Orbs and Cheese Pie

Rifol is mid-way through telling us about the investigation night she booked on the internet:

 This night was a turning point in many ways.  At last, I got my hands on a machine that measured things, and I measured something.  I observed orbs a-plenty.  I had a go at everything.  As I might have expected, I eventually came away with more questions than answers.  That was how I felt at the end of the night.  I had better start from the beginning.

The evening began easily a full hour and a half after the starting time.  You do not have to be Einstein to work out that there has to be some payback for a  publican, hosting an event like this.  We had to buy dinner.  By happy chance, I was able to pass the time with a friendly bunch from a nearby town, also on their first investigation.

While we were waiting for dinner, we watched a large screen displaying web cam images from three of the upstairs rooms.  Straight away, we were in orb land.  There were globes of light floating all over the split screen.

Some specialists will have us believe that orbs are merely an irritating by-product of digital photography: the flash is very close to the lens, so dust and insects caught on camera appear as circles of light.  Others insist that orbs are connected to spirit activity.  There are any number of websites supporting each of these positions.  We each have to choose our own storyteller.  Opinion on our table was divided.  The publican scowled at us and sourly pointed out that she certainly had dusted her bedrooms.  Personally, I leaned towards the dust camp, but I was interested in what the organisers had to say.  

I believe it was Sensitive who explained to us that, while many of the light anomalies we could see were surely caused by dust, closer observation would show that there were different kinds of orbs, and that some of them moved purposefully, whereas dust always moves in the same pattern.  She told us that she had once seen a photo of an orb with a face inside, and it was the face of a person associated with that particular site. 

Reading around this subject later, I learned that, in a still photo, orbs caused by dust look as if they are close to the camera, and may contain a concentric ring pattern.  Some writers claimed that ‘real’ orbs connected to spirits emitted light, and they have posted examples of these for all to see.  That reminds me of my childhood and the way older people always whispered about supposedly haunted locations in terms of ‘strange lights’.

Watching for longer, I did realise that the screen showed a variety of light effects.  When one of the staff walked across to a camera, sparkly dust particles could clearly be seen whirling up around him, and they subsided when he left.  Other, larger ones, glided across empty rooms.  Some seemed to have tails, some were more like wisps of light.  These may have been insects.  When examining moving images, internet advice tells us to look out for orbs which appear to move through or behind objects, as these are less likely to be dust.  I expect it is possible to do that when you can slow down or replay scenes, but I could not possibly keep up with the speed and frequency of what was happening on screen in front of us. 

Frankly, I grew bored.  Pleasant as everyone was, I had not intended to spend the evening making small talk with strangers.  Orb-watching does not remain a novelty for long, especially if you are fairly certain you are watching moths enjoying an evening constitutional before retiring to lay eggs on the curtains. 

I was rescued by the arrival of dinner, which was delicious, but contained a solid week’s worth of carbohydrate and fat.  The waif-like young woman at our table ate less than half of hers.  I guessed she must usually peck at bits of lettuce, and I commented on how large the portions were.  She told me she had already been to MacDonalds before she came, just in case the food in the pub was not good. 

That is the real difference between the generations.

 People under twenty think they might find better food in MacDonalds than in a pub.  People over fifty would rather eat a beer mat than a Mac.  Fortunately, I did not have to.  I waded through most of my home made cheese pie and I enjoyed that rare delicacy – real, properly fried chips made from thick potato chunks.  No oven baked twigs here.  If it doesn’t clog the arteries, it is not worth the calories.

The enormous meal gave rise to a hazard I had not anticipated.  When we later had to sit in tense silence, one by one, the stomachs began to speak.

‘Is there anyone here with us?’

‘Grrrr.’

‘Is there any spirit person here?’

‘Brrrrr.’

‘Oo, I am sorry.

‘Trrrr.’

‘Oops, excuse me!’

The main activity of the evening began with a small group meeting.  The A team invited us to follow them upstairs to the first guest bedroom, a large family room.  14 punters and six or seven organisers filed in and perched on beds and bits of furniture.  I took the only good chair.  Arthritis has to have some advantages. They held a small ritual intended for our protection.  It was very familiar to me as the kind of meditation often encountered in yoga classes.  Any female of my generation has usually been exposed to so much yoga that we have only to hear the words ‘breath in through your nose and out through your mouth’ in order to slip into a light hypnotic state.  Suitably cocooned in imagined white light, we were divided into two groups, one for each upstairs floor.

