Invisible critters stealing my stuff?

B

Bill Marsh

Joined
Mar 26, 2002
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Is it just me, or do other people have this problem?

I was recently working on restoring a keris. I removed the blade from the handle and went to work sanding and refinishing the sheath and handle. I then decided to clean the blade, but it was gone!

Now, there are legends (urban legends) in Indonesia that keris have the ability to fly, that they leave their homes and go places. Usually they return to their owners -- actually the Javanese don't belive that you "own" a keris, just that you are a temporary custodian -- but that is another story....

Anyhow, the blade vanished! Well, let me say that I went back to my workshop and it was gone. I looked everywhere. There were no visitors. I have an elaborate alarm system that detects any movement, so no breakins and nothing else was missing -- then.

I accused Anne of hiding it for a joke. But, no, she was as mystified as me.

I began by carefully searching the workshop area. Then the entire house. Then the entire warehouse. The cars. EVERYWHERE! A 20 inch blade should be there somewhere!

For THREE WEEKS I searched and re-searched. I looked in places I knew I had looked before. Finally I gave up. Two weeks later I "happened" to look on a high shelf above my workbench and THERE IS WAS!

I must have looked there before. I remember looking there before.

Maybe it is just me, but I have noticed other stuff disapearing -- like losing my wristwatch in my bathroom --- for two weeks! Had it on when I went in to take a shower. Finished the shower, dried off and could not find the dammned watch! Anne was not even home when this happened.

Two weeks later I found it hanging on the inside door knob. How many times had we opened and closed the bathroom door? And not noticed it?

Is this something that goes beyond "senior moments?" Something that you young people have noticed?

Could it be --- now lets enter the Twighlight Zone" a moment. Could it be that there are invisible critters that like our personal stuff? That they take it and use it for whatever purposes they have and then return it? Putting it somewhere we will suddenly see it? Somewhere we have looked before, or nearby.

Or does this stuff of ours go invisible for a while and then re-appear? Usually in a place that makes you strike your forehead and exclaim, "There it IS!"

Now if I can just find my car keys......
 
Or maybe the invisible critters walk around watching us when we think we are alone and just snicker at us?

.
 
I can sure relate to the car keys issue. OTOH i once had a S&W Chief's Special 38 disappear for 2 months. It reappeared on the shelf of the closet and I swear I never put it there. :confused:

Ice
 
In Irish mythology there are creatures called Brownies that are said to be furry little men about 2' tall that wear dirty brown clothes and walk among us invisible. Most of the time they are harmless and even kind as they tend to watch over generations of a family, sometimes even following them to different homes or latching onto a particular family member. They also like to try and help around the homestead by doing little odds and ends. A little bowl of cream "accidentally" left out is the best treat you can offer them...just don't GIVE it to them. That is insulting and they might leave...or worse.
A Brownie that has been mistreated or unappreciated for too long can transform into a Bogie. Bogies are hob goblins that like to live in dark places of a man's property and play mean and dangerous tricks. Bogie is where the term Boogieman probably came from. Dark closet...plays tricks, etc etc etc.
It is said that oldest Irish families always have a Brownie living among them. My last name happens to be the second most common Irish name next to Murphy. The variations of my name date back well over 1000 years. I'm pretty sure my family has a Brownie...i just didn't know it until i researched it a bit;) When I was living alone before my fiance' moved back to town it was just me and the ferret in a small apartment. I'm gonna be honest. I lived like a slob. Food, dishes, clothes...everywhere.
Late at night I'd be sleeping in my bed and wake up to the sound of plates clinking together in the living room. "Must be the ferret," I'd say as he always loves to jump fromt he couch to the coffie table to root around and make a mess of my left out dishes. I'd curl up to get comfortable when I would notice a warm breathing little ball of fur was pressed against my stomach. It was the ferret trying to stay warm and he had been there the whole time. Then what made the sound? Brownie trying to clean up after me?
I would find stuff put up in places that i would never put it. Peanutbutter in the 'fridge? Plastic drinking cups stores with the baking pans? I'd never put that stuff there.
Sometimes i be having a bad dream as I often do and just as it would get to the worst part I would feel myself getting woken up by someone pulling on my big toe. My dad did it to me all the time when I was a kid when it was time to get up, just like his dad before him. Now it still happens from time to time...but my dad lives in another county 40 miles away;) The effects of sleep paralysis brought on by waking "too soon" from a boarderline night terror? Probably, but it's a lot more fun to wake up and chuckle "Brownie, one of these days you're just gonna pull my big toe right off! Thanks for looking out for me:)".
Great thread:) Lots of fun.

