I Can’t Stand It Anymore!

It’s after 1AM and I just gotta get blog. I just gotta. I’ve gone too long since my last post. There are many really great reasons for that, too, though.

I’ve been making lots and lots of necklaces, developing new designs, even selling them at swap meets just to do that inevitably fun ‘something’ with them this time around.

I just got home from a New Kids on The Block concert. They were awesome as always. I even met them ahead of the show. Tonight was my seventh time. Back in the day, I went to 9 concerts, but was never able to meet them. I suppose I’m making up for that now and I’m sooooooooooo glad for it. They were absolutely worth the wait.

Because I’m too lazy when it comes to myself, I use the concerts as incentive/inspiration for me to create more outfits. I haven’t even twittered the last few days because I was making a little halter top and pants/skirt. I’ve never done a halter top before, so that was quite an experience. I didn’t even have a pattern I could fudge from. I just had to do it on the fly. The pants were easy, though. Yoga pants. I can whip up a pair of ’em in less than an hour. Then, I draped a quasi-skirt over the top.

Yoga is another thing I’ve been doing more of. I barely talk about it on my blog here, but I absolutely love yoga and all that it allows me to do and feel and be. Bending, stretching, twisting…and building tons of strength…while really taking control by doing the poses and in turn, they do me, good golly, I wish I could live on my mat.

I built another website. It’s not completely finished yet, but it’s damn close. Tomorrow, I’ll be helping out at a TAPS boot camp. I absolutely love being a TAPS member. Ghosts were people, too. There’s no reason to be afraid of them. Yeah, strangeness abounds when they’re active, but that’s only if you refuse to admit what your senses are telling you. Some of the most interesting people I’ve met are dead and I plan to meet many, many more.

It seems I’ve got my hands in a little bit of everything these days and I wouldn’t have my life any other way. In fact, just the other day I was telling someone about how even two years later, I still have trouble believing I was paid to drive a Lamborghini Gallardo, a Porsche 911 Turbo and 2 Ferrari F430s. These are the kinds of things that happen in my life and I wouldn’t trade them for the world.

However, I really should blog more about them!

Anyhow, a few weeks back, at a swap meet, I scored a composition ball-jointed antique doll body. It needs to be restrung, but so do several of my other dolls–some are even on display smashed between two others so that it’s not obvious their arms aren’t really attached. Hell, some of them, their heads are just sitting on their bodies. One good earthquake and they come trembling down. Is it wrong for me to find that hilarious?

Anyhow, I wanna blog about restringing. I’ve never done it before, so I wanna see if I can do it.

My cars need some work, too. I’ve had the replacement speaker for my Prowler over 2 years now, at least. Plus, I’m finally sick of the manual switch on the fan in my ’68 Fastback. Well, it’s not really a switch. When I go to drive the car, I have to plug the fan in or it won’t turn on at all. Heaven forbid I should leave it on while I’m in yoga class. I’d come out to a dead battery and that would be very, very bad. I’ve got the proper thermostatic relay switch. I just need to install it. The wiring is already done and everything. I dunno why such a quick job has gotten backed up in my queue.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll also be doing a lot of writing. Jen’s handed the current few chapters to me. One to rewrite/edit/change, the other to draft. Eternal Talisman is gonna be an amazing book when we’re through with it. The characters come alive. They live, they love, they fight, they laugh, they lead very tumultuous lives, but yet somehow they pull it all together and help each other through.

If I can’t be back at the New Kids on the Block concert right now, I’d like to be in Talisman Bay. Maybe I’ll dream myself there tonight. That would be awesome. Have a wonderful weekend!

Queen Mary

So, earlier this year a friend of mine wanted to go to an event on the Queen Mary, but didn’t want to go on it herself. She said, “Hey Lisa, you’re into ghosts, right? Wanna go with me to this thing?” Me, being unafraid of both ghosts and adventure said, “Hell yeah!” and we went.

Little did I know it’d be a life-altering event.

This pic was from the first night. Before all the discussions, investigation, just about everything. I had no idea that being there on that ship for this little paranormal convention was going to change my life…

Well, not really change it. I’ve always believed in ghosts. (Click here to read the whole paranormal category including my personal ghost experiences up to now.) I’d just never really done anything with my sensitivity/sixth sense other than ignore it or play with it. I’d never pursued using it to help others.

So energized and excited about the paranormal field after that event in February, I got on myspace and started friending all the people I’d met at the event and blogging my experiences. One thing led to another and I was invited to join the TAPS West Coast Home Team.

That has certainly changed my life. I made a bunch of new friends all in one shot and not only are they friends, they understand when I say that I can sense ghosts! They probably do think I’m crazy from time to time, but for the most part they understand and that’s good enough by me. I’m weird enough as it is… I understand when I’m considered too weird.

Getting involved in the paranormal field has made a difference in my life and I hope it makes a difference in others’ lives as well. I don’t want anyone to be afraid of ghosts. There’s really nothing to fear. I’ve met some of the most interesting people alive or dead because of my interest in the paranormal.