By this time, we all knew the two stories associated with this pub.  On the top floor, we expected to encounter a desolate female spirit called Sara, who had been killed in a fall when escaping from a violent, predatory male.  On the ground floor, the ladies’ toilets were visited by an unpleasant male spirit.   Suitably primed and protected, we were sent on our way.

Yes, there is still more to come...

Visiting the Haunted Pub

At last.

On Thursday night, in one of those hellish weeks when everything happened at once, I left behind the stressed spouse and the stroppy teenager, heading off into the comforting rain.  This was it.  The ghost spotting event run by the group with the good website.  Calling these ‘investigations’ gives them a professional feel.  LSS cried off.  He had enough to cope with.  Once again, the lone mad woman enters the pub…

By far the scariest part of poking around in the paranormal is driving to unfamiliar locations, especially on dark wet nights.  I knew where this pub was, but I did not know where to park.  It is on a corner, at the junction of two busy roads, and, as so often happens when a person needs to drive slowly, somebody was far too close behind me, on the verge of sliding into my hatchback every time I braked.  Indeed, I almost gained a back seat passenger when, outside the pub, a massive American style four by four vehicle appeared, causing me to jump on the brake in surprise.  Immediately, I knew this belonged to the organisers.  ‘God help me,’ I thought, ‘I’m here with the A-team.’  Then I realised that the car park was across the road and I had just driven past it.  Heart now thumping, I had to continue through two hairpin bends another mile into Candle Town before I could turn around in comfort.  By the time I had finally parked up and found my way in to the pub I was exhausted.

It was worth it.

Thursday night changed everything for me.

It is all about Agnes now.

‘Anybody can be open to spirit,’ said our Sensitive, as we made ready to encounter the unknown on the top floor of the old building.  ‘If you hear anything, or feel anything, or if a name pops into your head, then let us know.’  Now, as soon as she said ‘name’ I found myself thinking ‘Agnes’.  I involuntarily thought ‘Agnes’ three times.  I had barely had time to register what was being said before it happened.

Everyone knows that Agnes was a name more popular in times gone by, but I can stoutly declare that if I had chosen a name for a worker in that old building, I would have chosen something associated with the Victorian working class – Fanny, maybe, or Bess.    My only association with Agnes is that, about 40 years ago, I was taught a Keats poem called ‘St Agnes Eve.’  Education being rather different in those days, I can still remember the first verse.  To me, ‘Agnes’ has always been the name of a poem.

So, for no reason I can understand, this name jumped into my head three times.  No way was I intending to share this information.   I was going to wait, to see if anyone else said it.  If the name did crop up later, then this moment would become significant for me.   If I mentioned it now, I would never know if others had heard it for themselves or if they had been influenced by me.  If I kept silent, and someone else produced the name, then I would take this as an indication that we might both have acquired this name in the same, inexplicable fashion.  I would feel that there was, as they say, ‘something in it’.  I have since pondered whether or not this was fair on Agnes, but that is another story.

Later, I was pleased I had said nothing, for one of my fellow punters on the trip proved to be so impressionable that if I had claimed to be aware of a Fred Flintstone in the room, she would no doubt have sensed that Wilma and Pebbles were there too, and that they were all looking for Barney.

The high spot of the night happened a few hours later, when we had all explored the upper floors and were milling around in the bar. I overheard someone nearby saying ‘Agnes’.  I asked some of the second group what their trip to the top floor had been like.  ‘I didn’t like it’ said one, ruefully.  ‘It was all about the men and how they treated the girls.  It wasn’t nice.’

‘Was Agnes one of them?’ I asked, casually.

‘Yes.’ She said.

I was stunned.

Something had happened to me.  However sceptical I might feel about other events of that evening, I knew that there was Something, whatever it was, going off about Agnes, and it followed that there could well be other Stuff, whatever it might be, also going off.

It is all about Agnes.  I am even more fascinated that I was before.  I will never give up now.

