The Warm Spirit

I wanted to share something that happened to me back a few years ago during the winter. It was one of my first nights in my dorm room at the University of Fairbanks, Alaska. I was informed that the frigid winds from the arctic north were even worse than usual, and the frigid arctic winds were blowing right against my dorm wall, so this night had indeed been very cold at -62 Fahrenheit (-53 degrees Celsius).

The room was freezing cold, I cranked up the heat but even at the maximum setting it did not seem to heat up the room The outer wall swapped the warm heat with its frigid grip of unwelcoming coldness.

As I huddled up under all the blankets, I finally dozed off into a slumber, only to wake up again about one hour later even more frozen than before. I turned over and again manged to doze off into my cold slumber.

Next, I do not know if I was dreaming or awake. I noticed someone walking over to the my bed. This someone crawled into the bed and normally, I would have rose up and gotten out of bed to see who it was and why this person was in my bed. For some unknown reason, I didn't do that. The heat of whoever's body warmed me up. and, allowed me to sleep.I snoozed into a comfortable sleep.  When I woke up I was fully rested still feeling warm and cozy. While the room itself was totally frigid with arctic coldness.

I got dressed and decided to tell one of my mates about the event. He informed me there had been the exact same thing happen to others in that very dorm room on several other occasions. They described the same event just as it happened that I just experienced. It seemed to happen on very cold nights, this friendly spirit would cuddel up with you and keep you warm while sleeping. I later learned that back some years ago, a girl in that very room froze to death. She apparently went to turn the heater up but turned it off by mistake, right before she fell asleep. I am told that her spirit comes on extra cold nights, and keeps whoever is in that room, warm and safe overnight.

The Cursed Norwegian Kicksled in Vadsø

A Norwegian Kickslead

Photo in courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Many years ago my mother became so fed up with everyone running off or stealing her way of winter transportation in the icy city of Vadsø, so she went ahead and placed a Norwegian reading and a curse on her kicksled, so that anyone that next to take it without explicit permission would feel the full wrath that she now instilled into its wooden frame.

It so happened that the next morning before she went to work, our one cousin Hilde was late for her own work, and, knowing the kicksled belonged to her favorite aunt, felt reassured she wouldn't mind in letting her borrow it because it was an emergency. 

Hilde, however, did not get far on the kicksled as she put it into the ice and headed down hill, it started shaking ferociously, and then sped up to full speed before it collapsed with my cousin Hilde ending up in the nearby ditch holding onto what was left of its wood handles. Hilde was not badly hurt, but she felt as if she was beaten up, with red and blue marks all over her body from first falling on the icy hill when the kicksled collapsed on her, and then from tumbling into the nearby ditch before it all ended. 

When my mother woke up and prepared for work, she noticed her kicksled missing again, and AGAIN was forced to walk to work. As she continued down hill, she could see a pair of uneven kicksled metal tracks that were split into two lanes as if the kicksled had been split in half. At the end of the hill where it turned, she could see the markings of someone that had tumbled and smeared the fresh morning snow, with the remains of kicksled shattered about the snow. She thought to herself, now looks like whoever took my spark did indeed feel the wrath I put upon it last night. Wonder who it was. 

Later in the evening, Hilde came over. I remember how she was still all scrunched up. Luckily, she had not broken anything from the tumble from her encounter with my mother's kicksled. Her first words were “Aunt edith, What did you do to your kicksled? I took it this morning to get to work fast, as I happened to be late after I overslept, and then it went all insane on me. It was like it was trying to cause me bitterly bodily harm which it also did as it caused me to end up in the ditch by the end of the hill.”

I still recall the stern look on my mother's face as she looked at my cousin Hilde, who was about 18 at the time, while I was still only a kid. “Now Hild, you know better than taking other people's property without asking permission. I was getting so tired with all the rascals in our neighborhood running off with my things so I had a curse placed on the kicksled to affect anyone who tried to use it without my permission.” 

My cousin Hilde sure learned her lesson and would always ask for explicit permission before borrowing anything from my mother again.