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*Cue the Twilight Zone music*

This post may be a little woo woo for some of my readers and that’s fine. I’m a very grounded skeptic at heart and I swear if these things didn’t happen to me I wouldn’t believe them either.

If you’re a long time reader you’ll remember I wrote about the bizarre things that transpired during my mother’s last days in hospice. I can’t explain any of them, but I was there. They happened.

I’m an only child and my father died when I was young. My mother and I were close. She was a very spiritual woman and believed in a lot of things I don’t. Her death in 2014 hit me hard and deciding what to do with her ashes took me a few months. After burying half of them with a memorial tree on our property, I decided to take the other half back to the Jersey shore where we spent countless happy hours as a family.

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She adored the ocean.

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It was an emotional journey returning to the place she loved and saying goodbye.

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But I felt her with me and knew she’d approve.

I was a bit of a wreck that day, drained and raw. So when we returned to our hotel all I wanted to do was crawl in bed for a nap… but then I saw this on the counter.

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A white bobby pin that wasn’t there when we left. The same type of white bobby pin my mother used every day. The ones I had to special order at a beauty supply shop because no one carried them. The ones my mother would obsess over if she didn’t have enough.

I don’t use white bobby pins.

I certainly didn’t bring one with me to New Jersey.

No, the maid hadn’t cleaned our room while we were gone and left one. I checked.

Scoff all you like, but I know it was my mother’s way of telling me she was okay with my decision.

For the last 9 years that bobby pin has been a talisman and has lived on the bureau in my bedroom where I carefully dust around it. Until the other day… when I had just finished reading a book about a girl who lost her mother and believed she could communicate with her from beyond the grave.

I finished the book, went into our bedroom and it was gone. I looked everywhere. Under and behind the bureau, in all the drawers, behind my jewelry box and perfume tray. My husband didn’t take it. No one else was in the house. Lord Dudley doesn’t jump on the bureau but on the off chance he had, I scoured the room, searched in every corner and under the bed. I even emptied the vacuum cleaner. Nothing.

Just… gone. There that morning, gone in the afternoon, and I can’t explain it.

I also can’t explain this –

Remember when I posted about the recent storm and our loss of electricity? When my husband and I had an epic six hour gin rummy match by flashlight?

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We used a blue deck of cards I had in the drawer. Naturally I won because gin rummy was my mother’s game and she taught me well. Hope springs eternal for my husband, but he rarely beats me.

Wanting revenge, he pulled out the deck last night and we played again. I was skunking him and after I’d just dropped another gin… double points thanks to a spade… he complained about not drawing the jack he needed and picked up the deck to check how far down it was.

The deck we had just recently played with for 6 hours.

The deck that has been in the kitchen drawer, untouched, ever since.

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There wasn’t a single jack to be found. None. It was a deck of 48 cards.

Did Lord Dudley remove them all? Doubtful.

Is there a jack burglar on the loose in rural Maine? Equally as doubtful.

I’ve been joking lately about our house being cursed due to all the renovation nightmare mishaps, but damn. Now I’m really beginning to wonder.

What the hell is going on?

😳

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