Back to Denise, who dragged me to that first event on the Queen Mary back in February… She had no idea that within a year I’d not only get re-energized about the paranormal, but also become an investigator, let alone a TAPS member. No idea. But the moment I saw Grant, I had to get another picture with him and Denise because it’s her fault that all this happened in the first place.

We didn’t get a picture with Jason for some reason. Oh well. There will definitely be a next time.

My time at the Stanley Hotel

For all intents and purposes, this was a vacation. It was not my usual kind of vacation because I really love to go and see and do when I’m on vacation. This was more for my husband. He likes to go somewhere and do nothing. Well, he did write a significant chunk of his novel on this trip. Got it out of the starting gate with a huge bang, I might add. Me, well, I had fun for a few days and was bored for a few more.

Anyhow, back in February, I’d gone to a paranormal event on the Queen Mary (which I’ll post about in the coming days) and afterward, I was hooked. I wanted to do more, so I booked the event at the Stanley hotel almost immediately. I figured that since it was so far in the future, I couldn’t turn back if I already had the tickets. I couldn’t weasel out somehow and neither could my husband. We would have to go.

And go we most definitely did.

That place is crazy with activity. It really is. I was astonished. But mainly, what I wanted to do was meet Jason and Grant now that I was part of their extended team. I’m a TAPS West Coast Home Team member and loving every minute of it, so meeting them again on those terms was so awesome.

I truly enjoyed being there, listening to all the discussions and meeting new friends.

It was also my husband’s first event. Being a photographer, he even got a few action shots during the day between investigations and discussions. It’s just hard for me not to be investigating when I’m in an area where everyone knows what I’m doing and not just talking to myself or recording thin air.

It definitely helps the photographs that the Stanley hotel is so darn gorgeous. I can’t wait to go back, but I know it’ll be awhile.

Oh, the Theatah!

So, I was perusing a file of photos and came across a huge stack I was going to post here once upon a time. While I don’t have the mountain of time required to process all the images at this exact moment, I did have the time to post one.

And here it is:

This is the private theater of Adelina Patti. She was the first person in Wales to have electricity in her home. I snuck behind that original drop and discovered that the technology has not been updated. Every spot a gas burner would have been, there’s a lightbulb.

I couldn’t believe my eyes. I mean, I’d read mountains on the topic of stage lighting from candles to early electricity, but never thought I’d get to witness it in person. This was the type of thing I’d only ever seen in pictures and illustrations. I wanted to spend hours there in Adelina’s theater.

Sure, the front of house is all gold leaf and finery, but I wanted to explore the fly gallery and all the electrics. I couldn’t quickly figure out where the controls were or I’d’ve definitely snuck in there, too. It was dark, I didn’t have a flashlight and backstage was in use as a storage facility during restoration.

I’ll go back to Crag-Y-Nos someday. You bet I will. And maybe, just maybe, I’ll go on another impromptu tour backstage…perhaps a ghost of performances past would show me around!

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.

Me and the Ghost (Part Two)

Okay, I’ve already shared the beginning of this story–the icky thing in the creepy storage room where I did lighting for a week-long symposium. Now, I’m going to get into the stuff I really don’t talk about. I’m weird enough, I don’t need to claim I see ghosts, too. But I do feel it’s time I write it all down–or as much as I can remember.

The writings I’d done at the time seem to have disappeared, but I hope they resurface in one of my old files or binders one day. I found some later writings that referred back to what I’m about to post. Unfortunately, they aren’t as detailed as what I wrote during the experience. I suppose everything happens for a reason and if they’re important, they’ll resurface later.

This is a long one, so grab your favorite beverage and get comfy…

I explained that the big room where the symposium was taking place had two storage rooms, each with a ladder up to the catwalks–and one of the rooms had something very powerful in it which made me not want to be in there. I still don’t know what was going on in there and I’m not sure I want to!

However, I haven’t mentioned the room where I spent four eight-hour days in semi-darkness (which is more light than the average light board operator gets while running most theatrical shows).

The light booth could not be reached from the big room where the symposium was going on. I had to go out, down a hallway off the lobby (which was shared with a movie theater next door). This part of the hallway was on the circuit for the theater which wasn’t in use at the time, so only the single emergency light bulb was lit.

I was given one of only three keys to that particular light booth: the janitor had a master key (but given all the dust, I doubt the room was on his list of rounds), my boss had a single key and Operations had the spare. My boss took the one off of her ring and I put it in my pocket.

The door to the light booth was marked Authorized Personnel Only. The lock itself was hard to turn and sometimes it was necessary to jiggle the key a little. The door was always locked. There was no way to get it open from the hallway without the key. Once through the door (which was hard to push open and wasn’t adjusted very well so it slammed if you didn’t hold the handle and fight with it)(this was particularly important to notice because if I needed to make a run to the little girl’s room during the show, I couldn’t let the door slam or the audience could hear it), there was a cinderblock room with a hardwired fluorescent light that could not be turned off and a set of metal and concrete stairs leading up.

