What boy?!

This evening, I confess that I couldn't wait to get the children to bed. With Scully being away on business, I'm tired. So, after putting Gigi to bed, I was done and reclining (or, refusing to move, if you prefer). The house was mostly silent except for the sound of the fan in the baby's unused nursery.

But I could hear a soft conversation (with laughter) between two children and I just passed it off as the product of sleep deprivation or a simple error in perception.

Later on, I did actually move and went to check on the children. Baby was asleep and Gigi was, too. Just as I was leaving, Gigi woke up and lifted her head, squinting:

"Mum, where did the boy go?"

I couldn't get her to say anything else. Five-year-olds are surprisingly protective of their sleep. At least, mine is. I must make a mental note to ask her tomorrow to please elaborate. These days, however, I often get a sigh as if talking to me is a real chore; well, at least as if I'm not as interesting as Arthur and D.W.

Again with the door!

On Sunday night, I fell asleep at the same time as the girls did. At some point, I could hear the phone ringing downstairs. I decided not to answer it, feeling too tired. Besides, who calls a house with children so late at night? But the phone was persistent.

Then, the doorbell rang. I checked the time: about 10 p.m. I thought, "There's no way I'm going down there to answer that!" But, again, it persisted. Searching frantically for something to preserve my modesty, I grabbed my maternity hospital gown (er, it accidentally ended up in my suitcase last year) and ran downstairs.

I called through the door, "Who is it?"

"It's security, ma'am," a man answered back. "Are you alright?"

Ugh. He called me 'ma'am'.

"Yes, I'm OK." I opened the door just a little. How did I know if he was really a security guard from my security company?

"ALARM COMPANY has detected an intrusion alert. We need to know if you're OK."

That's when I noticed it: the absence of an alarm. That thing is so !#$@@ noisy, I would have heard it down the street.

"If you check Zone 102, you'll see the door's open."

I looked over and, surely enough, it was open. But I had locked it!

"Must have been the wind or something," he offered.

"Yeh," I said. "The wind." Except: I wouldn't have been able to secure the house if the door was insecure enough to have blown open in the wind. When the door is shut -- but not locked -- it is impossible to push it open.

A report was filled out. The security guard had checked the entire property, inside and under my car as well. He went room-by-room, door-by-door through the entire house. The only other people in here with me, he concluded, were two sleeping children.

I was a bit shaken. There were no signs of attempted break-in. Scully, being in the UK on business, was going to have a hard time believing this.

I waited until I knew he'd be awake before calling.

"What??@!" He yelled down the phone. "Obviously, you DIDN'T lock it. That's the only reasonable explanation."

"But I DID lock it. I went around the entire house locking up. You're telling me to convince myself that I didn't do something I can remember clearly doing. THAT'S insane," I countered.

He had to agree. But, why hadn't the alarm sounded? That's when he realized it wasn't an error on my part. The alarm had been set but had not gone off. I couldn't have set the alarm if the door hadn't been shut and it has been clearly established that one cannot push the door open when it's shut-but-not-locked. Ha!

I have to admit, before going to sleep, I had asked my spirit guides and relatives watching over us to give me a sign that they were with us because I couldn't see or detect them.

Ridding My Home of Books

Scully has asked me to kindly go through our 10,000 books and, well, get rid of some that I don't want or won't read or won't read again, etc.

Fair enough. We either need to get a bigger house or pare down our collection. I've definitely set some boundaries. There are books with which I will never part; books that are no longer in print or books that had such a limited print run that you can barely find them on the Internet.

I'm thinking of old Hans Holzer, Ed & Lorraine Newman, Edgar Cayce tomes . . . To mention only a few among hundreds of names. Over the years, I've tried different book databases and different methods of tracking my acquisitions but, really, haven't succeeded very well. I think I will use this blog to help keep me organized. Why not? I'm working on a running list of titles in the area of supernatural/paranormal/psychic phenomena and will post a link.

I'm reminded of the first time that we (my family-of-origin and I) walked through our new home in the early 1980s. As I kind of 'spaced out' looking around, taking everything in, I heard my mother mentioning to someone that many families had lived in the house but most had left pretty quickly.

I opened the closet door of the upstairs hallway. There, on the shelf, was a copy of the bible. Had people been afraid? Was this an age-old custom of moving home? And, now I wonder, did I keep the bible?

