Cellar Scribblings

[CellarDweller]

Another staycation? Damn! 

I'm with the company for so long, I get a little over 5 weeks of PTO, and I don't get paid for it if I don't use it.  I can carry over 40 hours of PTO to the next year.

I will take off next week, the Wednesday and Friday around Thanksgiving, and then one week in December, and I've used up what I need to use up.

[CellarDweller]

Hiya BetterMost friends!!!!

My 'staycation' has officially started today.     I'm using the week to get some stuff done.  I picked up the Hallmark ornament that I've been waiting on to be released, got the laundry done, did some grocery shopping, had a doctor's appointment, and tomorrow (Tuesday) is a dentist appointment.

I've also ordered some replacement batteries and a charger for my camera.  I'm tossing around the idea to go out driving this week, and take some fall foliage pics, and some pics of houses decorated for Halloween.  The batteries and charger are scheduled to arrive by tomorrow.

Here's a story for you!  It's about an incident that my coworker had occur.

I'll try to be brief, and not mention any names, as with my luck, she'd search google and somehow find this post, and then give me shit for telling her business.

 

and btw, I'm not telling this story to mock her, but rather mock myself and the way my brain thinks.


Coworker has a large house with a finished basement.  They have a tenant there that pays rent.   They went away for the weekend, and when they returned, went to the apartment to collect the rent that was owed.   They got there and found out that he had apparently partied too hard with some substances (I'm assuming illegal) and passed away on the couch.

My poor coworker called me upset, as the police had basically torn the place apart, looking for more contraband and left everything a mess.

She had called me for a sympathetic shoulder, and I made sure while I talked to her,  I was very supportive.

However, my brain was saying:   "Ohhhhh gurl!   Now you gonna have a ghost!   You're gonna be in the house and wonder "what's those noises?" and "why are things going missing?"   We're gonna see your ass on one of those paranormal hunting shows in about a year."

[Front-Ranger]

Thanks for keeping us up to date! Be sure to log in some relaxation time during your stay-cation!

I had a fall in late July as I was climbing out of my pond after cleaning it. I thought I was all healed up but in mid-August when I went to Europe, I either reinjured it or put too much stress on the injury, which seemed to be in my left hip or pelvis. I was hobbling around much of the time in Europe until we went to a spa in southern France, where I "took the waters". I had several pain-free days, but started to hurt again as we hiked through the Dolomites. Finally, when we wound up our trip at the beach in Sitges, the pain went away completely. I'm not climbing into my pond anymore this year, it's too slippery (and cold now).

[Jeff Wrangler]

Hiya BetterMost friends!!!!
Coworker has a large house with a finished basement.  They have a tenant there that pays rent.   They went away for the weekend, and when they returned, went to the apartment to collect the rent that was owed.   They got there and found out that he had apparently partied too hard with some substances (I'm assuming illegal) and passed away on the couch.

OMG, they had a dead body in the cellar? 

Good thing they were away only for a weekend.

[serious crayons]

Your coworker's story is pretty horrifying. But I'm impressed that she turned to you for a sympathetic shoulder.

As a non-believer, I would say she's probably safe from ghosts. But some states require home sellers to admit on the disclosure the house is haunted.

I thought that was ridiculous and told me editor I would just say no. "Well! If you want to break the law!" my editor scoffed. He's not the brightest.

The reason we were even talking about it was because I had written a Halloween story about places around here that people believe to be haunted. Some of them were like, "I heard a door slam upstairs and nobody was up there so it must have been a ghost." I'm supposed to put that on my homeseller's disclosure?

But to be honest, some of them were pretty specific and hard to shrug off. One guy had a bedroom in his house where a ghost kept popping up and trying to lure people to fall down the back stairs. He always left behind the smell of cigar smoke. So the guy made that room the guest bedroom. And whenever a guest would stay there, the next morning they'd report the same thing, including the smell of cigar smoke.

For appropriate sound effects, here's the opening of a scary soap opera I used to watch after school. It was kind of like a normal soap opera, except the characters were vampires and witches and scary things happened.

[CellarDweller]

Thanks for keeping us up to date! Be sure to log in some relaxation time during your stay-cation!

I had a fall in late July as I was climbing out of my pond after cleaning it. I thought I was all healed up but in mid-August when I went to Europe, I either reinjured it or put too much stress on the injury, which seemed to be in my left hip or pelvis. I was hobbling around much of the time in Europe until we went to a spa in southern France, where I "took the waters". I had several pain-free days, but started to hurt again as we hiked through the Dolomites. Finally, when we wound up our trip at the beach in Sitges, the pain went away completely. I'm not climbing into my pond anymore this year, it's too slippery (and cold now).

I will always make sure I take relaxation time, so no worries! 

