Cricket Invasion?

Have any of you noticed an increase in crickets this year? These damned things are everywhere. I went to take the garbage out this morning and one jumped at my face. Since when are these suckers so aggressive?? I duno…seems like a sign or something…like in that movie... with the locusts. I can't recall the name, but it is either biblical plague material or some sort of sorcery….preferably the later. 

No pictures this time...those things creep me out.

House with overdone garden and other 'plants'…owner must be a witch

It’s cold and flu season and the wife was feeling a bit under the weather. Today I was going to be a good husband and go to our local Tim Hortons to pick her up some tea. For my American and Latin readers Tim Hortons is our local coffee shop franchise. The Tims is in a new plaza that was just freshly built and is literally a 5 minute walk from my house. Driving around the corner and down the street I noticed something strange…blog worthy strange. One of the houses on the street had an excessive amount of greenery planted. To the average untrained eye this would simply look like a house with an owner who had an unbelievably poor taste in landscaping. Less is better in this case. My hawk eyes revealed much more. Hidden amongst the ugly plantations and eye straining amounts of evergreen shrubs I found what looked like Deadly Nightshade (Atropa belladonna), Woody Nightshade (Solamum dulcamara), Monkshood (Aconite) and if my memory serves me correct…Hemlock (Concium maculatum). There are massive amounts of lore floating around the interweb about the uses of these plants and most of it looks like pure nonsense. Take it from an expert (me), Nightshade is not used to conjure up a love spell. In fact, lore of the past associated this plant as being the devils plant and any homeowner growing the devils plant must surely be a witch. One house I won’t be passing by on Halloween..

p.s For your safety..... and mine.. street names were edited out.

Looks haunted…therefore it must be haunted.

Since I recently moved into the area I have been hearing quite a few stories about a forest located nearby that is supposedly haunted. Like any young male resident in a new town I was intrigued at the idea of a haunted forest so close to home. Also, possibly because I had been watching back to back to back episodes of Supernatural, I was determined to find out exactly where this forest was located and to make a visit and photograph some of the demonic entities that most likely existed in this labyrinth of evil trees.

A tip from a long time resident pointed me to the intersection of Salem Rd & Rossland Rd and that from there the haunted forest can be seen on the north east side of the intersection. At first glance, the haunted forest looked more like a gathering of trees as opposed to a forest. I decided I needed to fully investigate the location to determine it’s hauntedness. So I decided to come back the following night after work with my digicam and some homemade religion-free holy water….for protection of course.

My plans changed that night. I had decided to drive by the forest on my way home from work. When I got there...a thick mist was building...the same mist you usually see in movies right before something bad happens to one of the characters. The following pics were taken that evening at around sunset. After studying those pics I came to the conclusion there was no way in hell that I was going to walk into that forest at night. From the pics alone I can clearly tell that it looks like a haunted forest, therefore it must be haunted.