11:11:11 on 11/11/11 - Farewell

Hey Guys and Ghouls....

Sorry for my post Hallowe'en absence. In all the furor surrounding the beloved Hallowe'en holiday, I had gotten behind on my 'greeting card' creating. And with the Christmas/Yule season coming up, I had to actually do some work....blech! But I do it so that I can make some extra dough, so I had to give in and start creating something other than Hallowe'en themed cards for the Winter holidays forthcoming. Sadly, there is not much of a market for Hallowe'en themed greeting cards and invitations once Oct. 31st has passed. I personally don't understand why of course, as I am always still interested.....but alas, others seem to want to move on! {sigh}

With that being said, I just HAD to take a short break and make this post. Do you all know what today is? It is 11-11-11! That's right, you may or may not remember this 11:11 post of mine from January....but the number 1111 is significant to me and is ever present in my life. If you want to know why, you can click on the link above and read how it came about. But, today is MY DAY! Today we will hit 11:11:11 on 11/11/11 TWICE! That doesn't happen often as you can obviously figure. So does the day hold any great significance or auspiciousness? Maybe it does....who is to really say. I would guess that would be determined on a case by case basis.
But for me....well I am fairly certain it will be my last and final post here on the Hallowe'en Tree Blog. Why? Because it is obvious to me that tonight at precisely 11:11:11 pm.....my Mother Ship will be docking in the huge field that lies just behind a buffer of trees on the back of our property. And that Mother Ship will be coming here to finally carry me back to my home planet. I'm not real sure how it will all play out, but as long as there is no pain involved, then I'm all for it. So I wanted to be sure to bid you all adieu and farewell and let you know that I've enjoyed conversing with you over the years.
Now I'm certain that there HAS to be some plausible explanation for this number arriving in my life and refusing to go away. In fact, I am partial to the 'Encoded DNA' theory myself. And it will be nice to return to the place in which I was spawned and sent to Earth to.....uh.....well I don't really know actually. In fact, I may have actually failed my mission here, and am being sent back to be reprimanded....who really knows?! But regardless....I'm certain tonight is the culmination of something, as it relates to 1111. However, should this event fail to transpire, (like all of Harold Camping's Doomsday Predictions)....then I suppose I am stuck on this planet until Dec. 21st, 2012 at precisely.....yep, you guessed it, 11:11 universal time. This is the end date of the Mayan long count calendar and there are a myriad of theories out there as to what that means for us peons here on Earth.Of course book sellers and the History channel seem to favor an "it's the end of the world as we know it" scenario. (You REM fans can sing aloud now if you want.) But WHAT end? A massive solar flare and explosion of the entire planet and all its inhabitants? Or as the New Age movement believes, it marks the end of one age, and the beginning of a new age. "It's the age of Aquarius", with a new mass spiritual awakening that will "let the sunshine in". (Now you '5th Dimension' and 'Hair' fans can sing along.) Of course it's also fun to note here that Aquarius is the 11th sign of the zodiac....but whose counting!
If you want to do a little more reading on 11:11 and it's relationship to many worldwide events including the Winter Solstice of 2012....click here or do an 11:11 web search if you prefer! And for your viewing pleasure I've posted a YouTube video below dedicated to the subject. In the meantime, I need to go eat dinner and get packed up for my trip. If my big plans fall through however, I'll be back in a few days! :o)

Treasure on the Mountain - Part 2

"Searching is half the fun:
life is much more manageable when thought of
as a scavenger hunt as opposed to a surprise party."
~ Jimmy Buffett

Okay...the last two posts are more autumn related than Halloween per se....but I only promised to post in the general realm of those two subjects. And since I've been away for a week, it's the best I can do.