Dear Ghostiegurl:

I have a home that a man died in and he and his wife were in the middle of a divorce. They would fight all the time. He died in this house of a heart attack. I have seen the man here and often feel his presence. When my husband comes home we fight always and we try to be close. You can feel a very cold presence in the room, yet if we quit and walk into another room, it is usually warm. Any sugggestions???



Answer:

Many psychics believe that ghosts leave visual or emotional "imprints" (it's like watching a film over and over again or feeling a certain emotion in a certain room) on the places in which they lived or spent time in. It's possible that you and your husband can pick up the tension in the room in which you and he argue because the deceased man and his wife used to argue there.

If it is an imprint, you're not dealing with a ghost. But, you say that you have seen him. If it isn't an imprint, and you are picking up the attitude of the ghost, then you may ask him to leave. Tell him that he doesn't have to stay there anymore or, that if he does stay, ask him to leave rooms when you enter and you can "share" the house in peace.

Reaping

I came up with a description of my status: I'm now a professional 'psychic on leave of absence', though I can still be convinced to give a reading every now and then. I still hear from regular clients who like to give me updates, tell me they look forward to my returning to work. A local group asked me if they could keep me in mind for future investigations (some televised, some not) and I agreed.

Anyway, I decided to watch a movie while reaping the benefits of cardiovascular exercise. At the gym, I sat transfixed as The Reaping played on my Treo. It made going to resistance level 8 for four minutes, three times a lot easier; it made me work harder during the four four-minute "rest" intervals.

I didn't get to finish it. The pre-programmed weightloss workout (if you're not doing the math) is only 28 minutes long. I'm hoping to finish it at the next two gym sessions!

What do I think about it? It's definitely creepy. Gabriel Byrne is always worth watching. I'm not religious but I often find myself watching scary movies with religious themes (think: The Omen, The Exorcist) and really enjoying them. I can't say much about The Reaping because I haven't seen much.

Carrying on the theme of psychic kids:

As a child -- about the age of Gigi -- I had a knack for always knowing where anything was located within the house. My mother would say, "Have you seen this ----?" and I have one particular memory of opening a bottom cupboard in the kitchen and reaching around behind the pipes to show my mother where an object was. She found the frequency of this kind of event peculiar.

My sister -- whose abilities are more dream-oriented than outright intuition -- complained often about playing games with me, especially the card game, Go Fish. I always "just knew" what she had as a hand. She STILL talks about it from time to time as being a particular point of frustration while we were growing up.

As far as empathy goes, as a child, I would walk past people and get overwhelmed with an emotion of some great intensity, as if it was just washing over me and I could barely stand up under the pressure or weight of it. The hardest emotion, of course, being sorrow or grief. It wasn't easy and I would really dread having to walk past people at a very young age!

So many psychic things happened to me as a child; would I have wanted to "go public" with it on a show such as Psychic Kids? I doubt it. I doubt that my mother, as open-minded as she is about such things, would have allowed it.

Gigi always knows who is calling and often tells us who is coming by. As you probably already know, she's been talking about ghosts since she started talking! After much thought, I realize that I would not allow her or my other child to participate in such a show.

At any rate, if you, dear readers, would like me to post about something in particular, please feel free to ask as I work harder to keep this blog updated more frequently. Otherwise, I'll just keep rambling on as usual . . .

Psychic Kids

This show surprised me. I managed to catch one episode and, so far, I am of two minds about the program.

On the one hand, I'm glad that the psychic sensitivity of children is finally getting some attention. On the other, I'm uncomfortable with children being subjected to such intense media exposure when, clearly, in my opinion, they are not old enough to appreciate the later-in-life consequences of being so open. Certainly, it's entertaining; however, children can learn to be comfortable with themselves without doing so in front of a camera.

But, then again, according to the bio of Dr. Lisa Miller (co-host and psychologist), she works with "psychic kids and their parents to offer support and to clear a path for psychic children in our culture." I can support this idea. Perhaps the later-in-life consequences will be negligible since our culture does seem to be developing an open-mindedness where the paranormal is concerned.

Who knows? Maybe one day, people will put a capital "P" on their blogs or Facebook profiles to indicate that they're "out" as a psychic and proud of it.

