“‘cause it just hasn’t gotten weird enough for me yet”, Hunter Thompson.
The veil must certainly be thin, we’re in between moon phases that are conducive to spiritual encounters, the geomagnetic field is quiet, yet Corda woke up to voices moving at breakneck speed at 5:19 a.m. yesterday. Like Alvin and the chipmunks played at 78 r.p.m. might be a good way to describe the sound. I heard them the night I said goodbye to the Harsens Island Haunted House. We had sold the place and I went to ask the spirits there if there was anything they wanted to say to me, since I wouldn’t be coming back. It was daytime. I had been visiting late at night to take pictures the past few months. I’d leave my job at the club, drive to Sans Souci, enter the house in the dark, go up the stairs, open the attic door and sit down on the bed with my camera and wait to get creeped out. I began praying before I pulled into the driveway. Prayer had been the only weapon I had that worked against the house. When I felt totally creeped out, I’d take a few pix. Now it was broad daylight, I felt the house’ gaze upon me blocks before getting there. Up to my usual spot outside the attic, I sat down and asked, “do you have anything that you want to say to me, I’ve sold the house and won’t be back again.” My ears picked up a faint buzz that sounded like a mosquito near my ear. The buzzing grew louder, like a fly, a bee, a bumble bee, then it was inside my head. I began to pray out loud in earnest. The voices were unrelenting though, louder and louder the buzzing in my head got until I could feel the pressure building inside my head. I began to wonder if there was any chance of doing damage to myself and decided to leave before finding out. I started to bolt for the door but thought better of it and walked calmly to the door, the crescendo still building in my ears. Once in the van I got scared, the pressure and noise was continuing to build, I started my vehicle and put the van in reverse. I couldn’t drive in this condition so I looked around the van to see what had accompanied me from the attic, there was nothing I could see. I eased the van back into park but stopped short of shutting the engine off. After about 5 minutes the ringing began to subside. I left the Harsens Island Haunted House for the last time. That was my experience, Corda was woken up twice with a buzzing in her ears. Later the same day, I was watching Most Haunted Live around midnight when the grandmother clock on the buffet began to chime, the clock read 4:30. I wondered why Corda had wound the clock and not set the time. The clock hasn’t been wound in 5 months. At 1:30 I went to bed. There were sounds all over the house, sounds like someone walking on the roof, creaking from every corner of the house and at 2:30, I was still awake. Corda got up and I said to her “is that you? There sure are a bunch of noises in the house tonight”, “of course it’s me” she replied and as she laid back down the clock began to gong, 10 times it gonged. When we got up this morning it was still working, the pendulum swinging to and fro, the clock, as yet still unwound. We talked about the events during the night and she set the clock, it read 3:30 when we got up, it’s keeping perfect time but the gong has yet to sound since winding the clock. The clock is very old, made in Germany and belonged to Cordas’ mother who got it from her sisters, Cordas' spinster aunts, who probably got it from Cordas’ grandmother.
UPDATE: The clock stopped at 12:23 p.m. 11/02/06 60 hours after it started running by itself. Corda's mother Pauline Jane Wolff died 12/23/96