Be Right Back!

I was suddenly reminded of this topic yesterday via a meme.  To be honest, I had totally forgotten this was a thing until my memory was jogged.  And while I don't know for certain if it runs in my family, I do know for a fact that in addition to it happening to me, both intentionally and unintentional, I remember my dad telling me how he experienced the same thing when he was in his 30s.  And then his younger brother, my uncle, also had it happen to him.  Or at least, I recall a story he's told that it happened to him.  

I initially thought it was because of the Garage, since that's where we were living when dad and his brother had it happen as well as my first experience with it.  Then when we lived in the Cul-de-Sac, I was practicing the ability to do it on my own.  And it was working.  

Some may call it an out of body experience, others think of it as a near-death experience because of the circumstances for a few.  And others refer to it as astral projection.  Whatever your thinking is on this, I can tell you with certainty, it's real.  

Dad wasn't one who was prone to make up stories of these types of phenomena.  So it was a bit unnerving the first time he told me that it happened to him.  Again, we were living in the Garage at the time and I was maybe 12 or 13 years old.  Dad worked hard all week so when he took some downtime, it usually just meant he went to lay in bed for a bit before getting up and doing the next thing.  So it was probably an early Saturday afternoon.  I was in the living room watching probably MTV, mom doing something in the kitchen.  My brother who knows where out and about with his friends.  Sister in the main house with grandma.  She spent all kinds of time with grandma back then.  

Dad gets up from his nap and he doesn't look to be all that well rested.  And as was often the case with dad and his stories, there's no warm-up, no preface, he just jumped right in to what he wanted to say.  He starts talking about when he went to lay down, that after a while he was at that sunset time.  At least, I call it the sunset time.  When you're halfway between awake and sleep.  Not fully asleep but not really awake either. He said he could sense a detachment from his body.  That he was suddenly feeling like he was hovering over his bed and when he looked back, he could see himself laying there beneath.  That he felt himself rising further up and he could see more of the world around him, that he could see me in the living room watching TV.  He sort of just trailed off after that.  He may have gone into more detail or he might have just let his mind wander off from the story.  I can't remember exactly.  We're talking about a conversation we had nearly 40 years ago.  My memory's good but, come on.  

Anyway, he did have those experiences again, at least that he shared with me.  A few times at the Mountaintop and again at Chaucer.  But I didn't really think much about them at the time.  Looking back, I wish I had asked him more about what was going on, how it happened, etc.  

My uncle's story, on the other hand, came during surgery.  At least, what I can recall of it.  I was way too young to remember what or even when he was in surgery for, but the story that I remember him telling was that he was in the operating room and he could see himself on the table, the medical team surrounding him.  He said something about a brilliant white light above him and that he went towards the light.  That it was the warmest, most comforting feeling he had ever known.  But when he reached the apex, he heard a voice tell him, 'No.  It's not your time.'  Then he woke up in the recovery room.  

I heard the story a handful of times when I was in my teens but I don't know if he's ever mentioned it much since.  But he's often cited that bright white light as the reason why he's led a pretty reckless life through most of his teens right on through middle-age.  Because he wasn't afraid to die, if that's what's waiting for him.  

As for me, the first time I experienced it was also at the Garage.  Honestly, it didn't freak me out as much as it probably should have because at the time it was happening, I thought it was an episode of Alice in Wonderland Syndrome that I had been afflicted with previously.  Remember that also involved feeling larger and larger, to the point where the room couldn't contain me?  The out-of-body experience felt the same or very similar to me at the time.  However many times it may have occurred, I couldn't say for certain because again, I thought it was AIWS at the time.  

It wasn't until we were living in the Cul-de-Sac where I was actively practicing and attempting to do it on my own.  As I mentioned before, that's the time in my life when I really started to study up on shamanism, spirituality and meditation.  Part of where shamanism and meditation converge is in the spirit world.  I'm sure there's a more specific term for it but it eludes me at the moment.  But nevertheless, I was actively attempting to initiate out-of-body experiences.  Spirit Walking.  It took a few tries before it really started to happen.  And I gotta be honest, after a few successful attempts, I decided to stop altogether.  Maybe I freaked myself out about it?  Overthought the process?  Something just made me pull back on that aspect of my training.  Could be because I was doing it by myself and was worried about what might happen if I went too far?  Can't say for sure what was going through my mind back then.  But I haven't made any attempts at that in over 20 years.  

You Thinking What I'm Thinking?

