The Strange Visitor

A woman was sitting at her reel one night; And still she sat, and still she reeled, and still she wished for company.

In came a pair of broad broad soles, and sat down at the fireside;

And still she sat, and still she reeled, and still she wished for company.

In came a pair of small small legs, and sat down on the broad broad soles;

And still she sat, and still she reeled, and still she wished for company.

In came a pair of thick thick knees, and sat down on the small small legs;

And still she sat, and still she reeled, and still she wished for company.

In came a pair of thin thin thighs, and sat down on the thick thick knees;

And still she sat, and still she reeled, and still she wished for company.

In came a pair of huge huge hips, and sat down on the thin thin thighs;

And still she sat, and still she reeled, and still she wished for company.

In came a wee wee waist, and sat down on the huge huge hips;

And still she sat, and still she reeled, and still she wished for company.

In came a pair of broad broad shoulders, and sat down on the wee wee waist;

And still she sat, and still she reeled, and still she wished for company.

In came a pair of small small arms, and sat down on the broad broad shoulders;

And still she sat, and still she reeled, and still she wished for company.

In came a pair of huge huge hands, and sat down on the small small arms;

And still she sat, and still she reeled, and still she wished for company.

In came a small small neck, and sat down on the broad broad shoulders;

And still she sat, and still she reeled, and still she wished for company.

In came a huge huge head, and sat down on the small small neck.

“How did you get such broad broad feet?” quoth the woman.

“Much tramping, much tramping” (gruffly).

“How did you get such small small legs?”

“Aih-h-h!-late–and wee-e-e–moul” (whiningly).

“How did you get such thick thick knees?”

“Much praying, much praying” (piously).

“How did you get such thin thin thighs?”

“Aih-h-h!–late–and wee-e-e–moul” (whiningly).

“How did you get such big big hips?”

“Much sitting, much sitting” (gruffly).

“How did you get such a wee wee waist?”

“Aih-h-h!–late–and wee-e-e-moul” (whiningly).

“How did you get such broad broad shoulders?”

“With carrying broom, with carrying broom” (gruffly).

“How did you get such small small arms?”

“Aih-h-h!–late–and wee-e-e–moul” (whiningly.)

“How did you get such huge huge hands?”

“Threshing with an iron flail, threshing with an iron flail" (gruffly).

“How did you get such a small small neck?”

“Aih-h-h!–late–wee-e-e–moul” (pitifully).

“How did you get such a huge huge head?”

“Much knowledge, much knowledge” (keenly).

“What do you come for?”

“For you!” (At the top of the voice, with a wave of the arm and a stamp of the feet.)

My third grade teacher read us this story. It's one of those tell-it-to-the-kids-and-scare-them-with-the-last-line. The "reel" is spinning wheel; the strange figure is a skeleton or Death itself. The refrain of "Aih-h-!-late-and-wee-moul" seems to translate as "Ah! It's very late, and there's little (time) left!," though one site seems to claim it's the recipe for a magic potion.

It Was Fifty Years Ago Today

Five decades ago "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" first aired on TV. I wrote a post about it in 2013; if you search the blog you can see what I said about it. I still stand by the opening words: It is not A Halloween special, it is THE Halloween special."

Good-bye, Hubie

Thanks, http://diversionsofthegroovykind.blogspot.com/.

Die-Cut Diversions

Ghosts I've Never Known

"WE have all met the man who says that some odd things have happened to him, but that he does not really believe that they were supernatural. My own position is the opposite of this. I believe in the supernatural as a matter of intellect and reason, not as a matter of personal experience. I do not see ghosts; I only see their inherent probability."
~G.K. Chesterton: Tremendous Trifles.

It is a peculiar fact that just about every member of my family has had a ghostly experience or a tale of weird encounters, while I have never experienced anything that I haven't found totally explicable. The peculiar thing is that there's nothing in my beliefs or philosophy that denies the possibility of ghosts; I've just never seen one.

And really, I live in one of the most haunted areas in our little town. Just across the street is a haunted hotel that's been featured on TV, news articles, and websites around the world. The house I live in (through no virtue of my own) is over one hundred and thirty years old. My nieces and nephews think there are ghosts here.

Lord knows, I've got plenty of dead relatives who could come visiting. It didn't use to be that way. For a long time, nobody I was close to ever passed away. But, of course, that couldn't last forever. I even knew lots of evil assholes, now passed, who could come a-haunting.

I have plenty of hypotheses about my situation. One is that everyone is bullshitting me about their paranormal experiences. The "professional" hauntings at the hotel seem like pretty obvious money-making endeavors. My favorite theory is that God knows I'll drop down dead with fright if I see a spook, so He protects me from that.

Orthodox Christianity seems divided on the existence of ghosts. One school of thought says when you're dead, you're either in Heaven or Hell, no vacations. Another tradition says the dead pop in and out for special reasons. A lot of opinion hinges on how they interpret the whole Samuel and the Witch of Endor episode.

