My sister and I were talking, and we got to talking about one weird thing

[conuly]

We used to spend summers in Belgium with our grandparents. Our grandparents had a nice patch of land, with red currants and black currants and gooseberries over here, and roses over there, and a field, and a little copse that, as a child, seemed more than large enough to house a few bears (oh my!) and I used to think all that land nearly went on forever. I'd go through the woods, avoiding the nettle at the entrance (or not) and wander until I hit the neighboring farmland. I'd stand there a while, carefully not stepping onto the field, and look at the Wallaby balloon in the distance, and then I'd get lost on my way back.

There were two houses on the property, the big one they rented out and the little one they lived in. The little one had outside stairs to a small attic, covered in ivy. I loved to sit on those stairs and pull off the ivy bit by bit and pretend I was a princess in a tower, right up until Bonne-Maman called me in and gave me an ice cream cone. Which I thought we were supposed to eat from the bottom up, so you can see why my face got messy.

The first year we went, when I was just leaving kindergarten, we had no bedroom of our own, but afterwards they added a small studio and an extra bedroom next to the attic. Jenn (Ginger, back then) and I had beds right next to each other, touching and there were two windows with a small patch of wall in between them.

And one night, quite randomly, we woke up when it was dark (and you know it gets dark very late in Belgium in the summer) and that little patch of wall was glowing. Pale, bright green. I eventually sat up and touched it, and the glowing patch was colder than the rest of the wall, and I swear Jenn saw it too or I'd never believe it now that I'm grown.

I have no idea what caused it. To this day, it is absolutely the weirdest, creepiest thing about my childhood. The only explanation I can think of is "practical joke", but not only are the logistics wildly out of character for my grandparents (painting on the wall!?) but there is no way they'd take a joke this funny to the grave. So I've got nothing.

Any explanation that isn't "aliens" or "ghosts" would be much appreciated, because I'm baffled. We both are.

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Comments

[alatefeline]

Well, there are fungi and minerals that floresce or luminesce...but I don't know why it would only be visible once, unless it only got sunlight the day before or ... activation energy of some kind ... the one time and ... oh, heck, I'm grasping at straws.

[conuly]

Considered years ago and rejected. Surely we would've seen something by daylight if there was some sort of fungus on the wall?

[wpadmirer]

I'm going with a ghostly window into another time of the past. Manifesting takes energy and generally leaves things around it cold. (I have a friend who ghost hunts and swears by this.)

[loligo]

Raising my hand on the earthworm challenge! Of course, I'm married to an invertebrate zoologist, so all sorts of little-known facts about slimy & crunchy animals get discussed at my house.

[novel_machinist]

Moss, perhaps? Some other forms of mold or even paint can bio- luminesce. It could have also taken light and reflected it from moonlight, or flood lights.

[amyvanhym]

I love spooks-from-childhood stories. My best/only one is that once I got up really early in the morning, and found the people on my mom's Gone with the Wind poster in the living room were talking to each other. Their lips kept moving but I couldn't hear anything.

About your glowing wall -- how does the story end? You touched the glow, found it cold, and then did you tell an adult? Or go back to sleep? Did you see it lose its glow? And have you verified the story with Jenn recently? For all the wonder there is in the world, Ockham's Razor may apply.

Edit - I just realized your title says you and your sister were talking about it, so I assume she has verified it. But is there anything her account adds to yours? When did she fall back asleep?

[cactuswatcher]

I have one of those grandparent stories in reverse. My grandmother came to visit us at our house in the woods, and stayed in my bedroom, which had been my sister's room before me. In the middle of the night she woke up and heard mysterious voices, seemingly coming from nowhere. I guess she fumbled around in the dark (the "headboard" was a thick piece of furniture with compartments with sliding wooden covers) and found the earpiece of my crystal set radio. When she told us about it in the morning, I apologized and offered to tune it off station so it wouldn't bother her. But no, no, she rather enjoyed listening to it when, as old folk do, she woke up in the middle of the night.

[conuly]

You get a gold star!

Most people? No clue.

[conuly]

We didn't tell an adult, we just ended up going back to sleep. (And yes, that's what we talked about!) It was completely non-visible by morning and didn't show up the next night or any night thereafter... though it's possible we slept through it if it did.

[conuly]

That'd be creepy until it was explained!

[conuly]

The only trouble we have with this - and this was definitely in our top ten, after "aliens", "ghosts", and "fuck if I know" - is that there was no sign of anything the next day. Surely they show up at least a little in daylight?

[conuly]

Is a ghost likely to manifest in a room that wasn't even there three years ago?

[elf]

About the link about charter schools - trust in public schools has been dropping, too, but since those aren't optional, there's no way to really survey for that. Charters were supposed to fix things, and mostly they haven't, so they are blamed for having the same problems as publich schools, with bonus weird drama and/or bizarre mistakes attached.

Private schools are believed to be better because they're private, rather than because they're expensive and selective. People see the test results etc from private schools and think, "we should have more of those!" rather than, "of course families that can afford and will prioritize spending $20+k/year/student on education, attending schools that will kick out underperforming students, are going to have better results with school."

