Fuzzy Icicles

We've had light rain for the past week. Other parts of the area got bonified rain and snow. We didn't. But we still got icicles hanging from the roof around us. Being on third floor gives us a closer view of these things.

Today we have light snow. It's supposed to keep getting worse and worse. Nothing like the east coast just got, but snow nonetheless. It's a dry snow, and it's sticking to the icicles. While waiting for our tax guy to arrive I chanced to look out through the deck and saw them. So I took some pictures.

This was the first thing I saw.

And I did a close up.

The snow keeps falling off the top, but the stiles got their share of now.

Our third floor neighbor never uses his deck.

Our second floor neighbors had a nice Christmas scene.

And on the other side it looks like an avalanche under construction.

A Timid Groundhog Fears Its Shadow

Okay. I set myself up for this and so I'm paying my penance. You were curious to know what Bevie James looks like? Well, I don't have any recent pictures to show you. Neither Spouse nor Son takes my picture very often. Got lots of Spouse and Son, though. But that wasn't the question, was it?

All three of these pictures are at least twelve years old. The first two were taken about fifteen years ago, when Spouse and I had our first house built. The third was just over twelve years ago. Right after Son was born.

My best side. I am leaning on the floor of what will eventually become our living room. I am standing in the dining room. Below the living room is the family room. I designed that room myself, and when we put the house up for sale it became the focal point for all buyers. I had a wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling entertainment center built in along the wall to my right in the picture. Against the far wall I had a fireplace. I kind of wish we hadn't sold that house. So many things went wrong after we did.

Below is me - and my little red car. The 1992 Mitsubishi Eclipse. It had fifteen miles on it when we bought it. Now it's over one hundred thousand. Back then it was almost brand new. We built the house in 1994. Like me, the car has seen better days. The driver's seat is broken. The passenger seat is stained with pizza grease. The seals on the windows and rear hatch are torn. The driver's window won't roll up unless I stop the car and pull it pull it up with my hands. The air conditioning is broken. The front bumper was destroyed while delivering pizza to someone who hadn't plowed their driveway. Spouse tried to talk me into selling that car many many times, but I always resisted. Some day, when we have money again, I'm going to fix that car back up. It's such a pretty car. Oh, and only one hubcap remains.

Below is without a doubt my favorite picture of me. In fact, it is probably the only picture of me I have ever liked. It was taken not long after Son was born. See how we're looking into each other's eyes? We used to do that endlessly. I read stories to him before he was born. I would lay sideways on the bed and read into Spouse's stomach. And I would sing, too. Elton John's, Blessed. The night he was born (11:36 p.m.) the attending nurse cleaned him up, wrapped him in a blanket and handed him to me. I paced the room for an hour while they tended to Spouse (who didn't even know I was there). I talked and sang to him the entire time. Then, after an hour, Spouse was ready to take her son. I handed him over and he fell asleep. I think the reason the picture below worked is that neither Son nor I knew it was being taken. We were caught in our natural states. Laughing. I'm in a white t-shirt, which is also my normal attire. My hair hangs over my head like a mop. The same it has done for over forty years. It looks like I've shaved my cheeks and neck though. That's not usual.

The House of My Youth

Part 11 - So What's My Read on the Manifestations?

Okay, as promised, here are the reasons I (mostly) do not believe the things I have written about regarding The Old House were ghost induced.

First. I don't believe that when people die they stick around. Either they go to live with God, or they are locked away to await final judgment. Do I believe in demons? Yes. But I don't think that's what was going on at The Old House either. I think all of the manifestations can be directed into a couple of groupings. Let us examine each kind of manifestation (as opposed to each instance).

Voices

That nearly everyone who came to The Old House heard voices from people who were not (apparently) there is without debate. So who was talking? Where were they? Why couldn't we see them? Why was it so difficult to make out what they were saying?

I am convinced it has to do with how things work. Our knowledge of science should back me up on this, I believe.

The Old House was built before 1900. At some point in time, someone brilliant decided to insulate the walls with small pieces of something which appeared to contain metal. When we lived in it, The Old House was over eighty years old. Having never been properly heated and cooled, the wood had gone quite dry.

