Nice relaxing interlude of normalcy......and I bet its just a few days be for a full moon and ghostly storm clouds are slowly brewing
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exnzpat buys a rental!
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Originally posted by Davo36 View PostYes SpiritMasters has a good ring to it, thanks Austro.
$50 evenening seminar this Saturday. Will tell about the up and coming weekend seminar where you learn the real stuff. And very affordable at only $4k per person ($3k if you pay in the next 5 mins, only 39 places left!).
Plus all the dvds, books, games and accessories you can shake a set of chains at.
DGB (Daves Ghost Busters) a division of SpiritMastery Netherworld Academy
Obviously there is going to be a housing shortage, a shortage of hauntable houses and that means someone will need to build some , a whole industry awaits.
Originally posted by Knott View Post"I smell dead people"
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Day 7
Thud, thud went the sledge hammer. Thud, thud, thud … I was dreaming.
“OH MY GOD! WHAT ARE YOU DOING…” a woman’s voice. It trailed off into a bloodcurdling scream.
I sat full up at attention in the camp bed. I had moved it back into the dining room. Don’t ask me why, maybe I was just used to being there…maybe I felt safer.
It was the same scream I had heard on my first night.
I sat stock-still in the bed my heart beating loudly. The house was now dead quiet. In the darkness of the room I could just make out Lincoln standing, sharp and alert staring across the living room towards the hallway and the bedrooms beyond.
Other than a low guttural growl from Lincoln there was silence.
It was too early to get up and too late to go back to sleep. I just lay there listening until I could stand it no more.
My headache had returned and so, after a struggle, I dragged myself out of bed and into the kitchen. With no refrigerator, I had moved my perishables into one corner; I rustled through the assorted food stuffs and plastic bags and finding the milk and coffee and sugar brewed a pot of coffee. Lincoln joined me. He did not look happy. Poor guy wasn't getting any sleep either. I looked at my watch. It was 4am. Damn!
This place is really beginning to piss me off!
This time I did not call the police. But instead, decided that I would go to Church this morning.
For those of you not familiar with the Catholic Church: normally, prior to Mass (or Communion) we Catholics are required to attend Reconciliation (better known as Confession). At least that’s the rule. But basically, these days, you can do it any time.
Reconciliation today is nothing like what you see in the movies. The small confessional booth with the Priest behind a curtain etc. Don't get me wrong; we still have the booths. But, the modern version of Confession is normally held in the Priests' office and is a very casual affair. It's more of a chat than a confession.
I hung about after Mass. I did not know the Priest. My wife and I had belonged to this Parish more than fifteen years ago before we moved south to the home we live in now. Our oldest had been baptized here.
Catching the Priest alone was not easy. As the parishioners filed out almost every one of them stopped to talk with him; to the kids, he gave a “high-five” as they passed. Finally, I got a clear shot and introduced myself. I told him I needed to talk to him alone if possible. I guess I looked earnest enough, or maybe he confused my tired eyes and drawn face, for someone who may have just committed a mortal sin - and needed to confess it like-yesterday!
He led me to his office in the Rectory, which was in the building next to the church. We sat and he asked me a little about myself and was there something else I needed to discuss?
I told him my story.
He seemed concerned, and while he was not familiar with that back-story of the house i.e. the murders, he asked me a myriad of questions about the scream. Everything, from what the disembodied voice said, to the tone and pitch, and even the feel of the thing. He seemed particularly interested in the time that the voice made itself heard. All I knew was that it was between 3am and 4am. But, then I had only heard the voice on two different occasions.
I could tell that the appearance of the boy bothered him deeply and he was having difficulty categorizing the apparition into his field of priestly expertise.
"Have you shared these experiences with anyone other than me?" He asked.
"Yes."
I told him about you guys at PropertyTalk.com and how I began this thing as a simple diary of a rehabbed house.