Interestingly enough, my sister and I hadn't spoken for a while and today she asked: "Have you seen 'Psychic Kids'? I watched my first episode last night.

At any rate, it makes for capitivating television.

Dead Television Shows

Dead Like Me lasted only two seasons but it was fantastic. It was created by Bryan Fuller (think Wonderfalls, Heroes, Pushing Daisies, Star Trek: Voyager.)

George, the main character, having been killed in a freak accident, steps out of her body to find that she is, well, that she still IS. She has no choice but to live her dead-life as it becomes pretty ordinary but utterly fascinating.

I've noticed re-runs and you could probably catch an episode pretty easily. Otherwise, both seasons were released on DVD and they are well worth the purchase.

The humour is dry, biting; its timing is impeccable.

Fear and Folklore

Over the past year, until March, I was addicted to the first season of Ghost Whisperer though I hadn't seen an episode until after I'd stopped giving readings. Scully bought me the DVDs. My experiences do not match those of the main character, Melinda, and I think that is why I enjoyed it. Unfortunately, the tone of the second season changed and it wasn't interesting to me at that point.

I haven't seen the other shows that involve the paranormal and don't really know their titles. I guess I've always been put off by the fact that televisionland perpetuates certain ideas of the supernatural that I simply have not experienced myself. Also, in the many hundreds of readings that I've done, not a single person had been hurt by a ghost nor knew of anyone who had been but almost everyone feared ghosts and believed that a "haunting" was something that had to be erradicated.

So, in my last post, when I spoke of "folklore-ish" aspects of ghost-filled movies, it is this to which I was referring. It's one thing to enjoy these movies (I loved Poltergeist) and television shows about the paranormal; it is quite another thing to be frightened of the paranormal because of such movies and shows.

Don't get me wrong: I still find some experiences unsettling but it is not due to a fear of harm. At night, when the toys start playing music and wake me up or when books defy gravity by falling and then resting on shelves at impossible angles, my heart starts racing until I've processed that something is happening. To me, the paranormal is very normal, just sometimes unexpected!

Room 1408, please, with a view . . .



It took about a dozen attempts to watch the movie because, as you can (barely) see at the bottom of the image, my baby was with me and I could only watch the non-scary, mundane parts when she was around. I'm not sure how much information children retain at that age but I didn't want to take any chances. I was experimenting with the sepia-tone filter that day, too.

The movie was enjoyable even though it played to all the folklore-ish ideas about the supernatural and ghosts. But if you remember the lost-in-television, braces-going-wild drama of Poltergeist (1982) and would still watch it again, then you appreciate the folklore-ish aspect of things and should probably watch this film.

I have to say that I love Samuel Jackson and I think John Cusack is always brilliant.

Rambling

I have so many -- more than a hundred -- questions from readers that have gone unanswered because I have been so busy. My older daughter has started summer vacation; my baby has just started walking. If I finish one cup of coffee in a day, I'm doing well. There really aren't enough hours in a day to do everything I want/need to do, but, I'm sure that everyone reading this can relate. After supper, I go to my second job: the 'health club' (which, as far as I can tell, is just a way of saying 'very expensive gym'). Ghostiegurl is trying to shed the pounds and generally get healthier.

The premonitions that I had years ago about my future featured myself as a heavy woman. I still have to try, though; sometimes, we seem to be able to change the outcome of things provided that we don't suddenly find ourselves living out the premonition. That has been my experience. But, it's difficult. I can't tell you the number of times that I've been in the midst of events when I've realized, "Oh, s*&@! I dreamt about this . . ." I don't have all -- or maybe any -- of the answers. Maybe there are things we simply can't change.

Sometimes, a predictive dream is really straightforward in its interpretation: such an event X will happen at point Y in time involving person A. At other times, the dreams feature a mixture of all the predictive elements but the setting is purely unrealistic. For example, after breaking up with a boyfriend, I dreamt of having two children and a husband and of living in a small town and receiving a message from my ex-boyfriend. Well, it happened recently. I was shocked to receive an email after 15 years of silence just a couple of months ago but all the elements had been in place. I call that a "comfort dream": though inconsolable at the time of the separation, my mind was telling me that I would hear from him again and placed the future communication in a broad context.

