What Makes a Haunted House Happy?

April 20, 2016 By

AnnieWilderBlog_CheckeboardFloor_Sylvia

What makes a haunted house (or at least it’s physical world steward) happy? A brand new, sparkling clean checkerboard floor, that’s what! Doing the happy dance now that we have a charming and fittingly vintage-looking floor in the summer kitchen, back hall, and back bath. The pretty antique stove can return from its backyard exile, the clothes dryer can be brought in from the porch, and I have already gotten the pie table and Christmas cactus set up by the window.

Apparently, Leon kept an eye on the remodeling work. When I arrived home yesterday, the floor polishers were just finishing up. One of the guys said, “Did you know your house is haunted?”
 
I said “Yes,” and asked him what Leon had done to let them know he was around. He told me that the dryer vent kept flapping loudly while they worked and the smoke detector went off several times. Now Leon has “spoken” to me before with the smoke detector ~ in that instance (which was years ago), I sensed Leon’s presence in the back hall and asked if he was there. The smoke detector responded with a few quiet beeps. I told Leon hello, thanked him for his help with the house, and waited to see if the detector would keep beeping. It didn’t and the battery did not need to be replaced for months after that.
 
The other funny thing is that the fellow who actually installed the new floor ~ a man of very few words ~ must have had the same experience that the floor polishers did, because when I arrived home after his first day working here, the smoke detector cover was sitting on the summer kitchen counter and the battery was pulled out enough so that it wouldn’t work. Neither Dudley nor I have heard the smoke detector alarm go off or even chirp for years. We even tested the battery last week to make sure it worked before putting the smoke detector back together.
 
It made me happy to know that Leon was watching over the work and the house and letting the guys know, in a friendly way, that he was here.

 

 

 

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Getting Ready for the Haunted Tea Party Season

March 18, 2016 By

 

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Having fun and busy, busy, busy, preparing for the 2016 Haunted Tea Party and Spirited Schoolhouse Season! Had a little help from the house spirits yesterday ~ more on that in a moment.

In addition to getting events scheduled, updating my calendar and website, and adding one or two new spirited events this year ~ including a group past-life regression event ~ my house needed a few repairs, fresh paint, and some restoration work. This is  part of the feng shui work that we started a year or so ago ~ in late 2014 and 2015, our yard and house exterior received the most attention. We got a good start on front porch repairs and exterior painting, including scraping and repainting the bay window, a focal pint of our side yard on the east.

In 2014 – 2015, we also did some much-needed trimming of the 150-year-old boulevard elms, and said goodbye to five trees ~ the two dying crabapple trees in front and the backyard pines, which had grown so tall they were tangled in the power lines. (We already had the power lines raised once.) I was very reluctant to cut down any trees ~ and it took me a a few years to be able to do so ~ but I am very happy with the yard’s new energy and the vitality of the remaining trees. Sometimes being a good steward means recognizing when it’s time to say farewell.

This winter, we turned our attention to inside projects ~ polishing floors, restoring floors (more on that in a future post) painting, and de-cluttering. The house energy has been somewhat chaotic and I was just asked this morning what effect, if any, the commotion has had on the spirit activity.

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Yesterday, I was doing touch-up painting in six different rooms, and the house vibe was especially topsy-turvy. We have the summer kitchen and back hall closed off because we have torn up the old linoleum floor (yay!!) and I was trying to do (the not-really-very-efficient) several things at once. I walked into the kitchen to get … something … and found myself standing by the microwave cupboard. Dudley was at the table and chuckled when I said to myself, “Why am I standing here?”

Now, usually if I forget the reason I came into a room, I will remember in a minute or two, and most of the time, I am standing right where I need to be. Nothing came to mind, though ~ until a bowl that was sitting in the dish drainer tumbled and rolled, clattering as it fell. Dudley and I looked over and laughed and I said, “Hey! I came in here to get felt strips for the bookshelf.” Which are in the drawer under the dish drainer. I am guessing that it was Leon who helped, since I have asked for his assistance several times during this repair and restoration project.

Hope to see many of you this spirited event season!

 

 

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An Odd, Spooky Moment One Night Last Week

July 7, 2015 By

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I promised to tell this story and the rainy and windy-wild weather of the past 24 hours makes tonight seem like the perfect time.

A week or so ago, there was a night in which I was home alone until around midnight. I didn’t think twice about being home alone, since I am usually not afraid in my house. At some point in the evening, I got the distinct impression that the spirit sisters wanted to communicate with me and that their message was that I was going to start seeing spirits again. (It has been a few years since I’ve seen a full-blown spirit or astral being, rather than just seeing streaks of light or darkness.) I thanked the spirit sisters and hoped that I would get a dream visit from them or possibly from Leon.

By the time I was upstairs taking out my contacts, my mind was on other things ~ that is, until I heard a loud, strange moan coming from what sounded like less than 10 or 15 feet away from me. It actually sounded like the exaggerated ghostly moaning often featured on the Scooby Doo show, when some (human) villain was trying to sound like a ghost.