He pondered this information for a while, and then said "you know sometimes when it's late and I'm sitting at my computer," he paused and indicated to his computer on the far side of his desk, "I too can get that feeling. You know, like the one you described. It starts on the back of your arms - a tingling at first - and then the hairs pop up on your arms and then move to your spine and shiver their way up to the base of your skull. And you know - I want to turn around and look. You know what I mean - like someone is standing behind me."
He stopped and looked at me as I nodded. "Yeah, that's the feeling."
He went on. "Perhaps, when you post on this PropertyTalk thing your imagination just runs away from you?"
I thought about this for a moment and told him something that I have not shared with the PropetyTalk readers before. "Father, I don't think so. My dog Lincoln experiences the same stuff at the same time I do. But, I think I'm actually losing my memory - or at least parts of it. When I post on PropertyTalk I am making a reference to things I did the day before. Sometimes I don't remember doing most of the things I said I did. And it does seem that my memory loss is getting worse. PropertyTalk.com is my anchor to reality. Does that make sense?"
An example of my memory loss was the kitchen cabinets that I had still not installed – the ones that were to go on the walls. They were still outside under the carport. After I had brought them home I had put a white wood primer on them. I noticed yesterday when working with exnzpat1 on the kitchen – that there was at least a first coat of high gloss white on them! I guess I must have done something after I had seen the apparition of the dark-haired boy. I must have done something because I'm pretty sure I did not go back into the house!
The priest did not have an answer to that one. “Perhaps,” he suggested unhelpfully, “you should see a doctor,” And perhaps Lincoln should see a vet? I almost said it out loud. Almost, but I held my tongue. Instead I said I would think about it.
I thanked the Priest for his help. He gave me a small bottle of Holy Water a Rosary and a couple of prayer cards. He blessed me, and then wished me luck.
Before I left I asked him, "Father, do you think I'm going mad?"
He looked thoughtful, "Son, stress and hard physical work and lack of a good nights’ sleep can wreak havoc on the human mind. Go in peace and come back and see me before the week is over -- we can talk some more.” He was gentle man, and kind too, and I did feel better after talking with him. I made my way back to the rental.
It was about 1:30pm when I got back to the house. I had swung by the local bar and picked up a burger and fries and sat out on the front porch with Lincoln eating. Lincoln seemed more interested in my burger than ghosts. "Luck dog", I thought, "I wish I did."
Did you know, a Crystal Radio has no battery or electrical input? This device is totally inert. It relies solely on the crystal itself, a bit of copper wire and the elements of earth and air. I bought one a few years back for my youngest child on his birthday and became quite fascinated by it. In a world that practically devours energy here we have a simple device that harnesses the natural world about us. Quite amazing!
A house is divided into zones. This house is no different. The kitchen, the dining room, the living room, and the Master bedroom are safe places. The hallway, second bedroom and the Master bathroom have a definite feel of dread to them, but the third bedroom, and smallest bedroom, down at the end of the hallway, feels dangerous, dreadful and cold. The basement and the second smaller bathroom feel safe except the part that runs underneath the hallway. Now perhaps, just perhaps, much like the way a Crystal Radio does its thing could a certain alignment of materials in the house – surrounding the rear bedroom – create some sort of electrical attraction that stimulates the brain -- perhaps in the area of the Temporal Lobe?
I thought about this as I splashed the Holy Water about the house. I placed the prayer cards and Rosary on the floor next to my camp bed. It may seem an odd thing to you, but the average Catholic understands the comfort this would bring me.
I thought about the box up in the attic or more to the point, the bundle of letters in the box up in the attic. The return address on the top letter had piqued my curiosity. Should I go and get them? They were in easy reach. I could just swing up there and quickly haul them down before the thing… I don’t want to think about the thing -- other than that there is probably a logical and very human explanation for last week’s strange experience in the attic. Time and time again I went over it in my mind. Had I experienced it just for myself – that would have been one thing – but Lincoln experienced it too – and of that fact I was helpless to explain away as imagination or some kind temporal lobe seizure.
AustroKiwI, I am surprised that you think my diary narrative of the daily events may be following some formulaic scary movie script. I can assure you that I have no idea what will happen from day to day, though I will admit, that if there is something dark and evil living in my attic then bringing down the box may take the calm of yesterday's story to, in your words: “… a full moon and ghostly storm clouds…” tomorrow...
