Secretly Anonymous Poems

Poems by Ch. D. | Gemini | Feel free to ask me anything!| Ravenclaw| She/her| poems are under #sapoems

[honest-xpression]

One of the best dance routines I’ve ever watched.

The Nicholas Brothers

[catherine-siena-dr-of-the-church]

I believe these gentlemen are scientifically classified as a liquid.

[southernsassysub-deactivated202]

Diagnosis: sick liquid fire

[schemer-the-goat66]

Didn’t they use these dudes to help animate some of the dancing in Betty Boop?

[lordkevington-deactivated-deact]

Correct!

Even more, they utilized Cab Calloway (the band leader) and used the same rotoscoped piece of him dancing in almost 20 of their shorts!

[allsortsoflicorice]

Amazing

Tap is such an exciting form of dance. 

[hypnospilot]

It gets better. These are the Nicholas Brothers. They did this unrehearsed, in one take.

https://mymodernmet.com/cab-calloway-jumpin-jive-nicholas-brothers/

Legendary Nicholas Brothers Dance Routine Was Unrehearsed and Filmed in One Take

This is one of the best dance routines in history, and it was all done in one take without any rehearsals!

[killerchickadee]

1. That saxophone player who kept leaning out of the way lol

2. These guys must have had thighs of steel!

[mx-malice]

I’ve watched this like a thousand times and I’m so glad it popped up again

[naamahdarling]

UNREHEARSED WHAT IN THE

[coughybean]

HOW THE HELL?

[capricorn-0mnikorn]

How? Well, it helps that they were actual brothers, their father was in Vaudeville, and they’d been dancing together since they were almost bebbies:

Here’s a clip of them from seven years earlier:

[saturnineaqua]

Im so happy i got to meet the younger brother, when i was kid, he visited my dance class at Dance Theatre of Harlem and was just thee coolest mannn i have ever met  !

[secretlyanonymouspoems]

Should I stay?

If neither the nightingale would sing of me

nor the radios would speak of my name.

I opened my eyes to the frosty breeze and see

the world in all its glory, the world in all its blame

that as the misty sun sets between the mountains I cry

For those left behind

[secretlyanonymouspoems]

I watched him against the glare of noon high sun. Blinding hot light stinging my eyes in pain but I dare not look away. Blinding light merging into a scene of lightning. Flashing. Blinding. Flashing. But I dare not look away.

It was hot. It was humid. I felt heat cover every inch of skin I have, both exposed and unexposed. Heat latching on like glove to a hand with the only evidence seen were the drops of sweat trickling down the ground. It was sweltering. Yet I was shaking. Shaking as if enveloped in the icy wind that cold night. Rain trickling down my drenched body. Dropping. Dripping. Hard on the ground. As I shivered.

I hear the rustling of the trees. They rustle against the gentle wind. Rustle with your footsteps. But the rustling gets louder each second. This was peace. Tranquil. Quiet. Unlike thunder. Unlike rain. Unlike the loud banging of drums. Unlike the plops of water against tin. Unlike an explosion. Unlike a howl. Unlike the rain. Unlike the thunder. Unlike a crash.

And now I see you. I see you in the bright daylight. I see you in the gentle breeze. I see you in serenity. But I still see the night. I still see the storm. I still hear the chaos. I hear the danger. I see the damage. I hear the blare. I see the blur. I hear the scream. I see flash. I feel the rage. I feel the hate. I feel the rage. Bright. Hot. Flash. Crash. Rage. Fury. Anger. Pounding. Crashing. Rising. Rage fury anger fury rage anger rage fury rage an-

"are you angry?"

I see the sun. I feel the breeze. I hear your steps. I hear the wind. I feel the heat. I see your figure. I see your figure. Retreating. Retreating. Fading. Fading. I see you. I can't see you. Anymore.

- Are you angry? by chd

I haven't posted in a while...

[laisai]

so, the nickname Chinese fans gave to Love and Producer has been translated as

“Four Wild Men You Can’t Afford to Keep Dating No Matter What You Sacrifice.”

