Raising my spirits
I don’t believe in ghosts.
But then there are occasions when I sometimes wonder.
Many times I have come across phenomena which are real and tangible yet have no rational explanation in science or anywhere else for that matter. After all, if a Neanderthal had been shown a computer he would have considered it utterly impossible, and would have dismissed it even though the evidence was there? There are more things in Heaven and Earth Horatio, and all that shit?
If ghosts exist, and it’s a big IF, then this Manor is indeed haunted. I have noticed many strange things over the years for which there is no rational behaviour.
Take for example, Mrs Chippy. Mrs Chippy is our cat, and this morning he was fast asleep curled up on the couch. [Yes – he’s a male and is called Mrs. Know your history.] It came to pass that I had to attend to a small call of nature, and when I returned, Mrs Chippy was now fast asleep curled up in the middle of the floor. “So fucking what?” I hear you cry? Well, there is the small but not insignificant fact that Mrs Chippy is a stuffed animal that the daughter bought Herself as a joke some years ago. I grant he is incredibly realistic and has fooled many the guest to this establishment, but the fact remains – he is not a live cat. So how the fuck did he move off the couch onto the floor?
And then there is The Smell. People think of ghostly manifestations as shadowy translucent people who drift around the place, but surely they can manifest in other ways? Occasionally when wandering around the gaff I will come across an odour which has no explanation, such as the scent of burning turf where there isn’t a turf fire in miles, or the scent of my father’s jacket which hasn’t been in the house for getting on for fifty years.
There is a room in the house here that usually has a rather pleasant smell – a smell of an old room in an old house: a sort of slightly musty papery smell. I went in there on Sunday and breathed deeply. The stench nearly knocked me flat. It was a sweet sickly smell of decomposing bodies. It was revolting to put it mildly. I ducked out, took a lungful of fresh air, ducked in again and opened all the windows.
The stench lingered all day. It was almost visible it was so strong. Opening the windows had no effect whatsoever and the air remained foul and unbreathable. There was nothing in there that could have caused such unpleasantness and the only possible cause I could think of was that a rat or something had died under the floorboards and was happily decomposing. If that was the case there was fuck all I could do about it.
The next day the room had reverted to normal. It was back to its vaguely musty smell again with no hint of the previous day’s ordure.
The is no rational explanation for either of those two manifestations.
Unless of course Mrs Chippy nipped into the room and farted?
Afternoon Grandad. Dont Quantum Physicists and elon musk say we could be living in a sort of matrix, and that would explain everything, the smell a glitch in the program,
i,m getting dafter by the day, so feel free too take the piss!
I hadn’t thought of quantum physics. So you are suggesting that my room somehow intermeshed with a graveyard in a fourth dimension? I suppose it’s a possibility?
(Thinks) “That new Condor must be strong stuff!!!”
I got through half a pack just trying to fumigate the house.
” I will come across an odour which has no explanation, such as the scent of burning turf where there isn’t a turf fire in miles, or the scent of my father’s jacket which hasn’t been in the house for getting on for fifty years.”
That bit at least is easy to explain; smells are memory and vice versa. Your brain records every ‘smell’ that has ever meant anything to you -good or bad. A remnant from the past when recognising smells was a matter of life and death- the gentle aroma of sabre toothed tiger wafting in on the evening breeze..
Infact some smells may even be hardwired into our limbic. So something causes you to recall the peat fires of your youth or your dad’s jacket. The trigger might be anything, visual or another niff.
As to the rest of your post, the gender dysphasic cuddly toy….
…that’s just God fucking with you.He does that. You probably should go to confession more often.
I know well the connection between smell and memory. The smell of Laurel hedging to this day reminds me of my first school. Hated that place! I wasn’t aware that it is supposed to work in reverse though? For example, if I conjure up a memory of my father sitting opposite, I can visualise him quite clearly but there are no associated scents.
As for going to confession – the last time I went [many decades ago] the priest left the priesthood shortly after. He must have realised the pleasures he was missing?
Don’t know if it supposed to work in reverse, but it can…usually ‘triggered’ not consciously summoned. That or the wiring loom of ‘yer heed’ needs redoing. Simplest explanation is always the best and you’re probably just going senile. Same way psychotics can smell burning rubber when none is there (which might be a myth but it’s an example most have heard of).
