Through the eyes of me as a little girl

I’ve mentioned scent, audio and touch. Now, I come to sight. Due to my sensitivity, I’ve psychically seen a lot. However, there have been a few things I saw with my naked eye without using my ability at all. For this post, I’m going to go all the way back as far as I can remember and stick to my childhood experiences. I’ll cover some of what I’ve seen as an adult in later posts, I promise.

This first bit wasn’t exactly paranormal, but it is my earliest ghost memory. It was in the first house I lived in–which we moved out of when I was seven. I’m guessing I was about five years old at the time because of what my room looked like, how many dolls I had and the particular lamp on my nightstand.

I woke up at some point in the middle of the night and heard some sounds. I decided to investigate. As I got to my door–which was left open at night when I was that little–I determined that the sound was coming from the living room. The television was on. It was neither strange nor normal to me because I never woke up in the middle of the night so I had nothing to compare to. I went in there and found my dad asleep on the couch. What was particularly strange was the show that happened to be playing.

There was a group of people standing around a boxy device on the floor with a snaking, flashing light in a sort of tube pulled up to about six or seven feet high. This was some sort of documentary on the supernatural and trying to get in contact with the spirit world. The people standing in the circle were saying such things as “is there anyone here who would like to talk to us?” and “would you like us to turn off the lights?”

My dad woke up and I sat next to him there on the couch. We watched a few more minutes and I recall thinking those people were so absurd. Why were they using that machine with the stupid lights on it? Why did they think they needed it? Didn’t they know that the ghosts thought they were ridiculous and weren’t talking to them because those people were too closed-minded to figure out that yes, the ghosts wanted the lights turned off, but also that a machine with lights wasn’t what the ghosts needed in order to communicate? The people were completely missing the whole point of contact with the spirit world. I told my dad something along those lines, but I’m pretty sure he chalked it up to a little girl’s imagination.

We finished out the show and he put me to bed. I’ve asked him about that night and it doesn’t surprise me that he doesn’t remember, but I still remember the absurdity and how passionate I felt, even without any sort of foundation for those beliefs (which have changed here and there, but the core is still the same). I look back now and realize that yeah, I’ve always been sensitive. If at that age I thought it weird that adults couldn’t figure out how ghosts wanted to be talked to, the things I felt must have been real. The things I saw weren’t my imagination.

I still remember my old room and what it looked like in the dark with all of those people sort of floating around. There were lots of them…always were. They sort of superimposed on my physical sight whenever it was dark, no matter where I was. And it always felt crowded, like a lot of people in a concentrated area all at once.

Okay, now on to the first things I saw with my naked eyes. I don’t recall this phenomenon while in that first house, but I definitely recall it in the next house. The house was only about eight months old when we moved in. It never felt haunted…except by the spirits following me. One of which was my grandfather who passed away two months after my fifth birthday. I saw him superimposed on my physical sight and felt his presence a lot.

I loved him and he loved me. Grandpa was awesome and while I missed having him around physically to pick me up and let me watch him solder plumbing in the house he was building, show me how he cut feathers to put on the arrows he built for deer hunting and how to properly use a hammer, having him with me in spirit was good enough because I knew he’d always be around in a heartbeat if I got scared and needed someone.

On many nights, there was an indentation on the covers on my bed as though someone was sitting next to me. In fact, I used to leave room for whoever this person was! I recall shuffling to the far side of my bed, next to the wall so that this person could sit there with me and watch me sleep. I didn’t try to talk. I didn’t know what to make of it, but I wasn’t really afraid because it didn’t hurt me or make me too uneasy. Yeah, it felt strange, but not strange enough for me to leave my room. Sometimes the person felt like grandpa, sometimes not.

This went on for years. I’ve told very few people about it.

The other childhood memory I have is from a time when I was maybe nine or ten years old. That particular night I woke up for no apparent reason (or at least I’ve forgotten what had awakened me) around eleven o’clock at night, I think. I know it wasn’t the wee hours of morning, but I no longer recall exactly what time it was. Anyhow, I felt that someone was there in my room and I didn’t think this person was my grandpa. There was space at the foot of my bed for someone to sit there, but I was more toward the middle of my twin bed.

I had one of those clock radios where the numbers were printed on little tiles that flipped down each minute, each hour. When you whirl the dial to change the time, the tiles made a fluttering sound. The section of the clock for setting the alarm made a sort of clicking sound when you spun that wheel to set the alarm.

