Raising The Bar (2)

I was in the pilot of this show and was quite surprised to be called again now that episodes got ordered. This is the first time I’ve been in both the pilot and the series.

I was a public defender in the pilot. I was booked as a public defender again, but when I got there and the AD was signing us in, I noticed my name was separated out all by itself near the court reporter and clerks. As I got further through the line, I saw that I was supposed to be “Marcus 2nd”. What the hell did that mean?!?

In essence, I was instantly terrified. As far as I knew, I was about to be paraded around naked. No, wait. That’s a role I could figure out on the fly…

Anyway, I stressed all the way through check-in, all the way to the wardrobe line and then even more when I was pulled out of line because apparently I was someone important that might be needed on the set first or something, so they cut me in front of the rest of the extras. Aaaack! I hate it when that happens.

It took three tries. None of the suits I brought were appropriate for what they needed and two of the suits they gave me didn’t work right either. During all of this, I heard, “She’s going to be right there at the table the whole time. Right next to Marcus.” And the Costume Designer was being exceptionally picky.

Great, so I was about to be playing a heavily featured role that I didn’t know how to do. Nice.

I readied myself for the snake pit and dove right in.

Sure enough, I was seated in the courtroom, at the prosecutor’s table. Then my one big moment happened… The guy who was clearly the legal consultant walked by. I gathered up the courage to flat out ask him what it was that I was supposed to do. Do I take notes? What?

I was to be the prosecutor’s assistant. I was to do whatever the prosecutor wanted me to do. Note taking was optional.

Finally, there was meaning in my life. I knew my purpose. Everything was going to be okay. Well, mostly. There’s still that bit about being featured and having to act.

Why was I freaking out so much? I’m a background ACTOR, so why should this be so crazy to me?

Well, because I’m not ‘looking for my big break’ or ‘wanting to be a star’ or any of that kind of stuff. I just want to be part of the Hollywood magic and hopefully be in frame in the finished product so I can do a screen capture and put a little arrow pointing to me. Y’know, being recorded as part of history even if no one outside of this blog knows that tiny little blur is me. I don’t have big aspirations. If it happens, great, but I’m not going to seek it out. I don’t have that kind of stamina and rejection as a writer is hard enough. Rejection as an actor is far more personal.

There are several actors who would’ve been instant hams in my particular situation, too, and mentally rehearsed lines they’d make up and try to slide in so they could get paid more or try to show off like this was an on-the-job audition.

I’m not that kind of girl. I was there to be the prosecutor’s assistant and not steal his show. I was to work with him, not over him…and also not make him look like an idiot for supposedly hiring me.

That’s where all the nerves come from. But once we were rolling during the first take, I realized that mostly I’d be listening to the court case. There wasn’t much interaction necessary between Marcus and I. And what was necessary was on his lead, not mine.

So I went with that and everything grew from there. I started to scowl at the other lawyer, I got engrossed in the testimonies, I silently rooted for Marcus whenever he was addressing the jury or questioning a witness. It was awesome. For a role I had no idea how to play, I got it figured out pretty damn well if I do say so myself. (I just hoped I impressed the director, too…)

After much of the testimony of the three witnesses was done, there were still turnarounds to do…and then my chance to really shine. I gotta admit that sitting at a table with two big cameras about three feet from my face–which moved back and forth and side to side during the take–was both terrifying and exhilarating. Both the hair and make-up people had been touching me up between takes all day and that really boosted my confidence because at least I knew I was looking my best…now if I could just act my best, too, without looking fake…

In college, I majored in Theater Design and Technology. Basically, what that entails is about three-quarters of the acting classes that Actors had to take plus a few specialized stagecraft classes. In those acting classes, I was always near the top of the class. Aspiring actors used to ask me how I did so well since I didn’t even wanna be an actor when I grew up.

I flat out told them the truth: “I just go up on that stage and get the assignment done. I’m there to do a job. No more, no less. I don’t care what I look like or how I’m doing. I don’t care about any of that. I just get the job done according to what the teacher wants.”

My own advice paid off… That plus a little bit of paying attention when I watch movies and stuff. Ever notice how when they cut to someone who’s listening, they always use the clips where the person scratches his nose, shifts in his chair, sniffs, rolls his eyes, bites his lip, swallows, tilts his head, etc.? With that bit of knowledge in my head, my advice to myself about a job to be done and an interior monologue about the case at hand going through my head, I was good to go.

And then it finally hit me pretty hard that it was a two-shot with myself and Marcus. He knew the script. He had worked through his character. He was being directed. As an extra, if the director directs me, they have to pay me more money, so directors usually stay away from background actors. Sometimes, they have the 1st AD relay direction, but only when it’s really necessary. Good enough is good enough when it comes to extras.

This being a two-shot suddenly had me scared again. We were to be looking slightly to the right, so that put Marcus out of my peripheral vision. I’d be mostly winging it, so hopefully he’d make a few big movements so that I could sort of copy them. Not exactly, but if he shook his head, I at least wanted to match him with a scowl or rolling my eyes…something that had the same sort of connotations. That way we looked like a team–two people who had put a ton of work into this case together.

