Okay, so I don’t want to alarm anyone or have you feel as though I’m a crazy, but the place I live might be haunted, seriously.

Personally I like to think that there is no afterlife, that what you see here on Earth is all that there is, that when you die you cease completely, your mind goes blank to nothing, and that if you believe in some form of an afterlife your dying brain creates such a place as your last internal vision - like I said, this is what I like to think, I have no definite answer of it being true, but it comes from the logical portion of my brain, this is in part from having common sense, and having seen the life of someone else cease before my very own eyes.

All of this “logic” that I speak of has some holes in it, mainly some unexplainable things that have happened in and around my presence while inside my flat, and while I’ve never seen a ghost per se, I’ve had a few moments of hearing things, seeing odd things, and definitely feeling such odd things – the police were even called once, and I wish that this wasn’t true. 

Others who have never been warned of such ghosts, spirits, or whatever things that there are inside my place have been seriously spooked by various things, at which point I just giggle because they get to see them while I don’t.  Strange things don’t happen all the time, but often enough to think that something is up with it all.

One particular time that something happened to me was during the winter of 2004/05.  I was watching some television in the Tony Bennett Room, and all alone in my place with exception to my cat.  

During a commercial break around 10:15 I went through my flat to check that the windows and doors were all locked as I would normally do before going to bed.  After checking the front door I walked through the living room, stopped and turned off the light completely, and then checked that the cellar door was locked fully.  I remember that I specifically looked back into the living room and seeing the light being off while checking this cellar door, and then I walked back to the Tony Bennett Room to the television.

After about ten minutes went by I decided that I would get ready for an early night of rest.  I got up and went to go into the bathroom, when I stopped in my tracks.  Something inside me said “check on the living room” so stepped aside, looked down my hallway and saw that the light inside of the living room that had been turned off just a few minutes prior was somehow turned ON!!!

Having seen that, I walked into the living room, took an extra look around to make sure that no intruder was there, that everything was still locked from the inside, and then turned the light off, finding the entire light being on almost magically after I had definitely turned it off to be completely weird, but didn’t suspect a ghost or spirit or anything of the like.  I just thought that it was odd.

I then went back along my way to the bathroom, freshened up for bed, turned everything off, and slipped into bed next to my already sleeping cat.

I had just pulled the covers up to my head and had found a comfy spot.  I was no more than 30 seconds in bed when I felt the bed suddenly jerk out away from the wall, and then slam into the wall. 

I nearly crapped my pants thinking that someone was standing in front of my bed like an ax murderer.  Every muscle in my body was tense as can be expecting the ax to fall into my skull.  After about a minute of silence I turned the light on, and found no one in my bedroom.  I looked at the time, saw that is was still around 10:30, and that my cat was still in a deep sleep having not woken up from the sharp movements. 

I wish I could say that I bravely went through my flat looking for whomever pulled the bed out and away from the wall and then jerked it back to the wall, instead I cried, like seriously balled my eyes out in complete fright, cried. 

I then called up the girlfriend I had at the time hysterically crying, which would have been one thing, but she was around friends, who all just NEEDED to know what was so wrong with me. 

After about a half an hour on the phone I calmed myself down, got off the phone vowing that I would not to go to sleep ever again, and ended up waking up the next morning with the light still on next to my bed and the phone still in my hand. 

To this day I have absolutely no logical factual explanation of what happened that night, and so I guess the best explanation could be that a ghost or spirit was upset that I turned the light off when it wanted the light to be on.

C. C. Deville grew up in my neighborhood, and went to the high school that I attended for summer school one year- I just couldn’t ever care enough about sequential math to apply myself. 

I’m picking up the guitar, growing my hair out, stocking up on Aqua Net, and am giving myself the rockstar name of Scarlett Johansson Deville. 

Have you ever found yourself alone in your cubicle, felt a cold chill, turned and found that there wasn’t an open window?  Have you ever been doing an endless spreadsheet in Excel and felt a tap on your shoulder, only to turn around and find that nobody was there?  Have you ever stepped away from your breakfast to answer a coworkers question, only to return minutes later to find that your Cocoa Puffs haven’t become as soggy as they should have?

If you answered yes to any of the above questions, chances are your office and more particular, your cube is haunted by ghosts….from a past dimention!!! 

Together with my crack team of interns, pages, admins, and a handful curious passerby, we have assembled the true stories of the most horrific deaths and massacres to have ever graced the fluorescent walls in the land of cubes and corporate casual dress codes this side of the Mississippi over the past 20 years. 

