This is more like it
More often than not, when I go in to my husband’s office to work my little bits of magic every month, I make a bit of an occasion of it. Let’s face it, most office jobs are boring. When I’m there, all I do is stare at a computer. It’s boring…even multitasking, it’s still boring. So, if I gotta get my lazy ass out of bed and down to the office for a day or two, I might as well make it interesting…
This was another time my friend just had to snap a pic on my phone. She even told me I HAD to blog it. Well, here ya go, Denise!
Disregarding the 3D glasses that were gifted in honor of my poor choice in clothing, the shirt and pants I’m wearing do not go with anything else in my wardrobe as well as they go with each other. Yes, that’s really saying something since they really only have the flowers in common–although one’s got 4 petals, the other 3. A flower is a flower. The blue and red almost match…almost.
I tell ya, though, everyone in the office had to stop and say hello or comment on my horrid outfit and the shock on people’s faces as I walked to lunch across the street was priceless. A little bit of wackiness goes a long way and I’m happy to do my part–even if it’s not Halloween!
Am I Together?
Every now and then, I appear to have it together. Everything matches and all is well. I just found this photo from earlier this year. I had a bit of a vampire/gothic twist going on that day for reasons I no longer recall, but a friend of mine thought I was so well put together that day, she just had to take a picture.
I don’t suppose it’s confidence inspiring that she was laughing while it was taken and that’s why it’s blurry.
Meet Commando Barbie
About five years ago, I got up the nerve to wear a particular outfit to a romance convention. That evening, I was dubbed “Commando Barbie”. Okay, cool. That was fun. The outfit was great–$12 on the sale rack at a Forever 21 in, like, 1999. It hung in my closet for years because I was determined not to get rid of it until I’d worn it at least once. Thus, in 2003, Commando Barbie was “born”.
I wore it to Comic Con that year and caused a bit of a double-taking stir as I cruised about the Expo floor. One guy in a booth full of knives, swords and various other weapons just stared and said, “Wow…” before he’d even realized he’d said it aloud.
See, Commando Barbie is much hotter, cooler, better than I could ever be. I dunno what it is about her, but she’s really got her shit together. I, however, am her dorky alter-ego. I have difficulty speaking, going places and I’m just so darn uncool. I’m far too shy for my own good and could really learn a thing or two from Commando Barbie. Her social skills are far better than mine. I, in fact, have no social skills.
In a slightly different outfit, Commando Barbie (and her two best friends, Wendy and Jen) met Jamison Newlander and Corey Feldman, the Frog Brothers from Lost Boys–her favorite movie (and mine. We’ve got that in common.)
She even got up close with Gareth David-Lloyd, Ianto Jones from Torchwood. (BTW-you should seriously check out the band he fronts, Blue Gillespie. Awesome, sexy, hard blues. Makes me want to go back to Wales again real soon and catch a concert. I also haven’t been to all the castles in the south yet.) (Gotta love the T-shirt he’s wearing, too. All day long, having his pic taken with numerous women. See, now that’s the kind of skills Commando Barbie has and I could only dream of. That shit’s hilarious!)
Here she is right next to the Lost Boys: The Tribe booth… As herself…
And in her vampire-hunter gear.
I really wish I were as awesome as she is. In fact, walking around Comic Con with my best friend Jen (together, we’re the Ashleigh Raine writing team), I remarked how I wish I wasn’t such a big dork. I mean, here I am goofing off with a Dalek… Yeah, a Dalek from Dr. Who for heaven’s sake. “Exterminate! Exterminate!” Not cool. And there I am dorking it up, trying to be all cool in my camo and failing miserably. Nice. Help me Commando Barbie! Please put me out of my misery!
And what was Commando Barbie doing…instead of a Dalek? Well, she got her picture taken for Hustler magazine…for their “Hot Chicks of Comic Con” project. Of course.
Why can’t I be more like her? Instead, I freeze up when people try to talk to me. I trip over my own feet and quite often I have significant difficulty discerning where my ass ends and my head begins due to their close proximity–one being firmly shoved up the other all the time. *sigh*
When I grow up, I wanna be Commando Barbie. That bitch has everything…
Unsightly and Peculiar
So, the other day, my husband emails me this image…
Granted, it was with a bunch of other ones, but my first thought when I saw it was “Oh! I wanna shop there!!!!! Where is it?!”
Sadly, it looks like false advertising. I mean, I don’t see anything truly unsightly and peculiar in that photo.
