Topic 36B (A): Artifice
And here we are, still in the middle of Hell Week... it sure is living up to its name!
Here is the first of my five entries for the week. As always, may the Idol gods be kind and generous...
I have to make a really dorky confession. I love those paranormal shows on TV. Shows like A Haunting, Most Haunted, Ghost Hunters, Ghost Adventures and my newest obsession… the Dead Files. I love them. Can’t get enough of them. Well… until it’s proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that what they’re doing is nothing more than a trick, a deception, a carefully crafted ruse designed to titillate and entertain us, not necessarily to prove the existence of the paranormal. I am always a little bit crestfallen when indisputable proof crops up to prove that the current show in question is a bona fide phony baloney.
But every time a new program starts up, I swear that this one is going to be real because… not all of them can be fakes, right? Right???
You’d think I would have completely given up on those programs after all of the disappointment and heartbreak. But then, I’d say you don’t know how stubborn I can be.
Some who have absolutely nothing better to do at that moment in time might ask why I want to believe in the paranormal so badly. If you are one of the ones bored or unlucky enough to have asked me that question, I’d say that it’s because I believe in it wholeheartedly. I’ve experienced it my whole life. I’ve seen and experienced too much not to believe.
I know, I know, you might be thinking that what I’m about to share with you is nothing more than another carefully crafted ruse. A story designed to pull you in and make you believe something that just isn’t true. And you’re welcome to believe that but I can tell you that everything I’m about to write is 100% true. If I’m lying, may my beloved Oakland Raiders go winless for the entire season. And if you knew me, you’d know just how serious that swear really is! I could tell you a billion stories about things that have happened over the years. But since nobody wants to read quite that many stories, I’ll whittle it down to one good one.
Hey, I’m a giver like that.
I’ve been surrounded by ghosts for as far back as I can remember. Even when we moved, which was frequently when I was growing up, the ghosts didn’t take long to make themselves known. Things were often knocked over and spilled, footsteps were frequently heard as were strange and mysterious voices. Nothing was ever threatening or scary so it’s one of those things you just got used to. They were always with us. We knew it, they knew it and we all co-existed in peace and harmony.
It didn’t change as I got older, either. Even after I’d moved into my own apartments, the ghosts would seemingly go out of their way to let me know that I had another roomie. Which was fine and all. They didn’t eat much, didn’t piss all over the toilet without cleaning it up, didn’t leave dishes in the sink for a week and weren’t rude enough to wake me up at O-Dark-Thirty with some crappy ass music. In short, they were better roommates than I’d had until my sister and I decided to share a place.
For a while nothing happened in our first apartment. I was beginning to think that the streak had been broken and we’d moved into an uninhabited apartment. I was shocked. Well, a couple of years into our residence there, my sister had asked me if I’d come into her room the night before and tried to wake her. To which I replied that I had not. She told me that she felt a distinct tapping on her leg. Hard enough to bring her out of a dead sleep. Over the next few weeks, the voices started again and she also reported catching whiffs of a woman’s perfume that wasn’t her own.
Strange stuff that.
Well, late one night, she’d come home after a night out with her friends. She woke me up and was completely pissed off.
When I asked her what was up, I got a curt “Come with me” in reply.
Ummm… okay.
She led me to her room where a large, purple Tupperware-type box, the kind with the snap-on lids, sat on the floor. It was the one I knew she kept all of her three-thousand purses in. I shrugged and looked at her.
“Okay, what?” I asked.
“Stick your hand in there.”
I shrug again and stick my hand in. I’m surprised but all of the purses are wet. Soaked in fact. And in the bottom of the container, there is an inch-deep puddle of liquid. I pull my hand out, wipe it on my shorts and look at her.
“What did you do?”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“Then how did it get so wet in there?”
“I have no idea. Do you think I pissed in there or something?”
“Did your cats?”
“Given that they don’t have opposable thumbs, I highly doubt it.”
But somehow, the liquid was in there. Whatever the liquid was. There was no doubt about that.
They mystery though comes when trying to figure out how it got in there to begin with. The box, as I mentioned, had a snap-on lid. The lid was still in place when she came home. Not only was the lid in place, so were the shoes that sat on top of the box. By all appearances, nothing had been disturbed, nothing moved and nothing opened and/or closed. And again, I didn’t pee in the box just to mess with her. Not that I wouldn’t, I just didn’t do it that time.
But there was an inch of liquid and a couple dozen purses that were totally soaked. And to this day, we have no idea what happened or how it happened. Or what the mysterious liquid was. It’s a riddle that has yet to be solved but is just one more brick in that big paranormal wall we’ve lived with for all of our lives…
So I watch these shows hoping to find maybe some confirmation or validation of the things I’ve seen and experienced. I keep hoping that maybe somebody won’t be pulling a scam or some clever ruse and will turn up some indisputable PROOF of life on the other side.
It hasn’t happened yet but I keep hoping and hoping.
This has been my entry for therealljidol Season 8, Topic 36B: Artifice. Thank you guys so freaking much for keeping me in the game this long. I have no idea what to expect this week so I guess you'll find out right along with me! Thank you SO much for your support over these crazy months!!!