As soon as I heard “Action!” I just started making it all work. I did the best I could to match Marcus. I went really deep into my character…and realized that my shoulders were somewhere up by my ears because I was so stiff. How did that get past my mental inventory? Well, since I didn’t give a shit about what I looked like, I made that tension work, too and shifted at an appropriate spot and did a few other movements–even played with my pen a little.

That first ‘listening’ take was crazy, but I could tell by the director’s smile and the excitement of the camera operators plus the Director of Photography introducing himself to me between takes that I must’ve done something right. Yay! Go me!

Two solid minutes of nothing but listening can seem like an eternity–especially when you have to react to words you’ve heard a million times as though it’s the first time you’ve heard them. It gets hard to fight the anticipation sometimes.

Good golly, I was so thrilled. I mean, what was supposed to be just another extra gig had turned into so very much more and I’m so glad for that. I really am. It’s these little things that really spur me on, keep me going back to face the hours of boredom or the comments like “Stupid fucking extras…” and waiting until the crew goes through the lunch line before us extras are allowed to eat. It’s the kind of adventure I thrive on. It’s why I have been doing this for the past five years.

As a general note on this gig, though, I just gotta mention that another personal record was set for me. The trial took place over the course of four days…three of which were being shot on the same day…which means that us extras had to have three different outfits. This was a first for me to have three outfits that required an area for me to change in rather than just putting on a jacket or taking it off. The other part of this first is kind of funny.

Due to how long it takes to move cameras and rearrange a room to cheat stuff to look right in frame, sometimes, they’d leave the cameras in place and have everyone go change clothes. I swear it, we must’ve changed clothes at least thirty times by the end of the day. It got so hectic at one point, that I forgot which was which and changed into the wrong outfit. I had to ask the wardrobe people because I felt wrong, but couldn’t figure out what I was supposed to be wearing. After that, I started going by who was on the witness stand rather than what scene or what day it was because I just couldn’t keep them straight!

I’m betting that’ll make for a good story for all of us extras when we’re in holding on whatever show we work next. We’ll all have an “On Raising The Bar, we had to change clothes a million times” story to share in exchange for a “On War of the Worlds, Tom Cruise refused to work until production put heaters in the extras holding tents because we were freezing” story.

That’s another thing I love about being an extra. The stories are fascinating…and I’ve lived some of them!

Oh yeah, and the other surprise for the day was that I was to be recalled for the following day. Yay!

While the make-up lady was putting my face on, she said, “I just gotta say that you looked really pretty on camera yesterday. You did really good. The way you were lit… You looked really great.” I was stunned. I couldn’t believe my ears. I mean, yeah, the director shook my hand and thanked me at the end of the day and that was really, really, really freakin’ cool, but no one said anything about my performance or how I looked. I just figured that since I wasn’t being yelled at or directed, I must be at least passable…y’know, for a stupid fucking extra.

Then, she said, “And over by the monitors, one of the people there said, ‘Who’s she? The camera’s all over her? Does she have any lines?’ and when they said no, he was really surprised. ‘She’s really good.'” Yeah, I was beyond the valley of ready to do happy dance cartwheels. For a role I didn’t know how to play and didn’t even know I’d be playing it until about an hour before I did it, that ain’t too shabby a thing to say.

However, that also meant I had to do a repeat performance. No pressure or anything…

And at least the second day I didn’t have to change clothes. That was such a relief! The first day, my suits were polyester, but this second day, I was wearing wool and thought I was going to pass out from the heat a few times when I couldn’t take the jacket off. At least it was a skirt suit. That helped a little.

I did more listening and there were a few times when Marcus leaned over to say stuff to me. That was fun. Also, when the verdict was read and we won the case, it was fun to react a little, too.

But the absolute most difficult shot of the whole two days was the shot where Marcus and I leave. He and the other lawyer have some lines while we’re picking up our paperwork and stuff. Somehow, miraculously, I was able to carry my purse, a legal-size, inch-thick accordion file and two of those file box briefcases…and do it like it’s no big deal…and get through the swinging rail and out another door.

Somehow, it all worked out and I didn’t disrupt the scene too much, but wowie, now that was acting! I can’t imagine what it would’ve been like if those file boxes had been full. Ah well. That’ll make for another good story to tell while in holding next time I hear someone talking about how much stuff they had to carry in a scene.

Keep your fingers crossed that I get to work on this show again. Sometimes, they don’t bring extras back if they’ve been featured. Hopefully, I’ll get a recurring role as Marcus’ assistant throughout the series. That would kick ass, but I’m not gonna hold my breath. *sigh*

Another interjection

Before I get into some of the bigger stories, I do want to clarify that while I consider myself a sensitive, I’m also able to separate that sense from my others. I don’t claim to have any incredible ability or anything like that. And mostly what I post here are the things I couldn’t figure out.

Recently, I discovered that part of my ‘ability’ has to do with a sensitivity to EMF. If I stand too close to the microwave while it’s on, I can feel it. The heavy duty amplifiers in my husband’s high end sound systems have the same effect. Some of them don’t even have to be on for me to feel them.

However, I have to be within about two feet from them and the energy is constant. It does not fluctuate.

