Instead of being driven away by fear, the opposite was happening to Tinsley. She was being drawn to it. She just needed to know what it was, what it could be. The closer she got to the rock, the brighter the object and surrounding water seemed to glow.
For years I puzzled as to why our house roof remained intact and I finally asked Mammy. It was not by chance or good fortune she said. Through the years she had learned to open one window on the lee side of the storm, and when the eye passes over, during the lull, close that window and open a window on the opposite side of the house. In doing that, the build-up of pressure in the house is released and so the roof stays on. Of course this would not work if a hurricane-spawned tornado struck, but it did not happen to us, thank God!
I went into the bathroom, locking the door behind me and sat on the toilet. Suddenly a black snake that had been lying in the corner behind the door uncoiled itself and reared up. I froze. Then I screamed for help, all the while climbing up onto the back of the toilet. Daddy had to break the door in to get at the snake and rescue me!
I looked back and could still see a bit of the lady’s white dress. There was complete quiet as I explained what I was seeing, and I asked Mammy why wouldn’t the lady come out from behind the door and play with me. No one answered. Quickly Aunt Daisy drew me close to the window and pointed out the goings-on in the street below. I never gave the lady another thought!
These wonderful memories of storytelling have impacted me up to this day. My greatest joy is in telling exciting stories to the guests at our guesthouse in Montserrat, and seeing the awed looks on their faces. My stories are usually funny but sometimes eerie, and are based mostly on island legends and folklore. Some however are culled from my own personal experience with the paranormal.
Understandably, his heart was raising in his chest; threatening, with no uncertainty, to burst directly through his chest plate.
The Venetian lagoon is reported to be the most haunted of all locations worldwide.
And while the argument can be made that comparable methods are employed in many ceramic settings worldwide, at times the hand and body movements of the African potters (not to mention the familiar sound of ‘sucking the teeth’ for emphasis) were simply identical. In particular, watching the pounding of the wet clay prior to use with a wide-based wooden pestle convinced me that heritage practices can be retained within the physical memory of the human body, and have been transmitted from mother to daughter across time and space.
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