Now it is a fact that those of us who heard voices, heard them in only one of two rooms. The big room downstairs, or the big room upstairs, right above it. This meant the southeast corner. What I believe was happening was The Old House had become some type of radio receiver, with the construction allowing for a faint broadcast of what it was picking up. We heard voiced because it was picking up talk radio. (Talk about scary! Just think - Rush Limbaugh - and you'll know why we were terrified. Well, Rush wasn't around then, but you get the idea.)

Walls Banging - no footprints in the snow

Not many outside our family experienced this one. I think one of my uncles was there once, and maybe my grandma once or twice. But usually it was just the immediate family. Again, I think our knowledge of science will support me on this.

As indicated above, The Old House was, indeed, old. The wood was dry. The construction codes back in the 1800s were not the same as now. Different materials. For one thing, no sheetrock.

That the main wall to experience this banging should also have been visibly bowed is significant, I think. I have read that old dry wood will, of its own accord (and I believe this is what was going on at The Old House)(actually due to air pressures) begin to vibrate. The Old House was collapsing, as was evidenced by the bowing of the wall. What we were hearing was significant shifts and tremors in the wall. Someone more knowledgeable about such things can explain it better, but I am convinced this was a natural phenomenon.

Sharing the Bed

This one's harder (and the reason I wrote "mostly" at the post's beginning).

It could have been hallucinations. The argument against that is that these incidents took place in three different rooms with four different people. So what other explanations do I have?

Not an entirely satisfactory one, I'm afraid. The best I come up with is imagination. I have something like this take place today when I'm in bed. I will get the sensation that someone is rubbing my lower legs, or putting pressure on them. No one is. Not even the cat. Today I believe it is related to poor circulation caused by my diabetes. But I'm wondering, since only young people, school age, experienced it, if it wasn't related somehow to growing. Just a guess here. I didn't find anything about it on-line.

Sightings- Visual Manifestations

These are also difficult to explain because not only did many people see the phantoms, but we all saw the same thing. The most logical explanation is: magnetic fields.

There are several websites which talk about this phenomena. Here is one.

I actually watched a short documentary about this last summer or fall. A group of "ghost hunters" had gone to Edinburgh, Scotland. There is a castle there which is acclaimed as being the "most haunted in the world". Every week many castle visitors, and staff, experience eerie events in the lower places.

What the did was get several volunteers and put them into separate rooms. Some of the rooms were notorious for producing manifestations and some had few or none. The subjects were not told which room they were in. Cameras, sound equipment, and other electronic monitoring devices were set up. Then the experiment began.

The one young woman, who was in one of the notorious rooms, heard voices and felt something touching her. Neither the audio nor video equipment picked up anything. But the woman was becoming quite terrified. What the other electronic equipment did pick up was magnetic fields.

Later in the show, they filmed a doctor/scientist who was experimenting with low-level magnetic fields on human beings. What he had discovered was that these same manifestations could be induced. People would hear things. They felt themselves being touched. It was quite panicky for them.

Low-level magnetic fields exist naturally in the world. If they do in fact cause these kinds of hallucinations, then that may very well explain The Old House. It would also explain why the manifestations ceased when The Old House burned and we rebuilt 100 yards to the north.

Animals

Our dogs often reacted to The Old House itself. Especially when they were inside and near the steps going down to the basement. Both my Mother and Helvie told me about being down there and suddenly having a sense of fear which made them want to run out. But they barely made it, having to climb on their hands and knees up the steps.

The basement was so poorly constructed the ground itself could be seen. My guess is that some poisonous gas was seeping into it and that at times it got intense. The basement smelled so musty and bad anyway that we wouldn't have notice any other kind of smell. The dogs' reaction would suggest the gas was not odorless.

So there you have it. My explanations of why The Old House was NOT haunted. Like I said at the top: I'm mostly convinced.

Here, just because I have it, is a photo of The Old House's last moments. It didn't scan well. The paper is over thirty years old and quite yellow.