1. Lilith Gautbaum, Long Island, NY, 1988  Lilith’s coworkers vividly remembered how she was so happy one crisp autumn afternoon as she returned from a lunch hour drive to the local Burger King.  She laughed about how she just acquired 17 kid’s meal toy sets during her gluttony filled lunch hour – 2:07PM was the last time anyone saw Lilith alive.  After trying to reach his underling Lilith for over an hour, Lilith’s boss walked over to find out why Lilith wasn’t picking up her calls.  The manager walked into Lilith’s cube and found Lilith sitting in her chair, Microsoft DOS was on the brand new 85lb IBM desktop in front of her, and Lilith was dead!  The medical examiner found at least eight of the toys from the kid’s meal lodged down Lilith’s throat.  No one knows for sure why Lilith attempted to eat eight of the cute, albeit delicious looking childrens toys, and to this day, every afternoon at 2:07PM everyone in the office hears a laughing cackle, even when no living person is laughing,  Many people believe that this laughter just so happens to be the time that Lilith returning from her lunch…laughing over her Burger King toys.
2. Edwin Mascarda, Bethesda, MD, 1997  Edwin originally was a replacement Account Temps Temporary at the firm of McCloy & Spinster, LP.  He wasn’t even supposed to be working that day, yet for reasons unknown to even his closest fraternity brothers, Edwin went into cover a weekend shift at the height of tax season hungover, and with a tummy full of White Castle burgers.  Somehow Edwin managed to sneak into work that warm early April day, because no one even saw his arrival at the office, but they did notice that something was awry in the restroom.  On the floor of the last stall was a brand new copy of Mad magazine, the overhead light was flashing out of order, there were a pair of legs that had slacks pulled down to the ankles that weren’t moving, and a strong pungent odor was in the air.  When building maintenance went ahead and forced in the stall door they found Edwin hunched over against the wall, DEAD, with an 18 inch turd four inches thick stuck hanging out of his butthole and hanging halfway into the bowl of water.  To this day men walk into that restroom having the distinct smell of a floater left unflushed, yet when they check each stall they see nothing but clean bowls.  Some people say that the smell is really Edwin getting his revenge at having gone in to do a thankless day of work on a Saturday during tax season.
3. Paper Mill Marketing Department, Eltingville, Ohio, 2000 The entire team had been busy working through the night trying to get their brand new PowerPoint presentation ready for their big sales pitch the next morning.  They were just about done, and had been busy printing out a copy of the presentation for one last double check to ensure that everything was in the proper order when the printer jammed unexpectedly.  The team naturally sent Xie the new Asian kid straight out of college to see what was causing the jam, but since he was so new he didn’t know to check the back of the printer.  He eventually called in for assistance from his Caucasian and Afro-American coworkers for help.  After a good 15 minutes in which everyone stuck their hands into at least one orifice of the printer, a sudden surge of electricity blasted out of the outlet that originally went through Xie’s body, but since he and his entire marketing department coworkers were so close in proximity around the network printer and the outlet that powered the printer, every last one of them was shocked to their untimely deaths.  The next morning the receptionist arrived at work to find the network printer shooting out the PowerPoint presentation over and over and over.  There was a good 200 copies of it spread out over all 11 corpses that had been the marketing department.  To this very day each morning that very same network printer has a freshly printed copy of the very same presentation, most people believe that this the dead marketing department still wants to do their presentation. 

So the next time you or your coworkers have a hard on from a stiff breeze running through your office, just remember that the breeze might not be from the wind, it might very much be from…dead former employees passing through your crotch on the way to the water cooler….

Not sure if anyone has been following the news off the coast of eastern Africa of late, but the United States Navy is in the middle of a battle against pirates in and around the waters of Somalia. 

Apparently some modern day pirates have been hijacking and pirating foreign merchant vessels, doing what with them I can’t imagine.  Due to this, the Somali government has recently decided to allow the United States Navy to follow hijacked vessels into its territorial waters in a bid to rid the area of modern day pirates.* 

btw, my grandfather used to work on those tugs with the “M” markings.

Low and behold, after about a day of searching and chasing a hijacked North Korean vessel, the U.S. Navy has finally found its ship (full of seafaring men) and has boarded the ship to have a swashbuckling gun, grenade, and laser fight – a far cry from the good ole days of pirating

See now, when I was a kid, pirates didn’t have guns, grenades, or even lowly lasers. 

 

Back then, if you were a pirate and wanted to storm another ship you would have to scare them real good with cannons that could easily be turned around to point at you when you weren’t looking, you would have to take smalls steps (because all pirates were really short) to board via planks of wood, and then whip out your comedically large sword in a threatening manner.  Then to top it all off you wouldn’t have to deal with a Navy, you just had to deal with a wascally wabbit or two.

They just don’t make pirates like they used to, ya see, ya see.

*Wikipedia refuses to acknowledge the meaning of the term “butt pirate”.

This morning I received another paper version of the MTA Rider Report Card, and I caught something on it this time that I didn’t the first time I received one, namely all of the other languages that it comes in.  In particular, Yiddish!

Despite having been brought up around a grandmother who spoke a mix of German, English, and Yiddish I have no clue as to how to read Yiddish.  Heck, I never even thought that it was a written language, how’s that for ignorant! 

Basically my grandmother spoke a few Yiddish words in the middle of sentences, mostly when she was describing a few select things, and growing up I had just assumed that Yiddish was the old fashioned way of talking in some form of Pig Latin – I never realized that it was an actual full language until just now.

So while I cannot read Hebrew to decipher exactly how the translation from English to Yiddish goes about the subway report card, I’ll assume that the questionnaire says things along these lines…and please, excuse my broken Yiddish…

1. Is there enough room to squeeze in enough meshuggenehs on the train?
2. Does your commute deal with a facacta amount of delays?
3. Would a Metrocard fare hike have you verklempt?
4. Do you feel that the subway system is worth babkes?
5. Have you found the trains to clean or do people shlep schmutz all over the place?

Personally, I feel that the voice of the extremely large Yiddish population that takes the NYC subway system each day should have their voices heard, heard loud and clear!  It’s about time.