The Mystery of the Monarchs in a Novel

Last Sunday, in The New York Times Sunday Book Review, one of my favorite bloggers, Dominique Browning, wrote a rave review of a “majestic and brave” new novel by Barbara Kingsolver called “Flight Behavior”.

According to the review, it is the story of a woman from a small town whose life “is upended, not by a tryst but by an insect. She is stopped in her tracks by a valley blazing ‘with its own internal flame.’”  Browning writes,  “As she gazes in frightened awe, words of Scripture come to mind. Whatever else it is — and, naturally, she isn’t wearing her glasses — it’s a miracle of ‘unearthly beauty.’ In fact, it looks to Dellarobia ‘like the inside of joy’.

What this woman has stumbled upon is “the miraculous arrival of a colony of migrating monarch butterflies, its flight plan, evolved over centuries, thrown off by the chaotic weather patterns of a warming Earth. Now nothing is on firm ground...Dellarobia has learned to be wary of the subject of climate change; she doesn’t “believe” in it… Before too long, though, she’s forced to sort out matters of faith — and science.”

Reading this took me back to my own life-altering encounter with millions of migrating Monarch butterflies—blanketing a mountaintop in Michoacan, Mexico on their annual journey in the winter of 2011.  As I described in my blog post of Feb.20,  2011, it was the kind of experience that makes a person believe in miracles, one that you can never forget ,(but in the novel “Flight Behavior”, the arrival of the Monarchs in the wrong place, because of climate warming, tears the town apart as the people develop warring beliefs about why they came and what to do about it.  (Naturally I've ordered the book and can't wait to read it.)

For those who didn’t see it the first time around, I’m re-posting the story of my encounter with the butterflies below.  Click on the video to get a glimpse of the experience of being surrounded by the butterflies.

The Mystery of the Monarch Butterflies of Michoacan, Mexico

They are one of the great mysteries—and beauties—of nature. No one knew where the migrating Monarch butterflies spent the winter until 1975, when the mountaintop in Michoacan, Mexico was discovered by an American named Ken Brugger and his wife Catalina Aguada. The Bruggers had answered an ad in a Mexican newspaper  asking for volunteers, placed by Dr. Frederick Urquhart who had been trying to find the Monarchs’ wintering place since1937.

    The discovery of the Monarchs’ winter hiding place, according to another scientist, was “Like discovering the eighth wonder of the world.”
     For the native Purépecha Indians, the place of the Monarchs had never been a secret.  At the beginning of November every year, the church bells rang, signaling the arrival of millions of butterflies (which had flown all the way from the United State and Canada.)  The Purépechas believed that the mariposas were the souls of dead children, and the annual arrival frightened them, so they did not speak of it to outsiders.
     One of Mexico’s most celebrated poets, Homer Aridjis, who was born in a small village near the hibernation site, had known about the butterflies all his life, since he first discovered them while exploring near his home.  Here is what Christine Potters, an American fellow blogger, whom I met during my recent trip to Morelia, wrote about Aridjis in her excellent blog “Mexico Cooks”
        "In the town of Contepec, Michoacán, a small boy, Homero Aridjis, born in 1940 as the youngest of five Greek/Mexican brothers--used to climb Cerro Altamirano near his home to look at the monarch butterflies that flooded the forests for almost four months in the winter before they left again, heading north. No one living in his area knew where the butterflies came from or where they went. "When I began to write poems," Aridjis said, "I used to climb the hill that dominated the memory of my childhood. Its slopes, gullies, and streams were full of animal voices--owls, hummingbirds, mocking birds, coyotes, deer, armadillo. The natural world stimulated my poetry." But of all of these animals, he says the monarch butterflies were his "first love." Aridjis won Mexico's very prestigious Xavier Villarrutia Award at age 24 and years later, monarchs were still making their appearance in his writing. His 1971 book, El poeta niño, includes a beautiful poem that goes like this: "You travel/by day/ like a winged tiger/ burning yourself/ in your flight/ Tell me/ what supernatural/ life is/painted on your wings...."**"

      Early on, after the discovery of the hibernation site, Aridjis became an activist trying to protect the butterflies’ hibernation place and to prevent the deforestation of the fir trees on which they depend for their survival in the winter.