Now as I mentioned in the last post, my chitlins discovered a 'treasure chest' of sorts in a cave on the mountain, and insisted that I interrupt my much needed commune with Autumn to go check it out. Apparently, my son is the one who discovered it as he was climbing around on the mountain. He saw something tucked back in what appeared to be a small cave opening in the boulders. So he crawled back in there and pulled out what appeared to be an antique ammunition box perhaps? Not really sure how to describe the container other than it was yellow and rusty and looked like something my Grandpa would have had in his work shop.
So we eagerly open the box up with no regard to life and limb, should it have been some sort of explosive or snake infested booby trap. My son was hoping for gold and jewels of course....(well really, weren't we all?!) But at first we didn't understand what we were looking at. There were small spiral notebooks inside of plastic zip lock bags, pens and pencils, business cards and an assortment of small strange trinkets. We were wondering who put this stuff in this box, and why they had it hidden in the nooks and crannies of the boulders on the side of a mountain in Smuggler's Notch, Vermont.
So being the 'Curious Georges' that we be.....we opened the bags, removed the notebooks and looked inside. There were notes from all different people, one after the other. The oldest notes we found dated back to 2002 and the most current note had been inscribed on the very day we found it. So we started to read a few. And the first one I read made me very sad. It was written by a man and his wife who had gone hiking in Smuggs to commemorate the death of their daughter. They too had found this same box and added their message. We flipped through the books and saw a wide variety of passages from individuals, hiking groups, couples and families just like us. There would be days when no one had found the box, and days when apparently more than one person had found it.

Then we noticed a note in one of the plastic bags, so we took it out and read it. It explained that the box we had found was a 'GeoCache', put there by the Northern Explorers club or something like that. It said if you find the box, feel free to take something from it, but if you do, then please leave something in return. Or just sign the journals and kindly replace the box just where you found it. It had an email address....geocaching.com. So my husband used one of the pens, wrote the address on his hand, and I added our family's passage to the book. If you don't already know this about me....I apparently live in a parallel universe where I learn of things several months, to years AFTER, the rest of the world has already 'been there' and 'done that'! So of course we still had no idea what exactly we had found or why....but it seemed like a really cool thing to find nonetheless....whatever IT was. So we put it back nice and neat just where we found it. My son begged us to go back there a couple of days later so he could explore some more. So we did go back after the Great Pumpkin Boat Regatta on Sunday. And sure enough, one or two others had also found the box since we had. Fast forward to us coming home from vacation, and I remember the address and plug it into the computer. And lo and behold....GeoCaching is basically a real life treasure hunt game that began with the use of GPS devices in 2000, and is now found on every continent in the world. There are currently 1,547,128 million caches hidden throughout the world and over 5 million 'Cachers'! And chances are....there is one within a mile of your location RIGHT NOW, just waiting to be found! Really? Who knew? Well apparently 5 million other people knew....that's who! But not us....nope....we just stumbled upon this 'geocache' by sheer accident. We didn't use any GPS devices or iPhones....only the curiosity of a child exploring the side a mountain.

Turns out....there is an official name for people like us on the GeoCaching site....we are considered 'Muggles', as in the Harry Potter variety. GeoMuggles to be exact....those 'uninitiated' non-cachers who just accidentally stumble upon a 'cache' by accident. Cool! Although my son did try to claim that he used his innate 'Wizard' senses to find that box on the mountain. I of course didn't believe there to even be a real box up there when there was one....so who am I to argue against his claims of 'magical powers'?
So now....we are officially going to start doing some 'GeoCaching' as a family. Turns out you sign up for a free account and plug in your zip code or location....and a large list of GeoCaches all around you pop up. Then you use a GPS or a GeoCache App enabled iPhone and head out for the hunt. Some even have secret codes to break and things to collect in order to find the caches. My kids are ALL ABOUT doing stuff like that. And honestly....I am the first one to participate in Easter Egg hunting (I'm not ashamed to admit it), so this looks like fun to me. It's something to do if your bored and want to get outside. And what better time to do it than in the Fall! :o)

The 11:11 Mystery

The year is 2011! This is MY year. One might think 2012 would be the more anticipated year, but not for me, and I'll tell you why. Actually, I've been meaning to do a post on this for a long time, but I've just never gotten around to it. Perhaps because it's not specifically 'Halloween' related, although I've never said that my blog is ONLY about Halloween stuff anyway....hence the other 'happenstance' I speak of in my intro.

But this is a subject that is very near and dear to my heart. 11:11.........have you seen it lately? Well I have. In fact, I've been seeing it in earnest since about 2004-2005. My Father passed away very unexpectedly in 2003, and the following year or two was marked with many unusual happenings around me. I won't go into detail here, but I can assure you that they were all things that really made me stop and pay attention to the feeling that his presence was still with us. Those things eventually slowed down and got fewer and farther between until they pretty much stopped altogether.
Then came 11:11!

