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This is another one from the state capitol, which I thought was funny, but also kind of sad and scary.
It's a straightforward account. Two security guards were making their rounds one night and saw a cleaning lady with her cart struggling to open the door to the auditorium. "Funny," the one security guard said. "That cleaning lady looked like the janitor from my high school, Mrs. Baliot.""But I thought she looked like the cleaning lady at my other job at the Moana," the other security guard shared. Neither one mentioned this fact to the other until after their experience. "We ran up to help her by holding the doors open so she could get in."
"Yeah, the cleaning cart and was big and bulky," the first security guard said. "Like the old kine from before."
"We're holding the door open, she goes inside, and that's it," the second security guard said.
"What do you mean that's it?" I asked.
"That's it, she was gone. She walked into the auditorium as we held open the doors for her, and she disappeared." The first security guard made the explosion gesture with his hands."You know how big that auditorium is, right? There's no way she could have vanished, but she did. She was gone, totally gone."
They told me that after they compared notes, they realized that they had seen two completely different older women, even though there was only one of her. They also realized that they couldn't file a report because of the conflicting information. Two different older Filipino-looking women, pushing two different cleaning carts. That was their eyewitness account even though they were standing right next to each other. When they reviewed the security footage, there was nothing there. They saw the double doors to the auditorium open slightly, and the two come into frame, pull the doors back, and stand there. A second later, there's a flash of light that the two security guards don't appear to notice. "What do you think that was?" They asked me.
"Probably, some kind of shapeshifter," I told them. "They can appear as many things to many people, even simultaneously."
"Ugh, chicken skin!" The first security guard giggled.
"No shit!" The other one agreed.
"Thank you, uncle!" they waved and walked off through the rotunda, heading to the mauka elevator.
Just then, I saw someone from my peripheral heading toward me. My old friend Devon Pacheco gave guided tours at the state capitol. "Eh! Lopaka!" We exchanged the braddah, braddah, handshake, and one-armed hug and pat on the back. "I saw you over here, so I figgah, I come say howzit!"
"How you brah? Good to see you!" I replied.
"So, what?" Devon asked. "You was rehearsing one story or something?"
"Oh, no," I laughed. "Maybe you didn't see them, but I was talking to the security guards over here. There were telling about something peculiar that happened to them."
"Brah, no make li'dat you!" I could see the goosebumps raised on his arms all of a sudden."Whew!"
"I'm sorry?" I was perplexed, or maybe he was just pulling my leg.
"I saw you over here talking to yourself; neva have any security guards, brah!" He laughed again and gave me a playful punch on the arm. "You saw me coming and did all this on purpose so you can scare me, you suckin' guy!" He waved goodbye and walked toward a small group of tourists who were waiting to meet him for the next tour, but there was already a couple of state police officers talking to the group about something. Forty minutes later, I was home sitting in front of my PC on Facebook. Immediately, my page was flooded with posts of condolences, broken hearts, and disbelief. One of the posts showed a picture of Devon Pacheco. Apparently, he'd passed away from a heart attack while getting ready to leave his home to go to work that morning. That's probably why the state police were there talking to the group, perhaps giving them the bad news. "The Capitol tour today is postponed because your guide is dead," hopefully, they were a lot more tactful than that.
As for the two security guards and their encounter with a shapeshifter, were THEY the shapeshifters who decided to screw with an old beat-up storyteller? That's a good question. I will tell you this, there is more haunting the state capitol than just the ghost of a former governor. Whatever it is, it's very talented at projecting illusions into your mind. Wonder who it is and who it's posing as?
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