Thursday, August 21, 2008
Just Checking
Trying to make sure I'm no longer marked as a "spam blog". Dontcha just looove software gone bad?
Saturday, October 20, 2007
This Is a Little Spooky
I've been seeing a little bit of activity in my apartment the last few days. Just the things-seen-moving-from-the corner of eye type of activity. Little black, fleeting shadows, and sudden flickers of movement.
Well, I decided to invest in a digital recorder, just out of curiosity, and try and see what I could get on "tape".
On my second try, after asking if anyone would like to speak to me, I got an answer.
If you'd like to hear it, here's the download link (less than 95K).
spooky_10_19_07.mp3
Well, I decided to invest in a digital recorder, just out of curiosity, and try and see what I could get on "tape".
On my second try, after asking if anyone would like to speak to me, I got an answer.
If you'd like to hear it, here's the download link (less than 95K).
spooky_10_19_07.mp3
Sunday, October 14, 2007
The Thing in the Doorway
This is the scariest thing that ever happened to me.
When I was a teenager, my family lived in a haunted house. I won't identify the house except to say that it was a small 1930's era house in Lexington, KY.
Over a period of several years we all became accustomed to the fact that the place was haunted. One of our otherworldly occupants was so friendly that we gave him a name, "George", and even learned to laugh at some of "his" pranks.
However, George was not our only visitor.
I come from a long line of insomniacs. We've learned to live our lives in the night hours when the rest of the world is sleeping, and consequently we're not nervous about being "alone...in the night" as Shirley Jackson would put it.
Luckily I'm an inveterate reader, and that's what I was doing the night in question. I was comfortably stretched out on the living room couch, a book propped on my chest. I was totally involved with my book, and had nothing else on my mind.
I have excellent peripheral vision, and a flicker of movement to my right suddenly caught my attention. I looked up, and what I saw literally made my breath catch in my throat.
About four feet away from me, standing slightly to the left of the door to the hallway was a ....thing. More than anything else it resembled a columnar cloud of greasy, oily smoke. The smoke was moving, coiling in and out of itself. Expanding and contracting, almost as if it were breathing. Appalled, I lay there staring at it for about two minutes, watching it, praying it wouldn't move toward me. It didn't. It did something worse.
The roiling, smokey column began contracting and expanding a little more quickly, as if it were trying harder. And then, suddenly, wispy filaments of "smoke" began to extrude from its sides. And then I knew - it was growing arms!
I'm ashamed to admit that at this point I screamed, threw my book at it, and ran! Twenty minutes or so later I forced myself to return to the living room, and of course it was gone.
A couple of years later I found out that my father had had the identical experience. With the exception that he was asleep on the couch and what woke him up was his dead mother's voice shouting frantically in his ear "Jack, raise your head up!". The only thing funny about that experience was that he reacted exactly the same way I did--he threw a book at it and ran!
What was it we saw? I don't know. The only thing I can say for sure is that it wasn't - and never had been - human.
When I was a teenager, my family lived in a haunted house. I won't identify the house except to say that it was a small 1930's era house in Lexington, KY.
Over a period of several years we all became accustomed to the fact that the place was haunted. One of our otherworldly occupants was so friendly that we gave him a name, "George", and even learned to laugh at some of "his" pranks.
However, George was not our only visitor.
I come from a long line of insomniacs. We've learned to live our lives in the night hours when the rest of the world is sleeping, and consequently we're not nervous about being "alone...in the night" as Shirley Jackson would put it.
Luckily I'm an inveterate reader, and that's what I was doing the night in question. I was comfortably stretched out on the living room couch, a book propped on my chest. I was totally involved with my book, and had nothing else on my mind.
I have excellent peripheral vision, and a flicker of movement to my right suddenly caught my attention. I looked up, and what I saw literally made my breath catch in my throat.
About four feet away from me, standing slightly to the left of the door to the hallway was a ....thing. More than anything else it resembled a columnar cloud of greasy, oily smoke. The smoke was moving, coiling in and out of itself. Expanding and contracting, almost as if it were breathing. Appalled, I lay there staring at it for about two minutes, watching it, praying it wouldn't move toward me. It didn't. It did something worse.