Okay, this one I'm going to need to provide a little bit of history, some backstory, to fill you in on what exactly I've learned about myself and something I've learned that I am capable of. This is probably going to be met with a lot of skepticism, but considering everything I've experienced in my life up to this point, would it really be a big surprise if this indeed is what I think it is?  

For starters let's take you all the way back to the Mountaintop. I was still in high school, it was a weekend afternoon, I was in the kitchen dining room.  Mom was puttering about making the family meal, when this event occurred for the first time that I can recall. It was brief, I wasn't entirely sure that it had happened until I mulled it over later.  

Like I said I was sitting at the kitchen table reading something, Mom had the refrigerator door open, her head buried in there looking for something and for the briefest of moments I was going to ask her something but quickly decided against it. I distinctly recall thinking 'Mom?' But again I never actually vocalized it. And a moment later Mom popped her head out of the refrigerator and asked me, 'Que quieres, mijo?' What do you want, son? 

"No, nada, no dije nada." 'No, nothing, I didn't say anything.'  She paused for a second with a look of doubt but quickly went back to making lunch. I thought about it later and I was positive I hadn't actually called out to her, I just thought it and quickly changed my mind. That was as much thought I put into it at the time. But it happened again a few weeks later. Similar condition where she was in the kitchen and this time I was in my sister's room, which was right next to the kitchen. Her second bedroom door opened right into the kitchen, the door was open and I was in her room doing something, messing with her TV, I think and again, quickly was going to ask her something but changed my mind before I said anything. But once again, she 'heard' me and responded. This can't be a coincidence that I was thinking about asking her something and she happened to reply in that moment. 

It's happened quite often in the years since actually. It happened a LOT when I lived at the Bed & Breakfast with my ex when I was going to ask her something but didn't. And she replied anyway. 

Here's the part where some of you might start thinking about calling bullshit on this. And I wouldn't blame you. Except I've been doing it purposely more and more often. I can project my thoughts. Not always and not everyone is receptive to it but it has happened, and I've been practicing. It's also one of those things I hadn't ever talked about before because either you think I'm crazy thinking I can do that or you immediately become suspicious thinking I may have done it to you. Honest truth?  I might have. I practice it and obviously the receiver has to be either willing and open, in tune with me. Hence why my mom or girlfriend were open to reception.  Or sometimes entirely distracted that allows me a foot in the door, so to speak. 

The only time I've ever openly admitted this to someone else before was a girl I had met on a dating site. When I told her about it, she admitted that she felt a chill down her spine at the time. That wasn't me. But when we met up for our first date a few nights later, I may have suggested things progress more than she intended. Because she admitted that she let things go further than she meant to that first night. Then again, she invited me back over the next night with the intention that she wasn't going to let me leave until dawn. That, I didn't suggest and stayed the night anyway. 

So...  With all this out in the open, odds are some of you are starting to wonder if I've done anything to you, if it were possible. Let me be totally upfront about it...  I might have. 

Ladies, there MAY have been a moment where I happened to cross your mind at the most random time and you started imagining the two of us getting...  Involved. That may have been me thinking it, projecting it. Conversely, if you've had these thoughts about me and it WASN'T me, then that's all you and your dirty mind. Why haven't you called me? 😉🤣 

And to take things to an even more unbelievable level, remember I mentioned my ability of clairalience?  There's been a handful of times, especially late last year, early this year when one (or more) of you may have been thinking about me and taking care of business. Yes, I could pick up that scent from wherever you might have been. 

Now with all this out in the open, there may be a few of you blushing, some of you may even be pissed that I may have put those thoughts in your head, if it was me. And no doubt, a few of you are still thinking, 'bullshit!' You have to admit though, for a guy who's never actually done anything, I've been accused of a lot of stuff. Wonder why that is? 🤔

Only one way to find out though. Ask me. I'll be right upfront about it. If I did, I'll admit it to you. BUT realize that if I tell you I didn't, you're going to have to own up to the fact that you were thinking of me as more than... whatever we may be right now. 

Seaside Living

 The unexplainable events in my living situation seemed to have cooled off after I moved back to Orange County.  Both the Seaside Resort and the Bed & Breakfast didn't have too much activity going on.  Or if there was, it wasn't affecting me hardly at all.  

I will say that at the Seaside Resort, I had some really vivid dreams.  So much so that a few times I would wake up in a cold sweat and once I even called my brother to check on his well-being after what happened to him in my dreams.  Let's just say I had never dreamt about dragons before or since.  Yes, dragons, the whole medieval flying lizards, fire-breathing dragon was a thing in that dream.  