     When I entered the butterfly sanctuary at El Rosaria, in the Mexican state of Michoachan, on Valentine’s day, last week, as part of the first tour to the area sponsored by Susana Trilling, a chef who is based in Oaxaca, (www.Seasonsofmyheart.com)  the people of El Rosario were still digging out from a tragic storm, exactly a year earlier, which  caused mud slides and floods that buried homes and people and washed away cars, homes and animals, leaving 30,000 homeless and at least 45 people dead. We could see the construction to rebuild roads and bridges as we approached Rosario.

 Nevertheless the path up the mountain to the butterfly sanctuary was clean and paved with cement and stairs, punctuated by frequent benches.  Once inside the gates, our group was assigned a local guide, Guadalupe, (men named Guadalupe  are called “Jose”, we learned) but he scarcely said a word during our climb—it seems his only function was to watch us to make sure we didn’t harm the vegetation and the butterflies and didn’t get lost.  We had brought our own guide from Morelia—Raymundo Solorio Vargas (email: rayturismo55@hotmail.com ) who gave us a moving account of the deadly storm a year before.

In our itineraries for the trip, Susana had quoted an account of a  storm in 2002 that killed a majority of the wintering Monarchs.  It turns out that the butterflies, who don’t move, but cling to the fir trees when the weather gets cold, can survive temperatures well below zero, if they have little liquid in their bodies, but if they are wet, as they were in 2002, they freeze.  On the day after the storm, acording to Lincoln Brower, an entomologist at Sweet Briar College in Virginia,  “We were wading in (dead) butterflies up to our knees.”  He and his colleagues estimated that 500 million monarchs had died from the storm—five times more than they thought had even existed in the colony.
The scientists feared that only a fraction of the usual number of butterflies would return the next year, but to their delight, they found that the devastated Monarch population had returned to normal.
In my visit last week to the butterfly sanctuary at El Rosario, I learned a lot, including how to tell a male butterfly from a female.  A male has the two dots that you see below on the back part of his wings.   The dark veins on a female are wider

.

The butterflies that flock to Mexico from the U.S. and Canada to spend the winter are the fourth generation, the “Methuselah Generation” of their breed.
An adult butterfly lives only about four to five weeks, The eggs are left on the milkweed plant, three or four days later the brightly striped caterpillars emerge, and during the next nine to 14 days they shed their skin five times.   On the sixth molting, the caterpillar transforms into a chrysalis, and after eight to 13 days, the adult butterfly emerges. (This is illustrated by a five minute film in Spanish for visitors at a theater inside the Rosario sanctuary.) 

Three days after emerging, the adult butterflies develop sex organs and, five days later begin to reproduce. This cycle occurs three times during spring and summer as the butterflies travel north into the US and Canada until, in the fall, the fourth or “Methuselah” generation is born.  This fourth generation will survive seven or eight months, will  perform the astounding feat of traveling from Canada and the United States to Mexico, and after mating, the females will return back north again to the United States. (The male Monarchs in Mexico after enjoying the 72-hour mating season in February, during which they will mate with numerous females, will then drop dead—their work is done.  Only the females fly back north to lay their eggs.) 

                                      photo of butterflies mating

On the day we walked up the mountain to the most butterfly-crowded sections of the forest, what our guide Raymundo called “The Nucleus”, it was a warm day and the beginning of the mating season, and the air around us was alive with butterflies, while millions more hung on the trees like orange autumn leaves.   We were very lucky, because in the early part of the winter—November and December-- the butterflie tend not to fly, but just to hang still on the trees, and on cold days they’ll do the same.

Our guide told us that only one day in ten will provide the optimum conditions that we saw on Valentine’s Day. As we started up the steps toward the apex of the walk it became clear this was a harder trek than I expected.  (We walked 2008 meters up and 2008 meters back for a total of 6 kilometers, our guide told us—And when we started at Rosario we were already 1850 meters above sea level.)

