I’ve mentioned before that, when it comes to TV, the hubs and I struggle to agree on what to watch.   But one of the topics we DO enjoy viewing together is the supernatural/paranormal. We’re both fascinated by psychics, ghost hunting, and the occasional UFO or Sasquatch sighting.

Of course, we differ on the big question of “what happens when we die?”  I believe in God and in heaven, whereas the hubs is atheist/agnostic.  But we both find ourselves with a lot of unexplained loose ends when we watch “ghost hunter” shows like Paranormal State, Ghost Lab, or Ghost Hunters.  We’re completely mesmerized as temperature fluctuations are documented, objects inexplicably move, and disembodied voices are captured, all with no logical, rational, explanation.  (Except the “explanation” that it’s all fake.  If this is your position, you can skip right out of this post.  Fun killer.)

I am totally on board with believing that ghosts are actual dead people.  But I am open to the possibility that there’s a solid scientific explanation for all this.  After all, the brain is a complex organ – one we’ve only barely begun to understand.  It’s entirely possible that these phenomena are simply weird bursts of electricity – like clouds – that our brains, desperate to relate them to something familiar, turn into “ghosts.”

Or, perhaps this “evidence” is coming from the investigators themselves – the (not dead) people who are wandering around in the dark might be sending off brain waves in the form of electricity that we can then capture as voices, cold spots, and occasionally as a chair flying across the room.

(This plays nicely into my other theory that we are actually ALL psychic to some degree.  Think of psychic ability like a muscle – some people are born able to do pushups or run triathlons, while most of us can’t do more than jog a block or lift a beer without extensive, dedicated training.  So if someone is psychic, they’re just better at interpreting energy clouds than the rest of us are, but we could ALL be better at it if we went to, like, psychic bootcamp or something.  Wouldn’t THAT be amazeballs?)

So I have two experiences to share on this subject:

First one:  Let’s go back to when I was about nine years old or so.  A little background:  I was raised Catholic; therefore, we observed Lent, which is the season six weeks before Easter where you give up a food you love (like chocolate.  Dad always gave up cherry milkshakes, which he hates. Yeah, he told that joke every year)  and you don’t eat meat on Fridays.  (I know it means more than that – it’s about spiritual sacrifice and cleaning up your soul a bit – but it wasn’t when I was nine.)  My dad hated fish, so the meatless meal was invariably pizza.

Pizza was my favorite thing to eat IN THE WHOLE WORLD, so naturally I looked forward to dinner on Fridays.  And dinner was always, ALWAYS, at six o’clock, which is when Dad got home every single night, like clockwork. The routine was to order the pizza at 5:20 so we could pick it up and be back home by six.

At about 4:45 or so on this particular Friday, I whined to Mom about being hungry.  She reminded me that Dad would be home at six, like ALWAYS <read: so shut up.>

I said to her, “You better order it now.  Dad’ll be home in like ten minutes.”

Mom chuckled and went back to her crossword puzzle.  But when Dad unexpectedly walked in the door at 4:57, Mom wasn’t laughing anymore.

(I think she was a little bit afraid of me after that.)

Second: Fast forward to when my daughter was born.  Like any new mom, I was exhausted.  My new baby NEVER slept (seriously.  As a newborn, she slept 11-12 hours in a 24-hour period.  When my son came along and clocked 20 hours a day, I thought he was broken.)

At night, I’d nurse her in the rocking chair I placed between the crib and the bedroom door.  While I was rocking her, I’d turn off the bedroom light, but leave the hall light on and the bedroom door open.  That way, the room would be dark enough for my baby to sleep, but just light enough for me to see where I was going when I got up to lay her in the crib (and light enough so I didn’t fall asleep and drop her to the floor.)

Sometimes, I’d be so tired that I’d start to doze in the chair.  And when I started to drift off, the bedroom door would slowly close.

I’d reach out and push it back open – I needed the light, and I didn’t want to drop my baby! – and resume rocking.

Once again, if my eyes started to shut, the door would gently drift closed.

This would repeat until finally, exasperated, I would say something like, “please leave that open” or “knock it off, I need to stay awake.”

Only after I said something out loud would the door stay open.

Kinda spooky, yet cool, right?

