ghost hunter rules.

Totally stole this from Wikipedia.
...would totally scream and run into the nearest
person's arms if I saw this.

Can I just apologize for that last entry? The one about eros/longing? I've re-read the thing like 200 times and I'm not sure what the hell I was trying to actually say. I'm pretty sure I had a point when I started typing, but by the end I was just all over the place. Like a possessed ping pong ball. If I had to re-title that piece, I'd call it: Longing - Needle in a Haystack. 

It's almost October! The days are getting shorter, the nights are getting colder. I'm okay with the cold nights; not okay with the short daylight hours. (Quick side story: one Christmas, my mom gave everyone checks for like $50 to buy whatever they wanted. When it was my turn to open my package, I did not get a $50 check. I got a Happy Light. Do you know about those? You sit in front of them all winter and they're supposed to trick your body into thinking there's longer sunlight which is supposed to boost  your mood and make you happier. The Happy Light did not make me happy, though, and I returned it to Costco where I exchanged it for $50 worth of wine, which DID make me happy. And got me through a real rough winter.)

I want to go on a ghost hunt. Some dear friends and I like to take ghost tours, but these are different than ghost hunts. First off, you have to take all kinds of people on the ghost tours - some serious, some not, some really old and more interested in the history of the place than its haints. And they take a lot of flash photography, which I bet annoys the crap out of haints, and so they stay away.

No. I want to go on a ghost HUNT. With serious professionals. And use serious professional equipment like EVP (Electronic Voice something that starts with a P) recorders, fancy pants infrared cameras and stuff. And I want there to be serious people who know their paranormal stuff like nobody's business. For example: Jason Hawes of Ghosthunters. (Fine. Fine! Really, it's that I just want to hang out with Jason Hawes of Ghosthunters.)

But I have demands for my ghost hunting experience, and here they are:

1. I cannot ever EVER be alone.
2. I need to have a flashlight and night vision goggles on me at all times so I can see in pitch black darkness. 
3. I need to know EXACTLY where the escape, I mean exit, doors are in case something weird touches me.
4. I cannot ever EVER be alone.
5. Jason Hawes needs to be my partner.
6. I get to joke around with the ghosts if I get nervous.
7. I cannot ever EVER be alone.
8. There needs to be a good amount of beer to get me through the night.
9. If something weird touches me and I can't quickly locate an exit door, Jason Hawes must hold me for as long as I need him to.
10. I get to use all the cool equipment.
11. I cannot ever EVER be alone.

And that's it. 

I would also like the ghost hunt to be in a cool Victorian or earlier era home, but I'll take ancient distillery in a pinch. Or a hotel.

Once, I was on a ghost tour with some friends in Chattanooga, Tennessee. There's a hotel there (a Marriott, I think) that supposedly has a room that is terribly haunted. It's haunted by the spirit of a woman who was raped and murdered and she despises (with good reason) men now. Don't go in there if you have a Y chromosome! She'll get you. They tried to renovate the room, apparently, but she kept coming in at night and ripping it all up. Now, they'll claim they don't have a room number 233 (or whatever the number is), but if you demand to rent it, they'll sigh and give in to you. But then you have to sign a release saying (a) you won't demand your money back if you leave before dawn and (b) you won't sue anybody. 

When the tour ended, my friends and I went back to the hotel to stand outside Room 233 (or whatever number it is) and freak ourselves the hell out. Then a man came around the corner and asked us if we needed help, and we screamed and ran away. Then the elevator got jammed (or, you know, we forgot to press the buttons to make it go) and we screamed and laughed our ridiculous heads off a lot when we realized it was because we forgot to press some buttons. 

I'm pretty sure Jason Hawes and serious ghost hunters would be okay hanging out all night with that kind of attitude, right? I mean, once my terror dies down, I laugh and laugh. Ghosts are fun!

stone cold research-y stuff.

DIG (on USA!) episode 5 starts in 30 minutes. (!!!) I don't know when I'll be able to provide my completely inane thoughts, perceptions, and reactions to Episode 5 because I have some intense family obligations to attend to over the next several days. But I will try! I will try. 