The framework was metal with railings on both sides, so if you put your hand on the rail on the left, it could get smashed between the rail and the wall. The stairs were also very narrow. It wasn’t possible for two people to walk on the same step at the same time. There were twelve stairs after about four plus a landing and number eight was loose. When I stepped on it, it wiggled and made a bit of a noise. Not a lot, but definitely a recognizable sound.

Even on my first ascent, I thought those things were dangerous. Between smashing my fingers once (it only took once to learn that lesson!) and the disorientation caused by the shaking, loose stair, I did not have much confidence in their safety and always took them one at a time and with much care. They weren’t rickety, but they shook as a unit and the idea of falling down concrete stairs while my flailing arms and legs could get caught in the rails wasn’t comforting. Also, if that step number eight decided to crack open and break away, I am small enough to fall right through…onto the cement floor. No fun, either.

At the top of the stairs was another landing in front of an opening that led to the light booth itself. The carpet was maroon and brown with a ten-inch lattice and flower pattern that reminded me of the 70s. Right next to the doorway was a light turquoise fiberglass and metal chair. Straight ahead from the doorway was the sound rack. There was a reel-to-reel machine, a graphic equalizer, some speaker patch panels, a few amps and a rack-mounted, ten-channel sound board. None of this equipment was to be used for the symposium. Their audio was handled from an auxiliary board downstairs and didn’t hook into the house system at all.

The room was about twenty-five to thirty feet long and about fifteen feet deep. There were windows on the long side overlooking the room below. As customary, one pane was missing nearest the sound rack in case us technicians needed to hear what was going on in the room below or if during load-in or load-out upstairs and downstairs needed to communicate. Near the back wall, there was a miscellaneous pile of lighting gel–some in an accordion file and some in a messy heap around the file. Many were cut as circles for followspots, but some were square for regular stage lighting.

On the opposite side of the room was a chair and table with a small light board set up next to a house light panel built into the wall. That was where I got to spend my time.

On the first day, about an hour into the symposium, I noticed that I kept glancing back at the chair near the door. After the fourth or so time, I started to really wonder why I was doing it. On the fifth, I realized it was because I’d thought someone had come into the room. But I was the only one around who had a key, I didn’t hear the downstairs door in the echoey concrete entry and step number eight didn’t make its wiggle noise. (Would you believe that during my time up in the light booth, I went into the stairwell specifically to figure out if it was possible to step on step number eight without it making noise and couldn’t do it silently!?)

Well, if all that was true, maybe I was sensing a ghost. The thought no sooner crossed my mind than I had a gut feeling that yes, ‘someone’ was in the room with me. Hmmm…

The symposium was pretty boring for me and it was easy to figure out when they needed the lights up or down, so why not see if I could tune in and figure out the presence?

On the next time I turned around, I didn’t just glance, I stared right where I felt the largest concentration of energy. Then I smiled and whispered, “I know you’re there.”

The energy in the chair went from sitting to standing and moved toward me. The words, “You know I’m here?” came into my mind. “You really know I’m here?”

Remember what I said about reading this for entertainment value if you’re a skeptic? Well… from here on out, you really have to suspend your disbelief. I’m not writing fiction here, I swear it. I’m writing what I experienced. It’s entirely possible you’ll think that this is just my imagination. Feel free, but I’m going to go on with my story anyway.

“Yes. I can feel you. I can’t see you exactly, but I can feel you.”

Remember how in previous posts I said most of what I sense are emotions or I sometimes get vague imagery or sound? Well, this case is no different. But because I had so many hours up there alone with this entity, rather than be afraid, I tried to tune in, to understand, to be receptive and hopefully make a new friend. I did not sense any danger.

The entity started moving around the room and I turned my head, watching its movements.

I chuckled. “I can’t see you exactly, but I know you’re moving around.”

“Wow.”

“Wow?”

“No one else who’s come up here has done that.” The entity stopped about three feet away from me.

My mind’s eye started to tune the spirit in as a sort of light shadow overlaid on my physical sight. The entity was shaped more like a man than a woman and I realized that his voice was more masculine than feminine even though it wasn’t exactly clear in my head. I kept smiling. “Did you want them to know you’re here?”

“I don’t know. Sometimes. Maybe.” It was like he’d never really thought about it before. “No one really comes up here much anyway.”

“What’s your name?”

Okay, this is once again where I have trouble. I’m terrible with names. It took probably four times of me trying to interpret his name and he may have given up on me and just settled on “James” because it was close enough to whatever his real name was, but when I called him James, it seemed to fit the best. It felt the most correct out of all the names I struggled with. (See why you need to suspend your disbelief! My ability gets hard to interpret verbatim, so it’s reasonably unreliable when I communicate. As for sensing location of the energy, I’m usually right on.)

