Paranormally Skeptic

On Friday night,I sewed!!!!  Got a lot done last week but still have more to go.

On Saturday, I sewed!!!!  Got more done but still a ways to go.  Spent bits of the day doing some housework and making bread, pie and hydrating some lefsa for our annual Norwegian Christmas dinner with my bestie and her husband.  Meri was able to join us too. 

Boiled cod, mashed potatoes, corn, lefsa, Norwegian sour cream (minus the raisins) pie, Norwegian Christmas cabbage, Norwegian pork meatballs and kringla.  

If the recipe said Norwegian and Christmas in it, Robb printed it out.

oh and Norwegian corn.  Sam's makes the best!

OOhhhh... it was all so delish!  I don't dare weigh myself until next week after the Christmas digs!

AND don't weigh myself for another reason...  Meri and HER bestie Perla, have a bucket list.  They are both fascinated with abandoned places and paranormal stuff.  So naturally spending the night in a house where a mass murder had occurred was on that list!

Have you ever heard of this place in Iowa?  Apparently they are prominent on several tv shows too that specialize in hearing ghostly voices, strange happenings and the like.  

I'm a skeptic.

The story behind the Villisca Ax Murder House is this.  One night in 1912, after church down the block,  a young family of 6 with 2 little friends of the daughter, came home.  They all went to sleep.  And either someone was hiding in the attic or came through the door, he had an ax and murdered everyone in the house.  He took time to cover all the mirrors and eat in their kitchen...  There were strips of raw bacon on the floor in the girls room.  SO weird...

and SO sad!...

The investigation got bungled because a neighbor came to find out why they weren't out yet the next morning and discovered the bodies.  It's a small town so that neighbor got someone else to come in and that person got someone ELSE to come in.  So whatever evidence there was to point to the killer was trampled on, touched, moved and destroyed by all the townsfolk.  Also, when the detective from Kansas City arrived two days later to investigate, he got off the train drunk.  

Talk about a top notch mystery!

This wasn't going to be solved in an hour.  Nor 106.5 years...

It's still not solved.  But people still come and get tours, stay overnight and try to solve it themselves with ghost recordings, photos, etc.  

I'm willing to bet, it was a hobo off the train a block away that blew it's whistle every 8 minutes...

So anyway, I'm sure you're wondering why I know so much about the Villisca train schedule and why I have so many pictures of the murder house...

Let me tell you a story...  Saturday night, after our little Christmas dinner, Meri asked to talk to me privately.  3 of her friends had ditched the adventure that was scheduled for Sunday and her best friend, Perla, was almost ready to back out too, but she was the main reason for this bucket list item! 

and it would be shame if they lost their deposit!  This place is expensive. The only way that Perla and her other friend Cassie would go was if I went to...  For security...

I suppose because I'm a black belt.  Or that I just don't believe in that stuff.

I would be the self appointed voice of reason...  so I brought along my bible.

 Robb was on his own to get Leon out the door for school on Monday and after packing lots of warm clothes because Meri was convinced that there was no heat, the four of us took off right after church on Sunday.

Got there around 3 and got a tour from the guy in charge.  He was great and answered a lot of the girls questions and told them stories about paranormal type things that happened to him there and other places.  

We saw a black cat roaming around the house and Meri went to see it, but it took off.  We found that the basement door had been broken so we told the tour guide.  He let us into the basement and we explored a little.  If anyone was going to spook us, it would be from down there...  yikes!  But no access into the house from there so we were safe for the most part.

And to clarify, there WAS heat here, but since the house is on the historic registry, it's only in two rooms.  AND we wouldn't have to use the outhouse after all!!!!  I thought the local Caseys was going to get lots of visits from us but there was a bathroom in the barn behind the house that we could use.  WHEW!

We DID go to Casey's twice.  Once to use the restrooms when we got to town and the 2nd time to pick up a pizza for supper.

We found this dog on top of a truck, waiting for his owner.  Hilarious!  So attentive too.

It got dark... REAL dark...  The house had an extension cord we could plug our cell phones into but no lights.  The barn contained some rechargable lamps and thankfully Meri had invested in a new one.  We left the lamp on all night.  

