Season’s Greetings

Merry Christmas Folks, and a very happy New Year to one and all…and remember – the best cure for a hangover, is to keep drinking!!

Halloween…and that tapping on my door

Today, of course, is All Hallows’ Eve (Halloween), also known as All Saints’ Eve (so good we named it twice).

It’s a day in part derived from the Gaelic festival of Samhain, celebrating the end of summer, the lighter half of the year, and the onset of the darker half of the year, winter – Summer births, winter deaths. It is a time when the very fabric separating us from the unseen otherworld becomes so thin that the dead are able to reach back into this world of the living. In the ancient festival of Samhain, in Ireland, it was customary to hollow out turnips, carving a face on them to create lanterns that would frighten off the dangerous spirits…

But today irritating little monsters  children appear on the twilit streets, their faces hidden by plastic masks as they go door to door, calling: “Trick or Treat!”, their raucous yells putting the fear of God up little old ladies who live alone. Neither parents or kids have any real understanding of the history behind their dressing up – the pagan implications, the appeasement of the dead, the spirits moving into this world from the otherworld.

Nor I suspect do they have much comprehension of the Christian meaning behind All Hallows: the celebration on first November honoring all the Christian saints, both known and unknown…the spiritual communion between the living and those who have died in a state of grace to face purification in purgatory or their arrival in heaven.

Across Europe people visit the graves of deceased relatives and friends with flowers or lighted candles. The day coincides with “Día de los Inocentes“, the first day celebrating “Dia de los Muertos”, the day of the dead. “Día de los Inocentes” is for the children who have died, honoring their spirits and praying for their continued peace in the otherworld…

So parents, one and all, be aware what little Jonnie is about in the dark, in the night, all bundled up in his coat and scarf: he’s inviting the spirits from the otherworld into this one, perhaps; and as he and his friends scream “Trick or Treat” at some palpitating pensioner, ask yourself:

“What is that shape moving just now in the shadows behind them?”

Ghosts

The house is empty now,
Depersonalised.
Nothing left that bears your name -
Only household ghosts remain,
Allowing us to feel in touch.
Footprints of furniture
Mark out the space of daily life;
Shadows left by picture frames
And shading, like the faintest bruise,
Where fingers searched for switch and light,
Are all that’s left to mark your stay.
But outside, where your flowers bloom,
The planting brings you back to life:
A shadow toiling in the shade,
A smiled “goodbye” in fading light.

Patrick Osada

Titling Shadows

The church is on the other side
of the estuary being beautiful
may not save it.

I went there once
with the children
the day full of sun and chat

though something happened.
Gone now, the man’s dead,
anyway I never knew him.

Today the mud is bared,
the sea out
the boats tied and tilting

as if they might sink at high tide
instead of rising as they did yesterday
and Thursday and the day before.

The season’s done and the inevitability
of winter is honed in the fresh winds,
the late sun.

Inside the tidy school – quiet.
Our children safe?

Nowhere is -
not the estuary mud or the fields
by the church, even the lanes
are haunted

and each day we wait breathless
for the rattle of the gate, the child’s shout,
‘I’m home! I’m home!’.

Virgin Mary wandering around Bosnia – Vatican to investigate!

Yes, the Vatican has announced a commission to investigate claims that the Virgin Mary appears on a daily basis in a town in Bosnia.

For almost 30 years, the Virgin Mary has been said to appear daily in Medjugorje, dressed sometimes in a grey dress and veil and sometimes in gold, crowned with stars and floating on a cloud.

It is said she speaks in Croatian, uttering the words: “I’ve come because there are many true believers here. I wish to be with you to convert and reconcile the whole world.”

But the Catholic Church has long debated the credibility of the sightings – I wonder why?

Read HERE.

Ghost terrifies shop staff…and is caught on video!

Two women working in Simply Food & Drinks in Durranhill Road, Botcherby, Carlisle were stopped in their tracks when a strange white mist appeared on CCTV screens showing the outside of the store.

Trish Nolan was working in the shop alongside Sonya Hird when the mysterious spirit appeared to drift in and out of the shop almost 10 times in one hour on Tuesday night.

Miss Nolan, 42, said: “I have never believed in things like ghosts until that night but unless somebody can explain to me what it was, I believe now.

“I wish to God I hadn’t seen it. I kept serving afterwards, but half the people that came in were standing staring at the screen.”

The ghostly apparition could only be seen on the shop’s CCTV cameras, and the recording has quickly become notorious around Botcherby.

One theory says that the spook has been disturbed by workmen renovating a flat across the road, which was also said to have been haunted.

See the video HERE.

Irish witch in portrait…spooky!!

From the Irish Independent

Saturday October 31 2009

“IT SOUNDS like a spooky Halloween story but the author of a book about a medieval Irish witch has discovered an incredible coincidence linking her to her subject.

