COSMOS MYSTERY AREA

Sorry, all:  (Spoiler alert . . . if you want to go to Cosmos Mystery Area without bias, don't read further.) Like the page boy's lone voice of dissent in 'The Emperor's New Clothes,' citing the Emperor was, in fact, naked, I have to be a lone voice of dissent when it comes to the Cosmos Mystery Area outside of Hill City, South Dakota.  This place was actually recommended to us as a 'must see!' attraction. "You won't believe it!  Nature just goes topsy-turvy there, trees bend unnaturally into each other, water flows uphill; you've got to go there!"  

Okay, great lead-in . . . we had to go there.  Except my hubby was being a little bit chicken.  He wouldn't go on the tour, citing 'Things aren't natural in this place.'  What did he think, the 'unnatural' forces of the area were going to make him shrink?  Get heavier?  We're both headed that direction without worrying about pinning it on some strange energy vortex.  A blog I read about the attraction said many people make a dash for the restroom either during or immediately after the tour from the wooziness of the area, so those of you who know me well and know I battled vertigo on and off for a few years can understand my reticence to go up that hill, but I decided I was going to brave probable severe nausea all by my lonesome to bring you the best scoop about this place.

Meh.  Not surprising my skeptical side kicked in within the first five minutes when they began touting the 'bent and twisted' trees.  Right. Um, we live in Northern Arizona and see saplings of oaks and pines doing this bending phenomenon all the time.  The phenomenon is called snow drifts and wind.  A storm blows in from one direction and dumps a bunch of snow on struggling saplings, they bend over from the weight of the snow accumulating on the one side.  Then later if a storm blows in from the opposite direction with loads of snow carried on its wind, I bet you can guess what happens.  After one experiment that actually did give me a little pause, knowing that it is some slight of hand but not quite able to figure it out, then we came to the cabin. They have two; the original cabin, then they decided they wanted to get more tours fitted in on a given day so they constructed another.  Below is a diagram I made of their cabin(s) . . . I should have taken a picture of the outside, but I was just too distracted/disgusted to think to click the camera. Having a little background in construction, engineering and a fairly healthy dose of common horse sense, it was immediately apparent how they were getting balls, water, etc. to roll uphill.

Looking at my pitiful sketch (sorry, I didn't have a felt-tip pen or ruler while on the road) you can probably see how they do it as well.  If you tilt your head to the side so the built up floor in the 2nd, interior sketch looks level, then you see how the other section of floor (A) looks like it's going uphill, when in fact it is still at a slightly downward angle so a tennis ball or water will still roll downward, but inside it appears to be going uphill as your sense of balance adjusts to actually standing somewhere around 30 degrees. They do their 'slight of hand' with a series of built-up floors, built up even more than the slant of the mountain.  They can even make a chair appear to hold steady on just it's back legs perched on a ledge, but it is all in the center of gravity.  They have to adjust the chair back and forth until they find that center of gravity and only then do they let go.  With our tour, the little girl sitting on the chair fell back about six inches and hit her head against the wall twice because the tour guide couldn't quite get that exact center.   Needless to say I never had a moment of vertigo or nausea, because all I had to do was look down at the floor and see exactly what was what.

There was only one set of 'experiments' they did that had me scratching my head.  They had two separate slabs of concrete on the ground which are parallel and about two feet apart which they prove are level by setting a contractor's level on them, then a tennis ball and also a water bottle on them at different points.  They also take the level and place it perpendicular to the slabs, bracing each end on either slab to show the slabs are also level to each other. These two slabs are about one foot by four foot each in size. The guide picked two people, each one to step onto the middle of each slab, facing each other.  We studied the height difference between the two people, then they changed places and there was at least a five inch difference in height.  Hmmm.  At the end of the tour they had a cement slab shaped like a capital T.  The entire slab was also shown to be level.  I was asked to stand at the bottom of the T, and two people were placed at opposite ends of the top of the T.  The guide asked me where my P.O.V. showed the top of the shorter person's head to fall on the gentleman opposite.  Then he had them change sides, sure enough the shorter person grew by five inches. I wasn't satisfied . . . I asked to have the two slowly walk towards each other to see what happened.  As they walked toward the middle their heights adjusted to almost exactly the same height.  I'm sure this was also some type of optical illusion, I just haven't figured out how they did it yet.  The guide was right; he told us we'd be saying 'That is so weird' by the end of the tour, and over those two experiments I did, but as for the rest . . .  If I seem a little bah-humbug, it's because I handed over almost ten dollars for a 'slight of hand' show.  But I will say, even knowing it was a hoax, it is still fun to see how all of us on tour reacted to our world suddenly being tilted off its asses . . . oops, axis.   

My point in this post is two-fold; to alert you to spend your money here only if you want the fun, but to me, it is this kind of bogus  trivializing of those elements of the earth we don't understand that make it more of an uphill battle to actually accept those things we don't understand.   I firmly and truly believe there are many things of this earth we haven't begun to scratch the surface of, so I keep looking and researching to expand my knowledge base.  Tomorrow we head for Sicca Hollow, a legendary forest the Sioux Indians of Dakota believe is haunted.  I will give you my impressions of this forest in the next couple of days. Later, friends.

GREAT BILLBOARD SIGN IN HILL CITY, SOUTH DAKOTA

We're on our annual vacation, trekking across the Country.  Saw this sign in Hill City, South Dakota!  Nowhere in all of our travels have we been made to feel more at home!  Are we in redneck country, or what?  

MT. RUSHMORE

Hello all:  We are on our annual motorhome vacation, and have arrived at Mt. Rushmore in South Dakota.  I've posted some pictures of the stunning country but oh, the winding roads.  And beyond tackling the switchbacks we were also dodging pile after pile of buffalo pies.   Our doggies fared quite well, though, no yacks from the front or the back seat!  Below was our first look at Mt. Rushmore from afar, thirteen miles away.  Aren't the statues impressive?     

We came through New Mexico, then up through Colorado, paralleling I-25, the main highway that runs North and South through Denver.  We were on Hwy. 71 about 50/60 miles east of Highway 25, and it was mainly a two lane road, sometimes down to one lane with no divider markings.  That got a little nerve wracking.  Thank goodness for our Garmin or we would have been completely lost the way these roads zig and zag. 

