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Post by coldmercurywitch on Jan 22, 2003 21:08:36 GMT -5
I can't spend much time in a grave yard. I start to smell rotting flesh and damp bones. It's not very pleasant. I'm not one for funerals either. A good friend of the family died a few years ago. She lived up the street from us adn had a heart attack. Mum wanted me to go to funeral, and I got all ready to go then couldn't. Just the thought of seeing someone I remembered as being really enthusiastic adn full of happiness, lifeless and pale in a satin lined wooden box made me feel nausious. I stayed home and everyone else went
I never told my mum this, because she wold hang me if she found out, but before our house burned down, I had preminitions of it. I'd be sitting at school and I'd suddenly be thinking of this image of seeing our house gutted and noting but chared framing. I also kept getting these weird thoughts about our deputy coming to get me to send me home because our house had burnt down. I kinda ignored them, thinking it was just me being silly and insecure....
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Post by Motley the Mercenary on Jan 22, 2003 23:35:29 GMT -5
it's weird, i've never had a problem with dead bodies, or cemeteries. they're just... maybe it's because my grandmother always used to call them "bury patches." it just never seemed like a big deal. they were bodies, and i might be sad the person is gone but i am okay with the goodbye rituals and okay with the places we put dead people. i don't know, it just feels fine, although personally i'd rather be burned (long story).
i have had worries that turned out to be premonitions that i didn't tell, because guys don't have second sight (according to my mother) or because i thought people would think i was weird. which is one reason i like druids so much. imagine living in a culture where people taught you to deal with stuff like this instead of letting you freak out and get confused all alone?
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Post by coldmercurywitch on Jan 23, 2003 0:10:22 GMT -5
imagine living in a culture where people taught you to deal with stuff like this instead of letting you freak out and get confused all alone? don't alot of us live in that sort of society? i mean....if you tell people you get premonitions, they laugh at you or tell you you're crazy.
i heard that Frida Kahlo (mexican artist from earlier last century) was creamated. they say that they put her body in the furnice and shut the door, but a blast of hot air blew it open, and apparently she sat up and appeared to be looking at everyone. her hair was on fire so it looked like she had a firey halo surrounding her, and people there swear that her lips curled up into a seductive grin. Kahlo btw, for those who don't know, was in critical car acciedent when she was 17-18 and was impaled on a steel pole. she had several miscarriages through her life, was always in a brace or plaster for her back, and had numerous other health problems. her only form of relief and sanity was to paint.
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Post by KoNeko on Jan 25, 2003 4:07:16 GMT -5
Hmmm, I'm not really freaked out by cemeteries or anything, but the fact that the cemetery where my ancestors are buried and cremated in Hong Kong is home to packs of wild dogs and if you don't pay your rent for the plot of land then they dig up the coffins and gravestones and leave them on the side of the road... well, that kind of puts me off wanting to go to a cemetery so I can see a bunch of wild dogs gnawing on someone's arm or leg bones or whatnot.
Oh, about cremations, when my great-grandmother was cremated, they lit a big fire in the furnace thing and put the coffin in it, but the furnace has an open top so you can watch if you want, and apparently after they burnt the wood off the coffin, she sat up in the coffin because as her body burned, her skin and muscles contracted, pulling her body into an upright form. Luckily I was only about one year old at the time and don't really remember it.
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Post by Motley the Mercenary on Jan 25, 2003 8:19:32 GMT -5
stupid question... why burn the coffin too?
i kind of wondered about that cremation sitting up thing. because there are so many scary stories where a dead person sits up, and i'm like, if they had to do something that looked alive, why not wave or kick or something? but if people sit up when they're being burned, that explains it. somewhere, somebody saw what koneko saw at about the same age, and subconsciously remembered it and made it into a scary story, and away we go.
but as for rent and wild dogs... ack! gotta say i'm glad that even the ancestors of mine who didn't get proper graves aren't about to be disturbed... even the graves of former slaves are respected in the south... at least as far as i know. even if it is because of superstitions. people in america are really weird about that... they don't want to build buildings on a burial site. but, it's okay to build on land that belonged to prehistoric peoples... that land is even cheap. i don't get it. if you think dead german-americans would haunt you for building a house on their graves, why wouldn't you think that dead prehistoric people might get upset too? people are weird.
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Post by coldmercurywitch on Jan 25, 2003 8:46:39 GMT -5
I think it's an ownership thing Motley. People would feel that the dead German americans that were buried in that land stil owned the land in a way, so they don't want to disturb them. But prehistoric people didn't have any sort of records of owning land, so I guess people don't think of them as being any different that animals buried underneath them.