It started innocently enough. I woke up late one morning, look at the clock and it says 11:11. I think nothing of it. I go wash my face, let the dog out and walk into the kitchen bleary eyed to get my Diet Mountain Dew when I notice the clock on the microwave says 11:11. I wonder how that could possibly be since it's been at least 10 minutes since I got out of bed, where the time was the same. I then remember that my bedroom clock is set 10 minutes faster than the other clocks in an attempt to fool myself into actually getting somewhere on time. (Which for the record, has never worked.)

So I go on my merry way through the day. Later that night I am sitting at my computer and I've been engrossed in a design project for the last couple of hours, oblivious to the time, when I look down to see how late it is and find the time to be 11:11pm. I think to myself that it's pretty strange to see that 3 different times in the same day and then forget all about it again. The week progresses and all of a sudden I just happen to look at the clock when having not paid any attention to the time whatsoever all day or night....and yet I catch it at precisely 11:11.
It took me a solid week or so of this happening before I paid attention to it being a strange coincident and decide to tell my husband about it. Of course, I am loathe to ever tell him anything of a mystical, esoteric, conspiratorial nature because he's firmly rooted in rationalism and often just dismisses my dynamic revelations as nothing more than my active imagination. But I tell him anyway, and he 'yes dear's' me as always. But then it starts happening with him around, it begins to pop up when we are in the car and when we are in the house. So we start making a verbal note of it out loud to be sure the other person sees that it's starting to happen with an almost startling frequency. We start to use it as an excuse to make a wish.

I tell him that I feel like it's something stranger than just coincidence...I feel like it's happening for some reason because I've never seen it before and now it won't leave me alone. But it's not just the time on the clocks. I open emails and they were sent at 11:11, I look at a message on a message board and it just happens to have been posted at 11:11, I pull up someone's bio and their birthday is 11/11, I am searching for a bank transaction on-line and when I find it the date is 11/11, we are at the Disney camp ground and see the #1111 spot on our loop, I see a big 11 shadow on the wall made from the sun coming through the blinds, we're at our daughter's basketball game and the power flickers off and when it returns the scores on the scoreboard are replaced with 11:11, or I was working on a photo and when I went to check the dimensions it was 11:111. I start catching not only 11:11 on the clocks, but also 1:11. I receive a daily tarot reading in my inbox and discover that it gets automatically generated at 11:11, the car in front of us in traffic will have 11's on it's license plate, I will look at my receipts and the amounts/product number will have 11's in it.....and on and on it goes.

So finally I can stand it no longer and I have to just see if there is anyone else out there this is happening to. I decide to plug 11:11 into Google and I am astounded by what I find. Not only are there LOTS of people currently experiencing this same phenomenon, but it happened for them in the same way it did for me....all of sudden and with increasing momentum. So I start reading and I learn that there are LOTS of different theories for what it's all about. My favorite is that it is some DNA encoding that is being triggered in people that marks their spiritual awakening and subsequent ascension where the unknown mysteries of life will become known. Okay, that sounds cool and I'm down with learning the 'mysteries of life'!

Then there is the crazy sounding one about 1,111 angel guardians who are here to guide and direct us as fellow lightworkers to defeat evil or something like that. That one sounds a little odd to me, but who am I to judge. The one my husband of course latches on to is that it's all in our minds, and we have somehow trained our sub-conscious minds to look at the clock at that precise time. Or that we are just looking for the numbers now, and that's why we are seeing them. I beg to differ on this one because I will swear under oath that it all began happening out of the blue, when it had never happened prior. Then perhaps the scariest theory is that it's a powerful occult number that has to do with war, power and other evil things, which gets me worried that perhaps I'm being called to fight with Darth on the 'dark side'...ha! I don't really want to be contacted by malevolent forces, I'm much too chicken for that. And lastly, the most disconcerting one says that when the 1111 gets triggered to our awareness, it signifies that our time of completion is near. Yikes! I don't really feel complete just yet, and I'm not quite ready to make my exit.............or am I?!