But I wanted to share with you our observations along these country back roads.  It was very sad to see one after another tiny farming town along the way reduced to a ghost town.  Not a ghost town from the frontier gold rush days, but a town that, maybe as little as ten to twenty years ago was a viable little community.  Now buildings are crumbling, roofs are caving in, windows are missing and doors are boarded up. It was almost spooky to see how many ghost towns there were . . . and hubby and I were asking ourselves, 'Where did everybody go?' Obviously they're not farming anymore . . . we passed hundreds of miles of drought-ridden or completely dead crops.  Abandoned.  And the few corn crops we saw which had corn ripe for the picking, the cobs couldn't have been bigger than three inches at best.

No more so than on the rural  back roads will you find yourself asking, 'What's happening to our country?'  I'm sure farming hasn't been hit harder than many other industries, but it is real easy to see the end result here.  God bless our great country and may she live to see a new era in productivity with an upcoming generation that will be given the same opportunities as the generations before them, and like their predecessors won't be afraid to roll up their sleeves and get their hands dirty in her soil.  To put in an honest days work for an honest days pay.

For now her amber waves of grain are brown and withered, but her soil is resting . . . she's waiting for the days to come; the time of rejuvenation.  America has seen tribulations before.  Her great Founding Fathers still look over the land as a reminder that she can be great once again.  Let us hope her people choose to continue the tradition of being so themselves.  

SAN DIEGO'S HAUNTED WHALEY HOUSE

The Haunted Whaley House

Hi all:  Ever heard of this place?  It's one of my favorite 'haunts' from when I was a kid.  It's reputed to be the most haunted house in the U.S., according to several sources. The United States Chamber of Commerce has declared the Whaley House as being genuinely haunted. It also happens to hold the distinction of being the oldest brick structure in southern California. The house has all of the signs of being haunted. Apparitions, cold spots, feelings of being touched (or hung!) unexplainable lights, footsteps, rappings, objects moving, odd smells and feelings of being watched.  All of these have been observed, felt or heard in the Whaley House since it opened to the public in 1960.

Located in San Diego's Old Town, the house dates back to 1857 and it also includes an attached courthouse where, from what I've read and heard, frontier justice was most harshly and swiftly dispensed in its day. The Whaley House grounds even had their own hanging tree.  Wasn't that convenient?  When the gavel came down and a guilty verdict was announced, the hapless unfortunate was oft times dragged out into the courtyard for sentencing.  No wallowing in jail cells for the convicted.  

One of their more famous ghosts is named Yankee Jim, who was hung on the property, actually before the house itself was built.  He was hung for supposedly stealing a boat.  There was never any hard evidence found and Yankee Jim went to his death proclaiming his innocence.  It was not an easy hanging.  Sketchy history reports claim that Yankee Jim was a very tall man with unruly blond hair, and the law miscalculated his height. When they pulled the wagon out from under him, supposedly his feet still touched the ground.  He was reported to have actually strangled to death, slowly.  Lillian Whaley, the owner's daughter who lived in the house until 1953, claimed it was Yankee Jim's footsteps she heard at night walking the floors.  Today loud footsteps are heard upstairs when you're downstairs, and vice-versa.  And sightings of a tall man with messy blond hair are reported frequently.  His laughter is said to be heard echoing through the hallways.  Several other ghosts are said to haunt the house, including Mrs. Anna Whaley, who likes to play the piano.  Some of their children have been spotted, all of them having died bizarrely, along with the family friend of Anna's who accidentally hung herself on Anna's clothesline. And if that weren't enough, there are spirits of those who were actually hung where the parlor now stands, and that makes the parlor area the most haunted area of the house. Some have actually reported the sensation of a noose slipping about their neck when visiting the parlor rooms!   The gavel has been heard rapping in the courthouse, the privacy ropes keeping the public away from the judge's podium and out of the pews are frequently seen swinging; all in all a very creepy place.

The Haunted Parlor

I lived in San Diego until I was twelve and visited The Whaley House many times with my friends. And I have been back to visit a handful of times since moving away.  I have to say that never once did any of my friends nor myself ever see or experience anything in the Whaley House, though many, many others have.  

I had a ridiculously hard time ever getting hubby to go through the Whaley House with me in all the years we revisited San Diego.  He was always nervous about the spirits lurking around the place and didn't want to be susceptible to them.  It wasn't until our girls became teenagers and each took a friend, that those extra four voices were able to add their whining insistence to mine and pressure him into going in. We got out of the front door without incident, although once we returned home and had the pictures we took inside the house developed, we noticed a very definite shady outline of what looked like Thomas Whaley against the wall in the front parlor.  Above the painting.  I posted the picture below but the image is so subtle I know you won't be able to see it.  However, I find myself looking at the picture and skeptically analyzing it, questioning the authenticity.  Because, being a painter, I could see where someone could paint this very detailed outline in a slightly different shade of white . . . so close to the original color the naked eye probably couldn't see it, but it would be picked up by a camera.  Yup, that's me . . . after all I've experienced at our place my first reaction is still to be skeptical.  But, skeptical or not, it still makes for a creepy-fun afternoon!

The Haunted Parlor (faint image is above the painting)

So, don't miss a trip through the Whaley House, if you dare, on your next visit to San Diego.  Events do not occur there every day.  In fact, sometimes weeks pass without a spectral 'gotcha,' according to the historians who greet those touring the house.  But unlike myself, you may just walk through at the precise moment you're given a memorable, spine-tingling experience!  Later, friends.

Had to add this, also from that trip . . . someone's huge yacht planted in the middle of the freeway.  That's something else you don't see every day!

COWBOY BOB AND THE CARETAKERS

So, it's been a hectic couple of days, and promises to be busy for a few more so I may be a little scarce until sometime next week.  I'm sitting here enjoying the thunderstorms and patter of rain on the back porch, and I'm thinking back on the various guys we've had stay here over the years; free room and board in our guest apartment in exchange for maintenance around our acreage.  