I could be wrong here, but that's the first thoguht that came to my mind.
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Post by Motley the Mercenary on Jan 25, 2003 8:57:57 GMT -5
yeah, that's what i was figuring too, only... the german-american people took this land, not always lawfully, from the descendants of the prehistoric people, a fact that people continue to forget... and anyway i'd just like to see your future anthropologists get their hands on our land ownership laws. they're screwy as hell. nialle tried to explain some to me once and i just couldn't wrap my brain around it. it was so medieval.
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Post by coldmercurywitch on Jan 25, 2003 9:25:41 GMT -5
Laws in general in many countries are really, really weird. Here in Australia we have a law stating it is illegal to roam the streets dressed in all black with a black beanie, black felt shoes and black shoe polish on your face. Why you ask? Because these are the tools of a cat burglar.
I think the land ownership laws here in Australia are OK, though I would have to look into it.
*looks at KoNeko in hope of some enlightenment*
We do have problems here in Australia about burial grounds and such though. An awful lot of Aboriginal tribes and clans were completely wiped out, and so the locations of their sacred burial sites went with them. There aren't meant to be hundreds of towns and cities where parts of them are built on top of these forgotten burial grounds, but it doesn't bother people because they don't know about it. Aboriginal people have also been here in Australia for 60, 000 years, so we have no idea how much land we have built on that was sacred.
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Post by Jet Black on Jan 25, 2003 10:49:45 GMT -5
i like cats a lot. they just don't like me. dogs do though and mosquitoes
Motley, it's exactly the opposite for me. I like dogs a lot. They just don't like me. (For some reason, they get all hyper, bark, and look fierce..and their tails aren't wagging (a sign of wanting to be friends)...). Cats do though..and flies (j/k). ;D (Mosquitoes aren't far behind, I can assure you..)
Do any one of you here actually dream about a situation, or a place, where you say or do something and then, after a few days or a week or so, it actually happens? I think that's happened to me a few times..does that count as premonitions?
Burial grounds..haven't been to one, except for one time, when I was quite young, I went to my grandfather's burial site to watch the coffin being buried. It was on top of a hill or something..and I'm not sure where they buried him, 'cause there was a crowd over there, and I couldn't see. It wasn't anything like a graveyard..weird..
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Post by Potter723 on Jan 25, 2003 11:48:45 GMT -5
[glow=black,2,300] hmm, that happens to me too, i like cats/dogs, almsot any animal, but they just dont like me... well, ok, a few of em do want to be freindly, the rest just dont want anytihng to do with me(unless its to eat me.. )
all of this druids stuff has made me relise, i can almost know what people are gonna do, before they do it....like i knew our teacher at school was gonna give us homework, when nobody else did....i knew she would. also i can somtime feel what poeple are thinking/feeling, (is that weird?) only works for some people, but its kinda funny, cuz i somtime get it wrong, and think people are happy when they are sad, or somthing, figure...
well, i gotta go weight in now, see ya'll later..
((sorry about not being on for a while, had stuff to sort out..))
[/glow]
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Post by En on Jan 25, 2003 12:49:15 GMT -5
*cracks up* At least you don't have to do it for a living, Mot. Real estate law is medieval, literally. The laws haven't changed much since the feudal lords deeded their manses to each other, except that mortgages are more common now and we have computers that can copy and paste long boring repetetive bits
My mum's grandparents lived in a house that was built on a Native American burial site, and I know for a fact that house had problems. You all know I'm a practical type, right? Well, one of my three real and personal ghost stories takes place at that house, and according to my mum she had run-ins with weird stuff there, too.
But of course I could never tell that to most people, because they'd laugh at me and tell me I'm full of crap. I doubt they'd be laughing if they knew what I dream that comes true, or if they'd dealt with the last two hauntings I have.
Jet, that's not weird in this thread at all. I'm not the only one who has dreams just like that. But most people laugh at that, or they only care if you dreamt about them lately. *shudders* I just hope my dream last night doesn't happen. I dreamt I witnessed a shooting on a college campus. And Mot, I'd kill to know someone older and wiser who could talk me through my hauntings and dreams. Most of the time the only way I can find to deal is to write a story about it, pass it off as fiction.
