A ghost that looked like me
AND I would like to tell you a low story that happened many years ago in Bombay. I was about 9 years ancient then. During summer vacations, my uncle would take me and the rest of my siblings to a nearby park to play. Every evening we went to the park and played on the swings, slide and jungle gym. I was very naughty and jumped off the top of the slide many times to show off to my younger siblings. One day I was very ill and couldn't go to the park, so my uncle just went with my younger sisters. My youngest sister was about 4 years ancient at the time. Well, they came back early that day and my youngest sister had bruises on her arms and legs, she was taken to the doctor who said she was fine and needed to get some rest. When we asked her how she got hurt she told everyone she was just following me, she said she saw me jumping down the slide and she thought if I could do it she could too, it was very strange and we didn't know what to think about it. She insisted she was following me, I was wearing a nice white dress. Mom thought she must have imagined it because I stayed at home watching TV all the time and didn't have any white dress. She was not seriously injured as she fell on a man exercising next to the slide.
But I still wonder, what could she have seen?
Spoons collection
HHave you been contacted by someone who crossed the border, someone on the other side? I have it and I think each of us does. Some people simply recognize the contact, some choose to rationalize the contact, and some don't even notice it. Read my story; It's not uncomplicated to rationalize or ignore it! Indeed, for me it is impossible.
On January 4, 2003, my husband and I were returning from a few days of fun; it was overdue and dim, and as always, we talked non-stop – even if we had nothing to say – as we drove home. The topic of crossing and death came up; I've lost five relatives in the last thirteen months and we've been talking about where they might be. What could they be? How can they be? In our country, conversations about death have never been macabre; they always seemed natural, open and inquisitive. The exchange that night seemed a little more sedate, but not “terribly” sedate, just “interestingly” sedate. Ron and I had been married forty years, less than three weeks, and at one point in the discussion we made a pact: “Whoever gets to the other side first will try to contact the one left” – a tiny, concrete sign that life did indeed go on.
This brief exchange of ideas and promises between two vigorous adults who plan to live many, many more years resurfaced within two weeks and with surprising clarity. Listen to my story.
We traveled a lot and wherever we went we collected spoons. Over the last few years we have been doing thirty to ninety day trips, and for the last year we have been driving an Alfa Gold Fifth Wheel. We worked as camp hosts, bird-watched, hiked, built trails, explored, visited casinos, and collected spoons. Ronnie died nine days before we left for a thirty-day trip to Australia and New Zealand to celebrate our fortieth anniversary. Anticipating the spoons we would collect made the planning more intriguing. Our spoon collection began in 1974 in Denver, Colorado, during the first of many vacations we took with my mother-in-law, Bets. She bought me a spoon rack so I could display spoons commemorating the places we saw. Spoons from every ghost town, national monument, national park, restored fort, every place we visited graced that first rack, and I think collecting spoons shed our blood, Ronnie's more than mine. Over the years, he selected and purchased eight more spoon racks ranging from twelve to forty-eight capacity and placed them on our living room walls. Everywhere we went, we looked for the perfect spoon to remember that particular place.
One rule was: never show any spoon unless we visited the place; the rule was waived when Jessie, our granddaughter, brought us three back from her European trip. Yet these spoons hung separately in a row, separate from those that salute our amazing moments together.
In the summer of 2002, Ron and I talked a lot about our spoons as we wandered from place to place in the Midwest, from the Mall of the Americas to Glacier National Park, and at each stop we bought another one, twenty-one in all – the most we had ever collected in one year. In our conversations, we recalled the past times, which were already commemorated with spoons standing on the shelves at home. In November, we returned home to place our fresh spoons on racks and imagine the ones that would come “next year.” Reservations were made in two Australian national parks, spoons would be from there; the Melbourne casino where we would spend our anniversary night offered a special spoon; Jessie told the innkeeper at the Tasmania guesthouse about our hobby and he promised he would have one ready; and even convinced the horse farm where she worked to have something to add to our collection.
At about five thirty in the afternoon on January 6, 2003, Ron and I walked the dog. We had a busy day, I was packing for Australia and Ron was running errands in the office. Ron was more tired than usual, but we both laughed when he said, “Those girls in the office don't know I'm retired, or they just don't care!” About halfway through our mile-and-a-half loop, he became dizzy and sat down to rest for a while. I told him I'd pick him up when I finished my walk, and Niki and I continued down the trail. From about two hundred and fifty meters away, I saw him crossing the stream and heading towards the closed car. “Why?” I thought. “I had the keys. Why didn't he wait for me?” When I looked back, he was lying on the ground. I ran towards him, thinking he had tripped, or maybe he had become dizzy, lost his balance, and might have hurt his knee or ankle. The pair reached him first. He was conscious, not in any pain – I asked him and he said “no, just very weak and dazed…” I reversed the car and the couple helped him into the car; he thanked them and less than a minute later he was dead. He never struggled, gasped for breath, or showed any signs of pain. He just stopped breathing. Upon arrival at the hospital, he was pronounced dead; based on what happened, doctors speculated that it was an electrical imbalance, cardiovascular disease, stroke, and ultimately the death certificate listed “heart attack.” No one asked for an autopsy; it didn't seem necessary. It certainly didn't impress me. He wasn't there and the question of why and how didn't matter. I signed a consent form to donate his organs, as we had agreed long ago, and I knew he would be pleased to know that someone would look at his corneas, perhaps the only donation that would be useful.