Rifol has rather a lot to say about her special night out, so it is chopped up into bite-size chunks.  She will start it properly from the begining in the next post...

Haunted Holiday

Rifol, as you may already know, inhabits a different time.  She has reached the middle of February, and she has just had a short break in a very old property.  Some of her guests expressed surprise because nobody sensed a spook...

 Renting a holiday property can be an adventure.  You do not always know what you are going to get.  One Easter, we had an extra, uninvited guest.  When the children were younger, we often rented the same isolated farmhouse up a steep track from a Welsh village.  It was tatty-comfortable with wide views of the estuary, mad chickens, wandering sheep and black cattle.  We loved it.  The owners still lived in the back part of the building, and she gave us huge eggs with deep yellow yolks.  Once, she found an injured racing pigeon and rescued it. 

That Easter, as usual, we had another family staying with us for part of the week.  You could fit any number of small children in the quirky bedrooms under the eaves.  One bright morning, I woke up very early, feeling suddenly alert, with the last few chapters of a thriller on my mind.  Only parents of small children know what a joy it is to wake before the rest of the family and sneakily read alone in the kitchen.  If anyone could bottle and distribute that feeling, then the world would be a better place.  I slid out of bed, grabbed the book and made my exit.

From the landing, a short straight staircase led down to a little entrance hall.  Directly in front was a heavy front door.  To my right, the hall led quickly to a large sitting room with saggy sofas and a malfunctioning TV.  To the left, another door led to the cosy kitchen, full of mis-matched furniture and all our holiday goodies. 

On this particular morning, as I stood on the landing, I saw a woman of about my height, with light brown shoulder length hair, wearing a long baggy cream or beige jumper and dark trousers walk into the kitchen.  I thought it was my friend.  Goodbye to the dénouement, I thought.  Still, there would be tea and a chat, so I dropped the thriller into my pocket and went into the kitchen to join her. 

It was empty.  There was nobody else awake.  The person I had seen had not been there.  There was no other way out of the kitchen.

To date, this has been my most startling unexplained experience.  There certainly had been somebody there, who looked as live as any of us, then suddenly there was nobody at all.  If that is not a strong example of the paranormals, then I do not know what is.  It was surprisingly bland, however, and not at all nasty.  I had no sense that anyone or anything had communicated with me, and I had no feeling of unease.   Once in the kitchen, I made tea and finished my book.  It was very good.  Everyone else got up later.

I never saw the extra guest again, and it was a long time before I told anyone else about her.  I have heard stories of images of people being seen

re-playing old routines years later, and I have sometimes wondered if this is what I had witnessed.  I understand that paranormal buffs refer to this as a ‘residual haunting’.  They believe that buildings can record events, just like a camera can record a picture.

 I sometimes think that it may have been a picture of Mrs Farmer, from 20 years ago, when she used the whole house for her growing family, and when she went into that kitchen at the same time every morning, to get breakfast ready for them all.  Can one really see an image that looks like flesh and blood, when the real flesh and blood person is only yards away, possibly asleep, behind a thick wall?  Apparently you can, and this is called having a ‘double’.  It means there is an extra part of yourself, which you might accidentally send off on its own from time to time.  I am sending mine to work next week.

So… holiday properties, extra guests… You would imagine a very old house would have at least a spook or two, and our latest, ancient holiday let had history to spare.  The odd thing was, this was the least populated building I have ever been in.  There was absolutely no sense of anything unseen, even in the pokiest, darkest, woodiest corners.  By the end of the week, two other people had commented on this.  Now if a building being empty of supernatural presence is a thing worthy of mention, by implication, a building having a presence is so common as to be considered the norm.  I am starting to realise how many of us must experience some low level of phenomena, or slight sensations of disturbance as a regular feature.  As the teens were telling me not long ago, there is a lot of it about.  Of course, nobody knows what it is, exactly

Stone Circles and very Cold Sheep

Sunday arrived at last.  Sub-zero yet again, but we paranormal investigators are made of strong stuff

The first snowflakes were just starting to bode as we warmed up the car.  Long Suffering Spouse, Eldest Child and myself pretended we had not noticed them, and drove the few miles to Candle Town.  When the children were small, this had been a favourite haunt of ours at weekends.  A wander along the canal, a go on the swings and buying a book or a toy had made a day-long treat.  At that time, there had been a wonderful Italian ice cream parlour.  It is still much missed, even though all our little sweethearts are now six foot creatures with more attitude than is really necessary.  Proper ice cream parlours are rare as hen’s teeth and that is a shame.