(老娘砸锅卖铁也养不活的四个野男人)

(laoniang zaguomaitie ye yang buhuo de si ge ye nan ren)

which is a bit tame of a translation!

I asked my mom to read it out loud to me and I CAN’T stop laughing, because it’s just… so ridiculous

a more literal translation is like,

“Four male lovers whom I sold off my last cooking pot for, yet still can’t afford to keep.”

The “male lovers” (literally “wild men”) here is an euphemism for a guy you’re seeing on the side (cheating with) – or kind of like, a male version of a mistress (hence “afford to keep”)

The “I” being used here is actually literally “Old woman” (sort of?) – it’s a kind of rude and also arrogant way to talk about yourself. I can’t figure out an English equivalent because English is less big on personal pronouns and stuff. Just think about like, a kind of puffed up woman saying things in whatever you imagine to be a rude accent 😂

“Sold off my last cooking pot” / “no matter what you sacrifice” is literally “break pot, sell steel(? a metal anyway)”. It implies that you’re so beyond poor, forget about trying to cook your food – you’re gonna sell your cooking pot just to survive.

and the last part is “yet still can’t afford to keep” like in the sense of a “kept woman” or “kept man” which I mentioned above. The guys in this sentence are like. Your side hoes. But the word literally used here is also used in the sense of “keep alive” or “take care of” – like the breadwinner for a family who keeps their kids alive or takes care of their family.

So, imagine you’re SO THIRSTY for these guys you’ve sold off everything and the kitchen sink in order to date them, and yet you STILL can’t afford them 😂😂😂

It’s actually an intensely ridiculous situation!

My mom and I couldn’t stop laughing about it. 😂

Hope I explained it well enough that you can imagine the scenario better too?

[iloveallthebestbois]

@cheerydandan

[secretlyanonymouspoems]

I confirm.

“Four wild men, this lady sacrificed everything for, yet still can’t afford to keep”

Seems like a title of a webnovel hahahaha

[secretlyanonymouspoems]

I Raised Cinderella Preciously!

I've recently taken the project of translating (or at least making machine translation readable) this novel!

Synopsis:

There is a famous fairytale. A kindhearted girl whose father and stepmother got married and became a family of five with her two stepsisters. The poor girl who was condemned by her stepmother and stepsisters when her father died. The very fairytale, Cinderella.

But I am not Cinderella, I am the stepmother.

At the age of thirty-seven, already married twice, been widowed twice and is raising three daughters!

Daniel Walford, a man who keeps approaching me while I’m busy trying to raise my three daughters.

“Can I kiss you?”

As a son-in law, I think he’s a little bit older but why does he keep approaching?… Oh, I don’t know.

Once I let Cinderella marry the prince, I can live quietly

But is this fairytale really ‘Cinderella’?

------

It's about Cinderella's stepmother and a look into her perspective. It caught my eye on how some aspects of the story can be seen in another light. It's also quite humorous and also has a healthy dose of romance.

Here's the link if you want to read!

I Raised Cinderella Preciously

I Raised Cinderella Preciously Author: Kiarne Synopsis: There is a famous fairytale. A kindhearted girl whose father and stepmother got marr

[secretlyanonymouspoems]

Vote for me!

My poem is 'Mirror Mirror' by Dana Cheer. I would like your help to vote for it, if you like it :)

Thank you for the support!

You can vote for it here

A Poetry Moment: Voting Phase | Text Poems

Support your favourite poet in the voting phase of A Poetry Moment Competition

Mirror Mirror

Mirror, Mirror looking back

Tell me all the things I lack

Pointed faces, Walking sticks

Why does beauty seem so seem so sick?

Lips so pale and skin so rough

Why am I not enough?

To their breasts so full of plastic

Too many surgeries that are too drastic

Mirror, Mirror tell me please!

When will all these madness cease?

Battered bruises, darkened eyes

Too many comments, too many lies

Scarred skin that stick to bones

Still seeing ugliness when alone

Mirror, Mirror can’t you see

What this reflection does to me?