In the meantime, here's some geeky research I've done about the breastplate, the 12 stones, and the Urim and Thummim. I started out thinking the plate and the 12 stones were the most important focus, but then, as I started to research I hit total frickin' pay dirt regarding the Urim and Thummim, Internet. Do you know about them? I'll tell you about them...in a minute. I think they're going to become fairly important to the story that DIG is telling. Of course, I could always be wrong, and frequently am, but I just became incredibly intrigued by them after I stumbled on several things. Online. (Because if it's ONLINE, it must be true.) (Abraham Lincoln said that.)

First, let's talk about the breastplate and the stones.

So basically, it's something the High Priest would wear to beg God to forgive the children of Israel all their transgressions. Essentially, it was a big ol' iPad to the Lord. It even lit up, in just the right lighting. Super rad, considering it was before microwave ovens and Star Trek had even been thought up.

In Rabbinical literature, the breastplate is called "hoshen ha-mishpat." After the reign of David, the breastplate was lost to antiquity (supposedly; at any rate, it was never mentioned again by any scribes in any religious text). It was created by Moses when he consecrated Aaron and his sons as the first High Priests. Aaron wore it directly over his heart, because his heart was happy and not even a tiny bit jealous God picked his brother Moses to be the one to lead the Israelites out of Egypt (good for YOU, Aaron!). It was made from different colored threads, covered in gold leaf, and inside of it were 12 precious stones and each one had the name of a tribe of Israel engraved on it. 

The reason the names were engraved on the stones was to keep God mindful, whenever the High Priest stood before Him, how pious each tribe was. The stones were never to be chiseled, painted, marked on in any way. In fact, the legend goes that the names of the tribes were engraved on the stones via the use of the Shamir. It was the 7th miraculous creation by God. It was created during the evening twilight on the first Friday after the first 6 days of creation. The Shamir was a hard stone, the size of a grain of barley, yet nothing could withstand its hardness. Whenever it was placed on stones, the stones were split apart as easily as the pages of a book. Moses supposedly used it when God created the Ten Commandments, and he kept it in spongy balls of wool, in a lead box filled with bran to keep it safe.

In my research about the breastplate, I kept coming up on stuff about an ephod. There's some argument about what an ephod actually is--some say it's an image that would be brought out and worshiped, others think it's just a covering worn in conjunction with the breastplate, as part of the High Priest's adornments and clothing. If one is of the ephod-image camp, it's the thing that's used as an oracle. 

So the breastplate goes on, the ephod comes out (or on, whichever your scholarly self wants to think), and let the holy oracles begin! When King David, for instance, wanted to ask God a question, he'd go to the priest and say: "Bring us the ephod." In King David's time, and probably also previously, this was also called "the ark of God." 

There were 3 methods of divine communication for whoever wore the breastplate: 
1-a dream oracle
2-oracle by word of the Prophets
3-oracle via the Urim and the Thummim

So. Let's talk about the Urim and the Thummim. Because this is the part I went: "Holy shit!" (and also: "How the hell did these writers keep all this straight in their brains?!")

In English, the words translate, roughly, to "revelation and truth" or "light and perfection," and the Urim and the Thummim (in Judaism) are the two cherubs adorning either end of the top of the Ark of the Covenant. (More on the ark next time.) But they may have also been stones that were part of the breastplate, in addition to the 12 stones, because Aaron was commanded to add these to his breastplate, which he was to wear as a way to continuously carry the judgment of God for the 12 tribes of Israel over his heart.

Definitely in Christianity they became something else. The Urim and Thummim are two stones--a white and a black stone used as part of divination rituals. And you know who REALLY loved to use the Urim and the Thummim to divine God's will? 

Joseph "magic underpants" Smith. (You know who he is, right? Mormon guy. Utah desert. Sister-wives. A really kick ass Tabernacle Choir my mom used to play on the record player every Christmas season. Hordes genealogy info on everybody, God only knows why except it does kind of make me nervous--does it you? I wonder why they want to have all that information on every human in America, possibly the planet...) 