What I consider ghosts fluctuate. Also, the paranormal experiences I have had sometimes include an emotion with the fluctuation, maybe an image or two that pop into my head and sometimes words either heard or spelled out. They also seem to have a life of their own. They feel more natural, imperfect and are far from constant. They are usually fleeting and have a sense of motion.

If the experience doesn’t have those qualities, I don’t consider it paranormal. I might consider it strange and worthy of more investigation, but not ghostly.

Also, up until recently I haven’t felt a desire to truly investigate for the sake of investigating. My experiences have simply happened. Sometimes, in the moment, I’ll try to debunk, but sometimes I don’t consider it necessary. I don’t recall having something paranormal happen without my sixth sense lighting up one way or another. Sometimes, the event is weak and I don’t get much from my sense, but that’s still a matter of learning how it works. And tuning in isn’t always possible within a split second.

Like any other bit of equipment, if you don’t know what it means, the reading is useless. There is no instruction manual for being sensitive. There’s only experience. And in my experiences, I’ve learned what I seem to be good at and what I am particularly bad at. Plus, just because I sensed it a certain way, that doesn’t mean another sensitive will agree, and that doesn’t mean equipment will show a reading. All I can do is keep trying, keep learning, keep questioning.

As I write this, I’ve got some activity going on upstairs. My sixth sense has always come alive in that particular spot, but I’ve been more comfortable just ignoring it. Whoever’s up there doesn’t come down here–at least not that I’ve felt much over the years–so I’m not really worried. What concerns me most is that I can’t seem to get much of a read on who the person is and whether she is even aware of her current state.

While doing an EVP session with one of my antique dolls, I didn’t think it all the way through and put the particular doll about three feet from the odd spot upstairs. Duh! But on my second ever EVP session, I got what sounds like two different spirits. About seven sessions later, I got a short one with only one voice.

Twenty sessions later, I’m wondering why the ghost up there won’t talk anymore! All she does is play with my remote controls when we’re trying to watch movies…and I’ve tried everything I can think of to debunk the two remote controls and it’s just not happening. Plus, my sixth sense does light up when stuff happens, but it’s very low level. I wonder if the ghost even knows she’s doing it at all.

So, if you enjoy being entertained by ghost stories, feel free to keep reading my blog. From here out, it does require a bit of a stretch for those who are skeptic, but I want to share my experiences. I mean, I find them fascinating, maybe you will, too.

I Love You, Man

This was my first gig as a waitress where I had a specific uniform and had to be fitted before the shoot. I was a waitress in Windfall and on Twins, but not the kind that wore the apron and shoes…and panty hose. I always try to help out the wardrobe department and bring my own stuff, but because of that, all five of my pairs of panty hose now have runs and snags or both.

But this time, they didn’t get mad. They gave me a pair. So, I’m bagging them up and stashing them in the bottom of my gig bag just in case…so I can keep helping out the wardrobe people since the only time I wear panty hose is on set.

It’s been awhile since the last time I didn’t really know what to write about a show. Sometimes, I spend hours bored. Sometimes, I spend hours doing something monotonous. Sometimes, I never even make it onto the set, but there’s still tons to write about.

This time, there isn’t much to report except that I was nervous as hell because I was a waitress. On other shows like this, they have the waitresses visit ten tables, do fifteen things, hit marks on barely audible lines. It’s insanity. I was worried I’d end up like that, too.

But they used the other two waitresses in the first set-up.

Then, they almost used me in the next one.

Then, I was going to work the one after that, but it changed.

I knew I’d be in the next one for sure, though. I was the only one who hadn’t been seen.

And it was so quick, I only had time to literally work from table to table pretending to ask how everyone was. I carried no menus, never whipped out the order pad, nothing.

Oh, wait… On the turnaround, I did get to deliver one drink, but that was literally it. The amount of time it took to get that drink to the table, turn and walk out of frame was about the entire length of the shot.

I’m counting myself very, very lucky.

Between one of the set-ups, I went out to use the port-a-potty and on my way back in the restaurant, I came around the corner and surprisingly ended up making good, solid, dreamy eye contact with Paul Rudd. I did a mini mental swoon and looked away for fear I might get in trouble (some actors get upset because it disrupts their concentration) and then realized that Paul didn’t seem like that kind of a guy and it was between shots, he was just relaxing.

It was a legitimate smile moment no matter who he was, so I should’ve just done it even though I might’ve accidentally drooled, and then darnit all…the moment was gone…never to return. *sigh*

But let me just say that my little split second staring into his eyes was a tiny wonderful slice of heaven. *sigh…swoon…sigh*

After the restaurant stuff was done, we went to a bowling alley where I was switched out to just regular background…Deep background, no less. So deep that I have no idea what the scene was about.

After a few million walk-through-frames, I got to go home. All in all, definitely not a bad gig.

My love for old dolls

I’ve been collecting dolls since I was in fourth grade. Sure, I had a lot of dolls long before then, but that’s when it really started for me.

When I was about five, my aunt gave me two of the dolls she played with when she was a little girl. One was a big, tall Patty Playpal–who was taller than I was when she was given to me! The other was a small doll that by my mom and aunt was called a “Ginny doll”.

