Notre Dame Apparition + Green Orb + Angels In Disquise...

About two years ago I went to Notre Dame here in N Indiana with my Grandchildren, their Mother and their other Grandmother. We went to mass and afterwards visited the grotto behind the church built like the one in France. I took several pictures and on the last photo I saw a flash of light come down in the picture. I have never before or since seen this happen with my camera. If you open the picture and look closely you can see an apparition with hands

clasped, and you can make out clothing like a nuns or bible time clothes. She appears to be looking down at my granddaughter who is lighting a candle. I will always treasure this picture and have made an eight by ten and have in on display in my lawyers cabinet. It was only one of the times in my life that I felt the presence of something Holy visiting me or my family...

When my oldest grandchild was about 4-5 months old she had spent the night with us so Mom and Dad could have some alone time. We had fixed up a little pink bedroom for her and found a really nice crib at a garage sale. I needed all this because I babysat her everyday.

We lived out in the country and it was a beautiful fall day. Baby had done just fine and had a wonderful evening being spoiled by Mamaw and Papaw. I got her ready for bed and it was to be her first time in the crib in a room by herself. I felt panicky but knew it would be better for all of us if she moved into her own little room for the night.

It was just about daylight and I jolted awake and sprang up and ran down the hall to the baby's room. Just as I entered her room the sun was just starting to light up the sky and there on the wall above the side of her crib was an emerald green orb. It was about the size of a small apple. She was awake and smiling and cooing at the orb and did not notice me at all. As I looked at the orb the most euphoric feeling came over me. It was the most joy I have ever experienced in my life. To this day I can't get past how wonderful I felt. Sadly the orb faded away and disappeared all the way. I looked all over that room to see what could have possible made the orb. Nothing could I ever find. Baby and I went on with our day and I never saw the orb again. 

 About two years after that she was finally starting to talk pretty good and I took her to the mall. As I put her in her stroller she wanted to know why I was belting her in. I told her I didn't want anybody to steal her. She told me she was alright because her lights were in front of her. I asked her tell me about her lights. She said, don't you see them? They are always there....

One day when I still worked as a nurse I was coming home from work and taking the back country roads home. I came up on a car with two elderly people driving about 20 miles an hour. No matter how hard I tried I could not get around them. The man driving would pull right out in front of me when I tried to go around.  I was getting pretty stressed but finally gave up, It was about a six mile ride at about 20 miles an hour... As I rode along I started to think about this and that. Up ahead I saw police lights and a tow truck. As I got closer I saw a car in a ditch and it was on my side of the road heading the wrong way. The police were not letting the cars go through till the car was pulled from the ditch. As I sat there I realized the car in front of me was gone, just gone, vanished... It had not turned off and it had been right in front of me. The first thing I thought of was that it had been angels, slowing me down so that the car would not hit me head on, it was not my time...

Can you say Ghost Dog?

As I have said I get a lot of vintage items that have gone through my house for years since selling on eBay but there was one box lot that is not easy to forget...

(just a stock picture of a Shriner)

The auction stated that it was the liquidation of an estate from a gentleman who was a Shriner and I thought well I have seen those sparkly fez's sell pretty good so away I went. I wound up buying quite a bit of this man's personal items such as hats and framed memorabilia. He had won quite a few awards being a Shriner and he must have been an officer because his fez was really fancy. I also wound up with a nice velvet hat of his like men used to wear during the 40's. I take lots of staged pictures and could use that hat as a prop.

It was late when we got home from the auction but I am a night owl so I went to my office to unload my loot.  After laying the items out on my work table and getting a closer look at the stuff I turned around and sat down at my computer to do some price research on eBay.I had been at it for about 15 minutes when from right behind me a loud whistle sounded, like somebody whistled for a dog! I about jumped out of my jeans! The hubbs had already went upstairs to bed but I yelled up the steps anyway and he was sleeping.... our dog was just standing in the middle of the floor staring at me.  I racked my brain trying to figure out what had just happened but I just could not figure it out.... eventually I went on to bed.

Our upstairs has two bedrooms, one in the front of the house and one on the backside. We sleep on the backside because it is larger and more quiet. The front room is small and does not have a heat vent or ac vent in it so we keep the door closed.  However in that room is a fancy little cabinet with a glass door that I was keeping my props in for photos. That next day I added a couple of the hats from the estate auction, closed the glass door and the bedroom door and had forgotten about the whistle I had heard and went on my merry way.