It looked easy at the start, but only about 100 feet up I was gasping for breath  I quickly realized that the altitude was a major factor in whether or not I was going to make it all the way.  As it turned out, half of our group of six—most in their thirties or early forties—had little trouble making the ascent but the other three of us—with me at 70 being the oldest—had to stop at nearly every bench to catch our breath, while marveling at the scenery around us. (For those not able to make the ascent, horses can be rented, but the last 300 feet up still has to be on foot.)
The butterflies were a constant commotion all around us.  As one book said, the miracle is that they never collide.  In spots where there was water, like a small stream over the road, they clustered. 

The view of the sky, of the laden fir trees, the beauty all around us was indescribable.  When I sat down to catch my breath, the silence was complete-- almost eerie.  But then, as I sat there and my heart stopped raced and my breath returned to normal, I could hearing, ever so faintly, the rustle of thousands—millions—of butterfly wings.
It was a transcendent experience, even for those who have no religion.  No wonder the Purépecha Indians thought the butterflies were the souls of their dead children.
We all took photos and then we realized, as one of the women in our group remarked—there is no way a still photo could give any idea of the indescribable experience we had.  So I tried for the first time to take some videos with my camera, and I’m attaching below a link to one of those videos.  It lasts 55 seconds and if you watch it to the end, you will see some of the members of our group.

This trip to Michoacan, Mexico was a gift from my husband for my 70^th birthday—and I can’t think of a better way to mark a milestone in life.  It was something I’ve always wanted to do before I die, and I wish you an equality miraculous and moving experience, to mark a landmark birthday.

Donald Trump and Diane Sawyer--Post Election Fun and Games

Much more fun than following the pre-election debates (yawn!) and the election night results is reading today's after- election commentary and Monday-morning quarterbacking on the internet.

Trending now as number one topic on Yahoo is not a search for the breakdown of electoral votes, but the burning question: Was Diane Sawyer drunk?  Evidently ABC and her colleagues are saying she was merely exhausted from staying up night after night memorizing election facts and figures. I say, never mind if she was celebrating Obama's win off camera; she still did a great job.  I think Diane Sawyer's wicked smart and gorgeous to boot.

Salon has listed the 20 top sore losers after the election results came in and Donald Trump has won first and second place in this race for two tweets , one of which he has deleted after cooling down a little.  This is what Salon said about Trump:

(Credit: Salon/Benjamin Wheelock)

As election night wore on and an Obama victory became more and more likely, conservatives began explaining away the loss for Mitt Romney and other Republicans. On Fox, Bill O’Reilly kicked it off on a sour note, predicting on Fox News: “Obama wins because it’s not a traditional America anymore. The white establishment is the minority. People want things.” Then it deteriorated.

The sorest losers, ranked in order:

1). Donald J. Trump, for his tweet:

He lost the popular vote by a lot and won the election. We should have a revolution in this country!

Trump has since deleted this tweet, maybe after he learned Obama would not lose the popular vote.

2).

Donald J. Trump

• ✔

@realDonaldTrump

Lets fight like hell and stop this great and disgusting injustice! The world is laughing at us.

I think the painting of Trump on Salon (above, by Benjamin Wheelock)  is probably adding to the mogul's anger and disappointment over Romney's loss, so I thought I'd repost a portrait of Trump which hangs in his estate Mar-a-Lago,  which is now a private club.  This is the way Trump prefers to see himself portrayed:

I first posted my photograph of this painting after a lunch at Mar-a-Lago in April 2011 when the Donald and his family passed through and greeted us visitors.  This is what I posted about it:

Lunch at Mar-a-Lago with the Donald

Someone passed this self-aggrandizing photo on to political blogger Andrew Sullivan, whose blog is Goliath to "A Rolling Crone's" David.  When Sullivan posted it, hilarity ensued, but no one knew where the photo came from in the first place until another political blogger, Michael Shaw, traced it back to my humble blog and my pocket digital camera.    Suddenly I was getting 3,000 hits an hour--a heady experience for  a novice blogger.  If you want to read more about the brouhaha, click on

"Somebody's Playing my Trump Card"

Meanwhile I'm going back to search the internet for more sour-grapes tweets from Trump and explanations of Diane Sawyer's slurring.  It takes my mind off the rain, sleet and snow in the nor'easter which is fast heading our way.  (Now where did I store that snow shovel?)