Since Patty and I were about the same size, she got to wear some of my clothes, but Ginny came with a red trunk full of clothes. She was nothing like a Barbie or Darci or any of my other contemporary fashion dolls.

One day, for reasons I no longer remember I brought the Ginny doll with me when my family went out to dinner. (I was about ten years old… It made sense at the time.) There happened to be a doll shop in the same building, so after we ate, I went into the doll store.

Me being a little girl holding an old doll was too cute for the lady behind the counter to resist. She struck up a conversation with me and asked if she could look at my doll. I handed the doll up to the lady. She was older, had a sweet smile and was wearing this weird Hawaiian print dress that seemed so out of place in the doll shop, but yet it kind of suited the lady.

She told me that my doll was made by Madame Alexander in the 1950s and was worth about $125.

One. Hundred. Twenty. Five. Dollars.

To me, that was more money than there was in the whole wide world. She might’ve said the doll was worth a gazillion dollars and it would’ve been the same amount.

I walked out of there in a daze. Of course, I’d never sell the doll, but that was the beginning of a real fascination because I’d never even thought that people sold or bought old dolls. To me, dolls either came from my mom, my grandma, my aunt, my second cousin or from Toys R Us. Someone would pay money for my little doll? Someone would pay THAT MUCH for her? Wow. She must really be special.

That Christmas, Santa Claus brought me a Doll Price Guide (which I still have for chuckle purposes!) that I read almost like a regular book. I wanted to learn of every different kind of doll out there. I had no idea there were so many manufacturers, so many different materials that dolls were made of.

Then here’s the real curve ball. My mom had given me two of her dolls. One was a ballerina marked only with 16VW and the other was completely unmarked. How was I to find them in my price guide if they weren’t marked? I tried the library, but still couldn’t figure out who these two girls were.

Fast forward to college when I discovered dolls at flea markets and thrift stores and best of all, I had a car and could drive myself to the library or the bookstore.

Since then, I’ve amassed a collection of books. There’s always the internet, too. Not to mention ebay for a sort of real time price and identification guide.

I’ve also amassed quite a few dolls. I now have at least one from every decade from 1870 through the present. My passion is for the pre-1920 dolls, though. They have so much more character and I love doing repairs on them. More on that in later posts, I’m sure.

Meet the girl who started it all… Aunt Linda’s “Ginny doll”.

What does the future hold? I have NO idea…

In earlier posts, I’ve explained that I’m sensitive to paranormal activity. I’m psychic, however, I don’t get many premonitions whether in the form of feelings or even prophetic dreams. I simply suck at trying to foretell the future and I’m totally okay with that because I’ve got plenty of other stuff going on.

However, that doesn’t mean I haven’t had any premonitions.

A simple one happened after my car got wrecked in 1999. As soon as the tow truck arrived, I knew the path to getting my car back on the road again was going to be long and suck pretty hard. I also knew that I needed to go through it and learn from it. Both of those feelings came true, but let’s be honest…the feelings were awfully vague and I try to learn from every experience in my life anyway, so that one was no different. Although, in this particular instance, the grief I felt I was about to embark upon was not enough to make me tell the driver not to load up my car, not to take it to that shop. I felt I was in the right place, doing the right thing and should continue on with it even though it was going to suck.

Was that a premonition? I don’t know, but I’ve had a lot of similar situations. I just chalk them up to life experiences. I’ve also had times when I’d receive a feeling and indeed I would stop what I was doing and change directions because I felt something bad would happen if I continued. The problem is that I couldn’t experience both paths at the same time, so I don’t really know if I chose the better path. There’s no way for me to check my answer other than in my heart, I felt I was making the right choice.

To me, there are triggers. Thoughts, actions, things that pop into my head which trigger me to double-check what I’m doing is the best thing for the circumstances. Sometimes I ignore them, sometimes they can’t be ignored.

I have a few friends who are pretty good with premonitions even when they’re not really trying to foretell the future. Things just unfold in ways they said they would because somehow they just knew how it would happen.

I’m not generally like that. In one instance, I was driving back to work after lunch in 1998. I was in the lane next to the sidewalk. There were cars parked solid along the street on that particular block. A black, full-size, long bed pickup truck was in the lane to my left. Clear as day, I heard my grandfather’s voice shout, “Slow down!” Because his tone was so urgent, I was kind of scared and did as he said, hitting my brake, but not hard enough to lock up my wheels.

The pickup truck came within about two inches of my front bumper as he swerved into my lane and stayed there.

I would have been slammed into all the parked cars had I not slowed down. Premonition? I don’t really know for sure, but I definitely heard Grandpa’s voice. I hadn’t heard him talk for twenty years, but I would have recognized his voice anywhere.

Fast forward to 2003 around Halloween. This was one of the big firestorm years here in Southern California. The fire had burned up to my back fence the night before and I was heading to the set of a movie I was working on as a background actor.

A sense of urgency came over me. There was a telltale tightening in my solar-plexus, heightening the urgency. I had a feeling that I really needed to turn around and go back home. I didn’t know why, but it was very, very important. However, I also felt that if I turned around, I wouldn’t get there in time to do anything about whatever bad thing was about to happen.

I also honestly knew that if I turned around, I wouldn’t be able to make it home and back before my call time. Hmmm… That left calling my husband.