Private school vouchers are supported by (1) rich people who are upset at how much money a good education costs and (2) poorer people who want into the good education game, who don't realize that the money itself isn't what makes them work. (It's necessary - more money means better educational resources - but the real success of private schools is that they throw out students who don't fit in, whether that's by test result levels or personality type.)

[conuly]

Private schools are believed to be better because they're private, rather than because they're expensive and selective. People see the test results etc from private schools and think, "we should have more of those!" rather than, "of course families that can afford and will prioritize spending $20+k/year/student on education, attending schools that will kick out underperforming students, are going to have better results with school."

You have that same problem with public schools. Of course schools in wealthier areas do better, the parents can pay for tutoring for their kids and know how to help them! And then they can go to the PTA and put together the funding for every class to have extra trips and a full-time aide, effectively cutting the class size.

And in NYC, where we have high school choice, it's worse. Yes, the students in schools that screen for academics do better than the ones in other schools, because they were always going to do better. And now we've neatly removed them from the mass, so of course all the other schools do a lot worse, because their average grades and test scores are from the bottom 80% of the population! What else did you expect would happen?

(But it can be impossible to get through to people that a school that starts with kids who don't want to be there and are working a year and a half below grade level and graduates them working on or near grade level has done a better job than a school that starts with kids working two years above grade level and graduates them still at two years above grade level.)

[novel_machinist]

Not necessarily, like a light film over the area wouldn't be visible to the naked eye, for example. But that is REALLY weird.

[conuly]

But that is REALLY weird.

That's what I keep saying!

[wpadmirer]

I was thinking that maybe there was a window where there is now a wall. Either that, or you've got a portal opening in the room.

[moonhare]

This really strikes a chord. As a child of about 5 I recall waking in the night to see a ghostly apparition floating above my bed in the large room I had to myself. It was pale white, and rectangular, but it moved like a towel or pillow case in a breeze. I was too scared to call out but just buried myself in my blankets until I thought it would be gone... I vaguely remember my sister coming to my aid, so maybe I did make some sound or another.

I would think it was a light shining into the bedroom if not for the shifting shape and movement. Strange.

[conuly]

There was a nothing. The room hadn't existed before that summer. The attic had been sort of a stand-alone space above the downstairs bedroom, and the kitchen and bathroom and living room and laundry room (and these were all very small areas) had had nothing above them.

[randomdreams]

I'm going with fungus, but something more like a mold, that had the majority of its mass inside the wall and you were just seeing the ... ugh, whatever the basidiocarp structure is called in a rust.

[wpadmirer]

Ooo, phantom! I'd go with portal then.

[archangelbeth]

Just so's you know, I now have goosebumps.

If you believe in ghosts... Well, we had one that basically wandered through the upper floor of the house. We had some brachiation bars in one of the dormer windows, in the Big Room (the developer of the subdivision had weird design choices, and had built that house for himself; it had a secret closet behind a built-in bookcase in what became my room eventually!), and if you stood beside them in the dark, you could feel the breeze as if someone were swinging on them.

I would have friends over and we'd turn off the lights in that room at night and give everyone flashlights (...not in that order...), and then do Hide In The Dark, which is like hide and seek only standing in the dark. The seeker doesn't get to use a flashlight. (I once perched on top of the huge speakers near the TV. Another time, I got in between the cushions of the couch and the back of the couch, and the seeker decided she was gonna just move one of the cushions and lie down on the couch and I turned on my flashlight as she moved the cushion, for a "!!!!" moment.) Standing in the dark, next to the brachiation bars... Yeah, fun.

Anyway, my friends were all pretty darn sure that SOMETHING IS MAKING STUFF MOVE (sheets, curtains, etc.) and while we would play up there, often we wound up sleeping downstairs for slumber parties.

One of my next-door-ish friends inherited her house, and was doing housecleaning in the neighborhood, and she says that the ghost was, frankly, in EVERY upstairs of a house that had an upstairs. (A lot were single-story.) It wandered around, playing like a kid, in all of them.

So! Sure, wandering ghost. Not impossible!

[conuly]

It was pretty much brand new drywall.

[conuly]

I would have friends over and we'd turn off the lights in that room at night and give everyone flashlights (...not in that order...), and then do Hide In The Dark, which is like hide and seek only standing in the dark.

We called that Manhunt, for some reason.

One of my next-door-ish friends inherited her house, and was doing housecleaning in the neighborhood, and she says that the ghost was, frankly, in EVERY upstairs of a house that had an upstairs. (A lot were single-story.) It wandered around, playing like a kid, in all of them.

Or you could've all had a weird draft?

[archangelbeth]

In every house, only the upstairs?

I mean, yeah, it could've been our imaginations. It was just... weird. Veeeeeery weird.

[conuly]

Were they all built to a similar design?

[kalloway]

High-tech US plants offer jobs even as the laid-off struggle

*waves hand* Returned-to-school Mechatronics Technician here! Robots are great because they can safely and reliably do the Three D's - Dull, Dirty, and Dangerous jobs that humans don't need to be doing.