I decided to get the box. I rehearsed it in my mind before I did it. I set up the ladder, stepped back and took a deep breath. Then in one swift movement clambered up the ladder snapped open the trap door and leaned in as far as I could and grabbed one worn edge of the cardboard box and dragged it towards me. It only took a few seconds and I was safely back in the dining room -- I laughed out loud with relief of my effort – no ghosts! Ha! This is, after all, my house! Screw You! I shouted (perhaps a little too hysterically) at nobody.
I made a space amongst my beddings and opened the box. Lincoln curled up beside me.
For at least three hours I poured through the letters while sitting on the dining room floor, it was amazing. All I can say at this time is: WOW! If true – it changes everything!
Mrs. Exnzpat would say I was wasting time – and she would be right. Time is money and I needed to get back to work. I put the letters carefully back in the box and not knowing what else to do with it decided that I it should go back up into the attic for safe keeping. The house was, after all, a work zone and the letters were very very old and very very valuable.
The problem of course, was getting the box back into the attic. My earlier bravado had now faded, sobered no doubt by the contents of the letters, and as I approached the ladder that cold-dread feeling played across my body. I stopped up short. Lincoln felt it too. Lincoln’s ears were perked up and a low growl reverberated quietly from his belly. His hackles weren’t up yet.
They say a dog’s senses are better than a humans – I think any dog owner would agree. And so for tens of thousands of years dogs have been mankind’s closet companions (cat owners may disagree). I watched Lincoln for clues.
We must have looked a sight standing next to each other in the living room staring at a ladder. A dog and his master – afraid of a ladder – surely our primordial ancestors would have been appalled at our cowardice. Soon Lincoln’s muscles relaxed and his growl quieted. I felt it too – the coldness lifted -- very strange. But even so my confidence had been shaken and I decided to put the box in the only place I knew would be out of the way for now; on one of the shelves in the closet of the back bedroom. As much as I feared this room – I had already decided that this was the last room to be rehabbed and so the box and its contents would be safe there. I did it quickly. Hell, I practically ran there and back!
I spent the rest of the afternoon installing the Kitchen cabinets. An easier job than you might think for one person. These cabinets are all the wall cabinets.
What you do is, apart from measuring, is to screw or nail a 1 x 2 inch board onto the wall (make sure its level), find the studs, and then, when level, screw the cabinets into the wall. It's that simple. Just don't forget to remove the 1 x 2 inch board when you're done.
Once everything was in place I surveyed the room and decided that I needed to get to work on the floor. That way, when the new appliances arrive tomorrow I'd have something to put them on.
I spent the next hour tearing up the linoleum and exposing the sub-floor and then, from the truck, lugged the three long boxes of Pergo hardwood up to the house that I'd brought a couple of days earlier.
In my own house I would never use Pergo for my floors, but rather, real wood. Pergo has its detractors, but for rental property I cannot speak more highly of this product. Pergo hard wood is incredibly resistant to the worst renters, waterproof, and actually looks pretty good. And over the years, Pergo has gotten more expensive because of these very attributes. It has, in some cases, become more expensive than some brands of real hard wood!
As night came, I didn’t stop work. I broke for a quick diner and later took Lincoln for a short walk. But other than that – I worked – I think I’m beginning to fear sleep.Last edited by exnzpat; 23-06-2009, 03:00 PM.
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I looked for and found a wire that was running (to what I presumed
was the power outlet in the hallway) and spliced in my three wires
I enclosed the lot in a metal housing and screwed it onto the closest
cross-piece. And that’s it – done.
outlets are fused (circuit breaker) at a higher rating
than lighting circuits and have heavier-grade cables,
capable of managing higher loads. I wonder if an in-
line fuse might've been a good idea?
