November 1, 2011
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1 Another Halloween.
2 They just happen, every year.
3 And then they're gone.
4 Interestingly, we had more Heidi things going on than we have in years.
5 Not too much, but enough to be worthy of DN news.
6 For instance, yesterday I got to our Theater early.
7 I went up to the tech booth to set the lights for the Heidi Chronz.
8 I flipped on the light switch, and nothing happened.
9 Normally, when you switch on a light switch, lights go on.
10 Not yesterday morning.
11 I switched on the light switch and nothing happened. The lights did not go on.
12 Fortunately, another switch turned on the incandescent lights in the booth, and I was able to light the stage down a bit, no thanks to the normal light switch.
13 Pretty normal stuff for the Heidi stories.
14 My first class of the day came in, and instantly everything in the Theater turned strange.
15 I began my stories, but something felt extremely weird. I can't always explain it, but it was an overall feeling with that morning group.
16 Some kids got a bit spooked, but I began the stories, telling them all that I was just a scribe, like any scribe who ever had to relay history to a younger generation.
17 I began my stories.
18 When I got to the climax of the stories, the stuff about a one-act play I once wrote called the Titanic that was included in a collection of short scenes and plays called Ship of Fools, a strange, light breeze brought a slight chill to the Theater.
19 Everyone in my morning class felt it, and a few even wanted to leave.
20 As always, I told them that if they wished to leave, they could.
21 It became a lttle strange, but I kept going with the stories.
22 The discomfort was felt by all, but I continued, welcoming anyone uncomfortable to go out to the lobby.
23 They all stayed, and I finished it all up, and then received applause because of a genuine Halloween scare.
24 Only it wasn't really a scare; it was just me relating things that happened so many years ago, as truthfully as I could deliver it. The play, which included direct quotations of Titanic survivors, almost always turned the YB Theatre chillingly cold. Each time we rehearsed that play back then, the temperature would turn cold, and the seats in one area of the Theatre would begin clicking in a sort of popcorn fashion. It would happen at different times of the day: at afternoon rehearsals, as well as at evening performances. Interesting to note that a lot of the survivors we had quoted had since died. Consequently, my students were saying the exact words of some people who had later died after having quoted them.
25 The applause from my classes yesterday was interesting, and much appreciated.
26 I've told these tales for years, almost untouched, and they remain incredible.
27 But oh, my. Sometimes it all becomes quite real, and quite present. I must confess I was a bit spooked yesterday.
28 The stuff became almost too much for my morning class.
29 The remainder of the day saw no noticeable temperature changes, nor anything really unusual. I told the same stories I have told for years, and only got out of sequence twice the whole day. That usually happens when students try fooling around, or talking to the point of distraction.
30 It takes a great deal of concentration to tell even a familiar story five times in one day, so I got a bit out of sequence with the story during my fifth period class, which is just before lunch.
31 At one point, the students got scared, because someone was standing and watching the stories. I had the Theater extremely dark, so we did see a shadow on the wall house right.
32 "H, it's Jenny!" came a voice from the house. I had invited alumni to come in yesterday, and Jenny Valdez was always a person who not only loved the stories, but who went through a few quite real encounters with me through the years. It was great of her to come in and corroborate a few stories.
33 The best thing she reported was the clicking of the spot booth a few years back. I rememember it distinctly, because the clicks were not singular, but rather staccato. She told my class how she put her hand on the spot both and felt the clicks happening. I did too, and as I recall the Theatre turned remarkably cold that day.
34 It was truly a remarkable series of stories this year, as hauntingly strange as ever.
35 I'm realizing that the more things that happen each year, the longer the stories get. So many small things happened this year that it will be tougher to tell these tales next year, and in subsequent years.
36 I'm beginning to think that it is time for me to re-write the stories. I have notes from the Geocities stories, which I tried adding to each year, but which often wouldn't allow me access, nor even the ability to do layers any longer.
37 A few years ago I tried copying and pasting that story from Geocities to Xanga.
38 When I went to paste it, it became huge, smothering my entire Xanga page. I couldn't even get to the control keys to remove it and to write the DN.
39 I was able to Google the situation and go through a virtual exorcism, but I have never been able successfully to take the story I had been writing and paste it anywhere else. The story was layered with pictures, and the fonts on the written story would change, get bigger, shrink, and other odd things.
40 That happened on one Halloween around 2006. I'll try to hunt that story down, because all the Xanga postings have been archived since 2004. I checked on that this past Saturday, but there's a lot, and it is over two-week periods each year.
41 It is becoming obvious that I will one day have to write the entire story, updating odd things that happened at times when I wasn't paying careful enough attention, and THAT goes all the way back to 1998.
42 For some reason, I became less willing to believe that the stories were ongoing.
43 At least until this year.
44 So many strange things occurred this year.
45 I fully intend to archive them.
46 One girl in my class, for instance, a straight A+ student, reported her skepticism about the stories. She told the class that she was pretty skeptical, but brought in a story only for extra credit.
47 She also said that she went on Microsoft Word in order to shorten her story so that she could practice it, and that when she finished, a bunch of sixes appeared on her computer screen. She backspaced them off, walked off, came back to her computer only to find three giant sixes on the screen.
48 Another student said that her mom was a ghost-hunter, and that they had two pictures with a ghost in each. She had them on her phone all day, but during my class she couldn't access them.
49 There are more, and there will be more.
50 Running late.
51 Gottago.
52 More to come.
53 Peace.
~H~
