Month: July 2019

When it comes to snacks, Welch’s grape-soda and Ringolos hold a special place in my heart. For one thing, they’re a good combination of salty snack and drink, both of which are really tasty. But even more so, they have a sentimental, nostalgic value for me.

For a big chunk (10 years) of my childhood, we lived in an apartment building, which had a couple of vending machines in the lobby. One fond(-ish) memory of the apartment is that my sister and I had dog-shaped piggy banks and while I knew it was best to save up my change for something worthwhile, I couldn’t help but try to pull out quarters from my “doggy-bank” to use in the vending-machines to get a pack of Ringolos and a can of cold Welch’s grape-soda.

That was a tasty snack combination and while I felt naughty for “wasting” my money like that, it’s a good memory that I now look back on fondly.

I don’t tend to believe in paranormal stuff (not for lack of desire, but because I hate vague, nebulous so-called “proof” of them ¬_¬). That said, there have been a few times when I experienced something strange.

• One night back in the early 90’s (or maybe mid-to-late 80’s 🤔), when we lived in an apartment building, we noticed some strange lights in the sky. There were three white lights circling each other about 100 feet in the air. My mother, sister, and I stood on the balcony looking around and theorizing what it could be. Of course we included aliens, but also tried to figure out other options. We were running out of ideas for explanations until one of us (I don’t remember which one) remembered that there was a new Ikea across the road and they were having a grand-opening soon. Sure enough, the lights were just Ikea’s grand-opening spotlights reflecting off a cloud layer. Oh well, maybe next time. 👽

• In the summer of 1997, I came over to London to register for university. While we were waiting for the person from student-housing to return from lunch so that I could register to get a dorm-room, a guy came by to post a listing for a place for rent for students. My mother asked him about it and we went to check it out. It was great and the rent was low, so we ended up signing a lease that would start in October.

  In September, I moved into a dorm-room for my first year of university and a month later, my mother and sister moved into the town-house. I went there now and then to help clean and prepare the place as well as to do laundry and get food, but I spent most of my time in the dorm. In April, I moved out of the dorm and into the town-house. It was weird because before the dorm, I lived with my family in the town-house in Burlington, this new place didn’t feel like home to me, it felt like my mother and sister’s place. Regardless, I moved into my room and the first night was the strangest of all.

  That first night, I went to bed in my room, with my bed directly in front of the door, I had a straight line of sight (and sound) to the hall outside, and could see things clearly because of the night-light in the hall. I lay there waiting to fall asleep for a while when I noticed some creaking. Creaking is a pretty normal sound in most houses with wood expanding and contracting on its own. The difference is that this creaking wasn’t random, it had a distinct pattern. I laid there, listening carefully to the creaks, specifically noticing that each subsequent creak was further and further down the stairs. Moreover, there was at least half a dozen of them. If the creaks were in random locations or if there were only two or three, that would be one thing, but for there to be that many creaks, consistently further down the stairs was suspicious and statistically unlikely.

  This was in April of 1998, several months before we got the cats, so it was not them. And it was not my mother or sister either because they were both in their beds, fast asleep. To this day, I cannot figure out a rational explanation for that experience. (Also, over the 14 years we lived in that place, there were other instances of strange things, mostly involving numerous electronic devices dying, some of which were attributable to bad household wiring, but most of which were not.) 👻

• (I’m sure there have been a few more but I can’t think of them right now; I’ll add them as I remember them.)