The next four hours with James were mostly about me trying to tune him in when I wasn’t bringing the lights up or down as required for the symposium. I felt zero danger, in fact I felt pretty good up there alone, locked in with a ghost.

The following day, I opened the downstairs door and went up the stairs to ghost the lights in order to do my dimmer check. I greeted James and told him I’d be right back. He seemed glad to see me and glad I knew he was there again.

I needed to adjust the focus of one of the lights, so I went into the creepy room to the ladder, climbed up, did the adjustment and went back down. I lingered in the creepy room just to see what would happen. Visions of the black, jagged, clawed, wicked thing this time with red eyes flooded through my head, so I left. Who knows if there really was something that looked like that in the dark corner in the back, but that’s the image it gave me to chew on, so rather than piss it off more than it already was, I walked out. Whether it knew I was there, I don’t know. It seemed so wrapped up in emanating hatred and vicious disdain that I couldn’t tell if it was sentient or not.

I went back up to the light booth and the symposium got underway. That day, I’d brought a binder to write in. I wasn’t writing stories at the time, just my thoughts, journal entries basically. I wrote about James a little bit. He looked over my shoulder and laughed and asked me to write a few things. I got them wrong and he laughed harder.

That afternoon, I got really tired of sitting at the table, so I went to the pile of lighting gel in the back of the room. There was a swatch book and a grease pencil, so I started picking up unmarked gels and matching them in the swatch book so that I could mark and file them. James had left for a while, but he came back when I was sitting there on the floor with the gels.

I picked up a bright Barbie pink one and couldn’t put it down. James seemed excited. I tried to tune him in because it seemed like he had something to say about it.

As best as I could interpret, he said, “That’s the color pink my girlfriend wore when we went to our high school prom. A strapless dress with a big flower.” Although, I couldn’t figure out if the flower was in her hair or on the waist of the dress or maybe the dress had a flower on it and she also put one in her hair. He was so excited that he was going too fast for me to keep up. “Do you know where she is? I miss her. I was going to marry her.”

My needle skipped off my record. “What?”

“I miss Annie. Do you know where she is? Can you find her? I want to see her again. I want to be with her. We were going to get married…” And then my interpretation skills started sucking again, but it seemed like he was trying to say that he died just before they were about to be married. (At a later time, I’d written that he said he’d died as a result of falling down the cement stairs in 1978. I don’t know what to believe other than that he knew he was dead and it had been untimely.) I felt a borrowed sense of longing and knew I was picking up James’s emotion because at the moment, I wasn’t really missing anyone.

So, there I was, still holding the pink gel and trying to tune in to James. I explained I wasn’t sure I could help him find her. He left for a little while and I kept going with identifying the gels.

I got to another pink one and he showed up again. “Thank you.”

“What? Why are you thanking me?”

“You’re talking to me. It’s okay you can’t find Annie. I miss her, but that’s okay. I’ll find her someday.” His emotion went from sort of sad to a disguising happy. “Stand up. If you can hear me, stand up.”

“Stand up? Why?”

“Just do it. I want to show you something.”

Uh-oh, in the past, when a ghost wanted to show me something, it wasn’t particularly something I wanted to look at.

He sensed my apprehension. “I just want to dance with you…like I did with Annie.”

Okay…write off my sanity completely now! I stood up and good golly I swore I felt his hand on my hip, his other hand in the air, waiting for mine.

So, I danced a few bars with a ghost. Go ahead, laugh, make fun of me, whatever, but bottom line it was fun. Even during the experience, I was laughing. There was a certain kind of happiness and whether I was really dancing with him or not, who cares? I had nothing else to do at the moment.

(But answer me this, would you think I was crazy had I just danced by myself for the sake of dancing? Not so much, I bet. But because I think I was dancing with a ghost, you might think I’m nuts. Funny how that little detail colors the event. Now do you see why I don’t talk about this experience much?)

I broke away because I needed to change the lights. He thanked me and either left or I simply lost track of him.

At the end of the day, I thanked him for helping me fight away the boredom. There were only two more days left.

That next day, not much new happened. We talked a little about various things. This was when I tried to figure out how he’d died and still couldn’t make heads or tails of it although it really seemed like if it wasn’t because of falling down the stairs, he’d somehow died in that building somewhere. He did, however, know he was dead. He said it had taken him awhile to figure it out. “At first, no one saw me and I started to really wonder what was going on, but after awhile, I kind of figured out that I must be dead. I believed in ghosts when I was alive. This must be what it’s like.”

I asked him more about ‘what it’s like’, but couldn’t understand what he was trying to say. The emotions I got were happy at times, sad at others, a little frustrated, but ultimately content and okay with it. He said mostly, he just missed Annie and that I reminded him of her. There was a sense that perhaps time where he was and time where I was were totally different things, but he didn’t actually say that.

At the end of that third day, I told him that tomorrow would be my last day up there and I didn’t know when I’d be able to come back. “I’m gonna miss you, though. And whenever there’s another event in here, I’ll try to get on the crew for it.”

