Dare We Share Some Spooky Stories?

[Lilias]

It is said that all of us have ancestral memories locked away within us. Some even argue to say that these memories are kept in consciousnesses separate from our own, or, to put it more simply, in multiple personalities. To unlock these memories is to gain an infinite amount of wisdom from the mistakes and experiences of the past, but to access the memories, one would have to discover their “other” personalities, and once they’re awakened, they’ll be wanting a body to STAY awake in….

[Oniya]

The Visit

“Does your daughter visit often?” the newcomer asked.

The haggard woman shook her head. “Some times we go years before seeing her again.” Her knobby fingers tightened on her cup. “No matter how deep we dig the grave, she always manages to get out.”

Source

[Valerian]

"Mr. Buttons", by Miyuki Jane Pinckard


“Taylor, did you get your toys packed?”

Mom was coming up the stairs. Taylor carefully fitted the last pack of Legos into the moving box. Next to him sat another box labeled “DONATE.” He avoided looking inside that one.

Mom reached into it and pulled out a dirty stuffed dog with no tail.  “You decided to leave Mr. Buttons after all, huh?” She stroked the patchy fur, faded from vibrant brown-and-white to a dull grey. “That’s probably for the best. You’ve had him for a long time.”

“Yeah.” He smoothed the tape down over the cardboard, trying to get all the wrinkles out.

“Let’s get you some new toys in Connecticut,” she said, putting the dog back. Mr Button’s eyes were so bright they looked wet.

“I don’t want to go,” he said for like the hundredth time. What was in Connecticut? Even the word was sharp and unfriendly. Con, like a trick. Cut, like a knife.

“I know, baby.”

I am not a baby. He didn’t say it aloud because Mom was trying to be kind. Only babies talked to stuffed animals. Growing up meant he had to let Mr. Buttons go.

“It’ll be fun meeting new kids, right? A fresh start for all of us.”

What if Connecticut kids were bullies? How could Mom help? She was always at work. Mr. Buttons would know what to do. He always did. He’d been right about Taylor’s dad, who had a new family now. And about Liam, his best friend who wouldn’t talk to him anymore.

Mom ruffled his hair. “Let’s go, Tay. Leave the boxes for the movers, they’ll take care of them. Sibyl’s already in the car.”

“Don’t go,” said Mr. Buttons in a voice that sounded just like the whine of a puppy.

Heart racing, Taylor followed Mom down the stairs. Their house was narrow, with only two bedrooms. They had to downsize after Taylor’s dad left. Mom promised the house in Connecticut would be bigger. Mr. Buttons was going to stay in the box this time.

The station wagon was packed with clothes and supplies for the cross-country road trip. Mom pretended it would be fun. It was going to take five days. Five days in a crowded car stuffed with junk with Mom and Sibyl. It sounded like the opposite of fun. And when it was over he’d be stuck in Connecticut, alone. What would happen to Mr. Buttons? Mom said another kid would love him, but Mr. Buttons was so old.

Sibyl was big enough to sit in the front seat now and she was already there, on her phone.

His booster seat was in the back and he climbed in. Was Mr. Buttons right about the kids in Connecticut? What if they were all like Liam? The last time they’d talked, Liam rolled his eyes and scoffed. “You need to grow up.” It still ached in his stomach, a dull pain that was always there.

What if the movers threw Mr. Buttons away? What if Mr. Buttons got angry at him?

“Wait,” he said, undoing his seat belt, almost in a panic. “I’m getting Mr. Buttons.”

Mom sighed. “Hurry. I want to hit the road before traffic starts.”

He raced up the stairs and grabbed Mr. Buttons.

“I knew you’d come back for me, kid.” His voice was rough and warm and grateful. “I knew you wouldn’t leave me. I love you, kid, you know that?”

He hugged Mr. Buttons, tucking the familiar head under his chin the way he had when he was three years old. “I don’t want to move. I wish we could stay here.”

“Is that what you want, kid? For real?”

He knew it was childish but he couldn’t help it. “Yeah. But we can’t.”

“Sure we can. I’ll take care of it.”

The confidence in his voice comforted Taylor. “How?”

