Last night was strange.

So, as dawn broke yesterday, it looked as though the ghost-hunting expedition was off. People had cancelled, couldn’t come ’til later on, and I’d been offered a gig. So the Facebook event was cancelled. And almost immediately people started texting asking why, and saying we should go anyway. But of course, I’d been offered a slot playing an acoustic showcase at a local pub which complicated things somewhat.

Anywho, this gig was arranged by the mother of a friend of mine – Mrs Sue Wood, mother of Kelsey – as a showcase of Harlow’s young talent. Not sure I really fit into that category. Surely I’m the wrong side of 25 to count as ‘young talent’? But whatever, I got a message through Facebook asking me to play. I was apprehensive, having not played a gig in over a year, but then I thought “Nah, Feth it”. Spent yesterday afternoon putting together a set-list and making sure I could actually play the songs I listed. It went well, and I ended up playing the final slot on the bill. It went well, and the landlord not only invited me back for the jam night they’re running next week, but also wants the band to play on 9th May. So I couldn’t have been to bad!

But during the evening, we spoke to Larter and decided that we’d head over to the haunted church after the gig! However, we didn’t take into account that my sister would turn up… As regular readers will know, my sister and I don’t get on. I have very little time for her, yet she seems intent on following me around, annoying my friends, and generally embarrassing me. And last night was no exception. She was wasted when she turned up, and proceeded to abuse my friends, stagger around drunkenly, get aggressive with strangers, and talk about having sex with Larter’s cousin. Then she got pissed off that everyone knows me as Rooney rather than my real name, and started getting up in my face and yelling “Rooney dude”. Then she wouldn’t leave us alone as we were trying to leave the pub. *sigh*

Leaving the pub quick was quite important as we were supposed to be meeting with Goon by 10pm. Anyway, we eventually made it out of the pub, got home and grabbed our stuff, and made it to the church. Just walking along the country road to get to the public footpath that leads to the church, Onion Girl and Goon were getting freaked out. They nearly crapped themselves when they heard a Sheep in a nearby field.

To be fair to them, the church and it’s graveyard were pretty damn creepy in the dark. Our torches lanced out over the pale headstones, and it was all too easy to imagine shapes flitting between the graves, or lurking amongst the trees! So we headed to the entrance and obviously, I was the first to crawl through the small entrance hole into the dark interior. The others followed, and within moments we’d spotted the first rather freaky thing. The stairwell that originally lead up to the upper floors (which was to be the place I spent the evening) had been turned into some kind of bed/nest/lair by someone/something. A mattress of dry grass, leaves, and small twigs had been layered over the first dozen or so stairs and flattened, as if something had been sleeping on it. This really meant that I was less than willing to head up there – the rumours of a feral cat using the church as it’s residence were suddenly foremost in my mind.

Now, I’d like to be able to show you some photo’s or even some of the video that I shot, but I can’t. This is due to the fourth freaky thing that happened that evening. More on tha later!

At about this time, Larter busted out his IR goggles and was nosing around. Within moments of doing so, he was reporting ‘orbs’ up around the ceiling. Then he saw ‘a squiggly thing’. That was the best way he could describe it. A glowing squiggly thing apparently drifted across his view, and freaked him out. Then shortly afterwards, began complaining that the little finger on his left hand was burning. When we took a look, sure enough, his finger was inflamed and blisters were forming right there in front of our somewhat disbelieving eyes. Now the obvious answer to this phenomena is that he’d brushed some nettles or something on the way there. However, he was wearing his armoured paintball gloves, so unless they were steel-tipped nettles, that seems highly unlikely.

Shortly after this Goon began to get a little freaked out, and suggested we leave. Since no-one but myself was opposed to this idea, we prepared to leave. And of course, I was the last to leave the Church – once again, stories about the church (this time stories of people being grabbed and attacked as they left the church) leapt to the forefront of my brain. We spent some time investigating the headstones (listening to the sheep bleating in the next field). At about this time my digital camcorder froze up, and then the batteries died. Which was strange since they were new at the start of the evening. I replaced them with new batteries which instantly died. I gave up with the camcorder.

Then we heard voices. But fear not, these were not the voices of the damned calling from the next world. It was people heading up the footpath to the Church. We decided that now would be an opportune time to depart, and so we headed out. Of course, we’d pass whoever was approaching on the way which was not a relaxing thought, since the other thing the church is known for is Chavs and other undesirables drinking and doing other stuff. And at 00:15 the last thing we wanted was a run-in with a group of drunken Chavs! They spotted our torches and quickly turned off theirs. They then started shouting and tried to scare us. Which of course failed, and we passed one another and exchanged a few surprisingly polite and sociable comments.