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Day 8
My headache returned with a vengeance and I wondered if the house contained toxic mold. Surely, the bug spray from the Foggers had dissipated by now? I hadn’t observed any mold but that did not mean that it wasn’t there. It could easily be hiding behind the walls. It had been a restless night and for the second time now I thought I heard a child softly crying.
The previous night: I had finished putting down the Pergo. The kitchen looked great! Next, I went to work on painting. I got the final coats of paint onto the Dining room, Hallway, and bathroom. I fell into bed sometime around 2am.
After breakfast I ventured down the hallway and took a look into the two smaller bedrooms. Neither had had wallpaper so, other than a scrape down and clean-up, they were ready to paint.
The middle room felt fine but the back one - well that one just gave me the creeps. Both rooms and the hallway were getting new carpet, as was the living room. In the Master bedroom I had already exposed the hardwood and planned to do the same in the dining room. The Master bathroom, which was in the hallway, catty-corner to the living room and Master bedroom, was fine; tiled and old-fashioned but other than stripping the wallpaper off, and giving it a fresh coat of paint, the Master bathroom needed no other work. The other bathroom, down in the basement, was newer but consisted of only a toilet and a sink, I was fortunate because it needed no work at all.
Ripping up carpet is easy work. The hardest part is removing the tack board. It was about 7am and I thought, "what the hell - ghosts or no ghosts," and began tearing up the carpet. After about thirty minutes I had the carpet up in both rooms and dragged it out of the house and dumped it into the dumpster. It took several trips to get it all done. I saw Jim as he headed out to work, and waved - I guess I needed to return the favor and invite him over for coffee one evening.
With leather gloves and a mini wrecking-bar I went to work on the tack board. After about an hour I had finished in the hallway and the second bedroom and swept up my mess.
I had left the third bedroom for last. I sighed when I went in. This should have been an easy redo. This bedroom -- and this bedroom alone seemed to be the main focus of the haunting. The attic or at least that part of the attic at the beginning of the hallway seemed somehow different. It’s hard to explain.
“M is for Murder”, “Murder most foul”, redrum, redrum etc, etc, etc.
I worked quickly on the tack board and the assorted nails and staples that one tends to find in the floors of an older house. As I worked that cold dead feeling played across my body the whole time, tingling my nerve endings up and down, up and down. Just like the swinging of an axe, up and down, up and down. I kept telling myself I was having mini seizures in my temporal lobes and that the materials of the house crystallized and focused an electrical energy into my brain – fueling my seizures. Up and down, up and down they went. My headache returned.
The carpet had been laid in the closet and I had not pulled it up on my early sweep though the room. I opened the door, and on my knees pulled away the small square of carpet exposing the tack. At that moment the air changed and the cold-dread feeling notched itself up into overdrive. I froze. As difficult as it was I raised my head to look – and in absolute horror I saw, there on the third shelve up, was the cardboard box from the attic! Terrified I ran from the room.
Out under the carport I caught myself and lent against my primer stand. “How the hell did that box get there from the attic?” “Had one of the kids brought it down the other day when they were here?” “What is going on?” Maybe I had imagined it!
It took about fifteen minutes for my fear to subside. And then I just felt plain foolish standing outside my house. This is just crazy – I have work to do. I braced myself and then walked back through the house into the bedroom. Sure enough, there was the box. How did it get here? One of the kids must have brought it down – that was the only explanation. Except that they would have asked my permission before doing so. It just didn’t make sense and there is no way Mrs. Exnzpat would have climbed a ladder and retrieved this box.
I opened the box and looked inside. The contents had been moved around, of that I was sure. The bundles of letters had been neatly stacked on one side of the box and the toys and nick-knacks on the other side. Someone had definitely gone through the box’s contents since I had found it up in the attic last week. But, the big question remained: how did it get down here?
I stood stupidly looking at the box, expecting answers that weren’t forth coming and so with nothing better to do I simply went back to work. The mystery of the box would have to remain just that for now. I left the box where I found it.
Finished, I tidied up the mess. And as I did so I wondered if these headaches that I was having might have something to do with the unusual experiences I was having (that I am expressing here as a haunting -- for lack of a better word). If temporal lobe seizures and energy focus from the materials in a home did not explain my experiences then – what about toxic mold?
