I wanted to talk about the spirit
world, and ghosts in particular, a topic that is somewhat taboo, but certainly
sensitive to me. My family, growing up,
was not particularly spiritual, other than they believe in God, and I suppose
the devil, although we never really talked about any of it. So growing up, for me, never involved any
connections to the possibility of spiritual beings, ghosts, demons, or even spiritual
energy. Come to think of it, we never
talked about much…but I digress.
I bring this up because it’s
important to know that I never really had any exposure to anything remotely
spiritual -unless you call loneliness spiritual, which I would consider very
possible. Essentially though, going into
adulthood, and in the process of shaping the man that I would later become, I
realized that I pretty much had to learn, and in many cases, re-learn,
everything that I thought I knew about life.
That was a pretty long list of stuff, if you only really knew, and it
included spirituality.
In the process of just beginning to
find myself, I was already coming into contact with more spiritual
beliefs. It began with learning about
other religions and learning more about science and history. Those two realms of thought were really the
beginning for me, because they taught me to question. Some questions arose in my head regarding other
cultures and religions, such as Buddhism, Judaism, Islam, and early
polytheism. I wondered why one single
God would ever persecute peaceful Buddhists?
After all, the Buddhists believe in peace and harmony, and they respect
all living things on earth. The Native
Americans, with their tremendous respect for mother earth, would be in the same
boat. The God that I grew to believe in
would never persecute such peaceful people, and if He or She did, would I even
want to follow such a god?
Based on the history of man,
scientific empirical evidence, and theories on evolution, I was forced to throw
the bible out too. And this was not just a single moment of time or some
epiphany that led to these conclusions, but instead, the process of it that
opened the door to other possibilities.
My mind was in essence, opening. I
think I should note, that even though I’m “throwing the Bible out”, that does
not mean I don’t believe in God.
Alas, this puff piece is not about
God or religion –or is it? When I grew
closer to Allie, I came to learn that she believed in some interesting aspects
of spirituality, which included evil spirits, bad energy, and even ghosts. Needless to say, I was fascinated. I won’t lie; it was a bit scary too. The possibility that such a realm of
existence was not only for Hollywood audiences was quite astonishing for me.
I feel at this point, it’s necessary
to tell you that we aren’t freaks. Not
by a longshot. And I don’t feel the need
to try to prove it either, because I already know (haha). After so many years though, to when I find
myself now, there have certainly been “things” that have happened to support my
new revelations of thought. Notably the
first time I think I felt a connection with a spirit. It was our first apartment together, when
during a night of sleeping, I dreamt of a young blond girl. She was kind of just walking around in my
apartment, as if somehow removed in the distance. She wandered into the bathroom and then that
was it. I thought nothing of it.
A few days later, I saw her again in
a dream, outside this time, just kind of lonely and keeping to herself. This time, I told my wife about it. To my surprise, she had had been dreaming of
a similar girl during the same week. She
immediately declared the young girl a ghost, however, I was quick to dismiss
that notion, although the odds of such a coincidence would not leave my
mind.
Nothing else ever happened, except
that a few months later, my downstairs neighbors and I had a curious
discussion. We got to talking about the
previous tenants of our flat, and they brought up the fact that there was a
single mom with a young daughter. She
was often abused, and they often heard the mom yelling at the girl and locking
her in the bathroom. I asked for a
description of the girl, and wouldn’t you know it? They described the same girl.
Nothing else happened for me until probably
7 or 8 years later. This was when I had
the shit scared out of me. I was living
in my new house (newish in general, and new to me, and also my current house)
and I was in the dining room working on my computer. I got up after some time and walked to the
kitchen, and as I walked I saw the apparition of a woman speeding across my
path, at a distance of about 10 feet.
She then suddenly disappeared when arriving at the counter where the
oven was. I completely freaked out and
ran upstairs to tell Allie. As you can
imagine, she was very surprised. I shat
my pants.
