Caleb Wilde
(218 comments, 980 posts)
Posts by Caleb Wilde
Do you believe in ghosts?
© 2015 Kevin Dooley, Flickr | CC-BY | via Wylio
Most of us who live in the 21st century assume that the mysteries and wonders of the world have a natural explanation. When we’re sick, we no longer attempt to cast out the spirit of sickness … we go to our doctor. We tend to believe that the natural world is caused by natural processes that science can or will explain.
But … ghosts.
Many of us … if not all of us … believe in ghosts. Even the staunchest believer in naturalism will admit to having experienced “something” one time or another.
I’m a skeptic.
Let’s get that out of the way. I’ve been around dead people enough to know that weird things happen and that those weird things can often be attributed to psychological stress and grief. In fact, I think much of this spirit sensing is due to death denial. We’ve made death so invisible that our lack of proper death ritual allows the “spirits” to hang around and go unburied. And what isn’t psychological stress is probably a combination of
magical thinking,
pareidolia,
hallucinations,
and / wishful thinking.
BUT.
While it’s healthy to ASSUME that every mystery and unexplainable sensation has a natural cause, it’s also reductionistic to be CONVINCED every unexplained mystery can be explained naturally. There are thousands of smart, stable people who have had “ghost experiences.” And I’m not gaslighting or trivializing them just because their experience doesn’t fit mine.
I’ve felt things that I can’t explain. I’ve never seen a ghost, but at times there’s a presence of … something.
And apparently, I live in a HAUNTED HOUSE!!!!!!!!!
A friend of ours recently came over to our house for the first time. And when she walked in, she said, “I have a gift. I don’t want to frighten you, but I identify two spirits dwelling in your house. They’re kind spirits … not evil. I just thought you should know.”
We’ve heard stories about our house. And we’ve had well over a dozen people tell us that our old house is haunted (I’m not kidding). And like I said, I’m skeptical because I’ve yet to meet the residents.
BUT, WHAT DO YOU BELIEVE?
DO YOU LIVE IN A HOUSE THAT IS “HAUNTED”?
DO YOU HAVE A GHOST STORY?
For those of you in the know, is there any kind of “ghost etiquette” I should be aware of? Since I’m housemates with two of them, and I don’t want to offend, I’m looking for some tips. I assume I’m no longer allowed to watch Ghostbusters?
Historical Quickie on Arterial Embalming Equipment
In the frustration of multitasking the details of four new calls, I decided to channel my angst into some spring cleaning. A new computer arrived yesterday, so in between the set up I threw all of our old lets-save-this-cause-we might-need-it tech in the dumpster.
After cleaning out the second floor of a tape player, two broken printers and a 30 pound monster monitor, I shifted my attention to the gallows of the basement … where ALL the old equipment goes to rest. After finding an 18 year old Compact monitor, I found the old embalming machines.
In our morgue today rests a Porti-Boy, the pinnacle of modern embalming tech.
With the Porti-Boy, you can control the pressure of the embalming fluid and the rate of flow via the little knobs on the left and right of the console.
The end of the rubber tube is where the arterial tube is inserted.
Once the incision on the deceased is made and the desired artery is raised (usually the carotid), the arterial tube is placed into the artery, the Porti-Boy is turned on and the fluid pushes out the blood via an open vein, replacing the blood with embalming fluid.
That’s how it’s done today.
Our funeral business is over 160 years old. And when we first started embalming, there was no electric Porti-Boy. In fact, there was no morgue to house the lovely embalming machine.
We came to your house. With our own equipment. By the time my grandfather was a teen, this tradition of embalming at the deceased’s house had waned. He remembers doing it a dozen times or so.
When I went down to the basement to clean out the old computers, I found the old embalming “machine” that my great grandfather would have used. It’s called an embalming gravity flask and stand … or something like that. I’ve actually used this contraption once when we lost electricity during a storm. And it worked.
You put the mixed embalming fluid in the flask, and raise the stand to find your desired pressure. The higher the flask, the more pressure it produced to push the blood out and the fluid in. My predecessors would lug this thing to the home of the deceased, put the body in the kitchen and try their best not to spill any blood. How they kept the blood from spilling (without the use of an embalming table), I have no idea.
My grandfather recounts that he and his dad used to play “who spills the least blood droplets on the floor” game. Apparently – per my grandfather’s selective memory – he would always win.
The Artistry of Suicide
Pulling the skull pieces from the wall
The brain matter spread over it all.
You didn’t intend it but your last grace
Is that at least you didn’t destroy your face.
*****
Maybe those you left behind will view
The pieces I put back together of you
But that wholeness, security you broke
Have burned and scattered in the smoke
*****
Of that gun you put between your jaws
When you blew that hole through the laws
Of life. A life you rendered as a tithe
To the world’s darkness and Death’s scythe.
*****
I look at your head, disfigured and displaced
And I can’t know the darkness you faced.
Perhaps the disfigurement is your artistry
Opening up to us the inside we couldn’t see.
*****
“I see it! I see it!!! I SEE IT!!!” I yell
As I look upon the art of your hell
Behold your magnum opus is your final scene
But I will work to ruin it and make you clean
*****
Of the blood, the cracked skull and pin
Together your broken, frayed, discolored skin
I will restore and embalm your broken head
While we all wish you back from the dead.
Stray Dogs Pay Respects at the Funeral of the Woman Who Fed Them
We love it when a family brings the family dog to attend the funeral. It might seem weird, but when the dog is there, they’re usually able to sense the mood of the gathering and mirror the mood.
It’s as though dogs mourn. And I’d like to believe that there exists a language of love and grief that can extend to creatures that aren’t human.
This story is Yucatan, Mexico. Margarita Suarez was known as an animal lover who would feed the stray dogs and cats every morning outside her home (when I was in Mexico, it seemed there were stray dogs everywhere and most of them were treated like rodents).
Suarez was even known to take a bag of dog food everywhere she went, so she could feed the strays as she went about her day.
Although the Google Translate from the website Misiones Online is rather rough, it seems the dogs arrived to the front door of the funeral home. The Suarez family asked if the dogs were local to the funeral home, and the funeral workers said “no.” The family asked the funeral home to let them in and the dogs … well, the pictures below show what happened next.
Apparently, the dogs stayed for the funeral service and even followed the hearse from the funeral home to the crematory.