Basically, Joseph and polygamy pals liked to use the stones to play 20 Questions with God: "Will there be a storm a'comin', O Lord?" (YES) "Will we be driven to the depths of the Utah desert to escape the US government's reach and laws?" (YES) "Will we ever have our day of glory and be Kings of the ENTIRE Planet?" (NO) 

(thank you, Jesus).

Joseph Smith said the Urim and the Thummim were the divine dwelling place of God. He claimed they were the earth in a future state, and that the white stone was from the Book of Revelation. He also said before God led him to the Urim and the Thummim, he'd been using a holy seer stone to divine the will of God, to receive divine knowledge and revelations. The seer stone helped him find lost objects and interpret ancient or mystical languages he didn't know (like ancient Egyptian). The combination of the seer stone + the urim + the thummim gave him the "all-seeing eye."

You know where else you'll see the "all-seeing eye?" On Egyptian stuff. Buddhist things. Freemason artifacts. THE FREAKING U.S. CURRENCY IN YOUR WALLET. (that's why it's the "all-seeing eye"--it's everywhere. WATCHING YOU.) 

(I mean, don't get paranoid or anything. I just thought you ought to know what you're carrying around in your purse or your pocket. Just think of it as sort of like a holy TSA or something. We're all just travelers through time, man.)

Most scholars say the original Urim/Thummim, like the Ark of the Covenant, are lost to antiquity. But other people--non-scholarly people, typically--who really, really, really, I mean desperately, want to be Masters of the Universe say that Jesus personified the Urim and the Thummim, and that when Jesus comes back to Earth, there will be no need for a physical earth to live on anymore. Because Jesus would be the real indicator of the will of God. 

This feels ominous, doesn't it? At least if you're watching DIG. I read all that and went: Crap. Those crazy guys want to bring Jesus down to Earth, don't they? THAT'S what they're doing with the black and white stones. Playing 20 Questions with God, and trying to figure out how to bring Jesus to Earth. (But does Jesus even WANT to come here? I mean, I'm certain some of you believe he's already been...and if this is true, wouldn't that be like going back to a hotel that gave you REALLY bad service--mold on the bed sheets, hair clogged in the sink? Seriously--he was ASSASSINATED. But if you don't believe that was the real Messiah, maybe Jesus is perfectly fine and dandy wherever he is currently...I mean, I don't know if you've noticed or not, but this planet isn't exactly a 5 star resort to live on. Some places on it, maybe, but the vast majority of it...Seriously. I just sat in 1 mile of traffic for over 40 minutes tonight. Seer-see THAT crap away, and then I'll consider what you have to say.)

Where was I? Right--research. 

Some things I found particularly interesting that may (or may not) be brought up in the show (or already have been and I've missed them because I've been too busy reading tweets):

Exodus 28:30 - this is the passage in the Bible that details Moses consecrating the breastplate to Aaron. It details how the plate was used to reveal God's judgment. In Numbers 27:21, God reveals to Moses what he wants Israel to do. And that instance (in Numbers 27:21), what God really wanted Moses to do was put Joshua in charge. Now THAT'S interesting. (Isn't it?)

What else was very interesting to me was that I found some information about Tetzaveh, which is Hebrew for "you command." It's the second word in the parashah, which are (in my goyim rough translation) sections of passages in the scrolls of the Torah, and it's really important where you section them or you mess everything up. And then you and God aren't copacetic. The parashah is made up of 5, 430 Hebrew letters, 1, 412 Hebrew words, 101 verses, and takes up about 179 lines in a Torah scroll. Jews read it the 20th Sabbath after Simchat Torah (in February or March). It might be important to the story of DIG because the Tetzaveh encompasses Exodus 27:20-30:10. It also contains all of God's commands on how to make sacred garments for priests.

Also: there are 7 readings of it, and Jews who read the Book of Exodus in accordance to a cycle do so in a triennial cycle--in serial fashion, over a 3 year period. Many Reform, Reconstructionist, Conservative, and Renewal Jewish congregations began doing this in the 19th-20th centuries. There's actually a whole lot more to it than that sad bit of tossed out information, but I was raised Presbyterian and that means my brother and I always started games of Tic-Tac-Toe whenever the minister started reading from the Bible. (I can only click on so many links in Wikipedia before my brain goes: Hey! We are NOT a computer! Dial it down! Is what I'm saying to you.)