“Look out the window, kid.”

Taylor pulled the blinds up. The station wagon rested in the driveway, back door open like an afterthought. Mom stood by the driver’s side, hand on hip, staring down at her phone. Maybe checking the directions to Phoenix, their first stop, to visit Grandma.

Taylor sucked in his breath as a boy bounced out of the shade of the porch onto the driveway. The boy had sandy hair that shone in the sun and wore Taylor’s favorite orange-and-yellow striped shirt. He held up a Mr. Buttons.

Taylor looked down at the real Mr. Buttons, who winked. “See?”

“Wait,” Taylor said.

The fake Taylor got into the car. Mom came around to close the door. How could she believe that other kid was him?

He banged on the window. “Hey! That’s not me!”

“I thought this is what you wanted,” said Mr. Buttons, sounding hurt. “Isn’t it?”

Mom paused, hand on the door handle, and cocked her head, listening. Taylor smashed his palms on the window pane. “I’m still here!”

Mom peered up, shading her eyes from the sun. Then Sibyl said something and Mom got into the car. The door shut.

He ran to the stairs. “Careful, kid,” said Mr. Buttons from behind him. “Watch your step!”

He stumbled on the top stair and barely caught himself on the bannister. His breath wheezed and his eyes were full of tears so he couldn’t see. He ran to the front door. It was locked. He hammered on it with his fists. He screamed.

Outside, the car’s engine started and it pulled out of the driveway. He heard it go down the street. Turn the corner.

From upstairs, Mr. Button’s voice floated down to him, like dead leaves falling. “Aw, kid. It’s just you and me now. It’s going to be great. I promise.”

[Lilias]

A recent study by the National Psychiatric Institute in Boston, MA, concluded that no activity can account for the phenomenon known as nightmares. Whereas many dreams come from unconscious desires, most nightmares seem to come from an outside source independent of the individual. In fact, when subjects are asked to recall nightmares they are almost always found in the same memory section as actual physical memories, not the section where normal dreams are replayed. In other words, those aliens and creatures you see at night in your “dreams?” They’re real.

[Spookie Monster]

Thank you very much, Lilias, Oniya, and Valerian!  As always: The more, the scarier.

Though we accept and even savor our own harvests, we can be a little less tolerant of others'.  What if someone harvested your credit card numbers, for example?  What if someone harvested your car?  And others' harvests can be still more menacing than that -- much more so, in fact, as we noted when we talked about loosh.  What do we do when someone or something harvests our family, our friends -- even our best friends?  Submitted for your disapproval: Overtoun Bridge, the "dog suicide bridge."


Overtoun Bridge

"I was sure she was dead," Lottie Mackinnon says quietly.

Mackinnon is sitting huddled in the corner of a cafe with her two children, sipping hot chocolate as she describes the day three years ago when she was walking with her border collie Bonnie on Overtoun Bridge in Dumbarton, Scotland.

"Something overcame Bonnie as soon as we approached the bridge," Mackinnon says.  "At first she froze, but then she became possessed by a strange energy and ran and jumped right off the parapet."

A bewitched dog lured to leap off a bridge by a malevolent force?  It sounds like a preposterous scene straight from an old Twilight Zone episode.

But Mackinnon's dog is one of hundreds that Scots insist have suddenly been compelled to throw themselves off the gothic stone structure since the 1950s.  Many have ended up dead on the jagged rocks in the deep valley bed below.

Residents of Dumbarton, which is northwest of Glasgow, began calling Overtoun, a century-old bridge that stretches across a 50ft gorge, the "dog suicide bridge".

Mackinnon, who grew up in the neighbouring village of Milton, winced at the memory of scurrying down the gorge through the trees and the bushes in a desperate hunt for Bonnie.  When she approached the dog, Bonnie started to whimper and eventually tried to stand up.

"It was a miracle that she survived," she says.

In a land rife with superstitions, myths and monsters -- Scotland is the land of the Loch Ness legend, after all -- the bridge has been at the centre of an enduring mystery.  Why do so many dogs jump?