Some would say this eerie story surrounding Dame Alice Kyteler, who escaped being burned at the stake on witchcraft charges, is beyond belief.

Kilkenny woman Claire Nolan published a book in 2008 on the life of the notorious noblewoman who disappeared without trace in 1324.

She was thought to have supernatural powers and to have poisoned several men, including three of her husbands.

Some 3,000 miles away in the US midwest, back in 2003, an artist painted a portrait of Alice because he liked her story, having come across it in a library in New York.

Paddy Shaw had never heard of Claire Nolan or her book called ‘The Stone’ — he couldn’t have, because it wasn’t written until five years later.

At the time when he was exhibiting the painting in New York, Claire Nolan’s book was just an idea.

Earlier this year, Paddy was clearing out his studio and decided it was time to send Alice home. He gave the painting, without charge, to Nicky Flynn of Kyteler’s Inn on St Kieran Street in Kilkenny city. Where the pub now stands is where Alice once lived.

A few weeks ago, the painting was brought to the attention of Claire’s father, well-known genealogist Pat Nolan.

Pat was “flabbergasted” when he saw it. The resemblance to his daughter was “uncanny”. “I almost fell over with shock,” he said.

He rang Claire, who came down that weekend to see the image and was “physically shocked” when she first saw the work because there are no known photographs of Alice.

“It was looking at myself in the mirror — the eyes, face, posture, body shape, everything was like me, except for the malevolent look on Alice’s face,” she said.

It gets even more creepy. The dress in the painting is almost identical to the one that Claire wears when she is reading excerpts from the book.

Asked if it was the work of Alice up to her old tricks, Claire said it was definitely very strange and could not really be explained on the basis of fact.

Claire has never met the painter, Paddy Shaw. And he had no notion of her existence when he painted the picture.

“I’m genuinely puzzled. It’s a very strange coincidence that somebody would paint a picture about Alice that looks exactly like me when he’s never heard of me.

“I wasn’t working on the book when he did the painting. The more I think about it, the more creeped out I get,” she said.

“He painted a woman that looks exactly like me, even the way she wears her hair and the fact that she looks the same age as me, it’s everything else about it,” Claire told the Irish Independent last night.

The portrait also shows Aethiops in the background. He is a mythical figure and supposedly the founder of Ethiopia.

Claire is an administrator at the school of information and library studies at University College Dublin.

She wrote her book on Alice Kyteler in 2008, however, it received little attention and was relatively unknown until now.”

Ghost caught in cellphone image

This is really spooky! You see that picture of the little girl? Well, when it was taken there wasn’t anyone behind her. You see now there is someone – a dead someone!

Read all about it HERE.

emails sent by the dead

Oh, this one’s a real winner! “A messaging service to send emails from beyond the grave has been launched called the Last Messages Club.”

Way to go!

“A member can write up to 100 emails that can be released once they die at times of their choosing, such as when a relative or loved one marries or has a child.”

Can you imagine that? I can just see the kind of message, too:

“You said you’d never find anyone else! You BITCH! Now you’re marrying a toyboy – SLUT! Well, I’ll tell you – I’ll be BACK!”

See it HERE

Ghosts of Rome

My first visit to Rome, I was eighteen years old. The city was so full of life – and I, with all the passion of youth, fell head-over-heels in love with the place…a love affair that continues still, to this day!

During the Spring of that year the monumental staircase to the church of Trinita’ dei Monte was a sea of colour with all the azaleas heavily in bloom. The church above contained Daniele da Volterra’s painting, the Descent from the Cross, which I’d been told was “a must see”! At the foot of the steps stood the Barcaccia fountain designed by Bernini, no less; young people sat here and there on the steps in the sun while tourists climbed wearily up to the church or descended to the Piazza di Spagna where they could pause for an ice cream and listen to the musical sound of the water in the fountain.

Aldo once told me, ‘Rome is a city of fountains…and of ghosts!’

Aldo was seventy something then, but looked younger: sixty, perhaps, and very fit. He had one of those severe, military-style haircuts normally associated with a much younger man, and, paradoxically, spoke English with a thick Bronx accent which led me to suspect he’d learned the language as a child from the occupying GI’s at war’s end. He earned money to supplement his pension from the University, where he’d been a lecturer in art history, by working as a guide. He’d been born in Rome: it was his city; the place he’d grown up. And walking from the Largo Goldoni by the Via Condotti to the Piazza di Spagna it seemed all the small traders knew him, greeting him with waves and smiles and cries of ‘Ciao Aldo’.

