Bonus: The Thing About Poltergeists....
Poltergeist (n. pol'ter'gist') comes from the German words, rapping & ghost. Literature on the subject claims poltergeists manifest around young girls who are in extreme states of anxiety or in the throes of pubescent hormonal changes. These geists can do strange things.
Like make appliances stop working. Or bump your car from behind.
As you all know I had a pretty scary car accident several weeks ago and although the cuts, bruises and tickety ribs are almost healed, some odd things have been happening that have made me a cautious believer in strange energy that's got a mind of its own.
And I'm not easily swayed. Probably because I have steadfastly kept the door to the netherworld firmly shut since I was a test subject at UCLA's department of parapsychology many years ago after volunteering to be a wired-up monkey. They told me that I was unwilling to open up to other realities and yanked me off the study. Suffice to say I'm not in the paranormal business and never have been.
But having someone push your car like a tinkertoy into the path of oncoming traffic and living through the whole 'life-flashing-before- your-eyes' experience does some strange things to your energy. First it implodes as you obsessively rewind the moment of impact night and day, reliving the pure, unadulterated essence of every second, the visceral sense-memories of sound and smell and the powerlessness of it all. And the even though it's deeply upsetting, you tell yourself that this process must be necessary because as time goes on it becomes more and more difficult to be present in the moment and less and less frightening. Finally you are no longer a true time-traveller, becoming merely the observer, the biographer and witness, left finally with a memory to be filed away in the older-but-wiser department.
And even though I was aware of the impact to my psyche from this face-off between life and death, I think I underestimated the power of the residual energy as it found ways to slough off into my everyday world. I am usually quite organized, a dedicated multi-tasker, and over the following weeks important papers went missing, keys disappeared, and the little 'borrowers' that make your socks disappear were out in force, something that rarely happens. I locked myself out of the house, the car, the bathroom, forgot to call people, and was generally oblivious to the obvious. Perhaps it was some hard-wired part of my brain that was saying: we were about to turn off the power and surprise! you're still around.
And then odder things started happening. In one afternoon the microwave, the air-conditioner, and the dog's citronella anti-bark collar just stopped working. I checked the outlets, checked the fuses, batteries, and everything was fine. "How very strange," my commonplace brain said, not putting things together, "that everything is breaking down all at once." And I went my merry way.
The next day I was driving my little rental car around and with one small bump it all came together. I was sitting in a parking lot waiting to turn into a city street (not far from where I'd been hit) when I felt a jolt from behind. Unmistakably the impact of a bumper on bumper. I went berserk, yelling profanities at the top of my lungs, something along the lines of "Not f-ing again!" and in a flash I saw a large white car kissing my car in the rearview mirror. I took a deep breath, trying not to consider the bum rap I was getting in the victim department, undid my seatbelt and got out of the car to confront the other driver.
No car.
I stood there, hands in the air, huffing and puffing, looking around in pure panic. What the....? I saw a large white truck turning into the parking space I'd vacated but he was nowhere near me. I twisted this way and that, not sure what to do, but after a quick look at my bumper, which seemed unharmed, I had no other choice but to get back in my car and question my sanity.
I was pretty shaken up at that point - glancing around at the people moving this way and that on their way to the shops, they seemed unconcerned, unaware. I was alone. After a moment I put the car into gear and drove off, seeing the white car in my rearview mirror over and over again. After a few blocks I couldn't stand it anymore and I pulled to the curb, got out and went back to take a closer look at my bumper. And there it was. A clear dent the shape of someone's license plate in the dark blue plastic. I had been right. Someone had hit me. But how on earth had they left so quickly?
And then it came to me as I rewound the moments before the incident, a true test of my observational powers, the ones we rely on every moment of our lives to navigate our paths. As I was leaving my parking spot I saw a woman near the exit in a white sedan who had just put her car into reverse and was waiting for me to pass. I stopped not to far ahead, waiting for a space in cross-traffic and when she backed out of the space she backed smack into me and in that second before she drove forward in the opposite direction, I saw her in my rearview mirror. She may or may not have known what she'd done but whatever the case she took off and was long gone in the maze of parkinglot land before I realized what had happened.
That's my story. Then again, I can't prove any of this because, well, she and her car were gone by the time I got out and there were no witnesses.
So what does this have to do with the poltergeist? There's still the small matter of the appliances that all stopped together that afternoon, only to start up again when my husband got home from work (except for the dog collar which had been working flawlessly for months before). And then there was the sudden appearance days later in the parking lot of the post office where I was waiting in line to mail a package. We heard a lot of screaming outside and turned to see a line of burning fuel snaking along the asphalt toward a retreating car, which burst into flames seconds later.
At that point I decided I'd had enough. I sat in front of the hospital where I was going for a followup visit and watched the parade of very sick people, very unfortunate people, very unlucky people and banished the little nymph into the world of reality checks and balances.