[secretlyanonymouspoems]

To the delight of the butterfly

If love be thought as the summer wind

With tingling warmth that spread

Then love unlike winter's scorn

Shall bore more heart than head

If love broke through like icy cracks

Upon smooth porcelain glass

Noticed yet not, on smooth skin

The fissures one already has

If love be red as roses born

To the delight of the butterfly

If love blinded both- not just one

Then no one would ever cry

-Ch. D.

-----

Here's a hopeful poem for a special day! I've been feeling in a slump lately so I hope this would also cheer you up.

[secretlyanonymouspoems]

Send me some writing prompts please, I need my inspiration back after the loss of months worth of notes on my app.

[secretlyanonymouspoems]

Well shit.

If laughter was an indication

I should have known from the start

But stubborn me

Stubborn me refused

Refused to see the way I acted

Refuse to admit in thoughts

Refuse to say I have experienced

Til it all hit

Like a harsh slap in the face

Yes, finally I see

But still refuse to acknowledge

Yes, finally I know

But will never admit

For this is me

Knowing what would lead

Knowing what would become

I'm not a coward

Maybe I just need some time

Still, even if I refuse to admit

It never meant

I wouldn't pursue.

- Ch. D. | Will I change?

-----

A sudden inspiration for me... :)

[femmegeniuss]

unusual(ish) asks <3

who’s your celebrity crush?

are you single or taken?

rant. just do it

do you think its ok to separate the artist from the art?

how many accounts do you have?

how many pairs of shoes do you have?

opinion on… (specify to the person you’re asking to)

how many accounts do you follow?

favorite brand of clothing?

name a dog

what unusual talent do you have?

what’s the most interesting schools gossip you’ve ever heard?

ever prank called a store?

what’s your coffee order?

what’s a question do you constantly get asked?

if you had to get a tattoo right now, what would you get and where?

google the top song from the year you were born

rant about your favorite musician 

what’s your favorite teacher you’ve ever had?

describe your blog in 3-5 words

what’s a conspiracy you believe in?

if you could see any concert tonight what would you choose?

if you could break one of your bad habits which would you choose?

can you dance? sing?

what’s something you can’t stop buying?

crowds or small groups?

how long before a trip do you pack?

what celebrity would you rate a PERFECT 10?

what quote or inspirational setting do you think is bs?

if you had to dye your hair an unnatural color right now, what would you choose?

you can change one thing about your life right now. what are you changing?

how old do you get mistaken for?

what do you think about a lot

do you like your hogwarts house or do you wish you were a different one?

what does home mean to you?

what do you think you’d be arrested for?

have you ever been called down to the principals office?

post a picture of the outfit you would choose if you could have any outfit you wanted

describe your aesthetic

answer with one of your ‘school memes’ (inside jokes you have with your class/grade) with no explanation 

feel free to reblog or send me some if you’d like! this took forever so reblog please!

[armsofstranger]

hey this is fun! Send some in!

[secretlyanonymouspoems]

They wrap you up in words

Words of Deceit

Words of revile

In words you never heard

That know no defeat

Nor bought in exile

What is to be made by words

Of which differs when heard

By you or me and everybody

Til we're all wrapped up in the curse

For they exploit the meanings

That never stay the same

That settle for the likes

That never mean the right thing

And then point to blame

With the pitchforks and the pikes

-Ch. D.

[secretlyanonymouspoems]

To science

To my brother

In all but words

We both see

We both ponder

In a vision brought

By the world's wonders

To every small

Or big event

To where little

Or large descent

Of a plant

An animal

We both see

We both ponder

Yet interpret

As one thing

Or another

So different

Where you see

The rationality

I see the emotions

That lay between

The visions

We both see

We both ponder

-Ch. D.

[heywriters]

because my interests in world culture and food cross over so well,

reply/reblog with your favorite snack (bought or homemade) and what country you’re from! share pics if you can.

[stephrawlingwrites]

From the US and I like blood orange Noosa yogurt (I like a lot of other foods too, but this is the best snack)

[bookishdiplodocus]

I’m from Belgium, Europe, and I love pindarotsjes. Literal translation: peanut rock formations. Peanuts covered in melting chocolate, spooned into heaps, put in the fridge to harden. The higher ratio peanut to chocolate is key.

