Last night, my husband and I did our "normal" ritual for a Monday night. He was watching the NCAA College Basketball finals on his laptop while I was (sort of) watching the news and catching up with the day's news on Facebook. At 11:30, when both programs ended (and congrats, Villanova, on that "beat the buzzer" shot that won you the championship), we turned off the televison and, since I was actually the one in less pain last night, I took the dog down for his last trip outside while my husband went up and get settled upstairs. When I returned to the second floor, where the living room, a small room that has become Bill's fly tying space, and a weight room all are situated, I realized I was still wearing the reading glasses I wear when using the laptop were still in place, so I went back into the living room to drop them onto my laptop for morning. A quick glance around proved that all was in order. There were no candles left burning. The television was dark and silent. All lights had been extinguished.
I went up to bed.
At about the time that I was finally warm enough to start to drift off into the arms of Morpheus, with the bulk of my husband snoring as he pressed against my back and the small, furry weight of the dog pressed up against my stomach (also snoring), I started hearing soft voices. I lifted my head to listen for a minute, trying to tell if it was real or my crazy imagination, but there were no lights or sounds other than that soft murmur that I convinced myself had to be coming from outside the house. Maybe one of the neighbors was out by a car saying goodbye to a late night guest?
I dismissed the sounds and slipped off to sleep.
As always, I was awakened by the clock radio and the songs and chatter of the country radio station that my husband prefers. Since I'm currently on the late shift (12-8 four days a week and a morning shift on Friday, just to throw off my inner clock), I did my normal thing about getting up, dozing lightly until the radio shut itself off after an hour, hearing the weather report and groaning about it, same old same old.
Then I noticed something that WASN'T "same old": that soft sound of murmuring voices in the distance that I had written off the night before as late night guests leaving the home of one of our neighbors.
"Are you hearing voices?" I asked the hubster, who normally will cock his head to one side, listen for a moment, and then tell me I'm imagining things...
This time, he responded, with a confused look, "Yes, I am."
"Did you get up at some point and turn on the tv?" I ask, and again, that confused look.
"No. Did you?"
I start hearing the theme to the Twilight Zone as I respond in the negative, but then his face clears as he comes up with an explanation: "Maybe the dog went down and was trying to see if I had anything on the other side of my laptop and hit the button."
"The dog", whether he actually does it or not, gets blamed for a lot of things that happen around here, from closing doors that you could swear you left propped open, to knocking things off tables, and obviously, even to turning on the television by walking on a remote that, considering how small the dog is, should have been outside of his reach on the tv stand where my husband stores his laptop. But then I remember hearing the voices as I was drifting off to sleep at a point when I can solidly connect the dots to prove that both Pookah and Bill were snoring next to me, having remained within physical contact with me from the moment I settled beneath the covers until I was warm enough to not wish to go see if somehow the television had turned back on or if, perhaps, I was hearing someone talking outside in the middle of the night.....
Now, my children and I, and even my husband at one point before we ever moved in, have mentioned seeing something a bit off in this house. When we were painting the outside of the building in an effort to hurry the paperwork along when we were buying the place, my husband insisted that his Uncle Ken, who died in 1976, if I remember the stories correctly, had been sitting above him at one point when he was painting close to the peak over the garage and smilled at him, as if approving of our choice to purchase this property. If I were to bring that up now, he would deny ever telling me that, as he and I have different believes in the spirit world, and he is currently at an all-time Mr. Spock logic mode on most of the weird happenings in this house, so unless it's a thoroughly logical explanation that DOESN'T involve some prankster in another plane of existence, all is well in Bill's World.
I, however, being raised to believe that God, an entity that cannot be touched, but can be felt in one's heart, believe that there are things in the world you just can't explain with logic. Take, for example, my very mobile coffee cups when we first moved in.....
I am often left alone in this house, and at times, I have done things such as pouring a cup of coffee and leaving it next to the coffee maker while I do something on the first floor, which houses a bathroom, a long, narrow combination kitchen/dining room (or, at one point, our living room), a den/laundry room and a space we call "the rock room", as it has a rock floor that appears to have been a back deck space at some point in it's past. About four years or so ago, my husband walled off a part of the "rock room" that features a crushed rock floor (where the former owner built a "greenhouse" that was on the south side of the building and was too hot to grow the plants), but when we first moved in, this was a space one could easily reach from inside the house, and it often had spider webs trailing down one corner, as we didn't use that space much and the spiders love a good drafty spot....
It was the spider-infested corner where I would find my freshly poured coffee whenever it went missing, behind an unblemished wall of web, still steaming from the point about 15 minutes earlier that I had poured it and left it next to the coffee maker. (The first couple of times this happened, I searched for an hour or more before finding it, but after a point, I would roll my eyes and head for that one corner, where the seemingly playful poltergeist seemed to enjoy putting it because I would always curse under my breath about having to break my coffee free without having any web or spiders fall into it.)