We'll have to see about the dreams in which I was heavy. It's hard to imagine because my hair -- very long with loads of spiral curls -- was short in the dreams and Scully hates the idea of me cutting my hair. I don't even feel inclined to do it.

At any rate, back to busy-ness. Giving up readings was hard to do but, in my schedule, something had to give. There's definitely a part of me that misses giving readings. The other evening, a friend requested that I give her one and I did. Believe it or not, my husband (aka 'Scully') occasionally asks for a reading. I like giving readings. I will do so again at some point.

Not Gone But Maybe Forgotten!

It isn't really that things have been quiet around here for as long as my absence from the blog.

My house is periodically buzzing with ghost activity. Back in February, for example, every night for weeks, one or all of my baby's noise-making toys would be set off. One night, every single toy was blaring music across the hall from our bedroom in the nursery. One night, even I was freaked out and didn't get out of bed. Sometimes, the noise would come from Mini-me's room and she would come running out to tell me.

Just a few weeks ago, she told me about a man named "Cory" in her room who was looking for bad guys. He had a hard "green hat" and a gun and he was dirty. He also had a dog with him who helped him. When I asked if it frightened her, she said, "no" but she didn't think he would find any bad guys here. Then, just recently, I asked her if Cory was still around and she said that he had left to go to another family's house; in fact, to one of her friends' house, just to look after her for a while.

Premonitions are strong. But I've given up readings entirely because of the stress of childcare. I stopped after January, actually. I honestly had no clue before having the baby that trying to work inside the home as well as be a mother of two to very small children and work from home would be so difficult.

Lately, however, I've been able to read more often and I've come across some great titles that I intend to share at some point.

At any rate, I haven't disappeared. I guess I just needed a break.

Christmas Eve

On Christmas Eve, after everyone had just settled, I was alone in the living room. I scrolled through the music on our television/media centre and decided on Anne-Sophie Mutter's Beethoven pieces.

Within a second, I heard the Christmas tree behind me: it sounded as if it was shaking. I looked behind me and saw a single decorative bulb swinging wildly on the bottom branch and this was obviously the source of the noise. The bulb was swinging but ABSOLUTELY NO OTHER part of the tree -- including the branches -- was moving in even the smallest way.

As I sat there staring at the swinging bulb, it stopped just as suddenly as it had begun, but it wasn't a gradual loss of momentum: it simply stopped.

Immediately after it stopped, the same rattling sound came from beside me and in front of the sofa: I looked and saw that a frame on the mantlepiece had slid down and its picture -- of my grandmother as a girl and which had already had the word "me" written in her own hand just above her image -- had slipped out the top of the frame.

It was nice to know that my maternal grandmother was with me for the holiday.

Just how dumb am I?

I recently posted elsewhere about my daughter's frequent discussion of "the witch":

"That's the witches' forest." She pointed to the sideyard of a smallish mansion on the way to school.
"Oh, it's very pretty."
"No, it's scary."

She's been talking a lot about witches lately.

The other day:

"I locked the witch in my room."
"You did?"
"Yes. That way, she can't come out and talk to me."

I hadn't known that she was having trouble with witches.

I was rather glib about what I'd assumed -- despite my (gulp) intuition -- to be the flight of her imagination.

Recently, when I thought about it, it occurred to me that my four-year-old hadn't had the same lilt in her voice as she does when she's making believe. So, at dinner time last evening, I casually approached the subject:

"You mentioned before that there's a witch in your room . . ."

"Yes. But she's trapped."

"She is?"

"Yes. She always says, 'Ah, let me out'."

"Oh. I see. Is she a witch or a ghost?"

"She wears a witch costume."

"She comes to play with me. She doesn't share. She hits and throws toys."

"Do you like it when she comes to play?"

"No," she said quite seriously. "She disturbs me."

"She does?"

"Yes. She always sleeps on my bed. In the mornings."

"Does that bother you?"

"No."

"Oh, that's good."

"It just scares me."

"Does she speak to you?"

"Yes, she always calls me."

"Did you first see her before Halloween or after?"

"Before."

"What's her name?"

"It's a 'Sah, sah, sah' [sounding out an 'S'] sound..."

"Like Cecilia...Sarah?"

"It's Sarah!!" She was happy that I'd guessed it.

More today:

"Is she big like Mummy or small like you?" I asked her while we cuddled this morning.