[your-lovely-ghost]

I’m usually hesitant to say where I’m from unless I know you, so I’ll only tell you my favorite food.

I LOVE Sachlav, it was a great comforting drink in the winter. It was warm and thick and creamy and had nuts, pomegranates , and rose water in it, the way our mother used to make it.

[ice-cream-salad]

I’m from the central USA, and my all time favorite snack is saladitos, which are salt-dried plums!!! It’s not a snack from my own culture, but I had them a lot as a kid and they never fail to make my mouth water.

Look at that sour, salty goodness! There are some variations of this treat that add Anise to the mix, and I have to say I prefer… not those!

[heywriters]

anon:  I’m from South Africa and because I couldn’t choose just one, I’m gonna name three. Hope that’s okay :). First is vetkoek. It’s a bread-like dough fried in oil. We usually eat it with mince. 

Second is koeksisters. Also a dough fried in oil, but it gets braided first. And then dipped in syrup while it’s still hot so it’s juicy. 

Last is melktert. It’s a tart with milk as its main ingredient and cinnamon :)

(ooh, this one reminds me of buttermilk pie in USA)

[writersblockandapotoftea]

I love this winter treat where we pour hot maple syrup on snow and wrap it around a popsicle stick. 

La Tire: 

I’m canadian, if you couldn’t tell

[seoscribbles]

are we doing savory foods as well? idk. i lOVE baked eggs: its literally what it sounds like: its just a difference i cooking style but it makes a WORLD of difference in flavor.

(when i brought these to school, kids would think i was eating easter eggs.)

for a sweet snack, my fav has gotta be 뽑기. its very similar to honeycomb flavor wise, and theyre pressed with cookie cutters, and it becomes a game of whether or not you can cut it into the shape without breaking it. if you do, you get it for free! its a very nostalgic food. my parents would reminisce about how they would buy these for like ten cents while walking home from school from a grandpa with nothing but some sugar, a pot, and baking soda, crouching on the street. now, its mostly sold packaged in stores or in markets.

[akirakan]

From the yucatan part of Mexico, marquesitas!

@hayley566

[hayley566]

I’m from the US. If we’re talking about snacks like small things to eat while relaxing, I’d have to pick pistachio nuts

[sleepyowlwrites]

Muddy Buddies - rice chex cereal with peanut butter and chocolate, covered in powdered sugar. Once you start you can’t stop.

[heywriters]

“once you start you can’t stop” is how I plow through bags of that garbage every after-christmas sale. It’s so good though?

[secretlyanonymouspoems]

I'm from the Philippines and I absolutely adore Pastillas de leche. Such an easy to make snack with condensed milk and skim or powdered milk then sometimes dusted with sugar. I live for the milky sweetness and I'm not a fan of sweets that much!

Oh another all time favourite if I'm not into something relatively sweet are seeds, especially watermelon and squash. Like popcorn but more work since you have to crack 'em open.

[secretlyanonymouspoems]

Concept/ prompt: The Cinderella assassin

This came to me randomly but imagine

'You've only got until midnight to live'

[secretlyanonymouspoems]

What is love

But abject desire

That muddles head

In times of need

That turns bravery

To sloth and cowardice

What is love

In a sense of passion

Titillating response

To the lust

Of the flesh

Whose words vow

Empty promises

What is love

But forsaken mind

-Ch. D.

[secretlyanonymouspoems]

A million worlds with you

It is but the string of fate

That ties the knots of destiny

Destined for something great

Destined for inevitability

Worlds without the hint of sorrow

Worlds without our regret

Worlds that would become tomorrow

Worlds that we would forget

Clinging onto the passage of time

In which I stood to remember

A destined fate with no reason nor rhyme

Has set for you to suffer

In a million worlds, I yearn

In a million worlds, I know

In a million worlds, I learn

Yet I never let you go

-Ch. D.

--------

Made a bunch of poems for endgame

[chief-of-project-e]

Irish people; The faeries aren’t real

Irish people; No fucking way will I go in that faerie ring

[queer-trans-amazon-deactivated2]

#look#you don’t go in a fairy ring and you don’t fuck with a stone in the middle of a field#these are just facts#nobody does it#fairies will fuck you up#Ireland#folklore#fairies (Via @false-dawn)

[false-dawn]

Look, I don’t believe in God, but I will not disrespect the Good Gentlemen of the Hills. That’s just common sense.

