Wednesday, December 07, 2005

Demonic Mice and the Not Quite Dead

So this morning, I'm sitting in Starbucks listening with mild horror to the "please promote me" — "why should I?" meeting between white-shirted, stripy-tie employee and boss, two tables away. Even without hearing a word, you know the employee's on a losing streak. His shoulders are tense and bowed, and he's fiddling obsessively with a pen lid and staring at the tabletop between his arms as the boss speaks. Boss is fair haired and sitting with his legs apart and just hasn't stopped talking for — no kidding — about an hour. Employee is sinking lower in his chair. Lower and lower. It's like watching a wildlife documentary, really. If they had antlers it would be SO much easier.

Then two students come to the next table, sip their mint whizz thingumbys and talk about...ghosts! Wooooooo! Trying hard not to look as if I'm listening, I listen harder. Cool! Was it our local fenland favourite, the Black Shuck? The giant black, demonic dog that stalks the reeds and fields at night, portending the death of those who see it within the year? No. It was a slightly cold feeling in an upstairs room of their shared house. I am disgusted! A slightly cold feeling is a totally rubbish paranormal experience. I get it all the time. When I sit by the window; when I eat ice-cream; when I watch daytime television. But I needed, of course, to do some immediate research on Cambridgeshire ghosts. These, according to the Paranormal Database, are our local manifestations of the supernatural. Never has ghost-hunting seemed such an attractive alternative career.

  • Etheldreda's Blue Hand
  • A Little Old Lady Attracted to Wives
  • A Creature with One Yellow Eye
  • Green Lady Removes Bedcovers
  • A Pale Yellow Head without Ears
  • A Nun, and A Brown Dog Thing
  • Large Furry Penguin-Like Creature
  • A Womaniser
  • Car
  • Sounds of a Motorbike
  • A Black Chrysler hit by Express
  • Terrible Smell
  • A Voice Asks for a Spade
  • Stabbed Bulldog
  • Party with Ugly Young Man
  • Murdered Elizabeth Pateman Wringing her Hands
  • Small White Dog
  • Jospeth Hannath's Wife
  • Giant Saxon Warriors
  • Snowy the Cat
  • Animals Feel 'It' at 20:20 Each Evening
  • Charlie Presence
  • The Not Quite Dead
  • Skeleton
  • Victorian Road Crossers
  • Monk
  • Demonic Mice

4 comments:

Heidi the Hick said...

Fascinating! Can you get all those things at the Starbuck's, because that might distract the blowhard boss from his lecture. Or the limp employee could quit and take up ghost hunting!

Heidi the Hick said...

aagghh! that paranormal website is amazing! My husband's family has a long history with Sidney Sussex college, and now I'm so bummed out that I didn't know enough to look for Cromwell's pale yellow head when I was there 15 years ago visiting! Oh the regret!

Pluvialis said...

Ahh! You should come visit again! Definitely! I can't promise Cromwell's earless head, nor demonic mice, though -- but you should still come visit!

Heidi the Hick said...

I think it's time for one of the relatives to get married again...