I can't remember one of these men who hasn't had an experience of some kind; probably because as a minimum they've stirred Cowboy Bob's curiosity . . . who is this person, what are they doing here?  Beyond the usual noises a frame house makes, some have heard doors opening/closing, the ongoing footsteps.  But there have been caretakers we've hired that apparently Cowboy Bob didn't like particularly well, and he'd let the caretaker know his true feelings, by acting them out.  While we were away traveling, this one caretaker who lived up in the guest apartment would no more than come home from work and get inside the apartment and he'd hear multiple doors opening and slamming shut all at the same time directly underneath him in our rec room. He'd charge down the stairs to find everything in place, nothing unsecured. Up he'd go back to the apartment and within two to five minutes the doors would be slamming open and shut again. Cursing in exasperation, this time he'd run down the stairs and all would be quiet and in order. This would go on several times on the nights the activity decided to manifest. It wasn't something he would ignore because he was in charge of keeping the place secure in our absence. It was intermittent, not happening every night, but enough that our caretaker was very annoyed by the time we returned home from our trip.

Another friend who watched the house while we were gone, woke up at somewhere around two-thirty to three a.m. one morning and looked up toward the ceiling fan. He lay there for about three minutes watching a spooky mist with bluish light pulsing within it, slowly swirling around the ceiling fan until it at last disappeared. Of course the windows and doors were closed and we live in such a wilderness area you never see car lights . . . only star lights. 

Whatever the energy is around here, it has a mischievous streak . . . more than one of the caretakers has had their stuff disappear only to reappear much later. This is a favorite prank around the place. We've actually been looking for something we left right on the kitchen table, looking for it for hours or even days, and then five minutes after we quit looking for it, amazingly it reappears right in the middle of the table.  And not with a bunch of other clutter around it . . . all by its lonesome. Very bizarre. One time it took over a year for the item to be returned. I was wrapping Christmas gifts in our rec room, using our ping-pong table as my wrapping platform. I had the gifts piled on a gaming table we had located close by. As I finished I realized I was suddenly one gift short. A video game for one of the nephews. It had just been there. I turned first the game room and then the whole house upside down looking for it and ended up having to buy another one because we never found it.

Over a year later I walked into the rec room and spied the video game sitting on top of the gaming table, right where I knew I'd left it. No dust on it or any signs of wear and tear, it was still perfectly brand new and in its wrapper. I will tell you that the video game's discovery was very unsettling, and exasperating. I'd spent good money on another video game only to end up stuck with an extra. I donated it. Ho, Ho, Ho . . . someone got a little Merry After Christmas present.    

So, what exactly is this energy around our place? Is it just that? An energy of a nature mankind has yet to understand or explain? That seems plausible, especially after finding out something interesting which was shared on a "Ghost Hunters" episode. After several years of ghost hunting, the guys were asked recently to comment on the things they found in common between the sites which displayed the most activity. One, it seemed to make a big difference if there were teenage girls in the house. Hmmm. I had two teenage girls, who weren't living here at the time the activity was at its heaviest, but they were here often enough. Secondly, by far the most active sites were sitting on top of limestone. Limestone is apparently some type of conductor for the kind of psychic energy they experienced. Hearing that, I looked at my hubby and asked; "Um, just what type of rock is this mountain made of that our house is bolted to?" He replied; "Solid limestone." Well, of course it is. So perhaps it's a naturally occurring energy, then.  

Except . . . that 'energy' has been seen and spoken to. The energy here seems to have taken on the persona of a Cavalry Officer. That, along with the fact that about four years ago, after a bout of very heavy rains, my hubby discovered what looked like the remains of an old grave on our acreage. There were a few piled up rocks, the remnants of two pieces of wood with the numbers '3' and '8' burned into the one piece and the other piece had antique nails which had been apparently used to piece together a makeshift cross. After discovering these items,  the 'activity' immediately slowed down to a fraction of what it used to be. Though another of our relatives was visiting here recently, staying in the guest apartment, and in the wee hours of morning she was awakened to the sounds of heavy footsteps coming up the outside stairs, stopping right outside the door.  That's Cowboy Bob, whatever he or it is, saying, "I'm still here . . . don't think for a minute I'm going to let you forget me."     Later, friends 

CAN OUR LITTLE LOST ONES COME BACK?

That is the question my hubby and I are asking ourselves tonight.  I have to digress from Cowboy Bob once again and share with you something I think you'll appreciate that my hubby and I just encountered this afternoon. For a couple of months now, when I'm alone at night in the living room writing and its quiet, hubby's doing something else or gone to bed, I've been hearing this very definitive scratching at our back door, not ten feet away from me. Loud. I get up, throw on the back patio light and look out . . . but there's nothing there. This has happened well over a dozen times, sometimes several nights in a row. Usually more than once a week.  I've always thought that I was dealing with a Cujo squirrel at the back door, but there's never anything there.  So I'm thinking, well, maybe they see me approaching and high-tail it out of sight before I get to the door, so I've left it at that, especially because I'm the only one hearing it.  I told hubby about it two or three times, and he always looked at me like I'd sprouted a third eye, following that up with something like, "Yeah, yeah.  You need to get your hearing checked."

Then my youngest was visiting this summer for a little while and she was sitting close to me in the living room one night, and she heard it.  I'd gotten so used to the noise by that time I'd been ignoring it.  

"What on earth is that scratching noise?" she said and stood up.

I startled, saying, "So you heard that, too?"   

She reached the back door in under five seconds, saying "Yeah, I heard it!" but there was nothing there.  

I shrugged and said, "Probably squirrels."  Except you never see squirrels or chipmunks running around outside on our back patio deck at night.  Ever.