“I really need you to go home right now. I don’t know why, but I feel like something bad is going to happen. Can you just go home and check to make sure everything is okay. Please? I’d go if I could, but I can’t. Will you do that, please? I don’t know why, but it’s important that one of us go home right now and I can’t, otherwise I would.”

Generally, my husband is a workaholic. It requires a crowbar to get him out of his office–especially in the middle of the day and, good grief what a crazy, wacko reason I was giving him to drop everything and go to the house.

But he said there was something in my voice, something in the urgency, the fear, something that made him curious.

The police still weren’t letting even residents drive up into our neighborhood, so he parked at the base of our hill and walked all the way up through the subdivision, all the way up to our house.

All was quiet. The hills were still smoldering, but the house was fine. He walked out on our back deck on the second floor and surveyed the yard, the hills, the view in general, but there was nothing wrong, nothing bad going on, nothing truly unusual.

He said just as he said to himself, “Looks like she was wrong. Oh well.” and was about to turn around and go back inside, Whoosh! One of the trees on the back hill ignited. He ran inside to find the phone, even fumbled it trying to dial 911 because he was so surprised.

Firefighters came back and put it out and all was quiet once again. He called to tell me all that had happened and swore he’d never doubt my psychic ability ever again.

Premonition? I firmly believe yes. No one told me, I just knew.

Yeah, I didn’t get the details about what was going to happen, but I knew something needed to be done at home.

Although I suck at foretelling the future, I believe that if the event is important enough, I’ll pick up enough information to do something about it–whether that “something” is simply preparing for the worst or actively participating in an outcome that likely would not have happened had I not gotten some sort of feeling about the situation.

If I hadn’t called my husband, he definitely would not have been there and who’s to say whether that tree would’ve sparked fire on our property or that of our neighbors. But I do believe that since he witnessed the ignition, he was able to get the situation taken care of before it could escalate. Premonition or not, I’m glad no one’s house burned down.

Also, for the most part, most of my ability lies in feelings, empathy, emotion, not the physical senses, so in order to make heads or tails of what I feel, I have to tune in or interpret the information I receive through my sixth sense. And it’s not easy. It takes practice. And each situation is different although the same basic foundations are there. The more I encounter, the more I learn, the more educated I am in order to figure out how to deal with the next encounter and so on.

For those who don’t have this kind of sensitivity, the best way I can describe it right now is for you to go into your bedroom. You see everything that’s there. The furniture, whatever might be on it and around it, even the carpet on the floor, the light fixture or fan on the ceiling. You see it. You know it’s there.

Okay, now close your eyes. Can you still see it…or at least imagine it? Probably not in the same detail, but you can remember the basics.

That’s kind of how my sense works. Some things are easy to interpret…like if I walk into my bedroom, I know where the bed is and even if I didn’t, I know what a bed feels like, so if I trip over it or something, I can still identify it as a bed.

If I’m already blindfolded and I walk into a room I’m unfamiliar with, I find myself paying particular attention to the sound my footsteps make and whether they echo off of anything other than walls and how far away those walls are located from where I walk in.

I also use my sense of smell. For instance, I might know I’m in a garage because I can smell the motor oil. Then because there’s concrete under my feet, I can make the assumption that it’s most likely a garage. Plus, the echo of my footsteps off of the space plus all of the various items, some large, some small helps, too. It’s still an assumption, though, but a somewhat educated one because I’ve been in many garages and am familiar with the most common contents.

Each experience builds on the ones prior.

(I think this is also one of the reasons I seek out small adventures in my life and try to have as many different life experiences as I can. For instance, I work as a background actor because it takes me to places I wouldn’t likely go, I meet people I wouldn’t likely meet and I do things I wouldn’t normally do.)

Beyond these physical senses, my sixth sort of comes alive, sensing energy. To me, every object has energy. Some objects more than others. One of the hard parts is figuring out which objects commonly have what energy and that’s where my sense leads me in strange directions sometimes.

And sometimes, objects have picked up energy from people who’ve come in contact with them and the energy I sense isn’t from the object, but from the person. In many of those instances, I feel emotions. Sort of borrowed emotions that I can separate from my own. I know they aren’t mine, but they’re coming from somewhere.

I’ve mentioned that I’ve worked in several theaters. I was mainly a lighting technician, so I spent a lot of time in the dark. I always wondered why I was able to navigate so well in pitch darkness, but really, it makes sense… I read the energy coming from the catwalks, the fixtures, the pipes, the crawlspaces, the cables. Yeah, I’ve tripped over tons of stuff, but for the most part, navigating in the dark is something I’ve always been able to do quite well, even on stairways and ladders.

Okay, now back to being blindfolded. What if instead of being in a room full of objects, you’re in a room full of people? No one’s talking, yet you know you’re in the middle of a big surprise party just waiting to erupt. But they’re people you’ve likely never met before.

Welcome to my world. I hope you’re not as shy as I am or it’ll get really hard to deal with sometimes and you’ll want to turn it off, but it never stops.

Why are they here?