The Bed & Breakfast, one would almost assume it should have had some kind of activity based on its age and location.  But I already had enough drama going on with the living situation as it was for me to think about anything else.  And it had such a bizarre layout.  Like it was probably a large single-family home with a courtyard that previous owners at some point divided into a duplex.  So the bathrooms were in the center of the structure and despite there being a window in the bathroom, opening it you were looking at a small cubby with a vented skylight.  So the only natural light and ventilation in the bathrooms were indirect.  

But as I was saying, not a whole lot of activity going on at either of those locations.  Casa on the other hand, my current abode, well, every few weeks/months, I'll start to feel a creeping touch while I'm in bed.  Nothing like a full grabbing sensation but more like a caress.  A most inappropriate caress.  I have to call out to it to leave me alone, I'll center myself for a bit and then it's gone for another stretch of time before it starts over again weeks later.  

But it's also at these apartments when the baby universe dreams have become  more frequent.  If you're not familiar with the term I've been using, "Baby Universe," allow me to elaborate. 

I have these recurring dreams.  But not like most people who have the same dreams over and over.  The clown chasing you with an ax while you run away naked?  Nothing like that happens.  No, my recurring dreams are more inline with the same locations within my dreams.  I actually wrote a blog post about them a year ago so I'll just copy and paste that here to explain and maybe expand on the concept because a few of them have become more fleshed out in recent months.

1) The School - Despite visiting this universe countless times, I can't pin-point whether it's a high school or college.  Or if I'm even a student or working there.  I did work at the Community College for several years.  But it's also unlike any school I've ever attended myself.  There are hallways and classrooms I've been in.  Lecture halls or they could have been theaters used to lecture students in.  There's been flights of stairs and shop classes, an underground or lower level with rows of classes downstairs as well.  I have interacted with people in this space though.  But often as I'm giving them information, the others who are here rarely speak to me.

2) The Farm - The Farm location is always interesting when I drop in because it's the one I visit the least.  But it is definitely someplace out in the country.  There's an old-fashioned barn, pasture or field with crops.  Like wheat crops or something.  I don't recall seeing many animals outside of maybe a horse or mule, some livestock.  But there's never any people out at this site either.  

3) The Mansion -  This location is unusual in that, I've been only a few times and they were always very brief visits.  But what happens here has left me a funky state once I wake up out of it.  The Mansion is exactly that, some big home, not unlike you might see on the BBC or east-coast estates.  Big, dark wood paneling, heavy wooden railing along the stairs but most of the time, it's empty.  Just me, maybe one or two others, often strangers.  And then it's what happens in the Mansion that goes beyond the norm for even my dreams.  I've been able to become lucid in this Baby Universe.  I would come to realize that I'm in the middle of a dream and start to take it over.  I've gained the power of self-flight, which is the most bizarre feeling ever.  What would it be like to fly like a superhero?  I think I felt that within the Mansion.  I was playing around over the bannister and suddenly, I was floating, hovering.  I was only a couple of feet off the ground but within a few moments, I started to become lucid and then I really took over the dream and my flight ability.  And all I can recall from that is the sensation of falling.  In the Mansion, my ability to fly was making me feel as though I was just constantly falling.  A controlled fall, if you will.  But with forward, controlled motion.  That's about as best as I can describe the sensation.  Haven't been back there in a while but I wouldn't be against a return sometime.  

4) The Future World - This is always my most interesting destination and the one I've visited probably the second most.  I feel like I'm in some sort of megalopolis in the distant future.  Like how the 1920s imagined what the future would look like with endless high rises and high-speed rail lines crisscrossing between the buildings.  I've ridden on those subway-type vehicles a few times but there's also a high-speed foot transport, like a moving walkway you might see in an airport but at a much higher rate of speed and you have to step into these harnesses for your feet to hold you in place.  

5} Travel Town - I call this one Travel Town mostly because there's a depot or port (air or maritime) of some sort. I've flown to and from this airport, been in a plane that landed here or taken a bus to this terminal. I've been in the parking structure in cargo vans and limousines. I've taken off from here and landed at some amusement or water park in the Midwest. And I know it was the Midwest because of the grain silos. But the insides were ginormous and had water slides inside them. But again, there's a terminal or airport involved and I'm often coming or going. 

