A Haunted House

A Haunted House
Oct 9,2013



Haunted houses are supposed to be old, dark, perhaps unkempt.  They are not supposed to be modern brick ranches with a finished basement and white painted walls. The aren't supposed to be in suburbia either. 

The House Itself

This house is, however. It's light and airy inside with tall ceilings and lots of skylights. It was an unassuming little house with a two car garage in a nice neighborhood. It was owned by my husband's grandmother who willed it to her son and my husband jointly.  She purchased the house when it was newly built in the 1980's.  Nothing particularly bad had ever happened there - no deaths in the house that we knew of. 

Whenever we visited the uncle we would stay in the basement. Then finally our circumstances changed for the worse and the uncle allowed us to stay full time.  We moved our things into the basement and tried to make it home.  
In spite of our best efforts the basement was dreary and dark (although the walls were white - it actually made it MORE dreary!), but still not the stuff of haunted houses. In fact, the general appearance of the house led one to believe it was a safe and happy place. Even after we began to notice things it was still difficult to believe that we were living with ghosts.  

The kitchen upstairs

The upstairs living room

I can't remember what happened first, or even when. It might have been before we officially moved in, when we were staying for just the weekend.  I remember seeing glimpses of someone out of the corner of my eye.  The kind of glimpse that you question and think that the sun or your aging eyes are tricking you. When you turn to look full on at the corner or spot where you thought you saw something there is no one there.  

Other little things happened as well.  Lights would turn off or on and again it made you question yourself. Did I do that? There were times I know I hadn't touched the lights... but they were on.  

One day I was telling my husband about the ghost that would sit on my bed when I was a child.  He got a bit pale and said, "That happened to me too - in this house!"  He described waking up one night and seeing someone enter the bedroom and then come around and sit on his side of the bed. It had scared the hell out of him and still made him uneasy as he told the story. 

Both of his kids had also seen or felt things in the house at various times. I don't know exactly what they saw or felt, but they told my husband they knew there was a ghost.

I was working the graveyard shift but was not exempt from ghostly events even though I slept during the day.  I was rudely awakened around noon one day when a very loud male voice shouted my name.  No one was home at the time except me!

The entity seemed to live in the basement and particularly haunted the basement stairs.  My husband and I would occasionally talk about the ghost but not where we had seen it.  One day he mentioned that he always thought someone was walking around the foot of the stairway to go down the hall.  "You're kidding!" I said, "I've seen the same thing too!"  
We moved in to the house full time in the spring of 2012. We had a difficult summer for various reasons that only got worse that winter.  Even now I have a hard time explaining why, but all of us felt so down.  I would sit in the basement living room and look at the drab white walls and feel so depressed.  Things weren't going well for us, but at the same time they weren't horrendous.  Living there with my husband's uncle was difficult as he was elderly and taciturn, but it shouldn't have been enough to cause the incredibly negative feelings I had that winter.  

The basement stairway.  The spot behind the black chair is
where we used to see the ghost

We also had some of the worst arguments ever in that house.  In retrospect many of the people who lived there or visited ended up getting in an argument with someone else in the house.  Of course this is all conjecture, but my gut tells me that the thing in that house affected everyone in it.  

That winter I read books about protecting yourself from spirits and took certain steps which helped my mental state considerably.  I often burned incense in the basement and kept the curtains open as much as possible.  I turned on more lights than necessary because light supposedly makes them weak as does smoke or incense.  I meditated and wrote in my journal.  I took great care to monitor my thoughts and not let them get away from me.  When the uncle went on vacation in Hawaii we painted the basement a sunny yellow color, which helped the mood quite a bit.  

When summer came we were still experiencing difficulties but were able to go outside and take weekend trips away. The more we left the house the better we felt.  Still, I never connected things to the house, but more to the challenge of living with Doug's uncle.  

We moved out this fall with little advance warning (that's another story!). The circumstances around this move weren't good and I fully anticipated another dreary and depressing winter.  We moved in to our travel trailer, which is much smaller and made more for short trips than living in. By rights it should have been depressing....but it wasn't.  