That next evening we came home from a dinner date and were getting ready to head upstairs for bed, I was finishing something up in the kitchen and all of a sudden my husband started yelling that it sounded like there was a little dog upstairs whining... He wanted me to come by the stairwell and listen, I could not hear it as well as him but did hear something faintly.  He went on to bed and I followed a few minutes later.  I finally made it upstairs and was standing in the hallway talking to him and I heard it much better this time. It was coming from the front bedroom.  Chills ran up and down my back and my hair stood on end but I managed to go over and and slowly open the door, the whining stopped but I saw no dog.  Although we were both rather freaked out we just didn't really talk about it, it was like we both knew it was other worldly and we were just going to ignore it as much as possible.

For about three days the whining continued, I finally decided to keep that bedroom door open and it seemed to stop. One evening my husband went up to take a bath and from downstairs it sounded almost like somebody was running around or stomping in the the bedroom closet. My husband was in the bathroom when I went up to see what the heck was going on, he had not even came out of the bathroom the whole time...


I had a sewing sleepover for my grand babies and their cousins, one of the cousins stated they didn't know we had a little dog... I said we don't and they swore one was just at the end of the dinning room table. At the time we only had a large Australian Shepherd. A couple of weeks later I was sitting in the living room facing the stairwell door, it was very late and I was thinking I should just go to bed when I heard dog toenails coming down the wooden stairs, plain as day. I thought our dog had been up there and was coming down when I looked over and realized he was laying two feet away from me. Looking back at the steps I saw the first full bodied apparition I have ever seen. It was a small dark dog, with long silky looking hair, like a sheltie mix. It paid no attention to me whatsoever and walked straight to the kitchen almost like it was on a mission. I got up dumbfounded from my chair and walked to the kitchen. There was no dog to be found. My dog did not seem to hear or see what I heard.

this is the staircase where I saw the dog..

(the dog looked something like this)

I was starting to get a little panic stricken. I tried to find something about seeing a dog apparition by researching online but all I found was a bunch of mumbo jumbo so I tried to think it through on my own. I prayed about it, and it stayed on my mind constantly. I wasn't exactly scared but very confused as to what the heck was going on. Then I thought about the whistle I had heard and I felt it connected right to the dog sounds and the dog ghost I had seen. What if it was the man whose estate items I had bought, he had passed away and his family had sold all his belongings.... so maybe he was kind of sticking with his stuff, maybe even his hats that I had in my cabinet!

That next day I removed his hats and laid them on the back porch. Not sure what to do with them I just kinda left them out there for a day or two.  I had left my dog out in the backyard one night and rested my arms on the railing watching him for a few minutes and it felt like someone touched my back, not slightly but like the real deal. I decided that I would pitch the hats and walked them out to the trash.  As I returned to the porch I heard the whine of a little dog, almost like a puppy but I could not tell from where it came.  I thought maybe that would take care of the situation, yeah right... There was the night I was up to use the facilities and I started to hear something clicking around in the hallway, like it was clicking up one wall and down the other. My husband even got up and was listening to it, just as we started to talk about it a dog howled from the bottom of the steps, we had never heard our dog howl before. My husband ran downstairs and our  Aussie dog was in the kitchen on his mat sound asleep and never reacted at all...

It was almost a year later and I was awoken by a dog on my bed digging my feet just as hard as it could, it actually hurt! But I saw nothing, it was broad daylight.  We still will feel a dog jump up on the side of the bed in the middle of the night and it can freak you out. But its getting fewer  and farther between now. Its been almost two years since the awful howling sound.

However... our new rescue dog (Bitsi Boo my little Jack Russell)  has taken to waking me up in the middle of the night growling at the ceiling... I hope she does not keep this up.

There are still one or two things to tell but they will come out another time...

It came from across the sewing room!

For years now I have been a seller on eBay. First I sold antique and vintage clothing buttons and then went to other vintage items that struck my fancy. Now I list for a partner who frequents the auction houses looking for domestic items for me to sell on paulsdomestiques1.  He does the leg work and I do the research and listing. So you can imagine I have a lot of domestic paraphernalia laying around. Two years ago I turned half of my basement into a sewing room. Complete with machines for the granddaughters and their friends to learn to sew.  When school started back up I decided I would sew down in the catacombs by myself.... yeah right....

For about a week I sat down there and sewed by myself. It seemed that every time I would go upstairs for a tea break and come back down to my machine the tension would be almost falling off my machine. I would fix it, sew for a couple of hours and it would do just fine. I thought maybe it was vibrating itself loose or something, but it wasn't, I checked.

One evening I was sewing away and stopped to check my underneath stitching to make sure my bobbin tension was alright. I was just staring at the stitching when from across the room a button flew, a little china calico button. It hit me on the cheek.  Now.. I  had another disturbance while upstairs but it had been awhile.  I have been told that energy or ghosts or whatever can stick with their possessions, especially possessions they loved while alive...

