504 - Don't Take This The Wrong Way But The Spirit World Is Alive And Very Well

[2:20 PM] 

Oops...apparently I have "The Voice" going.

"Don't take this the wrong way, but you have a very...sensual voice..." 

(said in a tone that she's definitely taking it the wrong way)

[2:21 PM]  Mr. Brown: 

lol

[2:22 PM] 

I read a medical slang site and the nurses call the doctor rumble "The Panty Melter"

I generally bring it out to tease Mrs. Silver

(adjusts using magic voiceover training to 'geeky IT-guy' voice)

[2:24 PM]  Mr. Brown: 

I have some voices

No Barry White, though

[2:31 PM] 

It's not just a deep thing...there's a mid chest kinda thrumming to it. 

[11:37 AM] 

Shaman story while I have time

Mrs. Silver goes off to some thing with a friend of ours...

Comes back and reports:

"So in the middle of part of it we hear a woman shriek or scream.  We all heard it.  The person in charge said it was a banshee attached to Rick.  So cool!" 

"What?  No, that is definitely NOT cool."

"Sure it was (starts telling again)-"

"No.  Banshees.  They're bad.  Always bad."

"Why?"

"Because they're a death omen.  At best some of them are vampires and they just kill you."

"Think Rick knows this?"

"Apparently not."

(So she IM's him)

"He says that's just negative thinking.  Hollywood stuff."

"Tell him its ancient folklore. So no, it isn't Hollywood stuff."

"(pause) He says 'Oh, it's just folklore.  Can't be burdened with the negativity of folklore.  They're just stories.  He's Irish and doesn't listen to any of that."

"He's Irish? (unrelated genuine surprise - woulda said Italian) And he doesn't acknowledge this stuff?  It's THOUSANDS of years old.  He's just dumping on a tradition from all over Celtic history because he's a modern New Ager?  You can't do that."

[11:43 AM]  Mr. Brown: 

Irish and doesn't know that is bad news?

[11:43 AM] 

Anyway, he pooh poohed it.

So Tuesday night, we're at the UU church dinner thing we do.  I'm stirring onion gravy for bangers and mash.

And Rick sidles up and kind of mumbles out "the correspondence with the banshee thing and the 7 days later thing isn't lost on me...just wanted you to know."

"Uh.  Sure...OK."

[11:45 AM]  Mr. Brown: 

Bangers and mash. The cousins of Hall and Oates

[11:45 AM]

LOL

(later that night...Mrs. Silver) "Rick come and apologize?"

"He came up and mumbled something...I was busy.  About the banshee?"

"Yeah.  He talked to me all about it and was upset because the banshee was his, and just like you said it was a death omen.  That recent church shooting had people he knew and was kinda related to in it that got killed and it was exactly 7 days after the banshee scream."

"Oh HO!  Well...crappy way to be right about something, but... Told him.  Hollywood stuff indeed!"

[11:47 AM]  Mr. Brown: 

Hearing the future of victims in screams sucks

I found out my family from my dad's side is actually a lot Irish

[11:49 AM]  Mr. McGreen: 

So hear scream --> 7 days later the victim of that scream dies?

[11:49 AM]  Mr. Brown: 

No, its a warning of impending doom in the family

I wonder how he got the banshee though

[11:51 AM] 

Well he's a practicing mystic...lot higher chance he'd notice than some others in the family

7 days is a magic number in general if you like that sort of thing, McGreen.  Most of the stories say "soon"

[11:50 AM]  Mr. McGreen: 

Wait wait wait

So was the impending doom gonna happen already, or does it happen BECAUSE the banshee visited?

[11:51 AM]  Mr. Brown: 

The banshee doesn't cause it. You just hear one before a relative dies.

[11:52 AM]  Mr. McGreen: 

Now I'm curious

[11:53 AM] 

I guess you'd have to interview all the families involved and ask if others had banshee incidents...or just the Celts? Or just the sensitives?

Since you asked, the vampire kind are just killers.  The 'keening woman' variety doesn't seem to be anything aggressive.

They tend to be attached to families too.

Someone in the family is going to die...banshee wail. 

But they don't talk about them as family curses...

Not "oh, she's angry and out for blood"... Just “the McGreen banshee was heard”

[11:55 AM]  Mr. Brown: 

Kind of a family spirit, mourning for the family member

[11:55 AM]  Mr. McGreen: 

Seeing your doppleganger - is that another one warning of impending doom?

[11:55 AM] 

Yes

There's a variety of those too

[11:59 AM]  Mr. McGreen: 

Can you exorcise a banshee?

[11:59 AM] 

These stories get convoluted.  There's only a couple consistent elements across about 10 varieties by geographical area -

They all mean death, soon, of someone you know or in the family if a family has a famous banshee.

Or...in the vampire cases...well...people see them and the next morning people are dead.

Those ones have fairy quirks

The one tale...heh...is that a few of these pretty lasses showed up at a party.  No one knew who they were but they joined the dancing. 

The one guy notices his partner had a tail showing under the hem of her skirt and knew he had to tread very carefully.

"Miss...your petticoat is showing."

Gave him a bit of a glare...looked.  Saw the tail hanging out.  Hid it.  Smiled at him. 

Next morning, everyone was bled dry but him.

The End

[12:04 PM]  Mr. Brown: 

Interesting

Show courtesy to monsters and they will show some to you

[12:04 PM]

Good advice 

[12:04 PM]  Mr. McGreen: 

Fairies are evil?

And people sized?