Every morning I get off work at 7 am and drive an hour to our little trailer. The sun is rising and I am happy to arrive there each day.  Certainly some of that happiness comes from not living with the uncle, but we both soon realized it was more than that.  There was a deeper happiness and a sense of hope that I hadn't felt in a long time.  My husband feels it too... I attribute this feeling to not being in that house anymore.  The spirit, ghost, demon, whatever you want to call it, affected us negatively for a long time.  I can't imagine what would've happened if we'd lived there longer. It was more than seeing shapes, though, it was a negative energy that infiltrated our thoughts day after day.  

While it may seem fantastic or unrealistic, I know what I saw and felt and experienced.  I know how I felt then and how I felt after we moved out.  Perhaps the spirit affected the uncle more than we know and is responsible for some of his nastiness, too.  Either way, I would never live there again and I'm thankful that we found a way out!  

Our new and very happy  home!

Spiritual Practice

Admittedly this is not really "psychic phenomena" OR "weird stuff", but it doesn't fall under the horse banner either.  And the Masters all say that if you meditate long enough your psychic abilities increase and weird stuff eventually happens.  In the spirit of experimentation I will let you in on the beginning of my spiritual journey in hopes that it leads somewhere interesting... Ok, that was my ego talking!  My EGO wants it to be something worth talking about.  Of course, EGO is writing this blog, too, because the non-EGO part of me doesn't do stuff like this just to get attention.  Now that EGO has cleared that up, She would like to tell you all about her adventures!

I have been practicing a twice daily meditation ever since Monday.  This is the first time I have ever meditated twice a day, but for now it is something I look forward to.  It's not easy.  Some days you sit there and all this physical pain becomes obvious (it's been there all along, but when you sit still and pay attention it suddenly screams out at you - augh!)  However it pays off because I am calmer and more able to think clearly.  Sometimes a moment of clarity breaks through, a pause in the thoughts that stream into the mind like rush hour cars.

I was able to get a copy of "Sacred Earth - Places of Peace and Power" by Martin Gray at the library.  I want to own it!  Just reading it makes me feel at peace.  Looking through it I realized that we have been to almost every place in North America and Hawaii; Devil's Tower, Sedona, Shiprock, Chaco Canyon, White Sands, Mauna Kea and Haleakala Crater.  My only regret is that at the time we visited I didn't understand the significance of these places and so didn't look at them in a spiritual way. It is my intention to conduct a spiritual pilgrimage to places here in America and then overseas someday. 

In talking to my mother the other day, she said that she felt this valley we live in has good energy.  It is in a triangular valley, sort of a Fung Shui good luck thing, I think.  She says it is a "spiritual place" and I think it is.  However it's not of the caliber of the other places, but this is where I am and this is where it starts!

Hearing God...hopefully!

Right now my husband and I are struggling.  He has been struggling with finding a job for two years now.  I began  the same struggle in November when I was laid off too.  At first I didn't worry because I thought I had a job, a job I really wanted.  Then it fell through and other jobs fell through.  My husband has had the worst challenge of his life it seems, and since it is his challenge I won't go into detail as that is for him to share if he chooses.  Needless to say, we are both in the same boat.  Time is running out.  We are out of savings, we are looking at having to move in with relatives and sell the horses.  I can hardly contemplate that!  For some people, horses are a luxury, an extra.  They love to see them in the yard.  To me, they are like my children.  I could let some of them go, but it would be extremely difficult if not impossible to let all of them go.  I don't think there would be a way, since Bella is getting old and has illnesses to deal with on top of it.  You can't sell a horse like that, you have to "place" them. 

So far our family has helped us immensely; financially emotionally and however else.  At least those who were willing and able.   We are getting down to the wire, however, and I feel desperate.  One night my husband said, "What are we doing wrong?  Why are we in this position?"  Yes, indeed, WHY?  I thought about this, and about karma and everything else.  I know that challenges are given to us to make us grow, etc, and I should be welcoming this but the fear takes over.  I needed to see a way out.  One day I was watching Oprah's 25th thing on her new network, a program about her life and how she got where she is today.  One thing about Oprah is that she is one person that I think is truly genuine and who she says she is.  So many others have disappointed, but she never does.  

So, on this program she talks about how things in her life flowed, how one thing led to another and another and here she is.  Then she said that the degree to which you are in flow is directly related to how far you are from your spiritual center.  If you are not flowing, then you are not spiritually centered.  I am paraphrasing from memory, so cut me some slack if it's not exactly what she said.  In any case, this really resonated with me.  My husband also watched it and agreed with me.  We felt that we weren't in tune with our spiritual selves.  I think that means different things to each of us (he and I), but we understood that we needed to reconnect with that somehow. 