Since we live in the middle of the wilderness we have a very large outside dog run that is completely enclosed so the wild beasties can't get at our dogs.  Nothing bigger than a fly can get through the thick wire mesh. And yet . . . Today hubby and I were in the utility room talking. He was about five feet away from our doggie door, which we'd put the cover on so our kitty couldn't go out to the dog run and 'poo' when it's in the house.  Anyway, we both heard the loud scratching of something wanting in, and I figured I'd accidentally left one of the poms out on the ramp when I secured the cover over the door but, no, hubby opened the doggie door and nothing was there!   Our doggies came out of their dog carriers where they'd been sleeping, giving us a "What gives?" look.  My hubby, on the other hand,  got that 'round-as-saucers' look going, and he kept repeating, "What the hell was that?  What was that? Did you hear that?"  Interestingly, within about five minutes our dogs abruptly started running around the living room and kitchen, barking at nothing.  Acting excited . . . well, agitated.  The whole barking at nothing thing is not unusual for our poms, but the timing was very odd.

Now I'm really starting to wonder if one of our little lost ones is coming around in spirit.  Maximus, specifically.  Looking back on when the scratching started, it was soon after we had to put Maximus down.  With Gidget and Taz, they both died in the Valley, in Gilbert, and there was a long delay before we could bury them.  With Gidget I had to have the Vet's office keep her body until hubby healed enough from his operation a few weeks later to make the trip back to our house.  With Taz, we brought her up here immediately, but the ground was frozen solid (being the day after Christmas) and we had to keep her body until the ground thawed out enough to bury her.  But Maximus was sick and dying, here.  I ran him into an emergency Vet in Flagstaff late that night so they could put him out of his suffering, but I brought his body back with me and we buried him the next morning.  Just by virtue of the circumstances we had to deal with, Max was the only one whose spirit might have stayed more connected to this place when he passed than the others.  And truly, Maximus was our little 'scratchy-scratchy' dog.  Most times at night.  If we accidentally shut the bedroom door on him while he was still laying under the couch we'd be awakened to that very same scratching noise at our door.  If I was in the bathroom with the door closed, soon I'd hear 'scratchy-scratchy.'  Suddenly it doesn't seem so far-fetched to think Max wants in.  He was happy here and is doing his 'scratchy-scratchy' at the door to let us know he's still around.  It brings me close to tears thinking one of them could be out there wanting in . . . especially when the weather is gloomy, wet and miserable, even though I know if it is them they probably wouldn't feel the elements.   But next time I hear that scratching I'm opening the door!  

I promise I will move on with Cowboy Bob!  Later, friends.

COWBOY BOB AND THE COMPANY

After a few days of whining and sulking over the status of our stolen belongings,  I'm back on the subject of Cowboy Bob.  Some of the scarier but also amusing experiences I have to recount have been with the guests we've had here over the years.  We've thrown several parties, and our family has had numerous friends come stay with us since the house was completed in 2002. More than one visitor refuses to come back, hehehe.  And, NO, it's not that we were bad hosts, but somebody else was!  

Before the house was even completed we had the girls' friends rough it up here on the occasional weekend. My youngest, still in high school at the time, had to try very hard to convince three of her tough 'guy' friends to grow a set and come up for a visit.  They were quite nervous about it, and kept asking my daughter questions like,  "Just what all happens up there?" and "Nothing's gonna' happen while we're there, is it?" and "When was the last time anything happened up there?" . . . you get the gist.  

Their first morning at the house we were all sitting in the living room at the makeshift dining table watching the makeshift television and reclining in makeshift chairs and, on a perfectly windless day, from my line of sight I watched the front door handle jiggle and the heavy metal door open on its own.  The boys all heard it and gaped at each other, leaning back in their chairs to peek around the corner at the wide-open door.  I'd give anything to have had a camera right then to capture the looks on their faces.  One of them stammered, "That wasn't . . ."  to which I nodded.  "No Way!  That didn't just happen . . ."  blurted out of another one's mouth.  I went to the front door, closed and locked it before the boys streaked down the road or into the forest and I had to fill out three missing persons reports.

A couple of years later we hosted our first Halloween party at the house (those who know me well know how gaga I get over Halloween) and my youngest had a dickens of a time getting her friends to step a foot inside the house again.  Word had spread like wildfire at the high school about our house's otherworldly occupant.   I wasn't aware of the deal at the time, but apparently all of my youngest's friends made one stipulation that in exchange for them steeling their nerves and entering the 'ghost's den' they refused to sleep in the guest apartment by themselves.  The next morning after the party I went upstairs to wake up my daughter and get her to go wake up her friends for breakfast, and I found every single one of them sacked out in sleeping bags or on top of pillows, or just a blanket thrown over them on my daughter's bedroom floor.  Almost a dozen kids arranged heel to toe, side to side with no room to even walk between them.  I latched the door shut and chuckled all the way down the stairs.

Some of these same kids have been with us, sitting on our couches in the living room at night watching television with our family, and we've startled as we hear the floor creak upstairs and our dogs who were sound asleep on the floor suddenly sit up alert. Quickly the dogs move to the doggie gate we have in place which separates the living room from the front foyer and stairs.  Their hair bristles as they growl under their breath, all looking intently the same direction; up the stairwell.  Sometimes they bark furiously.  Again, where's a camera when you need one, to capture everyone's jittery expressions.  Every time this happened our company jumped up and asked our daughters to make a quick exit to another part of the house.

My eldest has a girlfriend who enjoyed visiting for a weekend from time to time . . . until that one night.  The two of them retired to my eldest's bedroom to watch television and gab in her room, and the subject turned to Cowboy Bob.  My eldest's guest was somewhat of a skeptic and they were enjoying making each other jumpy with stories.  When it came time to retire late in the night, after everyone else in the house had long gone to bed, the girls went downstairs for a final snack, a bowl of ice cream, then returned to the room to partake.  When they finished they turned off the television, turned out the lights and jumped under the covers.  

Immediately they heard distinct footsteps downstairs on the foyer's tile floor, moving slowly and advancing their way towards the stairs.  Cathy (not her real name) jumped and whispered, "What is that?"  

My eldest frankly answered, "That's Cowboy Bob.  Coming."  

"NO, it CAN'T BE!" Cathy yelped.  My eldest reconfirmed it with a nod of her head in the shadows. 

They froze and listened to the heavy, solid  footsteps.  The sound grew muffled as the steps made contact with the stairway carpeting, slowly advancing one stair at a time, the muffled thumps getting louder as they progressed.  Cathy was wigging, eyes round as saucers.  "That HAS to be your parents," she hissed.