And I should know what unsightly and peculiar clothes look like… This is only a tiny part of my wardrobe:
Not just one ugly polyester pantsuit, there’s three or four there…including one that’s plaid burlap. Oh yeah…unsightly…peculiar… That’s my taste in clothes.
Here’s a section from what I call my “everyday” pants…
Do you see why I got irritated by the costumer who told me “less is more” on Yes Man? These pictures are only a fraction of the clothes I have. I’ve also got a little over 100 yards of fabric in my collection. Some vintage, most not, but it’s all ready to go the moment I get inspired to design and build a garment or two. In fact, I did that last weekend and screwed up pretty bad!
I created a pattern using an existing, well-fitting pair of pants…and then forgot to add the seam allowance! When I went to try them on, I couldn’t figure out why they were so small…so tight I couldn’t even pull them all the way up. My husband started laughing with me as I wondered what the hell I’d done wrong.
Thankfully, I had about a half yard of scrap with which to fashion a peculiar solution to my dilemma. He thinks the pants are still somewhat unsightly, but I haven’t hemmed or put the waistband on them yet. He did agree that my creative attempt at salvaging them went well. They hardly look like I screwed up. They look more like I meant to build them that way. Yay!
This from a man who thinks my clothes are unsightly and peculiar… I don’t know why he’d think that…
And let’s not forget:
Okay, so perhaps that pic is best left forgotten. 😉
Learning From Ghosts
I’ve shared a lot of my paranormal experiences here already, so if you missed them, please scroll down. Those are the biggest ones so far.
Anyhow, what I want to post about this time is a particular ghost I met in college. Being a theatrical lighting technician, I spent a lot of hours alone in darkened theaters. Because I worked in the Lighting & Sound shop, I had keys to various parts of the building that I’d need to get into in order to do my job. There were three theaters and I designed lighting for shows in all three.
Being a lighting designer means that when rehearsal is done at 11PM it’s your time to program the show over the night hours. The stage needs to be dark and it was best to work alone. I could get the show programmed faster without distraction that way even if the show needed more than one night to get done.
Usually, the light board was set up in the middle of the audience until opening night, but sometimes, I did all the programming from the light booth even though the sightlines weren’t the best up there.
Now imagine being the only person in the whole building…and being locked in. Sure, I didn’t have the only key, but whenever I thought I heard someone else, I investigated. Darkened theaters are dangerous and I didn’t want anyone to get hurt. Whenever someone would come on stage (sometimes the costumers worked late, too), I always brought up enough light for them to see whatever they needed until they were done and back out of the theater. Common courtesy.
Okay, during my time in this particular theater building, I’d heard a lot of different ghost stories–one night, myself and another lighting technician even got into a very long and interesting conversation focused solely on how creepy that darn place was around 3AM–but I never physically experienced anything major the whole time I was there.
Psychically…well…that’s a different story.
To my knowledge, every time something unexplainable happened, it got blamed on a particular ghost. Apparently, the guy had committed suicide on stage in the 70s. I posted a little about him earlier.
I did not, however, post what I learned from him. The most important part of his haunting of that building. Just the other night, I was talking about him with my husband and he found it fascinating, so here I am posting about it.
The very moment I set foot on the property, I could feel the ghost. As I walked closer to the building, he got stronger and stronger. Once inside the building, he got overwhelming.
Unless I acknowledged his presence.
Yeah. If I looked at him and said hello, he left me alone.
Once I figured that out, it seemed so absurd, but I tested my theory the next few days when I’d go there and sure enough. No matter where I sensed his presence, if I acknowledged him, he’d leave me alone. Whether I was outside the building or all the way in and down the hallway. The moment I said hello, he would fade.
So, I asked around to see if anyone knew more about his legend. Apparently, in life, he felt invisible. Had no friends, no one noticed him.
I guess that was all a million times worse in death.
He wasn’t mean, though. Just quiet. He wanted to be an actor, but that wasn’t going so well and he had very low self-esteem–which also didn’t help much. I don’t recall the particular incident that sent him over the edge to suicide, but still. Poor guy was stuck there even more invisible in death than he had been in life.
I really felt for him, then. And never failed to greet him each day. Of course, if I didn’t or was a little slow on the greeting, he’d be the most annoying person anyone could ever meet.
Imagine a two or three year-old under your feet, constantly jabbering to you, even singing something like “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall” (…starting somewhere around infinity) and doing cartwheels and hopping and skipping and making faces at you and shouting on either side of you. “Do you see me? Hello? I’m here. Hello? Can you see me? Why aren’t you seeing me? Say something. Please, say something. I’m right here. Just say hello, please. I’m not leaving until I know you know I’m here. Where are you going? Hello? Hello? Hello? I’m here. Hello?”
