July 23 2023 - I Married An Angel

 

Has anyone claimed to have married an angel?  That was a song by Richard Rogers and Lorenz Hart and a Broadway musical in 1938.  I can’t find any stories about people claiming to marry an angel.  Lots of people claim to have seen angels.   And then there is the regilion-based argument about  Genesis 6:  "The recent fantasy film Noah and a slightly related blog comment by my friend Douglas Wilson have stirred up again the question of whether the “sons of God” in Genesis 6 who married the “daughters of men” were fallen angels or the priestly line of Seth. The article goes on with a line or argument that distinguishes between angel blood and human blood.  Wouldn’t that be a sort of "angels on the head of a pin" discourse? Lots of discussion can ensue as there is no way to prove anything. In comparison, ghosts seem more tangible. My friend, Marina, knows of two stories of women who have married ghosts, and then divorced them.   Astounding to me.  It was in the Toronto Star with the headline:  "She married a ghost.  Then she divorced him via an exorcism.  Turns out that’s a trend”  -  go to the story HERE.  All the papers have picked this up as it is so compelling a headline.  Brocarde, the woman in the story, suspected her ghost husband was heating on her with Marilyn Monroe. Just like the angels on the pin - who can dispute such wonderful claims?  The next story on this topic is in the dailymail.co.uk with a point by point summary (story HERE). Amethyst Realm, 32, from Bristol, fell in love with ghost Ray on trip to Australia Spiritual guidance counsellor was planning to marry and have a baby with ghost She communicated with the spirit, called Ray, through 'energies and feelings' Ray sadly 'changed' on holiday to Thailand after falling into the 'wrong crowd'  Says ghost also have to socially distance during pandemic as they fear illness The biggest story before these was the woman who claimed she married a pirate ghost. She was Amanda Teague, and the story was covered in 2019 - even the Washington Post covered that one (the topic was “religion”).  She divorced him as well.   What is interesting is that it seems so tacky to conclude the fantasy of ghost marriage with the every day marital norms of divorce.  I’ll stick with the Marilyn Monroe cheating story.

Here’s a Grimsby garden - on Ridge Road above the escarpment - this is a 200 year old house. Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblogspot.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

Jan 18 2023 - The Ghost of Bereavement

 

Yesterday I recalled a CBC interview with Emily Urquart, bestselling author and journalist, and the daughter of acclaimed Canadian painter Tony Urquhart.  She was interviewed by CBC on the subject of ghost sightings related to grieving death.  She had this experience - seeing her brother in passing strangers after he had died.   "I don’t remember the first time I saw my brother in a passing stranger, but I do know that it went on for years." As a journalist, she decided to investigate the area - known as post-bereavement hallucination.  This area has been studied for five decades and is found across cultures.  She writes that in Scandinavian folklore there is a belief hat the unsettled dead wander into the lives of the living. Here is a compelling excerpt from her Longreads.com article which is HERE:  "The living, for their part, are more likely to experience visitations from their lost loved ones if the death was traumatic, sudden, unexpected, or untimely. This might explain why I have never seen my grandmother, who died peacefully at 96, in the faces of passing nuns or in the eyes of the blue-hairs at the bus stop. Tragedies, the personal, and in particular those on a mass scale, tend to breed ghosts, like those seen in post-tsunami Japan. A few months after the disaster, a taxi driver picked up a young woman near Ishinomaki station in Japan’s Fukushima district. She asked the driver, a man in his 50s, to take her to Minamihama district, but he protested, telling her there was nothing left in that region. “Have I died?” The woman asked. The driver, stricken, turned to face his passenger, but, of course, she was gone and his cab was empty. This was one of seven cases of ghost passengers documented by a sociology student, Yuka Kudo in her study.   Urquhart covers many of these stories and folklore tales in her book Beyond the Pale:  Folklore, Family and the Mystery of our Hidden Genes.  Emily is Jane Urquhart's daughter.  A family of writers and painters of great talent.

Here's a visual explorations of the edges of things. Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblog.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

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June 28 2021 - Ghost Towns Ahead

 

It turns out Ontario has lots of ghost towns.  The Wikipedia list is extensive, organized alphabetically.  Most of these abandoned towns relate to railways and mining.  Lots are located in the north part of the province. When our family had the cottage near Parry Sound,  we visited Depot Harbour nearby to see the railway ruins.  When it was a thriving town, it had over 100 houses, grain elevators, docks, a railway station, a hotel and shops.  It was the reconstruction of the Welland Canal in 1932 and other events such as the Great Depression that led to the closure of the facilities. There was a fire in 1945 that set off explosives being stored there and the facilities were destroyed.  Then the Anishinaabe reclaimed the expropriated lands in 1987 and a fish farm is there now.   I thought I would find something nearby in Niagara.  Here it is - more a ghost site than a ghost town.  It is the Screaming Tunnel in Niagara-on-the-Lake.  I don't know anything about this.  The tunnel was created in the early 1900s as a drainage passage to keep railway tracks from being lost beneath flood waters.  Local farmers used it as a convenient path to avoid the oncoming trains overhead.   The tunnel, 125 feet long, is located off of Garner Road and is rumoured to lead to a farmhouse that burned down in the early 1900s. According to legend, a young girl trying to escape the blaze ran out of her house and into the tunnel where she was screaming as a train passed overhead. She died in the tunnel. If a person enters the tunnel and lights a match, and the match is blown out, you are supposed to be able to hear the girl scream.  This tunnel leads to the Bruce Trail, so is probably visited a fair amount.   And there's another Niagara tunnel - the Blue Ghost Tunnel - in St. Catharines. it is located on Seaway Haulage Road in Thorold.  It runs under the original Welland Canada for over 500 feet.  It is not as accessible or as safe, and is part of the Welland Canal property. Who would guess that Ontario has so many ghost towns and that there are "ghost" sites nearby in Niagara.

I found this pretty floral heart, created by Odile, in the archives.