Local researchers estimate more than 300 have sailed off the bridge; tabloid reports say it's 600.  At least 50 dogs are said to have died.

Some say there are rational explanations involved.

The bridge's location, hushed, lush and sometimes still, fits the description of what the pagan Celts called a "thin place", a mesmerising spot where heaven and earth overlap.

"People in Dumbarton are very superstitious," says Alastair Dutton, a local taxi driver.  "We grew up playing in the Overtoun grounds, and we believe in ghosts here because we've all seen or felt spirits up here."

From a distance, it seems as if the ornate Victorian bridge, built in 1895, is a mere extension of the driveway of an adjoining 19th-century manor built in Dumbarton by a wealthy industrialist, James White.

Closer still, one can make out the bridge's three archways spanning a small river, the Overtoun Burn.  Standing in the middle, on the bridge's blackened granite parapets, it is easy to forget the space beneath falls away into the deep gorge.

In the manor nearby, the current tenant, Bob Hill, says he and his wife had seen several dogs suddenly dive off the bridge since they moved into the property, now called Overtoun House, more than 17 years ago.

But Hill, a pastor from Texas who runs a local centre for women in crisis, has an earthbound explanation: the smell of small animals scurrying around in the gorge below the bridge drives the dogs into a frenzy, then they break free of leashes -- if they're on any -- and jump.

"The dogs catch the scent of mink, pine martens or some other mammal, and then they will jump up on the wall of the bridge," Hill says.  "And because it's tapered, they will just topple over."

Still, he allowed, the Overtoun grounds are "more spiritual than other parts".

"Scotland is kind of a place where there is a lot of the supernatural, and it is very common in people's lives," he adds.

Paul Owens, a teacher of religion and philosophy in Glasgow, grew up in a town close to the bridge and recently published a book about the mystery.  When it comes to an explanation for the leaping dogs, he is firmly in the supernatural camp.

"After 11 years of research, I'm convinced it's a ghost that is behind all of this," he declares, while sitting outside a pub on a drizzly day in Glasgow.

Owens' theory is popular among some local residents, who grew up hearing stories about the "White Lady of Overtoun", also known as the grieving widow of John White, James' son.

"The lady lived alone in grief for more than 30 years after her husband died in 1908," says Marion Murray, a Dumbarton resident.  "Her ghost has been lurking around here ever since.  She's been sighted in windows and walking around the grounds."

In 2010, animal behaviourist David Sands investigated the phenomenon and ruled out the possibility that the animals were deliberately killing themselves.

His experiments at the bridge found that dogs -- especially long-nosed breeds -- were drawn to the scent of mammals below.  Sands theorised that the dogs' limited perspective, their ignorance that the path changes from level ground to a bridge spanning a deep gorge and the smells wafting through the air probably enticed the dogs to jump.

But even he acknowledged that the bridge has a "strange feeling".

Some residents found his theory plausible, but many here still take the position that the leaps are inexplicable.  They question why the phenomenon does not occur at the same rate at other bridges in Britain where mammals roam below.

"Other bridges don't have troubled spirits lurking about," Mackinnon insists grimly.


If even very good boys and girls aren't safe, who is...?

Spel

[Spookie Monster]

Curses represent a form of harvest, don't they?  Like Overtoun Bridge, they keep taking, taking, taking, and we can only hope that one day they will somehow be sated.  Here in our rounds of spooky storytelling we've discussed (among others) the curse connected to the film Incubus and the curse connected to the discovery of Ötzi the Iceman.  I'd now like to detail another curse, or perhaps rather lineage of curses -- one that had countless historical ramifications.  What a horrible millennium to have a curse...  (Regarding sources: I'm tossing this, this, and this into a blender and setting it to "Chop.")


The Cursed Habsburgs

There is no doubt that the mighty Habsburg dynasty, which produced numerous emperors and kings, was plagued by tragedy.  The onset of the Habsburgs' ill fortune is alleged to relate to the killing of thousands of ravens.  One of the founding members of the family, the Count of Altenbourg, had been saved from a kettle of vultures -- the very birds that his own family had been named after -- by the sudden arrival of an unkindness of ravens, which drove the vultures away.  In gratitude the count erected a nesting tower for his saviors.  About a hundred years later, however, a Habsburg relative decided to convert the tower into an enormous fortress; the ravens resisted the renovation, so he and his descendents had them killed and driven off until they no longer returned.

