Voices in the Wee Hours

A West Virginian woman posted something eerie on a paranormal website.

"One night after my husband and I went to bed I awoke in the middle of the night hearing what I thought was a female voice calling my name. I sat up in bed and looked at my clock it was 3am. I sat there for a minute and listened thinking maybe I was dreaming."

Strange, eh? Well just this morning on NPR's Morning Edition there is a story that warns of many kinds of ghosts from India, including this one that calls out your name...

"...But you have to watch out for the very dangerous nishi, who call people by name in the dead of night and lead them away, never to be seen again."

Ghosts - ghosts that call your name, take you out, then do unspeakable things to you AND get honorable mention on National Public Radio?

Oh big deal! Loads of times I have heard my name shouted aloud; disembodied voices calling to me in dark before dawn.

An example; I moved to Sacramento in 1990. Got myself an apartment in a fancy up-scale complex and if I were into labeling weirdness as paranormal, I would not be amiss to label that apartment as being mildly haunted. While living there, numerous times I would wake from a sound sleep, because I would wake, hearing a breathy voice whispering into my ear.

"Claire!"

Waking, there was no one there but me and my dog. And no, Chiquilla, my dog, never spoke.

At other times I woke, hearing my name called aloud from the living room. ‘CLAIRE!’

Did that cause me to worry about newly immigrant ghosts? Nawww... never once did I believe or think I was being called by a ghost, spirit or daemon, from here in Sacramento or anywhere else for that matter. I do admit, that whimsically, I refereed to the voices as my 'Angels'. Calling the voices such was just how I made reference to the calling in my personal journals; for literary purposes, there were playful angels messing with me.

In reality, I always presumed, and still do, that what I heard was not angels, but my own brain messing with me, a facet of my long history of abnormal dream sleep; a miss-firing of my brain's neurological circuits, my brain chemistry gone awry.

In my current home, 'angels' called my name only once or twice. Still, on a dozen or so occasions, I have been woken by the ringing/buzzing of an alarm clock, that I do not own, and is not in my house, much less my bedroom. I am saying that I am woken by a phantom alarm clock. Yes! Me! Allow me to explain.

My current alarm clock is my old Razor cell phone, which wakes me up to the ring tone of a pod of singing Orca Whales. Trust me - singing whales sound nothing at all like alarms, or buzzes. So I am not hearing the Orcas and thinking they are rings/alarms. And anyway, the alarms/buzzes wake me long before my old cell phone has a chance to sound out.

What happens is if I go to bed fretting about over-sleeping (an event I can say has happened maybe twice in my entire life), while I sleep, my subconscious runs through it's file cabinets of sounds-of-the-past, pulls up the exact sound of alarm clocks I have known and loved in the past, and then plays those sounds to wake me. The sounds that wake me on those 'oh so special' mornings, sound exactly like an electronic alarm clock going off in my room. I wake and wildly search for what is shrieking on my night stand - an annoying way to wake up, I can assure you.

So, currently, at least, there are no ghosts in my house; no spirits, daemons or angels. Only by reading information on-line did I realize, some people believe hearing their name called out when no one is there, means a ghost calling them. Ok, I know you can understand their logic - disembodied voice = ghost. But, the way I see it, either those frightened people are sadly mistaken. or perhaps... could it be... is it I who am in denial? BWAH HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!

The Week of Haunts.... BWAH HA HA HA HA!

Guilty secret: I enjoy watching Ghostly Encounters, a Canadian TV program that has real people speak about their experiences with ghosts, poltergeists and various other things that go bump in the night. The show features annoyingly spooky music has reenactments of its guest's ghostly confessions. I'm convinced some of the show's guests speak the truth, at least as they see experienced it, other guests on the show may be sadly deluded individuals, and a hopefully minute portion are lying like rugs to achieve their 15 minutes of fame.

Recently while watching Ghostly Encounters, it dawned on me that some of the types of experiences people discussed on the show have happened to me. Yes. No lie.

That I have had 'paranormal' experiences is what makes me think some of the show's guests are a bit deluded. Meaning, that while I've similar experiences to some of the people on Ghostly Encounters, I don't believe my many of experiences were paranormal. And what better week to drag those experiences out of the muck and mire of mind than Halloween week?

Therefore, this week I will present one spooky concept per day and take a bit of time to give my explanation why the concept(s) is, in my Claire-ish reasoning, is not paranormal. Or is it? [Fill in echoing blast of evil laugh here]

Ah! But I never said I don't believe paranormal things never happen - or that they have never happened to me. On Halloween Eve, I will give an example of something that happened to me that was so overly ‘coincidental’ that there is no way, in my mind, was it a coincidence. In my mind, it was truly paranormal.