I woke up for no reason and felt someone else was there and silently asked for a sign as to whether what I was feeling was real or not.

The alarm dial of my clock radio started spinning. The radio turned on for the moment when it hit about 11PM (the current time) to about 12AM (what would’ve been an hour later) and went back out as the dial kept spinning, scaring the crap out of me. I was soooooooooooo scared. I begged it to stop, to please stop, to never do that again. I backed away from that edge of the bed and smashed myself into my stuffed animals next to the wall. I was utterly terrified, but strangely not enough to try to leave my room because the activity had stopped and I didn’t feel like I was in any real danger.

One of the creepiest parts of that ordeal was that the alarm dial also did not return to 5AM. It had stopped somewhere during the day and as much as I didn’t want to touch my clock after all that wackiness, I had to reset the alarm or I wasn’t going to be able to get up for school the next morning. It took me a good twenty minutes before I got up the courage to change it, but I slept the rest of the night through and never asked for another sign until more than a decade later…but that experience deserves its own entry.

Touch me, Tex

I’ve already covered a few of my paranormal experiences with audio and scent…which leads me to touch. I haven’t experienced a whole lot of touch that I can attribute to supernatural occurrences because I was able to either debunk for sure or there were too many other possibilities. But there was one time, with a ghost in the first theater I worked in. His name was Tex.

He was not an actor or a stagehand nor did he have anything to do with the theater…except that he’d helped build it.

The theater building was erected in 1978 or so. I worked there from 1992-1996 while attending classes. It houses two main traditional theaters, a black box theater, a green room, some dressing rooms, a costume shop, a huuuuuuuuge scene shop and various necessary storage spaces in the basement and on the three stories above.

Tex was a construction worker from…you guessed it…Texas. He was working on the second floor one day. There are two main staircases, one at either end of the building plus another secondary one that hadn’t been built yet. It was time for lunch and rather than walk all the way to the other side of the building to go down the completed stairs, Tex wanted to use the stairwell he was nearest. The building was barely framed at the time. I don’t know if much of the third floor had even been constructed yet.

The nearest stairwell didn’t have stairs yet, only a platform at the next landing. Tex figured he could just jump down the 15 or so feet.

Poor guy…he somehow tripped and skewered himself up through the crotch on a piece of rebar. He did not die immediately, but he was in such a difficult place to get to that eventually he suffocated on his own blood before rescuers could get him down.

When I heard that story, it had only been about fifteen years since the incident had happened. I’d always felt a little odd in that particular stairwell, but I was never afraid.

As part of my introduction when I first started working in the scene shop, the foreman told me that if I ever use the freight elevator, make sure I turn the key off after I was done…because Tex likes to make the elevator go up and down. He sometimes did it when the key was turned off and removed from the elevator altogether! In other words, Tex was part of the family there in the theater building. He did no harm, just a little bit of mischief.

I know a few other people who encountered him. I’m guessing that because of the nature of his demise, he was really big on safety. Now, in theaters, we do the unthinkable sometimes: we stand on the top rung of ladders–the one where the stickers warn you not to. It’s just something we all do at one time or another. It’s not good practice, it is unsafe, but sometimes, you gotta do what you gotta do.

A friend of mine was working very late one night painting a set. She was all the way at the top of the ladder, stretching to reach a corner when she felt the ladder start to tip. She prepared to grab on to the scenery in case the ladder fell all the way over, but suddenly, the ladder righted itself. She looked down and there was a man in overalls and with a Texan accent telling her to be more careful. She thanked him and turned back to her work before realizing that she hadn’t heard any of the stage doors open or close before the man was there, nor had she heard his footsteps even though he was wearing work boots. She also heard neither of those sounds after he’d steadied her ladder.

Another friend of mine had found a door to the big theater unlocked one night. He was about twelve years old at the time, waiting for a ride after a school program had ended, and curious. So, he went inside the theater. For one reason or another, the ghost light wasn’t working (That’s generally a single light bulb on a stand placed near the front of the stage so that if there’s scenery or whatever, anyone who goes in there in the dark can make their way around. Theaters can be very, very dangerous places.) but he walked out onto the stage anyway. The illuminated Exit signs provided enough light for him to see that the stage was empty, but he couldn’t really see much detail out toward the middle. The floor is black, too.