Jake
 
The brownie is a spirit popular in Scottish folk-lore. Brownies haunt houses, and if treated well will help with the drudgery of the housework while the occupants sleep.
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I'll be damned - all this time I thought it was a senior moment problem! :eek:
 
NO, IT'S THE BLUE MEN!!!!
(you must never have seen the "new" twilight zone episodes)
 
Notice how they TAKE your stuff, but never GIVE you any?

Just once, I'd like to open the safe and find a Kimber .45 in there- I would gladly put out milk & cookies for such a gnome/brownie/ghost.

Our downtown is well-haunted, and one old building has a female ghost who loves jewelry. Leave out a ring, bracelet, etc. it vanishes.

A day or so later it reappears in a certain spot, a windowsill I think.


Ad Astra :confused:
 
My family is Scots, so we have a wee Sock Fairy. In the dark of the night, he creeps inta' your room and gloms onta' one sock from your favorite pair -- just the one. And you canna ever find it again! :o
 
That happens quite often around here. Right now I have a very old 'Hawk's head gone missing and it has gone missing for months now. We have looked *Everywhere* and it is not to be found!

One time we went to a Sweat down in Arkansas and I had taken off my medicine bag and put it in my large medicine bag afterwards because it was soaking wet. Next morning I didn't pay any attention and we packed up and left for home.
When we got home and was unpacking I happened to think about it and went and looked and it wasn't where I put it.
I emptied *everything* out of the big bag even down to the insert that goes in the bottom. Barb did so as well. My medicine bag was not too be found!!!!
A couple of months later I was in my large medicine bag for something and there it was, smack dab right in the middle of the bottom!!!!
I don't often look anymore but things in my personal medicine bag, the one that went missing, sometimes has something substituted for what I put in it myself. The substitute will stay for a while and then disappear only after the object substituted has reappeared.
I don't question that because I figure the spirits that be know what I need more so than I do. It can be rather disconcerting though.
 
Interesting topic.

Two of my coworkers are thieves. When something comes up missing my first guess is them and not spirits, but I suppose that the spirits may be behind some of it. Some of the stuff that gets stolen is just downright odd.

Of course, when my field jacket went missing in the middle of the winter I was anything but amused. Regardless of whether it was taken by a human or a spirit, if I ever catch the culprit they're going to wish that they'd taken a different jacket. It was a very cold winter without a coat and giving it back won't make it right now - too late for that.

When a keris decides to take a trip, I wonder where it goes?
 
Hey Jake,

The Pookah (puca, pookie, etc) is an Irish or Scots faery which can be naughty, vicious, or congenial. Harvey, the six-foot rabbit, was a pookah; as you know, Harvey was a most gracious soul.

I grew up in a household which lacked sympathy for lost items. The refrain from the rest of the family, when one was looking for a mis-laid item, was:

"What the pookie hides, the pookie finds."

In other words, go find it yourself, you lost it. :)
 
Bill, consider the possibility that they don't have to be invisible, just fast and sneaky.

Hope that helps.
 
I have little sympathy for those of you who swear you looked in one place, and waa laaa; there it is later! It happens to me and I dont have any sympathy for myself either. Our eyes are not cameras. They are eyes attached to a very human brain.

But for the missing socks- that's Federal Grant material.



munk
 
Aardvark said:
Bill, consider the possibility that they don't have to be invisible, just fast and sneaky.

Hope that helps.
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Sounds like my ex-wife! :rolleyes: :rolleyes:


As far as family, my mother used to say, "Why, THERE it is!" While she was looking for the 'lost'article. Was really irritating. She thought that it would somehow make it appear. :confused: :p
 
My two year old shouts, "There it is" in high expectations of being right.






munk
 
munk said:
. . .
But . . . the missing socks- that's Federal Grant material.

munk
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"Unilateral Deacquisition of Stockings in a Closed System," Feller and Thompson, University of Wisconsin Press, 1996.
 
There is nothing here that couldn't be cured by ever higher doses of well cafinated coffee. :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :rolleyes:

n2s
 
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