Perfume From Nowhere

More Haunted Northern New York, © 2003, Second Printing 2005, Cheri Revai

While in Riverton, Wyoming on our Labor Day Weekend trip, I would get up before my wife and Cousin-in-Law (CIL) and read. I’d started these two books on our upstate New York trip and had finished one of them (New England’s Ghostly Haunts, © 1983, by Robert Ellis Cahill), but was only about halfway through with the other one. That book is the More Haunted Northern New York, by Cheri Revai (apparently Cheri changed her name for one reason or the other, to “Farnsworth”).

I’d sit in the recliner out in the living room, with just the table-side light on and read. What had happened next, I don’t know if it’s really paranormal or not, but I have not found out the source of “the weirdness.”

On the first morning, as I sat and read, I noticed a sudden and definite scent of women’s perfume. It wasn’t an air cleaner/spritzer, it was definitely perfume. I didn’t think any of it, thinking it must be some scent released into the air. I let it go. The next morning, it happened again—twice. This time it happened just as I was finishing up the story about the Hand House (pages 68-70), on page 70. If you read five lines up from my thumb, you’ll read what I read as the two instances of perfume hit me:

“The Hand House,” from More Haunted Northern New York, © 2003, by Cheri L. Revai.

Okay, at this point I put the book down and inhaled some more.

Perfume. Women’s perfume.

Definite, strong.

My wife doesn’t wear it. Neither does my CIL. Neither do his pets.

I put the book down and got up and looked around the shelves behind me (pictures on the shelves and that was it). Nothing. Not one thing that could cause the smell of perfume. I look above and below…I look to the rest of the living room. Nothing. I go out into the hallway…nothing.

Huh.

I sit back down and read the rest of the ghost story and book.

Later that day I ask my wife if she smelled any kind of perfume as she’d sat in the other room the previous day, and she’d mentioned that she had. I looked around some more but couldn’t find anything. I later ask my CIL, when he got up, and he had no idea. But later he brought me over to a knickknack he had. “Is this it?” he asked, at which point he placed what looked like half a geode into my face with a butterfly in the hollow.

I inhaled.

There was a faint scent of perfume. Faint.

He said that you had to run a hairdryer over it to release the smell.

I don’t know if it was the same scent, but I have this to say about the entire affair:

• I had to ram my nose right up and into that geode/butterfly thing to smell it. What I’d smelled was all around me. It was powerful and strong.
• No one ran any hairdryer during my early morning hours.
• This tiny “butterfly thing” was in the next room, around a corner, then recessed back from the entryway into the living room I’d been sitting in by about 12 or 15 feet? There was no way that extremely faint scent could travel like that and amplify it’s scent like it had. What I smelled was like someone had literally sprayed perfume into the air around me. Or like a woman who was heavily perfumed…had stood right next to me.

So…am I making too much out of this?

All I know was that on that second day (and not since) as I read the words “There’s also a very faint scent of perfume“…I smelled perfume. Twice.

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Cat on a Couch

Chloe and Cassie, December 2004

I have put off writing about this for a while…but it happened again, yesterday, so I simply can’t ignore it any longer. It’s not just a trick of light or shadow. It’s something else, entirely.

In August of 2007, while I’d been on a business trip, we lost one of our cats, Cassie, to kidney failure and another complication. She was a beautiful gray and white “flower child” mouser who would actually go outside and smell our flowers. Not kidding…she would go up to them and stick her nose into the petals and just, well…smell. She also had a habit of dropping dead voles and field mice at our patio doorstep (on occasion sneaking them into the house before I could see what it was she had in her mouth). But we called her our “flower child.” She was very sweet and loving and our first cat as a couple. She loved to sit up on the top edge of one of our couches, the one before our picture window, and just look out at the world.

A pensive cat.

A philosopher cat.

She would either hunker down on the left side or sit upright. In the picture above you see that “dent” on the left, where our other feline is sitting? She did that.

Well, ever since her passing, I’ve kept catching brief images of a cat (not Chloe) on the top of that couch. I’d stop and back up…looking to the couch…and would see nothing. I would bid Cassie a “Hello, Cassie!” and move on.

Well, it happened again yesterday morning as my wife was getting off to work (I took the day off). The curtains were open. I had walked through the kitchen, which has a view of the above-mentioned area, and again caught a flash of a cat sitting upright on the middle top edge of that couch (just a smidge to the left of where Cassie is in the picture).

I still have that image burned in my mind.

There was a cat there.

Then there wasn’t.

And Chloe was sleeping upstairs on “her” (our) spare bed; I’d just come from there.

I backed up and looked…no Cassie. Told my wife about it.

Now I’m writing this.

Hello, Cassie!

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One Painting…Two Dogs

Just Checking In To Say “Hi!” (Artwork by Rémi Jouandet [see page for license], via Wikimedia Commons)

Early into our vacation, like a day or so, something really weird happened.

Note: I’m going to respect my folks’ privacy and only tell the minimum of specific names and such.