And on Halloween I will reveal my one, unexplainable paranormal experience with a poltergeist.

BWAHAAHAHAHAHA! [Cue Spooky & Unsettling Music Here]

Weekend Pelagics - Day Two

After the canceled pelagic out of Half Moon Bay with Debbie Shearwater, I drove down to Monterey for a nice sunny trip, again with Shearwater & company.  Sunday's Pelagic - now that was more like it! Started off foggy, but just about the time the deep sea birds showed, so did the sun. Here is what made the whole day a treat plus brownie points - my day's lifers.I did get several shots of this handsome chocolate kiss of a pelagic bird, a lifer for me - a Flesh-footed Shearwater.


My Lifer Flesh-footed Shearwater
One was an infinitesimally tiny bird - an Ancient Murrelet ('ancient' because whispy white feathers on their heads make them look like little old men). I didn't take a photo of the stubborn Murrelet which did not want to stop & sit for its portrait. However I am posting someone else's breath taking photo.


Fleeting Flock of Ancient Murrelets - Photo © Robin Newlin
Now I'm certain, how every pretty the birds are to me, most everyone else will find the following dolphin's far more interesting so I'll start off with them. In the early afternoon, after we pretty much saw all the birds were were going to see, just when I was thinking there were, for once no whales or dolphins anywhere near Monterey, along came the back-up entertainment; a pod of 50 - 60 Risso's Dolphins with a few Northern Right Whale Dolphins and Pacific White-sided Dolphin tossed in for variety.

The Rissos were in high spirits, as seen in the shot below, I got photos of several slapping their ample bottoms on the ocean surface. Do they do that for fun, the noise or are they loosening oh-so-annoyingly-stuck squid farts?


Love this shot for all the action,
to look for Risso faces and bum, click HERE
Rissos haven't the usual dolphin beak, and to me they all seem to be smiling like jack-o-lanterns (this is a good week for doing so). They are born grey, but as they get older they get scratches on their hides and the color wears off in the salt water. OK, that's a lie, but their color does fade as the animals age - generally the whiter the Risso, the older the dolphin.


That Happy Smiling Face!
as the Rissos raced along, I shot my photos rapid fire. When I took the photos all you could see were milling dorsal fins and the odd splashing or blowing. Only looking at the photos at home did I really get a good look at the mini theater a Risso pod is. In my photos I found at least a dozen Risso faces, loads of tails and even a few shots of breaching, which is when a cetacean slaps its entire body on the water surface.


Nice look at a Risso breaching for the hell of it
Below are some nice surprises - cow and calf shots.


Nice proud, grinning white-faced cow and her little calf to her left

A split second later, same cow and calf continue their racing
check out the size difference in their dorsal fins
Here are a couple of group shots taken seconds apart - look on the left, you can see a Mama Risso, her baby's head is up out of the water - in the second shot there is an even better glimpse of baby's face. Remember, none of the animals in the photos are holding still; they're all booking along 10 - 15 miles per hour.


Mama and baby calf both have their head up (left)

Now Mom is down, and the baby gets split second looks as they rip along through the water
In my photos, I managed to find only one shot of Pacific White-sided Dolphins, but as the shot is crap, I'm not showing it here. I do however have a quickie video of Northern Right Whale Dolphins that rode the bow for maybe 5 minutes or so. It's rough shot, and I flip the camera after a few seconds, but you can see the mini-whales doing their thing as they surface on the run, to blow out the old air and pull in some fresh.

This Video is LOUD!

Ok! That's it for the cetacean circus! Show's over, go away. Now I'm going to post some birdie shots, because - well, because I do love those ocean going birds. I mean, different pelagic species may weigh as little as a short stack of dimes, or as much as a pound and yet they manage to stay alive and hale in all that freezing cold water and NO ONE puts out their food for them - they have to work for it! Isn't that totally amazing? Honestly - it's just astounding.


Not a lifer, but every bit a pretty - Pink-footed Shearwater

Pair of Pink-foot scooting by

Pomarine Jaeger - a bully bird
The only fish I saw all day were Sunfish - Mola Mola. They can get humongous, weighing more than a ton, but this photo shows a baby Mola Mola. It's lying to the right of the gull, like a pancake, with its fin up in the air. They like the gulls to pick vermin from their scales - and the gulls do it too! Click on the Mola Mola for a better look.


A Mola-Mola at its oceanside spa.
raises a fin, requesting some refreshment