Month: October 2020

A College Ghost Story

On By SimonneBradenLeave a comment

It began in my Communications class my first semester at Illinois State University. The group project was a panel discussion, where we had to argue both sides of an issue. Our group chose the existence of ghosts: did they exist or not? Our prof mentioned one of the librarians had seen the ghost of Ange Milner (pronounced Angie, short for Angeline) on campus and that might be a good source.

Ange Milner was a popular librarian in the early 1900’s at ISU, so celebrated that the current library – Milner Library – was named after her. They shut down classes when she died in 1928 so the student body could attend her funeral.

We shuffled over to the main desk at the library to get the scoop on the librarian’s experience. “Well, actually,” The Librarian said slowly. “I am going to go into the old stacks at Williams Hall, where she’s been seen, with a group on Halloween night. Would you like to come along?” We all agreed to be there.

At 9pm on Halloween night, I showed up outside Williams Hall. An older couple in their 50’s and The Librarian appeared, with no sign of my classmates, but I sort of expected that. My dorm floor was basically evacuated because everyone was dressed up and drinking at house parties. While we were waiting, The Librarian went upstairs to unlock the doors and check on things. The older couple was part of this tour: he was a Pastor/Medium (someone who could talk to spirits) and she was his wife. The Southern Baptist angel on my shoulder rolled her eyes and audibly sighed.

“Well, this looks like the group. Let’s go!” The Librarian lead the three of us up the stairs and through a large door.

The Librarian had a big flashlight, but it really wasn’t needed. The room spanned the length of the building and had large windows that overlooked Stevenson Hall and In Exchange. The street lights flooded the room with enough light to see, which was wall-to-wall with bookshelves. It was a very symmetrical room with a dividing aisle between them.

We sort of milled around at first, getting a feel for the surroundings and letting our eyes adjust to the dim room. And then The Librarian said, “Oh that wasn’t like that when I came up.” We all spun around and saw the filing cabinets were pulled nearly all the way out, some only half way. It was super creepy. My heart rate went up, but the Southern Baptist angel on my shoulder whispered, “She opened those for effect when she came up to check on things.” I agreed this was too circumstantial to use as evidence.

“Do you mind if I try to contact her?” Pastor/Medium asked.

“Sure, go ahead.” said The Librarian.

This ought to be good, I thought.

Pastor/Medium leaned against the wall by the windows and closed his eyes.

After a few moments of silence, his eyes flew open. “She’s here.”

“Where are you?” he called out. He started walking down the center aisle and we followed slowly behind. I felt like I was in a movie.

“Why are you here and not in the great beyond?” he asked. After a moment, he said, “She says she has work to do.”

The Pastor/Medium paused at one of the aisles, a few in from the windows. “Hello, Ange. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

We peered down the row, and sure enough, there was a white mist, ever so slightly opaque. The midst hung in their air, as if investigating the books on the shelf.

“Those are new books, Ange,” said The Librarian, as if she were talking to a student.

I would have rolled my eyes at the mist – it was a figment of my imagination – I came up here to see a ghost and now I’m seeing one – it was all about the power of suggestion and the lighting. The Southern Baptist angel on my shoulders nodded in agreement.

Except for two things.

One, I’ve never had a paranormal experience, I’ve never spoken in tongues, I’ve never had a vision, and I’ve never hallucinated. I’m a realist through and through, logic ruled all.

Two, the mist had a defined bottom. I could clearly see the hem of an A-line skirt with a small dainty floral pattern on it.

The others saw it too.

Most manifestations of an apparition appear and disappear quickly – this one did not. It floated in the air for quite some time. We just watched, in complete rapture.

Ever the scientist, I turned around and looked down the the other bookshelf aisle behind us. If I stared long enough, I should have been able to see the same “ghost” – as the lighting was the same in the symmetrical room. Nothing appeared. I turned back around, completely awestruck at what I was witnessing: there was a ghost there – or something was obviously there. I was seeing a real live ghost.

The Southern Baptist angel on my shoulder had left, too perturbed about what was happening to stick around for anything else.

Pastor/Medium spoke. “She would like us to leave now.”

“Well, if she wants us to leave, then we should go,” I said, probably too fast and an octave higher than my normal voice.

I was a little more than freaked out once we made it back outside.

I took off in run to my dorm. I needed to process what I just saw that went against everything I believed about the world.

The dorm was still a ghost town itself and I couldn’t handle being alone with all this stuff in my head. What if this spirit followed me!? So I took off in a full sprint to my friend’s dorm in Hamilton-Whitten (now demolished). He wasn’t in, his roommate said. He went to a friend’s house and wasn’t sure when he’d be back. I waited about a half hour before I left a note on his keyboard: CALL ME ASAP! I somehow managed to stay in my dorm room, my back up against the wall, too freaked out to sleep until well past midnight.

I’m a scientist and a Christian, so I should have been able to explain away my experience. It’s been twenty years and I’m still convinced of what I saw: a ghost. I’ve had other paranormal experiences since then – only audio, nothing as concrete as what I experienced in the old stacks of Williams Hall.

In the words of DC Talk, “Somethings just can’t be explained.”

Confidence

On By SimonneBradenLeave a comment

One of the things I’ve never had is confidence. I wilt easily. I have spent my life making sure I am out of other people’s way, whether that be a church or in traffic. My sweet boss from my last job managed to get it on every performance review: “You have no confidence in your work.” Yes, I know. I’m accustomed to being wrong and defaulting to someone with a louder voice, more experience – basically anyone but me.