The room I was using at the time was in the upper right corner. It was already gone when the picture was taken. There is a 250-gallon tank of fuel oil next to the house which was spouting fire. Everyone was terrified it was going to explode, but it didn't. The house looks cruddy for two reasons: 1) I was tearing off the old siding and painting the wood; 2) It was cruddy.

I used to use the part to the left as a backstop to throw rubber baseballs against. I quit when I threw one through the wall. Then I shifted around the corner to the left. The boat got pulled away and saved from a meltdown. Not so with my things. I had ran them out of the house and set them in the yard. Even at thirty yards away the heat from the fire evaporated them. All I saved was an acoustic guitar and the clothes I was wearing. No shoes.

The caption below the picture talks about damages being estimated at $5,000. They left off the "1" ($15,000). Mother was furious. Not only did the picture make it look like we were Ma and Pa Kettle, but then the caption confirms it.

The window on the far right was stained glass. The next window, by the tank, was at the foot of the steps. Then it was the two dining room windows. The last window, left-middle, was the kitchen window.

The tall chimney in the center didn't fall. My Daddy and two neighbors went the next day with a giant crowbar and took it down before it fell on someone.

Heck of a day. Not much of a birthday present for Helvie. I remember walking up to her and her screaming hysterically, "It's our house! Where are we going to live?" I put my arm around her and said, "It's okay. It doesn't matter." She didn't like that answer.

A Hodge Podge of Photos

I'm supposed to be posting about writing assignments, but I thought I would post some old pictures I found with the one from yesterday's post. I don't have many pictures from my youth. Most were burned with The Old House. Even Mother doesn't have many. Aunt Cile had a ton of pictures, but nobody seems to know what happened to them. Grandma Amy's either. I assume my Aunt Laurie has them, but getting copies may be difficult. People get funny about pictures.

Anyway, this first one is Daddy. We lost that piano when we sold the house, I believe. I remember we didn't have one for a long time. Then Grandma Amy let us bring home the big upright from her house. That was the one Daddy used to make his recordings. Those are lost, too.
.
The house is the "Pink and White House". That's what Helvie and I used to call it. We gave it that name because its colors were - pink and white. We only lived there a year, I think. Maybe two. When I was four and five. That house almost burned, too. I remember Daddy coming into the bedroom and carrying me to his Aunt Julia's house, which was right next door. We kids sat by the windows and watched the firemen. Not a lot of damage, but I remember we lost the electricity for several days. It was cold. Of course.
.

Pictured to the right is my great-great-Grandfather Ziegler's brother Fred. I don't know that I ever met him, but this is such a cool picture I had to include it. These are the kind of people I am descended from. [smiles]

.

Below is a picture of Grandma Amy - my mother's mother.

I always think of her as a portly little old lady standing about 5'2" with a wonderful sense of humor and the most darling laugh. From looking at this photograph, taking some time in the very early 1900s, I'm guessing she was a bit of a tease. According to my mother and my siblings, that was exactly the case. Grandma liked the boys. Mother didn't like it that she did. Not even after Grandpa died. Mother doesn't believe in remarriage. I think Mother is wrong about that. At the least it is plain Grandma like to laugh.

.

Here are two more pictures of Daddy. The one is Daddy (Daddy is wearing the hat) and his Uncle Gordon, who was either a year older or a year younger than Daddy.

.

The one on with the dog was taken at the house shown above. I believe that is Saber. Right beyind those cars is Aunt Julia's house.
.
.

This picture doesn't really fit with the others, but I included it because it is such a good picture of Helvie when she was perhaps four or five. She is picking at herself, as usual. That's how she got the name Pixie.

.
What a shame so many good pictures were lost - or never taken. That's true for everybody. Most of history is not recorded on photographic paper or in a computer. It's lost, if no one remembers it.

.

There is a theory that when we die, God is going to replay every moment of our life back to us. This will be part of our judgement, to show us why we need forgiveness and to confirm that we have accepted it.

.

I don't know if that's true or not. I do know there are scientists who believe all of our memories are still held chemically some place in or brains.

.

Scenes like these make me wish those theories are true. But I can think of other scenes in which I hope it's not.

.

I'm going to try and hunt down some more pictures.