The next time something occurred was
about a year later. We were unaware of any
presence this time, and instead, Allie was skyping with her friend who was in
China at the time. It was an uneventful
night, and I was making food at the kitchen counter. While Allie was carrying on, her friend could
see me clearly in the background. It was
at least 20 minutes later that the friend finally asked who else was over. Allie replied, “Nobody. Why?”
“Who is that with the red sweatshirt
next to Adrian?” she asked. Upon hearing
this, I tried to play it cool and act like I wasn’t scared, but I really was
freaked out. We all were. I mean, there was somebody next to me
‘helping’ me cook food? Really? Pretty freaky.
The last event was very recent, and
it prompted me to write this piece in the first place. Recently, we had another visitor that we
could not see. I assume this visitor to
be a “he” although I could be mistaken, since all previous encounters had been
female. Anyways, this one crept up on us
sort of stealth like. It started with
some occasional weird noises in the house.
Like when we were downstairs, we’d here the sound of a single crack
upstairs. Then a day later or so, we’d
hear a noise, like something falling off the counter, coming from the closet.
This went on for a week or two,
gradually intensifying in frequency. My
in-laws, who were at the house at the time watching the baby during the day,
were scared to bits. When we asked them
if anything unusual was happening, they said that they could sometimes hear
heavy footsteps walking upstairs.
It was around this time that I could
feel a presence at times. The feeling is
just like someone is watching me. It is
scary and annoying. We tried not to talk
too much about it while in the house, as we did not want the spirit to hear us
or know how scared we really were. During
the final week, things were worse.
Things were dropping constantly.
The TV turned off twice in one day by itself. While on my iPad, the volume went up all the
way on “its own”. This was where we drew
the line.
Allie, the baby, and I all sat in the
den upstairs one evening in silence.
Allie and I knew that the spirit was present. We could sense heaviness in the air, and
negative energy. It was then that Allie
addressed the spirit directly by speaking to it. It went something like, “Listen, whoever you
are, you are beginning to scare us, and that is not right. You are obviously stuck here, but you need to
move on. We did not do anything to you,
so please move on.”
I also addressed the spirit, saying
something like, “you are not wanted here.
Please move on and leave us alone.
You can see that we are good people,” etc…
Without saying anything to each
other about it, we noticed after a few days that the night we addressed the
spirit directly was the last night we felt his presence. About three days afterwards, I asked Allie if
she felt the presence still. She said
no, thankfully. I brought this story up
once to an online message board/forum that I sometimes frequent. I think they thought I was nuts, but they
didn’t say so. One of them actually chimed
in with some comments about smudging my house with sage to rid it of bad
energy. I can recall my mother in-law
burning dried laurel leaves, which smelled interesting, but left the house smoky. Maybe this is similar to sage? I don’t have a clue.
Additionally, some others suggested
that big life events sometimes bring an influx of energy into the home. That one was interesting to me. The past year was very strange. My dear dog died in August 2012, which left
Allie and I completely destroyed and distraught. I still have trouble with it, although it is
getting a bit easier to manage. There
have been many nights where I cried deeply in the dark, in my house. That has been a very strong emotion.
The other event was the birth of our
daughter. That happened in March of
2012. This has also been something that
has invoked very strong emotions in both of us.
As with the feelings of my Phoebe passing away, the feelings of my baby
girl’s entry into our lives continue on strong.
Could these events have triggered something in the spiritual realm that
invoked external spirits? My mind is
open to that possibility. I rule nothing
out these days.
I suppose too, that it is possible,
because of the location of my house, that spirits are naturally drawn to
it. Not quite as brutal as living on an
old burial ground like the Poltergeist movie, but maybe some kind of busy
intersection for the undead. I guess
time will tell. Anyways, being the
wannabe writer that I am, this has inspired me to write a book on the
topic. A fictional book about a guy that
has some interesting dealings with ghosts.
I have not written it, but I have the whole story in my head just
waiting to get penned. Creepy post, huh?
lol…
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