Spooky....

Bring forth the raisins and the nuts-

Tonight All-Hallows' Spectre struts

Along the moonlit way.

~ John Kendrick Bangs

***

Okay, I went to the cemetary to visit my parents. I was hoping to spook myself on Dia De Los Muertos (Day of the Dead).

According to various Pagan traditions, the veil between the land of the dead and the land of the living is supposed to be thin. From sundown at Samhain until sundown on All Saints Day (Nov. 1), it is easy for the dead to have contact with the living. That's why we have the tradition of dressing our children in scary costumes - it is supposed to scare away the ghosts.

My last couple of visits to cemetaries have been strange, to say the least. In July, I visited my parents and hallucinated. In September, I accompanied a friend as she visited her father's grave. I actually hallucinated in front of her. I heard her father's voice. He told me to have my friend call her mother.

Once I uttered the weird thought to my friend, she received a call from her young niece telling her that her mother was picked up by an ambulance and on her way to the hospital.

It gets weirder. The girl did not know what hospital my friend's mother was in. My friend called other relatives, no one knew anything. I had a hunch to drive to a Catholic hospital a few blocks away. My friend ran into the emergency area and discovered her mother. My dear friend laughed about the coincidence.

I wasn't laughing. It was spooky...

Due to those experiences, I decided that I absolutely must visit a cemetary today, that way I could try to prove the weird stuff to myself. I loaded up my camera and flowers. I hopped into the car and drove to the cemetary.

Nothing happened.

Nothing.

No noise. No birds. No hallucinations.

Nothing.

It was dead quiet.

Well, there was one thing out of the ordinary. My parents' plot was sunken in today: you could see a rectangle extended out in front of the gravestone for several feet*.

It wasn't sunken in a few months ago.

That's curious, maybe they left for the day.

Hmmmm.......Where would they go?

Would they visit the grandkids?

Crap, I didn't clean the house.

My mother in my filthy house?

Now, that's the definition of horror!
Can ghosts hurl brooms and dust rags?
Just kidding....
She wouldn't do that. Mom would just short out the electricity so no one would see the mess.
Good ol' Mom. I sure miss her.
But on this Day of he Dead, nothing was freaky or out of order.
nada....zip....zilch.
sigh...

***

* Okay, I'll admit it...the ground was wet and the dirt was a little compacted. Still, the belief that the dead can roam the Earth or watch the living is a scary one: there are things that I don't want my Mom to see me doing.