A Paranormal Investigator Tells her Ghost Encounters

During the last week before Halloween, while re-posting my three articles about true ghost stories I've learned about, I asked readers to tell me of any supernatural encounters they may have had.  I was delighted when three people responded, and thrilled that one of them was a “paranormal investigator”-- a young woman named Lori Hines who has written novels based on her experiences tracking down ghosts and spirits in Arizona, especially in a Gold Rush ghost town named Vulture City. 

I immediately dashed off some questions for Lori, which she kindly answered, but I still have so many more!

When Lori offered to write a “guest editor” post for A Rolling Crone about her experiences,  I quickly accepted. So here is the contribution of Lori Hines, Paranormal Investigator.  At the end you’ll learn more about her and how to contact her. The other ghost stories I received, along with one of my own, will show up in a future post. 

Is there life after death?

This is one of those questions that will most likely never get a definitive, truly scientific answer. Did that ball really move on its own? Is it a trick or due to the angle of the flooring? Is that deep voice on the recorder really a ghost? Or does someone want you to think it is? And what about that ethereal entity in the photo?

Paranormal investigators are professionals seeking to discover such proof. Yet today's technology makes it rather easy to fake evidence as well as find it.

Why do people want to believe in ghosts? Many of us, including myself, have experienced bumps in the night, disembodied voices, light anomalies, shadows, and physical contact with spirits of the past. We know it's real. Yet for others who haven't had encounters, such experiences are merely stories seen on television reality shows featuring ghost stories or horror movies.

What is the difference between a ghost and a spirit? Many use these two terms interchangeably. But there is a very distinct difference. A ghost is the soul of a person who has died but has not moved on "into the light." This may be because they are attached to a particular location or person, have unfinished business, or may be simply too scared to move on. Psychic mediums and shamans can sometimes help to cross such souls over.

Spirits, such as spirit guides, are capable of moving back and forth between the physical and spiritual worlds at will. Spirits can be angels or demons. There are characters in my novels who were inspired by some of my spirit guides: Joe Luna, the Native American shaman, as well as Brandon and Ian, who are two of the paranormal investigators.  [JPG says: I asked Lori if spirit guides were once living beings and she replied: "Yes, many of my guardian angels were once living -- I have Native American shamans, a member of the Third Reich who is atoning for many of his sins and an Egyptian Pharaoh."]

Colorful redrock formations in Sedona, Arizona

Assay office at old Vulture City, near Wickenburg, Arizona

As a paranormal investigator myself, I have been touched and inspired by the past. In Sedona, Arizona, renowned for its spectacular red rock formations and mystical vortexes, I had a hand place itself gently across my left shoulder. I have come across localized cold spots. And heard a 'Class A' electronic voice phenomena (EVP) of a little boy giggling as I sat on an old swing-set next to a dilapidated one-room schoolhouse in old Vulture City, near Wickenburg, Arizona. (EVPs generally fall into three main categories: class A, class B, and class C. Class A being the clearest. EVPs are not heard during the investigation, but are discovered during playback).

Vulture City is a major setting in my first two paranormal mystery novels, "The Ancient Ones" and "Caves of the Watchers", because of its rich history and history of activity. Once open to the public, it is now owned by a private company, Vulture Peak Gold, which leads two-hour private tours through this once thriving mining town, which sparked the development of Phoenix and Arizona. Vulture City, or Vulture Mine ghost town, grew up around the mine discovered by Henry Wickenburg in 1863. [JPG says: I learned from looking him up on Google that Henry Wickenburg  "died a pauper despite the fact that his mine produced millions in gold.  He ended his own life with a colt revolver."] This picturesque desert city reached a population of almost 5,000 before President Roosevelt closed it in 1942 (WWII), designating gold mining as nonessential to the war effort. The ban was lifted four years later, but unfortunately, no one ever returned.