Freakin’ unimaginably annoying…(but only if you’re sensitive.)
And then the moment I said hello, he backed away, satisfied, even pleased.
Day after day, I experimented with him. If I was walking in alone, I’d take the time to either ask how he’s been or tell him what I was going to be doing that day and to come visit me later on or whatever. As our ‘relationship’ progressed, I was able to tune him in more clearly, but never crystal clear. My ability just isn’t that detailed all the time. I do the best with what I’ve got, but it’s far from perfect.
He’d laugh at me on days when I really couldn’t understand what he was trying to say. He’d usually say something like, “You’re not having a good day with me today, huh? That’s okay. I’ll see you tomorrow.” And then he’d fade away.
Whenever I saw him in my psychic sight, he was mostly a head and torso with legs only to just above the knee. For some reason, I rarely get arms past the elbows and legs past the knees in my psychic sight. Faces also don’t always appear and when they do are somewhat vague…as though only there for showing emotion rather than what the person actually looked like.
Sometimes, he was just a cloud of energy that I recognized as his without needing to see him at all. Like he learned that I’d know he was there whether or not he looked like a person.
I haven’t been back to see him in about eight years. I wonder if he’d greet me the moment I set foot on the property or if he’s even still around. Perhaps someday I’ll go visit him and find out. Consider that a reason for an update to this post.
I am still trying to piece together my theories on person-shaped entities versus those whom I sense as energy clouds. The ones who appear person-shaped when I first meet them, but then fade into cloud shapes tend to be the most sentient. Strangely, the ones whom I see fully (with legs below the knee and arms below the elbow) tend to be non-sentient or residual. The ones whom I sense as clouds when I first meet them are usually a lot weaker than the ones who appear person-shaped at first and sometimes I can’t tune into them at all other than simply recognizing their presence.
I don’t know what any of that means, but given my experiences and ability, I plan to piece more of it together so that I might understand it and help others understand as well. Like, is there really a correlation between the shapes entities take on or has it just been coincidence all this time? It’s not like my sight is crystal clear. It may just be the way my brain processes each event that gives the shape. I don’t know, but I hope to find out so that I can use that knowledge.
That’s another thing… I know that just because I sense something or get an image, voice or emotion from something, doesn’t mean it’s concrete. Just because I think the ghost is trying to shake my hand doesn’t mean he’s not trying to bite it or yank it off my arm or even something else entirely which has nothing to do with my hand. I honestly don’t know what the ghost is trying to do, but I do know what is being projected.
Just like when I ‘danced’ with “James”. For all I know, he could’ve been trying to throw me out the window, yet I felt like he was laughing and dancing with me. I sensed him and his movements and what he was saying, but I fully accept that I could’ve been totally wrong. The difference is that I also ‘felt’ I was correct in what I was sensing, so I went with it. At no time did I sense danger, so I interacted with him.
But really, for all I know, that icky thing in the storage room could have been him, too. He could’ve killed himself in the storage room or been a murder victim in there and didn’t want me to sense that residual energy. It’s not like I ever got a clear answer on how and when he died. There were contradictions on that topic. There are just so many possibilities and not many ways to check my answers. Therein lies the issues of credibility and scientific collection of paranormal evidence.
Which has always had me wondering whether if everyone was sensitive, would there still be the quandary of the existence of the paranormal. And wouldn’t that also deem that which is now considered paranormal…normal? And would that be a good thing or a bad thing?
In the mean time, all I can do is just go with what I feel and hope for the best.
The Cleaning Lady Ghost
Okay, I’ve covered all of the physical senses with at least one story or anecdote. This next story starts in the physical and ends in the psychic. I haven’t made heads or tails of it completely, so perhaps you might help me out.
In 2004 I bought a lot of antique dolls and a lot of spare parts. To this day, bits and pieces of dolls I bought that year are still on my shelf awaiting assembly, 23 dolls-worth, in fact. Some still needs wigs or eyes or dresses or glued back together, but one day, each one will be displayed with the rest of my collection. I bought each doll, each part because it would make a great addition to my collection or it was cheap. (Yes, cheap. This hobby can get quite expensive if you let it.)
I hesitate to call myself a collector because, well, I don’t care if the doll was made in France or Germany or if she’s cracked or leaking sawdust. Is she cute? Do I have one like her? Is the price right? That’s really all I care about. They aren’t a monetary investment, they’re a preservation of history.