There is, and always has been, a spot at the foot of the stairs on the first floor where I catch a chill every time I go downstairs for anything. Sometimes the chill I catch there is fierce enough to make me shiver to the point I can barely walk as I make my way back up to the living room for a blanket. My husband used to make fun of me for "being wimpy" until I started touching him with a foot or a hand that has suddenly become an ice cube just from walking through that one spot. He's now decided that I have something seriously wrong with my circulatory system, even though this house is the only place where I get those fierce, "you-can't-move-until-you're-warm-again" chills.
And, of course, there are the odd electrical things that happen here far more often than they should, like a television that turns itself on or a stereo system that turns itself down when the phone rings and back up again when I've hung up and, sometimes just for my own amusement, call out "Ok, I'm done. We can have the music back up." (The stereo doesn't have any such thing as a remote, doesn't turn the sound up or down on a regular basis, and has been checked by Mr. Logical more than once for any weirdness, yet it still happens from time to time.....)
While researching and talking to various people over the almost 20 years we've been living with this, I've started using such oddities as last night's "voices" as an indication that it's time to relight a smudge stick and walk through the house, trying to get every possible space touched by the smoke from the ancient form of cleansing and repeating my title "prayer" over and over as I work by way from the third floor, where we have a master bedroom, a bath and my office, through the second and first floors (including the basement and garage) and ending at the front door, where I briefly open the door in a symbolic offer for any evil to leave before I "seal" the door against it's return. This is a temporary fix for the problem, but one that buys me from a couple of weeks up to a year without the return of any of the oddities (although that cold spot always remains there on the first floor, defying me to make whatever is causing it to leave). As I've been typing this entry and the sage smoke that I spread around circulates, it's an almost notable sensation of peace that's been growing around me, as if telling me that, even should it be only a temporary fix, I've managed to banish the spirits for another little while.
Of course, this also means that the house smells of burnt sage, so if I don't do anything more before I leave the house for my shift, my husband will be texting me about the "dump smell" in the house, asking which insence that is he's smelling so he can throw it out. (He and I grew up in an era when dumps burned the garbage once a week, and a smell very similar to my sage would permeate the air for miles around the dump - right up until the EPA realized that, if you could smell the smoke, you were close enough to get ill should someone burn something toxic......)
So, if you have little issues in your house like mine, I recommend doing a search for "Smudging Protection" against spirits and emotional baggage left in your home. As I have to do, you may need to repeat it several times a year, and it always helps to start the session by drawing the smoke to yourself to banish all negativity in the practitioner before the real work begins.
Although I no longer believe in organized religion, I do still believe that there are invisible entities out there, some good and some evil. I sincerely hope that I have helped you to find the way to your own inner good and that you can benefit from a good "spiritual cleansing" to begin the spring cleaning (or fall cleaning, if you live in the Southern Hemisphere and are just entering your "prepare for winter" ritual). May only good and light enter your heart and soul, and may only good things come your way in this coming season.
Blessed be!
I went up to bed.
At about the time that I was finally warm enough to start to drift off into the arms of Morpheus, with the bulk of my husband snoring as he pressed against my back and the small, furry weight of the dog pressed up against my stomach (also snoring), I started hearing soft voices. I lifted my head to listen for a minute, trying to tell if it was real or my crazy imagination, but there were no lights or sounds other than that soft murmur that I convinced myself had to be coming from outside the house. Maybe one of the neighbors was out by a car saying goodbye to a late night guest?
I dismissed the sounds and slipped off to sleep.
As always, I was awakened by the clock radio and the songs and chatter of the country radio station that my husband prefers. Since I'm currently on the late shift (12-8 four days a week and a morning shift on Friday, just to throw off my inner clock), I did my normal thing about getting up, dozing lightly until the radio shut itself off after an hour, hearing the weather report and groaning about it, same old same old.
Then I noticed something that WASN'T "same old": that soft sound of murmuring voices in the distance that I had written off the night before as late night guests leaving the home of one of our neighbors.
"Are you hearing voices?" I asked the hubster, who normally will cock his head to one side, listen for a moment, and then tell me I'm imagining things...
This time, he responded, with a confused look, "Yes, I am."
"Did you get up at some point and turn on the tv?" I ask, and again, that confused look.
"No. Did you?"
I start hearing the theme to the Twilight Zone as I respond in the negative, but then his face clears as he comes up with an explanation: "Maybe the dog went down and was trying to see if I had anything on the other side of my laptop and hit the button."
"The dog", whether he actually does it or not, gets blamed for a lot of things that happen around here, from closing doors that you could swear you left propped open, to knocking things off tables, and obviously, even to turning on the television by walking on a remote that, considering how small the dog is, should have been outside of his reach on the tv stand where my husband stores his laptop. But then I remember hearing the voices as I was drifting off to sleep at a point when I can solidly connect the dots to prove that both Pookah and Bill were snoring next to me, having remained within physical contact with me from the moment I settled beneath the covers until I was warm enough to not wish to go see if somehow the television had turned back on or if, perhaps, I was hearing someone talking outside in the middle of the night.....