The roiling, smokey column began contracting and expanding a little more quickly, as if it were trying harder. And then, suddenly, wispy filaments of "smoke" began to extrude from its sides. And then I knew - it was growing arms!
I'm ashamed to admit that at this point I screamed, threw my book at it, and ran! Twenty minutes or so later I forced myself to return to the living room, and of course it was gone.
A couple of years later I found out that my father had had the identical experience. With the exception that he was asleep on the couch and what woke him up was his dead mother's voice shouting frantically in his ear "Jack, raise your head up!". The only thing funny about that experience was that he reacted exactly the same way I did--he threw a book at it and ran!
What was it we saw? I don't know. The only thing I can say for sure is that it wasn't - and never had been - human.
Halloween at Waverly Hills
Bwwwwaaahaaahaaa. Halloween is coming so I thought I'd post some of my ghost stories. First up is a repost of my visit to Waverly Hills Sanitorium with a tour group. It was originally posted to the Ghost Discuss group.
Cue Spooky Music...........
October 29, 2001
Hi, Ghosters,
My daughter Courtenay, her (now ex-) boyfriend Mark and I took a tour of Waverly Hills Sanitorium here in Louisville on Saturday. The tour was sponsored by the Louisville Ghost Hunters Society (proceeds going to charity), and it was really worth it.
Some of you may have seen it featured on the Fox program "World's Scariest Places" last Tuesday. Believe me, it's just as spooky as it looked on television.
The sanitarium was built in the 1920s, and was the largest tuberculosis sanitarium in KY. At the time it was built, tuberculosis was a virtual death sentence. Once you entered it was almost certain that you would never leave alive. Doctors and nurses were confined to the premises as well, since tuberculosis was highly contagious.
The nurses worked long, grueling shifts, and as a result, at least 2 suicides occurred on the infamous fifth floor. The tour guide told us that one nurse hanged herself from a pipe running across the ceiling in a little room just off the main ward (the ward for the mentally unstable patients). She hanged herself at the beginning of her shift, so the poor patients got to watch her body swinging from the rope for 18 hours until it was time for the next nurse to come on duty. The patients were locked into the ward, so they could do nothing but watch.
A few years later, another nurse threw herself from a fifth floor window.
In addition, the place is supposed to be haunted by a little girl named Mary, who is seen running up and down the corridors wearing a white nightgown, and a little boy who plays with an old leather ball.
There is also the infamous "body chute", which is a long underground tunnel where deceased patients were taken to be shipped to a morgue off the premises. As most of the patients were dying themselves they felt that it would be too depressing for them to see the bodies of other patients being taken away from the hospital. So a very long tunnel connecting to the nearest railroad line was built, and they were placed in the tunnel and sent away secretly. At one time the death rate was about 1 per hour, so it was in use constantly.
The tour guide also gave some grisly details as to how they were first embalmed, which I won't go into here.
My impressions of the place:
If it's not haunted, it should be! The place is really a magnificient ruin. It has 480 rooms, all of it crumbling away. There's not one window left in the place, and it has been heavily defaced by the idiots who used it as a party place. (No longer true. The building is slowly being renovated. And my daughter tells me that some of the graffiti was put there deliberately as promotion for a party held there.) The walls (institutional green) are covered with graffiti, the plumbing fixtures ripped out, walls and ceilings crumbling, and the roof is also starting to go.
The wind was blowing strongly while we were there, so the eerie whistling of the wind through the open windows and doors was appropriately spooky.
In the first floor room where the tour guide began his lecture, I was standing towards the back of the group when I felt someone take hold of my arm just above my left elbow. It was if someone standing behind me and to my right had reached over and put their arm around me. Now, this room was already freezing cold but this spot on my arm was even colder! It wasn't at all frightening, though, just as if someone were saying"hi, I'm here". It continued to hold onto me all through the tour of the first floor, but when we reached the main corridor of the second floor it abruptly let go.
The third and fifth floors are supposed to be the "most" haunted, but strangely enough the fourth floor was the one which affected me the most. I felt intensely nauseous the whole time we were on that floor and I was starting to get dizzy. The moment we went back down to the third floor those feelings left. I was also smelling alcohol very strongly on the third and fourth floors (but Courtenay says someone in the tour group was drunk!).