So, what do you do to find your spiritual center?  As a Buddhist and generally a spiritual person, I tend to look at what's closest to me and what makes me feel connected to the "Universe", or whatever you would like to call it.  I think of it as "the thing larger than myself which is known as God, the Universe, Divinity, the Goddess, etc".  What it's called is immaterial.  What it does is not. 

First I pulled out my copy of Sonia Choquette's book Your Heart's Desire.  I have read this book many times and each time it is like a new experience depending on why I decide to read it.  Usually some crisis is looming but the book reads differently each time.  In any case, it is an instruction book for what is now known as "the Secret", or "The Law of Attraction".   If you have seen the movie, although it's very inspiring, it left a lot of things out.  I believe that fundamentally it is correct to some extent, but it also takes some work to turn your thoughts into things.  Your Heart's Desire, however, gives you the instructions and when things look bleak, just "thinking positively" isn't always helpful. 

Without going through the whole process, basically I got to a certain point in the book and realized that I needed to ask for help from the Divine Spirit.  And I needed to wait for an answer.  I needed to meditate and listen, listen for the inspiration and the guidance that would help us through this time.  I opened my email and had my weekly message from "Stumble Upon", a service that gives you the best websites by topic.  The spiritual one happened to be a site I knew well and had already been thinking of - "Spiritual Earth - Places of Peace and Power".  I clicked on it, and up came a map of the States with little red dots signifying spiritual places.  I hadn't visited the site in a long time.  I clicked on the magnifier to zoom in, and kept zooming in until only one red dot showed.  There were no divisions of states, so I had no idea what I was looking at.  To my surprise, the red dot was for Chaco Canyon, a place that I had been with my husband.  We had had a terrible time leaving there because the road was bad and it wrecked our trailer.  He was very upset about it.  I found this auspicious, but couldn't say what it means.

The more I searched the web and opened myself to spiritual advice from different places (I get daily "Wisdom Horse" messages, and "Napoleon Hill" inspirational advice daily) they all said the same thing: "it looks scary now, but you will come out of it. Be patient and be still.  Meditate and listen for divine inspiration and guidance."  This advice led me to want to go on a pilgrimage, and we did, but that is for another day.  I wanted to record this now, so that I can report what happens later.  The pilgrimage is interesting for its own sake, and the effects of that have yet to be discerned.  I think sometimes things happen very subtly, not in a huge flash of lightening.  A change came over us on our pilgrimage, a kind of strength to face our situation without fear so that we could talk about it and make decisions rationally.  It happened during a storm, by the way, and there was lightening in the background...

Links mentioned in this blog:

Wisdom Horse daily message - www.touchedbyahorse.com
Napoleon Hill daily message - http://www.naphill.org
Places of Peace and Power - http://sacredsites.com/
Free tarot readings, so far right on - http://free-tarot-reading.net/
Sonia Choquette's website - http://soniachoquette.com/
This is a shortcut from the Pioneer Woman's blog RSS feed about storms, which was one of the first things that inspired me.  Not sure if this link will work... If so, she is worth checking out for other reasons, but this one was special...http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/thepioneerwoman/~3/XyVXz65SSwQ/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email

Heart-shaped rocks

     Heart shaped rocks, you say?  What is psychic about THAT?  Well, in fact it is in my experience a psychic phenomena for me. Let me explain... many years ago, perhaps 20 years or more, I once found a heart-shaped rock.  It was well-defined and definitely shaped like a heart.  I picked it up and kept it and it was one of my most precious possessions because it could not be purchased anywhere.  It was totally unique and unusual, which I loved.



Part of my collection

    Then, about ten years ago, I began to research psychic phenomena.  I learned that if you want something in your life you can ask for it to be there.  The first thing that I asked for, for another reason that is very personal and special, were the colors purple and red. That is a story for another post, but all I need to say here is that red and purple began to appear in my life.  Around that time I moved into an apartment and in going through my things, found the heart-shaped rock that I had found so many years ago.  I said to myself, "it would be so cool to find another one."  I can't remember where exactly, but I found another one. 