Well every  machine I own is at least my age or older and some way older. And I do have lots and lots of sewing machines, old antique sewing baskets filled to overflowing with old needle packets, threads and all manner of millinery items. I have found marbles, little trucks and cars and lots of little toy things in these baskets as well. Sewing machine drawers overflow with bits of antique laces and rick racks of every imaginable color. Stacks and stacks of vintage fabrics and unfinished quilt tops and blocks.  Now I don't know how others feel but I love any quilt block I manage to make with all my heart and treat it as something special but I hope I can let them go once I buy the farm, if ya know what I mean!

To get back to the button story you can imagine I was kind of freaked out. I slowly stood up from my Singer stool and walked to the staircase and ran up the steps! Although I work downstairs sometimes on machines and what not (when the hubbs is home) I have never sewn down there again.  Oh don't worry, I have machines upstairs too. I think something was trying to get my goat. Messing up my tension and trying to get my attention my flipping a button at me. I still have the button. Another interesting fact is that I would have never have left a calico china button laying around down in the basement in the first place, they are very collectible and I have quite a few. I have no idea how it got there in the first place.She t must have had it in her pocket I guess!

(not the button that was thrown)

I have several other spooky stories related to vintage items that have passed through my home, maybe I will jot them down for you in a day or two. It seems this time of year brings about chills, don't you think? Stay under the covers if you can!

Uncommon Singer 15-75 in black yet! Georgeous!

Looky what I just listed on ebay this evening, the uncommon, scarce and beautiful Singer 15-75. Its in great shape too, if you care to look at the listing it is item number 150663518751.  I just love this good old machine!

Somebody is walking upstairs and it ain't me!

When our son was little we lived in a 1940's two story. The day we moved in to that place it felt like it was occupied already. Being our first home purchase I was still in love with its golden oak woodwork, open staircase and upstairs laundry shoot that went straight down to the basement, what fun.  The first night we moved in I was on the stairwell landing putting up a shade when it felt like somebody picked up a strand of my hair and held it up a second or two before letting it fall. Chills ran up and down my spine as I continued to hang the shade and I felt the whole time like somebody was glaring at me from behind.

About a week later I sat watching tv with our son while my husband worked second shift and every once in awhile it sounded like somebody was walking back and forth upstairs. As time marched on it came to be a regular occurance. Sometimes they walked softly, sometimes it sounded like they were pacing, it seemed to only happen once it was dark outside.

As I did laundry I could always feel a presence watching me, I would run all the way back upstairs once I was done folding the clothes, it felt like something was after me.  One day as I went down the basement steps the whole staircase collapsed with me on it! We had to rebuild a whole new set of steps.  The steps that fell never gave any indication that they were weak, never made noises and we certainly didn't notice where they were coming apart anywhere either.

Soon we got a new puppy, we named her Sissy. She was about 10 weeks old and still pretty little so we needed a place to keep her safe while I shopped or whatever. Our basement stairwell had a landing so we made two  half doors, one for the basement door entrance and one just on the other edge of the landing. I placed Sissy in the space and went to the store. When I returned home Sissy was not in the space yet both half doors were locked. She was just a tiny puppy and there was no way she could have jumped over the door but there she lay on the basement floor only half concience! I quickly scooped her up and carried her upstairs to our bedroom and placed her on the bed till I could figure out what to do. It was too late to go to the vet so I watched her closely all night and she growled at the wall off and on as if she was watching something.  She sustained a concussion and was kept at the vets for about three days. After which I never left her alone until she was full grown.  Our neighbor told me that whenever we went away our dog raised "hell."  Not like she was barking at a sound but like she was literally fighting something...  She was never injured again however and seemed fairly comfortable as long as someone was home.

One spring I decided that I would paper the spare bedroom. The afternoon I finished it I was so proud, it looked so bright and cheerful.  I went back down the stairs and began to make supper. Later that evening I went back upstairs. Just as I crested the top of the staircase a smell hit me that about knocked me backwards. All I can say that it smelled like was a dead animal or something. It also had a woodsmoke smell to it as well, almost like rotten bacon. The smell came from the newly papered bedroom. We tried everything to get rid of it. We could not imagine what was causing it! My husband decided he would look in the attic above the room, possibly an animal had gotten in somehow and died and that was causing the smell. We had never been in our attic before, it was never finished or anything but away he went. He crawled all over it and not a sign of a dead anything. The only thing that was up there was a child's bed, just the headboard and foot board. It was so strange because you would have thought it would have been placed close to the attic entrance due to there was no floor, but no, it was clear in the front of the peak... never understood that one.  The smell continued just as strong as at first... We kept the door closed and a towel rolled at the door bottom, trying to keep the smell in the room.