[ohmeursault]

Between this and the Icelanders with their elves I do not understand what is going on above the 50th parallel.

[superindianslug]

My general rule of thumb: you don’t have to believe in everything, but don’t fuck with it, just in case.

[elocinneem-deactivated20160605]

^^^ that part

[dduane]

This is truer than true. Especially the Irish part.

Let me tell you what I know about this after living here for nearly thirty years.

This is a modern European country, the home of hot net startups, of Internet giants and (in some places, some very few places) the fastest broadband on Earth. People here live in this century, HARD.

Yet they get nervous about walking up that one hill close to their home after dark, because, you know… stuff happens there.

I know this because Peter and I live next to One Of Those Hills. There are people in our locality who wouldn’t go up our tiny country road on a dark night for love or money. What they make of us being so close to it for so long without harm coming to us, I have no idea. For all I know, it’s ascribed to us being writers (i.e. sort of bards) or mad folk (also in some kind of positive relationship with the Dangerous Side: don’t forget that the root word of “silly”, which used to be English for “crazy”, is the Old English _saelig_, “holy”…) or otherwise somehow weirdly exempt.

And you know what? I’m never going to ask. Because one does not discuss such things. Lest people from outside get the wrong idea about us, about normal modern Irish people living in normal modern Ireland.

You hear about this in whispers, though, in the pub, late at night, when all the tourists have gone to bed or gone away and no one but the locals are around. That hill. That curve in the road. That cold feeling you get in that one place. There is a deep understanding that there is something here older than us, that doesn’t care about us particularly, that (when we obtrude on it) is as willing to kick us in the slats as to let us pass by unmolested.

So you greet the magpies, singly or otherwise. You let stones in the middle of fields be. You apologize to the hawthorn bush when you’re pruning it. If you see something peculiar that cannot be otherwise explained, you are polite to it and pass onward about your business without further comment. And you don’t go on about it afterwards. Because it’s… unwise. Not that you personally know any examples of people who’ve screwed it up, of course. But you don’t meddle, and you learn when to look the other way, not to see, not to hear. Some things have just been here (for various values of “here” and various values of “been”) a lot longer than you have, and will be here still after you’re gone. That’s the way of it. When you hear the story about the idiots who for a prank chainsawed the centuries-old fairy tree a couple of counties over, you say – if asked by a neighbor – exactly what they’re probably thinking: “Poor fuckers. They’re doomed.” And if asked by anybody else you shake your head and say something anodyne about Kids These Days. (While thinking DOOMED all over again, because there are some particularly self-destructive ways to increase entropy.)

Meanwhile, in Iceland: the county council that carelessly knocked a known elf rock off a hillside when repairing a road has had to go dig the rock up from where it got buried during construction, because that road has had the most impossible damn stuff happen to it since that you ever heard of. Doubtless some nice person (maybe they’ll send out for the Priest of Thor or some such) will come along and do a little propitiatory sacrifice of some kind to the alfar, belatedly begging their pardon for the inconvenience.

They’re building the alfar a new temple, too.

Atlantic islands. Faerie: we haz it.

[pamisleyphd]

The Southwest is like this in some ways. You don’t go traveling along the highways at night with an empty car seat. Because an empty car seat is an invitation. You stick your luggage, your laptop bag, whatever you got in that seat. Else something best left undiscussed and unnamed (because to discuss it by name is to go ‘AY WE’RE TALKING BOUT YA WE’RE HERE AND ALSO IGNORANT OF WHAT YOU’RE CAPABLE OF’ at the top of your damn lungs at them) will jump in to the car, after which you’re gonna have a bad time.

If you’re out in the woods, you keep constant, consistent count of your party and make sure you know everyone well enough that you can ID them by face alone, lest something imitating a person get at you. They like to insert themselves in the party and just observe before they strike. It’s a game to them. In general you don’t fuck with the weird, you ignore the lights in the sky (no, this isn’t a god damn night vale reference, yes I’m serious) and the woods, you lock up at night and you don’t answer the door for love or money. Whatever or whoever’s knocking ain’t your buddy.

