Assignment 3

Have you ever met someone for the first time and felt like you had known them for years? Have you ever gone someplace and felt like you were SUPPOSED to be there? Ever think it’s more than just concidence?

In September 2005, I was supposed to fly to meet my husband in Texas for a weekend getaway. Hurricane Rita had other things in mind for my schedule. After seeing the devastation and transportation nightmare caused by Hurricane Katrina a month before, I was concerned that I might get TO Dallas but not be able to get back to Charlotte. Although I now know that I would have been able to travel with little problem, it’s a really good thing that I didn’t go.

My dog, Fred- a small sheltie-mix that wandered into my neighborhood about 13 years prior and immediately stole my heart- was definitely getting old. He was about 17-18 years old, didn’t see so well and didn’t hear much at all. Each day when I got home from work, I would have to search for where he was sleeping and I was always afraid that today was the day that he wasn’t going to wake up. He had been my bestest bud and traveling partner since I was in High School and had lived in 9 different places with me. Well, the Saturday morning that Hurricane Rita made landfall, I found him lying in the back yard and he just wouldn’t get up. With tears in my eyes, I scooped him up and took him to the vet. Long story short, he didn’t come home from the vet and I was crushed. I hadn’t lost a pet in a long time, especially one that was “mine”, and had never had to make the decision to put one to sleep. My husband wanted to get another dog right away, but I wasn’t ready.

He kept after me about getting another dog every couple weeks. I was able to hold him off until February, when I conceded to LOOK at dogs at a shelter, but didn’t commit to being willing to GET one. We went to a no-kill shelter, but we both agreed that the right dog just wasn’t there. Whew... dodged a bullet there. Then we went to the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Animal shelter, which isn’t a no-kill shelter. We wandered thru the kennels and stopped in front of a kennel with a mostly Black Lab looking mutt. The tag said he was 5 months old. While all the other dogs would either run away or growl when you’d look at them, this one just parked it there and looked at both of us like “Hey. What’s up?” I was intrigued, but not convinced. After visiting with him for a little while, we decided that he needed to come home with us and we named him Cole.

So what does this have to do with the assignment? Well, after we got Cole, a few things happened that made us scratch our heads. Immediately after bringing him into our home, he walked over to small urn where Fred’s ashes were kept, sniffed them, sat down and “smiled” at us. At the time, I dismissed it as the ashes must have smelled like another dog. But then we noticed some other similarities… Fred used to love to play “sleeve” (he’d tug on my sweatshirt sleeve), something I’ve never seen another dog do, and Cole did the same thing unprompted. They both LOVE to swim and are great travelers. But the icing on the cake was the first time my mother and my sister (neither of whom are very superstitious or anything) met Cole, they both looked at his eyes and said, “I know these eyes. We’ve owned this dog before.” When we looked at the calendar, we realized that Freddie died about the same time Cole was born.

These pictures below were photoshopped to represent the similar portions of the two dogs’ personalities.

(This is hard to see, but I "ghosted" Fred swimming with Cole)

(Both dogs are GREAT travelers)

(The color of Cole's eye is actually Fred's fur... the same color!)

Assignment II

Have you ever had an experience that you just can’t explain? I have. I’ve tried to come up with a logical explanation, but simply put- I can’t. My inexplicable experience happened in 1998. From 1997 to 1999, I lived in Puerto Rico for work. I lived in Guyanilla in a portion of a large home called the “Castillo de Mario Mercado” (Mario Mercado’s Castle).

Don Mario Mercado Montalvo (1855-1937) was one of the biggest “sugar barons” on the southern coast of Puerto Rico. He ran the “Hacienda Rufina” sugar cane mill in Guyanilla from 1901 until his death. During the early 1900s, sugar was “king” and those who owned sugarcane fields were making money hand over fist. Mercado commissioned Francisco Porrata Doria, a “famous” Puerto Rican architect, to design this house in 1930. The ~30,000 square foot concrete & stucco house was atop a large hill that overlooked all his sugar fields. After his death, the family abandoned the home and it fell into ruin. It was used as a party spot in the 1970s & 80s for local teenagers who would have bonfires on the roof. They would use the mahogany floors and trim as firewood, and otherwise trashed the place. However, in the late 80s, a man from Oklahoma was brought to run a nearby petroleum facility and he saw the Castillo as a diamond in the rough. He renovated the home bit by bit and eventually made a total of 4 apartments.

Mercado had the distinction of being known as a tyrant and a miser, supposedly would watch for workers to take a break, and he would fire them, often after a beating. Mercado was supposedly just as rough on his children. Locals say that his son was homosexual, and Mercado could not accept this. I’ve heard two rumors regarding his son… one is that Mercado murdered him because of his lifestyle (supposedly he buried the son in the drivers seat of his Dusenberg car somewhere on the property to conceal the crime), and the other is that his son committed suicide by leaping from the top of the Castillo.

There are two other deaths surrounding the home… Mrs. Mercado was in poor health at the time the Castillo was completed. She is rumored to have died an unpleasant death in her bed, without any consolation from Mercado. Another is that Mercado had taken a fancy to a young woman who worked as a cook at the Castillo. The two versions that I heard regarding this woman is that she did not welcome his advances and he killed her. The other is that she died while giving birth to his child. The wife of new owner of the Castillo told me she saw this ghost several times… and always in the area where the original kitchen was located. I didn’t believe her and discounted her experience as her being from England, where they seem to be more apt to believe in the metaphysical.

Now to my experience: If you’ve ever been to Puerto Rico, outside of Old San Juan and the other tourist areas, you’ve no doubt seen that there is a real problem with stray dogs. At the Castillo, the owners had 11 dogs and my husband & I had another two. Two of their “alpha” dogs, Spike & Beauregard, would always try to attack my little sheltie mix, so I would have to tie up Beau & Spike every time I would take my dog out. One night while my husband & I were the only ones at the Castillo, I took these two big, brave dogs down to be chained up. Halfway down the stairs, I heard a noise that I can’t explain. It was almost like someone laughing mischievously… heeheeheehee… coming from the laundry room. The dogs bolted back up the stairs- and I followed right behind them! These two dogs were very aggressive toward anyone that they didn’t know, so this was very out of character for them to flee. To this day, I cannot explain what happened. I wouldn’t say that I believe in ghosts, but I still have no logical explanation for what I heard.