I'm sorry to hear that you reinjured yourself while on your trip.   Hip/back/pelvis injuries always seem to take a while to heal.  My arm where the abrasion is was fine, so much so that I forgot about it, and when I showered today, the water softened the scab, and I rubbed it off when I dried with my towel, and that was not fun.  It looks ugly again, but I put some Neosporin on it, and it's healing up again.

OMG, they had a dead body in the cellar? 

Good thing they were away only for a weekend.

Yes, I can only imagine what would've happened if they had been gone a full week or so.  It would not have been pretty.

Your coworker's story is pretty horrifying. But I'm impressed that she turned to you for a sympathetic shoulder.

As a non-believer, I would say she's probably safe from ghosts. But some states require home sellers to admit on the disclosure the house is haunted.

I thought that was ridiculous and told me editor I would just say no. "Well! If you want to break the law!" my editor scoffed. He's not the brightest.

The reason we were even talking about it was because I had written a Halloween story about places around here that people believe to be haunted. Some of them were like, "I heard a door slam upstairs and nobody was up there so it must have been a ghost." I'm supposed to put that on my homeseller's disclosure?

But to be honest, some of them were pretty specific and hard to shrug off. One guy had a bedroom in his house where a ghost kept popping up and trying to lure people to fall down the back stairs. He always left behind the smell of cigar smoke. So the guy made that room the guest bedroom. And whenever a guest would stay there, the next morning they'd report the same thing, including the smell of cigar smoke.

For appropriate sound effects, here's the opening of a scary soap opera I used to watch after school. It was kind of like a normal soap opera, except the characters were vampires and witches and scary things happened.

Oh, I'm a believer.  I don't think it's a frequent event, hauntings and such, but I believe they do occur.

However,  I do have a sense of humor about it.  One day at work we were discussing buying homes, and I told everyone that before I buy a home, and do any inspections, that I would do my own inspection.  I would go in with a group of kids, aged 6 - 10 and tell them "go have fun" and let them play in all the rooms for a few hours,  let them have lunch, and then play some more.  When they're all done, I'll ask them what they think of the house.

If any of them tell me about "the funny person under the stairs" or "scary lady in the closet", I'll know not to buy the house.   

[serious crayons]

I'm told some ghosts are nice, though. In my story, I said the Minnesota ghosts were mostly "Minnesota nice," which has various meanings but is often sort of a backhanded compliment meaning Minnesotans are superficially friendly. The best description I've ever heard was "The grocery store cashier greets you like she's your grandmother but your next-door neighbors of 10 years don't invite you over to dinner." That's exactly right.

Anyway, the ghosts were mostly benign.

[Jeff Wrangler]

Oh, I'm a believer.  I don't think it's a frequent event, hauntings and such, but I believe they do occur.

I seem to remember something about zombie children from Roundup.    It was at the place with the three-legged dog. (Twelve years ago. ...  )

[serious crayons]

Oh, I'm a believer.  I don't think it's a frequent event, hauntings and such, but I believe they do occur.

Then you might enjoy Hereditary, the movie my son and I watched the other night. The film was creepy, no doubt, but -- I won't give anything away, but the scariness involved things (not ghosts) I don't believe in. I tried to be a good sport for my son's sake, because he liked it. It got a good score on Rotten Tomatoes. But I'm not scared by paranormal things.

While looking it up on RT, I came upon a list of the 10 scariest movies ever. Of the ones I've seen, I found almost none of them scary. Rosemary's Baby was on it, which I liked although it does involve some paranormal activity. But Roman Polansky is a good director and it is creepy as you gradually discover who all is in on it. But probably my favorite is Psycho, which involves nothing paranormal whatsoever. I mean, it might be unlikely, but nothing that happens in that movie couldn't theoretically happen in real life.

However, if movies are too real -- if they're about home invasions, for example, or anything you might possibly read about in the paper -- they're too scary for me to watch. And I really don't like torture porn like Saw. Yuck.

There's a series going on now called Lovecraft Country. It's based on scary stories by H. P. Lovecraft, who I guess in real life was a notorious racist. The characters in the movie area all Black, and it's set in Jim Crow days, so the plot involves attacks by racists as well as monsters, like the ones Lovecraft wrote about. I watched a few episodes and kept wishing they'd skip the monsters and just focus on the Jim Crow days stuff.

[Jeff Wrangler]

Psycho is one of the best movies EVER. Once I saw it for the first time, I never miss it if I can help it.

"A boy's best friend is his mother." 

Good movie for Halloween season.

I remember Dark Shadows, though it came on too early in the afternoon for me to watch after school. Kate Jackson was in it, IIRC.

I like movies about extraterrestrials--books about them, too.