Much of the activity stems from men, women and children who died or were killed there. This includes smells emanating from the dining hall, light anomalies, shadows, reports of investigators being thrown around inside the assay office, a man seen outside the bunkhouse and even a floating head and torso at the ball mill. Once a training spot for investigation teams, this western ghost town has a hanging tree, powerhouse, blacksmith shop, ball mill, headframe, dining hall and bunkhouse.

Hanging tree outside assay office where 18 men were hanged for stealing gold

Paranormal investigators are on a never-ending quest to communicate with the other side. It is the Holy Grail and the reason we spend hours on end helping homeowners, reviewing video footage and listening to audio. When I tell people what I do in my spare time and what I write about, I hear fascinating ghost stories from friends who have lived in haunted homes or been visited by deceased loved ones. Some of these stories make me laugh. Some make me curious. And others make me cry.

Many believe that ghosts should be banished to 'the other side'; that it is a bad thing for earth-bound entities to be roaming what was once their home. However, if these ghosts are around to comfort the living or can co-exist and enrich people's lives, then they should be allowed to remain.

Is there life after death? I personally believe there is, for I have experienced things I can't explain. And I know I will continue to because I am open to the possibilities.

Are you??

About Lori Hines

Lori’s publishing credits include the paranormal mystery novels “The Ancient Ones,” and “Caves of the Watchers,” published by Aberdeen Bay. A few of her short story credits include “The Yellow Rose,” published in the 2011 Sisters in Crime, Central Coast Mystery Writers Anthology, “Somewhere in Crime,” and “The Princess Guardian,” published in the 2011 Sisters in Crime, Desert Sleuths Anthology, “So West So Wild.” She is a member of Sisters in Crime, Desert Sleuths Chapter, the Arizona Archaeological Society, Aqua Fria Chapter, and the Arizona Authors Association. Her mysteries are inspired by experiences as a paranormal investigator. She is working on her third novel in The Ancient Ones series, titled Anasazi Whispers. Readers can visit her online at http://lhauthor.wordpress.com/.

True Ghost Stories III --Kids, Animals & Monsters

Newsflash:  While reprinting my three-part series on "True Ghost Stories" during Halloween week,  I've been asking people to send me their own paranormal experiences--write to joanpgage@yahoo.com.  So far, three  people have done so, and one of them is a young woman from Arizona who is a paranormal investigator.  On Thursday I will publish an article she has put together for this blog, chronicling her experiences with ghosts and spirits and also her explorations of a ghost town dating from the Gold Rush era.

And if YOU have a ghost story to share, please send it to my e-mail address above, and I promise to tell it on "A Rolling Crone."

What are ghosts exactly and how do you know if you’ve got one?

As I mentioned on Friday and Sunday—I have a collection of 101 letters from people describing ghosts they have encountered in their homes. These letters came to me 25 years ago when I was working for Country Living Magazine and we asked for reports on hauntings. But because the subject proved so controversial with readers of the magazine—especially Christian fundamentalists—the editors told me to write a brief and up-beat article and not go into any frightening detail.

But I’ve saved the letters all these years because I thought they were an invaluable source of information about: What is a ghost? And except for one letter, they all seemed to come from responsible and sane people, who included a police officer, a librarian, a minister, a psychiatrist and a host of other evidently reliable correspondents.

Last year-- on Halloween day-- my local paper (Worcester’s Telegram & Gazette) reported on a nearby haunted house, where the owners invited a team of “paranormal investigators” to study their home while the family was away. They set up cameras connected to DVD recorders and digital audio recordings to capture “electronic voice phenomena”. Aside from some mysterious voices and the unexplained turning off of the recorder, and film showing two paper lanterns that revolved in opposite directions, these ghost hunters found nothing much, but I was interested that they later said, there are two types of hauntings — “intelligent hauntings” in which purposeful actions are observed—like rearranging the china cabinet—and “residual hauntings,” which pick up and relay random events, such as a radio broadcast from the 1930’s.