By 6pm, I was exhausted.  No one wanted to play a board game.  It was like, all they wanted to do was find proof there were ghosts there!  BORING....

I pulled out Meri's mattress topper that we brought along and curled up to sleep.  The girls made a nest out of all the other blankets brought and hunkered down to talk.  It's hard to sleep with 3 girls in the house gibber gabbering, laughing and talking about everything under the sun. I was in and out of sleep, talked with Perla who was miserable due to a hurting ankle and migraine.  Meri and Cassie took the video camera with microphone system upstairs to see if they could capture something.  Anything...

Meri has a Youtube channel where she talks about her abandoned places she's visited.  I still don't know what it's called but one of the videos she took, she introduced me but all you can see is my arm waving.  

Around 3am, when historically the ghost magic happens, Meri and Cassie were talking softly and recording again.  The train whistle blew.  Not new for us by that time...

Meri started crying.  She had recorded us for a while and then went back with higher definition to listen to the recording.  She heard a little girl's voice say Hi!  all perky like, then a bunch of screams.  It broke her heart to hear it.  She asked if we wanted to hear it too.  Cassie did.  Perla and I just said, Hey!...  Let's listen on the way home tomorrow when we're not here anymore!

FINALLY it was morning!  The girls and I cleaned up the living room where we'd spent the night and hauled everything out to the car.  They had been up most of the night.

And get this.  Meri and Cassie were listening to the recordings and they heard an odd whine or snort sound.  Gasp!?  Did you hear that???  What was that??!  

Um wait... Meri... It's your mom snoring...

HAHAHAHA!!!!  Payback babies!!!

And I'm still a skeptic.

So this is our "We Survived The Villisca Ax Murder House" photo.  The girls were worn out but thankfully I was perky. I guess a little congestion and 12.5 hours of attempted snoozing was all I needed!

As we left town, I noticed a REALLY long cow on the side of a house.  I pointed it out to Meri. She put all her recording stuff down to notice the abandoned house behind the cow and it's "shadow"...  The cow isn't abnormally long after all!  It's a Guard Cow.    From a distance it was pretty funny!

So Meri got out to get her abandoned house fix.

We were getting home.  5 miles at a time...

About 5 miles later, I had a flat tire.  We had to unload all the bedding and suitcases and junk from the trunk out onto the side of the road and into the car itself to get the spare and jack out.  While we did that, a VERY nice man with a service truck stopped and changed our tire for us!  What a gem!  He heard all the stories of the Murder house and may take his boys for a tour some time.

I took it easy driving up to I80 from there.  Every mile seemed like it took 5 minutes.  I'm sure that's an exaggeration, but it really did feel like it.  We got to a big town and the girls all seemed like they wanted something more than donuts, chocolate whoppers and chips for breakfast.  The pansies...

And as I drove into town with Robb on the phone telling him about our ordeal, I noticed a little wrench symbol light up on our dash.  G-reat...  We were still a couple hours from home too.  ugg..  While the girls got food, I checked in with work and told them of my car woes and that I'd be a bit longer getting in.  Then scoured through the user manual to find out what that little light meant.  Something about the Power Tran...  whatev.  I wanted to get home!  

So I drove maybe 50 mph with the hazard lights flashing so people would just go around me on the interstate.  a little while later, the little tire indicator on the dash started flashing instead of just being solid.  I figured that probably meant something too!  The car was falling apart!!!!

We pulled over and I noticed that the spare tire was a little low. 

Dang!  Can we ever catch a break??  The girls in the back seat got para-normally quiet and I drove even slower until we found a gas station within sight of the interstate to get some air.

After that, the little wrench went away!  Woohoo!!!  It still took some nerve to get even up to 60 miles per hour but when I got to Des Moines, I felt my confidence in the tire come back.  Whew!  

FINALLY got back to Meri's around 12.  We unloaded all their stuff and I was outta there to go home.  AHHHHH  I'm enjoying sitting in a chair that doesn't look like it's 106 years old and I have electricity at the flip of my wrist with only flesh and blood dogs whining in the back ground.

There's no place like home.

There's no place like home.

There's no place like home.