On the fifth floor, in the operating room the tour guide was telling us about the types of (really gruesome) surgery which took place there, when somebody said "look there". An EMF meter someone was carrying started beeping like mad, and as we watched the door slowly closed itself. Now, as I said before the wind was blowing very hard, and if it was the wind, I think it would have slammed the door hard. It closed the door very slooooowly. A couple of minutes later the door started to open again and of course we were all going "oooooh". It swung open to reveal one of the other tour guides trying to catch up with group. He saw a group of stunned looking faces staring at him and kept saying "What? What?", while we were all roaring with laughter.
My daughter took her digital camera with her, and we got some stunning pictures. Courtenay and I officially don't believe in orbs, but we got some pictures with 20 or 30 diamond shaped orbs. If Zubrovka is reading this I would really like to know if this is common with digital cameras?I know it must be light refraction of some sort, but would like to know how this happens. Courtenay also got one picture that shows what I think is a little boy, but she thinks is a shadow on the building. (Courtenay told me later that her digital camera shut itself down 12 times while we were there!)
Well, you guys, sorry for the long post, but would really like to knowwhat you think!
Cue Spooky Music...........
October 29, 2001
Hi, Ghosters,
My daughter Courtenay, her (now ex-) boyfriend Mark and I took a tour of Waverly Hills Sanitorium here in Louisville on Saturday. The tour was sponsored by the Louisville Ghost Hunters Society (proceeds going to charity), and it was really worth it.
Some of you may have seen it featured on the Fox program "World's Scariest Places" last Tuesday. Believe me, it's just as spooky as it looked on television.
The sanitarium was built in the 1920s, and was the largest tuberculosis sanitarium in KY. At the time it was built, tuberculosis was a virtual death sentence. Once you entered it was almost certain that you would never leave alive. Doctors and nurses were confined to the premises as well, since tuberculosis was highly contagious.
The nurses worked long, grueling shifts, and as a result, at least 2 suicides occurred on the infamous fifth floor. The tour guide told us that one nurse hanged herself from a pipe running across the ceiling in a little room just off the main ward (the ward for the mentally unstable patients). She hanged herself at the beginning of her shift, so the poor patients got to watch her body swinging from the rope for 18 hours until it was time for the next nurse to come on duty. The patients were locked into the ward, so they could do nothing but watch.
A few years later, another nurse threw herself from a fifth floor window.
In addition, the place is supposed to be haunted by a little girl named Mary, who is seen running up and down the corridors wearing a white nightgown, and a little boy who plays with an old leather ball.
There is also the infamous "body chute", which is a long underground tunnel where deceased patients were taken to be shipped to a morgue off the premises. As most of the patients were dying themselves they felt that it would be too depressing for them to see the bodies of other patients being taken away from the hospital. So a very long tunnel connecting to the nearest railroad line was built, and they were placed in the tunnel and sent away secretly. At one time the death rate was about 1 per hour, so it was in use constantly.
The tour guide also gave some grisly details as to how they were first embalmed, which I won't go into here.
My impressions of the place:
If it's not haunted, it should be! The place is really a magnificient ruin. It has 480 rooms, all of it crumbling away. There's not one window left in the place, and it has been heavily defaced by the idiots who used it as a party place. (No longer true. The building is slowly being renovated. And my daughter tells me that some of the graffiti was put there deliberately as promotion for a party held there.) The walls (institutional green) are covered with graffiti, the plumbing fixtures ripped out, walls and ceilings crumbling, and the roof is also starting to go.
The wind was blowing strongly while we were there, so the eerie whistling of the wind through the open windows and doors was appropriately spooky.
In the first floor room where the tour guide began his lecture, I was standing towards the back of the group when I felt someone take hold of my arm just above my left elbow. It was if someone standing behind me and to my right had reached over and put their arm around me. Now, this room was already freezing cold but this spot on my arm was even colder! It wasn't at all frightening, though, just as if someone were saying"hi, I'm here". It continued to hold onto me all through the tour of the first floor, but when we reached the main corridor of the second floor it abruptly let go.
The third and fifth floors are supposed to be the "most" haunted, but strangely enough the fourth floor was the one which affected me the most. I felt intensely nauseous the whole time we were on that floor and I was starting to get dizzy. The moment we went back down to the third floor those feelings left. I was also smelling alcohol very strongly on the third and fourth floors (but Courtenay says someone in the tour group was drunk!).
