When we lived in Charleston, the first house we owned was located on Meeting Street, a few blocks south of Broad. It was a truly nice house, completely restored, and had the most marvelous bathrooms I’ve ever seen in my life. One night, Mary and I came home from seeing a ballet. I went to the kitchen to feed our dogs, Frances and Max, and our cat, Winnie. Mary ducked into our half bathroom near the entry, because “She really had to pee.” A few moments later, she screamed, “Polly, come here, right now.” I hustled down our entry hall, and when I got to the restroom, she looked white. “What’s wrong?” I asked. She whispered, “Someone’s in the house. They’re upstairs.”
I wasn’t worried. In the past few weeks, I’d told her of the footsteps I had heard upstairs, when I’d been in the house alone. Heavy steps. It had happened at least four times by them. This was her first. But that night, she wasn’t dissuaded from the burglar theory. We armed ourselves with kitchen knives and baseball bats, and explored the 2nd and 3rd floors. We did not find anyone, as we systematically stayed together and investigated the house. For a item of note, we did not say, “Hey, let’s split up.” Like they do in the horror movies.
Anyway.
This wasn’t our first story about the house. I mentioned the renovation. When we purchased the house, there were a few things that still needed to be buttoned up by the builder, so some of the workers would occasionally come to the house. Most of them asked us if we had “seen” anything. My response was usually along the lines of “Like what? Tools, or something you left?” And they’d skirt the rest of the conversation. The man who did the audio / visual in the house, Boris, took hold of my arm one day and said, “My mother came. She’s a devout woman. She blessed this entire house with holy water.”
Okay. Now I’m worried.
We sold the house a few years after living there. Not because of the paranormal activity, or the fact that we found out someone committed suicide in one of the bedrooms, or the fact that when they excavated the basement to convert it to a wine cellar during renovation, they found a set of human bones. No. Those weren’t the reasons. We simply fell in love with a different house on the same street, a block and a half south.
That new old house was every bit as active in its mysteries. I have more stories about the cigar smoking gentleman who “lived” there.
I bring this up because today is the birthday of Lorraine Warren. She is a professed “clairvoyant and a light trance medium” who worked closely with her husband, Ed Warren. They were the “darlings” of the paranormal world for many decades. The couple worked with prominent cases of hauntings, including the controversial Amityville haunting, the Perron family case, and of course, the possessed Annabelle doll. Films like “The Conjuring” and “The Amityville Horror” and “Annabelle” were based on their stories.
The couple’s work has come under sweeping scrutiny, as expected. That typically happens, when things happen, that aren’t quite so typical. Most people don’t believe that there might be a spirit world walking in the midst of the living world.
I am a hard believer in science, and for that very reason, I will not dispute the possibility of these claims. We didn’t know the sub-atomic particle world existed either, but through research, we found this to be true. We also discovered that plants sense their surroundings. And there are black holes bigger than our galaxy.
Once, we did not know. And now, we know.
That’s how our world goes. There is not one person on this earth who knows everything. Not even close. Not even one-one trillionth of it. Maybe even more than that.
And that very thing is what is so exciting about this place. The whole big mystery of it. From unseen spirits to the unseen atoms that make up our very own eyes.
There’s so much we know, but even more that we don’t. I hope today, you find something new. Mysterious. And quite wonderful.
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“The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science.”
― Albert Einstein, The World As I See It
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“The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery.”
― Anais Nin
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“The world, even the smallest parts of it, is filled with things you don’t know.”
― Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
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