Of pre-1920 dolls, I have at least one with a head made of each of the common materials: Bisque porcelain, china, papier-mâché, wax and celluloid. Same goes for bodies: cloth, composition, papier-mâché, leather and wood. They range in height from seven to thirty-two inches.
These dolls may have been the ONLY toy a little girl had.
Yes, I also have several from the 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s including some hand-me-downs from my mom and aunt, but aside from one in particular, most of those girls are quiet.
Anyway, back in 2004, I either assembled a doll or bought one off of ebay and put her on display in the central hallway of my house. I honestly do not recall which doll it was because I’d added more than one to my hallway display that week. I’d even added old shoes to some barefooted girls and changed a few dresses.
One week, I psychically felt a greater sense that ‘someone’ else was in my house, but this is sort of normal for sensitive little me and I didn’t want to deal with psychic stuff at the time so I did nothing.
That Friday, the dishwasher came on without myself or my husband turning it on. The dishes in there were clean, we just hadn’t emptied it. Oh well. We thought nothing of it. Maybe one of us had leaned against the counter…although no one was home during when the cycle had started some time around 7:30PM or so.
The rest of the week was normal except that the kitchen light was turned on in the middle of the night a few times.
The following Friday, we weren’t home around 7:30PM, but we came home to the dishwasher running on its own again. This time, it only had a few dishes in it. We both joked that we should start filling the dishwasher up and put soap in it every Friday so that if the ghost decides to do the dishes again, it wouldn’t be for naught. Ha ha funny funny.
A few nights later, I was in my home office writing one of my novels. The door was open, but I had some music on. My husband was upstairs in our home theater which has a balcony opening over the living room and kitchen.
‘Someone’ opened the refrigerator and rummaged a little bit. I thought it was odd that my husband had come downstairs to grab something to eat without pausing the movie he was watching.
About an hour or so later, he came into my office and asked if I’d found what I was looking for in the fridge. “Huh?” He proceeded to tell me that he heard the refrigerator open and had called out to me–just a generic hello like we always do when we hear the other–and I didn’t answer, so he got up off the couch and looked out off the balcony, but no one was there by then. I told him I didn’t answer because I wasn’t in the kitchen and then we shared an “I thought that was you” “No, it wasn’t me” moment. Hmmm… We shrugged and left it at that.
Sprinkled throughout our house, we have heat-sensitive dimmers on some of the lighting. The previous owner was nuts about mood lighting, I guess. Our house was built in 1997 and we are the second owners. Anyway, there are days when my fingers are so cold I can’t get the lights to turn on in the various rooms. I have to use my elbow or my nose or something. Yeah, funny, but I gotta do what I gotta do.
A night or two after the refrigerator incident, the heat-sensitive dimmer in the home office was making the light fade on and off. I saw it shining down the hallway and nudged my husband. We were going to sleep. He had zero interest in investigating and quite honestly, I didn’t want to go in there, either. The up and down stopped after about five minutes.
The next weekend, I was up in the home theater watching a movie and my husband was downstairs. He had finished what he was doing and wanted to see if I was done with the movie yet. But first he had to use the restroom. The door to the bathroom opens directly in front of the dolls in the hallway. As he left the bathroom, he saw a shadow run away from the dolls and down the hallway toward our bedroom. He called out to me.
This time I heard him. I was coming down the stairs from the home theater. He was pretty spooked, but once again, we shrugged it off.
Throughout all of this stuff, I still had yet to psychically feel anything negative. I only felt a little frustration and maybe some sadness, but it was nothing worrisome or even really powerful. It never overcame me or gave me other cause for concern.
There were a few more nights of random lights coming on. And one day while I was home alone, the heat-sensitive dimmer in the office started bringing the light on and off again. Well, rather than trying to communicate with the ghost, I used the manual part of the switch to get the light to turn off and stay off.
That night or maybe the next, my husband and I were up in the home theater, watching a movie. About half way into it, I ‘felt’ someone come into the room. I started to tune her in. I actually didn’t have much choice. She had something to say and wasn’t going to be ignored any longer.
After about two minutes of listening to her yammer on and on about how she does all the housework, all of the laundry, all of everything and all I do is lay around and never say thank you, how I don’t appreciate a single thing she does and that I don’t love her at all anymore despite all the years we’d spent together, I asked my husband if he felt anything.
He said yes. There was something weird going on, but he didn’t know what.
I told him that there was a woman in a dress with an apron over it going on and on and on and on and on without letting me get in a word edgewise.
He was surprised, but not shocked.
I asked if he wanted to hear what the lady was saying.
He wasn’t sure he wanted to hear it, but curiosity got the best of him.