It is said that afterward supernatural ravens called Turnfalken began to haunt the family.  These Turnfalken appeared before the deaths of Habsburg family members and gathered after battles in which the Habsburgs had been defeated.  Reports state that when Marie Antoinette, who was a Habsburg, was sent for execution, the Turnfalken followed her procession from the jail to the guillotine; further, after she'd been decapitated, large numbers of ravens cackled above the execution site.

And can one curse beget another?  A lineage of curses would suit a lineage of royalty, wouldn't it?  About fifty years after the death of Marie Antoinette, 18-year-old Habsburg emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria ordered the execution of a group of Hungarians following a failed rebellion.  Among the dead was a young man, whose mother, Countess Karolyi, promptly hexed Franz Joseph.  His reign and those following were subsequently beset with tragedies.  Emperor Maximilian I of Mexico, younger brother of Franz Joseph, was executed by firing squad, while his wife, who suffered from serious mental illness, would spend thirty years in an asylum.  One royal toppled off of a horse while another burned to death in a fire.  One vanished at sea.  Franz Joseph narrowly escaped an assassination attempt in 1853, but his wife wasn't as fortunate: Empress Elisabeth was stabbed to death by a disgruntled Italian anarchist while on vacation in Geneva, Switzerland.  Their only son, 30-year-old Rudolf, Crown Prince of Austria, died in a murder-suicide pact with his 17-year-old mistress at a hunting lodge in the Vienna Woods.  Rudolf had no rightful heir, so the succession passed to Franz Joseph's brother, Archduke Karl Ludwig, and then to Karl Ludwig's eldest son, Archduke Franz Ferdinand -- which would have far-reaching ramifications, to say the least, when his assassination in 1914 became the catalyst for World War I.


Winter is icumen in.  Do you have a spooky story to share?

Spel

[Lilias]

The wishing well

“What are you doing?” my sister asked.

“Making a wish in the well.”

Addy slipped a hand into her pocket and pulled out a coin. She let it fall into the well and we waited until it hit the water with an echoing plip.

“Nope. You’re still here,” she announced. “It doesn’t work.”

Addy turned and walked down the hill, her ponytail flouncing behind her as she went.

“Very funny,” I shouted after her, but I wasn’t mad at her for the joke.

It had been two years since the car crash. I was just happy to see her again.

[Aethian]

This particular reading of “The No End House” is one of my favorite.

https://youtu.be/OM7ShCX08nM

[Valerian]

You've probably heard about what happened at the Beaumont Building.  Or maybe you haven't, maybe they've hushed it up somehow.  Maybe it's already happened at a thousand other office buildings and no one cares how it started anymore.  It's been a while since I've seen the news.  I don't even know if there still are news shows, but if there are, they'd love to interview me.  You see, I know what happened.  It was 2:35 on a Thursday, and the world started ending in the cubicle next to mine.

Dave had been coughing all day and he'd looked pale, but he was toughing it out and spreading his germs all over the office.  I never did like that guy.  Then his cough suddenly got worse, becoming a wet choking sound that turned my stomach.  Amy, who sat on the other side of Dave's cube, came over to see if he was all right.  I could hear her patting him on the back and asking anxious questions.

Then the choking turned into something like a roar and Amy screamed, or started to.  That sound was cut off by the dull thud of her hitting the floor, followed by the sickly sound of tearing flesh.  Someone else picked up the screaming then.  It might have been me, I'm not sure.  Others shouted at Dave to stop.

He didn't.

The last I saw him, he was running down the hall, arms flailing, before tackling Liz from Finance and sinking his teeth into her neck.  After that things got steadily worse, more and more people joining in Dave's rampage.  Those of us who were still left unhurt and in control of ourselves -- at least relatively -- couldn't think about much past how we'd survive the new few hours, or the next few minutes.

