Fumiko really exists!

Welcome to the land of perpetual viruses...

Well it appears that someone or something has a vendetta against my computer, because as of the 23rd, it is basically a paper weight. :( This time it's bad enough that I'm going to have to send it out somewhere to get it fixed. Generally I can rehab most problems, but this one has got both myself and my computer stumped. So for now I am computer-less except for at work and maybe at home if I can borrow somebody's laptop.

However, I did have a fun Christmas regardless, and I hope everyone else did as well. :) I spent some time with my family and my boyfriend's family, actually slept in one of the days (!), played with our new gadgets, and generally had a good time. My favorite gift of the year was from my boyfriend and his family, a new iPod!

My prior iPod lasted about 8 years, which was pretty good for an iPod at the time. It recently decided to stop turning on/charging, and I was just shy of devastated. Poor little thing had been through most of high school and college with me, and I just got a car that would allow me to play an iPod through the sound system. I had almost suspected that the bf was getting me one, but I wasn't positive. He also boxed it all up in small individual boxes, to then wrap those in a larger box which threw me off even more. He also taped weights to the bottom of the box...always the trickster.

So Saben (the iPod) and I are now getting acquainted and trying to find an apporpriate case which is apparently near impossible since the iPod Touch came out... We will persevere though!

No real gifts for the dolls this year, though I did finally get some pictures of Fumiko in front of the Christmas tree...right before my computer fried. At least my camera works right? I'm going to try and commandeer my work computer this week to upload those if all goes well.

Dolly Talk: Do your dolls cheer you up?

This is a current thread from the DoA "Discussion" section wherein the OP asks if people find that their dolls cheer them up. The original question pertained to illness (temporary or continuous), but has been expanded to include bad days, depression, and so on.

Personally, I've always found toys* in general to be a big help at the end of a bad day, whatever the reason. this has only continued to be the case with bjds, though probably more so with them now than any other part of my "collection." As a child toys played an important role in my life as friends and confidants. Bjds have gone beyond that because of their interactive nature. One reply on the thread stated this in particular, talking about how many of us go from just owning bjds to sewing and painting for them.

Above all though I think bjds provide me with a great escape from this world when I'd prefer not to be here. Just like some of my favorite books and movies, they lure me into another world where I can put my real life problems aside for a time. Whether it is through writing, crafting, or painting them, I enjoy this departure they provide.

If nothing else they help me remember to pause on busy and/or stressful days. Sometimes I just keep going, believing that if I can just get to the proverbial end of the line, I'll feel better. The dolls though offer a small distraction, even if it's only for a few minutes of dressing or posing. In that time I can relax and collect my thoughts, making the subsequent time considerably less stressful.

Speak of the devil...

Last night I was working on cleaning and rearranging my room, specifically my closet. I'll admit this up front: I'm weird. Ever since I was little I've loved to find small, cozy spaces to spend my time in. I became particularly fond of closets as I grew up, and tended to use them more as a little reading nook rather than storage. So I decided to clean out my present closet and return it to its former purpose.

I was in the midst of cleaning off the shelves and re positioning everything when I encountered an interesting (read: creepy) phenomenon. Every time I'd place something on a shelf and turn around, it would suddenly fly off and hit the carpet with a thud. The items weren't just sliding off the edge, they were shooting off the shelf and across the closet. I ignored it at first thinking I'd simply placed a few things incorrectly, but then it started happening with both shelves, and no matter how many times I'd put things up there they'd come flying down.

Prior to this these shelves had been stacked with the very same objects, for the last several months or so. I'd never had an issue with anything falling off before, so I didn't suspect and uneven shelf or something of the like. I tried to ignore it for a while, but it was happening so frequently that I was doing more replacing than cleaning.

I grabbed Fumiko from off my bed and sat her in the closet with me and suddenly it stopped. Not another object fell inside the closet for the rest of the night. The other parts of my room weren't so lucky, but by then it was late enough that I just went to bed and ignored it completely.

The Haunted Vessel: Fumiko

I think I've discussed Fumiko's...penchant for the paranormal here before. Essentially I've found that above and beyond any other doll I've ever had, she is most responsive when it comes to ghosts.

I haven't caught much visible movement (i.e. seeing her in a different position than the last one I had her in), but I have heard movement very frequently. As I mentioned in the last post, I'm currently experiencing what I'd consider an active haunting. Owing to this I've returned to my old habit of having a doll in the room/car with me to even the playing ground so to speak. I've found that Fumi tends to be the most successful at this, and so she's been accompanying me all over the place recently.

In particular I've noticed a lot of movement sounds in the car. The spirit I'm dealing with seems to "enjoy" my car even more than the house, and routinely hops in for a ride. As someone who can be a nervous driver to begin with, this isn't the most ideal situation. However I've found that if I keep Fumi in the front seat the spirit will all but leave me alone. No odd noises and no crossing the "line" (to my front seat). Fumi on the other hand makes all sorts of noises.