I was lost in a fog of disbelief, as were our children, grandchildren and all the people who loved him. Ronnie and I were enjoying “being together” as a married couple, and I couldn't facilitate but think that I didn't have Ronnie by my side. Once, just a few months earlier, in Deadwood, South Dakota, Ron and I got separated in one of the casinos. Thinking I had left the building, he walked down the street, and when I realized he was gone, I panicked, consumed by the unfounded fear of losing him. As I ran from building to building looking for him, he was looking for me. When we saw any of them, I burst into tears, and even though I felt stupid, I couldn't hold back the tears of relief; he understood and held me for a minute. Perhaps this was a harbinger of what was to come. That same horror and terror multiplied a thousandfold, consumed my soul a million times over that Monday afternoon and grew into a huge hole in my heart five days later, on Saturday morning, the day of the memorial service.
Our children, my brother John, who was to deliver the eulogy, my niece Peggy, my sister-in-law Becky, and several friends arrived early in the morning for coffee and to prepare for our official goodbyes. While the others sat in the living room, John and I sat at the kitchen table, talking and remembering how Ronnie had brought so much to our lives; As John prepared his farewell tribute, he took notes. The sound of something hitting the living room floor pierced the weighty air that surrounded us.
A spoon fell from the top shelf.
For over twenty-five years these racks have been on the wall and never once did a spoon fall off. Most of them could only be removed by turning them at a certain angle. Peg called out, “Aunt Olevia, the spoon fell…” A chill ran through my arms as I reached for the fallen spoon – from Tombstone, Arizona, a place we had visited so long ago. Silently, Ronnie spoke to me and I heard him as clearly as if he were sitting across the room. “Ann, I've made it through; the tombstone of my life has been set. You'll go on and we'll still travel together…” Becky said, “Look. The spoon next to the one that fell is moving…” It was actually rocking back and forth, and I was given a chair to climb up to look at – Australia? How is this possible? We've never been to Australia. Australia was simply a place we planned to visit together.
I don't know the source of this Australian spoon, and it doesn't matter how it ended up in our spoon collection. Ronnie talked to me – us – this morning. He let me know that I was not alone, that he would be there for me even as I stood at his gravestone, and that he would continue to journey with me. This week I experienced an unknown peace and that peace remains with me. Thanks to this, I survived that day and every day that followed. There were dozens of other reminders of Ronnie's continued presence in my life, but none were clearer or more appropriate than the fall of the spoon.
Ghosts and Channeling
Sometime near the end of September of this year 2006 I went to my friends home in NJ. My friend “Mike’s” house has claimed to have been haunted from him and his family ever since I knew him. When I was younger (about 10 or 12 years ago) my friend and I went into his shadowy and cluttered basement and were looking around at all the nippy antiques and items. We saw some clothes move around near the washer and dryer; so my friend Mike thought it was his brother and picked up a plastic bat to scare him with or hit him with. When we went over there the clothes stopped moving and nobody was there. We freaked out and ran back to the stairs to go back up, but a immense painting which was facing backwards towards us blocked our way up the stairs. Together we moved it away and ran scared as hell back up. We told his mom and she believed it was the ghosts or ghosts in the house. After that I never went in his basement or really visited his house.
So as time went by I later became good friends with Mike again and ended back up at his house a lot. Nothing weird happened until the events of the September that just passed.
Mike and my close friend Val were sitting up stairs in Mike’s room just relaxing and talking. His room was very soothing because he had a very immense fish tank and he had a visualizer on his tv playing mellow music. Not sure if this had anything to do with it, but I was very relaxed and I was staring into the visualizer on the television. Mike was talking about ghosts with us and actually brought up the time when we were younger when we saw something in the basement. He told me about the painting that blocked our way back up the stairs… And I didn’t remember it. I suppose I blocked that part out.