I started repeating everything the woman said…even did some of the gestures–the finger pointing, the arm crossing over her chest, the hands on hips, the head tilting, etc. My husband wasn’t scared, he was intrigued. I think he somehow knew I wasn’t making this up, that there really was a woman standing near the entrance to our home theater and she was really, really upset.
After about five minutes of this, I distinctly saw a man’s arm reach over the back of the couch and pull out a shotgun. (Psychically, not physically, otherwise I think my husband and I would’ve launched off the couch and crashed through the sliding glass door to get out of the house as fast as possible!)
The man was sitting about where I was on the couch. The woman kept on screaming at him, daring him to shoot, even berating him. Horrible, horrible stuff and I couldn’t stop myself from seeing the shotgun go off and the woman fall down and disappear from my psychic sight.
I told my husband, “Wow. I think her husband just shot her. Holy crap.”
And the tension in the room eased up and went away. In fact, in the last four years since this incident, the office light hasn’t gone up and down on its own, the dishwasher hasn’t turned on without someone pressing the buttons, the refrigerator hasn’t opened without one of us pulling the door and no more shadow people have run past the dolls in the hallway.
Or at least not while we’re home!
Random lights do still come on overnight, though…but they’ve done that at least once every month or so since we moved in 7 years ago.
Personally, I think the whole thing may have been some sort of place memory that had gotten attached to one of my dolls. The woman was dressed in a style from as early as the 20s, as late as the 50s judging by the length of her dress and apron. The dolls in my hallway range from about 1870 to about 1945. Perhaps one of those dolls had belonged to the woman when she was a child. Perhaps one of those dolls had been on display in the woman’s house. I doubt I’ll ever know.
Maybe if I’d tried to communicate sooner, I might’ve found a consciousness to go with all of the unexplained occurrences. By the time she could no longer be ignored, it was too late. I still don’t know what to think of the whole ordeal, but I’ve learned a lot from it.
While I’m no stranger to haunted locations, this one was a little too close to home…it WAS home. Had I been anywhere else, I likely would’ve tried to communicate. For me, it’s one thing to work with a ghost…a whole other thing to live with one! I like to choose who I co-habit with, thank you.
This was also a period of my life where I tried to push aside my sensitivity. As you can tell, it’s just not always possible. If she ever comes back, you bet I’ll try to communicate. Video, EVP, K-II, whatever I can get. Like I said, doll collecting is about preserving history to me. I’d love to step back in time and talk to someone whose doll I’m now taking care of. Who knows? Perhaps years from now after I’m long gone, part of my life will replay to the new owner of one of my dolls.
All I can hope is that it’s a really fun part of my life!
Another interjection
Before I get into some of the bigger stories, I do want to clarify that while I consider myself a sensitive, I’m also able to separate that sense from my others. I don’t claim to have any incredible ability or anything like that. And mostly what I post here are the things I couldn’t figure out.
Recently, I discovered that part of my ‘ability’ has to do with a sensitivity to EMF. If I stand too close to the microwave while it’s on, I can feel it. The heavy duty amplifiers in my husband’s high end sound systems have the same effect. Some of them don’t even have to be on for me to feel them.
However, I have to be within about two feet from them and the energy is constant. It does not fluctuate.
What I consider ghosts fluctuate. Also, the paranormal experiences I have had sometimes include an emotion with the fluctuation, maybe an image or two that pop into my head and sometimes words either heard or spelled out. They also seem to have a life of their own. They feel more natural, imperfect and are far from constant. They are usually fleeting and have a sense of motion.
If the experience doesn’t have those qualities, I don’t consider it paranormal. I might consider it strange and worthy of more investigation, but not ghostly.
Also, up until recently I haven’t felt a desire to truly investigate for the sake of investigating. My experiences have simply happened. Sometimes, in the moment, I’ll try to debunk, but sometimes I don’t consider it necessary. I don’t recall having something paranormal happen without my sixth sense lighting up one way or another. Sometimes, the event is weak and I don’t get much from my sense, but that’s still a matter of learning how it works. And tuning in isn’t always possible within a split second.
Like any other bit of equipment, if you don’t know what it means, the reading is useless. There is no instruction manual for being sensitive. There’s only experience. And in my experiences, I’ve learned what I seem to be good at and what I am particularly bad at. Plus, just because I sensed it a certain way, that doesn’t mean another sensitive will agree, and that doesn’t mean equipment will show a reading. All I can do is keep trying, keep learning, keep questioning.