Generally I'll place her on the seat in a particular position, one which should eliminate any further movement. So all her joints and usually straight and she is tucked up in a sweater or bag or similar vessel. Once that's done I get my own things together (adjust mirrors, pop in cd, adjust temperature etc.) all without moving the car. Almost each time I do this, I can instantly her the distinct sounds of joints being moved, a lot. These instances are always at night so I can't see anything occurring, but the sounds are so frequent and many that I recognize something is happening.

Of course most times I flip the light on I find nothing has changed, though once or twice I've found her head turned to look at the back seat. Something similar happens in the house as well, regardless of where or how I position her.

It's the most wonderful time of the year!

Christmas time always ends up being so busy for me, mostly I think because I make a lot of the gifts I give. Right now I'm working on finishing a Harry Potter scarf, two t-shirts, some embroidered ornaments, and a Harry Potter gift set. Granted it's a lot of fun to be doing all these crafts, but it's also time consuming. This year it seemed to come up so fast too!

Alas I've had almost no real doll time lately, or at least not time to do anything productive. I have taken Fumi all over the place, but haven't gotten any pictures of her. I finally got her bodysuit in today (beautiful, by beachgirlnikita) and can't wait to have her try on some of Uri's clothes she hasn't borrowed yet due to staining. I'm not very paranoid about staining at this point as she already has some marks and you can purchase new "skin" pieces as it were. Still I've been holding back on a few things just in case. Now that doesn't matter, and the bodysuit is pretty in and of itself.

Unfortunately this year I don't get very much time off for the holidays, but I would like to spend at least a little time taking my traditional "under the tree" photos. I always like having pictures of my dolls at Christmas, and this year Fumi even has a dress reminiscent of one from the Nutcracker. I'm I could even force Uri into something festive for the occasion. :)

I got soul but I'm not a soldier.

I've discussed haunted items in the past, and a few famous stories of them. I also have my own haunted item stories, this being the most interesting of them so far.

It concerns a Civil War soldier’s uniform button I purchased at a favorite antique store. It was an interesting piece and well within my budget, so I decided to buy it along with a few coins for my boyfriend. I purchased the items and didn’t really feel anything from the button at that point. I had it at home for a few days before bringing it to my boyfriend’s house to show him. At that point nothing odd had occurred in my house. The night I moved it over however was the “super moon.” It was supposed to be the fullest moon we would see in a long time due to the moon being physically closer to the earth when it became full. A fascinating astronomical event, but also very powerful. The energy that night was intense, but I went to bed not really thinking anything would happen.

I was awakened around 3am by sounds in the room. My boyfriend does have cats, and so I generally attributed any nightly noises to them playing or fighting. However after listening to these noises for a minute or so, I realized they weren’t feline in nature. I could hear footsteps and breathing as someone made their way through the room. They were rifling through drawers and moving things around as they searched for something.

At this point I was fairly certain we’d been broken into and were being robbed. My boyfriend kept some things of value in his room and they were located in the very drawers our intruder was looking in. There had also been a pretty serious robbery/murder in the recent past, and I was still on edge at times. I remained frozen in bed, afraid that any movement might alert them that I was awake. The person seemingly dug through everything on that side of the room, at times tossing things to the floor.

After a while this whole scenario struck me as odd. How had the person gotten in? I hadn’t heard the sliding door open or anything break. Unless they had somehow broken in upstairs and come down to the basement, but that didn’t make much sense. How did they know where to look? As the minutes went by I observed the situation more closely, and realized abruptly that this wasn’t a burglar, or at least not a living one.

The interesting thing about ghost encounters is that they are fundamentally not real. Yes they may interact with the real environment, but often when they appear they are missing things. It’s an incomplete picture in some way. A person walks by but you don’t hear any steps, or there’s someone smoking a cigar but no smell. Little things, little hints that this is removed from reality. Sometimes it’s even just a feeling of a disturbance or disconnect with reality. This particular experience seemed so real at first, but something just wasn’t right. Coupled with the question of how they would have gotten in, and the fact that no one had woken up (including my boyfriend), I came to the conclusion that it was a ghost.

As we reached the early morning hours things quieted down slowly, and I finally felt calm enough to sleep. Prior to this I hadn’t moved or closed my eyes, despite being buried under the blankets. At this point I decided to finally roll over and go back to sleep. The moment I moved however I heard someone start. From the opposite side of the room someone ran; I could hear each individual footstep. They jumped up on the bed and on top of me, and within a split second there was a knife in my throat. Not a knife to my throat, but in it. I felt the blade slide in and cut through skin and muscle. I tried to speak, to cry out, but only sickening, wet noises came out. The feeling was one I couldn’t even begin to explain, other than to say it was real. I wasn’t just seeing this or even sensing something emphatically, I was feeling my throat being slit.