The a little while later still upstairs in his bedroom I start feeling weird. I felt like the room was getting darker and I couldn’t feel myself correctly. I felt as if I was falling slightly backwards. The best I could describe it would be getting a shiver up my spine and feeling that moment right before you pass out, or when you are on medicine and diseased; you feel very spacey. That’s how I felt. So I quickly panicked and told Mike and Val that something was wrong. I told them I didn’t feel right. I felt like I couldn’t keep my mind focused. I was thinking that maybe I was dying for some weird reason and I really didn’t want to. My friends told me to placid down and were looking at me weird. I kept telling them I didn’t feel right and my friend said to come down because I was working myself up and my heart was racing. He didn’t want me to get a panic attack. He then told me to close my eyes and I did. Then I saw visions and felt emotions of things. I got freaked out, but was also curious at what the hell was going on. I told my friend Mike and he thought I was channeling. I told him no I wasn’t… I couldn’t be. He kept saying I was. Apparently he was right.
I was a little boy sitting on a wooden dock with wooden walls around me. My feet were dangling out the door and there was a fence like door that was open outward and it had a little black book with a latch on it. It was hazardous to get the book because I could have fallen out, but I wanted it for some reason. Out the door was a lake and it was very placid and nice out. The green stalks and trees seemed very immaculate to me.
At this point I started crying. I personally was not crying, but my body was. My fingers turned freezing chilly and when I came out of it they warmed up. I later found out that every time this happens my body cries as a signal to tell me yes this is true, or yes this is happening. Everything crucial is relayed back to me through emotional responses, either elated or crying, even though the feeling I am receiving is not always a melancholy one.
So then I picked up a piece of paper and with my eyes closed I drew a picture. I drew what I was seeing and the little boy. I felt the time period was in the early 1900’s and this boy had a schoolboy uniform on with a hat with a shadowy ribbon hanging to the side. I said my name was Josh or James and continued to draw on another piece of paper. I drew on 3 different papers and then just folded them up and placed them together to make one whole picture. It was uncanny how everything lined up. Some pieces of the drawing were difficult to see, but others were very clear. I began to get freaked out again.
As the pen moved on the paper, I felt as if there were magnetic forces pulling my hand at little increments to make the image on the paper. At one point I put the pen on the side of my palm with my hand straight out and it started spinning in one spot very slowly. Again I was freaked out. I wasn’t able to understand the whole message that night, possibly because it was my first time, I’m not sure. The little boy also got very frustrated very easily when my friend Mike talked to him.
A day passed and we all thought about everything that happened all day. I went back to the house and again went back into Mike’s room. This time another friend, “Wes” was there. We were hanging out again and just watching a movie this time. I again started to feel something. I was also trying to tap into whatever I was doing again though. This time I felt like my right side of my face was drooping or had something wrong with it. I looked at my friend Val to the right of me and asked her if anything was wrong with my face. Then Val told me my eyes turned a different color and I said “When I look at you I just…” I didn’t remember saying that. Val was questioning me about what I was saying. Then I started to feel that falling backwards feeling and I started to cry. My fingers became freezing again and I closed my eyes and could hear myself breathing. Everything after this felt more like a dream then truth. Luckily my friends were there to remember it all and I remember telling them to remember because I may not. I think this day I felt like whatever was embodying me had more control then the previous day. I said I felt chilly and I saw water. It was nighttime and I kept saying the water was like Titanic chilly water. There was a lighthouse also. Val asked if it was her grandfather and I cried and felt that it was. She began to cry a little as well. She said her grandfather saved two adolescent girls in frigid waters and he got a medal from the town for doing so. I don’t know why that message was relayed as telling her that’s who it was, but maybe that was the way she would know.
So I kept hugging her and I said that I loved her and missed her. At this point I felt less of myself and began talking to 3rd person. I was saying that Kevin was ok. I was letting everyone know that I was personally ok, but my body was crying and something else was talking through it. Everyone there believed everything that was happening as well. So after a little bit, my friend Mike whose room it was, asked if I wanted to get some air. I agreed. We went downstairs and Val was making sure I felt ok. Mike wanted to get a glass of water from the kitchen before we went out and asked if it was ok. I agreed. I didn’t want to be alone, so we all walked to the kitchen.
The kitchen had a door which went into the basement. To get to the kitchen we walked through the dinning room and passed the bathroom and his mother’s room. His mother’s room was originally his step-dads father’s room. Mike’s step-grandfather was bed ridden and died in that room. I know he is one of the ghosts in the house.
So when we walked past the dinning room and bedroom I felt enormous energies around me. I jumped into the kitchen and told Mike. We were there for a little bit and then walked out again. I felt the energies again and started to move my hands like an Italian would when they are pointing at something. Shaking both hands up and down. I did that in the living room where a pile of clothes were, the dinning room, were some more clothes were, and back in the kitchen were the garbage was. My friend Wes said, “What do they want you to clean up the house or something.” I laughed and felt elated. I believe that is what the energy wanted, as comical as it sounds.
