{"id":14085,"date":"2025-08-01T19:53:27","date_gmt":"2025-08-02T01:53:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=14085"},"modified":"2025-08-07T17:50:44","modified_gmt":"2025-08-07T23:50:44","slug":"the-case-of-the-paranormal-pincushion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=14085","title":{"rendered":"The Case of the Paranormal Pincushion"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In my last post, I mentioned the English writer Mary Ann Norton’s “Borrowers” books, which my sisters and I treated as enjoyable kids’ books. It was a long time before it occurred to me that possibly she made up a story around actual events<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have had a quite a few experiences in this house, more than I would want to chronicle. But here is one from this past spring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had been mending some item of clothing in the living room, sitting in the armchair that has a good, powerful lamp beside it. I had left the thread, pin cushion, and small scissors there on the adjacent TV table.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A couple of weeks later, I had needed to fix something else. I went back, and everything was there \u2014except the pincushion. Looked behind the chair, behind the TV stand, under the nearby bookcases, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No luck. Cleaned and vacuumed the living room. Nope.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The usual suspect is brown and has four paws, and he has a soft mouth when he wants, but with all those needles and pin sticking out? Biting down would be . . . regrettable. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I went to Joann\u2019s, the fabric and hobby supplies chain, and bought a pin cushion, pins, and thread for a particular job. Good timing, because then I learned that that chain is shutting down<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A month later, M. is walking from the study into the bedroom. There is a tall bookcase there with all my religious studies books. It\u2019s a brick-and-board bookcase (we still decorate in American Grad Student), with the shelves held up by bricks standing on end.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Slightly above her eye level, between two of the bricks at the end of the shelf, she saw something. Yep, the pin cushion. Still with floor dust on it, as shown in the photo above. It had moved from the other end of the house. And the dog, even if he had picked it up, would not have placed it five and a half feet above the floor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They “borrowed” it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Type your address in the Subscribe box, and I will post another weird experience some time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In my last post, I mentioned the English writer Mary Ann Norton’s “Borrowers” books, which my sisters and I treated as enjoyable kids’ books. It was a long time before it occurred to me that possibly she made up a story around actual events. I have had a quite a few experiences in this house, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[227,468],"class_list":["post-14085","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-paranormal","tag-wights"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-3Fb","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":13414,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=13414","url_meta":{"origin":14085,"position":0},"title":"Bigfoot on the High Wire?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 13, 2023","format":false,"excerpt":"Everything is paranormal these days. Even Stormy Daniels, the porn actress whom Donald Trump made famous, also bills herself as a paranomal investigator and medium. (\"How to arouse a ghost\"?) Driving past a shopping mall parking lot last week, I saw an assortment of new-looking trailers and motorhomes and circus\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"North America\"","block_context":{"text":"North America","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=north-america"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/paranormal-girl-240x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1923,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1923","url_meta":{"origin":14085,"position":1},"title":"Paranthropology newsletter","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 24, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Paranthropology is the \"Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal.\" From the website: The first issue of a new newsletter entitled \"Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal\" is set to be released this July. While the main emphasis of the journal is on anthropological approaches, it will also\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"anthropology\"","block_context":{"text":"anthropology","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=anthropology"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2026,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2026","url_meta":{"origin":14085,"position":2},"title":"When You Meet the Buddha in the Road, Bite Him","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 18, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"We have a best-selling series of romance novels about vampires written by a Mormon. But we also have a popular, if not so huge, series of romance novels about people in Amish communities, by a writer who grew up around Amish people but is not herself Amish. Is this a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11767,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11767","url_meta":{"origin":14085,"position":3},"title":"A Quick Video Introduction to Fairy Studies","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 1, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"? Early in the twentieth century, the famous physicist Ernest Rutherford (1871\u20131937), \"the father of nuclear physics,\"\u00a0 is supposed to have remarked snarkily that all science was either physics or \"stamp-collecting.\" ((Variations on the saying include \"That which is not measurable is not science. That which is not physics is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"fairies\"","block_context":{"text":"fairies","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=fairies"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6158,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6158","url_meta":{"origin":14085,"position":4},"title":"Colin Wilson 1951\u20132013","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 7, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"A prolific writer on mysticism and the paranormal, among other things, the English author Colin Wilson has passed on. In the video (audio recording, really) he discusses some of his work and personal experiences.","rel":"","context":"In \"England\"","block_context":{"text":"England","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=england"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":13659,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=13659","url_meta":{"origin":14085,"position":5},"title":"‘Lodge Tales’ Is a Native American Paranormal Podcast","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 25, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"My overall favorite paranormal podcast is Timothy Renner's Strange Familiars, which now has logged 465 episodes. Its style is low-key. Usually people discuss their experiences with \"the Other\" in conversation with the host. Sometimes he and a friend or two take a late-night walk on the Appalachian Trail or another\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"cryptids\"","block_context":{"text":"cryptids","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=cryptids"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/lodge-tales.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/lodge-tales.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/lodge-tales.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/lodge-tales.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14085","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14085"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14085\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14099,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14085\/revisions\/14099"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}