I've previously noted in this blog that I've lived in a haunted building. For some reason, tonight I was thinking about another experience I've had with hauntings, and I thought I might share it.

I've had many experiences with ghosts and other strange presences, but I think this is the strangest. I can't explain it other than to tell it the way it happened (and I'd like to note that I was certainly not the only person who experienced these weird phenomena by any means).

In the late 1990s, while living in a medium-sized university town in the American Midwest, I had a roommate, R, who worked in a coffee shop a few blocks from our apartment. The coffee shop was in a building that had once been a theatre in the early part of the twentieth century. I was told by M, the owner of the business, that upstairs was an old vaudeville or burlesque theatre, although it was kept locked and nobody was allowed up there for safety reasons. In the basement under the coffee shop were some storage rooms and some old offices. The coffee shop's office was actually on the same floor as the shop, and it wasn't the only business in the building.

My first encounter with something odd there was when I noticed The Manager, as we came to call him. I couldn't see him, but I could "sense" him and get a kind of mental image of him (as could others). He was a short, balding man with a mustache, and he would come up from the basement and walk around the coffee shop in a set pattern. He probably went elsewhere in the building, as well, following a "circuit" of some sort. He didn't seem at all aware of anyone else, and he seemed to me to be mostly an "echo" type of presence rather than sentient one.

He was pretty much harmless, and a lot of people didn't even notice him, although some people seemed to notice odd cold spots in the shop. The shop's owner, M, knew about The Manager, however, and so did my roommate. In fact, she was present one night when I was standing in the wrong place and he walked right through me. All the hair on the back of my neck stood up and I got an immediate case of severe goose flesh. Fortunately, I knew what it was and I was able to just shudder and shake it off (I might have freaked out completely if I hadn't already become acquainted with The Manager and his rounds).

There were other presences there, though, that were not so harmless. At least one struck me as quite malevolent, or at least troublesome. I always had the impression that he was tied to the theatre upstairs, but I'm not sure why I thought that. I never really had a picture in my mind of what he "looked" like. This particular presence caused a fair bit of nervousness in some of the employees, knocking things off the walls, breaking the occasional cup, opening or closing doors, and generally being a nuisance. One girl refused to work at nights there after an encounter with this spiteful spirit.

This spirit, whom we came to call "Mr. Spooky", was in the habit of hanging around the front door and trying to menace people as they went past. Usually, the shop's owner opened in the mornings, but sometimes my roommate did, and I was there at opening a couple of times. All of us felt the presence of the spook waiting for us by the door. He would also sometimes hang out by the door at closing time. I encountered him there several times when I stayed late to walk my roommate home after work.

Finally one night I got fed up with Mr. Spooky, and I told him to go away. I had the feeling I should give him some specific instructions, so I told him, more or less on a whim, that he was not allowed into the building at all any more, and that he couldn't come any closer than the curb from then on. I had the distinct impression that he was furious about this, but he did seem to move to the curb, and R and I went home for the night.

The next evening, R came home from work and had a story for me that still gives me chills. Although her boss, M, had absolutely no way of knowing what I had told the spirit, M said that when she had come to open the shop in the early morning, she was surprised to see that Mr. Spooky was standing on the curb and didn't seem to be able to come inside the building at all! She said that normally he would be right by the door to annoy her, and M thought that Mr. Spooky did seem quite irritated and angry, although he also seemed unable to do much other than "chatter" angrily at her from the curb.

Like I said, I can't explain this. If it hadn't been for M reporting that Mr. Spooky really was apparently banished to the curb (without knowing that I had told him he wasn't allowed any further), I would probably have put it all down to my and my roommate's active imaginations... Also, as far as I know or experienced from then on, Mr. Spooky never was able to come inside to pester people from then on (although The Manager certainly still made his endless and harmless rounds of the building, and probably still does to this day).

Someday perhaps I'll go back to that city for a visit and see if Mr. Spooky really is still chattering angrily at people outside that theatre turned coffee shop. Maybe I'll send him into the Light, if he can find it (which is what I should have done at the time, but I didn't think of it).

So, you want to catch a unicorn. As we all know, the unicorn is a swift and fierce beast, not to be caught by ordinary means. But there is a way: find a pure and virgin girl, sit her down in unicorn habitat, hide in the bushes clutching your spear, and wait. A unicorn will come along, and charmed by the girl's purity, will lie down with its head in her lap. Once the unicorn is nicely settled in and comfy, you leap out of the bushes and slaughter the beast.
 
No wonder there are so few unicorns left in the wild.
 
But why kill the unicorn? Wouldn�t a live unicorn give you more bragging rights than a bloody corpse?

In a move that will create legal history, Victorian governor David de Kretser has signed a pardon for accused killer Colin Campbell Ross which Attorney-General Rob Hulls will announce during question time in the Victorian parliament, The Age newspaper reported.
 
Ross, 28, who ran a wine saloon in the Eastern Arcade in Bourke Street, Melbourne, was alleged by the Crown to have given Alma Tirtschke alcohol before raping and strangling her in Gun Alley, off Little Collins Street, on New Year's Eve, 1921.
[...]
"It is a tragedy for everybody that the actual perpetrator was not caught and an innocent man lost his life.