All of those theories on a sudden proliferation of the number 11:11 showing up in your life...wow! But even more astounding is the connection of the number 11 to events in history, to the September 11th WTC attacks and even to the Mayan Calender end date which just happens to be December 21st, 2012 at 11:11 UT. Here is a great site with lots of information on where and how this number is manifesting itself into our history and present lives. 2012rising.com

So I figured that today....January 11, 2011 (1-11-11) was the perfect day to discuss the significance of 11:11. Especially since it is also supposed to be the day that Verizon/Apple introduce the new iPhone for Verizon at a meeting in NY at 11:11! I waited to get this phone for Christmas in hopes that Verizon would finally get it this year....so when my husband called to tell me that it was supposed to be announced on 1-11-11 at 11:11.....I just knew it was a sign that I am supposed to own that phone.

My best guess is that it will become the device with which I will connect to my Mothership which will come for me this Autumn on 11-11-11 at 11:11:11pm and take me home! Ha! So I have to ask if any of you share the 11:11 experience, and if so, in what ways and what is your belief on why it's happening?

What a Hoot!

So remember in my last post how I spoke of the mind's ability to see patterns in random objects and data? Well I thought I'd share with you a most splendid specimen of that very concept. You see one night a couple of months back, we were in a gymnasium, watching my daughter practice Volleyball. And my son was climbing around on the bleachers to waste time. The seats were made of plastic, but the floor part where your feet go, was made of wood.

Now most of you who know me, know that I have a strong affinity for Owls. I collect owl necklaces and the Owl is one of my totem animals. So of course my son knows how much I like owls also, and he is in the habit of notifying me whenever he happens to spot one somewhere.

And on that particular night, he must have been studying the floorboards....or perhaps it was just a completely random sighting....but he called me up to the top bleacher to show me what he had found, and it was this image.....
Now just how cool is that? There in the completely random grains of the wood was a perfect Owl. Now you can call us 'Believers' or crazy folks who see things...but this sure looks like an Owl to us! never would have even ventured up to the top row, let alone paid attention to the wood I was walking on. But he did, and I thought it was just fab enough to share. And when I read that article about finding patterns in randomness, it made me think to share this neat little discovery. Of course I had no regular camera with me, so this was shot on my cell phone. I think it still turned out pretty good. And also I think our ability to spot patterns amid randomness is a handy and fun little attribute to have, don't you? :o)
Photos © Wendy A. (All Rights Reserved)

Do you believe in Ghosts?

Do you believe in Ghosts? A Gallup poll found that only 7% of Americans DO NOT believe in ghosts, deja vu, telepathy, past lives and other such supernatural phenomena, which experts believe may have a lot to do with the growing popularity of Hallowe'en. I just read a fascinating article from Sharon Begley about our belief in the supernatural. (Supernatural encompassing anything that cannot be explained by the laws of physics or biology.) And I'll be the first to admit, that I do believe in some supernatural things....and honestly that makes life so much more fun don't you think?

The article states that "scientists now realize that belief in the supernatural arises from the same mental processes that govern our everyday reasoning and perception. And chief among those processes is our neuron's habit of filling in the blanks for us." We don't have to see all of something, in order for the neuron's in our brain to fire and complete the picture or data for us.

The mind also has the ability to see patterns in random data which is why we see the 'Big Dipper' in the night sky instead of just a random grouping of stars. Likewise, if we consistently see a number pop up in our lives, or a spot on a cow's back that looks like Jesus....we believe it to be 'Divine' rather than merely random and coincidental.

This also includes our belief in the use of talismans or rituals such as carrying a lucky stone or wearing the same shirt to every game. Research shows that if we go against our superstitious belief, we become so tense and stressed at not having it, that we do indeed lose the game. Thus, it becomes natural for our minds to attribute the things that go bump in the night, to some spirit or force, rather than branches brushing against the window pane.

Also of interest in the article, is the belief that our minds are not bound to our bodies. "This belief called 'Dualism,' is universal and seen in children as young as 2. Thus entities without physical bodies are in deed plausible to the rational human mind. And we also tend to operate out of 'Confirmatory Bias'. "This is our mind's tendency to remember when synchronistic events happen, (like thinking of someone and then they call)....while likewise tending to forget all the times it didn't happen. "And as scientists have probed deeper into the brain to determine what fuels superstition, they have uncovered a surprising suspect.....Dopamine, which usually fuels the brain's sense of reward!"

