Validating My Theory About Ghosts

I was watching Ghost Adventures again. Why, oh, why do I keep watching? I think the investigators make up over half of what they claim to hear and see. Plus, they scare themselves silly. If a person wants to investigate ghosts, he shouldn't be freaked out to find something ghostlike. At least the Ghost Hunters don't scream and run every time they hear something strange.

Anyway, one of the paranormal "experts" has the same energy theory as I do. Today is the first time I've seen this episode, at the Houghton Mansion in Massachusetts, so I don't think I've ever heard someone express the energy theory. It's good to know I'm not alone.

On Sunday, I tried explaining my theory. No one but Chris seemed to get it. Even if I think that most of Ghost Adventures is contrived and akin to cheesey '90s horror movies like The Blair Witch Project, I appreciate my idea being validated.

Made It Mondays - Color Change Bracelet and Earrings

I'm trying something new today! Apparently while I was on my blogging break, Jules over at The Persimmon Perch (http://thepersimmonperch.blogspot.com/) invited me to join her for "Made It Mondays." I just found her invite last Thursday, so this will be my first submission!

Green/Gray - Natural light/Incandescent

Pink - Fluorescent light

Last week I made the above bracelet and earring set from Swarovski color change crystals and glass pearls. Swarovski color change crystals are amazing because they appear a different color in every type of light. Incandescent light makes them appear green; fluorescent brings out a lovely pink/peach; and natural outdoor light, they're a grey green.

What I did is a relatively simple, loose beading pattern. All you need are the following:

1) a length of clear beading wire (cut to be the length you want AFTER it is doubled). Leave enough extra for knotting the end.
2) a box clasp
3) glass pearls
4) crystals -- I chose color change because of the dramatic way light effects it
5) metal butterfly beads or other "spacers" of your choice
6) earwires if you want to make earrings also
7) 1 small silver crimp bead for the bracelet, 2 additional ones for earrings
8) pair of small needle nose pliers

Thread your beading wire through one end of the box clasp. Making sure your wire is even, add beads: place one pearl on each end of the wire, bring wire together and add a single crystal, add two pearls, bring wire together and add a spacer bead. Repeat until bracelet is desired length (mine is 8.5").

This is a box clasp.

Once it will fit comfortably around your wrist, add a crimp bead. Thread your wire through the free end of the box clasp and bring it back through the crimp bead. Tighten your wire until there is no undesirable space between your beads. Flatten your crimp bead with the pliers until it is secure. Tie a knot or two in your wire close to the final bead and thread it back through a bead or two for extra security.

For earrings, use a piece of clear beading wire that is approximately 4 inches long. String one crystal, flank it with a pearl on either side, bring the wire together and thread your spacer (or butterfly) bead, and add your crimp bead. Bring ends of the wire through the loop of the earwire, and thread ends back through the crimp bead. Flatten the bead with your pliers, and thread wire through top spacer bead for security. Repeat for second earring.

On Admitting There May Be Ghosts

I wrote my ghost blog on Friday. Today, Sunday, strange things have been occurring around my house. Last night I folded a quilt on top of my suitcase, which is standing on the far side of my room next to a window. I woke up this morning and the quilt was in its place. After a shower and some coffee, I went back to my bedroom to get ready for lunch; the quilt was laying in the middle of the room, like it had been dragged. I folded the quilt and put it back on the suitcase.

When I came home after lunch at my grandparents' house, the quilt was in place, but a table cloth was in the middle of the living room floor. Yes, the table cloth was supposed to be in the living room since I was using it for a backdrop to take pictures of my jewelry, but when I left, it was on a chair, not in the floor!

The cats could probably have something to do with the movable linens, but the quilt seems a little big and heavy for them to tackle. While I was having coffee, they were all in the living room with me. I've seen them move rugs, even pull the table cloth backdrop off the chair, but entire quilts? That seems a little much.

Less than a week after Chris and I moved into this house, our wedding quilt that my aunt had made for us vanished. We assume it was stolen along with a wine rack that was in our garage, but maybe I just have a ghost with an obsession with linens.

Echos of the Past: In Defense of the Pricklings of an Overactive Imagination

Ever since I can remember, I've been intrigued by ghosts. In elementary school my Scholastic book orders always had a ghost story: The Ghost Wore Gray, Ghost Cat, The Haunting of Frances Rain, just to name the ones immediately coming to mind. The first lengthy story I wrote was about about a ghost named Alfred who lived in a little boy's closet. I don't know what draws me. My Wednesday evenings center around Ghost Hunters or Ghost Hunters International, depending on the season, and right now Ghost Adventures on the Travel channel is playing in the background while I write.