(This, by the way, is the reason I oppose the death penalty. It's not that I believe that violent criminals have any particular "right" to live. It's that I strongly believe that innocent people have a right not to be put to death for things they didn't do, and while you can let someone out of prison, you can't bring them back to life if you make a mistake. Happily, Australia doesn't have the death penalty any more.)

Complete with the Power of God(tm) in every phone!

Well, as I mentioned, we moved a few weeks ago, and it's been quite hectic and chaotic around. I've still got a ton of stuff to unpack. We have more books than any sane people need, we really do, but we got most of them unpacked tonight (still have a few more boxes of them at Andrew's parents' house in the garage where they've been stored for some years). Some of the books, the ones we want to keep but don't read often, got put back into boxes and shoved under our bed, which is a good enough place for them and a good enough use of the space.

We also acquired a new printer this weekend. We needed one, anyway, after my old one packed it in a few months ago (some sort of internal logic fault; it couldn't figure out when it was finished printing and it would think it was still going and, oh, it was just a mess). Printers are not, in fact, designed to last very long, and that one lasted for several years, so I guess it did what it was supposed to do: break down completely after a few years.

Anyway, the new printer is a Brother, and I chose it specifically because it has a paper TRAY rather than that stupid feed on the back where you stand the paper up. I hate those, they always jam up on me. This one is nicely contained and the paper is all tucked up nicely inside, so that's an improvement over the old printer, anyway.

I've had a cold for the past week and a half or so. Early last week I got the chills really badly, which turned into a fever, which turned into sweats. Ugh. I had to have Andrew take Miranda to school on Tuesday so I could sleep in, as I felt like I'd been hit by a truck or something. By the afternoon, I felt well enough to get Miranda from school, but I've been sleeping the days away most of the week. I just crawl back into bed after I get back home, and set my phone alarm to go off in time to grab a bite to eat and get out of the house in time to pick up Miranda.

Got a headache at the moment. I bashed myself in the head getting something out of the car this evening. It hurt like crazy when I did it, but I took some pain reliever and felt okay (the actual spot I smacked was still sore, though). Now, it seems, the pain reliever has worn off, because suddenly my head hurts like mad again. Could be the cold. Could be the bonk on the head. Could just be bad luck. In any event, Nurofen Plus is on its way (I love that you can buy codeine-enhanced pain relievers over the counter in Australia; you can't in the United States).

I also realised today how really, REALLY boring my blog has become. This is not because I haven't got interesting things going on in my life. I'm just not writing about them (well, not here, anyway).

Just today, there was a pair of rosellas in the front yard, having a nibble of the seeds I put in the tree, and we have some magpies that come around to have seeds, as well. Apparently, they also follow Andrew when he leaves for work, because they know he often has a muffin with him and he's been known to share (magpies are pretty clever birds; they know a soft touch when they see one). I did take some pictures of the rosellas, but they didn't come out that well, mostly due to the overcast day.

Anyway, I hope to soon be writing at least semi-interesting things in my blog. I used to be at least amusing, if nothing else...

Okay, I'm not exactly a Weezer fan, but I liked this video and the song, too. If you're much into YouTube, you'll recognise a lot of familiar faces from various viral videos of the past year or so.

I'mma do the things
That I wanna do
I ain't got a thing
To prove to you
I'll eat my candy
With the pork and beans
Excuse my manners
If I make a scene
I ain't gonna wear
The clothes that you like
I'm finally dandy
With the me inside
One look in the mirror
And I'm tickled pink
I don't give a hoot
About what you think

Oh, and just in case you wonder which videos they're referencing in this one, Weezer has them all on their channel here (note: there are several pages of them; big time waster, but lots of fun!).

Note: Language is NSFW. Funny... but kinda tragically true, at the same time.

The mummified remains of a Croatian woman have been found sitting in her armchair at home in front of a black and white TV set 42 years after she was reported missing.

Described as, "an ambiguous animation painted on public walls. Made in Buenos Aires and in Baden," I found this to be astoundingly innovative and some of the best surrealism I've seen in a long time.

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

eBay's Australian management held a public meeting for sellers in Melbourne tonight to justify its plans to make PayPal compulsory. Things got nasty. Very nasty.
 
It took only took four minutes before the booing and hissing began, and not much longer before eBay vice president Simon Smith was comparing people who didn't want to use PayPal to drug addicts. APC was there to give you a blow-by-blow account and pictures from the meeting that saw million-dollar sellers, specialist cake-tin vendors and proud pornography users united in their opposition to eBay's plans.

I only intended/expected to be away from the net for a few days. It turned out to be more like two weeks. Gah. It's a bit of a long story as to what happened, but let me sum it up: moved house, Telstra (phone/internet) were idiots, modem/router wouldn't work, couldn't find necessary computer cords/cables, power supply in computer failed, and everything went from annoying to infuriating to absurd to totally beyond ridiculous.

The good news is that it seems to be okay now. Now I just need to unpack all this crap we have managed to accumulate. Honestly, where does all this stuff come from, and why do we have so many books? We have more books than any sane family of four need... *sigh*

I'm going to be offline for a few days. I'd like to say it's because I'm going on a holiday, but it's not. I just won't have internet service for a few days. Bleah. I hope to be back online early next week, but we're talking about Telstra, so don't hold your breath.

Anyway, that's the size of that. See y'all later.