Crash!!

6 AM.  The cats are already off the bed and running towards the kitchen.  I stumble out of bed and follow them.  Chimes are heard from my mobile phone (text message).

All 3 of us stand at the kitchen doorway and look.  Nothing.

Nothing is on the floor, nothing has fallen out of a cupboard, everything is as I left it last night.

The cats want treats, I guess for being brave kitties and leading the way.

I look in the bathroom, just to make sure we aren’t misidentifying where the noise came from. Nothing amiss.

Storage room next to kitchen?  Nothing there, just flattened-out boxes (being smart, saving those for the next move), a computer desk, and a cot.  Nothing has fallen in there, either.

I go back to the bedroom and pick up the phone.  It’s a text message from Nancy:

“Everything ok up there?  I heard a crash!”

Ok, we can rule out the kitties and me hearing things, because Nancy heard it too.

“Dunno what it was.  Maybe the ghost,” I text back.

“Thanks for waking us up,” I say out loud, to no one in particular.  The cats have already gone back to sleep on the bed, having done their good deed for the day.

Later that day, I decided to go online and see if anyone has any suggestions as to how I can find out what this thing wants and why it keeps making noises.  I don’t even know what the explanation is for crashes and bangs that don’t seem to be connected to any physical thing, it just doesn’t seem possible but there you are – it’s happening in my apartment.

But, really, who online would be able to help?  On one hand, you have fake mediums and people who claim to be able to sort this kind of thing out but…I don’t like them, in general.  I find them to be not at all credible, usually because they are selling something or they just don’t seem to be telling the truth.

I have never met a medium, online or off, who wasn’t a complete fraud.

That doesn’t mean I don’t think mediums exist – I suspect they do.  I just don’t happen to think that the “real” ones are on TV or on paid internet sites.  Oh, maybe one or two started out that way, but then the pressure to “always see” gets to them and they start making shit up.

Activity isn’t ongoing, as most of you know from reading this blog.  And if I say, “Throw everything off the dresser,” nothing happens.  Things happen when they happen, and no amount of cajoling from me seems to have any effect.  So I find it completely unbelievable that “spirit” (as mediums love to say, ala Long Island Medium) would just manifest and talk when asked to.

On the other hand, you have people who don’t think there is any possibility of this being something unseen that is trying to communicate.  Their explanation would be that I am either lying (and so is Nancy), or this is a “folie a deux” – “madness shared by two”.   Or that there are completely normal explanations for this that I am not considering (mice? earthquakes? fracking? who knows?)  At any rate, I won’t get much help there.

Aside #1: I have a friend who already, thankfully, debunked the flushing toilet experience as a small part that needs replaced.  So, no, I am not ruling out normal explanations.

So I decided to post on a Reddit paranormal forum.  Since Reddit has now been purged of most of its ugly, nasty, hateful trolls, I thought well maybe someone else has this issue and can provide some feedback.

I posted on a few other sites, too.

I wrote a concise post about the activity, and mentioned that this happens in a lot of places I live.  But that I don’t think it’s something following me, and I definitely don’t think it’s classic poltergeist “I-am-angry-so-my-energy-is-going-to-knock-shit-off-shelves” activity (i.e., I do not believe I am the cause of the activity).  I ended the post by stating I wasn’t wanting rid of it, I just wanted to find out why it’s acting like this.

I got one nice response on Reddit, a long one by someone who has similar activity.  It quieted down when he started including “it” in his morning cup of coffee ritual.  I might try that, actually.  He just talks to it like it’s a visitor in his home, and while he doesn’t know what it wants, it seems to be quieter when he acknowledges it.

His idea is that whoever it is, is just lonely.  I can relate to that.

I liked that guy.  He was nice.  I thanked him and told him I would try the coffee routine.

The rest of the responses were from mediums.  Angry, hostile mediums.

Each and every one of them told me “it” wasn’t trying to communicate.  That it was a risidual haunt that occurred whether I was there or not (in every place I’ve lived since age 4?  Really?).

Aside #2: My dad threw out a Ouija board one night – I think I was 6 – convinced it was the source of some very weird lights in the house.  I don’t know about that but I still saw the indigenous ghosts and the ghost of an old woman, Ouija board or not.

Those were not the hostile posts.  None of them were hostile at first.  They all said the apartment “needed clearing” (uh yeah, for a fee, right?) or that I should ignore it.  It was when I replied to them that it got hostile, when I stated that I know how to get rid of “things” but that wasn’t what I was asking.

One wrote a diatribe about how a “6th century superstition” (she meant Wicca) was useless in dealing with spirits and that only small children or fools believe in magic.  Oh and that salt and sage are just things for cooking.

This, from someone who has a “team of investigators” who use sciency kinda stuff like EMF detectors, and not-so-sciency stuff like her own medium spirit-talking ways.

So, essentially we have a fraud and a pseudoscientist arguing with a witch that the witch’s belief system is “unscientific”.  The humor was not lost on me.  In fact, I think I “lol-ed” a few times.