[thefingerfuckingfemalefury]

^ So much good advice in this post right here

[weirdo-city]

I live in the south and… you just… don’t go into the woods or fields at night.

Don’t go near big trees in the night

If you live on a farm, don’t look outside the windows at night

I have broken all these rules.

I’ve seen some shit.

If it sounds like your mom, but you didn’t realize your mom is home…. it’s not your mom. Promise.

One walked onto the porch once. Wasn’t fun. But they’re not super keen on guns. Typically bolt when they see one.

You think it’s the neighbor kids.

It’s not the neighbor kids.

Might sound like coyotes but you never really /see/ the coyotes but then wow that one cow was reaaaaaally fucked up this morning. The next night when you hear another one screaming you just turn the tv up a little more. Maybe fire a gun in the air but you don’t go after it. If it is coyotes then it’s probably a pack and you seriously don’t want to fuck with that and if it’s the other thing you seriously REALLY don’t want to fuck with that.

So in the south, especially near the mountains, you just go straight from your car to inside your house, draw your curtains and watch tv.

If you see lights in the fields just fucking leave it alone.

Eyes forward. Don’t be fucking stupid. Mind your own business. Call your neighbors and tell them to bring the cats in. There’s coyotes out. Some of them know. Most of them don’t.

Other than that everything’s a ghost and they died in the civil war. Literally all of everything else is just the civil war. We used to smell old perfume and pipe tobacco in the weeks leading up to the battle anniversaries.

Shit’s wild and I sound fucking crazy but I swear to god it’s true.

[witchy-woman]

Every time this post comes around, it’s my favorite to open up the notes and read the stories. Probably shouldn’t have since I’m sleeping alone tonight, but you know, it’s fine. 😂

[mistresstrevelyan]

Austrian girl here who has lived in Ireland for 5+ years. This shit is LEGIT. I’ve seen it with my own two Catholic eyes. 

Sure, visit during the day. That’s alright as long as you’re respectful. But you couldn’t PAY ME ENOUGH to go there at night. These are also the last places where you wanna start littering. 

[gayantlers]

I grew up in southwest Pennsylvania which is a weird mixture of American cultures and environments. I was in the heavily forested mountains (northern Appalachia) but had lots and lots of corn fields and cow pastures. Like the Smoky Mountains and fields of Kansas combined. And being so cut off from a lot of the world, we had our fair share of ghost stories.

We had ‘witches’ in the mountains (more like ghost-women who will snatch you up by making you wander in a daze around the forest like the Blair Witch before killing you or letting you back out into society but you’re… different). Or devils in springs or abandoned wells (don’t look too long into one or something will follow you). 

But we also had the cornfield demons. I’ve witnessed this many times. You’ll be in the passenger seat looking out the window and see red glowing eyes in the cornfield. No light shining in that direction. Just two red dots a few inches apart faintly glowing in a pitch black cornfield. They’re not the glow of deer eyes in the headlights. More like the embers of a dying fire. Sometimes, as you drive away, you’ll look out the back window or side mirror and you can see the eyes have moved to the edge of the corn field, still watching you. If you bring it up with the driver, they’ll call you paranoid, but grip the wheel a bit tighter and driver a little faster.

I was walking to a friend’s house one night. It was about 20 minutes down a dirt road with forest on one side and a cornfield on the other. I’ve walked past it many times and wasn’t really concerned. My main worry was coming across a skunk or porcupine. I didn’t have a flashlight because the moonlight was bright enough and I knew the walk really well. Then I saw the eyes. I immediately averted mine (because for some reason that’s how to not annoy it) but they kept wandering back. They were still there, watching. I heard rustling and saw the eyes come closer and I took off running. I got to my friends without a scratch, but I was terrified. I mentioned it to my friend and that’s when I found out it was A Thing. Her parents agreed and shared their stories. I brought it up more and almost everyone knew what I was talking about. It was a phenomenon a lot of folks around town experienced but never mentioned. To this day, I don’t linger around poorly light cornfields at night. 