I remained awake for the last hour or so until morning, and as soon as light returned to the room I got up. I tentatively asked my boyfriend if he’d heard anything the night before, to which he replied a sleepy no. I then asked him where his valuables were and went to check. The other side of the room wasn’t disturbed at all, everything was exactly where we’d left it the night before. I got dressed and left, only to return again that night and explain things to him. I actually ended up crying as I discussed what happened at the end, as the experience had been so frightening. We both speculated the instance had something to do with the button rather than our normal farmer ghost. It had felt completely different, and further examination showed that the button was placed where the individual had been rummaging the night before.

There was no further activity at my boyfriend’s house, and I took the button home and tucked it away. Time passed, and the button was tucked under my bed in storage with a few other items. By this point I’d completely forgotten about the button. Then at the beginning of July I began to sense something in my house. At first it was very nondescript, just the feeling of a presence. Form there though it branched out rapidly. I would feel confusion and loss, as if the person didn’t know why they were here. I could catch small glimpses of them that soon grew. The figure was in a dark shirt and pants, and at times appeared standing on my porch or in the living room.

My puppy Bear also seemed to sense something at the time. He began to get very nervous in certain areas of the house as certain times. For a while he wouldn’t enter our larger living room, or would only stay if I was there. At one point we were playing with a toy and he suddenly stopped mid-fetch and froze. He dropped the toy and began to bark at the room behind me, and wouldn’t come any further. I had seen a shadow in the room and assumed it was the ghost visiting again. This continued for a few days until one night when I was home alone with our two dogs. I spent the night watching movies, and then settled down the animals and myself around midnight. My puppy was tucked into his crate and soon fast asleep, and all the doors were locked and windows shut.

A few hours later around 3am by my cell phone’s clock, I was woken up by the sound of steps. Again this felt very real at first. It sounded like someone walking through the hallway and heading to my room. Initially I thought I was dreaming, and was about to ignore it when my dog woke up. My puppy had very specific barks that meant different things. There was a happy bark, one for food, another for play, and one very distinguishable bark for when someone was at the door or approaching. Bear woke up and began to use that last bark, and the footsteps stopped briefly. They started up again after a moment and headed into the room and for my bed. I began my standard protection chant and the steps stopped, and Bear ceased to bark. I continued this for some time, stopping only when light finally came into the room from dawn.

When I finally got up and went downstairs, I found the living room (the same that Bear barked in) had been trashed. The blanket that was normally on the couch was strewn across the room. Papers, my jewelry, and the television controls had been knocked off the table and were scattered around the room. The batteries were even removed from the controls and tossed separately. The rest of the house remained untouched, and there was nothing missing or broken to suggest and intruder.

The more general disturbances continued after that, with the entity making its presence known in the upstairs hallway or some of the downstairs rooms. Bear was particularly affected, refusing to even remain in the kitchen to eat if I wasn’t there. I continued to sense and see something on occasion, though it suddenly seemed more focused on bothering Bear. I eventually sat down and spoke aloud to the spirit, telling it that it couldn’t bother my dog any longer. I told the entity it could stay, and I’d even help it if there was something I could do, but that any more interactions with my dog would force me to ban the spirit from the house. After that the entity stopped bother Bear and it quieted down considerably.

Several months later I began to have the same experiences again. I would wake up in the middle of the night to hear footsteps outside my door, but they did not attempt to come inside again. I had done a very quick blessing and doorway protection spell so that it had to stay outside. Around that time I began to look my records over and realized that this manifestation was very similar to that which I experienced at my boyfriend’s house. When I looked up the initial date it began here, I found that it coincided with a major Civil War battle, which my soldier could possibly have been involved in.

Since then the activity has died down again, but it has left me wondering what to do with the button. There is now no way to reunite it with the remaining pieces if they are even still in existence. I’d considered burying it, but I’m not sure that’s even a good idea. The concept of a haunted item is not a new one in the paranormal world or even to any major culture. Cases of haunted items have popped up in just about every century and all around the world. From dolls to paintings to music boxes, these items have been connected to hauntings much like my button. If the soldier died in this uniform or simply saw it as important and now it is being sold piecemeal, I can understand his frustration. Perhaps time will help reveal his true intent and a path for me to take in this case.

Update

Don't you just hate it when real life gets in the way? Back from Nano, though alas I didn't make it this year. Two surgeries (neither on me thankfully!) and quite a few mishaps later I had to put my writing aside. Then my car started having issues...and my mechanic had issues...and then it died (the car not the mechanic unfortunately). So I'm back with a new car and really nothing new that's doll-related!

However, I will post a story that was to be the end of my Haunted Vessel series for October that wasn't finished in time. Look for it in the next post!