Of course, the materialist philosophy says we're all just meat-machines. We see a ghost, that's just something interfering with the machine, a glitch in the brain or a hoax or a misinterpretation of the facts.

What do I think? I think all my ghost-seeing relatives seem sincere. They're not fools, though I'm sure they could be fooled. I'm not even sure when they describe their "ghosts" if it's dead people, and not, say demons up to some kind of mischief. That's certainly been one popular interpretation of hauntings. In which case thinking it was really ghosts would be almost comforting.

And, if they are dead people, why hang around? I remember reading a ghost story by Charles Dickens (or was it Mark Twain?) where the narrator, after getting on to comfy terms with an apparition, asks the ghost why spirits, no longer hindered by fleshly concerns, and having the entire planet, if not the universe, to roam, limit themselves to dreary places like cemeteries and abandoned houses that can only be unwholesome reminders of their death? The ghost realizes the justice of this argument and leaves for greener pastures.

So, ghosts: real or nay? I can only say, with Samuel Johnson, "[F]ive thousand years have now elapsed ...and still it is undecided whether or not there has ever been an instance of the spirit of any person appearing after death. All argument is against it; but all belief is for it."

In Ghostly Japan--A Fragment

Fragment--by Lafcadio Hearn, from In Ghostly Japan, 1899

And it was at the hour of sunset that they came to the foot of the mountain. There was in that place no sign of life,—neither token of water, nor trace of plant, nor shadow of flying bird,— nothing but desolation rising to desolation. And the summit was lost in heaven.

Then the Bodhisattva said to his young companion:—"What you have asked to see will be shown to you. But the place of the Vision is far; and the way is rude. Follow after me, and do not fear: strength will be given you."

Twilight gloomed about them as they climbed. There was no beaten path, nor any mark of former human visitation; and the way was over an endless heaping of tumbled fragments that rolled or turned beneath the foot. Sometimes a mass dislodged would clatter down with hollow echoings;—sometimes the substance trodden would burst like an empty shell….Stars pointed and thrilled; and the darkness deepened.

"Do not fear, my son," said the Bodhisattva, guiding: "danger there is none, though the way be grim."

Under the stars they climbed,—fast, fast,—mounting by help of power superhuman. High zones of mist they passed; and they saw below them, ever widening as they climbed, a soundless flood of cloud, like the tide of a milky sea.

Hour after hour they climbed;—and forms invisible yielded to their tread with dull soft crashings;—and faint cold fires lighted and died at every breaking.

And once the pilgrim-youth laid hand on a something smooth that was not stone,—and lifted it,—and dimly saw the cheekless gibe of death.

"Linger not thus, my son!" urged the voice of the teacher;—"the summit that we must gain is very far away!"

On through the dark they climbed,—and felt continually beneath them the soft strange breakings,—and saw the icy fires worm and die,—till the rim of the night turned grey, and the stars began to fail, and the east began to bloom.

Yet still they climbed,—fast, fast,—mounting by help of power superhuman. About them now was frigidness of death,—and silence tremendous….A gold flame kindled in the east.

Then first to the pilgrim's gaze the steeps revealed their nakedness;—and a trembling seized him,—and a ghastly fear. For there was not any ground,—neither beneath him nor about him nor above him,—but a heaping only, monstrous and measureless, of skulls and fragments of skulls and dust of bone,—with a shimmer of shed teeth strown through the drift of it, like the shimmer of scrags of shell in the wrack of a tide.

"Do not fear, my son!" cried the voice of the Bodhisattva;—"only the strong of heart can win to the place of the Vision!"

Behind them the world had vanished. Nothing remained but the clouds beneath, and the sky above, and the heaping of skulls between,—up-slanting out of sight.

Then the sun climbed with the climbers; and there was no warmth in the light of him, but coldness sharp as a sword. And the horror of stupendous height, and the nightmare of stupendous depth, and the terror of silence, ever grew and grew, and weighed upon the pilgrim, and held his feet,—so that suddenly all power departed from him, and he moaned like a sleeper in dreams.

"Hasten, hasten, my son!" cried the Bodhisattva: "the day is brief, and the summit is very far away."

But the pilgrim shrieked,—"I fear! I fear unspeakably!—and the power has departed from me!"

"The power will return, my son," made answer the Bodhisattva…. "Look now below you and above you and about you, and tell me what you see."

"I cannot," cried the pilgrim, trembling and clinging; "I dare not look beneath! Before me and about me there is nothing but skulls of men."

"And yet, my son," said the Bodhisattva, laughing softly,—"and yet you do not know of what this mountain is made."

The other, shuddering, repeated:—"I fear!—unutterably I fear!…there is nothing but skulls of men!"

"A mountain of skulls it is," responded the Bodhisattva. "But know, my son, that all of them ARE YOUR OWN! Each has at some time been the nest of your dreams and delusions and desires. Not even one of them is the skull of any other being. All,—all without exception,—have been yours, in the billions of your former lives."

Quotes on Friendship

Witches Get Together

Hallowe'en Greetings

Allegory of October