I had already worked out for myself, from reading my 101 letters, that “hauntings”, “ghosts” or “paranormal activity” (as in the blockbuster film) can represent many different kinds of phenomena.

Instant Replay Traumas--I believe that one kind of “haunting” is the re-enactment of some traumatic event that happened in that place long ago. It’s periodically re-projected—like an instant replay in a football game. One example of this was the reader from Fogelsville, PA who reported that every now and then in the middle of the night, they hear a horse trotting up, the locked kitchen door flies open and woman screams “Oh no!” (This reader has seen five separate ghosts in her house including a Civil War soldier “hanging” in their barn.”) I believe that these ghosts all qualify as “residual hauntings” and that they represent no danger to the living. The woman from Pennsylvania ended her letter: “Holidays are the most active seasons. Whether the ghosts like it or not, we’re staying.”

Lost earthbound spirits-- On TV programs like Medium, the ghosts encountered are usually people who don’t realize that they’re dead and they have to be coached to go on to the next world, or move toward the light or whatever is the next stage. Among the ghosts described in my letters, most of these lost souls were children and a few were elderly people who remained in the room where they had spent their last years of life. These old people, who don’t know they should move on, tend to get very angry at newcomers who have invaded their space. They get most irritated when renovations, restoration or re-decorating happens. One woman in Virginia used to encounter the voice and tricks of an elderly lady who once lived in the attic—where the reader would hang her laundry on rainy days. The “ghost” could often be heard rocking in her rocking chair . She opened doors and took a door off its hinges and leaned it against the wall , One day, in exasperation, she cried “Oh, just get out of here!” In many cases, according to the letters, angry lost spirits were helped to move on by a helpful priest, minister, exorcist or psychic.

More pitiful were the ten child ghosts who truly seemed lost and confused and often interacted with the living children of a household. (I learned that animals and small children are almost always more likely to see and interact with ghosts than adults. Often the small children don’t realize the spirits are ghosts and ask “Why won’t the little girl come back and play with me?” and “Why is that little boy playing with my trains?”) One reader from Wilbraham MA, called on ghost hunters Ed and Lorraine Warren who contacted a “9-year-old earthbound boy who apparently died in the farmhouse in 1898, named Alfie. He told them he was concerned over his dog Dodo, and when he died his father was away from home in the army. Every year on July 16—the day he died—there would be a flurry of ghostly activity.” Visitors have reported seeing the little boy looking out the window of a front bedroom and waving good-bye.

From the letters I’ve read, I believe these earthbound child ghosts are unlikely to cause any harm to the inhabitants of a house, although they sometimes smash china and play havoc with electrical appliances—they have also been known to cover sleeping children with blankets and to close windows in a sudden rainstorm. Lucy Ensworth of Louisburg, Kansas who died in 1863 at the age of 12, has done both the pranks and the helpful gestures, stealing things and putting them back, and causing a visiting granddaughter to say, “It’s hard to sleep with that lady walking around—she’s sort of a big girl.”

In two cases ghosts have seemed to known and react to a sickness in the family: A reader in Sandston, VA wrote they have a woman ghost “seen only twice, both times in the fall when someone in the family had been hospitalized.” A man in New Berlin, Wisconsin wrote “As a pastor I’m not supposed to believe in ghosts, but I do.” He described the experiences of friends who live in a country barn house with a poltergeist. Ferns would spin and chairs would rearrange and a cousin who scoffed at reports of a ghost had a fork fly off the table and prick his cheek. “When Jennie’s mother fell down the stairs, her arm was held so that she didn’t plunge headlong, but slid down. On her arm were bruise marks of four fingers and a thumb.” They had a three-year-old daughter who had an allergic reaction to the anesthesia during an emergency appendix operation. The night Jenny died, her bedroom pictures on the wall—mattress, etc—were hurled all over her room. After that, there were no more messages from the ghost.

