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Thursday, December 30, 2004

I’ll tell you this story, and you decide for yourself what really happened…

I left a box on top of my kitchen counter. Stacked right side up inside the box, were six clean China dessert plates. Totally breakable, if you get my drift. The box was for a fondue machine, so there was more than enough room for six China dessert plates. Don’t ask why the plates were in the box. Okay, let’s just say I left the plates at a friend’s house and that’s the box I carried them home in.

Anyway, the lid of the box was wide open, and the plates were just sitting quietly inside. We had to go to work and obviously I did not have a chance to put the plates back in the cabinet. I figured the dogs would not bother the box, as it is not edible, or tasty... well, it’s doesn’t smell like food. So away to work we went.

We came home around 6pm. I put the key in the door and walked into the kitchen. With one hand still on the lock and the other still on the doorknob, I froze in the doorway. My mouth dropped opened and a chill ran up my spin. I was completely motionless except for my eyes. I looked at the floor in the center of the room, then at the empty counter, then at the box laying in the corner, and back again to the center of the room. I couldn’t tell if I was more confused at what I was seeing or just in utter disbelief.

There was something very different about how I left that room…

The box was not on the counter but was in the corner of the room. Empty.

All six plates were stacked right side up, neatly on top of each other…

In the very center of the dog blanket…

In the very center of the kitchen…

Very weird yet very geometrical.

Because the dog blanket was originally on the floor next to the counter where the box was in the first place, it would make sense that the plates would land there if they fell. Okay, no mystery there, but remember - this is a blanket, not a cushioned bed.

If the box had fallen to the ground by means of puppy paws and puppy noses, I can see two ways it could have left the counter:

#1 The Knock and Slide - If the dogs clawed the box and knocked it to one side before pushing it off the counter, the plates may remain in what we could call a “sloppy sideways stacked formation”. As the box fell, it would have to either land on it’s side (which in that case, the box would have to be removed and the plates would need to be returned to their upright stacked position) or it would flip over during the fall and land upside down (which in that case, the plates would be stacked upside-down. The box would have to be removed and again, the plates returned to their upright-stacked position.)

# 2 The Push and Slide - If the dogs pushed the box to the edge of the counter and slid it right off, the box may fall without flipping over, landing completely upright. The plates may still remain stacked in an upright position, but they would also still be inside a right side up box. The stack of plates would then need to be picked up out of the box and placed in the center of the blanket – And last I checked, my dogs hadn’t learned that trick yet.

As for the blanket being moved to the center of the room, if the dogs were very careful they could pull it with their teeth and push it with their feet and get the blanket to the center of the kitchen without knocking the stack of plates over…

So I put this out there to you all. It’s not too crazy to ask for opinions. I can’t be sure what happened. Could have just been a bulldog blunder, and if it was, I would have paid to see how they did it. Perhaps the plates, the clean plates, just stuck together when they fell... Or perhaps something else was involved… You’ve read the things I’ve written about the house. You tell me.

Earl is a true skeptic. He insists the plates landed the way they did because “that’s the way they fell.” I don’t understand how a box can fall from counter to floor, emptying contents of six China plates yet allowing them to remain in upright stacked formation.

Perhaps I will attempt to recreate this amazing feat, only I will probably not use my good China. Something with the same weight though, and just as fragile.

All I know for sure is how I felt inside when I saw those plates in the middle of the room. It didn’t feel right and it didn’t feel normal. Dare I say, it felt paranormal? Try as I may, I can’t explain how they ended up there like that.

Hey, most of the time you see paranormal activity in the same room with flatware, you've got a mess of flying tea cups and saucers smashing into walls. It would be nice to know that something is watching out for our house and the fragile things inside - including tender little puppy feet that cut easily on broken China.



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