And so we begin theme week...

Or we did last night. Hush.

I like to present myself as a very rational (shut up Rich), scientific minded person who prefers fact to conjecture. When the subject turns to ghosts, though, I go all Fox Mulder. Or worse. I don't want to believe. I do believe (I also try to believe in the Chupacabra because the idea of a Mexican Goat Sucker tickles me to no end).

I'm going to tell you right now. Tennessee is haunted.

Not just a little haunted. Not just a spectre popping up here and there. The Native Americans referred to Tennessee as "The Dark and Bloody Ground," and they pretty much hauled ass out of there and left it to its own devices. And then the idiot white folk stumbled upon it and went, "Oooooo. Pretty." and set up house because Captain Obvious was not around to slap them silly.

The first time I drove to visit my friend in Tennessee I started through the Smokey Mountains and instantly felt something watching me. It wasn't a pleasant type of something. I did not know yet about the history of the area, and I thought I was crazy. As I drove through the state on my way to Nashville, though, I noticed more and more areas where I simply felt uncomfortable. Even one place as innocuous as an overpass near a field. Nothing felt right.

I mentioned it when I got to her duplex, and she told me that the land was absolutely batshit crazy, and I had not been imagining things. So we went ahead and got drunk on loads of Jim Beam, and I went to bed on the futon in her living room. In the middle of the night I heard a noise from upstairs, and it sounded like she had fallen. So I got up and went to the stairs and looked up, and there was a dark gray mist hovering at the ceiling. As I stood there she came to the top of the stairs and asked if I was ok because she had heard a noise. I pointed. We sort of simply nodded and both went back to bed.

On that trip she took me to the oldest cemetery in Nashville. I try to visit cemeteries everywhere I go. The headstones fascinate me. I used to take rubbings before I discovered that the process is bad for the stones. "Common" understanding is that cemeteries and the like shouldn't be haunted, because by the time the bodies make it there anything that inhabited them is long gone. Before that excursion my camera was working just fine. These are the photos from that field trip.

When I got my photos developed everything taken outdoors in Tennessee was like this. All photos from before and after the trip on that roll of film (film?) were fine. I would LOVE to go back with a digital camera and see what happens.

On my second trip to visit her the babies had been born and I was there for 9 days helping her out. She was in a new house in a different part of town. One day I was walking through her hallway and a small dark figure trotted past me and into nothingness. I barely blinked, and when I returned to the living room I said, "So who's the little dark guy who just ran past me?" and she told me she figured it was her brownie. Apparently someone kept ripping down the kitchen curtains and screwing with the silverware drawer. This was my first real introduction to the fey. Looked them up when i got home. Some are not so bad. Some are very, very bad. In fact, at her previous house she had dealt with at least one who looked like an oversized, pitch black Jawa and it tried to push her down the stairs.

She's had some really crazy shit occur over the past several years, and I believe her completely. This woman is a very intelligent, educated person with a background in science. If she's willing to believe what she sees, so am I.

So my next entry will be what I've seen, outside of Tennessee. See you tomorrow.