6) The Aquarium - Out of all the Baby Universes I've been to, the Aquarium is the one I've been to most often.  And while I call it an Aquarium, it could also be a water park like SeaWorld because in addition to the fish displays, there are aquatic shows with marine life.  I can practically draw a map of the Aquarium, I've been to it so often and the layout stays about the same every time.  There's always people there, either watching the shows or wandering around the hallways looking at the displays.  There's a show  room upstairs that I've never attended but I have been to the arena for the big show.  It wasn't a killer whale or even dolphin show, they were seals, or walruses. Once, there was an audience filing in and I took a seat next to dad one visit.  It was unusual in that, since he passed away, I've only dreamt of dad maybe 3 or 4 times but he was never in one of my Baby Universes.  And the funny thing is, while I sat next to him, I never once looked at him, didn't see his face at all.  I just knew it was him, that he was there.  I don't think we even spoke.  And with the way time works in a dream, we may have been sitting there for a few seconds to a few hours but afterwards, we just got up and kind of went our separate ways in the dream.  

7) The Apartments - I call them the apartments but it could be just a large layout/campus of some sort of living situation.  Lots of low-lying, single-story buildings, front and rear entries so only two shared common walls between units.  And a recent trip there, within the last couple of weeks, has expanded the location to include a more centralized, larger building.  Whether it's offices or community center, I'm not sure.  

8) The Road - This one has started becoming a frequent setting and it's unusual because I'm starting off traveling this road and it could take me up to some forest/mountain setting and then I'm out of whatever vehicle it was I took there and exploring.  Or, and this one was a trip even at the time I was in the middle of it, the Road became a coastline road.  Similar to PCH but the ocean was on my right as I was traveling north.  There were people traveling along the road riding bikes.  Road bicycles, like Tour de France types of thing.  And like I mentioned, my journey starts along the road and eventually makes a stop where I'm out exploring.  And this latest trip, I ended up in another familiar location.  But I couldn't figure out if it was a real world location or a variation of my other Baby Universes.  Wouldn't that be a trip?  Starting off in one Baby Universe and traveling to others from there?  

Anyway, the baby universes started becoming more prevalent in recent years though I don't know what I could attribute that to.  

Down a Rabbit Hole

Charles Dodgson was a scholar and a teacher at Christ Church, Oxford England.  He was a lanky figure with a number of health issues.  A knee injury that gave him a hobbling gait, he suffered from a fever at an early age that left him deaf in one ear and a bout with whooping cough as a teenager that left him with a chronically weak chest throughout the rest of his life in addition to a stammer/stutter that he  dealt with since childhood.  

While at the university, Dodgson would end up taking the Dean Liddle's children on row boat rides up and down the river.  First the Dean's son, Henry and soon after his three sisters, Lorina, Edith, and Alice.  It was on these row boat trips that Dodgson would start to tell the children tales based on what they may have seen along the riverbanks, creating fanciful stories of a rabbit dressed in a waistcoat running late to an appointment or flowers singing.  Another time, perhaps they would 'see' a dodo bird and the stories would branch off from there.  The children loved his stories so much that little Alice begged him to write them down, which he eventually did.  Under the pseudonym; Lewis Carroll.  Alice would become a central figure in many of his stories from then on.   

It was believed that Dodgson may have also suffered from epilepsy.  Speculation persists due to the sensation some epileptics report at the onset of an episode, feeling as though they're falling down a rabbit hole.  Considering the Wonderland stories are loosely based on real-life occurrences he and the children would see on their excursions, it would make sense that Dodgson, ne Carroll, would include this specific feeling when Alice journeyed to Wonderland.  

The reason for this rambling preamble?  

Of the many sensations, encounters and activities we experienced at The Garage, the one that was the biggest mindfuck of them all was what I later discovered to be called: Alice in Wonderland Syndrome, AIWS. To give you a quick idea of what I went through, and I wasn't alone in this as I found out both my brother and sister had similar issues was, like the story where Alice drank to become Lilliputian in size, or ate to become a giant, we too would get the sensation of growing or shrinking in size, regardless of the world around us.  Just as an example, I may have been laying in bed, wide awake even though it may have been dusk or dawn, and suddenly out of the blue, I felt, had a literal sensation that I was rapidly shrinking in size right there on my bed.  Almost to the point where I was going to disappear into the bedding.  The effects would last anywhere between a few minutes to maybe half an hour and then it would be gone.  Never a revert to normal, you were just back to where you started from.  Or sometimes the reverse would occur and it would feel as though we were growing beyond the confines on the bed, the room was shrinking around me and a few times, I thought my bed was going to break under the stress and weight of my now immense size.  
For a pre-teen who's already seeing growth spurts, this was a hell of a thing to deal with.  And again, it was all three of us kids.  You can ask my brother or sister, they'll tell you they felt the same thing.  

