Our library is done!
Posted by Michelle on Mar 21, 2003 in Jeff, Michelle
The make your own wallpaper experiment is done – and it looks great!
Researchers to see who gives up ghost
Posted by Michelle on Mar 8, 2003 in Michelle
Cool article about a group of researchers who are staking out a local historical house to see if they can get the rumored ghosts to appear.
It’s extra cool to us because we had our wedding reception at the old house. It’s a great old house with a gorgeous lawn. ….
Researchers to see who gives up ghost
Durham center invites ghostbusters to work
By ANNE BLYTHE, Staff Writer
CHAPEL HILL — There no doubt will be much spirited debate during this event. Ghost hunters plan to hole up in the historic Horace Williams house tonight to try to coax answers to mysteries that have haunted the 1840s farmhouse for nearly half a century.
The investigators — from Seven Paranormal, a nonprofit organization based in Carthage — are likely to arrive with infrared scopes, motion detectors, thermal scanners and different kinds of recorders to log anything paranormal that might happen.
Horace Williams, a frugal, eccentric philosophy professor, lived in the cozy, one-story home for the last four decades of his 82-year life and for the first four of the 20th century.
It is he, residents have said through the years, who reappears as an apparition.
Images of the thin, bespectacled man also have been reported in the halls of the venerable Caldwell Hall, a 90-year-old building on the UNC-Chapel Hill campus that once housed the campus philosophy department.
“I guess that’s how he stays so thin,” joked Catherine Frank, an administrator with the Chapel Hill Preservation Society, which has offices in the Horace Williams house. “He moves around a lot. I know this is serious research that they’re doing, but it’s one of those things that if you don’t approach it with a bit of levity, it can be tough.”
Not only have there been reports of the phantom philosopher appearing, some objects in the Horace Williams house seem to disappear from one room and mysteriously resurface in another without the visible or admitted aid of humans.
A trip through the house today offers a second close-up look at the old haunt. Ghost hunters took their first look around Feb. 8.
“The places that they found any activity at all were places like the office where electronic equipment could have been part of the reason,” said Frank, who opted to stay home with her young daughter that night. “They said they found some violence in the bathroom closet and at the end of the evening, they said there had been a presence following one woman the whole time.”
There is one theory about the paranormal presence in the bathroom.
Williams, who was said to be very tight with his money, was loath to spend the cash necessary to hook up to public water and sewer. His wife, so the lore goes, returns to the house, which now boasts such modern amenities, and flushes the toilet just because she can.
Who knows whether any ghosts will be given up tonight, Frank said.
The investigation is a try-out of sorts.
Durham’s Rhine Research Center, one of the world’s oldest institutions of paranormal study, is sponsoring the event as part of a series of ghost hunts at historic homes to do a bit of research. In recent years, the interest in paranormal activity seems to have surged, according to Maggie Blackman, publicist at the Rhine center.
“We get so many calls here,” Blackman said. “We seem to be a lot of people’s first point of reference.” The center, though, does not do such field work. The idea behind the hunts was to get a look at some of the people who do such research and review and compare their methods. With a better understanding of the kinds of ghost hunters in their midst, center staffers might feel more comfortable referring calls.
“We’re just trying to take a look at what people are doing out there,” Blackman said.
Photos: Around town photos
Posted by Michelle on Mar 6, 2003 in Michelle
I live in one of those sprawling suburbs that is rapidly moving out the country and farm people with development after development.
(Shot of from inside my car at an automated car wash)
Update – March ’03
Posted by Michelle on Mar 3, 2003 in Michelle
Not much to report…
That’s about it.
Our pups :)
Posted by Michelle on Mar 1, 2003 in pups & other pets
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As you might be able to tell, we love our pups!
We have two beagles, one six year old open marked tri-colored female named Miss Molly and a now eight month old black back male named Buster Brown. And now we have added Sam, a dachshund we found.
Michelle got Molly in 1995 when she was living with her roommate Michele Eager. Eager got two kittens, Cody and Grant the same week and the threesome grew up together.
When Michelle moved in with Jeff, Molly came along – little did Jeff know what he was getting into! Once we built the house, we had so much more room and thought Molly needed a pal.
Buster arrived the first week of January, 2001 – all of eight weeks old.
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Our six year old beagle Molly was thrilled to have a friend – ok that’s a lie! He’s a pest but we think deep down she loves him. And she has lost three pounds since he arrived, so that is great for her!
We added a fence to the house for them in May, so they can run wild outside. Molly likes to lay in the sun and relax but Buster wants to dig and play ball. We tried the frisbee thing but he seems to be more interested in chewing the frisbee than retrieving it. His new trick is when he wants to be playful, he runs under the house and hides whatever ball or frisbee that you are playing fetch with.
We put up a basketball hoop as well and Buster loves the basketball – as well as to try to grab your shorts when you are shooting.
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People think we are nuts but we had a wonderful artist, Keri Lynn Shosted, do a painting of the pups. We just LOVE it, here is the small version of it to the right –>
We took them on vacation to Nags Head in June, where Buster got in the ocean for the first time, found a huge fish head and escaped four times – of course Molly was content and mellow. Buster is now as big as Molly, skinnier but as long and maybe a bit taller – actually he’s two pounds more according to the vet. He may be the dominant one but she doesn’t take any crap from him.
Our newest pup, Sam, has been documented quite a bit already on here. On 3/19/02, we found a lost dachshund crossing the road near our home. No collar and as sweet as can be, I nearly jumped out of the car before Jeff had even stopped it. Check out the info we posted about him trying to find his owners.
Long story short, after many efforts to get the word out, no one claimed him – I’m sure now someone dumped him to fend for himself in the world. We fell in love with him and kept him despite his problems. I’m still angry someone dumped this wonderful dog but if they would to this to a dog, they clearly weren’t very good owners anyway. Read more about why we couldn’t give him up and kept him.
Sam wakes me up almost every morning – and I don’t even mind!