As I write this, I’ve got some activity going on upstairs. My sixth sense has always come alive in that particular spot, but I’ve been more comfortable just ignoring it. Whoever’s up there doesn’t come down here–at least not that I’ve felt much over the years–so I’m not really worried. What concerns me most is that I can’t seem to get much of a read on who the person is and whether she is even aware of her current state.
While doing an EVP session with one of my antique dolls, I didn’t think it all the way through and put the particular doll about three feet from the odd spot upstairs. Duh! But on my second ever EVP session, I got what sounds like two different spirits. About seven sessions later, I got a short one with only one voice.
Twenty sessions later, I’m wondering why the ghost up there won’t talk anymore! All she does is play with my remote controls when we’re trying to watch movies…and I’ve tried everything I can think of to debunk the two remote controls and it’s just not happening. Plus, my sixth sense does light up when stuff happens, but it’s very low level. I wonder if the ghost even knows she’s doing it at all.
So, if you enjoy being entertained by ghost stories, feel free to keep reading my blog. From here out, it does require a bit of a stretch for those who are skeptic, but I want to share my experiences. I mean, I find them fascinating, maybe you will, too.
Interjection about where I stand
All right, I’ve opened my can of worms and started posting some of my experiences with the paranormal. I feel it necessary to add one thing:
I am not a professional ghost hunter (yet). I’m just some weird girl who was born sensitive to all that’s around me physically and psychically. I haven’t taken classes. I have never finished reading any books on psychic abilities. (I get bored after I start them and never pick them up again.) I have not actively pursued ghost hunting although, I have worked in several haunted theaters as well as a haunted studio (the first purpose-built soundstage in Los Angeles). So while I haven’t done full-fledged investigations, I’ve spent many, many hours alone overnight in darkened theaters.
And let me tell ya…There are A LOT of people hanging around those places.
When I first got involved in theater, the resident ghost was sort of a joke, but everyone had stories and no one could figure out why the elevator used to go up and down at random times–without tangible passengers–sometimes when the key was turned off. I still thought I was crazy in that I kept feeling at least one unseen presence during this time period.
I’d fancied myself psychic, but my divination skills suck and I have yet to find a way of changing that. I used to do tarot readings for my friends, but that was mostly for fun. I don’t recall ever being “right on” when I read. Sensing ghosts, however, is something different.
In the early days, every time I was in a theater by myself and felt someone else nearby, I’d call out whether I’d heard them or not. I rarely got a response, but I’m also not sure I wanted to hear one! Darkened theaters are creepy and hazardous enough without paranormal activity going on. But through my having to work amid these conditions, I discovered that what I’d been sensing since childhood really were ghosts. They weren’t my over-active imagination.
In fact, as much as I know and believe the things I’ve experienced are real, I still look for validation. I still want further proof that I’m not insane. I’m an odd girl who never fit in, so it always feels good to have proof I’m not crazy, just sensitive and weird.
I’ve had experiences at all hours of the day although most have been at night. Most have been in the dark. Most have also been in places that are less traveled by people. Like, in rooms that don’t get used every day. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t had experiences that don’t fit that category. I mean, “someone” opened my refrigerator and rummaged through it and my kitchen gets used every day.
Also, I’m only blogging my favorite experiences or the ones that come to mind when people ask me if I believe in ghosts. I know there are several experiences I’m leaving out simply because I don’t remember them. If they didn’t leave a big enough impression on me, I suppose they weren’t important anyway–or at least didn’t change the way I look at the paranormal world. And some of them…well, even though I’m a published novelist, I find it difficult to describe them.
I mean, yeah, I can say that when I was in high school, whenever I visited my grandmother, I hated to go into her retirement home because all I could hear were screams and moans and people I didn’t know were coming up to me, asking why no one talks to them anymore or why their relatives don’t visit anymore and who’s that crazy lady living in my apartment now or go away and let us suffer in peace.
Maybe at some point I’ll dive in and write a post sort of fictionalizing that kind of experience so that those who are not sensitive can see what it looks and feels like to try and balance the dead with the living. (I always visited Grandma with at least my mom and there was noooooooo way I was going to let on that anything might be paranormally affecting me. No way, no how, no sirree.) It was always tough to focus on the living while I was being bombarded with all the other information, too.
Also, it wasn’t until just yesterday that I finally got a voice recorder. I even got a few EVPs. They’re class C and hard to understand even after cleaning them up a little, but I got ’em. I’m one step closer to listening to the spirits attached to my antique doll collection.
Okay, I feel I’ve given enough of my background in order to continue. In fact, my next post will be about one of my favorite ghosts.
