Escalation

I woke up this morning at about 04:30, about an hour and twenty before the alarm went off.  You know that feeling when you wake up, but you don't know why?  You look around to see what's different, if there's the smell of smoke, or a man with a big knife standing at the bottom of your bed.

The light was on and my wife's side of the bed was empty and cold.

Now, I snore, I've been told that I sound a little bit like someone slowly cutting their way through through a particularly bad-tempered goose using a rubber hacksaw.  So my first thought was that the better half had decamped to the comfy sofa on the lounge.  After donning my least scandalously gusseted pyjama bottoms, I forayed into the bowels of Dandy Towers.  Past the stables I went, listening to the hypnotic droning of the Alicorns as they slept and down through the kitchens where I startled cook as she stirred the morning's kedgeree, humming one of the tuneful yet haunting throat-yodels of her people.

But despite a damn-hard looking, she was no-where to be found.  Until that is, I took my search to the windy battlements.  The top floor of the Towers is the sole domain of the Mini & Micro Dandies and even a seasoned explorer such as myself thinks twice before entering into it. Luckily, as I reached the bottom of their grand staircase and started to ascend, I met the Mehmsahib and the Mini-Dandy coming the other way.

There was an expression of concern on the face of the former, and one of fading panic on the latter. Also, they were carrying sufficient bedclothes for an impromptue bivouac in the Library.

Mrs Dandy indicated that she had everything under control and that I should retire to my bed.  I considered her advice and chose to wholeheartedly ignore it and sally-forth into a line of questioning of positively Sherlockian proportions, 'What's happened then?' I asked her.

'There's been an escalation.' She replied.

Now, all joking aside, regular readers will know that Dandy Towers is haunted by my late Mother.  It's nothing new, our previous stately pile was similarly blessed, you've probably read the story about the time the Mini-Dandy met her Grandmother, despite her having inconveniently died some fifteen years previously.

Still fewer of you will have heard the tale of Piper, our second ghost.  Actually, so few of you might have heard that, that I may as well retell it here.

I think it was last year when it started, odd things happened that made you do a double take.  You would hear doors close, despite the fact that you had already closed them moments previously yourself. There would be noises that you could easily convince yourself were footsteps, that could have just as easily have been the wind, or the house settling. It was unnerving, but nothing more.

Then the whispering and the giggling started.  Those are noises that it's more difficult to explain away. The Mini Dandy started hearing people call her name behind her, almost out of earshot.  Then doorhandles started turning of their own accord (which let me tell you, puts the wind right up you the first few times you experience it.) And she then began to say 'Bye!' to the Mini Dandy whenever she left the top floor and came downstairs.

Then she started shouting 'Mum!' and 'Dad!' (Also pretty perculiar when the entire family's sat in the lounge watching TV and someone calls your name from downstairs) And that's about where we were until last night.

Oh, no, I tell a lie, the Mini Dandy's bedroom door opened recently and she asked who was there.  The little girls's voice saying 'It's me.' was not exactly what she expected.

Anyway, back to the escalation.

For a few days, my daughter had felt like she was being watched.  Not the normal type of being watched that she was used to, by my dead Mother and ghost Piper, this was different.  She said that it felt like a man.  Of course, we all automatically assumed that it would probably be her Grandfather, who passed away earlier this year.  And she didn't feel as if there was any threat or anything like that, it was just somehow 'different'

Last night, she went to bed wearing a new necklace, one that I had bought her.  She awoke just after 4:00 to briefly see it hanging in the air in front of her face, before it was snatched away, to be found laid out perfectly on the floor over the other side of the room.

She was a little shaken.

As you can probably imagine.

I'm still trying to think what I should do next, the Micro Dandy's Godparents know the County Exorcist, maybe we should seek his advice?

Or some kind of roving, freelance Medium, specialising in ectoplasmic hoovering?

I'll keep you in the loop.

Right in the Ghoulies

Well, Friday was a busy day wasn't it Children?

I wrote a Blog that was a bit divisive, about a sensitive subject, from my personal viewpoint.  It went straight in at No. 2 in the most popular Blogs ever by The Chimping Dandy (Completely failing to knock the whole shattering pigeon story off the number 1 slot of course - Glad to see you guys have got your priorities straight) and helped to power May 2013 to the second most monthly pageviews ever - Only got 208 views to go to take it rocketing to the top though - there's always hope... You know what to do.

Anyway, back to normal now - Let's be a bit more inclusive, I'm going to talk about a subject that can't possibly divide people.  no-one takes it seriously - there aren't huge groups of sometimes slightly unstable types going to gatherings of like minded people, no banners, no secret handshakes, no wandering around disused buildings in the dead of night hoping to make contact with shadowy individuals. No massive amounts of senseless death.

Cock!

Actually there's all of those things.

I'm talking about the paranormal and the investigation thereof.

Longtime readers will know, and dippers (What I've now decided to call people who just read odd posts every once in a while, on the toilet perhaps) might have spotted, that whenever I mention my Mother, I qualify it by saying whether she was dead or alive at the time of the particular story.