"Not this late.  And besides, we were just down there getting ice-cream, you saw they were in bed.  It's Cowboy Bob, I tell you.  He's not going to hurt you, Cathy."

"But he's coming IN HERE?"

"I don't know.  I think we're going to find out!"

The steps slowed at the top of the stairs and waited . . . both girls breathed a sigh of relief, until very crisp and distinctly loud steps commenced on the wooden landing, headed right for my eldest's bedroom door.  My eldest jumped out of bed and locked the door as Cathy started whimpering, "He's coming right for us!" and threw the covers over her head.  My eldest followed suit as they both listened from under the comforter to the advancing steps, until they stopped right outside the bedroom door.  

The knob jiggled slightly . . . and then, nothing.  The entity had disappeared as Cathy sobbed under the covers, frightened to a level where she has refused to return here.  Which is really a shame because we all love her company!  

What's even more disconcerting is that, after all this time, our remaining dogs are so used to the noises coming down from the stairs they don't even get up.  It's creepy to watch them all suddenly lift their heads and quietly, intently watch towards the stairwell with maybe only a low growl as they stay stretched out on the couch or floor.  You just know they are all focused on someone we can't see, and they are apparently so used to him coming and going it doesn't phase them anymore.  Wish I could say the same for me. 

My next post I'll go into more detail about our various caretaker's experiences in "Cowboy Bob and the Caretakers."  Later, friends.

NOW I'M REALLY MAD!

Hello all:  Close family and friends will find this info interesting . . . so I digress one more time.  We had been hearing on the mountain for a while now that 'someone' had walked into Kim's house over two months ago (Kim being the lady we'd kept employed as our gardener for the past several years whose house is in the subdivision next to ours) and had seen my big expensive jukebox  that was stolen from us sitting right there in her bedroom.  It was apparently common knowledge around here.  Kim hasn't been living there but the house had been rented to a man who, apparently everyone on the mountain also knew was a felon who last year got out of jail for grand theft, and had violated his parole by leaving Winslow and renting the house from Kim's family.  

Hubby and I have been saying all along we feel someone who knew us broke into our home, not just because of the things that were taken, but the things that weren't taken and the way they knew things about our place that no stranger would know.  Where to look, where not to bother, hidden storage areas, stuff like that.  Then to hear that supposedly our jukebox was sitting in a house right down the road, it was infuriating!  And the Sheriff and Coconino County weren't doing anything about it!  

We received a phone call this morning from a neighbor of Kim's who said there were cops swarming the place with a search warrant and arrest warrant for this renter, (FINALLY) who coincidentally was tipped off and fled the house less than ten minutes before they got there.  He's still at large.  Hubby went right over to that house and the Sheriff let him in . .  there were dozens of key sets strewn all over the kitchen table . . . including one that looked suspiciously like the missing key to our Ford T-Bird.  John took the key home, put it in the car's ignition and voila' the car started right up!  The only reason they didn't get the T-Bird that night was because the battery was dead, but they took the keys apparently planning to return another time for the car.  They found two of our printers, and our brand new air-conditioner was still in the box in the back yard!  The smaller new one we had is hanging out Kim's living-room window right by the front door, and two old ice-chests of ours were sitting on the front porch!  Of all the arrogance.  And to think, we ourselves kept Kim employed for years when no one else would.  GRRRRR!!!  Our jukebox wasn't there, of course.  Law enforcement took too ridiculously long to act.  But they found the paperwork for it which had been taped on the back of the jukebox on the floor in the bedroom, then had the gall to ask hubby to give the make and model number of the jukebox!  He said; "It's right there on the paperwork!  How many other commercial grade jukeboxes do you think there are up here on the mountain?"  DUHHHH!

The recovered items are a mere drop in the bucket of all they stole from us, but at least maybe this thieving spree is at last over . . . we had two break-ins just last weekend, and two the weekend before that!  The total count for this tiny community is forty-one!  That's disgusting and shows such a lack of caring and/or competence on the Coconino County's police dept's part.  Shame on them for being so complacent! Knowing this guy was violating parole should have been all the excuse they needed to get at least a search warrant months ago!   Later, all.  I'm going to go sulk a while.       

PARANORMAL INVESTIGATORS . . . REALLY?

I'm veering off my personal recounts of Cowboy Bob on this post to vent a little.  I was flipping through channels last night and paused on a repeat episode of "Ghost Hunters" for a few minutes, but quickly went back to channel surfing.  They insulted my intelligence.  Is it just me, or are these shows actually hindering mainstream acceptance of the paranormal?  You know, I'll admit it.  I've gotten sucked in more than once.  And unashamedly I will tell you that I've seen some very strange, unexplainable snippets from several of the paranormal investigator shows like "Ghost Hunters" and "Ghost Adventures."  I haven't tuned in to the new ones, such as "The Dead Files," "Destination Truth" or "Paranormal Witness," because, frankly, the first two I mentioned eventually gave me 'paranormal overload.' And then there are those shows which actually make me nauseous . . . especially "Scariest Places On Earth" and "Most Haunted."  

I'll get to them in a minute, but first let's talk about the prevailing idiocy of these shows in general.  The team goes in to supposedly secure and investigate a building the size of Titanic, then has the nerve to act surprised when they find out someone is screwing with them in the name of promoting tourism for their commercial venture.  Or they try to convince themselves, and ergo we the audience, that we're actually hearing spirits reaching out in the form of a plate dropping on the floor in the kitchen, or a door slamming from another room.  Right.  Are we supposed to believe that something the size of the mega-floored and wide-open Waverly Sanitarium in Kentucky, as an illustration, couldn't have some very alive-and-kicking self-promoters slipping in the back door to rattle a few chains, drop that plate or slam that door?  