He walked out from stage right, intent upon going to the front of the stage in the middle and look out into the audience. The space was magnificent. The proscenium opening was 60 feet wide and the house seated 1400 in bright red velvety seats. He got to a certain point and just stopped. ’Something’ prevented him from going further. He was a little scared, but more curious than anything. He backed up and stepped forward again, but something made him stop. Pulling a coin from his pocket, he flicked it out in front of him, wondering why he couldn’t go further.

It took awhile to finally hit something.

The orchestra pit was at basement level…about a twenty-foot drop. One more step and he would’ve fallen. In fact, his toes were right at the edge. Shocked at whatever force was holding him and even more shocked that it was a damn good thing the force had stopped him, he was frozen right there, trying to make sense of it all.

Then the temperature dropped and wind picked up, swirling around him, blowing his hair, scaring him and he ran out the way he’d come.

Yes, the air-conditioner was always on, but no, it never swirled with the force of wind–especially front and center stage–the entire three years I worked day and night in that particular space. The only time the air-conditioning freaked me out was in the basement because the ceiling was low and the vent was right at head height and the cold air would be surprising as I came around one of the lighting racks. My friend and I believe he had likely been ’saved’ by Tex.

There are numerous other stories about him, but those are my two favorites. My experience with him was somewhat less dramatic.

I’d gone down by myself into one of the storage rooms under the smaller stage in search of a cardboard tube for a project I was building upstairs in the scene shop. I knew where they were. I just needed to retrieve one. I always felt Tex’s presence strongest in the basement and this day was no different. When I got the storage room open, I discovered that some wooden chairs and another box of tubes had been placed in front of the ones I needed to get at.

Great. Well, I could either wrestle everything out of the way or lean way far over in order to get what I needed. Being lazy, I leaned…and as I looked at my target tube, I thought to myself, “Gee, it would really suck if I fell.”

I felt two fingers jab against my upper back and sure enough, it sucked to fall into that other box of cardboard tubes. And then I felt laughter. Tex was laughing at me…but he’d also taught me a lesson. I was uninjured in my fall except for a tiny scratch on the underside of my chin. But Tex–Mr. Safety–was laughing his ass off at my expense.

It’s because of him that I believe there are some good spirits out there. Not all are mean or in despair. I hope to go back and visit him one day. I don’t even know if he’s still there. If he is, I hope he’s still helping people, keeping them safe–or at least teaching them how important safety really is!

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.

Hear Me Out

I’ve already covered scent, so now I’m on to hearing. I don’t have witnesses to the actual experiences I had, but others have reported the same things at different times.

I’ll start with the earliest audient one I remember. I was about 12 or 13. I’d spent the night at my best friend’s house. She had three cats at the time and when they wanted to come in to her bedroom when the door was closed, they’d scratch at the door or meow or sometimes both. A few times, when I’d get up to let one in, I’d see nothing but tail and back end running down the hallway.

She shared a room with her sister and it was at the end of the hallway. The nearest door was about fifteen feet away, so if a cat was going to scratch and ditch, it’d have a ways to run before hooking a right turn into the bathroom. Beyond that was her brother’s room, which was beyond the point where the cats could slip through the railing in order to use the stairs as an escape route.

But they rarely scratched and ditched.

That morning, we were engaged in girltalk. Me, being closest to the door, assumed that since I heard the telltale scratch, a cat must want in and I should get it. However, the sound was a bit odd. I almost wasn’t sure I’d heard it. While it definitely came from the direction of the door, it still sounded a bit strange to me for some reason. In fact, when I got up to answer the door, my best friend looked at me sort of sideways, wondering why I’d gotten up so suddenly.

I opened the door and no cat was there. Not even tail and backside scurrying away.

We thought it was weird that I’d heard the “cat”, but she didn’t. Apparently, all the women in her house had either had the same experience I did or tripped over a shadow cat on the stairs in the middle of the night when the rest of the household cats were accounted for in other parts of the house or had stayed outside.

While I believed in ghosts, I really didn’t want this kind of thing happening around me. I’m weird enough as it is, I don’t need supernatural stuff going on around me, too. Although, I also have to admit there are times when I just didn’t want to be alone and thankfully, ’someone’ was always there. Usually my grandfather, but there were others, too. I worked in theaters for a decade and every theater has at least one ghost.