I was finally at the place where I could take an old saying to heart: I used to cry because I had no shoes until I met a man who had no feet.
I'm over it now. And the appliances have since decided to cooperate.
Like make appliances stop working. Or bump your car from behind.
As you all know I had a pretty scary car accident several weeks ago and although the cuts, bruises and tickety ribs are almost healed, some odd things have been happening that have made me a cautious believer in strange energy that's got a mind of its own.
And I'm not easily swayed. Probably because I have steadfastly kept the door to the netherworld firmly shut since I was a test subject at UCLA's department of parapsychology many years ago after volunteering to be a wired-up monkey. They told me that I was unwilling to open up to other realities and yanked me off the study. Suffice to say I'm not in the paranormal business and never have been.
But having someone push your car like a tinkertoy into the path of oncoming traffic and living through the whole 'life-flashing-before- your-eyes' experience does some strange things to your energy. First it implodes as you obsessively rewind the moment of impact night and day, reliving the pure, unadulterated essence of every second, the visceral sense-memories of sound and smell and the powerlessness of it all. And the even though it's deeply upsetting, you tell yourself that this process must be necessary because as time goes on it becomes more and more difficult to be present in the moment and less and less frightening. Finally you are no longer a true time-traveller, becoming merely the observer, the biographer and witness, left finally with a memory to be filed away in the older-but-wiser department.
And even though I was aware of the impact to my psyche from this face-off between life and death, I think I underestimated the power of the residual energy as it found ways to slough off into my everyday world. I am usually quite organized, a dedicated multi-tasker, and over the following weeks important papers went missing, keys disappeared, and the little 'borrowers' that make your socks disappear were out in force, something that rarely happens. I locked myself out of the house, the car, the bathroom, forgot to call people, and was generally oblivious to the obvious. Perhaps it was some hard-wired part of my brain that was saying: we were about to turn off the power and surprise! you're still around.
And then odder things started happening. In one afternoon the microwave, the air-conditioner, and the dog's citronella anti-bark collar just stopped working. I checked the outlets, checked the fuses, batteries, and everything was fine. "How very strange," my commonplace brain said, not putting things together, "that everything is breaking down all at once." And I went my merry way.
The next day I was driving my little rental car around and with one small bump it all came together. I was sitting in a parking lot waiting to turn into a city street (not far from where I'd been hit) when I felt a jolt from behind. Unmistakably the impact of a bumper on bumper. I went berserk, yelling profanities at the top of my lungs, something along the lines of "Not f-ing again!" and in a flash I saw a large white car kissing my car in the rearview mirror. I took a deep breath, trying not to consider the bum rap I was getting in the victim department, undid my seatbelt and got out of the car to confront the other driver.
No car.
I stood there, hands in the air, huffing and puffing, looking around in pure panic. What the....? I saw a large white truck turning into the parking space I'd vacated but he was nowhere near me. I twisted this way and that, not sure what to do, but after a quick look at my bumper, which seemed unharmed, I had no other choice but to get back in my car and question my sanity.
I was pretty shaken up at that point - glancing around at the people moving this way and that on their way to the shops, they seemed unconcerned, unaware. I was alone. After a moment I put the car into gear and drove off, seeing the white car in my rearview mirror over and over again. After a few blocks I couldn't stand it anymore and I pulled to the curb, got out and went back to take a closer look at my bumper. And there it was. A clear dent the shape of someone's license plate in the dark blue plastic. I had been right. Someone had hit me. But how on earth had they left so quickly?
And then it came to me as I rewound the moments before the incident, a true test of my observational powers, the ones we rely on every moment of our lives to navigate our paths. As I was leaving my parking spot I saw a woman near the exit in a white sedan who had just put her car into reverse and was waiting for me to pass. I stopped not to far ahead, waiting for a space in cross-traffic and when she backed out of the space she backed smack into me and in that second before she drove forward in the opposite direction, I saw her in my rearview mirror. She may or may not have known what she'd done but whatever the case she took off and was long gone in the maze of parkinglot land before I realized what had happened.
That's my story. Then again, I can't prove any of this because, well, she and her car were gone by the time I got out and there were no witnesses.
So what does this have to do with the poltergeist? There's still the small matter of the appliances that all stopped together that afternoon, only to start up again when my husband got home from work (except for the dog collar which had been working flawlessly for months before). And then there was the sudden appearance days later in the parking lot of the post office where I was waiting in line to mail a package. We heard a lot of screaming outside and turned to see a line of burning fuel snaking along the asphalt toward a retreating car, which burst into flames seconds later.
At that point I decided I'd had enough. I sat in front of the hospital where I was going for a followup visit and watched the parade of very sick people, very unfortunate people, very unlucky people and banished the little nymph into the world of reality checks and balances.
I was finally at the place where I could take an old saying to heart: I used to cry because I had no shoes until I met a man who had no feet.
I'm over it now. And the appliances have since decided to cooperate.
posted by vallie at 3:19 PM
<< Home