[matt-the-blind-cinnamon-roll]

@thedevilinthealchemy and I are very old friends. I used to live in the same town as her, in Southern California. One night, a few years ago, we were celebrating the end of finals and the start of winter break, and we just hanging out in her car, killing ourselves with late night Taco Bell. Well, we decide we don’t want to go home just yet, so we start driving. We drive up a canyon, near her place. Now, we both had made this trip many, many times, in daylight and dark. A local tourist trap is in that canyon, and there’s a shortcut to a college campus that goes through that canyon. It was a normal winter night in SoCal. 

Well, about halfway through I start to get scared. For no reason. Within the span of two heartbeats I grew so terrified that my palms were shaking and my mouth was dry and for some reason I couldn’t take my eyes off the wood to the driver’s side. 

“Turn around.” I say, quickly. 

“Dude, already on it.” Kama said, doing a quick three point turn. I look in the mirror as she’s pealing away and see the creature. It was vaguely humanoid, and hairless, with elongated limbs and pitch black eyes, on all four limbs, loping after us. Now, if you’re in the know, you might be thinking “hey that’s like the creatures from Until Dawn, I call bullshit on this.” Well, Until Dawn was four years away, and it wasn’t even in development yet, so shush. 

I rip my eyes away from it and hold on tight as she drives. Then, at the same time, both of us get this instinct and we speak. 

“Don’t look in the backseat.” Needless to say, neither of us did. She drove damn near 90 on a dark canyon until we saw the lights of her complex at the mouth of it. 

I haven’t gone back in there since, and that canyon got shut down about a year ago due to a landslide and it hasn’t opened back up. I’m a history major, and research always has been my first love, so I go digging. I visit the local history society, talk about my tale. Turns out the whole valley used to belong to a people called the Tativam. One day, after the Spanish arrived, they vanished. Without a trace. We have a graveyard of theirs that we know of. One of my professors was trying to stop the houses that were being built on it. Spoiler alert: he didn’t, and the houses are hella haunted, and nobody wants to live there. 

Personally I do think the creature is a wendigo. That chain of mountains is park of unbroken chain that leads right up the Serra Nevadas and Donner Pass. 

THE Donner Pass. 

You do the math. 

[poisonousdame]

@carolinemb88

[dryadgurrl]

I’m from Northern California myself, state capitol, and while we don’t have much by way of critters (sure, we’ve got Bigfoot up in the redwoods, but those guys are mostly harmless).

Most of what we’ve got is due to the Gold Rush, and not just the hauntings (though there are plenty of those, a great many of them are theatre ghosts, most of whom are harmless, though some are very particular).  What we’ve got by way of Things were brought along on the trail from the Old Country to the East Coast and then along thousands of miles of wagon trail.

We’ve got our fair share of phantom hitchhikers and women in white, but mostly what we’ve got are the Things That Survived The Flood.  There was a flood in the early 1860s, one that caused the state capitol to actually be relocated for a while, and when it was over and the floodwaters receded, there was enough sediment left behind that what had been the second floor of buildings was now the ground floor.

There are a handful of places in Old Town that you Do Not Go after dark (despite being safe during the day).  When I worked in Old Town, giving comedic history tours, we started from and returned to a restaurant that had a club downstairs (in what had been the ground floor before The Flood) and there was a storeroom down there that got locked at sunset and no one questioned it, but the door to that storeroom was pretty much right next to the portable shed we changed clothes in, and I know, more than once, I heard knocking and scratching and one of my very last tours I got a facefull of wet-plant rot smell (not quite mildew, but not stinky like rotting meat gets) so bad I couldn’t breathe. It’s one of the reasons I stopped doing the tours, really, because I was starting to get the feeling I was being singled out, and I didn’t want to find out what by.