At a certain theater, I only had the opportunity to do one show. It was late in 1995…around Christmas. I can do sound, lighting, set construction, costuming, special effects and props. I’m basically a one-woman show backstage. On this particular show, I was a lighting technician and then during the shows, I operated a follow spot. Anyhow, I was brought in a little late to the game. The show was already designed and the lights were hung. I was assigned to adjust the focus of a few lights and hang a special.

I was up in the catwalks all by myself. There was only one other person there at the time and he was nowhere near the stage. I don’t recall if he was in the scene shop or had gone out to the storage shed outside near his car. I just know he wasn’t around.

I can focus a light with the rest of the lights on, but it’s a whole lot easier to isolate the one I’m focusing, so I had very few lights on. The stage was mostly dark, as was the house.

I hung the light, plugged it in, went into the light booth to bring up the dimmer and went back to the catwalk to focus.

Step step step step step step. Stop.

’Someone’–who sounded like a man wearing dress shoes–had just walked from stage left out to the middle of the stage and stopped. Was this ’someone’ about to audition for a play? I saw no one. I wasn’t even sure I was hearing what I heard until the third or fourth step. I ’sensed’ activity, but I wasn’t in a position to really dive in. I mean, this was my first show at this place and at the time, yeah, I was sensitive (always have been), but that doesn’t mean I always use my sense nor do I always seek out activity. In fact, up there in the unfamiliar, darkened theater, I was kind of scared.

I sighed and went on with my work anyway. When my boss came back, I asked him if he’d heard the footsteps before.

“Yep. That’s George. No one knows how he got here. He also likes to turn on the house lights in the middle of shows. Other people have bigger stories about him, but he’s only done the footsteps for me.” (Yes, most of us theater people are quite nonchalant about the ghosts we “work” with.)

Sure enough, out of twelve performances, he turned the houselights on four times. There was a fifth time that could’ve been someone backstage, so I’m leaving that one out. Part of the training for a light board operator there was to be ready with the houselights because the slider would be all the way down. First, you’d have to realize that the houselights had come on, then press the button to take control, bring the slider up and back down again. It usually took three to five seconds, but that can be a long time when the audience is wondering what in the world is going on.

Although not an audient experience, there was also a blue glow that sometimes appeared in the furthest corner of the light booth. I hated going into that area whether night or day. If I had to grab equipment, I did it as quickly as possible. I only saw the glow once and I wasn’t really sure of it because some of the onstage lights were on and could’ve been reflecting off the front glass of the booth.

Except the blue glow was its own light, backlighting the light board operator’s chair, and one of the equipment shelves.

To me, George–and whoever else was there–was unhappy. I never sensed anything positive except when mischief was happening and even then it was more like vicious humor. I think he liked to see people being scared. When I ran the follow spot for the show, I stayed away from the rear wall of the light booth. That was where I felt the greatest despair. I also did my best not to be in there alone. I wasn’t afraid that something bad would happen to me, I was afraid of what I might see (psychically or physically), what I might learn about the source of the despair.

Theaters attract people who want to make it big. There’s nothing like hearing an audience roar with applause after a show, when all the focus is on you. It’s unreal. The sad truth is that there isn’t enough time in a single lifetime for every actor to get more than fifteen minutes of fame. So, I’m guessing some stick around beyond their lifetime, still hoping for their big break.

Although, not all theater ghosts are actors or stagehands. How do I know this? Well, that’s a whole other story I’ll share later, I promise. It’s one of my favorites.

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?

My First Past Life Regression

Last Friday, I went to a workshop about past life regression. I hadn’t researched it or experienced a regression before, so naturally the night was quite interesting. I’ve been threatening to blog my paranormal experiences and I assure you, they’re on their way. I need to write them all out first and put them into some semblance of order first. I dunno why. I just feel I should.

Anyhow, I also feel I should blog my first past life regression since it is a sort of important occasion, I suppose.

Apparently, I was a rather large, dark haired man…in the 14th century. The toes of my armor were very, very thin and pointy. I was rather burly and apparently had a few servants or at least male friends to help me prepare for battle.