When I travel, I have to go on the ghost tours. I've seen curtains move in the Juliet Gordon Lowe house in Savannah, Ga. In Boston, I wandered graveyards by lantern light. When I went to Oxford, England, for Honors Students Association study abroad, my CD player turned on in the middle of the night, playing the music from the sinking in Titanic, and I don't have a complete explanation for why. I could have hit the on button when I put it under my bed, but it seems like I would have heard it before my roommate and I were almost asleep. The next time I went to England for study abroad, the fire alarm in our hotel went off. It could have been a malfunction, but after my Oxford "Titanic Ghost," I have suspicions that maybe my ghost was making its presence known.

Do I believe in ghosts? I don't know. I just know I don't not believe.

I've been thinking more about ghosts lately. Ever since I started my http://www.ancestry.com/ research, the idea has been floating around in my mind that perhaps ghosts are not entirely supernatural. Humans possess energy in addition to their body and spirit. If my memory of elementary science is correct, energy is neither created nor destroyed; it merely changes form. Maybe after the body is gone and the spirit has moved on, the energy remains; maybe if somebody is looking hard enough for it, they can pick up on the energy, like a recording of the past. Ghost Hunters would call that a residual haunting.

Are there echos of the past? I'm so intent on solving the mysteries that my family tree has raised, I keep looking for echos. Anything that leads me a little further. Every once in awhile, I get a prickling in the back of my mind, a tiny itch that keeps me going. It could be my curiosity or my intuition that I'm closer than it seems, or maybe those little residual energies are stirring, ready to be uncovered. I don't think that my relatives are hanging around waiting to be released for earth. I'm sure they've already moved on to their after life, but if the energy of their human form remains, maybe my research has stirred it up.

It's exciting to uncover things that have been forgotten for a century or more. I'm sure part of the prickling in my mind is just excitement, the enthusiasm of a historian brushing back a layer of the past. But maybe, just maybe, there is more than meets the eye. What else explains all the ghost stories, programs (Most Haunted just came on), books, and even experiences that have been written, recorded, and reported over the course of the centuries? I certainly don't think that Ghost Adventures, Most Haunted, and all the rest are entirely true, but I think the theory behind the ghost should not be discredited. Those prickles, flickers, and goosebumps may not be entirely flights of fancy for the overactive imagination.

Mouse Liberation Day, or How I Reinvented the Mouse

It's nearly 3 a.m. I know I should go to sleep, but I feel like I want to write. Write what I don't know.

Spike is curled up against my leg purring, and Stryker is playing mouse. All of the kids love those little colorful, furry mice that come in packs of 10. They used to each have one, a different color for each kid, but they get lost so easily. Christabelle usually picks out a pink mouse, Stryker gets orange because it matches him, Spike likes blue or green, and Snowbird plays with whatever is left over -- but she likes shiny things the best. (I guess she takes after me.)

We have an infestation of colorful little mice in our house. Like most mice, they are typically all hiding, but one pops out every now and then and brings hours of amusement to my family. Stryker's primary goal is to capture General Mouse and his entire army. When we lived in Oxford, Stryker jumped up on his back legs, raised his front paw in a salute and commenced a fiery assault on half a dozen toys, vanquishing each one systematically under the stove. Thus beginning the epic battle between cat and furry mice.

When the toy mouse population has been marched into hiding, I begin the search for survivors. Armed with a yard stick, I crawl from stove to refrigerator to china cabinet, poking my stick beneath each one and batting out the stragglers. The journey takes me from room to room, looking under dressers and cabinets, in closets, and behind pianos and bookcases. I usually find one or two fewer mice than we started with, but Mouse Liberation Day brings joy to my furry kids. They think it's Christmas all over again.

I love entertaining my furry kids like that, but sometimes we just run out of mice. No amount of mouse liberating turns up enough of the right mice to make everybody happy. (Too many of the wrong color toy means somebody isn't going to want to play.) Or worse, the mouse is wedged somewhere behind a stove leg in a mousey prison, and we have to wait for Daddy to come home and lift the stove so I can jab the mouse with my yard stick and send it back out into the fray. If only General Mouse could be imprisoned somewhere easier to liberate -- like under the bed or next to the stairs.

A few weeks ago, I found some cashmere socks that had shrunk in the dryer. They had long been my favorite warm, comfy, snuggly socks, but they no longer covered my feet. Instead of throwing them away, I made mice for my kids. I cut out mouse shapes, stuffed each one with scrap material and catnip, sewed them up, and embroidered faces and ears. The kids love them! I love them! They're adorable in that lopsided ear, piggy-faced way of first tries. Okay, only the first mouse looks like a pig, the second has lopsided ears, and the third is a great and wonderful example of true mousiness. (That's the third mouse pictured above.) And the great thing is, they're too big to fit under the stove!

I think my next project will be dog toys and perfecting the mouse. I'm sure they will be demanding different colors soon.