And for the few people left in the Blogoshpere who don't know why, HERE's the story of my Daughter meeting my Mother for the first time, despite the fact that she'd been dead for a number of years.

So, it would be safe to say that I believe that some spark of consciousness can continue to exist after death. I mean, it makes a certain amount of sense (to me at least) what with the whole thing about what makes us, us, being a collection of electrical impulses trapped in the 3lb of mush that we keeps stored between our ears. Maybe with the right atmospheric conditions, those impulses can get transferred into the ether - I don't know, obviously, I'm pulling this out of my butt... But it's not impossible... So little is nowadays isn't it - what with the advent of the microwave and nanotechnology and suchlike.

This also explains the traditional 'Country House' type  ghosts, those ones that are forever cursed to follow the same route they did the night they died, moaning and clanking chains and looking for their lost babies and generally making a nuisance of themselves.  Their 'spark' is released into the ether, but gets trapped by the fabric of the building - Maybe there's a certain mixture of crystals or ores in the stones that record the spark and replay it in the manner of a cheap Taiwanese VCR.

This in turn fits in well with those, oh so popular in the 1970's, ghostly legions of Roman Legionaires that wander through country pubs and what-have-you, but have the audacity to be cut off at the torso by the floor - So it looks like they're wading through the concrete.  Then the owner of the building finds out that the floor's been raised by two feet and the Legionaries are marching at the level of the old floor.

So far, so spooky, but ultimately believable - As long as you have a stretchy imagination.

In fairness, I'm not wholly convinced about the whole 'Don't realise that they're dead' type things - But I suppose, thinking about it, it's not that huge a jump.  Maybe this 'Etheric copying' (Copyright Chimping Dandy 2013) isn't foolproof, and occasionally too much, or too little of the 'spark' gets transferred - You could use that to justify the angry spirit / poltergeist thaing too I suppose.  If there's supposed to be enough of you left to hold an understandable conversation with a small child, imagine the frustration if you still 'exist' somehow, but you can't communicate with anyone - Then imagine that there's enough of you left to realise that you're going to be like that for eternity.  Doesn't bear thinking about does it?

-oOo-

Then we've got those people who investigate the Rum & Uncanny for fun and profit.

There used to be a group of paranormal hunter types just down the road from me, they based their shenanigens from a semi with a high walled garden and had a website that had a few pictures of them in various dark rooms (And slightly more photos of them at various social events) - But they never actually displayed anything of a really ghostly nature, despite all of their night-vision cameras and EMF scanners, allegedly they ran a good ghost tour - Which I think was very brave of them as they had to compete in the same market with the wonderful Mr Richard Felix (Of whos Father's record stall in Derby Market Hall, I am proud to say I was a regular customer - in the 80's at least - Mainly because I fancied a girl on the Fruit & Veg stall opposite, but that's another story.) and his Haunted Derby / Derby Gaol tomfoolery.

You can't think about Richard Felix, without thinking about one time most popular woman on Television, Yvette Fielding... Who is great. And, with Husband Karl, has brought Paranormal Investigation to the masses.

Who hasn't seen Most Haunted?  Really?  That many of you?  Blimey! Go Google it or something, buy a box-set of the DVDs - Maybe Series 6 - Part 2, That features my local haunted house (Elvaston Castle)

If you ever watched Living, or Sky Living or whatever it's called this week you will have seen Most Haunted, at one time it was the only decent show on the entire channel and myself and Mrs Dandy were addicts.  It had it all, night-vision, history, believers, skeptics, stone throwing, table tapping, Ouija boards, orbs, and my most favourite thing ever in the world, is the consistent, regular as clockwork, reaction of Yvette's cousin Stuart to anything that could be misconstrued as even slightly paranormal.  Things such as plumbing noises, wind, spiders, darkness and on occasion, his own digestive system, would regularly sent him into a panic that started with a stream of expletives, continued via frenzied running through darkened corridors, and usually seemed to end with him banging his head off something and having to be rushed to hospital.

Sounds like I'm taking the p*ss?

Well, I'm not - I genuinely enjoyed it - It's one of the few shows that I would completely suspend my disbelief for.  If they produced a Stuart Torevell Teddy-Bear, I would seriously consider buying one.  Especially if it had a pull-cord that made it scream and spout fruity Anglo-Saxon invective, and you could buy a head bandage for it.

And that's before we even start getting into the antics (if you'll pardon the pun) of Mr Derek Acorah.  Seriously, he's too easy a target even for me, but if you get bored, and want to see his greatest work, go to YouTube and search for 'Derek Acorah Mary'

Mad as a Badger... Brilliant!


I include a photograph of 'The Brown Lady' of Raynham Hall - Not only because it's one of the UK's most famous ghosts, but it makes my link have a cool 'ghostey' image when I post it to FaceBook - Hey, kids, I'm nothing if not honest... And mercenary!