Day: February 27, 2024

WDYS — Do My Eyes Deceive Me?

Fandango23 Comments

Craig closed his eyes and rubbed them with the palms of his hands. Then he looked again to make sure he was actually seeing what he thought he was seeing on this eerie, foggy night with a full moon illuminating the mist.

Yes, what he was seeing was still there. A tall, lean young man wearing a dark suit and shoes that looked like sneakers. Was standing on the stone footbridge over the creek. He was wearing a top hat that looked two sizes too large for his head. He also seemed to have a book in his right hand. Craig speculated that it might be a Bible.

But as Craig was staring at the man, he saw the most peculiar sight. Suddeny, without shifting his position at all, the man appeared to float up until he was no longer standing on the deck of the old stone bridge. He was, in fact, standing rather precariously on the stone sidewall on the near side of the bridge. And his left shoe appeared to be fading into the stone wall, as if the bridge was starting to absorb the figure standing on the wall.

Once again Craig closed and rubbed his eyes with the palms of his hands. But when he opened his eyes this time, the man was gone, and all that remained on the bridge sidewall was the top hat and the book. Craig walked to the footbridge and picked up the top hat and book, which was, indeed, a Bible.

When Craig got home a few minutes later, he showed his father the hat and book and related to his father what he had seen. Craig’s father turned pale. “It was an apparition, son,” Craig’s father said. “The ghost of Elias Grant. He was tried and convicted for sorcery some 200 years ago. After his conviction, he was brought to that footbridge, hands tied behind his back, and he was thrown in the water under the bridge, where he drowned.”

Craig’s father grabbed Craig by the shoulders and said, “You must take those artifacts back to the bridge exactly where you found them. They say Elias Grant is only visible to those who will meet a similar fate. Be careful, my son.”

Written for Sadje’s What Do You See prompt. Photo credit: Darksouls 1 @ Pixabay.

Truthful Tuesday — Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell

Fandango12 Comments

Frank, aka PCGuyIV, is back with another episode of Truthful Tuesday. The idea behind Truthful Tuesday is for us to respond to the question (or questions) Frank asks and to be 100% truthful in our responses. No glib answers, no funny business, no fibs. Just raw honesty.

For this week’s Truthful Tuesday, Frank wants to know…

Are there certain topics that you won’t discuss or questions you won’t answer on your blog? If it doesn’t give too much away, what are some or all of those topics or questions? Regardless of you answer, what’s the reasoning behind it?

I blog anonymously because I want to maintain a certain degree of privacy and attempt to protect my identity from falling into the hands of potential bad actors. So, I don’t share my real name or the real names of any of my family members. I also don’t post photos of me or my family members on my blog.

That said, most of my readers know I live in the San Francisco Bay Area in an unnamed East Bay town. They know I have a daughter and a son, each married, and that I have two young grandchildren. They know I hobbled myself when I fell off a ladder last January and have been struggling in my rehab. They know I’m retired, that I’m a liberal Democrat and an atheist. They know I drive an electric car and that my wife and I have e-bikes.

What else they know about me is anybody’s guess. Despite blogging anonymously, I’m sure if someone was bound and determined enough, they could crack my real identity.

They’d be disappointed.

Fandango’s Story Starter #138

Fandango19 Comments

It’s time for my weekly Story Starter prompt. Here’s how it works. Every Tuesday morning (my time), I’m going to give you a “teaser” sentence or sentence fragment and your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to build a story (prose or poetry) around that sentence/fragment. It doesn’t have to be the first sentence in your story, and you don’t even have to use it in your post at all if you don’t want to. The purpose of the teaser is simply to spark your imagination and to get your storytelling juices flowing.

This week’s Story Starter teaser is:

This may seem like an odd request, but…

If you care to write and post a story built from this teaser, be sure to link back to this post and tag your post with #FSS. I would also encourage you to read and enjoy what your fellow bloggers do with their stories.

And most of all, have fun.

FOWC with Fandango — Scoff

Fandango22 Comments
FOWC

Welcome to Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (aka, FOWC). I will be posting each day’s word just after midnight Pacific Time (U.S.).

Today’s word is “scoff.”

Write a post using that word. It can be prose, poetry, fiction, non-fiction. It can be any length. It can be just a picture or a drawing if you want. No holds barred, so to speak.

Once you are done, tag your post with #FOWC and create a pingback to this post if you are on WordPress. Please check to confirm that your pingback is there. If not, ÿplease manually add your link in the comments.

And be sure to read the posts of other bloggers who respond to this prompt. Show them some love.