Is the Manor old? We used to live in a 400 yr old cottage where strange things happened. We had a dog at the time who must’ve been sensitive to something or other. One day I was sitting on the sofa reading and generally minding my own business and she was lying at the side of me growling at the open door. Now she was a gentle little soul and would usually rather hide behind the sofa than see anything off that was bigger than a housefly, but this day she was really upset about something. The thing is I could see that there was nothing there – certainly there was nothing visible to me. The cottage had once had a door to the outside from the sitting room that had been blocked off for about 300 years and what was once a detached cottage became a semi as another house was attached then but the timber lintels were still in the wall – a bit of an interesting feature. Every so often, the dog would get up and walk towards this “door” as if she was following someone to it. Another time I was walking up the stairs and there was a sudden, fairly forceful rush of cold air that came towards me – a wtf? moment. I called downstairs to see if anyone had opened any doors to the outside. Nobody had and it was mid-summer and warm outside anyway so that wouldn’t account for the sudden cold rush. Feeling pee’d off that some squatter from another dimension was having the run of my home I stood at the top of the stairs and declared “Who ever you are, you are dead, so push off and rest in peace!” Me and the dog were never bothered again and shortly after that we sold up and moved. 🙂
I have the deeds to the place somewhere which give the full details. Somewhere around a couple of hundred years or more. It was certainly designed for shorter people, as the top of my head will testify.
We get the odd occasion here where there is a feeling that there is someone there but that could just be imagination, or indigestion. The only time I nearly freaked out was many years ago in our previous house. Our daughter was around two or three when one morning she announced that there had been someone in her room [a physical impossibility, I might add]. She then gave a very good description of my father, and added that he was a very nice man. Strange…..?
Only strange perhaps due her very young age or if she had never seen a photo of your dad or never heard a description of him. You’ve just described a fairly normal childhood hallucination, the juvenile brain takes many years to decide on what is reality- watch one episode of Mr Tumbles (so creepy he makes Savile seem fluffy) and you’ll understand. You’re Irish for God’s sake man, have you never wondered why the Blessed Mother takes such inordinate delight at appearing to little children? Preferably young females about to hit puberty? And how those children can pass a polygraph even though science tells us Mary Mother Of God so did not trip off the astral and float above the spring spouting benedictions and prophecies?
That’s the thing – he died about five years before she was born. She never saw a photograph of him and never heard me describe him. That’s what sent the shiver down the spine.
When you have eliminated the impossible whatever remains, however improbable, must be true.
Occam’s Razor? The simplest answer is usually the right one. It was a ghastly ghostly stench!
Nope. Sherlock Holmes. Or Arthur Conan Doyle. 😉
Yup. I was offering Occam’s Razor as an alternative.
“There are more things in Heaven and Earth Horatio, and all that …”
Definitely.
But on the “gender dysphasic cuddly toy” (to quote BD): Could it be a possibility that Penny likes Mrs Chippy and in a very heroic and Grandad-fooling act of canine humour took her from the couch to the floor?
That would be a possibility as she has a devious sense of humour. I think she was asleep under the hedge at the time though. Unless her humour is a lot more devious than I thought, and she’s an excellent actor?
Okay, then, I give up – or … is Penny telecinetic? 😉
Not that I know of, though she could be. Maybe she can shift things in her sleep? A Canine Poltergeist?
I used to live somewhere with similarities. Although the memory/smell link (above) is plausible to rationalise the stuff you felt, it could not explain my house’s heavy and menacing breathing heard closely just behind your ear as you went upstairs. Boo!
Or the (possibly Roman soldiers) marching through the cellar.
This was near Oldbury Hill in Kent, a site of a Roman fort and on a major east-west route for centuries; in fact the next E-W route south of the Pilgrims Way. (If the flow of energy is eastwards on the Pilgrims Way, then perhaps it’s westward on the Oldbury Hill route. There’s certainly something going on there.)
menacing breathing heard closely just behind your ear as you went upstairs. Boo!
