St. Augustine

I thought I'd share some of my traveling photos over the next few posts.

The past four days I was in St. Augustine for an Early American Borderlands conference - the conference was great, admittedly the location didn't hurt one bit.
One of the highlights was visiting El Casillo de San Marcos, which has stood in St. Augustine since 1565, making it the oldest masonry defense in the U.S. I am a big fan of old things. Particularly forts with bastions and lookout towers from which to spy English and Dutch corsairs!

I also like cannons.
And interpreters in costume.
I also had a lovely time with my dear friend, Christian - who can vouch for my haunted phone story and Heather and her oh-so-cute son Mateo.
It was a great trip - today I'm across the continent in Seattle. I'm heading out to walk around now and will post pics tomorrow!

Ghost Vs. Android

I wasn't planning to post until I returned from the history conference I'm attending, but something utterly, unbelievably strange happened to me last night. I swear that everything I'm about to write is true. I'm still shaken up by it.

A little after 2 a.m. I woke up to the sound of my phone dialing and my dad's voicemail picking up.

Strange?

Yes. Especially since I was across the room in bed. My phone was sitting five feet away still on the chair where I'd plugged it in to charge overnight.

I got to the phone where my dad's voicemail message was still playing and then my phone rang. It was my husband.

"Andrea - what's going on?"

"What do you mean?" I was not only confused, but really tired.

"You've been calling me."

At this point my stomach pretty much dropped out of my body. I had no idea what was going on. I told him that my phone seemed to be calling numbers randomly and I was clueless as to why.

After we hung up, I looked at my call log. My phone had been calling random numbers for at least fifteen minutes.

Not knowing what to do and pretty much freaked out, I shut the phone down and went back to sleep.

This morning when I woke early for the conference, my hotel roomie and fellow history Christian said. "You sent me the most random text at 2 a.m."

She showed me the text. It was a smiley face followed by a bunch of random letters.

I did not send that text.

So there were random calls, and texts, and now this morning I've discovered my Facebook was also full of weird nonsense. I have a Facebook app on my Droid.

My theories : 1) my phone went insane. I don't know why, but it did.

2) A ghost, which had never used a smartphone, decided it would be fun to try mine out. I'm in St. Augustine, Florida. The oldest permanent colonial settlement in the U.S. and I'm staying in a very old hotel on the national register of historic places. If any place has a ghost, it would be here.

3) My Droid has become self aware and is attempting to communicate on its own.

So dear friends, if you got a call with no one on the other end of the line or a nonsense text from me in the middle of the night it was not me. I don't know what it was.

Theories?

Help??

Lonely Souls

I don't know that I could write a ghost story. I worry I wouldn't survive.

Writing is a visceral experience for me; I become completely wrapped up in the minds and lives of my characters, sharing their every hope and fear.

Ghosts might be too much for me.

But before we delve further into this haunted Hallo-week post, let's make an important distinction.

Ghosts = human spirits that for one reason or another haven't moved from the earthly plane to another. Ghosts remain in contact with the human world because they need some issue from their human existence resolved. They may cause harm in trying to do so but only as a result of their own desperation.

Poltergeists = malevolent spirits that are manifested by human acts of violence or sacrilege. Poltergeists are cruel and wreak havoc in human lives, like pulling little girls into televisions.

So one more time, just to be clear. Ghosts are people, poltergeists are people's fault.

Back to the writing dilemma (not so much a dilemma - I have plenty to write about - as a thorn in my paw; I don't like thinking there is something I wouldn't be able to write about). But I wonder if writing the story of a ghost wouldn't send me spiraling into a terrible depression. Human existence is so much about change, discovery, growth - all things that have been robbed from a spirit that is stuck on this plane. I can of little else that could cause more despair, to be deprived of the very essence of what makes human life so wonderful. To rely on flawed beings (uh, yeah, I'm talking about us) who you can barely communicate with to free you from that tortured liminal state.

I'm getting depressed just thinking about it.

Don't get me wrong; I enjoy reading ghost stories. Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones was one such story I found compelling. And I adore Poe's tales of ghostly vengeance. But frolicking in the worlds of other writers is a different ballgame than playing in the field you've built with your own hands.

Maybe I'll grow braver with time (side note: amazing writer and blogger Suzanne is my hero, for writing Haunting Anne, which looks to me like an astonishing, beautiful and devastating book about the world of ghosts. Suzanne you are courageous and so talented!)

Is the problem that I believe in ghosts?

Let's put a big check in the box next to I don't know.

I've had the experiences that I think most of us have. The prickling along one's neck. Glancing over your shoulder, knowing that someone is there, following, but then there isn't anyone. The flickering of movement in your peripheral vision.

All I these things make me wonder, but I don't know. The closest truth I've stumbled upon rests in the words of Emily Dickinson:

One need not be a chamber to be haunted,
One need not be a house;
The brain has corridors surpassing Material place.
Far safer, of a midnight meeting External ghost,
Than an interior confronting That whiter host.
Far safer through an Abbey gallop, The stones achase,
Than, moonless, one's own self encounter
In lonesome place.
Ourself, behind ourself concealed,
Should startle most;
Assassin, hid in our apartment,
Be horror's least.
The prudent carries a revolver,
He bolts the door,
O'erlooking a superior spectre More near.