel like home. It was a horrible feeling.

I did not have power phone or running water for a bit. It was hard to survive. I had to toss out all the food in the fridge. My dad being military had plenty of water and canned goods.

I decided to go to the store.... I had to climb over 300 year old oak trees in the center of the street to do so and bits of homes. When I got the store people where fighting over food. There was

food but many had the same idea. I got some things I could cook and was lucky enough to have ice. They had truck come in earlier. I took my prizes home in 85 degree heat 100% humidly.

I had made lunch like it was some grand treasure. I had to use the BBQ to cook my food.

I could hear two people fighting because they had a generator. Seems I did have two neighbors nearby. One had power from the generator and the other did not. It was everyone for themselves.

I spent a great deal of the day in isolation when not reading. About a few days later I had power. On and off. First was water then phone. No cable still. All those lines would have to be redone. I watched local TV and saw images of disaster everywhere.

We got radio back and it seems all they wanted to play was blues traveler and I call that the hurricane soundtrack today.

What does this have to do with the story? It plays a huge role in it. You will see the tie soon.....

My friend lost many window accounts due to the storm....

This event moves things closer to the main people of the story...