I'd had a friend who owned a house that had toxic mold. He and his family had constant health problems, headaches being one of them, memory loss, asthma and breathing problems another. Also, they had had a young puppy that had died within a few months of being in the house; it was the death of the puppy that had woken them up to the fact that there may actually be a problem with their house, and it was their vet that had suggested toxic mold. When the mold inspector arrived it took him about fifteen minutes to determine that they did indeed have a problem. The mold was black in color and was living quite merrily behind their walls. Poor ventilation, because of a type of inferior insulation in the walls, allowed for a thriving colony of the black fungus. Within an hour a sheriff’s deputy showed up and escorted my friend and his family off the property. They could take nothing with them and just like a fire - it was all gone. The house, the furniture, the lot was now tainted. The house was eventually torn down by the County at the behest of the bank and the insurance company who basically footed the bill for the whole thing.
It was a warm day and as I dumped the tack, nails and other trash into the dumpster. I decided to check the carpet from the room for mold. It was awkward clumping around in the dumpster but I was able to spread it out and make a fairly close inspection. Nothing. If there was mold it was not visible.
Around 11am two kids from the hardware store showed up with the new refrigerator, stove and dishwasher. I showed them where everything was to go and left them to it. It didn’t take them long. I signed the invoice, tipped them both and sent them on their way.
The kitchen was finished except for its final coat of paint. I picked out the pot of light daffodil-yellow paint that Mrs. Exnzpat had picked for the kitchen, and gathering the other tools I would need, stacked them on the kitchen floor and made a sandwich.
Sandwich in hand I sat down at my lap top and logged into PropertyTalk.com to see what was going on. Normally, my pattern of posts is set at regular intervals. I post at night before bed then in the morning just as you guys in New Zealand are going to bed I go over replies, comments, insults etc. Also, it gives me an opportunity to edit my earlier posts. You know spelling, punctuation and stuff.
Hmmm... Perry thinks an inline fuse would be a good idea. I don’t know what that is but it sounds as if the fuse popped I’d have to go up into the attic to reset it. The best place for a tripped circuit is the Main circuit board in my books. Let’s see, Perry states his interests as “Philosophy.” Note to self: don’t take a philosophers advice on electrical matters.
What else… Oh, I spelt “buddle” instead of “bundle,” bundle of what?
I stopped short. Sunday’s Post:I decided to get the box.
I remember none of it! Least of all reading the letters! Until now my memory lapses had been small. Things here and there, but you know, like most things – you just take some forgotten things for granted. Bigger things – now they make you think. Like the high gloss paint on the kitchen cabinets now that was pretty unusual but I chalked it up to stress like the Priest said. But, this -- this was astounding. How can three hours just simply slip away from my life with no recollection whatsoever? What else had I forgotten? What is wrong with me?
I need to get out of the house for a while. There were plenty of errands I could find -- the Laundromat was one.
I needed to wash my clothes anyway (it’s not standard for landlords to provide washers and dryers in rental homes in the US so after a week, the pile of clothing that I had dumped in a corner of the dining room, was really beginning to smell). I carefully put together a collection of coins from about the house and from the truck and stuffed my pile of dirty clothes into a large garbage bag and headed out to the local Laundromat. While my clothes were drying I decided this was as good a time as any to head over to the Town Hall and have a chat with the local police about my house and its history.
Like most small American towns the Town Hall, City Officers, Police Station and Fire Department are one big building in the town center.
The officer on duty was nonplused at my question.
“I called last week complaining about a woman’s scream – why was no one sent?”
He asked me who I was, my address, and the approximate time of my call. He told me to take a seat. I idled through an assortment of magazines stacked on the table next to the chair. I watched the officer consult what I assumed to be a log book, he grinned and left the room, shortly he returned with another officer.
“So, you the guy who’s fixing up the place on Erehwon Street?” asked the new officer.
I told them I was.