While my dad was watching TV and his dog, Boomer (name has been changed for privacy), was lying on the floor by his side, I was in the kitchen, doing something that most probably involved food, when I heard a bark—then my dad calling me over.

When I get into the living room, my dad tells me that Boomer was just lying quietly on the floor, when he all of a sudden went upright…and stared at this painting that was on the living-room wall. Barked at it. When I came in, Boomer was no-kidding-up-on-the-couch with his forepaws, back straight as an arrow, nose angled directly into the painting. He was very agitated, did those doggy “whiny sounds,” and may have again barked. But, both my dad and I looked to each other (definitely amused…highly curious)…and to Boomer…and the painting.

What the hell?

Preserving the privacy of this artwork, all I’m going to say is that in the painting (that had been up on the wall for a while, maybe towards a year?), two dogs are depicted: Boomer, and another, Rin Tin (again, not its real name).

Rin Tin is deceased.

Boomer remained agitated and brought his nose right up to the painting, less than an inch away from it, again, his whole body straight as an arrow. I put one hand to the painting’s frame, while holding the other nearby Boomer’s face, in case he decided to lunge and/or bite at the frame or painting. Dad and I are chuckling and wondering what the heck was going on, when Boomer did the weirdest thing:

He stuck his nose directly to the depiction of Rin Tin, sniffed it for a second or two…then abruptly departed.

That was it.

He jumped off of the couch and came to us as if nothing had happened.

Dad and I are laughing and looking to ourselves, totally baffled (well, truth be told, I had an idea). For the rest of our near week and a half there, Boomer never paid anymore attention to Rin Tin’s painted image.

Okay, you know I’m about to get kinda weird, here, but here’s what I believe happened:

Rin Tin was my folks’ previous dog and had to be put to sleep (turns out we were there, visiting, my wife and I, and one of my brothers, Chris). I love animals, and am particularly fond of dogs. I miss Rin Tin, and the day we arrived on the current vacation two weeks ago, I was actually wondering if Rin Tin might make, well, an appearance, now that I was here. Rin Tin’s cremains are in an “urn” my dad made (which was what I’d seen that first day and got me to thinking about all this), and I made a point to go to it a couple times while there, and “reach out” to Rin Tin. After all, I reasoned, I had a really cool experience with my last dog, Mac, and wondered if I would have a similar experience with Rin Tin.

I really believe that Rin Tin had reached out to us to let us know she was there…and was just saying “Hi.” I had lots of fun with her. I just have a way with dogs…and dogs generally like (okay, love) me. And I couldn’t be there when she was actually put down. I feel this was her way of saying “hello” one more time to dad and me…meeting the “new fur”…letting us know that she’s still “around.” The only ones in the area were my dad, Boomer, and me.

That painting had been up on the wall for a long time, and Boomer had never reacted to it at all. What the heck else could it have been? What the heck could have possibly caused a dog to behave that way? He went right to Rin Tin’s image, not his own.

I was right there, with Boomer, at the painting when it happened, saw exactly where Boomer’s nose went—it was directly and unhesitatingly to Rin Tin’s image, not concerned with his own image at all. I’ve seen dogs bark at the TV, but never a static image like that, especially when the image had been around in the dog’s presence for a while, with no prior reaction to it.

It truly ranks as one of the weirdest things I’ve ever witnessed!

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Ghost of Me

One of the weirdest things to happen to me occurred on September 20, 2010, at around 4 in the afternoon.

Actual names have been removed for privacy.

Two relatives were at our home with my wife, while I was at work. One relative was in the kitchen with my wife, the other outside. My wife and the first relative were making dinner. At about this time, both my wife and this person both heard the downstairs door to our living room open then close, and me shouting out (as I always do) “Hellooo!”  They both looked to each other and commented that I was home. The other relative then came inside, and my wife told this person I was home.  But after a few moments they wondered where I was, because I hadn’t yet shown my face. When one of them went to check on me, they only found one car in the garage–I had not yet returned home!

My wife looked to the one who’d been in the kitchen with her and asked, “Well, you heard it right?” to which the person replied, “Yeah, I heard it.”

But I was at the gym!

<cue Twilight Zone music….>

Okay, that’s a first–I’m a ghost while I’m still living!

After hearing this, I’d talked to all parties, and they all confirmed the above events. Every detail. To make it even more interesting, when I really did return home that night, my wife had me go to where she’d been standing and showed me exactly how it all went down by her going to the same door…opening then closing it. I then came down to her after she’d closed the door and shouted out my normal “Hellooo!” I asked her, “It sounded just like that?” She said yup.  She added that I even had that playful lilt to it I always do when I shout it out upon getting home.

Later, as I got ready for bed the next night, I think it was, it dawned on me that when I was running errands after work on the above day (the 20th), I was fully intending to head home to check on some flight reservations I’d made at work for a business trip. When I went to check on these reservations after having made them, our Internet and e-mail went down, and I really wanted these reservations, because I was flying home in the middle of a four-week biz trip. And up until the very last minute, I’d thoroughly intended on actually coming home, checking on them (or making them if they hadn’t gone through at work with our Interent down) then head to the gym–but changed my mind on the drive home and ended up going directly to the gym. So this all happened exactly when I would have gotten home if I hadn’t changed my mind and instead headed to the gym.