“Please do. You know I’m here. No one else can see me.”

“I don’t actually see you very well, I sense you.”

“Whatever. You look at me. No one looks at me.”

Wow. That seemed so important to him. His loneliness finally clicked with me. (I know, I know…took me long enough!)

“I’d like to really see you, James. Maybe tomorrow you could show me.”

“I’ll try. It’s really hard, but I’ll try.”

“Okay. Oh, one more thing before I go… What is up with the stage left storage room? What is in there?”

“Don’t go in there.”

“I don’t like to. I don’t want to. What’s in there?”

“Just please don’t go in there. It’s not good. Don’t go in there. Please don’t go in there. I really mean it. It’s not good in there.”

“I know it’s not good in there. I hate it in there.”

“Don’t go in there.”

“Sometimes I have to.”

“Use the other ladder or run, don’t walk if you have to go through there. It’s not safe.”

“What is it?”

“Just don’t. Please don’t. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“It’s just a room.”

“Don’t go in there, okay? Do you hear me? Don’t go in that room.” He was adamant.

“Yes, James, I hear you. I’ll do my best to stay out of there.”

“See you tomorrow, then.”

“Yes, see you tomorrow.” I smiled and felt him give me a hug. It was kind of strange, but I felt his energy surround me completely. Seriously, I felt him just like feeling any other friend giving me a hug.

The next day was the last day. I wrote more in my binder journal but aside from him greeting me when I arrived, I hardly sensed him around much at all. He popped in and said hello, even made me laugh a few times. But for the most part, he just wasn’t there.

About an hour before the symposium was to end, I was writing in my journal about nothing in particular. I’d brought the lights down low because they were watching a movie that was to last about a half an hour.

All of a sudden, I got the distinct feeling that someone had come into the room. As I lifted and turned my head, I reviewed the fact that I hadn’t heard the slamming door downstairs, nor the wiggle noise from step number eight and then clearly, but still in my peripheral vision because my head wasn’t all the way turned toward the doorway yet, I saw a man walk from the doorway to the sound rack.

I stood and walked toward the rack, wondering if I’d just zoned out and missed the door slam and step wiggle and someone affiliated with the symposium or perhaps Operations had come up to see how the show was going, “Can I help you?” or maybe someone was just lost, “Hello?” and maybe they didn’t see me over there in the corner when they walked in. It was rare that anyone who wasn’t part of the crew would walk into a light booth alone during a show anyway, so why was this guy up here?

There was no one there.

But I swear I saw a man wearing faded blue jeans, 70s-style Nike-type running shoes, a baseball shirt with a white torso and yellow diagonal sleeves. There was even a number on it which I couldn’t read and on one sleeve, there were two red stripes, a black one on the other. He had blonde shaggy hair that came just below his ears and he was young–college age or so.

And good golly, he reminded me of the stuff I’d talked about with James.

I stood there, staring at the whole-lot-of-no-person next to the sound rack and swallowed hard. What had I just seen? Someone had walked in. I knew it. He was three-dimensional and far from imaginary. The hairs on the back of my neck were standing at attention. Maybe I’d just seen a ghost. Had I really just seen a ghost? No. Wait. Yeah, it sure as hell seemed like it. The more I replayed it in my head, the more I knew that since there wasn’t a human standing next to that sound rack, I had indeed seen a ghost.

“Did you see me?” James asked.

“Yes. Yeah, I did.” I was still in shock.

“Then what’s wrong?”

“I’ve never actually seen a ghost before.”

“Well, now you have.”

I laughed. “Thank you, but next time, could you give me a little warning? I wasn’t expecting you. I was kind of scared.”

“Don’t be.” He faded away while I stood there dumbfounded for another minute or so.

I didn’t feel him much the rest of the day. During the load-out, I avoided the creepy room as much as possible. When I went back up to the light booth to shut everything down, we said our goodbyes and I really didn’t want to go.

The following week, I was back to work in the live theater next door–the one I normally worked in. That symposium was kind of a fluke and I sadly never worked another gig in that big room.

But one night when it was quiet up in the other light booth, I was programming the light board for a jazz concert and I felt James behind me. Faintly, but he was there. I turned around and let him know I knew he was there. He was very difficult to tune in to communicate with him, but from what I could understand, it was hard for him to really be there in that particular theater even though it was only about a hundred-fifty feet from the other light booth.

I worked in that space for a few more months before finding another job. On nights I was up there alone, I felt him come and go, but yeah, it was hard to clearly tune in to him there.

I haven’t been back to those spaces in about ten years, but as you can see, our time together hasn’t faded much and I hope it never will.

According to the writings I found from a few months after the symposium, James was always comforting, kind and compassionate. I always felt good around him. That’s one of the ways I knew he was there. Just like Tex in that other theater, James confirmed that ghosts aren’t bad, they’re just different.

If I ever get the opportunity to go back to that space, you bet I will. And for James’s sake, I’ll stay out of the creepy storage room.