“Well, we did send a car around but nobody stopped in. The truth is that we get quite a few calls about that house.” He consulted a sheet of paper, “fifteen in the last year alone.” He paused, and looked a little embarrassed. “ahh.. we, my officers, think the house is haunted. So…” Listening to himself he realized how dumb he sounded. He straightened up and asked, “what can we do for you sir?”
“I was told that about thirty years ago there had been a murder in the house, if you have time, I would like to know a little more about it.”
The two officers looked at each other. The more senior officer shrugged his shoulders and said “what the hell – it’s a slow day.”
A couple of hours later I pulled back into the driveway. Lincoln was glad to see me and he followed me happily into the kitchen. I dumped my clean clothes on my camp bed.
I unfolded the tarps, pulled the refrigerator out from the walls and went to work with the brush and roller. Within an hour I was done. Damn the kitchen looked good! Its new butter-colored walls practically gleamed.
I walked aimlessly about the house for a while, and then determinedly forced myself to the back bedroom. I tried not to think about what happened here. But, happen it did. I examined the rear wall where the bodies had been stuffed as one would stuff insulation. Yes, I could see that the wallboard was newer than the rest of the room. I just stood and stared. Soon my headache returned.
Perhaps, just perhaps, when the wall had been replaced the moisture of the blood and gore had not been cleaned up properly, and there behind the wall, a mold began to fester.
Thirty years ago a man had murdered his wife and son here. In an attempt to hide his crime he removed this wall and the insulation. He cut the bodies into more workable pieces and inserted them between the studs. After closing the wall back up with fresh wallboard, taping, mudding, and painting he packed his bags and headed for Florida. And because it was the dead of winter nobody was the wiser. As spring and summer came the smell began to seep from the house and out into the street and all across the neighborhood. When the cops showed up this wall had bowed outward under the pressure from the bloated gasses of the putrefied remains. So great was the pressure, that when one of the cops, curious as to why the wall bowed so, pressed lightly on it, it exploded outward. Much like the way a cartoon character opens a closet and is buried under its contents so it was for the cops in the room. Out came lungs, hearts, kidneys and several miles of stinking intestine. Blood, two heads, and gore flowed outwards -- filling the room.
I imagined it as I stood there. This house had never been the same since. And my head really really began to hurt.
I spent the rest of the day painting. The sooner I finished, and got the hell out of here the better!
I need to sleep.
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An Interest in Philosophy Does Not a Philosopher Make
Originally posted by exnzpat View PostHmmm... Perry thinks an in-line fuse would be a good idea.
I don’t know what that is but it sounds as if the fuse popped
I’d have to go up into the attic to reset it. The best place for
a tripped circuit is the Main circuit board in my books. Let’s
see, Perry states his interests as “Philosophy.” Note to self:
don’t take a philosophers advice on electrical matters.
last several years, so has an inkling or two about flowing
electrons and devices that humans use to try to stop said
flowing electrons from killing them.
Certainly an in-line fuse is not ideal in that position, should
a replacement fuse be required. However, very few of life's
happenstances are all that serendipitous, so some modest
inconvenience (in this case) outweighs the potential disaster
costs of a failure. And, lest it be forgot, 'inappropriate' wiring
may well have an adverse impact on any insurance claim,
should such ever happen. Given the "so sue me" penchants
of those indigenous to your present 'homeland,' I do recom-
mend some cautious reflection.
Note to self: take a measure of salt with any exnzpat's
advice on renovation and ghost-busting matters.
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This thread is worse than watching spooks............I always end up wanting the next episode to come out so I can find out what happens. So I await with anticipation for the next NZEXpat instalment. I have one unhelpful question: can you charge ghosts rent?..............just thought of an answer while writing...............yes you can: haunted house tours!!!!!The mission of any business enterprise should include the aim to develop economic conditions rather than simply react to them.
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Just thought: Instead of Ghosts maybe the house has an infrasound problem? Infrasound has been known to be present ( and proposed as as a cause) in "Haunted BuildingsThe mission of any business enterprise should include the aim to develop economic conditions rather than simply react to them.
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