Spooky Blogging
As I munched on my lunch the other day, I scrolled through my blog aggregator and found myself reading a couple of eery and spooky blog posts that just seemed to pop up randomly in an eery and spooky way.
The first was a post from my associate Silvia Cambie, writing about an afternoon by the lake a long time ago. It reads like a Stephen King or like one of those creepy movies like “What Lies Beneath”. Here’s an extract:
“I could feel its skeletal fingers between mine…Its glacial breath down my neck.
A surreal fog was rising between me and my friend, like thick incense smoke in a dark, forsaken temple.
I don’t remember how I left the house. “
Eeeeek!
The next post that popped up on my screen was from the blog of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, telling ghost stories set in the haunted libraries of the US. Here is the entry for a library in Arkansas:
“Benton, Saline County Library. The library’s home from 1967 to 2003 was a converted theater building that frequently featured phenomena that made librarians suspect a ghost was afoot: phantom footsteps, paperback carousels rotating by themselves, books falling from the shelves, a self-operating photocopier, and a slamming book-return door. Once, late at night, Director Julie Hart heard the distinctive sound of a manual typewriter—but the library had long ago discarded theirs.”
The hairs are standing up on the back of my neck!
I love a good ghost story bu I’m completely hopeless when it comes to hearing strange noises in the night - I’m no plucky heroine, going off to investigate and instead, preferring to cower in my bed after I’ve turned all the lights ablaze and turned up the radio full blast.
Picture: thanks to gaileymcguire on flickr.com
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Wed, October 3rd, 2007 - Author
Yang-May Ooi - Category
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October 3rd, 2007 at 8:02 am
As you may have guessed, I love this genre . . . and right now there’s an icy wind blowing outside and are those footsteps . . .
October 3rd, 2007 at 8:11 am
Hal - yeeks!
With ghost stories set in the tropics, is there still a feeling of chill and ice when the spooks appear?
October 3rd, 2007 at 2:44 pm
PORT DICKSON was a garrison town of the Japanese during the Occupation years where large numbers of people were reportedly executed. Once stayed at Armed Forces Officers’ living quarters at I think 3rd mile. In the wee hours, used to hear steps as if someone going to the communal shower room AND shower being turned on. On going to investigate [lights blazing and accompanied of course], shower stopped, Nobody around at all. Gave me the creeps.
Manifestations of the dead: the Chinese believe the spirits of the dearly departed do come back to visit, I saw a solitary white butterfly fluttering amongst my flowering plants for three days in a row, never to be seen ever again.
Once stayed in a poky bedsitter in NW London near to and overlooking a disused cemetery [no, not the one where Karl Marx was buried] but had never heard or seen anything untoward but I always drew the curtains after dark. Naturally I didn’t stay long.
I believe Arthur Koestler left a large endowment to Edinburgh Univ for study and research into the paranormal much of which we do not understand.
October 4th, 2007 at 10:56 am
I think I would’ve stayed un-showered and dirty, Yeeton, rather than clean and possible meet the ghost in the shower!
I remember seeing a film of a Chinese opera called The Butterfly Lovers about a Romeo & Juliet type tragic love story where the lovers can only live happily ever after after death - as butterflies. It was sad and romantic and spooky all at the same time.
October 4th, 2007 at 8:39 pm
* A Real Life Spooky Experience
I WAS billeted at Officers’ living quarters for singles in Port Dickson for the duration of a short military training course that ended quite shortly - I never ever was to return there - after the “hearing” incident. Never heard such stuff again in the ensuing nights but before I left I made sure I only showered during broad daylight hours for obvious reasons. The shower room incident, mind you, was quite frightening really, the guy who accompanied me to investigate was frightened too, carried a crucifix in one hand and a hockey stick in the other. And there WAS residual water on the shower cubicle floor and shower head indicating VERY recent shower use that all three of us staying on that upper floor served by the shower room insisted had NOT showered in the past hour or so. A fortiori, as it was after all about three in the morning, very windy with howling gale-force winds and it was unusually chilly that night. Before the footsteps, there were other unaccounted for noises in the corridor / building precinct that we quite wrongly dismissed as something else blaming the winds or a stray cat. It would seem that night was an opportune time for a visit of something from the spirit world, very spooky and unnerving indeed! I don’t think anyone of us slept that night at all, thankfully it being a rest day-Sunday. We all congregated in just one room, stayed wide awake chatting the night away, with lights blazing of course.There was a hand-wash basin in each and every room that we were each billeted in. We half-expected and dreaded the knock on the door indicating “May I/WE come in?”[ No, I haven’t been watching too many Hollywood ghost movies or Hammer horror films, not that many those days anyway]
From feedback received from others who had been billeted there before, it seems ours was not a one-off, isolated incident.There’s a guy previously who came to grief whilst sleeping alone under a mosquito net in his room but that’s another story. [ Rooms not air-conditioned in those distant days, hence use of mosquito nets!]
I’ve heard it said ONLY people of a certain disposition for want of a better term
are able actually to see ghosts but a lower threshold applies in respect of a “hearing” that would include probably most of us. Reportedly, domesticated animals like cats and dogs can see ghosts in cases when humans can’t. Shed light, anyone?
As to what you alluded to,YM, scientific investigations carried out have proved there’s usually a significant temperature drop on the materialisation or arrival of a “presence” regardless of locality. Audio okay but photographic or image bit proved a bit more difficult to capture on video though. Whatever got captured inconclusive anyway.
I reproduce below excerpts of an email that I sent to an old friend …
….Pudu jail was allegedly terribly haunted. Those living nearby said at midnight or crack of dawn when executions usually took place, cries of anguish could be heard of those whose lives were forcibly snuffed out. On execution, some went into hysterics, became incontinent but most took it with resigned relative calm.
… and in a reference to King Henry VIII of England [ 6 wives BTW],
The ghosts of those Henry VIII had executed still haunt the place in London where they were executed - beheaded - centuries earlier - one ghost with his/her detached head in his/her arm propped against chest wailing and
lamenting as it moves/sails around, reportedly…
Chinese are generally superstitious, believe in, including big Chinese businesses, in the concept of Feng Shui as do I? What about you?
On superstition,I seem to recall reading very long ago in Readers’ Digest that great, only US 4-term President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was superstitious, that might have an influence in his prosecution and conduct of the War, but I stand corrected as to what I say.
Are you superstitious? Avoid walking under a ladder? And Friday the 13th?