Fear shot through my body as a flash of heat, than I got goosebumps so quickly I literally shivered ~ my reaction was immediate and physical. I actually thought Dudley or someone was in the house  trying to scare me so I searched through the rooms upstairs. I even looked under the bed, thinking if someone was under there, it would take them longer to get out from such a tight spot then it would take me to run out of the house. But there was no one there.

Just then, Dudley texted that he’d be home in a few minutes. Which helped me stay calm when, a few minutes later, I heard cheerful whistling coming from the corner of my room.

When Dudley got home, I told him what had happened. He said he was surprised I was brave enough to look under the bed. I told him my theory about being able to move faster than someone wedged in the smallish space between the bed and the floor. He said, “But what if it had been a ghost under the bed?”

I have to admit, that possibility had not occurred to me. I’ve lived in a spirit-filled house for more than 20 years and it never crossed my mind that a ghost might be hanging out under the bed. And now I have to NOT think of it, or I’ll never get a decent night’s sleep again ~ Gee, thanks honey! I am happy to report that, except for my iPhone issuing an unexpected flash flood warning this morning at 2 a.m., (or was it 3 a.m.?) the nights since then have been pretty peaceful.

 

(The photo accompanying this post was taken by a young friend at her house during a storm early this spring. I thought it was such a powerful image, I asked  for permission to use it, which she and her parents graciously granted.)

 

 

 

 

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Report from the Spirits, Ghosts & Guides Event with Suzanne Worthley

June 27, 2015 By

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The spirits were in the house and the guests were tuning in to them at last week’s Spirits, Ghosts & Guides: A Who’s Who of the Astral World event with energy practitioner Suzanne Worthley.

Our guests were almost all people who knew Suzanne, or me, or both of us. They were bright, curious, and ready to have fun ~ the best kind of energy to bring when learning about and interacting with the spirit world!

Suzanne taught about the difference between spirits and ghosts, whether or not there are faeries and elementals (Yes! for the faerie fans out there), and how to respectfully and safely communicate with the spirit world. She talked about chakras, auras, and the specific process of spirits entering a physical body at the beginning of life and leaving one at the end of life.

On our tour, the guests were amazing, sensing scenes or emotions from the past that Suzanne and I were often able to verify. In Leon’s former living room (at the back of the house) a few women picked up on a feeling sadness and isolation. Another saw a clothesline with freshly laundered linens and said she felt a sense of contentment.

Many guests over the years have tuned into the room’s quiet sadness, but the image of a clothesline and linens was new to me. Suzanne tuned in, and then asked me, “Is there a clothesline in back?” (There was a working clothesline in the backyard when we moved in, which was hidden by our spruce tress for many years. This spring, we had to cut down the trees because they were growing into the power line. We plan to restring the clothesline poles and use it again.) Suzanne said she saw Leon looking out the window at freshly laundered linens and feeling a sense of satisfaction and simple joy.

One of the things I love to do is imagine what my house was like in the past — 50, 75, even 100 or more years ago. It resonated with me that, especially in his last years here, Leon might have enjoyed sitting down to take a break on a summer day and watching the clean white bed sheets waving in the breeze.

The image I am using with this post was taken one night this past week, when the bats were swooping around the house, a train rumbled by with a politely muted nighttime whistle, and a rambunctious wind lifted tree branches and rattled the house decorations. Maybe in 50 or 100 years, someone will tune into my moment of appreciation for the bats and the wind and the train.

My thanks to Suzanne Worthley, the house spirits, and our wonderful guests for a great evening!

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Spirits in the Bedroom

April 24, 2015 By

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The spirits are restless this week.

Woke up last night around three o’clock to a few knocking sounds in our room. I telepathically sent out the question, “Leon, is that you?” and heard one more light knock, over by the radiator.

The previous night I woke up around the same time (which is the time of night the spirits have always been most active here) and heard what sounded like a young girl making light sleep sounds ~ kind of a soft, high-pitched “huh… huhhh….huh.” At first I thought it might be Dudley (which would have been odd) but realized the sound was coming from the corner of the room, by the bookshelves and radiator.

I actually got a little spooked by this, as I have been re-reading books by UFO contactee Stan Romanek and his wife Lisa. Stan has many, many abduction experiences and like most abductees, he is usually taken from his bedroom at night. Both Stan and Lisa talk about alien hybrid children in their books, a concept that I find profoundly unsettling. (Stan and Lisa visited my house some years ago and yes, some VERY strange stuff happened. I did post about it at the time but will repost or retell the story next week.)

Back to the little voice in our room. We do have one cat who snores, though Fluffy’s snoring sounds like little breaths, not a voice. I had almost convinced myself that it was Fluffy snoring like a child ~ till I looked down beside my nightstand and saw her in her usual sleeping spot. I even reached down to feel Fluffy’s fur and make sure it was her. It was. I considered sitting up and peering into the corner, but decided I’d rather just stay right where I was, under the covers, with Dudley beside me. He told me the next morning I could have woken him, which (strangely) did not occur to me.

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