"Small like me."

"Did she ask you not to tell your Mummy and Daddy that she comes to play?"

"Yes," she said, almost embarrassed. "But I said, 'I have to'."

"Wow. You did the right thing." I kissed her cheek. "You tell Mummy and Daddy everything. No secrets."

I had to follow up with the "witch's forest".

"You said that it was the witch's forest yesterday, when we walked to school."

"Yes, Mummy. That's where she lives. Wait, I think I hear her...Oh, no. That's just the baby."

She's told us more about "the witch"--whom she thinks is about two years old--voluntarily and when questioned. Some of it:

"She didn't go out trick-or-treating."

"She didn't?"

"No. She was too late [when she came over]."

Wow. I made such a common mistake, one that I've often warned clients about: I assumed my daughter was 'making up' a friend or a character and she was actually talking about a ghost.

Shame on me!

A fitting Hallowe'en post

Today, something very unusual happened. I lay the baby in her cot beside my bed and left to wash her bottles. From the kitchen downstairs, I could hear her laughing uproariously. She wasn't giggling or babbling as she normally would: She was laughing heartily and squealing with delight. And it was LOUD.

I walked upstairs and her behaviour continued. The temperature, I noted, had fallen in the room. I got the impression that someone -- someone I don't know -- was around her. She was "looking" at something during all this. When my husband came up -- at my request -- he was as surprised as I was. He noted that it was cold in the room and, the scientist that he is, chalked it up to wind coming through the closed window (it holds the air conditioner, so that's a plausible guess.)

"I think a relative from your father's side is around her," I told him.

"Could be," he shrugged.

Moments after he left, the room warmed up and the baby stopped laughing. All the while, a name had been floating around my head. I ran out of the room, down the stairs and straight to the basement.

"Did you have a relative named Mary Margaret on your father's side?" I'd never looked at his genealogy project.

"Yes...I think she was his great aunt."

"That's who is around her."

Catching up a bit...

Strange things have been happening lately. Besides the usual, that is.

Last evening, I noticed that my husband had placed a newly-received wedding photo of his parents on the mantlepiece. Well, it didn't really fit in with all the other frames in that area. My scheme is black-and-white and the photo is colour, 1950s; my frames are gold trimmed and the photo is framed with brown wood. So, I took it down from the mantlepiece and placed it on the radiator, face down.

Later tonight, as I went into the living room to grab my laptop, I looked above the fireplace: on the mantlepiece--the opposite side of the now removed photo--a double frame of my husband's paternal grandparents was (1) face down and (2) upside down. Clearly, it could not have simply fallen over: It would have had to have fallen and then turned around. It's possible someone is trying to tell me something.

Well, it's my living room and if one of his grandparents is upset, that's too bad! I haven't had any impressions of his grandparents, so I don't know...

Also, I hear 'Mummy' being called, extremely faintly, when anyone old enough to speak is actually out of the house. My baby is only 6 months old. It's happened at least twice a day but I haven't paid much attention to it. Maybe I should.

I keep seeing someone standing near the garage but it's only out of the corner of my eye. If I look there, the image is gone. Mostly, ghosts come in my dreams and my dreams have been a bit 'noisy' lately.

I remember when my older daughter was quite a bit younger, she used to talk about "Ollie", the little boy, who lived in the backyard in my turn-of-the-century potting shed. She doesn't talk about ghosts anymore.

My husband says he often thinks he sees our deceased cat on the stairs in the basement for a split second and, when he looks again, the image is gone.

When I was pregnant, we had plumbers come in to fix the pipes in the basement bathroom. My husband tells me that one of them pointblankly asked him: "Who's really into ghosts around here?"

To which my husband replied: "Oh, that's my wife. She's a well-known psychic."

I apologize for the delay in responding to the dozens of emails that I receive. With a new baby, it's hard to find spare time. I will get to them, tho'.

The Problem of Privacy

Over the summer, I revisited an issue that I'd once put on the back burner, shoving it nervously away from the fore after making a resolution: When I have an impression of someone -- negative or not -- I will not just announce it to the person; I will store it away and try to forget about it.

Why? Though some people have asked if it's because I'm not working at the time and therefore wouldn't get paid for sharing the intuition, it's actually because of a sense of privacy that I avoid announcing my impressions. What right do I have to just intrude on what could very well be a private issue that isn't meant to be confided?