What battle? I have no idea. It was quite urgent that I get ready quickly and get on my horse and go. I recall something about an invasion, like there was land at stake in the skirmish, like I was part of the defense. I was near the battle, but not near enough to see it. I didn’t seem like an asshole, but I also didn’t get much of a flavor of myself to really know for sure. I did feel as though I was noble and in the right to defend whatever it was that I needed to defend. But that doesn’t necessarily mean I was a good guy.

The man leading the regression then asked us to go to our home to see what it looked like.

My house was made of stone and rather large. It was not a castle…not even a fortified manor. It had several multi-light windows and appeared to be two stories high. The door was thick wood and quite tall although not like the kind on a castle. It was also not ornate.

I had a beautiful, long-light-brown-haired wife with hazel eyes. I think she loved me, but she also seemed afraid of me or at least surprised to see me at that moment. She was dressed neatly, but again, nothing fancy.

At least two of my three little children were boys. The other could’ve been a girl. It was hard to tell. The oldest was maybe five or six. My house was well furnished, but not fancy. In the room with my wife and kids, there was one tapestry, a few candlesticks as well as wooden chairs and tables. It seemed as though I had everything I needed.

I must’ve been reasonably well-to-do in order to have so many possessions, but still, nothing could be considered true finery. The curtains were a sort of dark amber color, but I couldn’t tell what fabric they were made of. It wasn’t fancy. There were a few servants about, but I don’t recall much about them.

Then the man leading the regression had us go to the biggest, most important moment in that life.

Well, that’s when I got a little confused. It was as though I (as the dark-haired man) was interchangeable with the man in the center of my view…having his head chopped off at a public execution. There were whispers of treason bandied about. There was also something about either my brother had done the treasonous act and I was being wrongly executed or that I was somewhere in the audience and it was my brother being executed.

I’m leaning more toward the executed being myself because as my soul separated from my body, I saw my wife crying in the audience. If it had been my brother being executed, I would’ve been with my wife and I likely would’ve had an opinion or felt emotion about the death. Instead, I guess I was sort of in denial that I was being executed in place of my brother.

The crazy part was that I definitely felt the axe or sword blow around my neck and mostly what I thought about was that I was being wrongly punished for something I had no part in.

However, to me, the most interesting bit was as my soul was flying away, I knew everything was going to be okay because it would all be fixed in my next life. I would right whatever wrong had been done to me or in general, my next life would sort everything out. I just had to keep looking up and being honorable and noble and overall just plain good.

If there’s one thing I learned from the entire experience it’s that I wanna do it again!

And quite honestly, I’ve always believed in past lives. I’ve also always believed I was a rather large man in more than one past life. I’ve also thought that perhaps I was given this tiny little female body in this life as sort of payback for some bad stuff I did while in my big manly body. Like I needed to walk in the shoes of someone I’d wronged in order to really understand.

I’m 5’5″, 105lbs and yet I still think I can push my car up a hill. I still charge in and pick up four 25lb lighting fixtures as though they aren’t heavy. I still pick up two 50lb steel pipe bases as though it’s no big deal. I enjoy the company of men more so than women and I get pissed off when the guys hit on me rather than treat me like one of the boys. There’s always been that sort of disconnect in my brain. As a kid, I played with more boy toys than girl toys although I had an affinity for both.

In fact, I still collect dolls. Although my Hot Wheels and Matchbox collection has skewed toward the real things rather than the miniatures over the years.

I think it’s a strange balance. I mean, this was only my first regression. What if next time, I find out about a past life where I was female and I start to look at all the feminine things in my life that seemed to have always been there?

But I just gotta say…I still think I was more often a man than a woman. One of my ex-boyfriends even said I’m more of a man than most men. Funny how that is. To look at me, it seems impossible. To know me, there’s certainly truth in it.

And that’s just another thing about me that makes me strange…but happy.

Who were you in a past life and did that carry forward into this one?

Ghost Hunting

I know I haven’t directly mentioned it on my blog–and I’m actually kinda surprised by that–but I’ve always believed in ghosts. Ever since I was a little girl. My earliest ghost-related memory is when I was about 6 years old, maybe, but that was just the biggest memory. The earlier ones are smaller, somewhat less significant as far as actual concrete instances. Their only significance is that they happened and a conclusion can be drawn from them collectively.

Anyhow, I have always been interested in paranormal activity and always believed that I’m psychic (might wanna get out the jacket and prep the padded room for me). So, when a friend of mine asked if I wanted to go to a ghost hunt on the Queen Mary, I did not hesitate.