Apparently, that’s for them to know and you to find out…one way or another…

Through the eyes of me as a little girl

I’ve mentioned scent, audio and touch. Now, I come to sight. Due to my sensitivity, I’ve psychically seen a lot. However, there have been a few things I saw with my naked eye without using my ability at all. For this post, I’m going to go all the way back as far as I can remember and stick to my childhood experiences. I’ll cover some of what I’ve seen as an adult in later posts, I promise.

This first bit wasn’t exactly paranormal, but it is my earliest ghost memory. It was in the first house I lived in–which we moved out of when I was seven. I’m guessing I was about five years old at the time because of what my room looked like, how many dolls I had and the particular lamp on my nightstand.

I woke up at some point in the middle of the night and heard some sounds. I decided to investigate. As I got to my door–which was left open at night when I was that little–I determined that the sound was coming from the living room. The television was on. It was neither strange nor normal to me because I never woke up in the middle of the night so I had nothing to compare to. I went in there and found my dad asleep on the couch. What was particularly strange was the show that happened to be playing.

There was a group of people standing around a boxy device on the floor with a snaking, flashing light in a sort of tube pulled up to about six or seven feet high. This was some sort of documentary on the supernatural and trying to get in contact with the spirit world. The people standing in the circle were saying such things as “is there anyone here who would like to talk to us?” and “would you like us to turn off the lights?”

My dad woke up and I sat next to him there on the couch. We watched a few more minutes and I recall thinking those people were so absurd. Why were they using that machine with the stupid lights on it? Why did they think they needed it? Didn’t they know that the ghosts thought they were ridiculous and weren’t talking to them because those people were too closed-minded to figure out that yes, the ghosts wanted the lights turned off, but also that a machine with lights wasn’t what the ghosts needed in order to communicate? The people were completely missing the whole point of contact with the spirit world. I told my dad something along those lines, but I’m pretty sure he chalked it up to a little girl’s imagination.

We finished out the show and he put me to bed. I’ve asked him about that night and it doesn’t surprise me that he doesn’t remember, but I still remember the absurdity and how passionate I felt, even without any sort of foundation for those beliefs (which have changed here and there, but the core is still the same). I look back now and realize that yeah, I’ve always been sensitive. If at that age I thought it weird that adults couldn’t figure out how ghosts wanted to be talked to, the things I felt must have been real. The things I saw weren’t my imagination.

I still remember my old room and what it looked like in the dark with all of those people sort of floating around. There were lots of them…always were. They sort of superimposed on my physical sight whenever it was dark, no matter where I was. And it always felt crowded, like a lot of people in a concentrated area all at once.

Okay, now on to the first things I saw with my naked eyes. I don’t recall this phenomenon while in that first house, but I definitely recall it in the next house. The house was only about eight months old when we moved in. It never felt haunted…except by the spirits following me. One of which was my grandfather who passed away two months after my fifth birthday. I saw him superimposed on my physical sight and felt his presence a lot.

I loved him and he loved me. Grandpa was awesome and while I missed having him around physically to pick me up and let me watch him solder plumbing in the house he was building, show me how he cut feathers to put on the arrows he built for deer hunting and how to properly use a hammer, having him with me in spirit was good enough because I knew he’d always be around in a heartbeat if I got scared and needed someone.

On many nights, there was an indentation on the covers on my bed as though someone was sitting next to me. In fact, I used to leave room for whoever this person was! I recall shuffling to the far side of my bed, next to the wall so that this person could sit there with me and watch me sleep. I didn’t try to talk. I didn’t know what to make of it, but I wasn’t really afraid because it didn’t hurt me or make me too uneasy. Yeah, it felt strange, but not strange enough for me to leave my room. Sometimes the person felt like grandpa, sometimes not.

This went on for years. I’ve told very few people about it.

The other childhood memory I have is from a time when I was maybe nine or ten years old. That particular night I woke up for no apparent reason (or at least I’ve forgotten what had awakened me) around eleven o’clock at night, I think. I know it wasn’t the wee hours of morning, but I no longer recall exactly what time it was. Anyhow, I felt that someone was there in my room and I didn’t think this person was my grandpa. There was space at the foot of my bed for someone to sit there, but I was more toward the middle of my twin bed.

I had one of those clock radios where the numbers were printed on little tiles that flipped down each minute, each hour. When you whirl the dial to change the time, the tiles made a fluttering sound. The section of the clock for setting the alarm made a sort of clicking sound when you spun that wheel to set the alarm.

I woke up for no reason and felt someone else was there and silently asked for a sign as to whether what I was feeling was real or not.

The alarm dial of my clock radio started spinning. The radio turned on for the moment when it hit about 11PM (the current time) to about 12AM (what would’ve been an hour later) and went back out as the dial kept spinning, scaring the crap out of me. I was soooooooooooo scared. I begged it to stop, to please stop, to never do that again. I backed away from that edge of the bed and smashed myself into my stuffed animals next to the wall. I was utterly terrified, but strangely not enough to try to leave my room because the activity had stopped and I didn’t feel like I was in any real danger.

One of the creepiest parts of that ordeal was that the alarm dial also did not return to 5AM. It had stopped somewhere during the day and as much as I didn’t want to touch my clock after all that wackiness, I had to reset the alarm or I wasn’t going to be able to get up for school the next morning. It took me a good twenty minutes before I got up the courage to change it, but I slept the rest of the night through and never asked for another sign until more than a decade later…but that experience deserves its own entry.