Once we moved to the Mountain Top, I was already in my teens and that Alice in Wonderland sensation would subside and eventually pass before I hit 16 although migraine headaches would replace them for the next few years.  I don't know when my siblings would also get over that feeling but we eventually talked about it while we were in our teens and came to the conclusion that it must have been the Garage that was doing that to us.  Yet another in a long line of the unexplainable associated with living there.  

And I thought that was that.  Just a memory and the house being active.  Until about 10 years ago when my brother told me one of his kids was suffering from Alice in Wonderland effects.  O.k., there's got to be more to it than the Garage.  She hadn't lived there, she knew nothing about it but she was dealing with the same problems?  I started looking into it on my own.  

That's when I found a handful of medical articles describing Alice in Wonderland Syndrome.  Yes, it's actually a real thing and apparently a small percentage of the population suffer(s/ed) from it.  
According to a case report in Frontiers in Neurology, "Alice in Wonderland Syndrome  (AIWS) is a rare neurological disorder characterized by distortions of visual perception (metamorphopsias), the body image, and the experience of time, along with derealization and depersonalization..."  "In the literature, no more than 180 “clinical” cases of AIWS have been described (i.e., cases in need of medical attention). Of them, some 50% showed a favorable prognosis. However, non-clinical cases (i.e., fleeting, transient cases of AIWS for which no professional help is needed) have been described in up to 30% of the general population."  Up to 30% of the general population means that it's not as rare as one may have thought.  But oddly enough, outside of the 4 people I know who have suffered from it, myself, my siblings and my niece, I've never heard anyone ever mentioning going through a similar condition for any length of time.  If it's as common as the literature states, where are the other sufferers?  After all, to go from 180 clinical cases which required medical attention to 30% of the population is a massive leap in figures.  Which makes me wonder just how well it's being monitored/tracked or even diagnosed/misdiagnosed?  

But the primary reason why this fell under a Meddling Kids post was because we (my siblings and I) assumed the sensation was related to or perhaps induced by The Garage and not a medical/psychological condition.  

Clairalience

 I mentioned Clairalience in my last post as one of the multiple 'Clair-' abilities.  The others being Clairvoyant - seeing the unseen, Clairaudient - hearing the unheard, Clairsentience - feeling, either the emotions or physical pain of an entity, Clairgustance - tasting something that isn't actually there (I've never experienced this myself but my sister has.  More on that later), Claircognizance - knowing something we, by all rights, should not be able to know.  This one I've also had occurrences multiple times in my life that I'll go into another time.  And as the title mentioned, Clairalience - the ability to smell something which isn't there.  And that's what I'll primarily be focusing on during this post.  

The floral fragrance that I experienced with dad at Chaucer was the first time I can vividly recall that happening to me.  That's not to say it didn't happen earlier in life at other times.  Just that this specific time is my first time recalling it happening and recognizing it in that moment.  And it's happened a number of times since and I wanted to share a few of them here as they all seem to be directly tied to what may be on the other side of the veil.  

The most significant time I experienced Clairalience was in the days shortly after dad passed away.  This would have been back in 2012, in the week after his demise, I was working on putting myself into a blackout drunken stupor at the time.  I have to be honest, even though we had known this was going to be the eventual outcome for dad, even though we spent months preparing ourselves for the inevitable, when the time finally did come, I honestly wasn't ready for it.  And in those days, weeks and months that followed, I spent a LOT of time doing what I could to numb the pain.  
And so it was in this state of mind that I was several bottles deep into my nightly routine of blubbering on the couch and/or living room floor watching tv, tears would go from simple trickles down my cheek to full-on, body shuddering heaves that left me physically tired.  It was a Wednesday night, I was on the floor, between the TV stand and ottoman, bottle of Dos Equis almost gone and it hit me.  
Dad had this very distinct body odor.  I still can't forget it to this day.  It wasn't the Speedstick deodorant that he always used, it wasn't the Tres Flores brilliantine that he used in his hair, no, dad's body odor was very acidic, very similar to olive oil to me.  Not exactly but along those lines.  And that's the scent I caught in my living room that night.  It lingered, too.  Not like the flowers at Chaucer that was there and gone.  Dad's scent stayed with me a little longer than that.  Enough that once I caught the aroma, I breathed it in again.  A proper lung full.  By the time I exhaled and tried to catch it again, it was quickly becoming as faint as the flowers.  Gone.  I can only assume it was dad stopping by to visit me that night.  You know, he never came to visit me in that apartment while I was living there.  I lived there almost 3 years before he passed.  But he just wasn't driving anymore and climbing a full flight of stairs in his declining health just wasn't going to be happening.  But I have no doubt he came to visit me that night.  Whether it was just to check up on me, let me know he was finally better off or even if it was his way to say goodbye, I don't know.  
I think in that week between his passing and his life celebration, he was making the rounds visiting us kids and grandkids.  My sister-in-law told me that her youngest, who was 6 at the time woke up with a bolt in the middle of one night that week and just sat up and said, "Grandpa!" The other wonder twin, my sister's oldest, would dream of dad in the coming weeks and after as well.  Which made sense because he was one of the grandkids who spent the most time with him before dad went into the hospital.  I never asked any of the other kids if they were visited by dad but it's also been 10 years so I don't know if they'd remember after so long since they were all so young when he passed.  