At any rate, there you go. Breastplate, stones, Urim & Thummim. I want to say that I feel like the Urim and the Thummim are kind of like Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum from ALICE IN WONDERLAND, but I'm worried a Mormon out there will come running out of the desert like a bat out of hell, find me, and make me his 253rd Sister-Wife. And all the other sister-wives will shun me, because I can't clean a toilet or cook a roast to save my life.

Up next time I put my researcher-geek on full display for the World Wide Web: the Ark of the Covenant. (I'm saving the Temple Mount for last, because that is some screwed up shit. Seriously, religionists--get. it. TOGETHER. Honestly. I mean, Jeez Louise.)

stalker ghosts.

Fear got to me. I took down my ten confessions blog because I looked at my statcounter after work today and saw someone from the school district had been reading it. Aagh! No no no. (Heads need roofs and all that.)

But then I got mad. Because damn it, this is how I feel and I'm entitled to my opinions. What's going on in education today is not okay. It's NOT okay. And nobody seems to be listening to the foot soldiers in the trenches. So I did a slight bit of editing and then re-published it. (Here, I am singing Let it Go! Let it Go! Don't hold back anymore-ore-ore!) (Thank god for Disney songs, you know?)

Hey! Do you want to hear two stories? I have two stories. One is about stalkers and one is about ghosts, which are kind of like stalkers only friendlier:

Story 1: Stalkers are Gigantic Jackasses.
I have a statcounter on this page. The reason I have a statcounter is because about 11 years ago, I started blogging. I started blogging for many reasons, but the most important thing is that I started blogging. Eleven years ago, blogs were still sort of newish. I'd tell people I had a blog, and they'd go: "A what?? Is that like a big log? A blog? Or are you saying bog? Or dog?"

Nowadays, practically everyone has a blog. Moms have blogs, dads have blogs, kids have blogs, grandmas have blogs, dogs have blogs, gerbils have blogs. But 11 years ago, blogs were kind of like the wild frontier (sort of) of the Internet, and I was headed west. The problem was that I was very naive about blogs, the internet, and human beings in general.

Want to know a secret about me? Mostly, I remain naive about human beings (it never ever fails to shock me when someone I thought was super duper nice and awesome turns out to be malicious--I'd love to think I can suss out someone's character right away, but the sad truth is that I like people; I believe in the inherent goodness of humanity, and if we could all just sit around on long summer evenings singing Kumbayah, I'd be pretty dang happy). I give people 10, 12, 500 chances--well beyond their expiration dates--when they eff up. Because I want to live in a world where people take care of each other, and don't judge, and we're gentle with one another's hearts. (Kumbayah my lord....kumbayah....)

Which is why, 11 years ago, it never occurred to me that someone nefarious might be reading my blog. I'd accrued a following of a whopping 10 people or so--they commented on my stuff, I commented on theirs, etc and so forth. So when I wrote, I wrote to those people: my fans, my tribe, my very astute and totally good taste audience. And I practically drew them a map: here's where I get my hair done, here's my favorite supermarket, here's where I work, here's where I LIVE... come visit me, anytime! Bring duct tape and a hacksaw.

And sure enough, somebody did. Somebody showed up on my (internet) doorstep with his duct tape and a hacksaw. He was going by a mysteriously stupid (I won't repeat here in case he finds me again) internet name...oh, I'll just call him Jackass; that's fairly close to what he called himself anyway. And Jackass's big problem was that (a) he was a Christian fundamentalist and (b) I'd dared to use the gender pronoun "she" when making reference to God in a slew of my blog postings. (Because it's a well documented and scientifically proven fact that God has a penis, of course.)

He also didn't like the fact I wrote about hanging out with my friends. Teachers should go home, put on their appropriate, ankle-length Victorian flannel nightgowns, and sit by the fire with their knitting, an open Bible, and a little cuppa tea. Not go out to restaurants and be silly with girlfriends.

