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Monday, October 31, 2016

Spectral Encounter

This being Hallowe'en, and having made my mind up to make good on a decision to expatiate  a mention made weeks ago about spectral encounters (yes, Jon) I began to doodle yesterday. I have had two such experiences, 34 years apart, and will address the first.
I was four years old, standing beside my mother in the back porch as she operated the wringer washer. The inner doorway gave onto the kitchen. I looked in and saw the figure above appear from the south wall, glide through the woodstove and table as if they weren't there.

She looked more like a 3-d shadow, walking alone, than figures I was used to seeing. I could discern some features. She was young, younger than my mother but older than my sisters --who were soon to be teenagers. She was upholstered in a longer, translucent, version of the black bombazine dresses my elder relatives wore sometimes, and was veiled, hat to waist.

She then passed through the north kitchen wall into my sisters' room. I told my mother: "There's a pretty lady in the kitchen..." Mama shut off the washer, asked me what I'd seen,  took me into the rooms on the figure's trajectory. Nothing disturbed, nothing there. She then held me close and I got chocolate milk.

I won't go into my second encounter with a ghost. It took place in the summer of 1988 --34 years later-- and involved someone I knew. I'm concerned that the manifestation was meant personally, not intended for repetition. But the point is, despite my inimpeachable adherence to rationalism and concession to ghostly sightings being annectotal, there is an axiom I have long been trying to substantiate: The absence of evidence is not always evidence of absence. 

But, Hallowe'en is also the e'en of an election month, and I can't ignore the terms of Ovid. We have all, all parties, despaired with a grand old --and dignified-- faction and wept with Echo for the absence of Narcissus . Let the lessons of Rome, Nature, Supernature and the promise of chocolate milk guide us into the coming month.  

27 comments:

  1. Hi Geo, there is a cafe locally, a music and art centre. It has been open about a year. But is a very old building. There have been strange occurrences there. Some captured on cctv. There is a Facebook page. SeaFish Bognor.

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    1. Thanks, John. I also looked up "SeaFish Bognor ghost" on YouTube and found a clip of a clock there leaving its shelf all by itself. Intriguing place!

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  2. Thanks for having the courage to share this, Geo. I would never have been a believer, if I didn't have a few encounters myself. They were VERY real and I was completely sober (*smile*).

    When I was twelve, my family lived in a place that was "haunted". My father - who was the biggest skeptic on earth - saw and heard these things...and he instantly became a believer.

    Bring on the chocolate milk - -

    and some whiskey to get us through the election...

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    1. When you expressed an interest in my sparse experience with shades, I thought I better get this one in under the the wire. Happy Hallowe'en, Jon. 2 minutes to midnight and on to the election...yikes!

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  3. More things in heaven and earth...
    Chocolate milk on the other hand is a very, very pleasant and tangible reality.

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    1. My philosophy is full of things yet undreamt --I'm just satisfied to be included (Pretty happy about chocolate milk too).

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  4. A riveting account of that encounter. Ending with a hug and chocolate milk no doubt impressed it upon you deeply.
    I was only slightly older when a blast of lightning arced to a metal screen door and launched a fiery ball that burned a trail across a rug and disappeared into a wall socket. My mother says I jumped across the room and into her arms with eyes as large as saucers. I remember needing to move quickly, but there was no chocolate milk.

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    1. Wow! When nature can furnish a manifestation like that, no other-worldly supernatural forces need apply. I gather the ball-lightning was seeking a grounded conductor --you were prudent not to stand in its way.

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    1. My thought exactly! But curiously unaccompanied by fear.

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  6. Haven't ever seen a ghost. Lucky you. I did, however, have a visit from my father on the day of his funeral. The phone rang...no one on the other end....just a feeling of hollowness if you know what I mean and then, the doorbell rang....no one there. He told me many times that if there was anything after death he would try to let me know. When people ask me if I believe in the supernatural I always respond with, "I don't NOT believe in it."

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    1. I've heard similar accounts, Delores, enough to keep an open mind in the matter.

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  7. Many people have had claimed supernatural encounters. Who am I to say they are mistaken? I was not there. I have had some strange things happen to me. After I would sometimes wonder if I imagined it or if it really happened.But happen they did. Some are pleasant and some are not. That is my statement on the subject.

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    1. Your statement is a sound and workable one, Emma. Belief is in the experience and attendant step into a larger world.

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  8. That's pretty amazing, Geo. I've not had anything ever happen to me or anyone I know, but I don't discount anything either. We just don't know everything there is to know, and it would be foolish (not to mention arrogant) to think we do!

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    1. O Jenny, we live in a universe where all possibilities are assembled. I'm fond of Bachman Turner Overdrive's old song, "You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet" --which often runs thru my head as this trainride passes enigmas.

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  9. That was an interesting encounter, Geo. - and I would like to know if your mother had heard about it before - her reaction seems to indicate that to me.
    I've never seen a ghost, but I've met (reasonable) people who have. My mother seems to have had the gift to see events in the future - but I don't envy anyone that, always pitied poor Cassandra - I am quite happy to live in the moment, not knowing what times will bring along.

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    1. Dear Brigitta, I don't know if my mother had prior inklings of what I saw, but she reacted calmly --more calmly than might be expected if there was a stranger in the house. I suspect the mind sometimes exploits some sort of quantum coherence, a level of reality at which time means something quite different from what we're used to --but yes, like Cassandra, we find it inexpressible.

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  10. I've heard similar things before, even from people like you who I assume to be usually rational...so I don't dismiss them out of hand.

    What I do believe is the existence of karma, and I think it's possible that Karma with a capital K might just be coming to bite us in the ass in a few days. Six to be exact.

    I hope not, for my kids sake, but in many ways we'd be getting what apparently several million of us deserve.

    I gotta start learning more Portuguese than obrigado....

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    1. Mike, I'm not sure even supporters of the current bloviating narcissist deserve to waste away like Echo, but must agree the fangs of Fate are gnawing at our societal fundament. Should the candidate trained in government by discussion obtain, it will certainly percolate an obrigado out of me, and will suffice. As to ghosts, I suspect we see them oftener than we think --they may seem a bit out of style, gone when we glance away, but no different from other faces in moving crowds...unless it's someone we know.

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  11. I wouldn't mind visiting with some friends that are long gone or strangers for that matter. It would keep me interested as a living person.

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    1. Jono, I'd like to think it is interest as living persons that projects images of departed people into this time, this time beyond their own lives. My experience was seeing an old friend --unchanged by 20-year absence from my company--sitting four tables away from mine in a well-lit hotel dining room. I learned 2 hours later that she'd passed away 11 years earlier. I can't presume to understand an afterlife, or to dismiss the concept.

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  12. http://www.kalonasupernatural.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Organic-Whole-Chocolate-Milk1.jpg

    Yours ever,
    The Countess.

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    1. Thank you, Suze, for alerting me to Kalona Supernatural Chocolate Milk. I'm sure it's just the thing for easing spectral encounters. Does it work on election jitters?

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  13. My apologies for posting about Time Wave here, but:

    Things in soil and reason
    Endure between bricks,

    I'm moved by this. Sends my mind spiraling in a most fructiferous way. Thank you.

    The Countess.

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