The most recent experiences with Clairalience that I've encountered have been less personal and actually very recent.  As in, within the past year since I've started going on paranormal investigations and ghost walks locally.  The first time was at the Alexandria Ballrooms tour I went on with Haunted by History Author, Craig Owens.  The Alexandria Hotel is pretty much bordering skid row, just a short walk from the notorious Cecil Hotel in DTLA.  The Alexandria was THE place to see and be seen in a town before Hollywood was truly born.  While we were visiting the ballrooms and getting as much historical information from Craig, he took us to the staircase where he's mentioned guests of the hotel and film crews have seen apparitions walking up and down the stairs at random moments throughout the hotel's history.  And it was in this stairwell that I was struck by the smell, very distinct smell of cigarette smoke.  To me it literally smelled like someone had just been walking the stairs and was smoking along the way.  Which, not only was there nobody in the group smoking, the building itself is a non-smoking facility.  There's no way someone could have snuck into that stairwell to light up without having been seen by multiple people, much less dissipate any cloud of smoke for it to smell like it did.  

The next tour I went on where I caught the smell of something was with Haunted Orange County at the Kellogg House in Santa Ana.  Not to be confused with the Kellogg House in Pomona.  Hiram Kellogg of Santa Ana was a surveyor and engineer, not related the breakfast food magnate who owned the Pomona property.  It was at the end of the tour, we were all leaving the house and thanking Helen for letting us visit the home and I was stepping out the front door to the porch when I suddenly caught the aroma of smoke.  It was either a cigar or pipe smoke.  Much more aromatic than cigarette smoke, heavier, bolder.  And again, nobody around to be creating that.  In fact, I'm quite certain the entire property is non-smoking.  I mean, 100 year old wooden homes, you better believe they're not going to allow anyone to light anything on the porch.  And yet, there it was.  Very clearly, very distinct smell of smoke lingering outside the front door.  I should have asked our docent if Hiram was a smoker but the whole thing didn't really register with me and what it was until I was already in my car pulling out of the parking lot.  

Lastly and most recently a scent that hit me out of the ether was at an investigation with Craig Owens' group at the Warner Grand Theater in San Pedro.  I had been on a previous investigation at theater and while there were a handful of other activities to occur before, that second investigation seemed to yield much more EVPs than the first trip.  But the clairalience I experienced was during a quiet moment for me in the upstairs lobby.  The other investigators/guests were either upstairs in the projection booth, downstairs in the restroom lobby or under the stage.  I was sitting between the restroom doors, camera gear down, still recording everything just in case and I was suddenly hit by the scent of shoe polish.  Very unusual since I wasn't wearing dress shoes and there was no one else nearby.  I could only assume that at some point in the theater's 90-year history, there may have been a shoeshine stand right about where I was sitting.  Logically it makes sense as it's a theater and people used to dress up for a night out on the town.  The fact that San Pedro is also a port, so Seamen would likely have stopped by the theater on leave, shoeshines would have been a common thing.  I just need to find out if there was a shine stand upstairs, if at all.   

And to just wrap this up on the Clair- senses, I mentioned my sister experienced Clairgustance at least once before.  And that was during her quinceañera.  During the church service as she was receiving communion, the priest gave her the Eucharist, just a small wafer of bread, and she said as she was eating it, that it felt and tasted like meat.  "This is my body."

Chaucer

 For the entire time I lived there, I always referred to the house as Chaucer.  Considering Geoffrey Chaucer's most famous works are the Canterbury Tales, it made perfect sense to me.  Although it's unlikely others would have clued in to things like that.  But while The Garage and Mountain Top were active residences for me and the Cul-de-Sac wasn't, Chaucer seemed to be a quietly active place from even before we moved in.  