By the time we had finished arguing about where to park the car, snow was blowing in on a stiffening wind.  Sensibly, we made straight for the unknown path on the moors.  We pushed through the farm gate and started off up the slippery path.  A fall would be bad news here.  We paranormal investigators are action heroes.  We marched uphill swiftly, to keep warm.  CF& C had told me that the circle must be between the road and the top of the hill. 

Once a few yards from the road, I started serious off-pathing, hunting around for clues and trying to be sensitive to any available vibes.  There were large frozen puddles, a few miserable looking sheep trying to eat the tough grass and, lying around everywhere, a surfeit of huge grey boulders.  Part of this dismal landscape appeared to have been a quarry.  There were boulders on boulders, next to boulders, surrounded by boulders with extra boulders.  There were so many boulders, there was not much room for the large stones.

Stone circle?  On my next day off, I might look for needles in haystacks.  Just as, after buying a new car you suddenly start seeing the same model all the time, once we had the notion there was a stone circle here, we saw them everywhere.  I made out at least a dozen.  EC charged off in all directions at once, a blur in Berghaus.  I think she spotted fifty or more.  LSS had become rather quiet and blue looking. 

I stood in what might have been my tenth version.  A big circle of peat was enclosed by huge slabs of rock.  It looked like a stone circle.  It also looked very natural.  ‘That’s it’ yelled EC, enthusiastically.  I did not think so.  She swooped up the path again and I watched her plunge into the heather on the other side, further up.  Near where she was looking were three huge pointed stones.  I imagined, long ago, people heaving them up so the points could serve as markers, showing the way, like a cairn on a path.  I steamed on up there.

Below the pointed stones was a small circular depression.  Around the rim of this were low boulders, overgrown by rough grass, heather and bilberries.  Apart from one empty space, they certainly looked like a stone circle of sorts.  Had we found it or not?  It was a contender.  We waymarked it on the GPS.  EC pointed to the horizon.  Far off the path was a large rocky outcrop.  ‘I’m sure that’s it.’ she said, and raced towards it.  Only then did I realise she had been looking for Stonehenge.  We followed, and climbed up on the outcrop to gain an overview, although by now we were far away from what we suspected should be the search area.  We saw two circles directly below us, and slithered down on them only to find they were not circles or stones; they were shadows cast where the ground was wearing away.

‘Let’s go home.’ I said, and we turned into the wind for the long trudge back to the car.  We had to go steeply up to the rocks and then find the path again.  Snow was driven into our faces, stinging our eyes so we could only look down at our feet.  The bitter cold stole our voices.  Each of us climbed that hill in isolation.  It was one of those Tess in the turnip field moments.  Snow swirled around us, making me dizzy.  ‘Are you sure we’re on the right path?’ I managed to call out to LSS.  ‘We’re on the wrong path’ I thought.  ‘Of course we’re on the right path’ he replied.  He did not add ‘You mad cow’ but I heard it anyway.  As the gusts died down a little, I could at last see that of course we were on the right path, and without that swirling assault on my wits, I could remember that there are not many paths to choose from up there anyway.

We escaped to the warm car and retreated gratefully to the warm kitchen.    We had become very cold and tired.  We had been too cold even to remember to take a photograph.  I had learned why walkers get lost in blizzards.  For what it is worth, we discovered that there may or may not be a small and not very good stone circle at GR 01637 05562. 

