Most of my stories about how the “critters,” the house wights, the Borrowers (to borrow a term), or whatever they are like shiny objects.
There was the still-missed Norwegian salad-serving fork. Corkscrews vanished a couple of time. Another big serving fork disappeared and then reappeared, lying in plain view in an empty dish rack. Two rings of keys vanished from a spot on top of a filing cabinet. One later reappeared elsewhere (and there might be a naturalistic explanation, I admit), while the second was gone for good.
A few months ago they branched out into books. It was a one-time thing as far as a I can tell. (Well no, what happened to that Allan Kardec book?) There is a kind of a switcheroo in this one.
So I was musing about the history of the Tarot, and I wanted to look for something in Joscelyn Godwin‘s The Pagan Dream of the Renaissance, but I could not find it on the shelf where it was supposed to be.
The Pagan Dream of the Renaissance recounts the almost untold story of how the rediscovery of the pagan, mythological imagination during the Renaissance brought a profound transformation to European culture. This highly illustrated book, available for the first time in paperback, shows that the pagan imagination existed sidebyside often uneasily with the official symbols, doctrines, and art of the Church
I looked and looked. No book. No problem, I’ld order a used copy from the Big River. In due time, it arrived. I opened it and left it on my desk. Shortly after, it disappeared, leaving only the wrappings.
I ordered a third copy, and in a few days it arrived, as seen the photo. Meanwhile, the original book “re-appeared” — I put that in quotes because because it is quite possible that this was nothing paranormal but just me mis-remembering where I had put it. Every little weirdness does not bear the fingerprints of The Other. Sometimes I outsmart myself.
But somewhere there is a copy of The Pagan Dream of the Renaissance, and I would like to know who is reading it.
I am so glad other households experience these happenings. On occasion usually after a particularly annoying disappearance, I have addressed the unseen and asked for a return of the vanished object. I often find it somewhere odd relatively soon after my request. I think it is polite after the return to leave something for them that I think they might like.
It is also possible that many years of solitary living has made me eccentric
Sometimes polite requests and bribery work, and sometimes not! The best time was a couple of years back, when this large Hermes talismanic coin (think silver dollar size) fell from my jeans pocket as I was hanging them up.
I heard it hit the bedroom floor and roll. Then the sound stopped. “It’s in the rug,” I thought. But it was not.
U shrugged it off. Two or three nights later my wife and I were both coincidentally awake at 2 a.m. — it was Daylight Savings Time switch time, and so right when 2 a.m. became 1 a.m. DST, we both heard a heavy coin hit the wooden floor, about five feet over from the first drop. Like it had dropped from three feet up or so.
She got up to go to the bathroom, and, of course, she stepped on it. I asked her to hand it to me. “Where have you been?” I asked the coin. It didn’t say.
“Who is reading it?” A raven, or a raccoon! Both thieves are known to be attracted to shiny objects, but will return the book when it turns out to be inedible. After all, it takes a while to digest some radical ideas!