Night, smonster!
The theater at my college, which long long ago had started out as a barn/stable with various associated starcrossed student/stablehand and cruel riding accident tragic stories, apparently has a ghost in the costume shop/former tack room. Lights mysteriously going off, everything from measuring tape to entire bolts of fabric abruptly disappearing and then turning up in comically improbable places, the usual.
The summer theater costume mistress, who was otherwise a thoroughly stolid, unfussy and woo-free individual, told about being up late one night until she was finally, blissfully, one garment away from done. She decided that just this once she could quit early, as long as she had the fabric cut and laid out for basting before she crashed.
She got out her best fabric scissors, the NYC garment-district-graduation-present-to-herself ones, laid them on the table, turned to pick up the fabric and muslin, turned back, and the scissors were gone.
She looked around the table. She looked under the table. She looked in her pockets and her sewing kit in case she'd been so tired she'd only dreamed that she had taken them out and laid them on the table. No dice -- gone, just gone.
She turned her back to the table, threw up her hands, and said to the ceiling, "Okay, you had your fun, but now I'm so tired I'm about to cry. Pretty please?" And she turned back around, and there they were back on the table just where she'd left them.
There's also a rather creepier story involving my aunt and the furnished apartment she and a friend rented after the elderly occupant died, but I think I may have told that one before.
There's also a rather creepier story involving my aunt and the furnished apartment she and a friend rented after the elderly occupant died, but I think I may have told that one before.
Not to me!
sits on floor, waits patiently
The more ghost stories I get from other people who I know are sane and stable people (stop laughing), the more confident I feel that what's happened to me is real and not just some brain-grape I had.
I was listening to NPR this morning and a Dr being interviewed pronounces a word basically the way it's spelled, instead of correctly. I'm embarrassed for the guy and think how humiliating that would be to mispronounce a word in front of however-many listeners on the radio. So when I get to work I look it up on Dictionary.com, trying to give him the benefit of the doubt, thinking maybe it's an alternate pronunciation. And it turns out he pronounced it correctly...AND I'VE BEEN SAYING IT WRONG! Who knows how many times (probably not that many, it's not that common a word) over how many years! THE SHAME! Do not forsake me, fellow Word Lovers!
The thing is, here's the thing: it is: SAY-shuh-tee. And we don't care about your opinions.
This leads me to my greater point. A couple of times a month, Christopher mispronounces a word. We call this THE READER'S CURSE.
His last mistake was subterfuge. He said it like it was: "Sutter-fudge."
"Sutter-fudge" is still our go-to laugh.
Oooh, and I just a few seconds ago used the word "subterfuge" against a friend on FB (addressing his abject failure to exercise same). Goosebumps!
Zen, I will attempt the story about my aunt but Matilda requires fizzy water first. Back in a moment.
I still remember when my sister wanted a ca-NOPEY bed. ...of course, she also thought her middle name was Ceiling, for a long time (it's Celia).
I used "obstreperous" in an email the other day and my boss told me she had to look it up.
Yeah, my Facebook page kind of devolved into beefcake pictures of Chris Evans for a while after that.
I bet the end result of that bet will be that both groups of kids get a superhero visit, regardless of which team wins the sportsball event.
Okay, my aunt and the furnished apartment.
In the late '60s/early '70s, just out of college but not yet married, my aunt, a good friend of hers, and the German shepherd of whom they shared custody rented an apartment in Oakland that was a great deal -- cheap, and came completely furnished, as the last occupant had been an elderly immigrant from China who had no relatives in the US and nobody to take any of his things; he'd kept everything neat and tidy so the landlord was content to just vacuum and rent it furnished.
My aunt and her friend moved in, settled in and were perfectly happy for about four or five days. Then thing started happening. Cold spots. Rattling windows and banging doors. The dog furiously barking at nothing at all, then whining and cringing and hiding under the kitchen table. And one morning near the end of their first week in the place, they were having breakfast when they heard a door slam furiously, and then the roar of a furious wind with no rational source howling through the living room on the other side of the door. They heard things banging, pounding, being flung about, and the shepherd huddled at their feet and cried terrified doggie cries.
And then it all stopped. Dead, utter, breathless silence. They looked out into the living room, and saw everything inside out and upside down. Knick-knack drawers pulled out and dumped, pillows flung from the couch, curtains bunched up on the curtain rods, rug corners flipped over.
Being good Catholic girls barely past twenty, they (a) freaked out good and hard, and then (b) called the rectory of the nearest parish. The pastor listened to them, every word, and instead of pooh-poohing or laughing it off, he just said he'd be over as soon as he could.
And over he came, and looked at everything, and asked about the previous occupant; then he looked around the room again, and said, "He must be looking for something. Let's help him." And then he slowly and methodically began searching the room, tidying up as he went. Along the way he found, smooshed into the back of the sofa behind one of the cushions, a single gold silken tassel, but nothing else of note.
After the room was all tidied up, the priest held up the tassel and addressed the room in general; my aunt says that he said something like, roughly (it was around 45 years ago, and it scared her shitless at the time, so she doesn't remember his exact words): "This is a little thing, but it's beautiful, and it must have belonged to you. I'm going to take it back to my church and lay it in a corner near the candles and the altar. My faith may not have been yours, but it's still a sacred place, and I promise that this one thing of yours will be taken care of and you will be remembered, and if you leave these girls in peace you can come to the sacred space and be near your object of remembrance any time you like. You can follow me out and see where I'll put it; it's a nice quiet place and I think you'll like it."
And then he shook the hands of my aunt and her friend, and took the tassel and left, and tucked the tassel into a quiet corner near the altar, and the ransacking spirit was never heard from again.
JZ, that's an excellent story! Not creepy, just a lonely old spirit looking for one thing to be remembered by.