     Then I took a job at Hala Ranch about 4 years ago.  They had rather large rocks laid in on all the walkways around the barn and in going back and forth with the horses I found hundreds - yes, hundreds of heart-shaped rocks.  You might think this is impossible, or that I am stretching the truth.  No.  I have shown my collection to those who visited the barn and initially they too were skeptical, but there they were, piles of heart-shaped rocks!  Our farrier, Tom, thought I was a crack-pot at first.  He thought my heart-shaped rocks were...kinda silly.  Tom is a man's man, you see.  Then one day at this ranch which is high up in mountains, the deep winter snow began to melt and caused quite a bit of flooding on his place.  He said that huge rocks were actually floating on to his front yard.  He said to me, "And Cari, wouldn't you know, this huge rock lands on my front lawn and I'll be damned if it wasn't shaped like a HEART!"

A small part of my collection

     I also found them while on vacation and at home and other places there are rocks.  Sometimes I forget to look, because you must look in order to find them.  And sometimes it's good to take a rest from looking.  I left part of my collection at the ranch and I don't know what will happen to them, but that's OK.  It's good to let go sometimes and return what we have been given.  The joy comes in finding them in the first place.  For me they symbolize several things: love and wishing things in to your life and creating the impossible.

     For me the heart-shaped rocks are something I brought into my life.  I created them somehow (not literally) but in my mind.  My desire to find them put them where I would find them. It proved to me that you can bring things into your life that you want to be there.  I am also sure that we are destined not to get everything we have asked for, but many things we can influence.  Of course you must wonder why I didn't wish other things in to my life, like oh, money? Or a dream job?  Actually, that would be a good topic for another blog.  I did get my dream job, and the man I desired, and a small quantity of money so far.  I have gotten many things I wanted, they just didn't turn out quite like I thought they should.  Our lessons to be learned in this life are more important than getting what you want.  The things you "want" are attached to problems that you must resolve, unless it is something like a heart-shaped rock.  God says, "oh of course you can have a heart-shaped rock, Cari.  No charge!"

One of my favorite heart-shaped rocks

Addendum:  I wrote this a few months ago and had never posted it.  In the meantime, my good friend
 Leigh Ann came to visit from and mentioned to me that she has a collection of all things, heart shaped rocks! What a wonderful moment - sometimes the universe or God or the powers that be show us why our friends are our friends...  Here is a photo of her collection:

Leigh Ann's collection

Leigh Ann and I

   

Astral Projection

Have you always wondered what Astral Projection is?  Well, I sure did!  When I found out I really didn't believe it.  In case you don't know, astral projection is when part of you (your soul or ethereal body or some other filmy substance that is you) separates from your physical body while you are asleep and roams around the universe.  It can meet other astral bodies and journey to the higher regions.  It's completely true. 

A while back the subject came up in an office I was working at.  We were joking around about it when the one person who, in my opinion, I would never want to have dinner with much less meet in my astral body after dark, said that he and his wife did it all the time.  'Oh right', I thought, 'You, the most superficial and unrealistic person I know can do something like this?'  I thought it was for the spiritually pure soul, not your everyday salesman that seems to only care about money. 

So, for many many years, in spite of my interest, I ignored it because just thinking about it conjured up pictures of "Marty" and his wife floating by my bed. "Marty" bugged me enough during the day...  In any case, I eventually decided not to let "Marty" ruin my life experience and delved into the subject. 

First I read Robert Monroe's Journeys Out of Body" and skimmed through a few others.  Monroe describes his experience very clearly and without prejudice.  He is the consummate scientist and recorded his spontaneous journeys faithfully.  It was easy reading and quite interesting.  Since it happened to him spontaneously, however, he is somewhat unable to explain particular aspects of how to do it.  I was able to affirm by later readings that what he experienced was the same as many others. In the end this is what convinced me that this actually did happen to him and was not something he asked to happen. 

Next I checked out a rather hefty tome from the library called Astral Dynamics by Robert Bruce.  It was one of those books that I figured I would check out and leaf through it and due to it's size would discard as being way too much information.  The other books on astral projection are very short in comparison which is why this book intrigued me in the first place. What in the world did this guy have to say that no one else did?