[12:04 PM] 

Lots of fairy folk are people sized. And of course some are small. Some are giants.

No, they aren't all evil

They say "seelie and unseelie"

And you said “Good Folk” either way if you knew what was good for you. Fairies tended to react badly to being called fairy, though these days...as I've mentioned to Mrs. Silver...they're probably happy to accept the tag from anyone who actually acknowledges they exist.

[12:06 PM]  Mr. McGreen: 

What happened to all the fairytale creatures?

Hunted down and killed like in Night Breed, I would presume

[12:07 PM] 

Based on my experience they never left.

It's people that changed.

[12:07 PM]  Mr. Brown: 

There's a brownie I saw here, or something kinda like it

Whatever it was had small black buckled shoes and tried to scurry behind me to avoid being noticed, but i saw it

[12:10 PM]  Mr. Blue: 

I can spot a pixie fairy based on my attraction to 'em

[12:11 PM]  Mr. Brown: 

lol

[12:11 PM] 

Me too, Mr. Blue...me too. ;)

[12:11 PM]  Mr. Brown: 

That succubus I dealt with sucked

Pun intended

But i knew what she was doing and kicked her out

[12:12 PM] 

"Hello cutie, I'm a mythological babe called a Suck-yo-Dick"

heh

[12:12 PM]  Mr. Brown: 

hahaha

I think they are always around us we just don't have the same vision we used too

thats why I see stuff but others don't

Surprising how many times I could say aloud “what the Hell is that thing?”

Yeah so Mr. McGreen - on that hearing dead people thing

My wife's aunt was dying of cancer

The day she died i fell asleep a little bit here in my chair. Plain as day i heard her tell me to wake up. Then i got a text saying she passed away

Similar thing happened when my grandfather died

I was sleeping. He was in the hospital after a car accident

Wolves started chasing me in my dream and he showed up and stopped them

I woke up crying the phone rang and they'd called to say he just passed

[12:22 PM] 

"I was going to trade your soul to the wolves so I could live, but then changed my mind...didn't want to go through another Goddamned tax season."

(sorry...insensitive jerk moment)

[12:22 PM]  Mr. Brown: 

LOL

Apparently I have a connection to the other side, but i try to ignore it

Or I'm just very shamany without the training

[12:27 PM] 

Lotta people out there like that.  In denial of their normal abilities and a larger world. 

People changed.

There were too many religions that came along that decided to say EVERY old spirit, godling, tradition was evil.

So people still experienced and talked about stuff all the time, but it was all “bad”.

Later it was dubbed - “supernatural”. I started arguing against that when I was still a little kid - “If something is happening, it's natural”

“Unexplained”...fine...

Branding something supernatural is slander.

And then proper sciences started to develop and people began to assume the workings of this little speck of mundane life was all there is and it is a fully observable and describable machine if you can look big and small enough.

Now it's not even supernatural... pseudo-science, fraud, abnormal psychology.

(Science) “There can't be a Bigfoot because it makes no sense.”

(Mystic) “Yet real people have been seeing and interacting with hairy giants all over the world for thousands of years. Tell me the correct explanation for the double-slit experiment.”

(Scientist) “I can't, but there are several interesting theories and observations.”

(Mystic) “That ultimately make no sense which is why after 200 years none of you have figured it out and can't even decide which version to agree on. Show some respect and treat Bigfoot as a theory, please.”

No room for Good Folk and spirits...

Even though we encounter them just as much as we always have with the addition of people writing their experiences down, studying them, capturing provoking and very hard to pooh-pooh evidence it's happening, and scientists really head-scratching over how some disciplines really can't account for or explain some of their findings.  

This from a cadre of researchers who now find themselves having to come up with theories like “Time doesn't really seem to exist” or “The math seems to suggest we're just a hologram” because they elegantly answer nagging questions better than the nuts and bolts physics that they believed would explain it all.

...But not in the damaged modern cultural psychology of the average Westerner...

“They're delusions.”

“Just stories.”

“Don't talk about it.”

“I've never seen it, so it can't be real.”

“New Age nuts.”

“Schizophrenia”

“All con artists.”

“Who'd want to associate with people like that?”

“Don't talk about it, people will think you're crazy.”

[12:31 PM]  Mr. McGreen: 

I would just think with cell phones and cameras and monitoring/imaging equipment we'd have some sort of substantial evidence

But I guess nobody believes stuff anymore anyway, so people would write everything off as being photo-shopped

[12:34 PM]  Mr. Brown: 

There have been things caught, but since we don't fully understand them I would think our tech can't really catch it properly either. What is a ghost even made of?

[12:51 PM] 

One nearly universal aspect in the folklore-y bits about fairy/spirit folk is their ease in being invisible – whenever desired – to those without "the sight" (and sometimes the cruel penalties for those with the sight getting caught looking). There's lot of text that sounds like parallel-dimensional living, and 'magic' devices and abilities. Some of the more modern encounters sound outright alien

So how do you photograph that stuff?  How hard is it for a non-mundane or technologically advanced lifeform to deny observation?

So...say you really do catch something and decide to present it to modern skeptics?

"Film of Living Elf!"

(1000 comments) "Fake!"

[12:55 PM]  Mr. McGreen: 

I think even if i saw something like that I'd think i was losing it

[12:55 PM] 

yup

You've been well trained

[1:00 PM]  Mr. Blue: 

The technology is so good now that anyone can fake anything

So to a lot of people, everything is now fake

[1:00 PM] 

yup

It's a sad state of the world.