Sarah sees a farmer walk through our yard

Yes, I know. It's been a long time. Really, there's been nothing significant to report. I still have to get the remaining night recordings up on the sight, but work has been keeping me very busy, and to be honest, I want to spend as little time on the computer when I get home as possible.

But last night, something significant did happen. The rain was coming down in sporadic torrents. There was lightning aplenty, even when it wasn't raining.

The entire family was spending an evening together, watching a re-run of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire on ABC Family. We ate dinner in front of the TV, made popcorn, and even baked cookies. At some point Sarah realized she didn't know where her Zune was and went out the back door to look for it. A few minutes later she was frantically knocking at the back door.

Initially I thought nothing of it because earlier that day one of the other girls was complaining that the door knob gets stuck. I assumed Sarah was going through the same problem. A bit irritated, I yelled at her through the door, "It's open, just turn the handle."

It only took a few seconds before she did get the doorknob unstuck. When she walked in it was obvious something had spooked her. She explained she was on the back deck and saw a "farmer" walking up the hill in the rain through our property. It was light enough that she saw what he was wearing, and that he had a straw hat on, and that a piece of straw was sticking out of his mouth. He was skinny, wearing a a old white tank top, and ratty pants that looked like old blue jeans that were cut off and only came down to his knees. He was also bare foot.

She saw him walk up the hill for about 3 seconds, then he disappeared. This freaked her out enough to make a beeline for the back door. I went outside with her and made her explain in great detail where she saw this farmer, what he looked like. She stood on the deck and I walked over to where she said he was, and faced the direction she claimed he was walking. I was only 10 feet away from a huge overgrown cluster of bushes and brambles. He would have walked straight into this mess before he disappeared.

Inactivity and a voice after a long hiatus

Things have been very quiet here, which is a good thing in my opinion. I contribute this to the fact we have cats now. Three of them to be exact - one for each of the girls. A lot of noises at night I have no choice but contribute to them. Only the obvious things would I be able to really question now.

So we've had the cats since November, and I've not made any new recordings since then. But last night Holly and I retired to bed around 11:30 and were reading. Around 11:45 I heard a girls voice say one word. I thought it was the word "Ouch" but Holly says she distinctly heard "Hello?", which is very strange. The words don't sound anything alike. When we heard the voice we immediately looked at each other and gave each other the "What was that?" look. I got up to check on the girls, and all were asleep. I'm going to record tonight and see if I can pick up any more voices.

I still haven't transferred my backlog of older recordings up to this blog. Sorry folks for the delay.

More night recordings coming

I have a ton of night recordings that I have gone through. I just need to upload them and create blog entries for them.

Ernie is now sitting on my desk

Ok, so I just bit the bullet, and went rummaging through the boxes here in the basement to find the Great and Terrible Ernie. He is now sitting on my desk, facing me.

Come battery malfunction or sensor malfunction, every time he states "I feel GREAT!" we are going to be looking each other in the eye from now on.

Bring it on Ernie, bring it on.

Sophia sees a white figure at the top of the stairs

We are having our good friends Jean and Ray over tonight to celebrate New Years. So everyone is busy around the house cleaning up and tidying things.

One of the biggest and most constant fights is dog hair. With two dogs that shed, there is always hair, and since we have dark carpets, it's always noticable.

I had tasked Shelby and Sophia to vaccum the stairs, since they are both in their 'tweens, one holds the big heavy vacuum while the other handles the hose and actually sucks up the hair and debris.

I was downstairs sweeping the kitchen floor when Shelby walked up to me and said that Sophia just saw the same white "thing" that Shelby had seen a few weeks ago. I asked Sophia what she saw, and she replied that she looked up once and saw something white standing there, and saw the round shape of a head, but it disappeared.

Tampering with the alarm clock volume

My alarm goes off on weekdays at 5am sharp. I don't use that annoying beeping sound. I tune the radio to one end of the dial, where all the white noise lives, and turn up the volume. So when the alarm goes off, its loud white noise.

Like everyone I'm sure, either I or Holly reaches over to hit the snooze button a few times.

For some reason today I was overly tired. I usually wake up only a few times after the snooze button is hit. This morning I let it go a few times more.

I woke up at some point later, and the volume of the white noise was turned down. I thought that Holly must have turned it down instead of hitting the snooze button. I reached over, turned the volume back up, and hit the snooze button. I got up a few minutes later, started my morning and forgot about it.

Today in the car while running some errands, Holly told me some extra info. This morning, at 5:09, the alarm went off for the second time. Holly reached over to hit the snooze button and as she was reaching for it, the volume of the white noise went down. She snatched her hand away from the alarm clock for a second, then reached over and hit the snooze button, rolled over and went back to sleep.

My corroboration of this event is the fact that I had to reach over Holly and physically turn the volume knob back up. So there was nothing wrong with the radio. Someone actually turned the volume knob of the radio down as Holly was reaching for it.

Follow-up to Holly's Hello

I talked more with Holly this morning about her experience from 4am. I was under the impression that she had the exact same experience as I did - that the "Hello?" came from outside the room, that it was loud, and it was phrased in the form of a question.

Boy was I wrong. Although still a little girl's voice, it came from inside our bedroom - right next to our bed in fact. It was quiet, and soft - almost a whisper. And it was phrased in the form of a greeting rather than a question.

Holly also told me that a few nights ago a soft "Hi" was spoken near her ear. This was also in a child voice and it originated from next to the bed. She admitted that she didn't mention this because she thought she might have been dreaming, but last night's episode confirmed that indeed she wasn't.