Little Bits and Part One

I’ve covered the stories I usually tell whenever someone asks if I believe in ghosts or why do I believe in ghosts or if they straight out ask me to tell them one of my ghost experiences. If you missed them, please scroll down because what I’m about to post kind of needs a little set up.

I haven’t covered some of the smaller things… Like the showerhead that came on and off as soon as my husband and I entered our hotel room in Windsor, UK. Or the time I thought I felt the spirit of a young girl who’d committed suicide in the dorm building across from where I was living, so I asked her for a sign and the hallway light came on despite the fact that I was the only one in my dorm at the time. Whether that was really her or not, I don’t know, but the light came on when I’d asked for a sign. ‘Someone’ was there.

I’ve also left out the year or so when our gang of 5 turtles would randomly start paddling like they’re about to be fed, but there’s no one in front of the aquarium. They were all looking at the same place and expecting food, but the spot was empty. What were they looking at? Or more specifically, who? They don’t dance when you put a chair or other object in front of the tank. They only dance for people. Both my husband and I witnessed that together as well as alone. Makes me wonder how the turtles could see the ghost, but we couldn’t. And where did that person go? The turtles haven’t ‘danced for no one’ for about five years now.

I also just recently remembered an early morning when I was in fourth grade. We had a spa outside at home. I’d folded the heavy cover back half way like usual. There was no one around but me. Since it was about 4:30AM, I fell asleep lounging there in the nice warm water like I did most mornings before school.

Then I heard, “Wake up, wake up, wake up!” in my grandfather’s voice, startling me. I opened my eyes in enough time to catch the heavy spa lid about an inch from my nose. The wind hand blown the cover over and would’ve caused serious damage to my face and neck had it landed. Talk about a scary close call. There wasn’t even time to scream.

Now, in the next two posts, I’m going to write about someone I have told very few people about…like maybe three people total. And I don’t think I’ve told them everything. I do, however, tell just about anybody what happened at the end of this tale. The rest is somewhat personal, but mostly it’s hard for a skeptic to believe. I have not done any research and I wouldn’t even know where to start. I also have no evidence. So, if you don’t believe in ghosts or that I’m sensitive to them and want to keep reading anyway, pretend it’s just a story and hopefully it will entertain you.

In August of 1997, I was a lighting technician assigned to do the lighting and run the light board for a symposium. It was five days of easy money as far as I was concerned. This was to take place in a large sort of banquet room with a high ceiling. There were two storage rooms on one end. We set up several risers to be a stage. There were lighting positions up on a ledge where we had some lights clamped to a few pipe-and-base setups.

Obviously, this wasn’t a major theatrical production. For the most part, they were going to use the house lights, but when they showed slides or movies, they needed different lighting in order to see what was on the screen.

I hadn’t worked in the space, but I’d been in there once before. A big room without windows. Nothing special. During the load-in, all I was in charge of was lighting. There was a podium set up, so I figured I’d get up onto the catwalks and get it lit first.

I walked into the stage left storage room and my breath caught. Hard. I was practically blinded with a sort of darkness even though the light was on.

What the hell was that? I stopped. Good golly, I felt uncomfortable, but I had a job to do.

Oh well. Whatever. Get to the ladder and get up it so I don’t have to stay in there.

I climbed up two rungs at a time and got out onto the catwalk–which was literally a ledge that went all the way around the room, without guardrails or anything. I did what I needed to do with the lights and since that took me around to the other side of the room, I went down the opposite ladder–the one in the other storage room.

Okay. I climbed down to the floor. That room did not have the same effect on my sixth sense as the other creepy room, but I felt as though there was something on the other side of wall it shared with the other room…something very bad or at least very powerful. Hmmm… Kind of strange, but whatever. I took the mental note and continued working.

The day wore on and I got the lights ready before helping with some of the chairs and staging. My co-workers went into the creepy storage room and stood there talking and joking amongst themselves. I went in and thought I was going to die of creepy-wacky-weird-o-matic-ness, so I backed out to the doorway and made excuses not to actually come into the room.

I look back now and laugh my ass off. I’d never done that before and haven’t done it since!

My co-workers thought nothing of it because I’m a hard worker. If there were some nasty (fake) handprints on the door, it wasn’t strange to see me wiping down the door or even picking up (fake) dirt or lint from the floor. Yes, I made up stuff to do which would keep me from going into that room unless I absolutely had to.

Every single time I went into that freakin’ room, I got bombarded with either black imagery with sharp edges or a sort of deep wheezing, growling breath and of course an overwhelming desire to not be in that room. I did ask one of my co-workers if that room felt strange and he said no. I suppose it was just me, but at least the energy was confined to only that room.

Why was this such a big deal? Why don’t I talk about it? Well, honestly, it’s not the thing-in-the-room part of the story I don’t talk about because it was so personal, etc. There’s more to the story…in a different room…with ‘someone’ else…who essentially solidified many of my beliefs in the afterlife and how much of it works. There are exceptions to every rule, though. Nothing is certain.

