No, No Nonsense Ghosts

I have sadly come to the conclusion after six years that our house is not haunted. There isn’t even a hint of unexplained activity here. Even my Ghost Reader EVP droid app doesn’t register any sensible ghostly activity.  It says crap like “patterns, whale, and mile.” Those words, in any order, make no sense to me, and I have always been good at piecing together abstract items so they are clear to me if nobody else.* This creative piecing together of weird words and symbols is how I survived all of my math classes in high school and “Math For you and Your Hamster” in college.

Pic taken in front of non-haunted house 2010.

Now, when we lived in Richmond, our house was brand new and was not haunted because we built it. As far as we knew, the house itself could not have had a dark history, but we suspected the land may have been cursed with some kind of residual something or other. We lived fairly close to the Pocahontas State Park at the time, and every once in a while, a strong odor of tobacco would fill the upstairs. I don't mean the smell of a burning cigarette but rather a fragrant scent of tobacco leaves drying in a smokehouse.  It was a bizarre phenomenon but not unpleasant. We asked our friend and HVAC guy, Don, if he had any ideas what the smell could be, after he did some work for us. He had never heard of any case like ours before.  OOooooOOOoOooOOoo

Pic taken in the front yard of famous TV/haunted land house Halloween 2005.

The house also had a way of attracting attention to itself. It was on TV twice! I have never been on TV, but my house was in a commercial for our neighborhood. If I remember correctly, there was a stand-in family, in front of the house, smiling as if it belonged to them. It makes me laugh now, but I was offended at the time. Our house was also on the Richmond news after our neighbors' home unfortunately burned to the ground.

Before we lived in the local celebrity TV house, we lived in a run-down shack of a place also in Richmond. The house was sketchy for many reasons, among them the mummified mice in the basement and mushrooms growing in the bathroom. Husband insists there was a ghost cat at this house which would occasionally jump onto the bed at night.

No pics of this house for obvious reasons.

So this house is free and clear of ghosts. Though I am thankful to not have any worries of spooks and demonic spirits, I do kind of wish we had a ghost cat or two.

* I was having a difficult time remembering some of the words the Ghost Radar said the past, so I turned it on to get some examples of random nonsensical words to put in this blog entry. The radar said the following words… “find, take, all,” which does kind of make sense and is a bit creepy, but then it said “dog.”

No Such Thing As "Mostly Dead"

The ghost squirrels didn’t get me. I’m writing this because you seemed nervous.
Anyone get The Princess Bride reference?

No, there are no ghost squirrels; however, real squirrels have wreaked havoc on our pumpkins this year. The pumpkins were not sitting on the porch for 30 minutes before something chowed down on the jack-o-lantern’s tooth. If it wasn’t a squirrel, it was definitely the tailless chipmunk which has moved into a formally snake infested crevasse under our front porch.

October is my favorite month. I love everything about it sans mention of zombies. Give me crispy leaves, smelly pumpkin guts, muddy apple orchards, and crisp drizzly air. Just leave out the zombies.

Clarification on zombies: Half skeletal zombies with black ooze don’t scare me. If one was actually approaching me, I would likely pee my pants, but as fictional creatures I am immune to their gory gazes, jerking body movements, and wispy white hair. The zombies that scare me are the “mostly deads,” or “recently deads;” the creatures that were formally your aunt, uncle, bff, or parent just a couple of hours ago but have now suddenly gone rigid and have developed a taste for brains. THEY FREAK ME OUT! If you’ve been mostly dead all day, stay that way…. weirdo.

The pumpkin is starting to get that “mostly dead”  look about  it and is giving me the creeps. You should see it on my porch at night. :<

Here is a video from my past of a squirrel devouring one of our pumpkins. Look at that fatty fat go to work! He is the honey badger of the rodent kingdom. He just doesn't give a poop and gets right in that pumpkin. Sorry for the sideways vid and the poor quality. This video was taken in the early days when I did not know any better. I would have buried it away in my "I had nothing to do with these" files but it seemed appropriate to place here.

Lotsa Little Legs in my Apple

The fam and I went apple picking in a nearby orchard last week. Whenever I go to these local orchards, I feel like I've ripped off the owners. Not only do we get boat loads of apples for practically nothing, not to mention the nine apples that were eaten while the three of us picked, we also get an eensy bit of protein tossed in for free.

Here's hoping Poopsie #1 checked this one for squiggles before using her mouth as an extra hand.

Apparently, the land my house currently sits upon was once a very large orchard. I do wish they had not removed every single apple tree. Perhaps they (the construction and land development people) thought I would rather have a brambly brushy hillside perfect for blueberry bushes.  Poopsie #2 seems to think that having your own apple tree is the key to ending poverty.

I do wish for a single tree, but I think the deer would ruin all chances of our actually consuming an apple we have picked. I guess we'll continue to visit the orchard once a year and get gazillions of apples for nearly nothing.

Pie was thoroughly inspected for unwelcome leggy protein...

photos by Ctmom

*for the extra observant... we did use cat litter containers as apple picking baskets 'cause I'm low maintenance like that....