Crow Moon Rising

On the night of the crow moon, I came out after sunset. It was later than expected and there were eerie, red-rimmed clouds in the west.

As I stepped onto the lawn, a small dark shape streaked past, low to the ground. Cat, rabbit, fox? It seemed the wrong size to be any of these. I looked back only to see it dissolve into nothing. Strange.

My teenage son comes up the path and says, mother, there's some odd stuff happening out here. Like what, I ask. He says, well there's owls hooting in the trees, and weird creaking sounds, and a rock just came out of nowhere and hit me on the shoulder.

He showed me the rock. It was light, but big as the palm of his hand. I said, well, squirrels will pelt people with objects, maybe owls do, too. I didn't mention the dissolving dark shape - no reason to add to any flights of fancy.

I sat down near the oleanders to watch the rising moon. On the road I saw someone walking, though in the blue dusk I could see little more than a man-shape. I peered into the road, wondering if it was someone I knew, but as I looked it also dissolved into nothing.

Two dissolving shadows, I noted privately. Uh-huh. You should never trust your eyes at twilight, it's notorious for playing tricks. The eerie sky and night noises might be causing our imaginations to play up. Of course. But when you're a born witch (or a viewer of Twin Peaks) you know that owls, or anything else for that matter, may not be what they seem.

I didn't feel anything was too awry, though, nothing I couldn't handle, so I went back to watching the moon.

Teen son sat down beside me to watch, too. The crow moon rose, in a lovely silvery light.

We sat and talked about cheerful things to dispel any unease. I took some photos. It really was a nice night, breezy and warm. Suddenly, son jumped up. He said, mother, come in the house with me now, please.  I asked, what's wrong. and son says, mother, come in the house with me now.

Indoors, he said he'd felt something cold touch the back of his neck and a female voice had spoken right into his ear, "Go back inside."

He was really spooked, but I told him there's no reason to worry, no reason to assume it was anything nasty. Maybe it was just nerves, maybe it was his intuition that he happened to perceive as a voice. Of course, if your gut - one way or another - is telling you to get the heck out of Dodge, then it's generally the wise thing to do.

And anyway if something sees fit to pelt you with rocks, whether it's squirrels or Sasquatch or vengeful revenants, it's always best to move along.

I felt a bit bad, though. I should have been more alert. My mistake was in thinking I could dispel anything by distracting with cheerful talk. All I did was distract myself.

Later that night, when there were no more sinister shadows or a sense of unease, what my dad always called a buttermilk sky appeared.

We went out and lay on the ground to look up at it while the cats studied us, wondering what the silly humans were up to. All was at peace now. The luminous sky had become a shelter, and all was well as the crow moon shone through the clouds.

Ghoulies, Ghosties And Long-Leggedy Beasties

What, you say, it's the wrong time of year for ghosts? Nonsense. It's always time. And it's always time for a few spooky gifs.

It might be February, but the wind is murmuring eerily in the eaves, and I don't feel as if I'm quite alone here...

Omens

Maybe it's just one of those nights - too still, too quiet. Heaviness hangs over everything, like a watchful fog. Outside, two owls (great horned ones, by the sound of them) call to each other from each end of the street. A bad omen, according to legend. Witch birds on the prowl.

Then again, roosters crowing at night are a bad omen, too, and if that were true, this whole neighborhood would be doomed. Regardless, I can't be too careful. Last night I dreamt about dark magic: a handmade doll, with burning candles choking the air with smoke. One of those dreams you can't shake, no matter how hard you try.

Time to circle the house with salt and say a few prayers, perhaps. Stuff my pockets with ash leaves and rosemary sprigs. Wave some sage around. Ring a brass bell. Write the name of my enemy and tear it into nine pieces on the edge of town. Why not?

It all seems perfectly reasonable, on witchy nights like these.

What Once Was (Or, Guess What, Victoria Is Still Creepy)

(note: I wrote this back in December. I'm just now dragging it out of draft.)

Last month, I went back to Victoria, returning to a house I once stayed in many years ago. It was a bit sad and nostalgic, because it was at a major turning point that I had come to stay back then, on the eve of starting a new life in a new place. Now that time has long passed, the couple who lived in that house are gone, the people we worked with are gone, everything is irrevocably changed.  

Well, one thing is the same, something I'd forgotten after being away for over a year. In my current town, you couldn't take a spooky-looking picture if you tried. In Victoria, all you have to do is point your camera at random and snap:

See? Which was really the idea behind this blog - my wish to document what made that particular town so very strange, even if the strangeness went unnoticed - or at least unmentioned - by the majority of people (the minority who did mention it admitted to being spooked as all hell). 