And someone else in the position I was in might see things much, much differently than I did.

Like the essay I wrote in 11th grade about Thoreau and Emerson… I wanted to work on one of the many stories I wrote after school, but I had to write the stupid school essay, so I combined them. I used the characters from my story and put them in the essay. My teacher thought it was the most brilliant essay ever turned in to him. A+

He saw something in my writing that I did not intentionally put there. He interpreted that essay differently than I did.

To me, much of paranormal investigation is subjective like that. In a philosophy class that I never raised my hand during, when it came to the existence of ghosts, I just couldn’t sit on my hand any longer and shy little me found myself in a debate with a guy who didn’t believe in ghosts.

I asked him, “Have you ever seen a ghost?”

“No. Of course not.”

“With all due respect, sir, that’s probably why you don’t believe in them.” A hush fell over the class. “I have seen a ghost and if you were in the same situation, experiencing the same thing I experienced, you’d likely believe they exist, too.”

He didn’t appreciate that and said things which equated to me cavorting with Satan. I was discouraged (from ever speaking out in class ever again), but not vanquished. Others in the class seemed shocked that I had actually spoken out and began sharing unexplained occurrences in their lives and it was so nice to hear that I wasn’t alone. I thought the one guy was going to start crying or something. He was utterly mortified. Can you imagine what he would’ve done if I’d owned up to being sensitive, too?!?!

This conversation happened about a month after the experience I’ll post next time. Not everyone is going to believe it and that’s totally fine with me. Non-believers can treat it as entertainment.

I know in my heart what I experienced and honestly, others may have interpreted it differently, but the triggers were there for me to experience it the way I did and if I’m not true to myself, who can I be true to?

So, next time I’ll share the week I spent one-on-one with a ghost.

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.

What does the future hold? I have NO idea…

In earlier posts, I’ve explained that I’m sensitive to paranormal activity. I’m psychic, however, I don’t get many premonitions whether in the form of feelings or even prophetic dreams. I simply suck at trying to foretell the future and I’m totally okay with that because I’ve got plenty of other stuff going on.

However, that doesn’t mean I haven’t had any premonitions.

A simple one happened after my car got wrecked in 1999. As soon as the tow truck arrived, I knew the path to getting my car back on the road again was going to be long and suck pretty hard. I also knew that I needed to go through it and learn from it. Both of those feelings came true, but let’s be honest…the feelings were awfully vague and I try to learn from every experience in my life anyway, so that one was no different. Although, in this particular instance, the grief I felt I was about to embark upon was not enough to make me tell the driver not to load up my car, not to take it to that shop. I felt I was in the right place, doing the right thing and should continue on with it even though it was going to suck.

Was that a premonition? I don’t know, but I’ve had a lot of similar situations. I just chalk them up to life experiences. I’ve also had times when I’d receive a feeling and indeed I would stop what I was doing and change directions because I felt something bad would happen if I continued. The problem is that I couldn’t experience both paths at the same time, so I don’t really know if I chose the better path. There’s no way for me to check my answer other than in my heart, I felt I was making the right choice.

To me, there are triggers. Thoughts, actions, things that pop into my head which trigger me to double-check what I’m doing is the best thing for the circumstances. Sometimes I ignore them, sometimes they can’t be ignored.

I have a few friends who are pretty good with premonitions even when they’re not really trying to foretell the future. Things just unfold in ways they said they would because somehow they just knew how it would happen.

I’m not generally like that. In one instance, I was driving back to work after lunch in 1998. I was in the lane next to the sidewalk. There were cars parked solid along the street on that particular block. A black, full-size, long bed pickup truck was in the lane to my left. Clear as day, I heard my grandfather’s voice shout, “Slow down!” Because his tone was so urgent, I was kind of scared and did as he said, hitting my brake, but not hard enough to lock up my wheels.

The pickup truck came within about two inches of my front bumper as he swerved into my lane and stayed there.

I would have been slammed into all the parked cars had I not slowed down. Premonition? I don’t really know for sure, but I definitely heard Grandpa’s voice. I hadn’t heard him talk for twenty years, but I would have recognized his voice anywhere.

Fast forward to 2003 around Halloween. This was one of the big firestorm years here in Southern California. The fire had burned up to my back fence the night before and I was heading to the set of a movie I was working on as a background actor.

A sense of urgency came over me. There was a telltale tightening in my solar-plexus, heightening the urgency. I had a feeling that I really needed to turn around and go back home. I didn’t know why, but it was very, very important. However, I also felt that if I turned around, I wouldn’t get there in time to do anything about whatever bad thing was about to happen.

I also honestly knew that if I turned around, I wouldn’t be able to make it home and back before my call time. Hmmm… That left calling my husband.