Now, my children and I, and even my husband at one point before we ever moved in, have mentioned seeing something a bit off in this house. When we were painting the outside of the building in an effort to hurry the paperwork along when we were buying the place, my husband insisted that his Uncle Ken, who died in 1976, if I remember the stories correctly, had been sitting above him at one point when he was painting close to the peak over the garage and smilled at him, as if approving of our choice to purchase this property. If I were to bring that up now, he would deny ever telling me that, as he and I have different believes in the spirit world, and he is currently at an all-time Mr. Spock logic mode on most of the weird happenings in this house, so unless it's a thoroughly logical explanation that DOESN'T involve some prankster in another plane of existence, all is well in Bill's World.
I, however, being raised to believe that God, an entity that cannot be touched, but can be felt in one's heart, believe that there are things in the world you just can't explain with logic. Take, for example, my very mobile coffee cups when we first moved in.....
I am often left alone in this house, and at times, I have done things such as pouring a cup of coffee and leaving it next to the coffee maker while I do something on the first floor, which houses a bathroom, a long, narrow combination kitchen/dining room (or, at one point, our living room), a den/laundry room and a space we call "the rock room", as it has a rock floor that appears to have been a back deck space at some point in it's past. About four years or so ago, my husband walled off a part of the "rock room" that features a crushed rock floor (where the former owner built a "greenhouse" that was on the south side of the building and was too hot to grow the plants), but when we first moved in, this was a space one could easily reach from inside the house, and it often had spider webs trailing down one corner, as we didn't use that space much and the spiders love a good drafty spot....
It was the spider-infested corner where I would find my freshly poured coffee whenever it went missing, behind an unblemished wall of web, still steaming from the point about 15 minutes earlier that I had poured it and left it next to the coffee maker. (The first couple of times this happened, I searched for an hour or more before finding it, but after a point, I would roll my eyes and head for that one corner, where the seemingly playful poltergeist seemed to enjoy putting it because I would always curse under my breath about having to break my coffee free without having any web or spiders fall into it.)
There is, and always has been, a spot at the foot of the stairs on the first floor where I catch a chill every time I go downstairs for anything. Sometimes the chill I catch there is fierce enough to make me shiver to the point I can barely walk as I make my way back up to the living room for a blanket. My husband used to make fun of me for "being wimpy" until I started touching him with a foot or a hand that has suddenly become an ice cube just from walking through that one spot. He's now decided that I have something seriously wrong with my circulatory system, even though this house is the only place where I get those fierce, "you-can't-move-until-you're-warm-again" chills.
And, of course, there are the odd electrical things that happen here far more often than they should, like a television that turns itself on or a stereo system that turns itself down when the phone rings and back up again when I've hung up and, sometimes just for my own amusement, call out "Ok, I'm done. We can have the music back up." (The stereo doesn't have any such thing as a remote, doesn't turn the sound up or down on a regular basis, and has been checked by Mr. Logical more than once for any weirdness, yet it still happens from time to time.....)
While researching and talking to various people over the almost 20 years we've been living with this, I've started using such oddities as last night's "voices" as an indication that it's time to relight a smudge stick and walk through the house, trying to get every possible space touched by the smoke from the ancient form of cleansing and repeating my title "prayer" over and over as I work by way from the third floor, where we have a master bedroom, a bath and my office, through the second and first floors (including the basement and garage) and ending at the front door, where I briefly open the door in a symbolic offer for any evil to leave before I "seal" the door against it's return. This is a temporary fix for the problem, but one that buys me from a couple of weeks up to a year without the return of any of the oddities (although that cold spot always remains there on the first floor, defying me to make whatever is causing it to leave). As I've been typing this entry and the sage smoke that I spread around circulates, it's an almost notable sensation of peace that's been growing around me, as if telling me that, even should it be only a temporary fix, I've managed to banish the spirits for another little while.
Of course, this also means that the house smells of burnt sage, so if I don't do anything more before I leave the house for my shift, my husband will be texting me about the "dump smell" in the house, asking which insence that is he's smelling so he can throw it out. (He and I grew up in an era when dumps burned the garbage once a week, and a smell very similar to my sage would permeate the air for miles around the dump - right up until the EPA realized that, if you could smell the smoke, you were close enough to get ill should someone burn something toxic......)
So, if you have little issues in your house like mine, I recommend doing a search for "Smudging Protection" against spirits and emotional baggage left in your home. As I have to do, you may need to repeat it several times a year, and it always helps to start the session by drawing the smoke to yourself to banish all negativity in the practitioner before the real work begins.
Although I no longer believe in organized religion, I do still believe that there are invisible entities out there, some good and some evil. I sincerely hope that I have helped you to find the way to your own inner good and that you can benefit from a good "spiritual cleansing" to begin the spring cleaning (or fall cleaning, if you live in the Southern Hemisphere and are just entering your "prepare for winter" ritual). May only good and light enter your heart and soul, and may only good things come your way in this coming season.
Blessed be!
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