So he threatened to get me fired. I asked him not to do that, but also let him know I didn't think he could. So Jackass stepped up the crazy, set up a very scary blog filled with violent Biblical passages (the Bible: a disturbing piece of literature), and, in a psychotically detailed manner, outlined exactly what he'd like to do to me (slitting a lamb's throat over my unclothed body and then doing dastardly, unwanted things to me in lamb's blood were just part of it all). Because that's EXACTLY what Jesus would do, SO rape-y, that Jesus. I'm sure Jesus' mom Mary would be so proud as well.

I know when to wave the white flag; I'm not dense. So I deleted that blog, blocked his email, and stayed the hell off the internet for a good year, year and a half.

I still get mad when I think about it though. Stalkers make me so mad because seriously. Who are you? Who are you to threaten someone? Who are you to try to have that kind of control over another human being? Stalkers are perfect, stupid examples of how humanity is entirely more than capable of screwing itself off a perfectly good planet.

At any rate, now I have a statcounter. It logs IP addresses, just in case Jackass or his inbred cousins come back; next time I'll go to the police, I suppose. I don't know what the police could do for me, but I don't think stalking is okay.

But the statcounter also freaked me out today, because I do still need a day job even if I completely disagree with how they're doing public education right now. Until I publish my book and Hollywood options it, it gets greenlit, and 200 Hollywood A-listers all appear in the film and Oscar nominations come flooding in, I have bills to pay. (You know that's the only way to strike it rich with a writing career, yes? Yes, you do now. Ask the Twilight series chick--she's still reeling from the heady unreality of it all.)

Story #2: Ghosts Hate Reality TV.

Story number two is for my friend Patresa. Patresa and I met via the blog that Jackass found. Patresa is an amazingly talented human being and a freakishly lovely rock star of a woman (AND she's got great hair!) who I admire and love tremendously. She's a storyteller, too, both in words and music, of the best variety. You can visit her HERE on the internet. She's brilliant. But more importantly, she believes in ghosts and likes ghost stories, and I happen to have one (she demanded, on facebook, that I tell her the story...and so here it is, all for YOU, P-licious!):

It was a dark and stormy night, and Savannah's ghosts were restless. We'd come, a group of eight of us, married and exhausted, to find respite from life's demands...

No! Wait, I'm sorry. That's so 19th century over the top. I'll just cut to the chase: some friends & I went to Savannah for a girls' getaway weekend, about 4 years ago and I got to interact with a ghost.

We stayed in a 100+ year old renovated church. It was lovely. The only problem was, about 3:30 AM, someone would walk down the stairs...and never walk back up.

So here's the thing about this travel girl group: in that group, there are skeptics and believers about ghosts, but we all agree: ghost hunts are fun! And we picked to visit Savannah one summer because, quite frankly, you can't get more haunted in America than Savannah, GA.

On one of our last nights there, I was exhausted. I went to bed early while everyone else stayed up scaring the crapping bejeesus out of each other. I'd gallantly volunteered to sleep on a pullout bed in the sunroom, right underneath a creepy painting with THIS oogy guy staring down at me all night:

That horn to the right probably belongs to Lucifer.

So you'll  understand if I was a bit nervous before falling asleep. In addition, I'm a notorious insomniac, so that didn't help.

But that night, for some odd reason, I was just utterly exhausted, and I didn't care. I flipped Man in the Yellow Hat the bird, and went right to sleep...until 1:45 AM, that is, when I was woken by a loud crash. I laid there, startled...and then it happened AGAIN (do do do!). Well, that was it, readers. I tried to go to back to sleep, but Yellow Hat Man was staring at me with his Beelzebub eyes, and when I heard that! That second crash! Oh. Em. Gee!!! That!  THAT was something! Oh my god, did everyone else NOT hear those sounds?? Why are they still asleep?!? For the love of holy, those are the kinds of sounds that send everybody on Ghost Hunters, Ghost Hunters International, Paranormal Activity, and the Exorcist all running right into the poltergeist portal area of the house!!!