There was a girl in my high school named Kristen who was the most confident person I had ever come across. Her dark hair resembled a squirrel’s nest, her teeth could have been a dental case study, and her figure would best be described as lumpy. She was, in a word, ugly. More so, she had a grating personality to go with it: loud, slightly obnoxious, and a really annoying laugh. I say this not as an insult, but to say none of this registered with her.

No one would have given her a second look. But in Kristen’s mind, she was a runway model. She walked – no, strutted – through the hallways of high school as if she was a tall leggy blond who had modeling agencies breaking down her door. The football players did their best at making fun of her, mostly by imitating the annoying laugh she had. To a less confident girl, it would be torture. But to Kristen, she saw it as flirting. She’d laugh and smile and say, “Oh stop, you’re so annoying!” while giggling, egging them on. The old saying of “all press is good press” summed up Kirsten’s outlook on life.

“They’re not flirting with you, they’re making fun of you,” I wanted to say, but never did. She acted like she could have her pick of any guy and simply chose none of them. She eventually got a boyfriend in another town and used this fact to remind all the popular guys she was off the market. The entire school knew about Kristen’s boyfriend because she managed to bring it up in every conversation.

Even the cheerleaders – who were beautiful creatures – did not possess an ounce of confidence Kristen had. Kristen did what she wanted when she wanted and yes, she said what she said. You can see yourself out if you didn’t recognize her awesomeness. Everyone threw obstacles at her and she just stepped right over them, laughing as she did so. No one defined Kristen but Kristen.

While I made high honor roll every semester, Kristen did not. Nonetheless, we worked the same job in high school. I remember struggling with a procedure on the computer, but Kristen picked it up right away and then explained it to me several times when I couldn’t get it, with her usual confidence, but never once talked down to me or rolled her eyes at my gross incompetence.

I wonder how she got her confidence. Was in inborn? Did life put her through a crucible and this was the refinement? Here I am, twenty some-odd years later, and despite all the life experience, do not have the confidence of teenaged Kristen.

I wonder what she’s doing now. I wonder if her confidence has grown over years or if life squashed it out of her?

Here, on the cusp of forty, I need more confidence in all areas of life. I live like I’m still in my twenties, yet I’m experiencing hot flashes regularly now. Social media reminds me to sit down and shut up because I have the wrong outlooks on all the hot button issues of the day.

A more confident me would channel Kristen, but I am so darn sensitive to everything, my instinct is to get out of the way and camouflage into the background.

But then again, maybe that’s where the Lord intended me to be: out on the periphery like the desert mothers of the early church.

In permaculture, the margins are the key to everything: it’s where the most diversity comes out and is the reason the interior does so well.

As I continue to build up the soil in my garden, I hope to build more confidence in myself, even if it’s only above a whisper, to stand tall and step out of the shadow and into the sun.

Natural Farming

On By SimonneBradenLeave a comment

I’ve always said I was an organic farmer with the little patch of agriculture I have in my backyard. Since the pandemic, I dug up the land around my house to use as a garden. It has been mildly successful.

My cousin was an uber organic farmer, going as far as composting human waste – well out of my comfort zone. Currently, he is a guest of the Bureau of Prisons, a federal outfit. And because of this, we have become pen pals.

I kept him up to date with my gardening adventures and he suggested a book about natural farming. I was intrigued. I figured natural farming meant organic farming, but it was something completely different.

Natural farming was a technique developed by a Japanese man named Masanobu Fukuoka. He believes one should let nature take its course – as the Lord intended – instead of using pure science and unsustainable farming techniques of modern America, which in the long term, are not sustainable. While Mr. Fukkuoka does not come out and say it, it makes sense that the Lord developed all this for a reason.

Natural farming has four rules:

  • No plowing or tilling of soil
  • No chemical fertilizer or prepared compost; one should use clover or other cover crops as a ground cover.
  • No weeding by tillage or herbicides; to combat weeds, one should use straw mulch, clover, or temporary flooding; the goal should be controlling weeds, not eliminating them
  • No dependence on chemicals for gardening

Instead of adding to the soil with anhydrous ammonia and other chemicals, Mr. Fukuoka says you should use plants to add goodness to the soil, which in turn, also nourish the soil microbes that make plant life possible – without happy microbes, your soil is not healthy. Not only is it cheaper, but it much more efficient than the chemicals and “organic fertilizers” from the store. It has completely changed how I look at my garden.

Man made MiracleGro. God made the natural world. Which would you trust?

A more modern term for what I’m doing is permaculture. I hope to have a food forest in my backyard in the coming years. I’m interplanting other plants that add things to the soil or deter pests among my garden vegetables. Instead of getting a truckload of mulch delivered, I decided to have a “living mulch” in the form of the humble clover.

Clover makes a great groundcover and provides the soil with nitrogen, an element needed for leafy growth. I put it in both my garden and the lawn. I even tried my hand at planting rice in the garden. The plants grew, but they haven’t made any seed heads yet.

The real magic will take place this winter: I am overcropping. Instead of leaving my beds fallow over the winter, they will be fields of rye and hairy vetch. These grain/legumes will add more nitrogen to the soil, improve soil quality, keep erosion at bay, and nourish the spring plantings.

While I am still quite new at all this, I hope to take all the lessons I learned this year and apply them fully to next year’s garden.

And the best part? I’m growing food using nature as God intended.