But of course, the positions required change - there's a need for more trained quality control, process engineers, as well as the robot's programmers, maintenance, etc.

I don't think the general population is at all aware of just what robots are capable of and can do, or where technology is in general.

[archangelbeth]

Nope! The guy who did all the houses -- or so I heard, 'cause he was the one who was living in ours before us -- liked to make them all unique or something. It wasn't the "churn 'em out" style like in our current subdivision. There were some similarities in 'em, but more style than absolute layout.

Ours was especially weird, with a ginormous big room (seriously, I think it was about 30 feet by 15, with three (four?) dormer windows that each had a closet (slant-ceilinged) and were... 5 feet wide? A couple of sleeping bags could go down in one, anyway, with no problem, and they generally had benches at the ends to sit in. Then there was the "sink room," the bathroom with shower, the weirdly-proportioned I guess bedroom with the door into the gun closet (it had a lock; my sire kept his boyfriend's porn in there till he discovered I'd gotten into it (I copied the key and returned it))... My own weirdly-proportioned room upstairs, where the walk-in closet went into an unfinished attic space with enough floor to be storage... (I stuck my twin-sized bed into the dormer window there, with the built-in desk at the head of the bed.)

Anyway, no, each house was very different.

[randomdreams]

Man, that's harder to answer.

[conuly]

So I got nuthin'.

Unless! Unless your guy, the artiste, decided to uniquely make each house drafty on the second floor.

[conuly]

I don't think the general population is at all aware of just what robots are capable of and can do, or where technology is in general.

I think they're trying not to think about it, because it scares them shitless. Nobody wants to do dull, dirty, or dangerous jobs - well, except the ones who think it makes them manly or something - but we haven't yet figured out how to employ those who used to do them.

[conuly]

That is strange! It never happened again, I take it?

[moonhare]

No, thankfully! I've had inexplicable events as an adult, but nothing quite as haunting as this bit of childhood memory :o)

[archangelbeth]

*thinks about this*
*thinks about the secret closet behind the bookcase*

Not... impossible. I wouldn't think he'd be that good, but not impossible. >_>

[conuly]

Everybody needs a secret room behind a bookcase, but a closet seems unnecessarily small.

[archangelbeth]

Well, it was the "closet" behind the dormer (slanted roof and all) that the other dormer windows had with a real door. In fact, when we were moving in, my parents were discussing knocking a hole in the wall to put another closet in, to match the ones in the Big Room! Then local kids explained the built-in bookcase... pushed inwards.

[conuly]

Inwards? Why inwards?

[archangelbeth]

So the hinges wouldn't show!

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

The explanation that springs to my mind is bioluminescence (https://www.google.com/search?q=mildew+bioluminescence). A wall between two attic windows is a likely place for mildew - the coldness to the touch would support this, because dampness - and 'pale, bright green' is the characteristic color of bioluminescence. Back East, I once saw giant puffballs glowing like that: they're not ordinarily luminescent themselves, so must have had some luminescent mildew growing on their surface - very Halloweeny!

Meh, "aliens or ghosts" - you were correct that the glow was caused by some kind of invisible beings, but they're very tiny, totally native to this planet, and not the least bit supernatural.

[conuly]

But only one single night of the summer, and absolutely no sign of it in the morning?

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Yeah, maybe - the fruiting bodies of fungi tend to be pretty ephemeral. As for 'absolutely no sign' - if you were to look at a piece of fox-fire by daylight, you wouldn't see anything of note, because the glow is caused by micro-organisms, i.e. organisms too small to see with the naked eye.

I don't say that that's what it was, because I was not there to see it. It's also possible that you just dreamed it. However, bio-luminescent mildews do exist in reality (unlike ghosts and aliens) and could very well have colonized a damp patch of attic wall, so.... Occam's Razor, right? "The simplest explanation that fits all the facts."

"The phenomena of bioluminescence in nature have always been a focus of human attention. Prior to the identification of luminous organisms, the presence of even a dim luminous glow in the dark frightened countless numbers of individuals, who perceived the glimmer as ghosts or supernatural spirits. However, the curiosity of scientists to solve the mysteries of nature led to the identification of many luminous organisms responsible for the light emission in different environmental settings."
~Bacterial Bioluminescence (http://photobiology.info/Lin.html)

[conuly]

Dreams are right out, we both have a clear and vivid memory of this event.

I was going to say I don't think the wall was particularly damp, but then, I suppose it is Belgium.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

If that spot was colder to the touch than the rest of the wall, slight dampness is the logical explanation. It wouldn't have to be damp enough to feel damp.

It sounds like it must have been a fascinating old house! Love your description of your ivy tower.

I realize that bioluminescent mildew must be kind of a let-down after all these years of Unexplained Mystery, but it's still pretty cool to have seen it.

[conuly]

It sounds like it must have been a fascinating old house! Love your description of your ivy tower.

In fact, it was the converted old pig sty! My grandmother said it made more sense to rent out the big house because she was only two people, but my mother's take on it was that she associated living in that big house with her childhood.