So I got up, went into the living room (turning on every single light in the downstairs area), and sat on the sofa. With the TV on. My friend S had a coughing fit about 10 minutes later, came out of her bedroom for some water, and saw me sitting--very very bug-eyed, please know--on the sofa. Desperately trying to distract myself with an episode of Bridezillas (it's all that's on, at 2 in the morning...Bridezillas, infomercials, and Fox "News." Bridezilla reality brides seemed to be the most honest choice of all three of those).

"What are you doing??" she asked.
"Did you not hear that?" I whispered in a "I see ghosts!" kind of voice.
"Hear what?"
"That...that...CRASH. That was SOMETHING."

(S is one of our skeptics, so this highly amused her, and she went into a coughing fit again.) Recovered, she said, "Oh my god, no. No, Amy! That wasn't a ghost. We were making fun of M, R, and H before we all went to bed, and so C got her shampoo bottle and dropped it from the laundry shoot upstairs after she thought they were about to fall asleep."

The second crash was C making sure M,R, and H heard the first crash. So, no ghost. Just a trickster Skeptic. Frickin' skeptics.

So S got her water, trotted off back to bed, but I was done. Insomnia had set in, and there'd be little sleep for me that night. I watched Bridezillas, an incredibly stupid show about women competing to lose 10+ pounds before their wedding, and Say Yes to the Dress. And I did ponder in my heart on doing a research project about why women are so obsessed with marriage and getting a man, and my feminist heart wept quite a lot that night, wee into the early hours of a gray, Savannah morning. Susan B. Anthony would be outraged if she knew. Those women are exactly what the 19th amendment didn't want to see happen.

Then, about 3:00 AM....stuff....started to happen. That's all I can say to describe it: just, STUFF. Started to happen. Weird pops, lots of creaks, strange rustlings. Thank god for electric lights! Thank god for them. I turned up the television louder. Ghosts hate that you know. I'm pretty sure loud TVs make them run away.

About quarter to four AM, I suddenly heard an old lady's voice say (in the doorway of the kitchen) in a sort of irritated, what-the-hell-is-going-on-here?? kind of way:  "Hello? Hello?!?" And then that was it. All the noises stopped, and nobody ever materialized. And I finally fell asleep, funnily enough. (I had a nightmare about an evil bridesmaid in a yellow hat.)

I've told this story to several skeptics. The reaction I get is typically (a) maybe you thought you were awake, but you'd actually fallen asleep and dreamt the whole thing, (b) are you SURE it wasn't something off the tv?, or (c) have you been checked out for schizophrenia?

Listen you people: I was awake, it wasn't the tv (Bridezillas are simply not as polite as my old lady), and I haven't been checked out for schizophrenia, but I'm pretty sure my brother inherited that, not me. In addition, the voice wasn't in my head, it was outside of my head. As if someone (an invisible someone) was standing in the doorway speaking to me. Clear as a bell. Sure as death. As reliable as a politician turning up for a an all-expenses paid golf resort trip with a group of lobbyists in the Caribbean.

We named her Edna. And we spoke friendly words to her for the rest of our stay that weekend: "Hey, Edna! How'd you sleep?" "Want a glass of wine, Edna?" "Edna, did you just take my last tampon? Bad form, lady! Not cool!"

 The End.

(Oh wait! Also: this one time, when I was living in Yuma, Arizona, a friend won front row tickets to see The Who at The Staples Center in LA and I went with her. We spent the night at a really cheap motel right outside Anaheim, and in the middle of the night, I woke up to see a man in a trench coat hunched over something. He was sitting at the foot of my bed, and for some reason, I just KNEW he had a gun between  his legs and was about to pull the trigger. I certainly didn't want to see THAT, so I yanked the covers up over my head and begged God not to let the ghost in a trench coat get up to lean over me or anything or, Jesus Christ!, touch me with a dead finger! And I went back to sleep. I have no idea how I went back to sleep, but somehow I did. Actually, I think I may have just fainted from terror and woken up when sunlight hit my eyelids.)

Ghosts. They walk amongst us, sometimes down stairs like these:

But stalkers are scarier.