Fortified by cake, I returned to the forum.  Nobody had posted any more comments.  Nobody was interested.  Nobody wanted to talk about stones.  I had imagined others would be drawn into the conversation and that it would develop so that we would discuss mysteries and legends.  Wrong again!  I suppose if we had seen a few spirits with messages about where Auntie Susan had put the nail clippers, everyone would have been deliriously excited.  To be fair (which I must, because I promised) it was about this time that the organisers started to query why the forum was underused.  The members seem not to have been in discursive mood at all.  I felt quite deflated

LSS drew my attention to something.  He found another paranormal group operating locally.  That makes three so far.  I wonder how many more we will find?  I had better check with the neighbours, just in case someone is starting another.  The third group has a sophisticated looking website and, in a rash moment, LSS booked us two places on their next investigation.  It is very kind of him to keep me company.  I am sure he was influenced only by the spirit of matrimonial solidarity, and not at all by the nature of this particular investigation: a nearby pub known for good beer.  He was only a little gutted when he later discovered that all events of this nature are dry and that he will have less beer in the pub than he normally gets in his own sitting room.  The good news is that this will be happening in a couple of weeks.  Cosy Local’s investigation is still more than a month away.  I will not have to wait so long for a real experience, after all.

The Mad Lady and the Megaliths

Having recovered from my bout of nasty temper, I had a go on the Cosy Local site forum.  Communicating like this was another first for me.  What a wonderful idea!  It was much better than a chat room.  I could just leave a comment or a question, and people with an interest could browse through, then maybe read it and respond.  We could exchange views, build a shared understanding, teach each other.  I had instant access to everyone else who was interested, and new posts could be waiting for me next time I wanted to look.  Fabulous.  Oh brave new world.  I do like having my own computer.

I declined the option of having myself represented by a pseudonym or cartoon character, choosing instead the novel approach of using my own name.  Nor did I fancy adding a quote or a motto.  Some of the contributors went for baroque standards of ornamentation.  I kept mine plain.  I never promised to be interesting.

Because I want to poke around everywhere, in everything, and not just look for spooks in midnight buildings, I posted a question about outdoor investigation.  I wondered if anyone might mention earth lights or ley lines.  It is all Stuff, after all.  I was delighted when I found that a couple of people had read it and posted replies.  It felt like I had made contact at last.  Not with an entity: they seem common enough; but with a community for communication about Stuff.  None of my real friends care for it at all.  I had a little conversation with my new contacts, over the course of a day or two.  I mentioned a spot I thought could be interesting.  It is a prominent hill, site of an old beacon point and the subject of a local legend.  We often like to walk up there.  One of the contributors informed us all that some believed there to be a stone circle nearby.  Terrific.  This kind of investigation I could manage, no sweat.  I could not wait for the weekend; I wanted to hunt for it straight away. 

Stone circles are part of a tradition of stone monuments found in many parts of the world, and quite commonly in the British Isles and in Brittany.  The stones are unimaginatively called ‘megaliths’, which, is the Greek expression for ‘big stones’.  The scholars of the past often chose banal labels for their discoveries, but translated them into Greek or Latin, hoping that working class people would find it all too hard to understand.  It did not work. 

Living in this age of machines, and having seen the Angel of the North, we might query the ‘mega’ label for some of the more compact megalithic features.  However, most of us certainly would not want to try setting up even the smallest of them simply for fun, or just to provide a more interesting vista from the cracks in our hut, especially if our only tools were a few deer antlers.

 To appreciate how wonderful these creations are, we need to register that stone circles were home-made; built by people with nothing but brawn and determination.  We are looking a long, long way back in time, to a different world.  The very earliest known menhirs (or single standing stones) are thought to have been erected in Jordan possibly more than ten thousand years ago.  The earliest earth and wood monuments may have been started in Europe eight thousand years ago.  Work on our stone circles probably started in about 4500BC.  These features are older than ancient. 

Archaeologists have some good ideas now about how those energetic ancestors created megalithic features, but they are never likely to agree about why groups of people who led such short and difficult lives felt they ought to pull on their animal skins, get out in the rain and knuckle down to some serious graft on a project that might take hundreds of years to complete.  Religion and ritual are always feasible explanations for the behaviour of folk long gone; but there are many ways of inventing religious observances, not all of which require complicated building work.  If you had a choice between committing your whole family, born and not yet born, to years of back-breaking work, or chucking a virgin and a few flowers into the bog once a year… well, you would weigh up your choices carefully, that is all I am saying.   I expect we could all have looked the other way while that virgin crawled right out and craftily washed off the peat round the back.  ‘Me?  No, it was that other virgin, … forgot the name… Oh, this ceremonial gruel looks tasty, would you like some?’