My brother bought the house as a fixer-upper and boy, did it ever need the fixing up.  Several of the power outlets were bare wire, open boxes.  Some live, some not.  There may have been a foundation crack as there was a crack running most of the driveway into the garage and you could feel an uneven floor in the kitchen despite the tile that was laid over it.  The roof leaked, as did the bathroom, the bathroom being renovated after we had moved in.  I'll tell you, taking a shower in late winter with a partially missing bathroom wall makes for QUICK showers to get the hell back into the warmer house.  There were chain-link fences between us and the neighbors with both our left and right not even having the privacy slats in the fencing.  You could see everything our neighbors were doing, even when that meant the neighbors to our right were sunbathing or running naked from the kitchen door to their garage because she was doing laundry and literally had nothing clean to wear, or the neighbors to our left who would dig a hole in the backyard and dump their motor oil after changing it.  These were the same neighbors where their son's friend just decided to smash dad's back window out of the minivan just because he felt like it.  Oh, the shitstorm their dad gave that kid when he found out what had happened. 
But despite all of that, we actually turned that house into a home for the time we lived there.  

But it was even before we moved in that I took first notice of unexplained activity.  And it started with my bedroom.  We knew for a while when we were going to move from the rental to our new place so unlike previous moves, we had plenty of time to prep the house and start transitioning over from one to the other.  So I took advantage of this time to set up my bedroom before the move and make better use of the space.  I installed one of those wire closet organizers.  That helped a lot since I was scaling down to a smaller bedroom and smaller closet.  Maximize the use of space.  And I also bought a simple bookcase from Target.  You know the kind, the cheap particle board with the woodgrain decal in your choice of 'woodgrain' brown or dark brown/black.  I went with the 'woodgrain' and went into the house about a week before the big move to get those all set up.  It was just me in the place, all by my lonesome and listening to some music while I worked.  Didn't think anything about the random noises I heard in the other rooms since I just figured it was the house settling and since there wasn't anything else in the building, nothing to mute the echoing sounds.  No biggy.  
After I finished the bookcase, I went ahead and started to fill it with my books that I had mentioned previously.  The spiritual reading, shamanism and books on the occult.  Mind you, this point in my life I was also EXTREMELY anal retentive about my organization.  While I didn't always organize everything alphabetically...  well, I DID do that with my VHS collection.  Gah, late 90s of course I owned a small library of say, 50 VHS movies on an organizer.  But I didn't bring that over/set it up, just the bookcase and books.  But the books (and movies), I would always organize so they faced the same direction.  In that, you can read them Left to right, top to bottom.  Everything 'faced' the same direction so the book's spines, you could read at a glance.  

I finished up, locked up the house and left.  I wouldn't be back until the Big Move.  In fact, nobody was back in the house until the Big Move Day.  There were only 3 keys and I had one, my brother and our dad accounted for all 3.  Nobody was in the house from the time I finished working there until I moved the mattress into my bedroom a week later.  And it was as soon as I dropped the mattress on the floor and stopped for a few seconds to catch my breath that I noticed something was amiss.  From that laying position, I looked over at the bookcase and two of the books were facing the opposite direction.  Upside down for lack of a better word.  I know I would never have put them there like that and like I said, no one had been in the house since I was there last.  Who could have touched them much less moved them and then put them back exactly where I left them but facing the wrong way?  The books? 
A Dictionary of Angels and Demons
The Encyclopedia of the Supernatural  

Having lived with the entities in The Garage and then Fred and Wilma at the Mountain Top, I honestly didn't think much of this latest in a lifetime of unexplainable and genuinely didn't think about it again until hours later when I asked dad if he had been to the house since I was last there.  Of course he hadn't.  And of course my brother hadn't.  Yet, there it was.  And it was truly only the first of many small, very subtle activity in that house.  The next significant event didn't take place until a few years later and it was when it was just dad and I.  