Did anyone see the episode (I believe it was Ghost Hunters) where the team was investigating a huge ship, perhaps the Queen Mary, and they thought they'd captured a bed comforter folding down all on its own? They were so excited one of them might've done a handspring.  Upon closer inspection of the film, however, they figured out that someone had come in and time-lapsed the video camera while the team was investigating a different part of the ship, pausing the camera between takes as they ran over and moved the comforter down the bed a little more each frame.  Well, hello! If the site can't be completely secured from outside influences,  what's the point?  Some sites that these shows investigate are so vast and open the whole town could creep in and start dancing a jig on the floor above the investigators in the time it takes the team to set up their equipment.  Now on to my most dreaded of this genre:

"Scariest Places On Earth" has Zelda Rubenstein (Tangina from "Poltergeist" fame) doing voice-overs in that nasally, SSSLLLOOOOWWWWW drawl of hers that, like nails scraping on a chalkboard, makes me cringe and cover my ears.  Not even Linda Blair's perkiness can drag me back to the channel after Zelda's whiny narrative.  Meh. And then there's "Most Haunted," a British paranormal team headed by Yvette Fielding, who lock themselves up in supposedly haunted buildings for a night, but the minute a mouse farts they all jump and scream like banshees, especially her with that shrill, bloodcurdling shriek, dropping their cameras, running into each other.  God help them if anything ever really came out of the shadows- they'd wet themselves. AND, Yvette has admitted some of their scenes were faked.  Horrors!

That screaming-at-the-drop-of-a-hat theme pervades on several shows I've seen.  They come up with this brilliant money-making reality television show premise, to be God's gift to paranormal investigating, until something actually happens.  Then you don't hear a word for several seconds because they have to 'bleep' out all the cussing and the screaming like little girls.  Personally, I think the guys who keep their heads the best are the team from TAPS, (The Atlanta Paranormal Society) who do their stuff on Ghost Hunters.    Maybe it's because they've been doing paranormal investigating for so long.  Or  maybe it's because they're Roto-Rooter plumbers by day.  Perhaps their day job grounds them in a little reality . . . steels them for the horrific at night.  After all, having to deal with that much crap during the day, it stands to reason you won't take crap from anybody else at night, no matter what dimension they're slinging poo at you from.  What are your opinions on these shows? Seen any clip that has really knocked your socks off?  Made you stop and think, "Yeah, maybe . . ."  I'd love to have you post comments; so it's not just me flapping my gums!  I'm just sayin' . . .  Later, friends!

COWBOY BOB AND THE KIDS

Hello, all:  Ready for more Cowboy Bob?  

Next in line behind our relative for most run-ins with Cowboy Bob is our oldest daughter, whose room saw the most paranormal activity before it was even finished.  Once the house construction was finished and the two bedrooms upstairs were outfitted with more than a cot, the girls began visiting from college on weekends. Their guest bedrooms face opposite each other across a wood-planked landing upstairs.  The downstairs foyer is stone which my hubby fashioned into a beautiful round floral pattern, and the curved staircase is carpeted, along with the office that separates the two bedrooms.  I mention all this because each of these surfaces makes distinctly different sounds when a ghost is walking across them.  The carpeting is a muffled thump, thump as Cowboy Bob either treads up or down the stairs or walks through the office on his way to our outside patio, but there is no mistaking the wood landing and stone floor footsteps.  The stone is more of a dead weight (no pun intended) whereas the wood landing steps are sharp . . . and for the girls in their bedrooms, imminent.  

So many times when the girls have been visiting and it's very early morning (not the girls' favorite time of day to be awake) either myself or my hubby have heard those sharp footsteps on the landing, then the muffled steps on carpeting in the office, and we've run upstairs to see who it is.  Finding nothing, of course, but opening the two bedroom doors and seeing both daughters cutting major zzz's.  

Our younger daughter has heard these footsteps outside her door, on the steps or in the office, but for whatever reason Cowboy Bob has mostly left her alone.  She's seen his 'shadow' pass quickly through the kitchen, getting an outline of his form as he stomped out the closed back door, but it is our eldest who has had more of a problem than just hearing footsteps on the landing, which, by the way, anytime they are heard they are almost always headed for her room!  

We've run up to check on our eldest in the night when, from our bedroom right below her bedroom/bath, we hear what sounds like her body crashing onto the floor, things breaking . . . she'd always be out like a light in her bed.  Nothing at all broken or out of place.  But she's heard the crashing and footsteps in her bathroom so much that she will never sleep in the room without a light on and the television turned way up (we can hear it from below it's so loud.)  This masks the noises in her room at night just enough so she can sleep.  But Cowboy Bob continues to enjoy opening and closing her bedroom or bathroom door periodically, which, though she has seen it happen while awake more than once, it usually occurs while she is asleep.  She's heard something and awakened to find one or both doors standing wide open more times than she can count.

She grew tired of the nonsense one night when it happened three times over the course of a couple of hours.  Tossing back the covers she got up out of bed a last time and went to the bedroom door, shutting and locking it; mumbling, "There.  Just try and open it now!" 

I digress with a word of advice here:  I don't think 

it's a good idea to double-dog dare a ghost.  

Chances are they'll take you up on it!  

Our eldest shut off the bedroom light and crawled back in bed, but no more than got settled under the covers when loud, furious breathing manifested out of nowhere against her right ear, the ear closest to the door. This was the first time our daughter felt true terror in her room.  She slapped at the airspace beside her ear as she jumped out of bed, stumbled to the door and threw it wide open, saying; "Fine, you win.  I'll leave the damn thing open!"

  It was from that point on she always had to have a light on and the television going.  She has said there are only two things creepier than lying wide awake in your bed late night/early morning and listening to heavy footsteps headed for your room:  One, having those footsteps stop right in front of your bedroom door, and two; hearing the entity making those footsteps furiously breathing beside your ear.  I'm thinking I agree with that, and so do our daughter's friends, who've had their own experiences.  I'll go into more detail in my next post; "Cowboy Bob and the Company."  Later, friends.

"YOU DON'T BELONG HERE! YOU NEED TO LEAVE!"

How would you like to have a ghost standing a foot in front of you saying that to your face?  So begins the saga of 'Cowboy Bob,' our ghost in residence at our home in the mountains.  I should probably give you a little background info first, though.  