I Smell A Ghost
Over the years, I’ve had quite a few experiences with the paranormal. Many times, I have no proof of what I felt or research ends up inconclusive, but that only makes my experiences unreal to others, not myself. I’ve frequently debunked myself, too, so I know I’m not always right or the things I’m sensing may not be universal.
I don’t normally talk about my experiences unless someone asks, so it’s a bit of a step for me to blog about them. But if they provide a bit of entertainment or someone learns a thing or two in their quest for understanding, then I feel I’ve done the right thing by talking…well…writing.
I’ve decided to break down my experiences by sense. I’ve heard, felt, seen and smelled, but I have yet to taste and I suppose that’s a good thing!
In the scent category, I only have one that I was both certain I smelled and that was not debunked.
In 1998 or so, I was dating a guy who, like me, was very into cars. His friends said he changed cars like he changed underwear. Well, truth be told, he went commando, but there wasn’t anything paranormal about that.
Anyhow, he got tired of driving his mom’s hand-me-down and started looking through the newspaper, Recycler, whatever (this was somewhat pre-eBay and Craigslist) for another Dodge Charger. He’d had quite a few–even still had left over parts lying around in his garage.
After maybe a week or two of looking, he found a ’70 Charger. It was a 318 automatic, but the car was complete and the guy selling it just wanted it gone. It was his grandma’s grocery getter. She’d passed on, the car became his and he got tired of re-parking it on the appropriate side of the street every week due to street sweeping. He lived in an apartment with only one parking space.
My boyfriend bought the car and immediately swapped the 318 for the 440 he had lying around. From a prior car, he’d also saved the chunk of floorpan where the manual transmission shifter comes up through the floor. From the new car, he removed the automatic transmission, cut the right size hole, then installed the manual transmission…and riveted the floorpan chunk in place before putting the carpet back down. For what the job was, it worked beautifully.
When I first got in the car, I wasn’t amazed that it was in such great condition. I mean, if it had been a grocery-getter all its life, it likely only saw the doctor’s office, the store and maybe a relative’s driveway its entire life so far. It should have looked as good as it did. Not pristine, but not shredded, either. Just old.
He wanted to take me for a ride in his new project, so I knew I’d be in for a fun time what with the 440 and 4-speed installed. As we get in, he tells me about how the car might be haunted. He wasn’t the kind of guy to really believe in ghosts, but he’d worked in several theaters and we all know they have lots of ghosts. Anyway, he’d mentioned that there was something a little strange about the car. I asked him about it and he said, sometimes, when he was just driving along, the scent of BenGay would waft through the air. It didn’t matter if the accessories were on or off or if the windows were up or down.
I laughed and shrugged and we got on the freeway. About fifteen minutes later, I started to smell BenGay, but it, to me, wasn’t quite right. There was ’something’ off about it. And it just appeared. It didn’t emanate from anywhere. Whenever I have a paranormal experience, there’s always a certain undefinable ’something’ about it that isn’t quite right…and that has become one of my ways of knowing I’m having an experience.
We both looked at each other, “I smell it, do you?” “Yeah.” It lasted about two minutes and then was gone. We shrugged it off. It didn’t feel negative, so there was no real cause for alarm. Plus, the car ran and drove great.
The following week, my boyfriend said he tore the car apart up under the dash, all through the interior. There was no trace of BenGay. Not a tube, a smear, nothing. And when he’d pulled up the carpet to install the part of floorpan, he hadn’t seen or smelled anything, either.
A few months later, he got it in his head that he wanted to do a complete tear down and rotisserie rebuild of the car. We lost touch when it was still in boxes. It has been a decade. I wonder if grandma’s grocery getter ever got back on the road. I know I’ll never forget her.
How my ability works…or what I can explain of it
I consider myself a sensitive. I’ve always believed in ghosts. My first experiences were when I was very, very young, but because I was so shy, I kept them to myself. I’m strange enough as it is. I don’t need to claim I see ghosts for people to think I’m a wacko! As a young child, I didn’t want anyone to have a reason not to like me.
Now, I realize that not everyone is going to like me, so I’m no longer afraid. I don’t bring up my ability in conversation unless I’m questioned about it. In which case, I’ll likely talk your ear off!
As a young child, I never had an imaginary friend. It was too much work to imagine one and there were always spirits around that I could talk to, so why use my imagination?
Both of my grandfathers passed on when I was five years old. One of them in particular, on my mom’s side, was the guy who kept the family in touch all the time. He had tons of energy. Everyone loved him. And I swear he loved everyone, too. Nobody has a bad story about that grandpa. All the stories I’ve ever heard were either funny things he did or how sweet and kind and wonderful and helpful he was—how he looked after those he loved. Well, after grandpa died, I never really felt like he was gone. Almost 30 years later, I still feel him around sometimes.