Cooler still – I actually have a picture of my ghost.  This picture was taken by my then-mother-in-law; she was standing behind me and took it facing a mirror my daughter and I were looking into.

The only folks in the room were the three of us.  Yet…look closely:

Do you see the face?  The eyes are pretty much in the center of the pic; I can see a nose below it (he’s sort of looking to the left of the pic) and I can make out an ear on his left.

And then, beside his ear, there’s ANOTHER DUDE.  Only part of his face is there, but you can totally make out a beard and eyebrows.

No.  Really.  Look again.

<sigh> This may help:

See?  SEE?!!?!?

I have no idea who these dudes are.  But, interestingly, they do resemble the ex’s side of the family.  It’s not my ex, or his dad…but no one would throw them out of the annual family reunion.

So why am I bringing this up now?

Well…there’s been some…unusual activity recently that I can’t just shrug off.

1. Early this week, on our morning run, I had a song stuck in my head.  Later, when I turned on the car to head to work, guess what song played?  (Okay, it was a pretty popular song, so that was probably coincidence, but….)

2.  About halfway to work that day, I butt-dialed my sister.  Except the phone wasn’t in my pocket.  It was IN MY PURSE.  My phone magically dialed my sister while I was tooling down the highway belting out Adele at the top of my lungs, completely unaware that I had an audience.

3.  When we run, I take my iPhone along.  I use it to track the activity via MyFitnessPal (you know, so I can eat back the paltry 303 calories I burn RUNNING 3.5 FREAKING MILES…life is unfair.)  I also usually turn on my music halfway into the run (because by then I’m either dying of boredom, or just plain dying.)  I have 1,117 songs, so it’s a good variety.

I’ve mentioned before that the hubs and I disagree on a lot of things.  Music is one of those things.  Several times, he’s mocked a song that I love, making fun of the lyrics, the vocalist, or both.  One of those songs is The A Team, by Ed Sheeran:

It’s a song about drug addiction; the lyrics are dark, but the music balances that with folksy, upbeat guitar and vocals.  It’s poetry, beautiful and sad….But all the hubs hears is something about angels flying and crumbled pastries and that’s it, the song sucks.  (Men. <eyeroll>  And yes, I’ve asked him for an example of “good” lyrics, and he changes the subject.  WHATEVER.)

When this song was popular, so was this argument – we’d repeat it every time the song played.

The odd thing?  This song has come up on shuffle EVERY DAY WE’VE RUN for the last two weeks.  Every morning, without fail.  It’s one of five or six songs that pops in – OUT OF 1,117 POSSIBLE SELECTIONS.

(Suffice it to say we’ve been discussing this song a lot. And this morning, he actually said he was coming around a bit to appreciate it.  <stunned silence>  Now watch – it’ll never come up on shuffle again.)

4. In a prior post I mentioned my coffee addiction – to support it, I have a monthly subscription for coffee delivery.  I have two bags of fresh beans delivered every month from Velasquez Family Coffee (African Cinnamon and French Vanilla, but they’re all awesome, trust me.)

During this past month, I’ve been hitting the java a bit harder than usual, and was running low on supply.  I figured I’d just add a bag of coffee to this month’s delivery to bring my stock up.  Unfortunately, I never got around to ordering that third bag.

Last week, my monthly delivery was at my door.

There were three bags of coffee.

Confused, I emailed the supplier…ya know, I’m old busy, maybe I actually DID order the third bag, and just forgot?

Nope.

No one else was missing a bag.

No order for a third bag was placed, and

NO BAG IS MISSING FROM THEIR INVENTORY.

I did offer to pay for it, since I MEANT to order it.  They told me to keep it since it didn’t appear to be missing.  (YAY FREE PSYCHIC PARANORMAL COFFEE)

So what’s going on here?  Sunspots?  Hormonal imbalance causing me to send sixth-sense brain waves to the universe?  String theory got tangled into some bizarre game of Cat’s Cradle?

Whatever it is, it’s been an amusing and welcome distraction from my food issues.  So, even if it’s nothing more than coincidental entertainment, I’ll take it.

I know I haven’t talked about my food issues in a while.  I was going to today – and I’ll be getting back to that shortly, I promise.

But in the meantime, everyone likes a good ghost story or psychic experience, right?

Do you have one to share?  (Hint, hint.)  🙂