As it turned out, he had a lot to say for good reason.  It was by far the most complete book on how to do astral projection I had ever seen (OK, compared to the selection of books available at the Garfield county library system in rural, Western Colorado.  So you know they just have tons of books on astral projection because we are really bored over here!).  There were detailed instructions, exercises and preparations.  Very weird and specific exercises.  I had to try them immediately!

These exercises had to be done daily for something like a month or two before attempting to project oneself from the body.  They involved moving energy through your limbs and practicing relaxation techniques.  The whole thing about astral projection is that it happens at a certain point when you are falling asleep.  When you are relaxed enough and just before you fall into a deep sleep is when your astral body separates from your physical body.  If you want to experience what happens to your astral body, you simply need to get very deeply relaxed as if you were falling asleep, and be aware.  There's a bit more technique than that, but without getting too detailed,  that's what happens.  You already do it, you just are asleep and don't know you are doing it.  Apparently, you even wake up while doing it and can remember the experience as a dream. 

So this is where I am supposed to report how I did the exercises religiously and then followed through and began to project myself into the universe nightly, but of course I couldn't keep up with the exercises.  Someday, when I am retired and have nothing better to do and I am living in a cave in the Himalayas I will do the exercises and project myself.  In the meantime something weird happened. 

About a month ago I fell asleep and dreamed I was in our living room in the dark with the moon shining through the large picture window.  I was floating above the ground somewhat and suddenly I felt an arm between my legs hoisting me quickly up in the air.  It happened so fast my stomach was queasy.  I felt a deep-seated fear of all this - whose arm was that and why were we going up in the air?  I was free floating above the TV.  Then right there, in the middle of my "dream" I realized what was happening: I was projecting!  I also realized that this same thing had happened many times before and that I had always been afraid of it because you end up flying around. And also because sometimes the sensation of someone lifting you by unorthodox methods also is disconcerting.  I think I assumed it was a ghost.  Maybe it was Marty - lord I hope not!

According to Bruce, the feeling of someone lifting you or touching you is not unusual.  The fear that automatically happens when you realize where you are and that you are up in the air also prevents many people from staying with the experience as well.

Then two other realizations came to me.  Bruce talks about the "higher dimensional levels" or "astral planes" and how you enter them by going through a layer of shapes.  This sounded rather odd to me.  What are the shapes made out of?  Why shapes and not grass and land forms?  Who knows?  Then I remembered falling asleep a few nights earlier and seeing a plane of shapes (a la M.C. Escher) and they were so familiar to me and I went through them just as I fell more deeply asleep. 

The second realization is that as a child I had most likely projected myself quite often.  If you have read my earlier story about the ghost in my bedroom in Hawaii, you may remember how the ghost sat on my bed each night.  I still think that there was a ghost but the sitting on the bed phenomena  I think was my projected self, because of several things.  One, it always happened just as I was falling asleep, waking me sometimes violently and then the sensation of someone being there would be gone, and two, it did scare me but over time I came to accept it while the rest of the events still scare me.  I have even felt it more recently and seemed to be able to make it happen myself.  I wasn't even in Hawaii when this happened!  Do ghosts follow people?  I don't think they do.  In any case I suspect that it was my projected double sitting on the end of my bed each night. 

I find astral projection fascinating and am still very curious to attempt it in a more serious way.  Perhaps, in the interest of this blog, I will be inspired to keep up with my exercises.  If anything unusual happens I will let you know!

But if I manage to do all these exercises and finally drag my butt out of my body at night and the first thing I see is Marty and his wife, I'm staying home!

The Tahitian He'eiau

When I was 16 the opportunity arose to join a student exchange program through Punahou Summer School that traveled to Tahiti to study French.  There were about 10 of us on the trip which included staying with local families and excursions to art museums and local places of cultural significance.  Ironically enough the family I stayed with was Chinese and spoke Chinese at home. 

Early in the trip we travelled around the main island of Tahiti, stopping at a site where archaeologists were excavating a he'eiau.  It looked very similar to the Hawaiian version, as the two cultures are very closely related.  In fact, Tahitian and Hawaiian languages are nearly the same, the only difference being certain consonants that are switched.  For example, in Tahitian the word for forbidden is "tabu" and in Hawaiian it is "kapu".  In any case, a he'eiau is basically a low wall of a few feet high surrounding a square shaped enclosure. There are often several sections and levels with an particular spot designated as the altar.

