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Monday, August 26, 2013

The Spirit World According to Me

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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