A friend of mine visited and told me that she and her husband had postponed plans to conceive a child. Immediately, I had the sense that she was already pregnant and the impression just got stronger.

When I received the news of the impending birth, I was overjoyed and confided my first impressions then. As it turns out, my friend would not have felt that her privacy was being invaded if I'd shared the intuition.

It's an issue with which I've struggled for some time.

Visiting Baby

Whenever I come down to my office, a ghost run across the floor directly above me. It happens each and every time!

It's the ghost of a child and the running is at full speed. I get the impression that he wants to see the baby.

Harmless, I know, but it makes me a little uncomfortable.

Update

I've really missed writing here. I just got so busy with my new daughter (Mimi) and my other daughter (Gigi) and . . . and . . . my recovery from surgery was, therefore, not going very well.

I've recently acquired a few novels about which I'd like to write here once I'm finished reading them and I will.

That's another feature that I've always intended to add to this blog: book reviews.

Also, I've received many questions by email and I will get to them all as soon as I can but there is a bit of a backlog...

It's nice to see that people still read even though I took a hiatus for my pregnancy.

Hiatus Over

OK, I'm back.

It's amazing to me that I'm always struggling to keep up with everything. While I wouldn't say that having two children is difficult, it does keep you extremely busy.

One day, I'll read again. One day, I'll write again. One day, maybe one day, I'll sleep again.

In the meantime, I've continued to book reading appointments into February 2008.

By the way, does anyone still read this blog???

Dear Ghostiegurl:

We have experimented with a kind of "game". It consisted of calling a soul which would give us answers, even predicting the future.

The alphabet, numbers from 0-9, yes/no, and goodbye were written on pieces of paper and put on the table forming a circle. A plastic glass with our fingers on it was being moved by that spirit to give us the answers.

I don`t know the name of this "game" but it used to be very exact in giving answers about the past. I would like to know the name of this game and if it is dangerous. I heard some people who tried it lost some family members. It might have been a coincidence or maybe not.........Please give me some answers.

Answer:

You're talking about a handmade version of the talking board, a method of divination/spirit communication that dates back to ancient times.

It is believed to be an easy way of establishing a connection with the ghost world, especially for people who aren't naturally aware of such a connection. In the 19th century, fascination with the spirit world and communication therewith grew--in the form of the spiritualism movement--and some now-famous people got swept up in what was essentially considered a parlour pastime.

It was popularized in the 19th century but it was marketed in the early 20th century in the most recognizable form of a board-and-planchette game by Kennard Novelty Company and William Fuld's company, to name a couple. Parker Brothers acquired William Fuld's company in the 1960s and produced "The Ouija Board". (Since 1999, it has been a very different-looking product.) There are other companies that produced talking boards under different names and, today, different religious groups have other names for it.

Beliefs about talking boards run to both ends of the spectrum: some believe that it's not a game, that it's very dangerous. In a religious context, it has been labelled "an instrument of the devil" or the playground of demons. At the other end of the spectrum, some people believe that the planchette or message indicator is moved, subconsciously or consciously, by one or more of the participants in the game and that the predictions/answers are actually an expression of the participant's or participants' subconscious.

There is a good collection of literature on the subject of the talking board, each piece detailing anecdotes or techniques or warnings. Perhaps the most famous is the early-20th-century tale of Patience Worth; she was believed to be a spirit--apparently contacted by Pearl Lenore Curran --who produced poetry and novels.

Whether or not to use a talking board is, of course, a personal decision and I, personally, don't like them and don't advocate their use. Why? Because I believe that ghosts are everywhere and those that wish to help us are already doing so.

Many people report false information, vulgar language and insults in their experience with talking boards while a very few relate positive experiences to me. In my years of providing readings to people, I have found that many people are very curious to use one but are afraid to do so. I have never received firsthand or even second-hand stories of injury or fatalities and I've read for hundreds of people.

Not Too Much Longer...

I'm near the end of my pregnancy now and I have even less of a lap on which to rest my computer than I did last week.

My pregnancy has been pretty difficult and posting regularly has been next to impossible. So, posting the many questions that I receive by email and answering them has been a good alternative.

Once the baby is born, I'll post more.