The Vortex Clock

by Faro King

This is a first-hand story of a strange pedestal clock that came into the family about six years ago, when my eldest daughter was 16 years old. She was in high school at the time, but she also wanted to have a job to fill up her weekends and vacations. I drove her to the local mall to try and obtain employment… which she accomplished in under an hour. It was just her good fortune (which may be debatable in view of this particular tale) that the district manager of a very well-known chain retail decorating shop was reviewing the local outlet. He said he liked her energy and hired her on the spot as a stocker.

She started to work that same week.  In late summer, and by the middle of October, she started to bring home “employee purchases” such as my small decorative aquarium with the articulated fish, because she could purchase these slightly damaged items for mere pennies on the dollar. She paid .45 for the aquarium, which had been $17.00 at full retail price.

Then sometime around Christmas of that first year, she came home with “The Vortex Clock”… of course, we didn’t know at the time that this is what it was — we innocently thought it to be merely a Tuscan style wrought iron floor clock. That first night, she carried that heavy clock up to her room on the third floor of the tower. But by the next morning, the clock was down from the third floor and was standing in the corner of our dining room.

I didn’t think much of the clock being “shared” with the entire family until the day when I smelled the gentle aroma of a sweetgrass offering coming from the same corner that was home to the clock… that seemed to be the start of it all. After that there was a lot of activity in around and near that corner of the dining room. We saw shadow people coming and going and heard distant drumming and smelled aromatics and sacreds being offered… all coming from the area of the clock.

Whenever the vortex was opening, the clock double ticked, like an echo, and became very LOUD. When the vortex was closed the sound of the ticking was just normal, barely audible. The clock’s minute hand and second hand moved forward and backward at random, yet it kept perfect time when the vortex was closed and without having to be reset or adjusted. It just seemed to be on the correct time after the vortex closed.

My daughter graduated high school the next year and moved away to college… taking the clock with her. A lot of the activity in that corner faded away and gradually became only some occasional knocking up in the high corner of the ceiling. The dining room has very high ceilings with rafters.. it’s an old, old house. I would venture to say, it’s stuck in the “70”s and NOT the 1970’s… but I digress.

We would get occasional “Clock reports” from the daughter… it was still mis-behaving. After one very disturbing incident of sleepwalking, she got rid of it entirely, and we did a house blessing for her and for me. I went the extra mile and contacted my sister Krizmarica the Drabadni (Gypsy Witch) for some 3 Thieves Vinegar and a floor and wall wash called High John the Conqueror which, after use, seemed to calm things down considerably. After the cleansing of the vortex corner in my own home, I placed three beautiful mirrors in that corner, as well as three small chimnea where candles are often burned as an offering.

I did note that somehow my ju-ju bags had been removed from the archways in the dining room. Those too, have now been replaced with ceremonial sacreds for the protection of my family and loved ones.

But now, about that clock… a few months after she got rid of the thing, and while she was back visiting, there was a program on the Discovery Channel about a house in Georgia that reportedly had a vortex develop in the living room. Having had one ourselves, a vortex that is, we sat down to watch the program. As the home owner was being interviewed… guess what was in the frame of the picture… just behind the man’s shoulder? You guessed it… one of those clocks! And on an odd note, she did give the clock away to someone in Georgia. Maybe the clock is making rounds… and hey, maybe it will be your turn to have it someday.

My daughter’s theory about the clock is this… that it had something to do with 9/11 and the company’s tragic loss of family members and corporate employees in the Twin Towers. She bought it as a damaged item after 9-11. I am not saying it was damaged in the tragedy — it was not. Someone dropped it after it got to the local store. She means that some of the grief from local store employees could have imprinted on the item. My thought is, something inside the clock changed when it was dropped, and it became something different entirely. Then there is the chance that the clock was just “different” from the beginning, just like some people are.

It’s a pretty good story…