The only animals I have a way with are... can't think of one. Jack and Hermia's cats and Mum's cat don't hate me, and they're basically all the animals I know personally, so I guess I'm doing all right. I also tend to bond with people's dogs right off, but I'm afraid Roo and Gen's dog Willow and I never connected
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Post by coldmercurywitch on Jan 25, 2003 13:07:58 GMT -5
The old house that we used to live in, the one with the ghost, burnt down in 1999. Mum, being overly sentimental and materialistic, kept pretty much everything from the wreckage that she could scrunge up. This included bits and pieces of the house itself like bits of skirting board and also scorched belongings of ours (i wish she'd get over it and just chuck it all). Anyway, she put it all in the shed, which was untouched by the fire, to store until she worked out what to do with it. I now can't go near the shed without getting chills and weird vibes, and I refuse to set foot in there. The vibes I get from it are so sad that I have had tears build up behind my eyes.
I had a dream that mum's boyfriend came to stay over a night. Since he was dressed in regulation dark greens when he and mum came in the door, it menas he was on weekend leave to slowly re-introduce him back into society. This is not going to be something I'll be lookng forward to cos he bugs me. A guy in prison who gets himself that worried over me he doesn't eat for a week just because I went away with me dad for Xmas a few weeks after my op is way over obsessive. I'm wary of him.
I have this thing where alot of animals will listen to me. Our dogs, three rather huge rottweilers, always listen to me without a second thought, and often other people's pets listen to me as well. If I go over someone's house and their dog jumps up all I have to say is "don't" or "no" and they generally stop. Or if someone's cat won't stop rubbing against me, I can say "get away from me" in a polite, almost joking tone adn the cat will go away. Tis very handy.
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Post by Rue on Jan 25, 2003 15:57:45 GMT -5
The first cremation in the U.S. happened in 1876. A man built his own crematorium for when he died because he was so scared of being buried alive. Then his daughter died or something and she ended up being the first one to use it. (I remember weird facts sometimes, like ones I hear on the radio and stuff. I heard that one a week or two ago.)
Ha, and all of these people, mainly Catholics, were saying that it was bad to be cremated because it wasn't religious enough. But cremation was cheaper so a lot of people wanted to do it anyway. So people started selling $2,000 marble head stones for when you're cremated in addition to all of the stuff they have for normal burials.
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Post by En on Jan 25, 2003 18:47:36 GMT -5
I'm telling you, death is a racket these days. I earn every penny of my estate fees, I can tell you, but that's just because banks don't have enough brains to go round all their staff these days When I was really sick (Roo if you freak out, I swear I'll whop you with wet noodles), I looked into some burial plans and so forth, and the SMALLEST job I could get was over $5,000 USD. That's the plainest casket, smallest headstone and least fuss version. Cremation was around $3,000 but that's still money I would much rather leave my heirs.
And here I was thinking since there's a spot open at our old pioneer cemetery, they could just pitch me in a box and plunk a stone down, maybe an iris bulb or two if they want to spiff it up. Oh no. There are laws about what manner of box I must be packaged in, not a one of them less than $800 and that would have to be special-ordered from Trappist monks. There are also laws about maintenance and who can be in charge of sending my corpse off to whatever great beyond.
Lumie, darling, if something happens to me you know what I want you to do? There's a check in my cedar box, the one Papa made me, already signed. Make it out to yourself and check my computer to find out how much money is in the account. Write yourself the check. You can share the money with the rest of our siblings, and split my books up among the appropriate parties, but if anybody asks I wrote that check with my dying old-git-hand-tremble and if they have problems, they can consult my attorney. As fast as he gets crap done, they'll be mouldering in their own graves before they can try to get the money back.
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Post by coldmercurywitch on Jan 25, 2003 20:51:09 GMT -5
Wouldn't it be horrible to dig up an unmarked plot?
Sorry, this is just something that popped into my mind with all this talk of burial because I've done it before. I was digging a hole for our cat in the garden one time, because she died of course, and I dug up the remains of what I worked out to be a bunny rabbit of ours that we had buried in that same spot years before. I felt really really bad about it so I can just imagine what it would be like to dig up the remains of a person because everyone forgot they were there.
Personally, I'm not exactly sure what I'd like to happen to me once I do end up dying. I've thought about it plenty, but I just don't know. I don't think I'd like to be buried in the ground, except maybe if I culd choose any piece of earth in the world I wanted to be buried in and have a tree of my choice plantedover the top of me. If I was gign to have my remains burnt to a crisp, then I'd like to have myself put in a boat with lots of pretty smelling herbs (i don't know why i want the pretty smelling herbs, they just seem like a nice thought) and have the boat with me and the herbs in it lit then set adrift on the sea. I think I may have mentioned this somewhere before. It just sounds like a nice way to end my life and give it proper closure, cos if I knew that was happening to me, I'd feel like I was still as free as ever I could be.
Hmmmm......many would think us a morbid lot. We always seem to end up talking about death and being buried. I wonder why that is....
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