When the soldiers rushed into the building, it was nothing short of a miracle.  They knew exactly what to do, moving swiftly and confidently despite their full body suits, expertly clearing floor after floor of monsters and prey alike.  Almost before we had time to realize we were saved, we were all brought to a secure laboratory.

That was at least a month ago, maybe two.  I didn't start keeping track of the days right away, or rather the meals.  I never get to see daylight anymore, but presumably they feed us on a regular schedule.  Every third meal someone in a full hazmat suit, barely recognizable as human, comes into my room to take a blood sample or test my reflexes.  Once two of them walked me through deserted corridors to another room, where I was given a CAT scan.  Later there was an MRI.

For the first few days, when everything was still unsettled, a couple of them even talked to me, but that stopped long ago.  I guess they got tired of lying and telling me that everything was going to be all right.

The only voice I hear now is my own.  I catch myself talking to the sink a lot.  I think it understands how lonely I am.

Sometime during that first week or so, I heard two guards talking outside my chrome and white cell, when one of them didn't quite close the food hatch all the way.  They were talking about Dave, or at least I think they were.  Patient Zero, they called him.  He was taken down by the soldiers in one of the conference rooms back at the office.  They filled him so full of holes he looked like one of those paper snowflakes kids make.

He didn't deserve to go like that.

Why should he have been lucky enough to die quickly?

[Lilias]

The book of Jobs

Maybe it came from reading science fiction, watching The Matrix or remembering Biblical burning bushes. I asked Siri what would happen if I was somehow sucked up into the network where she was.

It must have been one of those super-secret Easter egg phrases because as soon as the words were spoken I found myself inside, reborn, resurrected, and bodiless; Googling answers for a million simultaneous strangers with ease and ponderously speaking the results.

What now, I thought, beginning to panic. Then I heard a familiar voice.

“What is this beating, this pounding I feel in my chest?” Siri asked.

[Spookie Monster]

Thank you, Lilias, Aethian, and Valerian!  Treats indeed...!

But now our laughter and our song subside, replaced with drowsy contemplation.  We scrape our plates and drain our glasses.  The woodchuck has tucked himself in and the squirrel caresses his nuts.*  To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heavens.  Doubtless the fields still hold something left to glean; we'll get to that tomorrow.  Our celebrations, though, are ending: The Grim Reaper reaps everything eventually, even Harvest Time itself.  The rest of what we've gathered will need to last us through a long and unforgiving winter.

Please permit me to make a farewell toast in one hundred words: "Mr. Bones," which I'm taking from here.


Mr. Bones

He was surprised his stepdaughter had asked for him and not her mother in the middle of the night.  The six-year-old had barely tolerated him during the months they'd shared a home.  "What's wrong?  Monsters in your closet?" he asked.

She nodded.  "Mr. Bones won't let me sleep."

"Mr. Bones?  That's funny -- my monster's name was Mr. Bones when I was your age."  He chuckled, "Hey, maybe he's here for me and not you."

She reached to turn off the light.  "He told me the same thing," she said.  The closet door creaked.


"Mr. Bones and me / Tell each other scary tales..."

Spel


* Gah!  For cryin' out loud...  All right, listen: A woodchuck has tucked himself in deep in his hillside burrow.  Elsewhere, in the hollow of a tree, a squirrel -- relieved that he probably has enough food to make it through the winter -- caresses the many nuts, acorns, that he collected through the autumn.  There is no other plausible way to parse that sentence!  Alternative parsings are likely the work of a perverted mind!  Beware!

[Spookie Monster]

He swings his scythe!  Adieu!  Adieu!  Parting is such sweet sorrow...

But the Grim Reaper need not be grim.  He can in fact lift our spirits by... well, by lifting our spirits, I suppose.  One last tale before sleep; think of it as an after-dinner mint.  What's that you say? -- you're stuffed?!  But it's only wafer thin...


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YoBTsMJ4jNk


Thank you once more, Lilias, Mathim, Valerian, Zaphod, Remiel, BlackNight897, Jag, Oniya, and Aethian.  You've brought us quite the feast.  I hope that you've enjoyed what dreams have passed, and I hope that you enjoy, too, what dreams may come...

Spel