Animal ghosts—I believe that spirits often return to the place where they lived before moving on—this makes more sense than ghosts in a graveyard hanging around their remains. Many readers described animal ghosts, especially cats, walking on the bed—sometimes their own deceased pets or an unknown pet. I know when my own dog died at the age of 11 years (I was away at college), my mother, who had never liked the dog that well anyway, kept seeing it out of the corner of her eye in the kitchen. A reader in Willoughy, Ohio, described her terrier named Bonnie who would run up the stairs, her nails clicking. One night, several weeks after Bonnie was put to sleep, she was awakened by the familiar sound. “Bonnie just dropped in to let me know that, wherever she was, she hadn’t forgotten about me and our many cozy nights together.”

Evil and dangerous ghosts—Most of the writers said that they view their ghost as a kindly, rather than malevolent presence. Eleven of the 101 correspondents specifically said they consider the spirit a friend. But eight people said they felt their ghost was an evil presence, and a few described the kind of dangerous evil spirit of the type made famous in The Amityville Horror (a true story) —the kind of ghost that would make you immediately put the house on the market at any price.

In each case the spirit was specifically attacking a child in the family. A couple in Surprise, New York described a ghost named Sarah who started out being helpful—caught the woman when she fell down stairs, covered the babies with blankets, put old hand-stitched baby clothes in an empty trunk. But “She hates our oldest son Eric. She threw his bed around the room one night with my husband and myself on it. We have now moved him to a bedroom downstairs. One night she choked him as he was walking in the hallway. He had red handprints around his neck…whenever she comes, our room gets ice cold and a terrible wind comes up. There is a tin-lined closet in the hall where she lives. One night we locked her in with a chair propped up against the door and taped the entire door shut with masking tape. About three a.m. a crash woke us up. The chair was flung downstairs, and the tape wadded up in a ball.”

Instead of moving out the next day, “We were at our wits end and so finally we put a bottle of holy water in our bedroom. She has been back twice since then in the last two years, but both times comes and goes very quickly. We love the house and have now finished restoring it.”

Two more writers described some sort of “monster ghost” that would terrify and torment a child in the family, sometimes trying to bite him—and both used crucifixes and holy water to protect the child and keep the ghost out of the room (in one case it was still looking in through the window.)

I’m very tempted—now that these letters are 25 years old—to write back to the addresses of a few of the most interesting haunted houses to see if the ghosts still are active there. But that might be asking for trouble.

To sum it up—I think most of the paranormal activity described in the letters was NOT dangerous to the homeowners, nor was it directed at them. And in most cases I don’t think there was an actual ghost interacting with the living, but in some cases (of “intelligent response”) there was, sometimes from children or old people still haunting the place they lived. And these spirits (which are sometimes poltergeists) are particularly agitated by re-decorating, construction, moving furniture or illness in the family.

I was amazed at how many readers mentioned: odors and aromas (pipe tobacco, a horrible stench, perfume) and a pocket of freezing air when the ghost was near. And electrical appliances acting up! Clearly, whatever ghosts are, they embody some sort of electrical energy. Fourteen readers reported spirits that played havoc with electric lights and appliances, monkeying with water faucets and setting off doorbells, phones, stoves, radios, TVs—even after they were disconnected.

Here’s a reader from Brevard, North Carolina: “Constantly bizarre happenings: we would find all the lights ablaze, an empty dishwasher swishing away, doors opened or closed. The old turkey platter hanging on the wall was smashed in the center of the room, although the nail and wire hanger were intact. Shower water goes on and off, a vaporous form comes through the bathroom door. Smoke detectors go off constantly. As I write this the lights in the office have gone off and on twice.”

(And that was before computers—wonder if ghosts can type?)

So that’s my last word on what I learned in the Country Living letters--, although I’d love to hear anyone else’s theories on “What is a ghost?” I live in a house that dates back to (at least the oldest section) 1722. Daniel Rand, the first white child baptized in Shrewsbury, MA (in 1722) lived to be 80 years old and is buried nearby. We have his tombstone on our porch.

I’m happy to say that I personally have not encountered any paranormal happenings in this house—although others have—and I’d like to keep it that way. Hopefully the spirits of all the families who have lived here for the past three centuries (and I know all their names and stories) can continue to coexist peacefully, without any paranormal activity or things that go bump in the night.