The acreage we bought to build our home on was perfect, with one exception; most of it was sitting atop a mountain of solid limestone. The land had no structures at all.  Virgin soil with nothing but limestone shelves, juniper, scrub oak and ponderosas stretching to the sky.  We'd only heard of hauntings centering around buildings which spirits were tied to or died in, so the idea that we'd acquire a ghost while the house was still under construction, barely weathered-in, was unimaginable . . . until it happened.  Apparently it took only a matter of weeks for 'Cowboy Bob' to start making his presence known.

We have a relative who was helping us with interior/exterior finishing projects on the house.  He is one of those that is more 'sensitive' to otherworldly goings on, the things other people cannot see.  He's been that way all of his life.  Though he waited months before spilling the beans about the confrontations he'd been having with 'Cowboy Bob,' he eventually started sharing experiences that made our hair curl, giving us the reasons why he was now refusing to stay at our place any longer unless he had someone staying there with him.  

'Cowboy Bob' got his name from our relative's description of what he looked like; late twenties or early thirties, tall, rather lanky with sandy blond hair, wearing blue jeans.  A while later the relative added to that description, saying  the man wore what looked like a double-breasted dark blue coat with brass buttons and a funny shaped hat.  That sounded like a Cavalry officer.  And, as it turns out, this area up here saw many vicious skirmishes between the Apache and the Cavalry, one big battle taking place not far from our property.  So we should probably rename him 'Cavalry Bob,' but the first name sort of stuck.  

Our relative stayed in the upstairs bedroom directly above our master bedroom, in the bedroom which would later become our oldest daughter's room whenever she visited.  This room became a hotbed of paranormal activity.  Cowboy Bob would seek out our relative up there to threaten him if he didn't leave.  The first time, our relative heard a sound behind him while in the upstairs bedroom and turned around  to find Cowboy Bob standing within a foot of his face, whereupon he told our relative; "I like these people.  I like what they're doing here . . . this place.  But you on the other hand, you don't belong here!  You need to leave, now."  

Cowboy Bob threatened him again in the middle of the afternoon, outside by our pond.  Our relative was picking up boulders to use on a wall and turned around to find Cowboy Bob in his face again, reiterating that he needed to leave, immediately.  

This relative also looked out our back window one night to the pond and saw a figure walking back and forth across the top of the dam, holding an old-fashioned hurricane lamp and appearing like he was searching for something.  He watched the figure make pass after pass across the damn for several minutes, then the light suddenly disappeared.

At this point no one else had seen any strange happenings besides this one relative, but that was to change.  One night my younger daughter and I were up from Prescott for the weekend and we were finishing hanging wallpaper in the two-story front foyer.  I was on top of a sixteen foot ladder while my youngest was bracing it at the bottom.  It was after eleven and very quiet in the house . . . our relative had shut the lights off and gone to bed two hours earlier.  From my vantage point on top of the ladder I had a clear view to the bedroom's closed door.  I heard a quiet click and looked over.  The door's handle had been pushed down and the door had clicked open, very slowly opening fully to the inside.  That bedroom had a room air-conditioner going full blast along the opposite wall from the door.  It should have been pushing a fair amount of wind resistance against the door, and yet it continued to open.  I could see it was pitch-black within.  

I looked down at my daughter, she gaped up at me and we began to shake our heads.  I commented quietly;    "Glad that's happening up there and not here."  Nothing else happened after a couple of moments; no blood-curdling shrieks or a terrified young man streaking out of the bedroom with Lucifer on his heels.  There wasn't any sound at all.  We went back to work, but less than five minutes later I caught movement out of the corner of my eye and looked over, seeing the door just as slowly closing, the handle pushing down by unseen hands once again and the door latching itself shut quietly.  I looked down at my daughter.

"You about ready to call it a night?" I asked.  She didn't need to be asked twice.  

More stories about 'Cowboy Bob' to come.   Thanks for reading, friends!  Night, all.

THE OUIJI BOARD

Did you ever try one of these? Did you ever have someone you really trust lightly resting their fingers on the other side of the planchette and have it start whirling about the board spelling out messages while your best buddy swears to you they're not doing it and you swear to them neither are you? I tried it a couple of times when I was a kid. Creepy. I saw a blurb the other day about Ouiji Boards and decided to research them a little. I was disappointed to learn that they were the dream-child of American entrepreneurs from a little over a hundred years ago; Bond and Kennard in the 1880's, not unearthed from some ancient mystical civilization. 

There are a litany of differing opinions about what makes the planchette move, everything from demons or restless spirits, to you're willfully doing it on your own or it's your subconscious mind making your fingers move without you knowing it. Er, what? This came from a learned doctor of psychiatry . . . and yet, how does your subconscious mind make your fingers move without you knowing they're moving? Picking your nose is not an autonomic response. Moving your fingers is not an autonomic response. 

Or is it? There is this: "The clinical term is "ideomotor response." A person may not realize that they are moving the message indicator, but they are. This is similar to autonomic writing, also known as automatism, a well-understood psychological phenomenon. A spirit medium, in years past, would hold a pencil in one hand and pay no attention as it wrote furiously. Some believed that these written messages came from spirits. Others felt that the messages came from a clever medium. At any rate, most proponents of the Automatism Theory think that it is very possible to move the planchette unconsciously. They claim that the Ouija board opens a kind of shortcut from the conscious to the subconscious mind."* Hmmm.

What are these professional skeptics saying, then? If the subconscious mind is coming up with all these horror stories through the board that people keep writing about, are the the professionals hinting there are a lot of demented people out there? We already knew that.

Not so sure about the 'Automatism Theory.' However, interestingly enough, the articles I read also stated that if you blindfold the duo at the planchette, the message that comes through is completely garbled, making a case that somehow the people using the planchette are controlling it, and when they can no longer see, the game stops working. When confronted with that 'gotcha' moment, some believers theorized that, like in my book, perhaps the spirits see through the eyes of their human conduits and so blindfolding the person blinds the spirit communicating through them as well. Another hmmm.

There are two schools of thought here; the believers and the skeptics. Surprisingly, for the most part both agree on one point: You shouldn't use it. The believers speak of hauntings and actual spirit stalkings, while skeptics say that if you're coming up with these crazy horrific stories, it means your mental state is teetering right there . . . on that teeny little ledge . . . and the board could acerbate your mental state right into a straight jacket. Which category do you fall into, hmmm? Skeptic or believer?  Share some stories here, if you dare! Later, friends!