Anyhow, from what I’ve learned over the years, the ability to sense spirits (using any of the senses in conjunction with the 6th) is felt differently in different people.
For me, I get it in the solar-plexus. It’s a sort of tightening feeling. Sometimes it feels strong enough to take my breath away. Often, in those strong environments, I also feel it in my third eye—like someone ramming a railroad spike into my skull, hammering it in all the way until I can feel the head of it against my skin even though there’s no pain in my brain, only in my forehead between my physical eyes. When that happens, I’ve had others ask me if I’m okay because the pain does show on my face before I can stop it.
I usually thank the person for their concern, but insist I’m fine. If it’s someone who knows me, I say something like, “Wow, this place is live.” or “There’s definitely some activity around.” Sometimes, I even ask if the other person feels anything strange. Usually they do. People who don’t consider themselves psychic, too. Sometimes, I know someone’s trying to communicate with me. Sadly and for many different reasons, I can’t always open a connection.
When I walk into a space that is haunted—or has some sort of activity—I concurrently feel my solar-plexus tighten as well as a feeling like I’m essentially walking through jell-o. Sometimes I find it a little difficult to breathe, but that goes away as I acclimate to the new surroundings.
I’ve noticed that when I enter a space with a lot of activity if it’s mostly either troubled spirits or negative energy in general, that’s when I get bombarded the hardest. It’s like going into a room and suddenly everyone wants a piece of you. Like a group of screaming teenage girls when they see their favorite celebrity.
For me, it’s like all of my senses get jammed and I can’t make heads or tails of anything I’m feeling. Sometimes I can adjust to that environment and sometimes I can’t.
I’ve had experiences where the spirit is just too excited to be able to clearly communicate with me. Other times, the spirit is so angry he or she just wants me to leave and tries to make me so uncomfortable that I do, indeed, leave. Sometimes, there’s a lot more than one or two and they’re all excited one way or another or happy to see a sensitive and they talk over each other, trying to get my attention and try as I might, I can’t separate one from the others. I always feel bad when that happens.
How would you feel if only certain people can see or hear you and when someone who can finally arrives, they can’t talk to you? You have so much to say, so much to express, but you can’t. (That, in a nutshell was me growing up. I can relate to those spirits. And I think that’s one of the reasons I’m so sensitive.)
I recently paid a visit to the Queen Mary in Long Beach. I was innocently talking to my friend, not even thinking about the fact that I was about to walk into a ship that many consider haunted. I don’t recall what we were talking about, but the moment I crossed over the threshold and stepped onto the ship, my breath caught and the lobby felt very heavy and thick—like jell-o—to move through.
At that moment, I scolded myself for not being prepared. As we checked in to get our room and walked down the hallway, I spent the time trying to adjust and tune in. Otherwise, I was just going to be restless the entire time I was there…and that would be no fun! I did mention it to my friend and she said she didn’t feel much. She doesn’t have the same ability as I do. She’s more proficient with premonitions…which she unintentionally demonstrated later on!
Once I got acclimated, I was okay and tried to single out a few spirits to communicate with just for fun. I felt I was eventually successful sorting through the jumble of place memory versus spirits, but I have no evidence to back it up.
That’s another thing. I’ve been living under a rock for so long… I don’t watch television. I don’t listen to the radio. I’ve been disconnected from the world of paranormal investigation. I’ve read books over the years and have always enjoyed ghost stories, but as for staying on top of the latest technological advances in proving paranormal existence, I’m quite far out of the loop.
Besides, I don’t need physical proof. I already know there are spirits. I always have. You can tell me different or that I’m cavorting with the devil, but I know where I stand, I know what I know and were the naysayer in my position he’d likely see the world the way I do, too.
This is one of the reasons I don’t talk about my experiences much. I don’t have much proof of them. It has been rare when I’ve been with someone else when something unexplained happens that can’t be debunked. But it has happened a few times and I plan to blog about those experiences, too.
I’ve worked in many theaters and as you probably already know…every theater has a ghost—most have several. Honestly, these are the entities who helped me hone my ability. Some are legendary and still haunt the theaters to this day. Some, I never got a concrete answer as to whether the person had anything to do with the particular theater. But I felt their spirit, felt them trying to communicate and in some instances witnessed them with my other senses.
I feel it’s time I talked about my experiences, wrote them down and shared. Maybe someone else can learn something from them. Maybe I can, too.
How do you ’know’ when spirits are around?
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