A fascinating discussion about megalithic remains started in 1967, with the publication of Alexander Thom’s ‘Megalithic Sites in Britain’ (Oxford, 1967).  Professor Thom had discovered that all the British stone circles he investigated seemed to have been erected using the same unit of measurement.  He called it the ‘megalithic yard’ and we would recognise it as 2.72 feet or 0.8297m.  I am told this is the length of an ‘average’ stride.  Using this unit to analyse the placement of the stones, he uncovered complex patterns of geometry.  When I read this my heart went out to those poor Neolithic builders.  Not only did they have to work all day in the cold, but they had to do geometry as well.  There is still, as there would be, entertaining dispute about what exactly Thom had uncovered, and whether or not he had been holding the ruler straight, but his work encouraged legions of characters who enjoyed geometry to uncover meaningful patterns in anything older than an Arndale centre.  Apparently, he was less than enchanted with that.  He had also, either unknowingly or deliberately, jumped on to a bandwagon driven by people who looked for mystical significances in units of measurement, some of whom believed that the ancient world was united within one common culture which had one holy unit of measurement.  Why am I thinking of Ikea?

Of course, there are other stories told about stone circles.  They are aligned in certain ways which enable them to be used as calendars.  They can predict eclipses.   They were ceremonial, they were symbolic. 

It is not possible to uncover the truth in this field by reading, especially if writers will have us believing in measurements, angles and constellations and each one you read disagrees with the last.  To be certain about the truth, we would all have to pop down to Stonehenge and get out the steel rule.  (‘Pass the protractor, Percy, I feel an alignment coming on.’)  If we wanted to understand these ideas, there would be swarms of the earnest, all plonking ladders up on the megaliths.

I remember as a young woman wandering up Silbury Hill one sunny August day, bathing in the pervasive Wiltshire weirdness and feeling bowled over by the sense of History, the atmosphere and the Wadworth’s.  That could not happen today.  In order to preserve our Ancient Monuments, the custodians of many of them have denied us access.  Their rationale is that if we tramp all over sites then our clumsy feet and our nasty ill-disciplined breath will simply wear it all away.  We will probably have pockets full of crisp packets as well.

This may all be true, but it raises the questions:

• What is the difference between not being allowed to use something and it not being there for you to use?  Surely it has the same effect?
• How long are things supposed to last?  Even Marks and Spencer’s underwear will wear out one day.  Nothing lasts forever.  That is called ‘change’ and it is part of our reality.

I imagine howls of disagreement.  Analysing my attitude, looking at why I think having access is so important, I expect I have been influenced by some of the modern mythology I absorbed, along with all that Wadworth’s, in my youth.  I have come across the notion that interaction, especially often-repeated ritual interaction, between people and places creates a kind of energy or power.   I think anyone visiting a church can feel something of that, whether or not they have chosen to be a Christian.  I know schools and theatres resonate when empty.  I believe this is because these places are crammed with life; much of it occupied in following well-worn or ritualised patterns.  I think people make this power and then they run on it.  We charge up places like we can charge up a torch battery, then we soak it all up and use that power to make ourselves shine.

Try a visit to Walsingham.  Slide unobtrusively into the shrine.  Unless you are made of wood, you will be bowled over by something, I promise you.  Then check out the history.  Discover that the whole structure, including the holy image, is a twentieth century reproduction.  The original building and its virgin are long gone; destroyed by Henry VIII.  So what bowled you over?   There is nothing there, dear diary, except what people have put there, but for years they have been getting themselves bussed in and they have been putting it there in shed loads.  Droves of the devout visit that place daily.  They sit, they think, they pray, they hold rituals.  I believe we charge these places up with energy, by thinking our thoughts and by treading our ritual paths.  At some level we have always understood that this is what we need to do.  Stone circles may have been built especially for that purpose, and they may be especially good at it.