It did catch me by surprise, though, after all this time. Snapping away with the camera, mostly out of boredom,.and seeing something very different turning up in the viewfinder than what I'd seen with my own eyes.

Case in point - 

 I don't like posting my own photo on this blog in any recognizable fashion, but it's kind of necessary here. I had entered the bedroom I once slept in, nigh on twenty years ago when I was but a young thing, and I thought, ah, let me take a picture for memory's sake. Here is the mirror I once gazed at, the daybed I once slept in, exactly as I remember it, an ordinary little room in an ordinary little frame house, nothing special or unique outside of personal attachment...

Oh, no, wait a minute. Apparently I had been sleeping in Dr. Dread's Mausoleum of Doom without realizing it. (enlarge to get the full effect)

Sadly, there are no non-creepy photos to compare these against. I took plenty, but some things are just too terrible to bear looking at.

This was all very interesting, so I got a little curious about how the rest of the house would photograph. How would I, product of the 70's, look in the 70's era kitchen? The 70's weren't creepy. They were tacky, but not creepy.

Well, it was fine, except in the photo it looks like a potential crime scene: Or like that bit in a movie right before something bad happens:

After that, I ventured into the room in the house that I did find overtly creepy, the den everyone had always seemed to avoid. I would soon find out why.

While setting up the camera and finding a suitably dramatic pose, I think I manged to tick off whatever was in there, because I definitely began to feel a presence. It was not pleased. The self-timer was set to take three shots, but I was so spooked that I couldn't manage to stay long enough for all three.

I'm normally more curious than afraid when it comes to haunted houses and mysterious presences, but this was a truly awful feeling.

There is something really wrong with these photos, something besides bad lighting and noise. I often take photos with poor light experimentally, to better understand how lighting affects the image. No, it's something else. Something looks wrong with my shadow, like it's someone else, standing behind me...

And another thing, harder to pinpoint. It's as if I don't want to look too hard, because there might be something there I don't want to see hiding in the image. It's like that with all of the photos I took that night, the sense of another presence there, watching the camera watching me.

Maybe that's the thing about Victoria, for those who notice it  - it's not just the sodden air and the swollen ground, the isolation or the tension and angst swirling like a low-lying fog - those things are obvious, only those in deepest denial could miss them. It's something else there - the spirit of the place, immaterial, watching, just out of sight.

Or maybe it's just all those bloody clowns...

Lone Oak Cemetery, Part 4

We reached the cemetery about 45 minutes before dusk, to have a little time to take stock of our  surroundings. Was the place still as creepy? Yes, though not as creepy as it would become as night fell.

We wandered around taking photos and video, looking for details we might have missed. It was a pleasant enough night, if a bit cloudy. Everything was as usual. As the sun went down the wind began to kick up. The photos I'd taken so far looked ordinary enough when seen through the viewer, and then suddenly they were not. 

                                        

View of the west corner of the cemetery at twilight: 

Pollen? Dust? Insects? The dreaded, ubiquitous orbs? If you look closely, you can see there is one light for every tombstone in that corner, including a small one near the eeriest grave, the one where some have imagined hearing voices.

                                                                I immediately turned to the right and saw this in my viewfinder.

I moved on toward the southern part of the graveyard to a place where I felt a strangeness, an eddying wind and rustling leaves that sounded almost like voices. I came to the unusual resting place of Lily Linke, buried just outside the family plot, forever separate. It was here that I began to feel a distinct presence.

I felt the presence follow me onto the path, where I began to feel very uneasy. I told it to go in peace and it gradually drifted away.

It was beginning to feel too spooky, though I was prepared for that. I was determined I wouldn't be scared into running this time. But still, the feeling of being watched was unnerving.. It was time to leave.

In the distance beyond the path, I thought I'd photographed a light from a radio tower or a passing plane. But  I was wrong. There was no tower nor was there a plane that time of night. That tiny light in the distance hadn't been there at all.

I've been waiting for my brother to watch the videotape he recorded that night, but for some reason he seems reluctant to do so....

Spookiness Is Afoot Downtown

Late last night, while taking a walk with the family in this nice cooler weather, I snapped these pics outside the newspaper building . They did not come out as anticipated - to say the least!

One may wonder why take pictures of the newpaper building in the first place. It's not exactly a wonder of great beauty and architechture. Simple answer - the area gives me the creeps. And I haven't called my project "Victoria Phantasmagoria" for nothing. Still, I was unnerved to see what look like playful little shades lurking around the perimeter of the fence on the last pic. Sure, lots of mistakes must have gone into creating this image, but...none of the other photos I took even a few feet away look like this.

It's kind of appropriate that not far from that spot is a bit of graffitti on the sidewalk that says "not here".

(I posted the third photo to my Tumblr last night but wanted to place all three together here)