My Favorite of Those Found

A way-back machine isn’t quite as necessary for this one except for me, it’s automatic. I still remember creating this one because I used the colors from my favorite sweater! I wish I still had it. I have the sleeves of the shirt I used to wear underneath it because I recycled them as part of the pantlegs to lengthen a pair of jeans that was too short. Yes, I still have those and yes, they still fit. Will I post a pic? Definite maybe.

Welcome to Favorite February 1988…

Touch me, Tex

I’ve already covered a few of my paranormal experiences with audio and scent…which leads me to touch. I haven’t experienced a whole lot of touch that I can attribute to supernatural occurrences because I was able to either debunk for sure or there were too many other possibilities. But there was one time, with a ghost in the first theater I worked in. His name was Tex.

He was not an actor or a stagehand nor did he have anything to do with the theater…except that he’d helped build it.

The theater building was erected in 1978 or so. I worked there from 1992-1996 while attending classes. It houses two main traditional theaters, a black box theater, a green room, some dressing rooms, a costume shop, a huuuuuuuuge scene shop and various necessary storage spaces in the basement and on the three stories above.

Tex was a construction worker from…you guessed it…Texas. He was working on the second floor one day. There are two main staircases, one at either end of the building plus another secondary one that hadn’t been built yet. It was time for lunch and rather than walk all the way to the other side of the building to go down the completed stairs, Tex wanted to use the stairwell he was nearest. The building was barely framed at the time. I don’t know if much of the third floor had even been constructed yet.

The nearest stairwell didn’t have stairs yet, only a platform at the next landing. Tex figured he could just jump down the 15 or so feet.

Poor guy…he somehow tripped and skewered himself up through the crotch on a piece of rebar. He did not die immediately, but he was in such a difficult place to get to that eventually he suffocated on his own blood before rescuers could get him down.

When I heard that story, it had only been about fifteen years since the incident had happened. I’d always felt a little odd in that particular stairwell, but I was never afraid.

As part of my introduction when I first started working in the scene shop, the foreman told me that if I ever use the freight elevator, make sure I turn the key off after I was done…because Tex likes to make the elevator go up and down. He sometimes did it when the key was turned off and removed from the elevator altogether! In other words, Tex was part of the family there in the theater building. He did no harm, just a little bit of mischief.

I know a few other people who encountered him. I’m guessing that because of the nature of his demise, he was really big on safety. Now, in theaters, we do the unthinkable sometimes: we stand on the top rung of ladders–the one where the stickers warn you not to. It’s just something we all do at one time or another. It’s not good practice, it is unsafe, but sometimes, you gotta do what you gotta do.

A friend of mine was working very late one night painting a set. She was all the way at the top of the ladder, stretching to reach a corner when she felt the ladder start to tip. She prepared to grab on to the scenery in case the ladder fell all the way over, but suddenly, the ladder righted itself. She looked down and there was a man in overalls and with a Texan accent telling her to be more careful. She thanked him and turned back to her work before realizing that she hadn’t heard any of the stage doors open or close before the man was there, nor had she heard his footsteps even though he was wearing work boots. She also heard neither of those sounds after he’d steadied her ladder.

Another friend of mine had found a door to the big theater unlocked one night. He was about twelve years old at the time, waiting for a ride after a school program had ended, and curious. So, he went inside the theater. For one reason or another, the ghost light wasn’t working (That’s generally a single light bulb on a stand placed near the front of the stage so that if there’s scenery or whatever, anyone who goes in there in the dark can make their way around. Theaters can be very, very dangerous places.) but he walked out onto the stage anyway. The illuminated Exit signs provided enough light for him to see that the stage was empty, but he couldn’t really see much detail out toward the middle. The floor is black, too.

He walked out from stage right, intent upon going to the front of the stage in the middle and look out into the audience. The space was magnificent. The proscenium opening was 60 feet wide and the house seated 1400 in bright red velvety seats. He got to a certain point and just stopped. ’Something’ prevented him from going further. He was a little scared, but more curious than anything. He backed up and stepped forward again, but something made him stop. Pulling a coin from his pocket, he flicked it out in front of him, wondering why he couldn’t go further.

It took awhile to finally hit something.

The orchestra pit was at basement level…about a twenty-foot drop. One more step and he would’ve fallen. In fact, his toes were right at the edge. Shocked at whatever force was holding him and even more shocked that it was a damn good thing the force had stopped him, he was frozen right there, trying to make sense of it all.

Then the temperature dropped and wind picked up, swirling around him, blowing his hair, scaring him and he ran out the way he’d come.

Yes, the air-conditioner was always on, but no, it never swirled with the force of wind–especially front and center stage–the entire three years I worked day and night in that particular space. The only time the air-conditioning freaked me out was in the basement because the ceiling was low and the vent was right at head height and the cold air would be surprising as I came around one of the lighting racks. My friend and I believe he had likely been ’saved’ by Tex.

There are numerous other stories about him, but those are my two favorites. My experience with him was somewhat less dramatic.