What do I think this was?  Well, it could be considered “suggestion,” some kind of telepathic link…or perhaps it was an alternate reality. I like to think of it as…a ghost of me!

Dog Gone

There were three dogs in my life that meant a lot to me, and two had the same name (“Mac”; the other was “Crackers“). Two were from my childhood, the third, adulthood.

I lost the first “Mac” to a little sports car out in the country (where we lived) driven by a guy with his girl. He’d come around the bend and didn’t see Mac as he crossed the road. Mac–I swear to you–looked both ways just before he was slammed into. Out comes the little sports car. Next thing I know, Mac’s lying in a small puddle of his own blood in the middle of the road. Mac was a Black Lab and he’d accompanied my young teenage self on my bike to the Post Office, a short jaunt down the way. We were returning home. We’d buried him “up back,” and I put his favorite and well-chewed tree branch across his grave, in homage.

I don’t know exactly when it’d happened, but sometime later, at the top of the stairs in our house, I don’t know what I’d been doing, but I turned around and looked to the head of the stairs…and saw the butt and wagging tail of a Black Lab heading downstairs.

We hadn’t had another dog at that point.

I rushed to the head of the stairs…only to be met by empty steps.

In 2003, our 11-year-old Black Lab, Mac, died of bone cancer.  He was my “Little Buddy,” and we did everything together. When I wrote, he sat at my feet. When I paced working on or reading my manuscripts out loud–he was there, eyeing me always with his big brown, caring, eyes. When I worked in the backyard, he followed me everywhere. Walked behind me when I mowed or sat and made sure I never missed a spot. Went with us on all our hikes.

When he died…I felt his spirit depart. Just as real as if I’d been hit. Or someone leaning on me had left. It was stark, jarring.

I didn’t think I’d cry–I was prepared, understood death as best as I could from my point of view–but I burst out in tears. Uncontrollably. Never saw it coming.

High Summer of 2006, I was out in the backyard, sweeping grass clippings off a sidewalk alongside a window. It was a bright, sunny day. As I worked past the window…in the window…was the reflection of a Black Lab following me.

I whipped around.

No dog.

I rushed back to the window to verify what I’d seen–the reflection of a dog behind me, or maybe just me and my broom at some weird angle–and held the broom back to where I’d had it, moving it back and forth where I’d had it…but no reflection behind me did it yield.

I was extremely surprised to see a dog behind me, because we no longer had a dog, and there were no dogs that size (at the time) around us.

I looked back to the window.

“Thanks, Mac.”

I smiled and continued on.

The Esoterica Challenge!

I don’t want this site to just be about me.

I really don’t.

I want others to visit and leave a personal “Just Plain Weird” or otherwise “esoteric” story or two about yourselves! For YOU to share weird things that have happened to you. Things that just didn’t “traditionally add up” in your lives. It can be large or small, doesn’t matter–but it has to be true. I’m not looking to pass judgement, may not even comment (unless asked!)…but I’d really like to bring up the “daily weird” into a more open forum in our lives. I believe we all have at least one or two things that have happened to us during the course of our existence that “just didn’t make sense” in the more traditionally viewed mindset most of us have been brought up in, or work in. I’d also prefer these stories to be more fun or curious.

That’s what ‘d like to see!

NOTE: I’m not looking to focus on the dark and negative, nor am I a “go-to” person to fix any such dark and negative experiences. I have no experience there and there are plenty of others out there who do have that experience. That is not the purpose of this site, so please respect that. The purpose of this site is to focus on the positive and constructive.

And–in the realm of the esoteric–I’m not considered any “great shakes.” I don’t speak, hunt, nor work with ghosts (though I have seen ghosts of two of my dead dogs…and some I know have actually heard a “ghost” of me!). I don’t channel (uh, that I know of…). Don’t interpret dreams (see my post and views on dream interpretation). Don’t paranormally consult. I don’t even make any claims that I’m more advanced than any of you out there. My only real claim is that I’m just like many of you out there…except I may be more aware of some of the weird that “happens” to us…am more open about it. I openly allow the “paranormal” to manifest in my life–but in constructive and positive ways, and I’m a proponent for others to be the same. Sure, many of you are like this too–so this might be more like preaching to the converted for those like you–but I really hope that each of us can be more open to the so-called “paranormal” in all our lives, to not fear it, even laugh at the humoursly strange things that sometimes happen to us (see The Grape)….

So, please, feel free to stop on by and conversate–even if it doesn’t necessarily match the current post. I’m really looking forward to seeing what kinds of cool things have happened to others out there, allowing each of you to acknowledge the esoterica in your lives, since we really don’t get a chance to do so in our so-called “normal society.” I would like this site to be a “safe place” to allow each of you to come and talk about things you might not otherwise be able to…without anyone passing judgement.

Looking forward to hearing from all of you!