We arrived at the dig site and were taken over to a deep pit that had been dug off to the side of the lower enclosure.  I can't remember exactly why they had chosen this spot in particular to dig, if they had found artifacts or some clues that they might find something there.  In any case, the archaeologists were French so we had a translator along to translate for us since our linguistic skills weren't up to the task.  It took a very long time for the archaeologist to speak, then for the translation to us.  It was warm, and after awhile I started to feel very sick.  Assuming it was the heat and standing still, I told our chaperon I needed to go sit down. She told me to sit in the bus.

After a short time, feeling much better, I went back to the dig.  I usually find these things very interesting and wanted to get back and hear more about it.  I stood there again and within 5 minutes my stomach began to heave.  I  thought it strange, so this time I walked away to find the altar and look around.  Once I had walked 20 feet from the dig the illness stopped almost immediately.  I noticed this as being rather odd.  If I were really ill then surely it would return no matter if I sat in the bus or walked around, but I felt fine.  I decided to test a growing theory that the dig site was making me feel ill. 

After a walk around the place I headed back to the dig site being very aware of how I felt.  Once again the nausea welled up in me as soon as I got to the edge of the pit.  Stepping back made it abate, coming closer it intensified.  After we got on the bus I polled everyone else and learned that no one else had felt ill. 

Later in our trip we visited a woman on another island that was considered a Tahitian spiritual woman who we should give much respect to.  The house, as I remember it, was blue and much like every other house in Tahiti.  There were many plants outside, and dogs and cats hanging around.  The woman, whose name I don't remember, spoke to us about Tahitian spiritual practices in general and then the group moved on to refreshments outside.  The woman remained inside and so I asked to speak with her.  Through the translator I was able to relate the experience at the he'eiau, explaining how I had felt ill near the dig site and how this was not the spot thought to be the altar. 

The woman told me that something bad had probably happened in that spot where they were digging.  Sometimes there were sacrifices and possibly human ones at one point in time.  I couldn't believe that she was telling me this so matter-of-factly.  Instinctively I sensed that she didn't approve of sacrificing any living thing.  But she gave complete credibility to my experience.  She never doubted that I felt this odd nausea and that it only happened near this spot.  She told me that I was merely sensitive to these things and that the world was telling me something, that's all.  I felt better for having been validated.

What really happened? In my heart I felt that something was communicated to me.  Something happened - I wasn't sick before or after we went to the dig.  Strange things seem to happen in Hawaii and alsoTahiti. These places hold on to the spiritual thread that the ancient cultures brought to the land.  You can almost feel it in the air, a kind of different energy.  It's the kind of energy that I think people hope to find by visiting Indian sites or events.  They hope to find this powerful, primeval kind of energy that lingers just below the surface, but oddly enough I never feel that either at Indian sites or from Indians themselves.  It makes me feel sad. 

Sometimes, in places like Shiprock or Devil's Tower, there seems to be a very faint energy, but it's not like Hawaii.  In Hawaii, things happen. You get the feeling that nothing you do leaves you any control over what happens there.

Pele's Revenge

Please note:  it is helpful to read the post "Hawaiian Ghost Stories" first for background). 

As a child growing up in Hawaii I was constantly told stories about not removing rocks from a) an active volcano, b) a Hawaiian temple called a He'eiau or c) other sites which are deemed sacred to the Hawaiians and/or the volcano goddess Pele.  I love rocks.  To this day I have a large collection of rocks from all over the place (ok, mainly Utah and Wyoming, but just about every place I've been is represented).  Not only do I love rocks but my grandmother had taken a liking to a semi-precious stone found near the volcano called "olivine".  It is an olive-colored glassy stone that is created when the right combination of heat and minerals combine.  There is a beach on Kauai that is made of olivine and it is often found embedded in volcanic rock.  My grandmother had some jewelry made from it and I thought it was so beautiful.

In any case, my fourth grade class went on a trip to the Big Island of Hawaii.  The purpose was to see Volcano National Park, and various He'eiaus and petroglyphs and other things of educational interest.  In preparation for the trip my mother allowed me to use her special bag and a pair of her stylish slip-on wedges which were a bit large for me.  My grandpa gave me fifty dollars as spending money.  I was so excited!  I had never been on a trip without my parents and I felt very grown-up.

