- Joined
- Dec 12, 2006
- Messages
- 13
Last night, I'd just finished reading Merrily Harpur's excellent book on Mystery Big Cats, and was trying to explain ot my partner the book's main hypothesis, which is that ABC's are examples of what Ms Harpur's brother, Patrick has defined as daimons. As Chris is not a long time student forteana, and I can chunter for England after a couple of beers, this meant that I set off on a long ramble about how there appear to be fashions in phenomena, so for example, earlier cultures had fairies while we have aliens, both with similar attributes, but in different drag. I went on to say that some versions of daimons appear to have died out, saying that no one encounters Brownies in their role of household helpers anymore. Then, thinking about one of the Brownies' roles, and remembering previous IHTM tales, I said something about the exception being the Thing That Brings Back Lost Stuff.
Meanwhile, Chris had tuned me out a bit, (I was going on!) and started picking around on the floor behind a mirror resting up on the wall by where she was sitting.
Then, picking up something, she said 'Ha - There are Brownies!' and showed me a pin which had come out of the front door when she moved in some three months ago, and been missing since.
I didn't believe that she had really just found it, and wasn't just teasing me, but she was, and is adamant that she found it at just that moment.
Now, I realise that in one sense, as reappearing objects go, this is quite tame, as there hadn't been a big search for the pin (we knew it had come out when the door was taken off to get a piano moved in, but the door worked without it, and there were other jobs to do), and it could quite easily have been behind the mirror since it came out of the door. However, the fact that the finding coincided with the 'invoking' as it were of the Finder Helper was remarkable.
The wider context of the event should also be noted, in that the previous night we had argued about ghosts, with me denying they were anything to do with post-mortem survival, and Chris taking the opposite view. Thus, to her, the finding of the pin represented some proof of the objective reality of entities as external to the percipient.
Its also worth mentioning that, after this happened, I said that we should really leave something for the Brownie, and Chris went off in to the kitchen and got a pot of honey, which she laid on the skirting boxing by the front door (as in many Northern homes, the front door is rarely used). What she was not aware of was that, in Harpur's book, there's a quote which says that honeycomb is one of the appropriate gifts for Brownies, and these gifts should be left in a quiet corner of the house.
Today, some of the honey had gone. I suspect nocturnal household bugs, but who knows?
Meanwhile, Chris had tuned me out a bit, (I was going on!) and started picking around on the floor behind a mirror resting up on the wall by where she was sitting.
Then, picking up something, she said 'Ha - There are Brownies!' and showed me a pin which had come out of the front door when she moved in some three months ago, and been missing since.
I didn't believe that she had really just found it, and wasn't just teasing me, but she was, and is adamant that she found it at just that moment.
Now, I realise that in one sense, as reappearing objects go, this is quite tame, as there hadn't been a big search for the pin (we knew it had come out when the door was taken off to get a piano moved in, but the door worked without it, and there were other jobs to do), and it could quite easily have been behind the mirror since it came out of the door. However, the fact that the finding coincided with the 'invoking' as it were of the Finder Helper was remarkable.
The wider context of the event should also be noted, in that the previous night we had argued about ghosts, with me denying they were anything to do with post-mortem survival, and Chris taking the opposite view. Thus, to her, the finding of the pin represented some proof of the objective reality of entities as external to the percipient.
Its also worth mentioning that, after this happened, I said that we should really leave something for the Brownie, and Chris went off in to the kitchen and got a pot of honey, which she laid on the skirting boxing by the front door (as in many Northern homes, the front door is rarely used). What she was not aware of was that, in Harpur's book, there's a quote which says that honeycomb is one of the appropriate gifts for Brownies, and these gifts should be left in a quiet corner of the house.
Today, some of the honey had gone. I suspect nocturnal household bugs, but who knows?