[teaboot]

When I was like 17, I lived in the woods on the northwest coast of canada. One day, I decided to go for a walk in a part of the woods I had never been to before. Because sometimes I see weird things out there, I made sure to bring my grandma’s dog with me, just running free and off-leash. These are wild woods, too, not parkland, so the only clear areas are deer trails. I stuck along to those because, you know, I don’t want to get lost, and about an hour in I hear this strange whistling. Just a short call- One long, sharp whistle followed quickly by a short, piping one. Now, I’m in a good mood and I figure it must be some new kind of bird, so I whistle back: long call, short call. It whistles again. I’m amused, so I whistle again. Long call, short call, and then just to be fun, I throw in a little trill at the end. It whistles back. It whistles back the exact same pattern. Now, normally that would freak me out, but I was in a REALLY good mood. A really weirdly good mood. So, I whistled again. And when it whistled back to me, I giggled. I… Don’t giggle. Not alone in the woods over basically nothing. The whistle came again, and there was a rustle in the distance. Seeing a shady outcrop, I ran to hide, feeling like I was playing hide-and-seek with someone. It whistled, I whistled back. Another rustle. Closer. I suddenly realized I hadn’t seen the dog in a while. I looked around, and saw him a few feet away, staring point-blank and totally still into the forest. The whistle came again, closer this time, and suddenly my weirdly bubbly feeling was gone. Instant fear. I got the dog’s attention and we absolutely booked it out of there, all the way back to the eight-foot-high gate that marked the start of the wild land. I locked it behind me, and we never went back. I never really had any idea what was whistling with me in the forest. Maybe some kind of mimic bird that had escaped home, or a squatter hiding out there sewhere messing with this kid and their dog. I only just remembered that when I was a kid, we learned about the Tsonoqua woman. The Tsonoqua woman is supposed to be an old woman who lives in the woods. She carries a basket on her back and has long, tangled hair. When children wander away from camp, it is said that she snatches them up in her basket and steals them away forever. But because she has bad sight, she uses her keen ears to hunt, and calls out with a birdlike whistle.

[normal-horoscopes]

I have lived in southern California for a lifetime. There are things here that even I don’t understand. Things I can’t describe. If you ever take any advice from my blog, please, please, remember this.

Coyotes don’t hunt in packs.

[secretlyanonymouspoems]

Reading the notes on this post, I also decided to put in my two cents.

First of all, you don't fuck with nature. You treat nature with respect. You never know who lives in the trees, rivers, bushes and the paths you walk on.

Living in a Catholic dominated country, everyone knows to respect superstition lest something happens to you. Especially in the provinces. Even in the city everyone knows and practices bits of superstition.

That's why roads are built around old trees. That's why parents teach their kids not to point at certain trees lest they provoke the mariit. Even some road signs tell you to be wary of these things. Accidents usually happens in these places.

There are times, drivers get lulled into a sense of calmness and don't realise where theyr

There are trees, you just don't cut down. You never know who could be living in there. People have been known to suffer illnesses if you destroy one of these trees, some never get better.

There are stories of getting sick after you played by the woods or near rivers. They say you must've caught the spirits' gazes. Grandmas just know what to do in cases like these. If not, the folk doctor is the way to go to ward off the energy.

There are stories of children and people coming back from the woods a whole new person because even if they look and speak the same, you never know if it was really them or they had been switched at the woods by engkantos (fae) - the original doomed to be lost in the woods til they die.

There are stories of engkantos (faes) trying to lure you to go with them to their lands. They seduce you. They enchant. They say engkantos take the appearance of beautiful people. They are beautiful, otherworldly, as stories describe. They lure people, especially children to come back with them. There are rumors that their lands are beautiful without compare, hidden and unseen by people. Some say parts of the woods are portals to their lands. The only downside, once you go with them, you can never come back.

You don't destroy the fairly large lump of soil in your backyard. They could be home to dwarves (duwende). Mischievous little creatures that could help you get fortune if you get on their good side. But can curse you if you get on their bad side.

If something has taken a liking to you, they will watch over you. That's why young girls are taught not to play deep in the woods. They follow you into adulthood and may ruin relationships you have out of jealousy.

So general rule of thumb is to not disturb nature. Like ever. If you're just going to ruin it. A little chant or mantra people say when walking into the woods is 'Tabi, Tabi po.' (meaning: please move aside) to be careful of disturbing these creatures.