Taurus: I pretty much like anything that's fairly bland, has pasta, and chicken or seafood. Olive Garden's seafood alfredo is the love of my life. I would kill for it.
Pluto: For someone who didn't really believe in the supernatural until about two years ago, I've had a lot of supernatural shit happen to me. Buckle up, because this is going to be a long answer. I'll put a read more for everybody's sake.
So, my friend and I live a few hours away from a place called Ashmore Estates. Built in 1916, it was a "poor farm" where people who were in serious debt would go live and work to try to pay off their debts. The original building burnt down, and several people didn't make it out. After sitting vacant for several years after that, the Ashmore was rebuilt and repurposed as an institution for the mentally ill. It too was eventually abandoned, and the place sat vacant for a long time until it was made into a haunted house. Unsurprisingly, the haunted house also closed and the building was left alone again, until the current owners bought it and refurbished it enough to allow visitors.
A couple years ago, my friend messaged me asking if I wanted to go spend a night there on one of their tours. I didn't really believe in ghosts or anything like that but I thought it would be fun anyway, so we bought the tickets and went. The introduction and tour hadn't even started when we had our first experience.
We were there with a professional group called Ghost Hunts USA and about 20-30 other people on the tour. Before the tour started, they gathered us all into a large room with a bunch of chairs so that they could give us a short presentation on the history of the building. Everyone was in this room- there was nobody on the floors above or below (we were on the second floor, the building has three). There was nobody absent from it. As we're sitting waiting for them to start, my friend and I both hear something strange- footsteps from above us. We looked at each other like 'wtf'.
The footsteps were heavy, like a man's. Like I said, nobody was upstairs at the time, but the sound was unmistakable. Keep in mind, I'm a skeptic at that time, but there was no way I could deny what I heard. Also strange was the fact that at the exact moment I heard the steps, I got a vivid mental flash of an image- patent leather men's shoes in mid step. It only lasted a moment, but it too was unmistakable. Still, I wrote it off as just something funky happening- maybe my brain just made up some shit in response to hearing those steps. Of course, the image came at the exact time I heard them so I didn't have time to think, but hey, I didn't believe in the supernatural.
So after the presentation, the tour began. We were split into groups, each group given tours of the three floors separately. The first floor was the one our group went to first. During its active years, the first floor functioned as the kitchen and dining halls. The dining halls were separated for men and women. In one of the kitchen areas, we sat down with one of the women from Ghost Hunts USA. She gave us a demonstration on how to use dowsing rods. As she was talking about it, I was thinking "yeah this is bullshit", but as soon as she raised them and began talking to whatever was in the room with us, my heart dropped to my fucking stomach. The rods were moving in clear responses to her question. I'm getting chills at that point, tearing up. Of course, I'm not going to let go of my skepticism just yet- I watched her like a goddamn hawk for any sign that it was fake. I stared at her hands, her shoulders, her arms, trying to see if she was doing anything that could possibly make the rods move in the way the were.
Nothing.
After the demonstration, I'm like... holy shit. What the fuck just happened? And then, the woman says "Alright, we've got a bunch of other dowsing rods, so grab a pair and spread out through this floor and try out talking." Of course, I jump on the chance to test it myself and grab a pair. My friend and I chose a spot in the women's dining hall. My friend was too shaken and scared to do it, so I was the one using the rods.
Lo and behold, as soon as I ask the first question ("Could you please show me what a 'yes' will be"), the rods swing outwards. I'll admit, my hands were a bit shaky, but up until I asked, the rods themselves had been perfectly still. Next, I asked them to return the rods to where they were before- pointing straight ahead. They did just that,
perfectly. Next I asked them to show me a no answer- the rods crossed at the tips.
What happened next had to be one of the most interesting conversations I've ever had. With dowsing rods, you can only ask yes/no question since movements are limited. After about ten minutes, we knew several things: the person we were talking to was a woman, had worked at Ashmore, and was happy to talk to us. By the end of the conversation, I felt exhausted (which could've been the CFS) but overjoyed. I was genuinely crying- I hardly ever cry, and certainly not from joy. It was a sense of elation unlike any I'd felt before. We had to move to the next floor though, so we said goodbye, and I promised to come back to talk to her more later.
I have a shitton more to tell about that trip and the next one, but writing is making me really tired, so I'm going to stop now and reblog this with more later.