My sister had a medical procedure done in Tijuana, because stateside doctors can often never find anything wrong or their process takes too long that people often opt for medical care outside of the country.  Medical "vacations" are a thing if you weren't aware.  Anyway, my sister was at a hospital in TJ and mom was there by her side as always.  So back at home it was dad and I.  He was laying on his bed, doors open leading to the living room and I was in the living room, facing the TV, my back to him.  He made a rustling noise like he was sitting up so I looked back at him and in that instant, he asked me, "Did you smell that?!"  
"No, what?"  
At this point, dad had already had surgery to remove his lower intestine, ulcerative colitis, so he had an ostomy appliance attached to his hip.  I mention this because some of you might be thinking dad farted and as a joke wanted me to breathe it in.  He couldn't pass gas that way anymore so no.  I didn't smell anything.  
He took a few seconds to compose himself and said, 
"I just smelled flowers.  The most incredible smelling flowers like someone had just walked past me with a bundle of them." 
"No, I didn't smell anything." and part of me was wondering how that could be.  After a couple of minutes of just sitting there facing one another hoping to smell it, me for the first time, him a second time, we both just went back to watching our separate TVs.  Him laying back down, me turning back to the living room.  Then it hit me.  

To this day, I can't fully describe properly what it was I caught the aroma of.  It was distinctly floral, almost like a rose.  But even a rose didn't smell as sweet.  It swept past me and I caught a whiff of it, just enough to register and then when I went back to breathe it in deeper, it was gone.  I swiped my head back and forth, leaning forward, stretching my neck out further and further to catch that aroma once again but it was gone.  I looked back at my dad who was sitting up on his bed again and he just smiled at me and said, 
"There it was again."  

I'm sure if you're even passingly familiar with the unexplained, the term Clairvoyant or even Clairaudient should sound familiar.  The ability to "see" or "hear" that which isn't there.  Mediums OFTEN claim to be Clairvoyant, even when they're not.  But I so rarely ever hear about the other Clair- abilities.  And I had never even heard of the term; Clairalience.  The ability to smell something which isn't there.  Yet, that seems to be what I've experienced.  In fact, both my dad and I experienced the same thing at the same time.  And if that doesn't do it for you, I'll do you one better.  We weren't the only two to smell those flowers at the time.  

Down in that Tijuana hospital as my sister was recovering from her surgery, and mind you, MANY of the hospitals in Mexico are run by churches.  And this one was no different, with the nurses actually being nuns associated with the church.  But in that hospital bed, my sister with mom sitting at her side, she asked mom what kind of incense the nuns were lighting in the hospital.  
"They don't burn incense here, it's a hospital."  

Cul-de-sac

It's taken me a few days to finally getting around to talking about this house for a few reasons. The first being that it wasn't 'our' house. Dad lost the previous house due to bankruptcy and we quickly needed a new place to live. So we found a rental in a cul-de-sac, the price was manageable and it was just big enough for the family. This was also around the time I started reading up more and more about what existed beyond our understanding of the world. Yes, I believed and saw with my own eyes unexplainable events but at this point in my life I started reading up more and more about angels and demons and got in touch with my spiritually. Sure, I bought a paperback about witches and spells when I came across the New Age section at B. Dalton years earlier when I was still in high school but I was well into working at the college at this point. However, once mom found that book back then, all hell broke loose and one of my aunts took it to do, I don't know what she planned on doing with it. She later told me she had put it in a closet in her home and her girls would "see" someone/some thing in the closet because of the book. I'm pretty sure I rolled my eyes at that statement back then and I'm rolling my eyes again just writing this out. 

Anyway, I started practicing shamanism and deep meditation techniques by the time we had moved in so I must have either blocked out what was going on at that house or it was leaving me alone for some reason. But that's not too say things weren't occurring there. Just that I wasn't experiencing it personally. So these are going to be second- and third-hand accounts. 

While I never sensed anything, my sister told me once we had moved out years later, that she never felt comfortable going into my bedroom for any reason. That in the back of her mind, she kept feeling/sensing that, "it's Louie's room, we can't go in there." Which I found so odd she felt that way since I hadn't been doing anything other than meditating in there. 

But it was my sister in her bedroom that she mentioned a sense of unease at times. She even stated that a few times she would wake up in the middle of the night and see a figure squatting in the corner of her room, only the moonlight coming through the window giving any sense of what she was looking at. Or that she once woke up to a woman standing over her bed looking down at her. 

While living at this house, my sister and the guy she would eventually marry started dating and a few times he'd sleep out in the living room and he said he never felt comfortable sleeping out there, that there was something or someone watching him while he slept. 

Other family members have mentioned an unsettling feeling at that house while we lived there. 

We were told at some point through my sister and brother's friends that the rental house was once known as the "party house" among their friends of friends. Which may be a reason why some of these things were happening. But considering the dark nature of what everyone else was feeling, it never bothered me, much less get my attention like what had happened at our former residences. Or what was to come at our next home.