Here is the first of my five entries for the week. As always, may the Idol gods be kind and generous...
I have to make a really dorky confession. I love those paranormal shows on TV. Shows like A Haunting, Most Haunted, Ghost Hunters, Ghost Adventures and my newest obsession… the Dead Files. I love them. Can’t get enough of them. Well… until it’s proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that what they’re doing is nothing more than a trick, a deception, a carefully crafted ruse designed to titillate and entertain us, not necessarily to prove the existence of the paranormal. I am always a little bit crestfallen when indisputable proof crops up to prove that the current show in question is a bona fide phony baloney.
But every time a new program starts up, I swear that this one is going to be real because… not all of them can be fakes, right? Right???
You’d think I would have completely given up on those programs after all of the disappointment and heartbreak. But then, I’d say you don’t know how stubborn I can be.
Some who have absolutely nothing better to do at that moment in time might ask why I want to believe in the paranormal so badly. If you are one of the ones bored or unlucky enough to have asked me that question, I’d say that it’s because I believe in it wholeheartedly. I’ve experienced it my whole life. I’ve seen and experienced too much not to believe.
I know, I know, you might be thinking that what I’m about to share with you is nothing more than another carefully crafted ruse. A story designed to pull you in and make you believe something that just isn’t true. And you’re welcome to believe that but I can tell you that everything I’m about to write is 100% true. If I’m lying, may my beloved Oakland Raiders go winless for the entire season. And if you knew me, you’d know just how serious that swear really is! I could tell you a billion stories about things that have happened over the years. But since nobody wants to read quite that many stories, I’ll whittle it down to one good one.
Hey, I’m a giver like that.
I’ve been surrounded by ghosts for as far back as I can remember. Even when we moved, which was frequently when I was growing up, the ghosts didn’t take long to make themselves known. Things were often knocked over and spilled, footsteps were frequently heard as were strange and mysterious voices. Nothing was ever threatening or scary so it’s one of those things you just got used to. They were always with us. We knew it, they knew it and we all co-existed in peace and harmony.
It didn’t change as I got older, either. Even after I’d moved into my own apartments, the ghosts would seemingly go out of their way to let me know that I had another roomie. Which was fine and all. They didn’t eat much, didn’t piss all over the toilet without cleaning it up, didn’t leave dishes in the sink for a week and weren’t rude enough to wake me up at O-Dark-Thirty with some crappy ass music. In short, they were better roommates than I’d had until my sister and I decided to share a place.
For a while nothing happened in our first apartment. I was beginning to think that the streak had been broken and we’d moved into an uninhabited apartment. I was shocked. Well, a couple of years into our residence there, my sister had asked me if I’d come into her room the night before and tried to wake her. To which I replied that I had not. She told me that she felt a distinct tapping on her leg. Hard enough to bring her out of a dead sleep. Over the next few weeks, the voices started again and she also reported catching whiffs of a woman’s perfume that wasn’t her own.
Strange stuff that.
Well, late one night, she’d come home after a night out with her friends. She woke me up and was completely pissed off.
When I asked her what was up, I got a curt “Come with me” in reply.
Ummm… okay.
She led me to her room where a large, purple Tupperware-type box, the kind with the snap-on lids, sat on the floor. It was the one I knew she kept all of her three-thousand purses in. I shrugged and looked at her.
“Okay, what?” I asked.
“Stick your hand in there.”
I shrug again and stick my hand in. I’m surprised but all of the purses are wet. Soaked in fact. And in the bottom of the container, there is an inch-deep puddle of liquid. I pull my hand out, wipe it on my shorts and look at her.
“What did you do?”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“Then how did it get so wet in there?”
“I have no idea. Do you think I pissed in there or something?”
“Did your cats?”
“Given that they don’t have opposable thumbs, I highly doubt it.”
But somehow, the liquid was in there. Whatever the liquid was. There was no doubt about that.
They mystery though comes when trying to figure out how it got in there to begin with. The box, as I mentioned, had a snap-on lid. The lid was still in place when she came home. Not only was the lid in place, so were the shoes that sat on top of the box. By all appearances, nothing had been disturbed, nothing moved and nothing opened and/or closed. And again, I didn’t pee in the box just to mess with her. Not that I wouldn’t, I just didn’t do it that time.
But there was an inch of liquid and a couple dozen purses that were totally soaked. And to this day, we have no idea what happened or how it happened. Or what the mysterious liquid was. It’s a riddle that has yet to be solved but is just one more brick in that big paranormal wall we’ve lived with for all of our lives…
So I watch these shows hoping to find maybe some confirmation or validation of the things I’ve seen and experienced. I keep hoping that maybe somebody won’t be pulling a scam or some clever ruse and will turn up some indisputable PROOF of life on the other side.
It hasn’t happened yet but I keep hoping and hoping.
This has been my entry for therealljidol Season 8, Topic 36B: Artifice. Thank you guys so freaking much for keeping me in the game this long. I have no idea what to expect this week so I guess you'll find out right along with me! Thank you SO much for your support over these crazy months!!!