Voice In The Night, Epilogue

The events I have related in the preceding posts actually happened, and are presented here to the best of my recollection. Over the years when the subject of strange phenomena comes up in conversation and I tell the story, people inevitably come up with what they think are the most probable explanations for what I experienced. Some say that I was most likely asleep and dreaming. Others suggest that someone was playing a trick on me. Still others think that perhaps an actual, living person was out there, trying to lure me away and harm me. I have examined all these theories and I am convinced to this day, roughly forty years later, that none of them apply. First, I remember thinking that I must be dreaming at the time and literally pinching myself, hoping with all my heart that I would wake up. I was, and still am, certain I was fully awake. Second, there were no kids near my age in that neighborhood that I was aware of at the time, and certainly no one who would have known my name or been aware of my obsession with cats, as I lived nearly an hour's drive away and had never visited for more than a few hours at a time before that night. My grandparents were pretty serious people, and elderly, certainly not prone to fooling around or playing jokes at two or three o'clock in the morning. Third, if there was a pedophile out there with bad intentions, he would have had to scale the concrete and stone wall with no stairs or ladder and without being detected, and since the door was open and I was completely defenseless, why didn't he just come in and get me? I don't know what it was that I heard, but I believe it was something that could best be defined as paranormal. I have had several other weird experiences, including two occasions when I saw things that I could not and still, to this day, cannot explain. Maybe I will tell you about them sometime.