They hosted an experiment with 'Believers' and 'Skeptics' where they were shown random images of 'faces and scrambled faces,' as well as 'words and non words'....with the goal being to pick out the 'REAL' faces. So who do you think did better picking out the real from the non-real? Common logic would lead us to believe that 'Skeptics' would get more right because they are not prone to the irrational 'flights of fancy' that us 'Believers' are.

But the opposite was true. The 'Skeptics' tended to discount more real faces as not real, and more real words as not real. This leads me to think that their skepticism actually works against them, perhaps even clouding their judgment, which I find rather amusing. Of course on the flip side, the 'Believers' happily saw real faces and words, even in the scrambled gibberish....ha, go figure!

However, after administering the 'Skeptics' with the dopamine increasing drug L-dopa....they began to ID more 'real' faces and words as real also, which suggests that dopamine inclines the brain to see patterns even in random noise." Does that mean that we 'Believers' just naturally have more dopamine in our brains than do the 'Skeptics'? And doesn't that mean then, that what we BELIEVE becomes REAL for us?

So in essence, the mind is a rather powerful entity all on its own. And if I understand all that I read properly...it would seem to me, to lend a little anecdotal proof to the theory that we create our own reality through our thoughts, and can manifest our own desires. That makes sense to me, as I've always believed in the power of thought and intention. What we put our mind to expands. If this is true, then we each yield a tremendous amount of personal power to affect and shape our lives. What do you think? Do you believe in Ghosts? :o)

"Supernatural" Synchronicity

Okay...so much of the time, synchronous events happen in my life which I love. And last night was one of those times. You see, my dear friend Dave (aka Gill-Man) had told me about a TV series on the WB called "Supernatural". He said it would be right up my proverbial witchy little alley because it is about two brothers who travel around fighting demons and monsters etc. It's been on several seasons, so you can buy the DVD's now. I went in search of them, but cannot find them locally to rent, so I will probably have to order them off Amazon. But then we noticed that they run episodes on the WB still. So we decided to record 1 episode on the DVR, just to be certain it was something we truly would like, before buying the DVD's. So last night we sat down to watch the episode we recorded.

Well, this is when the synchronicity started to kick in. As it began, we noticed that it was in black and white and had the styling like an old classic monster movie. Then as we followed along, it turns out that was the exact premise of the show. The two brothers found themselves chasing a 'shape-shifter' who was enamored with the old classic monsters like Dracula, the Wolfman and the Mummy. And this villain would kill each new person by recreating a scene from the old monster flicks. COOL! What a FANGTASTIC episode to randomly pick to watch right?! But it gets even better.

So the Dracula character comes on, and as I was watching him...I say, "hey, that guy looks really familiar to me." Even though he was in full make-up, fangs and Dracula clothes. It was his eyes....he had the most intense, beautiful eyes and I just knew....that I knew those eyes from somewhere. Then all of a sudden it dawns on me....hey, he looks just like a guy who is an actor friend of another friend of mine named Lou. I wasn't positive yet, but the more I watched him, the more I was convinced it was him. He is on Lou's MySpace page, and they are childhood friends from Chicago. So I wait anxiously for the credits at the end....but no cigar....there were no end credits. So my husband thinks to go back to the beginning to check....and sure enough, they were there, and it was indeed Todd Stashwick, Lou's friend from Chicago, who played the villainous Dracula. I thought, wow what a funny coincidence for this to have been the one and only episode I picked to record, and not only is it a great one about classic movie monsters, but my friend's friend is the villain! And of course that made me think about my buddy Lou...who himself is a very talented voice talent, and how I haven't spoken to him in a few weeks, and really need to drop him a line.

And then the icing on my synchronicity cake came this morning as I logged onto Facebook. Almost as if receiving my vibes right on time....Lou left a comment on my page, saying hello because he hadn't talked to me in awhile. So of course I had to tell him about my "Supernatural" experience! Sometimes life is just so magically delicious! Check out a clip of the show below to see Todd as Dracula!