Showing posts with label protection. Show all posts
Showing posts with label protection. Show all posts

May 15, 2003

positively shocking...

A little back story on this...

In the apartment I shared with a roommate (he'd already been living there 16 years when I moved in) I took over the spare/storage room as my bedroom. While renovating the room: painting, updating electrical outlets and so on I had a shocking experience.

---

After replacing all the plug and switch outlets I turned back on the fuse and decided to test all the outlets with a lamp. All was fine so I decided to take a break and have some iced tea in the living room. I left the lamp turned on, plugged into the last outlet, to help dry some plaster work.

About five minutes later I hear what sounded like the most impressive Hollywood special effects for an electrical socket exploding. I rushed to my room to see the light bulb exploded and sparks and smoke coming from the outlet. I ran and turned off the power. Took a look and decided that the old outlet worked fine so I replaced it and all was fine, except the smell of ozone that seemed to linger for a few days.

---

A few days later the room was completely painted and all the furniture and belongings moved back in. That night I fell asleep exhausted but with a sense of accomplishment. The TV was still on as was a night side lamp. After about an hour I awoke with the sense that someone was in the room. Thinking it would be odd that my roommate would have walked in, I slowly opened my eyes, only to see a man in rather plain workman's clothing standing beside my bed, hunched over a bit as if he had something he wanted to tell me without speaking too loudly.

Now I'd seen ghosts before, but never this clear or this close AND unexpected. I jumped up a bit and very audibly yelled. He took one look at me, and as it seems I startled him and he vanished.

Eventually I fell asleep but for the rest of that night and the next few I slept very lightly and with little real rest. He did not reapper. I mentioned it to my roommate after a few days and he indicated that he was not away of any history of the house that would explain it.

While at a friends place a few more days later I told them I had seen a ghost in my room but not gone into too much detail as I knew one of them was clairvoyant and so we began have a séance of sorts to figure out what was up. Who was it and what was he doing in my room.

With great detail my friend was able to recount what happened, where I was, where the apparition was in relation to me, including it's posture and appearance. It seems the man was a prior tenant (although I've never investigated the details I somehow don't doubt them as you will see there were other details of the room confirmed that were never communicated prior) His name was either Bruce or Brian; not unusual as the area we lived (Point-St-Charles) had a very established English (Irish) working class past. He was in fact an electrician and the reason he appeared was to warn me not to use that outlet at all, even though it had been returned to my pre-renovations state. He also wanted to know why there was a hole in the wall at the back of my closet that showed other electrical wiring that was not original to the house. (And in fact this was the case... there was a is a hole there because new wiring was required to add a wall light into the room next door. I never gave it a moments thought, but had certainly never mentioned it to my friend, nor had he ever had occasion to open my closet door.) We asked if there was a problem with it and 'Bruce/Brian' said no, it was just sloppy work! When asked what I should do with the outlet in question, all he said was to not use it, no harm would be suffered as long as I left it alone, and so for three years thereafter it was never touched.

I never saw Bruce/Brian beyond that one visit.

August 1, 1978

three unrelated (?) events

The first paranormal or "un-normal' experiences of my life, that I can recall at least, all happened one weekend back in August of 1978 My brother and I were camping with our Dad on a friends property (along with about 6 other families) in the Moose River area of Nova Scotia. I was 9 at the time.

---

The first of the three events was a ghost sighting that not only myself, but 6 or so others saw as well. We had heard of a 'haunted house' about a 30 min walk down the road from where we were staying. We all decided to walk down and take a closer look. When we got to the driveway leading to the house we all froze. While I don't think any of us would see anything, we certainly weren't expecting to see anything that far away from the house. But we all saw something pass inside the house, through one of the downstairs windows. It was pure white. It was neither the shape of a person or any animal.

(this is a quick sketch of it's shape)

It went, left to right by the window. But what really, nailed us to the spot where we stood was that mere seconds later it was on the second story of the building and walked(?) past both windows. We didn't need to see anything else, and sure as hell weren't going any closer.

Within moments we were all hightailing it back to 'home' our hearts in our throats. We told all the adults who would listen but they said we must have imagined it, or that it was just a tattered piece of curtain. We mentioned that it was impressive that the curtains in all three windows (on two different floors) all seemed to be tattered into the same shape and move across the window. But still no more from the adults.

---

Later that day I was going to sit down on a picnic table, one that had a large coffee urn (you know those industrial ones that hold a 100 cups or so) Well it seems that the table was not sitting level on the ground and when I sat down the table tipped forward causing the urn to topple over (directly toward me) and spill it contents - gallons of boiling hot water - all over my back, neck, shoulders and arms. An adult seeing what happened rushed over to me and grabbed me tearing my shirt off. Oddly enough both she and I were amazed as there was no blistering, no burning. I could feel the heat of the water, but there was no scarring, no mark whatsoever on me. I went in and changed into some dry clothing and then went back outside. She was still filling the urn with more water, she asked if I was OK, and I was. She commented how incredible it was that I was not harmed and said she would not believe it had she not seen it. Oddly enough the grass that was dowsed (along with me) was now all wilted - from the heat of the water - and a day later was dead.

I'm not sure why I was not burned, but in retrospect I am thanking some guardian spirit.

---

The last event took place the next day. A group of us, adults and children were all taking a walk down to the river and on the way had to cross an old wooden bridge over a dried stream bed. I refused to cross. Something inside me was telling me not to get on the bridge. It was a fearful feeling of dread that I just could not ignore. While my father tried to reason with me and others had crossed the bridge, we all heard the creaking of the bridge and from the middle some of the old wooden planks dropped off and hit the stream bed below. No one was hurt and no one fell through but as soon as that happened the dread and fear I felt disappeared and was replaced with a very vivid sense of relief.

...and thus started a lifelong irrational fear of bridges. :-)