» Messing with the Dark Side

Oddly enough
And this will make me no friends at all, but I'm part of a paranormal investigation team based in Preston. We've made little jaunts to various manors, ruins, theatres and pubs. Lots of pubs. All over the country. There's 8 of us in the team but I'm the only one who can drive, which is a right pisser.

Anyway, one of our number is a Welsh lad by the name of Sion. Deeply Catholic, also committed to heavy metal. Go figure. Now, back home in the Rhonda Valley Sion was the head server at his church, at which the priest so happened to be the diocese "exorcist". Usually his job consisted of people saying they'd moved into a new house and something didn't feel right, would he mind coming out to bless it? Which means yes, holy water being flicked around, prayers, incense, crucifixes, the lot.

Now one place we did a report on not long ago was of a house he'd been to that merited the priest waking him up at 3 in the morning, saying "Get your clothes on, we have to go out right now". Arriving at the house during one of the warmest summers the Rhonda has had in years, albeit early in the morning, despite the heating being on the cold inside the house was by all accounts unbearable. Each room felt like an icebox, with a mounting feeling of unease as our two church types blunder about the house, hearing a whisper on every breeze and seeing a movement in every shadow. They did their incantation stuff as quick as they could before hightailing it out of there.

On no less than three occasions within the following weeks were the Sion and the priest called to this house again. After four visits and blessings, the phone calls stopped and Sion found some time to do a spot of reading on the house. Up until very recently it had been home to a widower who had died alone and lain undiscovered in the house for several days. The gentleman in question was greatly traumatised by the death of his wife some years before and had responded to it by hoarding a great amount of everything, Mr Treabus style. According to the Police who arrived to take the body away, the house's heating system was off as there was too much hoarded junk to reach the boiler or any of the radiators. The horrendous cold in the valley and in the house had contributed greatly to our distressed old man's undignified demise.

No apologies for length, but believe it or not this is the shortest case study we have.
(Fri 21st Apr 2006, 18:45, More)

» Pretentious bollocks

Uni
I do a contemporary music course, it's all a bit wierd but it's usually pretty interesting and good fun. But sometimes the lecturers show us some documentary on some artist or other to try and give us ideas, but one of them just made half the class sick, partly out of disgust, partly out of rage.
Basically there's this bloke called Franko B, and his "art" consists of him bleeding in various ways. In a protest against the gay marriage laws, he painted himself white, cut into his wrists, stuck a pigs heart in his mouth and suspended himself above a circular canvas for a few minutes. Not long enough in my opinion, as he survived. Quite what that's got to do with the legally recognized unions of two consenting adults I have no idea. We also didn't know how we were supposed to incorporate those ideas into the stuff we come up with. We came round to the idea that the lecturers don't like us very much.
(Sun 2nd Oct 2005, 14:40, More)

» Crappy Prizes

Not me
My gran at one of those big national bingo game things where the top prize is several thousand quid. She ended up coming home with a swiss roll and a packet of crumpets past their sell-by-date.
(Wed 10th Aug 2005, 19:20, More)

» Premonitions

When I were a nipper...
I think it was my last year of primary school, in fact yes it was, it was 1996. On night near the start of the year I had a really nasty little dream about a bloke walking into a big, safe building and shooting lots of children. Within two days, the little Scottish town of Dunblane had become infamous for just such an event. Which, being a kid, scared the living piss out of me.
(Sat 20th Nov 2004, 15:37, More)

» Shoddy Presents

The year
My dear old granddad passed away was a confused one at christmas time for my dear old gran, as he was the one that sorted out the presents, a task delegated to him as he still had a grip on reality and understood what kids/teenagers want for christmas. I'm sure you'll agree, a very rare breed of old person.

But anyway, I digress. The christmas following his death I received a card, inside of which was 3 quids worth of vouchers for B&Q.

*sigh*
(Thu 23rd Sep 2004, 17:39, More)