Anyway, we made it home with no problems, taking a quick listen to the audio recordings we’d made. we got back to the Rooncave and at this point we spotted the fourth and final freaky thing – everything I recorded and all the photos I took from the moment we entered the church were gone, and the batteries that had previously died in the graveyard were miraculously fully charged and working fine again.

What this means, I have no idea. But it is quite freaky.

Anyway, I’ll let you all know if anything turns up on the audio recordings, and let you all know if/how the gig goes!

TTFN

What’s going on? Well, I’m glad you asked…

… and if you didn’t ask, well I’ll tell you all anyway. I’m just that nice!

Been doing a lot of reading lately. Can’t really put my finger on why. I just felt that more reading needed to be done, and so over the last few months I have made at least some effort to finish more books. Thus I have read:

• Star Wars: X-wing – The Krytos Trap, and Star Wars: X-Wing The Bacta War, both by Michael A. Stackpole.  Both great fanboy novels featuring lots of starfighter battle, blasters, aliens, and Wedge Antilles. Didn’t bother re-reading Wraith Squadron which is the next book in the series as I’ve read it about a dozen times already
• The Complete Robot, by Isaac Asimov. Despite being a big Asimov fan, this collection featured stories that I hadn’t even heard of, let alone read. It finally gather all his robot stories together in one place, including I, Robot which shows up the Will Smith film of the same name as the pointless, twisting of a well written story.
• Almost finished John, by Cynthia Lennon
• And about half way through Star Wars: Han Solo Trilogy – The Hutt Gambit.

I know, I know, more Star Wars fanboy nonsense in my reading list. In my defence, I did get a rather amazing bargain the other day – nine Star Wars books for £3.20, from St Claire’s Hospice charity shop – which has resulted in a flood of Star Wars books to my book case. Plus I know I can polish off on of them in a little over a week, so I can get through a lot of them n a relatively short time! I should probably keep track of how many books I read a year. I’d probably impress/distress myself with the amount of time I spend with my nose in a book.

anyway, aside from reading, I’ve also been playing Dungeons & Dragons (this blog is turning into a den of geekiness rather than cool….) with Onion Girl and a few others. I always figured D&D would be all about complicated maths based on the dice roll, whilst sitting ’round a darkened table talking in funny voices with people who couldn’t tell the difference between themselves and their characters. However, I was very, very wrong! I’m enjoying it so much, as is everyone else involved. Game nights are a lot of fun, and no-one takes themselves too seriously – we all have active lives outside of our D&D, and a sense of humour is much more important to our group than any skill in mathematics (I’m practically retarded when it comes to maths). Of course, I’m a geek, so I would say that…

Any other big news? Hmmm, lets see. Oh yeah, only two damned major things!

• First, we’re moving again! Yep, Onuion Girl and I are moving in with our chum Larter. We need to get out of our tiny little flat (Americans – read as apartment) into a real house with a garden, and Larter is sick of living at home with his parents (possibly not helped by spending copious amounts of time at our flat). So after realising we could get a bigger, better house with the rent being split three ways, we decided to move in together! Living with my friends is something I’ve always wanted to do, so this promises to be fun. we’re currently scouring the local papers and estate agent websites for a suitable place, since we’re looking to move in July, and we need to give our current agents two months notice… So if anyone knows of a three bedrom house in Harlow for less than £800 pcm available June/July, let me know!
• Secondly Requiem for an Empire are finally rehearsing/recording again! We’ve actually been doing so for a couple of months now,  but I’ve been too lazy to update the blog with the news. This time around we’re only a three-piece, and Goon is sequencing drums/bass/synths, whilst Larter and I add guitar and vocals. Our music’s heading off in some strange directions, but it’s so damn good to be making music again, and we’ve received some really positive feedback on our demo tracks. Check us out here, or become a fan of our Facebok page here. Apologies in advance about the awful sound quality of the recordings on Myspace – the Myspace audio player does terrible, terrible things to mp3’s when you upload them, and results in them sounding like they’re being played through a washing machine.

On an entirely different and much sadder note, I have had to sell the Duke. My beloved car needed repairs that I simply could not afford, and was costing me an absolute fortune in petrol (averaging somewhere around 15 mpg), so I had to sell him.

At least now he’ll get the work and servicing he needs, so he’s in a better place *sob*. This also means that I have a new car, which is somewhat smaller than the Duke was, and goes quite a bit quicker too, whilst being cheaper to run, and doing lots more miles per gallon! As yet she’s un-named, though I do have a few strong contenders…

Finally, so as not to end on a downer, we’re going ghost hunting! Yep, this Thursday evening will find me and an intrepid bunch of miscreants heading to Cold Christmas Church in Thundridge:

Cheerful looking place isn't it?

to hopefully spend the night being goosed by ghosts and spooked by spirits. I’ll let you know how that goes… Or alternately you could follow me on Twitter and get regular updates on exactly how cold/scared/bored we are throughout the night! The wonders of modern technology.

TTFN