* from the "Museum of Talking Boards"

PASSING ON DIDN'T STOP MOM FROM GETTING EVEN!

My mother apparently didn't approve of at least one choice I made after her death, and did she ever let me know about it!    I was just eighteen when she passed away, and a full-time college student.  She left me with a lease on an apartment, no income coming in, and . . . she left me an orphan.  My father died when I was twelve and I had no brothers or sisters, only distant relatives.  Engaged at the time to the man I would soon marry and spend the rest of my life with, he asked me to come stay with him so I wouldn't be alone. I had other offers from close friends and a couple of relatives to move in with them until I could get back on my feet, but I had to go with my heart; with the person I believed could give my heart the best fighting chance to keep beating.  

Immediately after I moved into my fiance's place, strange phenomena started crackling all around us like mini lightening strikes; surging our radios, our lights . . . we'd come home from school to find our radio stations turned to static and blaring through the place, and lights we'd turned off all ablaze.  At night we'd hear leaden footsteps creaking the floor while traversing up and down the hall, in and out of every room, pausing in the middle of each room as though someone was lost.  Mom wasn't happy I was there, but, well mom, you left me.  I was doing the best I could.  We were both doing our best with the crushing tragedy dealt us.  

Now, almost everyone knows what it's like to have a parent pissed-off at you at one time or another.  Alive or dead, sometimes it doesn't seem to matter.  Their reactions are pretty much the same if they're mad enough.  Don't misunderstand me; mom didn't mind my betrothed so much (well, maybe a little) but what she really had a problem with was my trotting off to get hitched at eighteen when she had so many plans for me.  As they say, however; life is what happens to you when you're busy making other plans.  She must have realized those plans weren't going to materialize any more than she was able to.  Events grew so turbulent around our place the energy spewed over to next door where my new sister-in-law and her family lived.  They would come home to blaring static and lights flickering on and off while our place was joining in the melee.  

About three weeks later the phenomena had mostly settled down, and it was then that my fiance and I were having a playful argument over something trivial.   He was crouched on his knees looking for something at the bottom of our hallway closet while in a corner of that closet his shotgun was leaning back against the far wall.  I zinged him with a particularly good point, to which Mr. Sarcastic leaned back on his heels and responded with; "Yeah, yeah; why don't you just come over here and do this, then?  Maybe I'll get lucky and that gun will fall out and crack you over the head."  

"Very funny," I retorted as I saw his eyes look up suddenly and widen just before his rifle fell forward and cracked him over the head.  He grabbed his forehead, jumped up and danced a jig while he hollered a string of curses loud enough to wake the dead.  I could almost hear a satisfied hahahahaha floating about the room.  When my victimized fiance ran out of four-letter words to spew he lowered his hand and revealed a nice black 'n' blue welt swelling on his forehead.

"That damn gun!  It was leaning against the wall and I watched the sonofabitch go completely vertical all on its own, then fall back on me!  I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes!"

"Karmic justice," I quipped.

"Karmic mother-in-law," he griped.

Mom couldn't have been too upset with me, all things considered.  She saved my life a few days later.  I'd gotten home from school first, and decided to snack on a piece of cake.  I choked . . . worse than I've ever choked in my life.  I couldn't draw in a thimbleful of air. I was getting light-headed as I uselessly leaned my rib cage over the sink and tried to pound my back with my fist, visualizing the obit in the newspaper announcing my 'Death by chocolate cake!'  How humiliating.  Nothing was dislodging that blasted mouthful of cake, until I received a severe whack across my shoulder blades. In my panic I assumed my fiance had come home and done his Good Samaritan deed for his soon-to-be new wife.  But of course when I turned around, no one was there.  I ran to the sliding glass door . . . his mini-truck wasn't in the driveway and the door was locked.  

I slowly turned around the room in a full circle, tears welling in my eyes.  "Thanks, mom.  I love you, too."

LOOKING UP A SCOTSMAN'S KILT

Hey, it was an accident.  But one I will never forget!  The girls and I were shopping along the Royal Mile in Edinburgh; incredible ancient buildings bursting with clan tartans, plaid material, sporrans, clan crests and paraphernalia, basically anything Scottish you could buy with the possible exception of their Crown Jewels.  In a corner of one store we meandered over to a retail display by a local Scotsman who'd become locally famous for walking around the Royal Mile dressed in full 'Braveheart' regalia.  He had it all going on, including the Highland attire, the blue face paint, long mussed hair and plaited braids.  One poster of his caught our attention right away; a side view of Mr. Braveheart hiking up his kilt to reveal an impressive tat on his right butt cheek.

We strolled up close for a better inspection.  "Nice ass," my eldest quipped rather loudly.  And, of course from behind we heard a chuckle and, "Why, thank 'ye, lassies."  We whirled around to find Mr. Braveheart all decked out with no one to  disembowel.  ****AWKWARD.**** The man was smiling from cheek to cheek.

Immediately our William Wallace impersonator began flirting up a storm with the girls, especially the one who'd flattered him by acknowledging his superior derriere to anyone in the store who wasn't deaf.  He handed us all kinds of free stuff; postcards, bookmarks, even a poster.  About this time I needed to excuse myself to use the loo downstairs. Funny how I paid no attention to the stairwell composition on the way down, but on the trip back I looked up and was dumbfounded to see open metal grating above me and one naked Scotsman right in my line of sight.  Somehow 'Nice ass' didn't seem adequate at that moment.  And I'm guessing he knew I'd accidentally sneaked a peek because that cheek to cheek smile was back on his . . . well, I'll leave the cheekiness to your imagination.

My eldest is engaged to a Scotsman so she can peek under a kilt whenever she wants.  Me?  Unless I'm carrying something like nitroglycerin in my purse, that once will do me just fine, thank you very much!

The girls in front of Mackenzie's tomb at Greyfriar's Cemetery.  That face on my eldest was the scariest thing there that day . . . almost.

This cannon misfired on it's first demo and killed a king.  Natch my daughter checked it out the hard way.