I will never know if I am right or wrong, just as I will never know if the Great pyramid really sits parallel to a line connecting Neptune with Sainsbury’s.  I cannot seek proof of everything I am concerned with for myself.  The world is too big and complicated, and some knowledge is too specialised.  If I wanted to be certain that people in Paris really did speak French, it would be inconvenient and expensive, but I could zip over for the weekend, just to make sure.  If, however, I had heard a theory that all the statues in Notre Dame had lengths measured in multiples of four, I would be unable to prove it for myself, even if I was standing in Notre Dame, because the job would be too big for me, and I would not be allowed to poke about like that.  If somebody had told me that the core of the Eiffel Tower was made of a special extra-terrestrial kind of titanium, I would not know how to drill out a sample and test it for myself.  I am told the population of Paris is 2 201 578.  I have to take that on trust.  I have heard many times that the Mona Lisa is a wonderful painting.  I have also heard that it is actually rather uninteresting.  I have even read that it is full of complex symbolic secrets.  Are any of these true?  Without becoming art experts, how would any of us what to believe?  We are like little boats, blown about in a gale of stories.  To anchor ourselves, we choose what we stories we believe in.  We choose our stories and we choose our storytellers.  I have one close friend who is so outraged by some of the stories I am hearing that she cannot begin to listen to any of them.  Her storytellers tell her of the tangible and the rock steady truths in this world.

 Climate change will kill us all.  Climate change is a natural variation and it will right itself in a few decades. 

When I read stories about the design and the origins of stone circles, I cannot prove or disprove them.  I can choose storytellers who inspire me or entertain me.  I can choose storytellers who fit in with my own half formed world view, who echo something of my own small experiences.  I can build a whole story telling team.  I expect my team would contain a few tellers who might contradict each other and fight.  It would be deliciously lazy just to enjoy the stories, and watch the inside of my head squabble with itself.  Doing stuff for yourself is important, though, to the serious poker about in the paranormals. I may never develop a deep understanding of archaeology, but I can poke about in any number of stone circles.  I can even take a few simple measurements without resorting to unpleasant re-training with a theodolite.  I can, like so many before me, find a subjective truth.  Back to action, then!

I could find no trace of a local stone circle on our trusty Ordnance Survey map.  Indeed, if it had been marked, we would have visited it a couple of years ago, during my last hobby, when I took to archaeology for a while.  Nor could we spot it on our special tourist map, on a scale of almost three inches to a mile.  I spent a guilty but fruitless half hour looking on Google Earth, when I was at work.  Close Friend and Colleague on the next desk started looking too.  She discovered the ‘Megalith Map’; an on-line guide to all the standing stones and stone circles in the country.  Our secret circle was not marked.  CF&C had some hope to offer, however.  She remembered, some years ago, while on a walk in that direction, seeing a group of people crashing around the heather on a mission, and being told that they were looking for a small, half-buried stone circle just off the path.

When she told me where this had happened, I understood why I knew nothing of this circle.  There are two paths from the top of that hill.  One goes to an exceptionally attractive pub, with real fires, good food and a microbrewery.  The other may go near an inconspicuous stone circle.  I now know where to start.

In the twenty-first century, equal opportunities or not, a lone middle-aged woman in a public house is still a social leper. 

To some, the word ‘meeting’ implies a structure.  It suggests something one could drift along to, where one could listen to a discussion, learn how to do something and maybe slowly get to know a few other participants.  Some meetings are not like that. 

I spent the evening with the Cosy Local club.  We had attended their Christmas party, and this week I tried out their regular gathering.   I was expecting seats in rows and a power point presentation.  We got holiday camp.  Once more, we had a quiz and a buffet, and the events were lead by an MC.  This time, though, there was no Long-Suffering Spouse for company.  Why he persists in thinking a night at the football with his friends is more fun than making sure I have someone to sit with, I cannot imagine.

I felt very conspicuous, being obviously alone at an event where everyone was in groups.  At least I won the raffle.  ‘It’s an Irish clock,’ she said. ‘It goes backwards.’  This did not seem the right moment to ask if they had an anti-racism policy in place.  