So then Mike cleans up and we start to go outside, but get stopped again. I fell on my knee and Mike said I mumbled something, but sounded weird. I was getting up and I said “the spot,” pointing down at the spot on the ground. Every time I mention this “spot” I also get choked up and feel whatever it is is very powerful. I don’t know what it is though. So I kept talking about this spot and then I heard something whisper “Mike” from the bedroom area. I quickly turned right at Mike and said, “Did you hear that?” He said yea and I said it said your name. He started to cry and get worked up, because now we knew this was really happening. There’s no way we both could’ve heard the same thing and me say exactly what it was if it didn’t happen. Nobody else heard the voice though surprisingly. I was scared and I went over to Mike with my heart racing. He was getting a little distraught and called up his cousin and husband. They were very interested in paranormal activities and raced over. I guess that’s why Mike called them.
So then I kept pointing at the spot, and feeling the magnetic forces around me. I can’t remember the whole scene after this, but I know Mike asked if I wanted to go into the mother’s room, where the grandfather died. I said ok. He opened the door and Me and my friend Wes began to go near the door. As soon as we did we both jumped back and felt something. I said there was a huge energy there and it just freaked me out. We ended up going in the room and my hand was moving around on the dresser searching or trying to tell us something, but I never got what it was. Then Val’s grandfather came back in me and I turned to her and hugged her starting to cry again.
We went out and I went back to the spot talking about it. I didn’t know what was so crucial about it. I followed my hand into a grandfather clock that was near the spot and opened it and a little piece of ripped paper fell out. It said something from dad or something. I’m not entirely sure if this was crucial or just coincidental. Then I went over to an venerable desk which was right near the same area and tried to get something that was under the lid of the top of it. I also never found anything there or figured out what was there. Then Mike asked if I would go into the basement. I said no man… I do not want to go there. He said what if the spot was something in the basement and it could start a fire or something. He wanted to know because it was his house. I agreed to go, not really wanting to go. I was very jumpy and my body was worn out at this point.
We had the 2 girls jump on the spot upstairs so we could find it exactly in the basement and me and the 3 other guys went in the basement. We went all the way to the back with flashlights, because the lights were so dim it didn’t matter if they were even on. Mike said the room which we were going to enter was the grandfathers tool room. I really didn’t want to go in, but I did. We entered the petite closet like room. I went in and there were a lot of venerable rusted tools on the wall. To the left and right were pitch black shadowy areas. I was a little scared. Normally I would have not gone in there but I felt like it was ok. Then I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I panicked and began to placid down and breathe very slowly as I made noise breathing in and out. Mike said it sounded like I was dying. He said I may have been the grandfather when he was on his deathbed breathing slowly. I pointed up at some wood and fishing poles attached to a wooden rack above us. I was pointing at a wire or something, that was right under the spot I was talking about. Mike asked what it was.
Then I heard a voice creep up from the darkness behind me and it said with a slight bit of attitude that it was a phone wire. It scared the hell out of me. I didn’t know this but, Mike said my eyes looked weird and he said it looked like I was going to kill him so he was frightened and then I let out a scream and dashed passed everyone back to the stairs going back up. I looked back and everyone was getting up off the ground. I went back to get them and we all ran upstairs.
We went up stairs and went over what happened and calmed down. We then finally went outside on the porch and talked some more. Val’s grandfather came in me again for a little bit and then left again. I felt a warmth and saw my grandmother and grandfather who were deceased to the left of me. I didn’t tell anyone until a day later though. I didn’t physically see them with my eyes, but I knew they were there and I could feel them and see them in my mind. That’s the best I could describe it.
Next I went to the A&P (a immense 24hour food store) because I knew it was very glowing there and that’s where I wanted to be. I felt more myself in the featherlight. In the darkness I could feel things around me. So I stayed there for a few hours with my friend Val and then finally went home with her and she slept over because I was still really scared of everything.
As I walked up my stairs and past my parents room, I felt like my grandmother was in the room with my mother and she was having a dream about her. The next day I told my mom the story and she believed me because she had events happen in her life when she was younger herself. Then I told her I saw grandma and she was set back and started to cry. It was her mother and she was close to her. I said I knew she dreamt about her last night because I could feel it and I just knew. She was a little freaked out but believed me and told me that it was true.
If you have any information for me, please let me know. This is all recent to me and I have been reading up on it and trying to figure it out the best I can, but I still would love for some facilitate. I believe you may know some things that could facilitate. Hopefully I’m doing everything right. But I don’t know how to focus better to get a clearer message yet. You are welcome to talk or visit if you feel it would further facilitate you understand the goals you are looking to achieve. I wish you luck and hope you write back.