On the fifth floor, in the operating room the tour guide was telling us about the types of (really gruesome) surgery which took place there, when somebody said "look there". An EMF meter someone was carrying started beeping like mad, and as we watched the door slowly closed itself. Now, as I said before the wind was blowing very hard, and if it was the wind, I think it would have slammed the door hard. It closed the door very slooooowly. A couple of minutes later the door started to open again and of course we were all going "oooooh". It swung open to reveal one of the other tour guides trying to catch up with group. He saw a group of stunned looking faces staring at him and kept saying "What? What?", while we were all roaring with laughter.
My daughter took her digital camera with her, and we got some stunning pictures. Courtenay and I officially don't believe in orbs, but we got some pictures with 20 or 30 diamond shaped orbs. If Zubrovka is reading this I would really like to know if this is common with digital cameras?I know it must be light refraction of some sort, but would like to know how this happens. Courtenay also got one picture that shows what I think is a little boy, but she thinks is a shadow on the building. (Courtenay told me later that her digital camera shut itself down 12 times while we were there!)
Well, you guys, sorry for the long post, but would really like to knowwhat you think!
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
The Fambly
I bought a digital camera a while ago, meaning to do something useful with it. So far, I have a short video of my dog running away from me and my camera, and a few "test" shots like this one.Meet my grandson Travis aka Soccergod, my granddaughter Kelsey, and my son Grasshopper, er Hunter. In their defense, Hunter is the only one with actual karate experience (ask him about the time his mother happened to pass through the living room while he practicing the mule kick).
My daughter-in-law Jackie somehow had the good sense not to be present while I was practicing with the camera but I'll sneak up on her eventually.
Sunday, September 16, 2007
Currently Reading..........
The Mummies of Urumchi by Elizabeth Wayland Barber.
In 1994 archaeologists uncovered a series of ancient graves in Western China. Because the deceased were buried in a desert area with a naturally high salt content in the soil the bodies were astonishingly well preserved. However, the most surprising find was that the bodies were not Chinese or Mongolian but Caucasian.
Three thousand years ago these mysterious people were laid to rest. For example, Cherchen Man who stood six foot six inches tall and had long, light brown hair and a thick beard. His face was painted with yellow sun spirals, a symbol common in Indo-European civilizations. From the same tomb came the body of Cherchen Woman, six foot tall, elegantly dressed and painted. Buried above them was the body of a tiny three month old infant carefully swaddled and still wearing a blue felt bonnet. Laid to rest with the baby was a feeding bottle made from a sheep's udder.
Textiles found in other graves showed a fondness for bright colors and plaid patterns. Who were these people and where did they go?
This book is beautifully illustrated, and a gripping read for anyone interested in the mysteries of our past.
In 1994 archaeologists uncovered a series of ancient graves in Western China. Because the deceased were buried in a desert area with a naturally high salt content in the soil the bodies were astonishingly well preserved. However, the most surprising find was that the bodies were not Chinese or Mongolian but Caucasian.
Three thousand years ago these mysterious people were laid to rest. For example, Cherchen Man who stood six foot six inches tall and had long, light brown hair and a thick beard. His face was painted with yellow sun spirals, a symbol common in Indo-European civilizations. From the same tomb came the body of Cherchen Woman, six foot tall, elegantly dressed and painted. Buried above them was the body of a tiny three month old infant carefully swaddled and still wearing a blue felt bonnet. Laid to rest with the baby was a feeding bottle made from a sheep's udder.
Textiles found in other graves showed a fondness for bright colors and plaid patterns. Who were these people and where did they go?
This book is beautifully illustrated, and a gripping read for anyone interested in the mysteries of our past.
Fleeing MySpace
I think I can't stand it anymore. I've totally stopped posting anything of my own, and the only reason I've maintained my account is so that I can stay abreast of family news. In order to do that, I must be their "friend".
The only problem with that is that other people soon want to be your "friend". Supposedly "hot babes" want to know all about me. No thanks. If you know me already and you really give a damn then come here to find out what's going on, okay?
The only problem with that is that other people soon want to be your "friend". Supposedly "hot babes" want to know all about me. No thanks. If you know me already and you really give a damn then come here to find out what's going on, okay?
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