I spent half an hour as a team of one, completing the pub quiz and wringing the odd friendly word from people sitting nearby.  I looked over a display of Equipment.  This was more like it!  Machines to measure Stuff.  Nothing was labelled, but I figured out they had a kind of electric thermometer, something to measure an electro-magnetic field and red torches.  I cannot wait to have a go.  As a paranormal investigator, I expect to measure lots of things with all kinds of technical equipment.  Oh yes.  I will stride around in a big coat, glance at the walls with a stern expression, and measure everything to bits.

Towards the end of the evening, we had a session with one of the mediums.  We gathered together at one end of the room in a large, rough circle.  He stood in the middle, moving at times more closely to the people he was addressing.  I felt exposed, alone on a hard chair, closer to the action than I had intended to be.  This medium took obvious delight in telling punters simple facts about their backgrounds.  Each time he was told he was correct, he grinned and crowed ‘course it is!’  He had a slightly cheeky persona.  He claimed to be drawn to different people, giving them information he said had come from the spirits.  This was a mixture of the banal (‘Your Grandma had ornaments on her mantelpiece’) and the shockingly accurate (‘You had an aggressive father figure, but he was absent a lot’). 

One person received a direct instruction to assist a family member.  Everyone else was told facts, which proved the medium had information, but they were not told why it was necessary for him to communicate this.  Genuine or not, it felt like a parlour game, without a clear message or purpose. 

Something happened to me while the medium was talking.  The top of my head became freezing cold, as if ice cubes had appeared there.  The feeling lasted less than a minute.  I have no idea what caused it.  Maybe he could read my mind and was punishing me psychically for having uncharitable thoughts.  Maybe, as some punters would suggest, the spirits were taking energy from us to give themselves power to communicate.  If that was so, they could have asked more politely.

Before I left, I picked up the latest edition of the club magazine.  It explained a lot.  The inside front page listed 17 club officers.  Since there were about 30 to 40 people in the pub, roughly half must have been these officers.  Assuming another 17 may have been partners or relatives, then hardly anyone else was a newcomer or a punter.  With Cosy Local, I had attended two events where a core of about thirty chums enjoyed pleasant social evenings while a few extras tagged along.

Once past the list of names, the biggest part of the magazine needed a good proof reader.  Can people who produce irregular grammar be trusted with expensive equipment?  I am disinclined to trust the judgement of anyone who cannot be bothered to learn the difference between ‘its’ and ‘it’s’.  It’s not rocket science, after all.  I am uncomfortable about accepting the leadership of people who cannot construct a sentence, or last three hours without a buffet. 

No matter what I think of Cosy Local’s magazine, they are the people who know more than I do, so I am booked onto what they call ‘an investigation’.  LSS has paid them £25 to take me away for a night.  We will be prowling around a civic building in the dark, with our machines and our mediums: heavily influenced, I feel, by the TV programmes everyone speaks of with such vitriol.  This will not be happening for two months.  The club excursions are always fully booked far in advance.  They must be doing something right.  I will see what it is, eventually.

In Search of Stories

If my recent conversations are representative of the normal state of affairs, almost everywhere must be just teeming with outrageous paranormal activity. This includes, I am told, our own cellar. 

Many of Youngest Child’s pals are convinced we have a lurker downstairs.  I am taking the cellar with a pinch of salt.  The testimony of people so drenched in hormones and intoxicants that they do not know where they have put their own feet is not a sound basis for research.

Oldest Child told a tale about her place of work.  This building has changed identities over the years so the interior had been redesigned and adapted, giving it an unusual, awkward layout.  OC is often busy in a room on the ground floor, towards the back of the building.  She sometimes catches brief sight of a figure, out of the corner of her eye, hurrying down the passage.  The working day regularly ends later than 9.00 pm.  At this time, when locking up, she feels there is someone nearby who has been patiently waiting all day, who is now irritated with the workforce and wants them out of the way quickly.  She feels as if someone is swearing and grumbling.

A neighbour tells me that, until recently, phantom cats would often jump on to her bed in the night to lean on her legs.  She was in no way phased by these experiences, until the cats became too disruptive, and disturbed her sleep too much.  When this happened, she sat up and asked them to leave.  They never returned, she said.  Chief Moral Support told a similar tale, of a ghost dog which regularly snuggled up on her bed when she lived in Pembrokeshire.

People who do not have even a slightly spooky story appear to be rare indeed, once you ask.