Taking our kids back to “Annalise” on St. Croix was a hoot. First, because they have become complete city kids since their younger days in a remote, exotic home in the tropical rainforest. Secondly, because their consensus going into the week was that Mom (me) and Eric were quacks for believing in this jumbie spirit stuff, especially in our own house.
{For those just jumping onto this blog cold, I write mysteries. Several have featured jumbie (ghost) stories of our time living in a tropical rainforest house on the US Virgin Island of St. Croix. The house is named Annaly. In the books—Saving Grace, Leaving Annalise, Finding Harmony, Bombshell, Stunner, and Knockout—I called her Annalise, so I’ll do that here.}
A week there schooled them. 😉
The kids started out confident and wanting to sleep on separate floors to get the fancy bedrooms (there are en suite king beds on each floor). But on the 3rd night there, they were increasingly jumpy because of all the night time rainforest noises.
* We didn’t tell them this, but we’d heard a woman’s voice, laughter, and sneezing repeatedly in the middle of the night by then — familiar sounds to us after living there. Who needs to tell the kids there is more than the wind rattling shutters, barking lizards, and wild horses and cows in the yards? *
Anyway, Clark woke because he heard a strange noise — they’d been hearing a woman sneezing at night– to hear Allie say “what is that”? and see her pointing out into . . . nothing. He assumed she was awake and had seen an intruder. {In actuality she says she was asleep and dreaming about a sea urchin.} HOWEVER, he jumped up—on her, oops, and left a heck of a bruise—and tumbled straight to the floor, hyperextending an elbow, cutting open his leg, and jamming his wrist. But he felt no pain at the time and went charging toward the door, bellowing threats, to attack whatever was threatening his woman. Allie woke with a start, became convinced that Clark saw something human about to slay them, and panicked as he dragged her out. Big time panicked. Meanwhile, they hoped Eric and I would come downstairs to help defend us all, since they thought there was no way we couldn’t hear, what with all the hollering and screaming they were doing. When we didn’t show up, they were convinced that whatever it was had gotten to us first. They ran upstairs, threw on all the lights, and came to our door, expecting a blood bath, but finding us happily snoozing.
Here’s the events as I remember them after I got involved: A flood of flight. My son’s voice at the door.
“Um, can you take a look at a my leg?” Clark asked.
I waved a hand in the air, I think. Eric went to help him clean it up. [Shame on lazy mom!] Alayah mopped up the blood.
“We’re going to stay on this floor with you,” Clark said.
“There’s a bedroom next door where our office used to be,” Eric said. Or so he tells me. I had fallen back asleep.
“No, we were thinking more like a pallet on the floor in here.” *Clark is 6’2 and 24 years old*
“In our bedroom?” Eric couldn’t quite believe it.
“Yes.”
“Okay . . . ”
And so that is what they did! The rest of the nights on-island, they stayed 20 feet away in the office 🙂 As we say in our house, “bwock, bwock, bwock” (those are chicken noises).
*** Alcohol at the rehearsal dinner may or may not have played a factor *** but whatever it was, the end result was that they came to their own conclusion that there may be a “friendly” jumbie at Annalise who plays tricks. Ha! Mom is not a quack!
Next week I’ll share the story of how Annalise welcomed us back, didn’t want to let us go, and ultimately played her biggest trick of all on us.
Here’s drone footage of the rainforest canopy and beach/ocean beyond, below or HERE:
Here’s drone footage that (after a few beginner fumbles–this was our son’s inaugural “flight” with his drone) zooms in on my husband and me on the balcony talking to his brother and our sister-in-law, below or HERE:
Did you see a jumbie? 😉 We’ve never seen her either, although you “see” her in the novels.
How about “the door to nowhere? And did you notice the front and back of the house are different colors? It’s midway through a repainting back to a yellow similar to the one we painted her, back in the beginning. Notice the blue thing behind the house (not the pool, further up and by the garage)? That’s a 27k generator. A necessary part of living remote-in-hurricane-territory.
As is being cool with a jumbie, apparently. 😉
p.s. Clark couldn’t move his arms for the rest of the trip. 260 pounds head first onto his elbow/wrist on a tile floor was not a good thing!!! Shame on Annalise.