Blue Ball Lightning

Gloria Faye Brown Bates ... photo taken 2018 winter

I sat on the old vinyl, red couch in my Grandma Alma's living room. I was under the quilt that somehow magically appeared to 'save' me.

I watched ... I knew it was coming ... coming to sit, stare at me as if it were deciding to get ME ... hurt me. I didn't want to ... I kept peeping out through the crack I left in the quilt.

I jumped when lightning struck close by ... somehow as young as I was ... I knew ... it was time! Sure enough ... as I sat on the old, red couch facing my evil aunt's bedroom ... it rolled out through the door toward me.

It sat there ... I felt its attention on me ... I felt ice-cold ... fear paralyzing my little body, my voice. I couldn't cry for help. It watched me ... as I peeped at it through the quilt.

My eyes quickly darted to my Grandma Alma, George sitting in the next room ... Grandma Alma sat in her old, upholstered slightly pink chair ... it rocked. George always sat beside her in his cane-bottomed chair. George was blind but, his cane-bottomed chairs were in demand. He was good.

I couldn't call them to help me! My eyes went right back to the huge ball that rolled out of my teenage aunt's bedroom ... it was blue ... it looked dangerous. It was a blue ball of lightning just a little bigger than a basketball. It teased me ... rolling slowly toward me. Fear unlike no other filled my mind ... I couldn't scream.

Then ... it lost interest in me ... dissipated into thin air. It always happened to me when thunderstorms came up while living at my Grandma Alma's house ... the portal to Hell ... where we lived in the flames of Hell ... where Hell-raising was always going on.

Again ... as a little, innocent girl I just knew everyone lived the same way. Can you imagine my amazement as I became older through time how surprised I was to find out ... no, they didn't.

All my life ... I've never known anyone else to see blue lightning balls roll through the house during a thunderstorm ... yet, it was a common occurrence in ... HELL. Any, everything was possible there.

Once I saw it over the Hardee's in Louisburg, NC when Tommy was little. We were in a TG&Y store across from it at that time ... that ball was bigger than 2-3 basketballs ... very red right over the fast food restaurant. That was the first, only red ball of lightning I ever saw. Then, when living in Mebane, NC as a child ... I saw more blue lightning.

As an adult ... where ... I saw the blue lightning stood out to me. I researched it online ... I read it was associated with 'evil'. Each place except Hardee's (I had no way of knowing who was in there) ... there was 2 very evil women who were young women then ... lived in each dwelling I lived in.

They affected my life in a very bad, awful ... evil way as a child and when I laid dying with cancer. They did the unthinkable. That's food for another story I'll write one day. One was my aunt, one was my step-mother.

This is what came to mind this morning as my mind wandered the memory halls of my mind.

I would be very interested if you ever experienced seeing blue ball lightning I saw often as a little girl, or even the red ball lightning I saw only once in my lifetime. It's an interesting phenomenon ... that is what shaped my fear of storms as a child.

To me ... a little girl wide-eyed with fear, wonder ... that blue ball of lightning appeared to be alive ... as if it watched me ... as if it were deciding to get me ... eat me. When it would move slowly toward me ... the fear mounted until I was faint ... then, it would stop, sit 'forever' ... disappear.

Note by this Author:

True story, photo written, owned by Gloria Faye Brown Bates Faye Brown Bates. Skip Bates Tommy M Sidden Dukester Kissy Camie Precious Camo

No one would believe the things the 2 evil women did to me because of hatred, jealousy ... one jealous that I was pretty, seemed to have 'everything' in my young life as a young woman ... one full of jealousy, anger that I was my beautiful mother's child ... and her husband happened to be my father. It couldn't be denied .. I favored him ... a lot.

When both saw the opportunity to strike ... strike they did. Strange enough .. the stepmother died with cancer just after her evil deed (it didn't take long once she learned why she couldn't eat) ... I survived to learn how evil, how much she hated me from a child up. She did the most awful, awful thing to hurt ME, succeeded. Strangely ... I still had compassion for her ... I still felt love, pain for a woman who hated my very existence.

One last little memory here ... I won't ever forget going to my father's mother's funeral ... I made myself get up from bed ... tried to act strong ... drove to Mebane, NC by myself. I was trying to survive cancer ... my body ravaged by the disease ... oh God, I looked so bad ... no hair ... probably the wig was on lopsided ... I can't remember ... I loved my Grandmother Lola ... that love made me get up from bed to go. I had lost such weight ... I can't even remember what I wore. I probably deserved to be made fun of. Skip was on the road trying to work ... I didn't let him know what I was going to do. He was hurt when he learned what happened.

I was made fun of by my sisters and their families ... I'll never forget their laughter at me while they sat ... ran in and out to smoke their cigarettes. They made sure to look at me ... my eyes as they laughed, saying mean things. I was dying ... did no one care? Doesn't matter ... I still feel love for them today. They are just that kind of people.

I won't ever forget looking at one of my sister's daughter-in-law ... knowing she was a stripper in some club ... as she made fun of me. I never knew any of them ... even my sisters very well. I can't even imagine making fun of either of them or their family members. I only loved them.

Life goes on ... it only served to make me fight harder to win my battle with cancer ... non-Hodgkins lymphoma. I fought that battle a little over 3 years. Then it was only to go into another battle ... Skip was diagnosed with colon cancer ... surgery removed 27 1/2 inches of his colon. The fight was on for him, for me to get very strong.

Don't ever feel sorry for ME as you read my stories ... these are events that shaped me, put steel in my backbone in order to survive all my Life Battles. If one thing never happened ... it would have made me ... less strong. So, you see ... it has taken all to bring me this far today.

I am a survivor ... I am like a big, redwood tree ... I've survived many, many storms of Life ... I am still standing ... I'm still smiling ... I still have a big Heart ... I still love. I never grew bitter, angry or mean. My body is riddled with visible scars, invisible scars of many battles of Life. Each scar represents strength ... Life, the will to live ... and my Grandma Alma's fighting spirit that lives in me today.

Good things can ... come from Hell ... I'm here, a for-real good person even if I can cuss good if, when the occasion should arise.