Or the (possibly Roman soldiers) marching through the cellar.
if you tell me that heavy breath smelt of dormouse in honey…. 😛
Just a thought – I must check to see if there are any leylines around these parts …….
Of any use http://www.geomantica.com/articles/what-is-a-power-tower/
Er indoors was round her friends house Wednesday last and her friends dog a cockerpoo (mongrel of a specific blend apparently) was in the room whilst they were chatting. He stopped playing with whatever toy he had in his gob and stared at the door to the hall.
Thinking there as someone there or a sound from outside she got up and looked. No-one about outside and there was only the two of them in the house.
The dog stayed staring low down at the door then got up and waked to its owners side and sat down again with her legs between it and the door. He kept looking round her legs and staring and then looked higher up the door and back down again. He kept this up for a few minutes and then went out for a slash.
As for out of place smells here they are common and smelt by more then one of us more often than not.
Number one son was washing up one day in the kitchen all by himself number two son was upstairs er indoors and me were in the living room. He felt someone/something pull his tee shirt down straight. The only person who did this to him was his nanna who had been dead two years when he felt this experience.
I love that kind of stories! More, please! It so nicely tickles the mind!
As others have stated, what you describe (and I assume there are others experiences you’d prefer to keep to yourself) is commonplace.
Smell is indeed one way in which spirits / entities / presences let themselves be known. You experienced the stench of putrefying corpses, and that indicates there could well have been a jolly good battle on land where your house is sited. Another indicator is areas of barren land in your area where nothing grows.
I’ve done a superficial search for Ley lines in Eire but drawn a blank on that. Wicklow has a stack of ancient religious ruins, so it’s very likely there are some important Ley lines in that region.
The main issue with this is there’s no harm being done; no one being scared witless and of course no blood being drawn. What you don’t want is something giving you a helping hand to fall down the stairs. That’s a nasty little get-out, as no blood is actually shed.
Unfortunately this doesn’t apply JUST to the land itself, it could just as easily be a stone that was used in the construction of the property.
I knew a builder chap who admitted to experiencing extreme cold in some parts of the older properties in Edinburgh and yes he had the breathing behind him on more than one occasion. Here it’s no big deal.
I went into an ancient pub in the port area of Leith and felt such intense pressure that I had to quit that part of the pub. It was awful. The owner explained a murder had occurred in that room something like 100 years beforehand – and yes it did seem to affect some people.
While there are people who claim to be able to get rid of intrusive spirits / entities / presences, I preferred to avoid using one – too brutal in my opinion. My own personal experience was a pre-pubescent boy who simply did not know he had died. Let’s just say I had to wait until I felt his presence, then sit and have a lengthy chat about what he needed to do and where he needed to go.
Felt a total twat at the time, sat on the lowest step seeming to talk earnestly to an empty staiwell! Sod all happened for several weeks, then that odd sensation in that area of the house ended and I knew the wee tyke had gone – about 170 years late.
Going back over the history of this place, there were no battles that I am aware of. There is a Portal Dolmen not too far away and in the other direction there is a “holy well”, so the area has been inhabited for quite a while. Interestingly there was a graveyard at one point, so long ago that it has never appeared on a survey map. It was a hundred yards or so from here [I’m not sure of the precise location]. It is possible [quite likely] that stones fro the ancient chapel were used in the construction of the house here.
Having said that, my “manifestations” are usually at the back of the house in an extension my Dad and I built and all the materials there are bog standard.
Barren land? Not a chance. I have the opposite problem – everything grows everywhere at a fierce rate. It is the most fertile soil I have ever come across.
If there is some kind of ethereal spirit inhabiting the place then it’s more than welcome. It certainly doesn’t bother me in the slightest.
Grandad,
As we pass through life many of us encounted instances of the unexplainable. May I humbly point you in the direction of our bit of the supernatural?
http://foggy-mirror.blogspot.co.uk/2007/03/and-then-there-was-touch-of.html
To be honest, there are ley lines on paper, and then there’s the sort you encounter out in the field with dowsing tools that aren’t official ley lines at all, but they’re still there right enough.
Have a shufti round with the old dowsing rods, see what you find besides the normal electricity cables and the drains and whatnot.