Scratches And Bites 

Maria 

In one of my earlier stories, I mentioned a trip that I and my kids and grand-daughter made, back to my home state of Ohio

While there, we visited the gravesite of a young girl who'd been murdered by my fraternal grandmother's uncle, in 1832

All my life, I'd felt compelled to pay my respects to this girl, as I don't believe anyone in my family had ever done so

I also mentioned that I felt she followed us home

When we visited this girl's gravesite, I figured I'd never get to go back, so I took a little piece of slate

This was before I'd done any research, and found out that you shouldn't take anything from someone's grave, so don't go there LOL

She has a brand new marble headstone, as the original had been vandalized and even stolen a few times

The caretaker has placed the original in the Town Hall

Anyway, some of the pieces that were broken from the original are still around her new one. When we lost the house and had to move, we would go back occasionally to check on it and make sure everything was still okay; no homeless hanging out etc

Well, every time we went I would go through and check all of the cupboards, closets, medicine cabinets etc, just in case I missed something

There was a cupboard above the toilet in the master bath that had a small shelf under it, and there was never anything on it

Also, there were hooks along the wall, under the window where we could put stuff, and when we'd come back from Ohio, I had hung my jacket there, with the stone in the pocket of it

It hung there for a hell of a long time, and when we moved, I washed all of the stuff in there before I packed it

And yes, I checked the pockets, but the stone wasn't in it

I thought I had put it in my jewelry box, and didn't think about it again until after we'd been moved for a few months. One day, for some reason, that little stone was on my mind, and I wondered what had become of it; so I searched through everything I own, jackets, purses, jewelry boxes

And it was nowhere to be found

Needless to say, I was really upset with myself for losing it

We'd found out that morning that the house had been sold, so we went back to check on it one last time

I went through my ritual of checking everything, and Brandon (my oldest son) and I were in the master bedroom

We both went into the master bath, and when I went to look in the cupboard above the toilet, there on the shelf was that stone

Absolutely no dust on it, and when I picked it up, no mark in the dust below it like it had been there for a while! Understand that this is just a little flat rock, and nobody would think it was valuable enough to place there for safekeeping! If someone had found it on the floor, they probably would have thrown it away

Poor Brandon! When I realized what I had, I picked it up and started shaking it at him saying, "Do you know what this is? Do you KNOW what this IS?" He has the funniest "confused" looking face LOL

So I told him, and he was like "What the hell?" Now, I really have tried to discount that experience as merely odd and coincidental...but, let me go on. I had a few months ago built this stone into a pendulum, and I've had some great results from her

So when we went to Alcatraz, I planned on taking her with me, to help in protection, etc

The night before, I'd told her I was going to take her; she answered yes

I asked if she was excited to go

She swung yes, but very, very slight

So I said, "Well, you seem hesitant though", and she answered yes in a full on swing

I told her she'd be fine, and I was going to wear it around my neck. In the morning, we got ready and I placed her around my neck

I checked a few times to make sure she was still there, and she was

We rented a car to drive to Bakersfield to catch the train to San Francisco

About half way there, I had to pee and smoke so we stopped at a Jack-in-the-box in Baker Ca

When I got to the restroom and sat on the toilet, I discovered that she'd slipped out and was gone

I was devastated

I looked in the toilet, and retraced my steps from the car, looked all inside the car, all around and under the car, and nothing

So I thought she was probably home, in the driveway, or in the bathroom

My daughter Krissy had sat with our dogs, and she'd said she cleaned and vacuumed, and I asked her if she'd found a little flat stone, she said no. The next day I looked in the driveway, the bathroom, the closet, got down on my hands and knees and checked around my computer

I checked the furniture, even stuff I hadn't sat on for a while; the bed, under the bed

Essentially every place I could think of..

No stone

I reluctantly allowed myself to believe that she was gone for good, however, it didn't stop me from asking her to come back! Last Monday, September 26th, I was sitting at my computer and my husband went to get a pop out of his cooler, which is on the dresser by my computer

He bent over, picked something up and put it on my desk and said, "What's this thing?" Yep, you guessed it! There she was. She, evidently, did not want to go to Alcatraz