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Post #3

Monday, 3.5.18
12:31pm
36 years old
188 pounds (Oscar party excess)
Meteorological conditions: windy enough to blow Odysseus home
Puppy conditions: Rousimoff is occupied with a chew toy, and is happy
Denver, CO

The author has not yet met a person without a ghost story.

These tales of specters and ghouls and supernatural spirits have spanned the spectrum from spooky to surreal to silly to seriously weird. The author's former residences in Boston were frequented with otherworldly visitors. In the neighborhood of Dorchester, the author dozed and made a home in a former crime scene. You see, reader, the previous residents of the home had been a mother and father and son. The story has it that son tried to execute mother and father by way of arson - a ghastly bit of business, reader, the author agrees. So one can imagine what sort of energies flowed through that home - macabre vibrations abounded.

It is the author's second residence in Boston that bears the most interesting story. A prominent family and second owners of a very comfortable estate on the edge of Milton had, in their employ, a maid and servant. The master of the house, Mr. Arnold Van Stein, had an affair with this maid (the author is racking his brain for her name but it simply will not come to the front, reader. I do apologize), and it bore them a son. This child was not cast out of the house, nor was the maid. Despite the protestations of Mrs. Van Stein, the pater was not to be moved - he loved the child and doted on the maid very openly. The lack of advancement in health care knowledge at the turn of the century in this country cost the child his life after only four years, and he died in the maid's quarters in the attic of the estate. In the years that followed, scores of visitors to the house (and the residents of the home itself) recounted tales of the child's presence. Footsteps could be heard in the secret staircase that connected the kitchen and the maid's quarters. The wails of a babe and soft whispering were heard by more than one guest. The house had adopted an occupant from the beyond, and this matter was not up for debate with its living residents. The child would forever be a part of the house.

At his current residence in the Mile High City, the author shares an edge with Cheesman Park. Cheesman Park is known to the residents of Denver as a city park of some infamy - its scandalous and grisly history as a former cemetery is common knowledge. There have been several reports of figures and shadows moving beneath the trees that line the edges of the park. Strange mists and fogs have settled over the lower valley of the park to the east. Travelers have reported feelings of sadness and depression at the park's northern boundary with the Denver Botanical Gardens (itself the former site of the Catholic section of the city cemetery).

What the author wonders today is whether or not he is drawn to these extraterrestrial energies, or if they seek him out. Or! Are the signs of the supernatural so ubiquitous as to be unavoidable? Perhaps the reason that everyone has a ghost story is because ghosts are everywhere and touch everyone. The author can draw no other conclusion. Our day to day experiences and lives insist that there must be some communion between living and dead, and there must be some harmony with our dearly departed. How are we to press onward without reverence and respect and a relationship with those who came before? And if this log is to be the chronicle of the author's journey through his life, there is only one place for it to end - and by then, the most wondrous thing that the author could hope to chronicle will render the need to chronicle irrelevant. That's a sad thought to have, though, and far too early to contemplate such things. The author hopes that day is far into his own future and yours, reader. But for now and for today, it is the final journey that all of us will take which occupies the author's mind. It is his sincere hope that those he's loved and lost will be the angels to greet him.

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