“I really need you to go home right now. I don’t know why, but I feel like something bad is going to happen. Can you just go home and check to make sure everything is okay. Please? I’d go if I could, but I can’t. Will you do that, please? I don’t know why, but it’s important that one of us go home right now and I can’t, otherwise I would.”

Generally, my husband is a workaholic. It requires a crowbar to get him out of his office–especially in the middle of the day and, good grief what a crazy, wacko reason I was giving him to drop everything and go to the house.

But he said there was something in my voice, something in the urgency, the fear, something that made him curious.

The police still weren’t letting even residents drive up into our neighborhood, so he parked at the base of our hill and walked all the way up through the subdivision, all the way up to our house.

All was quiet. The hills were still smoldering, but the house was fine. He walked out on our back deck on the second floor and surveyed the yard, the hills, the view in general, but there was nothing wrong, nothing bad going on, nothing truly unusual.

He said just as he said to himself, “Looks like she was wrong. Oh well.” and was about to turn around and go back inside, Whoosh! One of the trees on the back hill ignited. He ran inside to find the phone, even fumbled it trying to dial 911 because he was so surprised.

Firefighters came back and put it out and all was quiet once again. He called to tell me all that had happened and swore he’d never doubt my psychic ability ever again.

Premonition? I firmly believe yes. No one told me, I just knew.

Yeah, I didn’t get the details about what was going to happen, but I knew something needed to be done at home.

Although I suck at foretelling the future, I believe that if the event is important enough, I’ll pick up enough information to do something about it–whether that “something” is simply preparing for the worst or actively participating in an outcome that likely would not have happened had I not gotten some sort of feeling about the situation.

If I hadn’t called my husband, he definitely would not have been there and who’s to say whether that tree would’ve sparked fire on our property or that of our neighbors. But I do believe that since he witnessed the ignition, he was able to get the situation taken care of before it could escalate. Premonition or not, I’m glad no one’s house burned down.

Also, for the most part, most of my ability lies in feelings, empathy, emotion, not the physical senses, so in order to make heads or tails of what I feel, I have to tune in or interpret the information I receive through my sixth sense. And it’s not easy. It takes practice. And each situation is different although the same basic foundations are there. The more I encounter, the more I learn, the more educated I am in order to figure out how to deal with the next encounter and so on.

For those who don’t have this kind of sensitivity, the best way I can describe it right now is for you to go into your bedroom. You see everything that’s there. The furniture, whatever might be on it and around it, even the carpet on the floor, the light fixture or fan on the ceiling. You see it. You know it’s there.

Okay, now close your eyes. Can you still see it…or at least imagine it? Probably not in the same detail, but you can remember the basics.

That’s kind of how my sense works. Some things are easy to interpret…like if I walk into my bedroom, I know where the bed is and even if I didn’t, I know what a bed feels like, so if I trip over it or something, I can still identify it as a bed.

If I’m already blindfolded and I walk into a room I’m unfamiliar with, I find myself paying particular attention to the sound my footsteps make and whether they echo off of anything other than walls and how far away those walls are located from where I walk in.

I also use my sense of smell. For instance, I might know I’m in a garage because I can smell the motor oil. Then because there’s concrete under my feet, I can make the assumption that it’s most likely a garage. Plus, the echo of my footsteps off of the space plus all of the various items, some large, some small helps, too. It’s still an assumption, though, but a somewhat educated one because I’ve been in many garages and am familiar with the most common contents.

Each experience builds on the ones prior.

(I think this is also one of the reasons I seek out small adventures in my life and try to have as many different life experiences as I can. For instance, I work as a background actor because it takes me to places I wouldn’t likely go, I meet people I wouldn’t likely meet and I do things I wouldn’t normally do.)

Beyond these physical senses, my sixth sort of comes alive, sensing energy. To me, every object has energy. Some objects more than others. One of the hard parts is figuring out which objects commonly have what energy and that’s where my sense leads me in strange directions sometimes.

And sometimes, objects have picked up energy from people who’ve come in contact with them and the energy I sense isn’t from the object, but from the person. In many of those instances, I feel emotions. Sort of borrowed emotions that I can separate from my own. I know they aren’t mine, but they’re coming from somewhere.

I’ve mentioned that I’ve worked in several theaters. I was mainly a lighting technician, so I spent a lot of time in the dark. I always wondered why I was able to navigate so well in pitch darkness, but really, it makes sense… I read the energy coming from the catwalks, the fixtures, the pipes, the crawlspaces, the cables. Yeah, I’ve tripped over tons of stuff, but for the most part, navigating in the dark is something I’ve always been able to do quite well, even on stairways and ladders.

Okay, now back to being blindfolded. What if instead of being in a room full of objects, you’re in a room full of people? No one’s talking, yet you know you’re in the middle of a big surprise party just waiting to erupt. But they’re people you’ve likely never met before.

Welcome to my world. I hope you’re not as shy as I am or it’ll get really hard to deal with sometimes and you’ll want to turn it off, but it never stops.

Why are they here?

Apparently, that’s for them to know and you to find out…one way or another…

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