Nights, Ghosts, Nigerians

At night I sit naked in bed and listen to John Coltrane while eating toasted cheeseys and reading about the Iran-Iraq war. The night air squats warm and still and my posters, which are mostly old maps bought at Save-the-Children-Fund booksales, peel away from the wall and faint to the floor. The cheese doesn't taste like I remember it tasting on childhood cheeseys. I think I've lost some skill in cheesey-making over the years. My feet reach for the cold depths of the sheets. Cottesloe is completely silent, except for the dull rush of cars flashing alongside the trainline. The trains finished runnning an hour ago.

My friend Marty lives next to Hyde Park, and it turns out his house is haunted. I wish this was my story to tell you all, but really its not. It's just me recounting a story. Basically: over the last couple of months there have been the most crazy things happening to and in this house. It started with attacks of eggs and rocks at the front windows, followed by things placed on the window sill - a mushroom with "XXX" written on the top and "j" on the base of the stem for example. Then there were black X's written on window panes... some of them would even appear while they were home, in the rooms with the marked windows themselves. Then, on a back window the words "NO NEXT WEEK" appeared. And then months passed without incident.
A few weeks ago, more eggs, including one coming from over the top of the house and hitting the street, while they stood there. They ran through the house, but there was noone to be found. Then: a bullet shell on the window sill. And a few weeks later there was another. And then the voices.
Last week, on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday nights there was a voice, which repeated every half hour or so, in different volumes and from what seemed like different places in the house (but it was definitely coming from within the house). The voice is a woman's, sounds desperate, and says "I want to talk to you". All three housemates (and Courtney from Australian Idol who is a friend of Dan's) have all heard it a number of times, from different rooms. The voice sounds distorted or static, as though it is coming from a tv or a recording device. The housemates are, understandably, pretty scared.
Oh, and on Saturday morning? A ring of salt appeared on Dan's floor, within a three hour period in which no one was in the house. The ring was about the diameter of a lemon, according to Marty, and piled one inch high. There have been no more events of this nature since Saturday.
Obviously we are all are very unsure what to believe, or what to expect from here on.


I end this post with a hilarious and lovely message I got this morning on a popular "online community" that I am guilty of belonging to. According to her profile she is Nigerian. I don't quite know what I liked about this message so much, other than the obvious delight in her choice of words. It's nice because pretty much ever unsolicited message I have ever got on this site has been generated by a robot/computer named "Jenifer" telling me how lonely they are and how I should check out their sexy photos on site "x". And every email I have ever got from Nigeria has asked me to send my bank details to help transfer vast sums of money out of the country. So, assuming there is no junkiness involved in the communique below, it makes for a pleasant change, and is sweet, I think, in its simplicity. And because I imagine Rose to be a 40 year old christian Nigerian woman in a floral dress. I recommend you imagine the same:

Hello Chris
how u doin,...i hope u are havin lovely day out there?Well i got to check ur profile out ,..and i did love it,.ok.
Rose is d name,it will be my pleasure getting to have an wholesome chat with u anytime,..u seem priviledged.Here is my chat ids smilingrose10@hotmail.com,ulookhoney@yahoo.com.
And lets i forget to say that"u have a very lovely picture" on [online community].
i'll be waiting to read from u soon.
urs Rose