I’d gone down by myself into one of the storage rooms under the smaller stage in search of a cardboard tube for a project I was building upstairs in the scene shop. I knew where they were. I just needed to retrieve one. I always felt Tex’s presence strongest in the basement and this day was no different. When I got the storage room open, I discovered that some wooden chairs and another box of tubes had been placed in front of the ones I needed to get at.

Great. Well, I could either wrestle everything out of the way or lean way far over in order to get what I needed. Being lazy, I leaned…and as I looked at my target tube, I thought to myself, “Gee, it would really suck if I fell.”

I felt two fingers jab against my upper back and sure enough, it sucked to fall into that other box of cardboard tubes. And then I felt laughter. Tex was laughing at me…but he’d also taught me a lesson. I was uninjured in my fall except for a tiny scratch on the underside of my chin. But Tex–Mr. Safety–was laughing his ass off at my expense.

It’s because of him that I believe there are some good spirits out there. Not all are mean or in despair. I hope to go back and visit him one day. I don’t even know if he’s still there. If he is, I hope he’s still helping people, keeping them safe–or at least teaching them how important safety really is!

February 1988 a little different

So, it was February 1988 and I’d already done several pieces, so I thought I’d do one a little differently.

You’ll need your way-back machine for this one and if you look carefully, you’ll see my real name. Rina is just my pen name. Funny thing is, the actual birth of Rina was only maybe a year or two after this drawing. Rina was a character name from one of my long lost stories. For some reason I liked the name and remembered it through the years. My pen name would’ve been Twyla Emerson–born slightly earlier–but she’s a character in the Talisman Bay series that I write as half of Ashleigh Raine and I would’ve felt a little weird using her name.

Strap in to your way-back machine and enjoy February 1988…

Interjection about where I stand

All right, I’ve opened my can of worms and started posting some of my experiences with the paranormal. I feel it necessary to add one thing:

I am not a professional ghost hunter (yet). I’m just some weird girl who was born sensitive to all that’s around me physically and psychically. I haven’t taken classes. I have never finished reading any books on psychic abilities. (I get bored after I start them and never pick them up again.) I have not actively pursued ghost hunting although, I have worked in several haunted theaters as well as a haunted studio (the first purpose-built soundstage in Los Angeles). So while I haven’t done full-fledged investigations, I’ve spent many, many hours alone overnight in darkened theaters.

And let me tell ya…There are A LOT of people hanging around those places.

When I first got involved in theater, the resident ghost was sort of a joke, but everyone had stories and no one could figure out why the elevator used to go up and down at random times–without tangible passengers–sometimes when the key was turned off. I still thought I was crazy in that I kept feeling at least one unseen presence during this time period.

I’d fancied myself psychic, but my divination skills suck and I have yet to find a way of changing that. I used to do tarot readings for my friends, but that was mostly for fun. I don’t recall ever being “right on” when I read. Sensing ghosts, however, is something different.

In the early days, every time I was in a theater by myself and felt someone else nearby, I’d call out whether I’d heard them or not. I rarely got a response, but I’m also not sure I wanted to hear one! Darkened theaters are creepy and hazardous enough without paranormal activity going on. But through my having to work amid these conditions, I discovered that what I’d been sensing since childhood really were ghosts. They weren’t my over-active imagination.

In fact, as much as I know and believe the things I’ve experienced are real, I still look for validation. I still want further proof that I’m not insane. I’m an odd girl who never fit in, so it always feels good to have proof I’m not crazy, just sensitive and weird.

I’ve had experiences at all hours of the day although most have been at night. Most have been in the dark. Most have also been in places that are less traveled by people. Like, in rooms that don’t get used every day. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t had experiences that don’t fit that category. I mean, “someone” opened my refrigerator and rummaged through it and my kitchen gets used every day.

Also, I’m only blogging my favorite experiences or the ones that come to mind when people ask me if I believe in ghosts. I know there are several experiences I’m leaving out simply because I don’t remember them. If they didn’t leave a big enough impression on me, I suppose they weren’t important anyway–or at least didn’t change the way I look at the paranormal world. And some of them…well, even though I’m a published novelist, I find it difficult to describe them.

I mean, yeah, I can say that when I was in high school, whenever I visited my grandmother, I hated to go into her retirement home because all I could hear were screams and moans and people I didn’t know were coming up to me, asking why no one talks to them anymore or why their relatives don’t visit anymore and who’s that crazy lady living in my apartment now or go away and let us suffer in peace.

Maybe at some point I’ll dive in and write a post sort of fictionalizing that kind of experience so that those who are not sensitive can see what it looks and feels like to try and balance the dead with the living. (I always visited Grandma with at least my mom and there was noooooooo way I was going to let on that anything might be paranormally affecting me. No way, no how, no sirree.) It was always tough to focus on the living while I was being bombarded with all the other information, too.

Also, it wasn’t until just yesterday that I finally got a voice recorder. I even got a few EVPs. They’re class C and hard to understand even after cleaning them up a little, but I got ’em. I’m one step closer to listening to the spirits attached to my antique doll collection.

Okay, I feel I’ve given enough of my background in order to continue. In fact, my next post will be about one of my favorite ghosts.

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