On arrival at the hotel, the teachers gathered us into the lobby for a stern lecture from the hotel manager.  He warned us to keep the noise down and to not run in the hall.  We were to stay away from certain areas of the hotel but we could purchase candy from the lobby store.  Most of all, he warned, we were not to lock our keys in the rooms as this caused many problems for the hotel staff! He mentioned this twice at least.  Then we had an hour to put our bags in our rooms and of course, buy some candy.  I held off, not wanted to appear desperate for candy right away.

The first stop on our tour was the volcano, looking very flat compared to all the movie volcanoes.  Even the extinct craters on my home island were steeper, having been eroded away.  In their original state they look like a shield and are called "shield volcanoes" due to the way they erupt.  They don't explode so much as fountain.  There are hundreds of pictures of the fountains of lava erupting from Kilauea or the other active vents in Hawaii.  In some pictures of lava the face of a woman can be seen and it is said that this is Pele. 

In any case, we arrived at the volcano and peered into the vast crater of Kilauea, which was slightly smoking.  There were men in special white suits walking around in it.  They said it was more than a mile down to where the men were walking.  It is an unforgettable sight once you have seen it.  After the crater we drove along the road making stops at various spots.  At one spot, to my great delight, was an entire field littered with - you guessed it - black volcanic rocks studded with olivine!  They were so beautiful and there were so many of them!  Yes, it is against the law to remove rocks from a national park.  Not only that, the  legend was hanging over me too.  She would surely have vengeance on me for taking her rocks.

But it was simply not enough to stop me from taking several rocks.  My grandmother would be so happy that I had managed to bring home semi-precious stones for her.  Perhaps jewelry could be made from them... And those legends, come on!  How could they possibly be true?  Would the park service prosecute a child?  And the people who made the olivine jewelry, they must have gotten it from the volcano too... I could justify anything!

As the day wore on, things began to change.  The group of girls I considered my friends sat with me on the bus as we made plans for spending the evening at the hotel.  All day we sat together, giggling and laughing in between stops at the volcano park.  So far so good.  When we arrived back at the hotel that night, everyone crowded around the kiosk in the lobby that sold candy, myself included.  We took our stash up to the room and proceeded to do all the things the hotel manager told us not to.  We screamed, high on way too much sugar, teased the boys, tried to break in to their room.  I got emotional for some reason and....locked our keys in the room.  Yes, me.  And when my roomies found out it was me, I was out of the club. 

The next day I had to sit next to some nerdy boy on the bus who also ignored me.  I tripped in my mom's shoes several times, finally tearing them.  Someone told me I looked stupid in them anyway and they were too big.  My cool bag that my mom let me use suddenly seemed too big, too touristy.  Was it my imagination or was everyone looking at me like I was a complete dork loser?  No one wanted to sit with me at lunch.  The guy that I thought liked me was holding hands with some other girl.  My friends barely spoke to me.  The trip went downhill fast. 

That night in the hotel room I decided to go through  all the things I'd bought on the trip. It was our last night and my friends left me alone in the room to go have fun.  At the bottom of my bag sat those olivine rocks, glinting and dangerous.  I made a decision right then because it had become clear to me that Pele had indeed punished me and I didn't like it!  I found my teacher, a great lady who I knew would understand.  Gathering all my courage I knocked on the door to her room and silently handed her the rocks.  I told her how sorry I was and how wrong it had been to take them.  She solemnly received them from me, understanding my situation.  She said she would do something with them. 

After that a weight lifted off me and I headed down to dinner happy.  Low and behold, my friends smiled and invited me to eat with them... we had fun, and I spent the rest of grandpa's money (much to his surprise - "what in the world did you spend that money on?")  on more candy and nick-knacks.  We had a great night. 

In the morning we piled on the bus to go home, and I happened to look down at the planter on the sidewalk of the hotel.  There were my three rocks, glinting in the morning sun.  I smiled and said goodbye. 

In case you think this is a bit "out there", here is a website you can go to to read similar stories and it also tells you how to return rocks taken from the volcano.
http://www.volcanogallery.com/lavarock.htm

If anyone has stories they would like to share, please leave a comment and share your story.  I love to hear about things that have happened to others!

Next post:  what happened when my Dad took a rock from the volcano.