Later that week our son had gone to bed, he was about five years old. I had said goodnight and went back downstairs.  About an hour later I jumped clear off the couch. There was a noise so loud upstairs like an explosion almost! I ran up the stairs my feet barely touching the steps and there in the hallway stood my son's bed pillow, standing straight up against the wall. It would have had to been thrown on a curve to land where it did. My son was sound asleep, no pillow under his head. I picked him up and carried him back downstairs till my husband came home. We didn't know what to make of it but I started to get really scared at this point.  The smell continued in the spare room... The walking continued and the steps seemed to be heavier.

One night I had a family member over and she and I had been laying across my bed looking at decorating magazines and talking. She asked me if I heard what she was hearing and as I listened you could hear a sound like somebody was rustling papers or  something, all of a sudden my son came stumbling into the room and told me his comic books were flying around! We ran in there and all across his bed and on the floor were his comic books (he had quite a collection). I was just freaked out. Again we all went downstairs and waited for my husband to get home from work. At this point I think he was starting to think we were a bunch of fraidy cats.

The more I thought about what was happening I began to really worry that whatever it was might hurt my son and I started to pray that God would step in and get rid of it. I called our Pastor at that time and told him all that had been going on. Not sure if he believed me or not but he came over and said a prayer with me and prayed a blessing on my family.  The smell left and it left just as quickly as it started. There was not even a remnant of the scent, nothing.  The house felt better but I still was uneasy, I would still hear the walking occasionally. Shortly after that we bought some country property and moved.  I have thought of that house many times and wondered what the heck it was. I never felt like it was a ghost, it felt really evil. I read someplace that smells like that can be associated with evil.  I hope to not ever have that happen again.

The home I live in now fells good although I have had a couple of experiences here but nothing like the before but thats another story for a later time isn't it....

Haunted Memories...

Even as a kid I remember hearing strange bumps in the night. I remember that it was the fall of the year and the wind had been howling. We were supposed to be snugged down in our beds fast asleep but even though my eyes were closed I was wide awake. There are noises at night on a farm that are familiar. You could always hear the tin tub bumping against the house when it was windy and the cats were always scrambling around the back porch coming and going from late night hunts.  Dogs barked and every once in awhile a car would go down the road but not very often. An even more spookier familiar noise was the sound of a Bob Cat roaming the back woods with its call that sounded like a baby crying that had been abandoned. Then there was the dreaded sound of hysterical chickens when something was trying to get into the hen house usually an old Wiesel or stray dog. But the sound I dreaded most was one nobody else in the family ever mentioned they heard...

I tried not to listen but I guess I drank way too much sweet tea as a kid.  I think I had always heard this particular sound but I was always afraid to wake up my parents and tell them about it.  Of all the weirdest things to hear was the old hand water pump pumping away. Now some will think so what but a pump don't work unless there is an arm and a hand attached to the handle!  I am not sure why I was afraid to tell my parents, maybe they would think I was crazy!  I told my brother once and he said he had never heard it but maybe it was a thirsty hunter.

Anyway the years passed and we moved away to the big city leaving behind our neighbors and friends. Several years had went by and I learned that our neighbors who had lived across the road from us, Ms Molly and Mr Elmer, had moved into our old house. We visited them one summer and while Mom and Dad stayed down the road with other friends they left me at our old house to spend the night. I was about 13 and I was to sleep on the couch in the living room. I had almost forgot about the sound of someone pumping the water pump. I could hear Ms Molly and Mr Elmer snoring softly, their clock was ticking and no television was allowed even though I was in the living room. Lights out meant the TV had to be off.  Just as I was finally getting sleepy the pump started. I was so afraid I could barely breathe. It lasted about 3 minutes, seemed like 3 hours and then it finally stopped.  Not sure if I passed out from fear or I finally went to sleep on my own. To this day thinking about that really gives me the creeps. Especially if the wind has picked up and its a cool fall night...

Got my mantle did...

Well after a long hot summer the hubby was finally able to go back to work after falling out of Mrs Brown's tree. Poor guy, tree trimming ain't what its cracked up to be I guess. He's all mended and finally we are getting a little bit of a normal routine going again.

I was finally able to drag out a few fall decorations and throw some on the old mantle. Other than that I have not been able to sew or craft but hope to get to do a little soon. Maybe I will do up the back porch in the morning, who knows... maybe even pull a few weeds. Have a great fall everyone and prim blessings to all!