‘In the early hours of morning, ghosts sometimes walk the steps,’ Aldo told me. ‘Ghosts from way back in time, a lady in a fine dress, a gentlemen in a baggy silk shirt, drifting together from the Piazza to the church. It’s true. You can come yourself here and see them. You might even see on occasion the ‘White Nun’.’

Standing in the sun bright Piazza Lisa my girlfriend asked Aldo about his ‘White Nun’.

‘It is a sad story. Too sad for such a beautiful day,’ he replied. ‘She was thwarted in love, is all. She couldn’t go on and took her own life, which is a sin of course. Now she is forced to wander the steps in search of forgiveness.’

‘That is sad.’

‘Yes, indeed.’ Aldo’s eyes sparkled with good humor. He raised his hand to the sharp grey stubble on his skull-like head. He was a great one for teasing with such stories.

‘But you must not trouble yourself with these things,’ he said, gently. ‘Be happy. Walk in the sunshine with your man. Leave the ghosts to the night. Come. Let me take you to the Villa Borghese Park. We will need a cab. I’ll show you the lake with its small temple dedicated to Aesculapius. And we can eat ice cream and be happy together, the three of us.’

Such an idyllic spring day, and so many years ago now.

Lisa and I were both culture-freaks, which made the city nothing less than paradise on earth. It was her first time there, too, and she couldn’t get enough of it! Even the crowded market in Campo de’ Fiori thrilled her. I remember seeing her eyes so full of wonder like those of a child, and thinking how happy she looked. How happy we both were.

One time we had a row over nothing. I remember sitting in a bar somewhere off Via Vittorio Veneto, the interior air-conditioned, drinking vodka and ice with Nastro Azzurro chasers, the light beer fizzy at the back of my throat. Outside the day was slowly dying. Cars were parked bumper to bumper on either side of the road. I was alone at a table near the door. People stood at the bar behind me, loud, raucous. Others sat outside at pavement tables.

How many drinks had I consumed? I don’t know. But I’d reached that state where the waiter’s conversation with me was an insidious, labyrinthine thread I struggled to follow.

Later that evening it began to rain. I decided I needed to walk. The rain was rattling off the parked cars curbside and streaming down the windows of the bar. I saw people running for cover and heard the click, click, click of a young girl’s high heels on the pavement nearby. The rain was torrential, but I didn’t care. The air smelled fresh, good. The rain wouldn’t last, I thought, even as the watery darkness enclosed me. The narrow road was flooding in half-a-dozen places. I walked on, head up, face awash, streaming rain.

I crossed one deserted piazza and entered another via a narrow street where tall buildings stood wedged together. I saw faces in darkened doorways. Outside a small pizzeria two men with broom handles poked at a bright red and white striped awning filled to bursting with rainwater. The smell of the wood fired ovens reminded me I hadn’t eaten.

Thunder rumbled in the distance and some seconds later lightening flashed lighting up the narrow street. I was soaked to the skin but continued to walk through this deluge.

Then, abruptly, I sensed I had company – someone drifting beside me through the rain, a young woman in the shadows.

One of Aldo’s ghosts?

I became certain that if I could just turn my head slightly to the right, she’d be there – a ghost or spirit, at my side. But I couldn’t bring myself to look. I couldn’t look in that direction; couldn’t face it. Instead I breathed the faintest hint of scent, of azaleas, before walking quickly away from that place, and the overwhelming sensation of a ghostly, female presence.

After midnight, the rain long departed, I sat on the Spanish steps breathing in the scent of all those tangled flowers, my back propped against a crumbling mildewed wall, watching for ghosts – if not a scarlet clad cardinal from another age, perhaps Aldo’s white nun?

She might appear with one of those sad, haggard eighteenth century ladies whose hair hangs in powdered ringlets about the shadows of her cheeks. The rich silks of her dress rotting from time spent in the grave. Both floating down the steps and passing me by without a second glance.

In the Trinita’ dei Monte at the head of the steps was darkness. Within that darkness was da Volterra’s Descent from the Cross. my thoughts turned to the four grieving female figures depicted in the lower left hand corner, the three Marys and one other.

Perhaps Aldo’s White Nun hovered within, watching those figures with sympathetic gaze?

The painting had recently been restored. Before it had been obscure, dark, filled with gloomy shadows. Now, the colours were more robust – much more vivid, and the depicted forms were consequently more dynamic. This reality had lain hidden from modern observers of the work until its restoration. It was an example, I thought, of the reality concealed behind appearance.

I knew then that Aldo was correct: Rome was a city of ghosts. I knew, too, that I would return to Rome. I hoped it would be with Lisa.

Now, all these years later, I realise it is people, not places, that are haunted.

We each of us carry so many ghosts around with us…I carry the ghost of Aldo, and of Lisa…and the ghost of myself, as I was then, a very young man in love with a very young woman, and with life, and with that wonderful glowing city of Rome….