But wait. Before I get to that, let me give a little general back story. I’ll add more later in the form of experiences.

When I was little, I used my psychic ability to have ‘friends’ if you will. They were not imaginary. They came and went. My grandfather died shortly before my fifth birthday. He was the most awesomest grandpa on the planet if I do say so myself. Yes, I still remember him even though I was so young. That’s how awesome he was. He cared about everyone and had tons of energy. Anyway, after he passed away, it seemed as though he never really left me. No matter where I was, I could call him and he’d be there if I needed him–even if I didn’t, sometimes he showed up, too! As I got older, he faded somewhat, but he still stops by from time to time. He came from a very big family, so he’s got a lot of people to look in on.

As I got older, I started to sense more clearly. Yeah, grandpa was around, but so were a lot of other people I didn’t know. Some wanted to talk, some didn’t. Some were confused, some weren’t.

Then, I started working in theatres.

Every theatre has a ghost. I swear it. Usually more than one, but there’s always at least one that’s active. As you can imagine, for someone as sensitive as I am, spending a lot of long hours in the dark can get pretty creepy. There were times I was working late at night, behind locked doors, heard things, saw things, etc. I started to explore some of it as well as researching. If you read my novel, Otherness: Rift, I incorporated a lot of personal paranormal experiences to suit the story. But, after all the time spent in theatres, I started to become too sensitive. Too many ghosts were trying to communicate with me.

I had to find a way of turning it off.

It can’t be. I’ve tried. All I can do is ignore it. But I can always tell when I walk into a haunted building or room or if a ghost arrives in the room where I am. It’s just another weird thing about me. I don’t talk about it much. I’m weird enough already! I don’t need to start yammering about my ghost experiences, too.

Okay, well, maybe that’s true, but not entirely. This whole post has come about because of the ghost hunt I mentioned in the first few paragraphs. And because of the ghost hunt, I’m back to my old ways, back to allowing myself to use a higher sensitivity and all the craziness that comes with it. Yes, my time on the Queen Mary, listening to lectures and sitting in the dark with people with K-II meters and voice recorders has inspired me to embrace my …uh… “gift” once again. I’m not crazy. I’m just psychic.

I didn’t get pictures of everyone involved. I didn’t know what to expect, so this time was sort of practice for future hunts. The event was put on by David Schrader and Tim Dennis of DarknessRadio.com. And I’ve been essentially living under a rock for the last decade or so because I have not watched television. I do not have cable. The only television I see is on DVD or if I’m at my writing partner’s (Jen) house and she just ‘has’ to show me something.

I have not seen Ghost Hunters, Dead Famous or Haunting Evidence. But these were the guys headlining the event on the Queen Mary. I knew who the people were (well, I’d heard of them at least), but I hadn’t watched their shows except for a couple episodes of Ghost Hunters because Jen has a thing for Grant Wilson and ghosts, too for that matter! I went into the event knowing there’d be lectures as well as a 4 hour ghost hunt.

I had the time of my life. In fact, it was sort of life changing…well, life restoring for me. I got to be in a room with a few hundred other people who believe in the paranormal and don’t think I’m crazy when I share my experiences. To me, that’s freakin’ awesome.

The folder of pictures I took during those few days is a bit daunting to look through. I didn’t get any photographic evidence of anything, but I did want to share a few here on my blog. So, without further yammering, here’s Denise and I with Grant and Jason.

This next one has a little story attached to it. Earlier in the day, David was about to announce the next speaker when he got a call on his cell phone. It was Patrick Burns, asking if anyone had a Nikon camera with them. Well, I did, so I raised my hand and he put me in touch with Patrick. Apparently, something bad had happened to his lens and he needed to take some IR photos for some lovely ladies who’d won an auction for a photo session with him and the ship. We determined that I had the same camera as he did, so I walked down there and handed over my lens. He brought it back about an hour later. The following picture was taken through that very same lens! He thanked me profusely as you can tell. He’s a really great guy. Really, really super awesome.

The whole experience is still sinking in. Honestly, though, even without a whole lot of physical activity, the responses on the K-II meter and what I learned in the lectures and people I met were awesome. I’ll definitely do another one of these. My new K-II meter is probably being shipped as I write this, too! I’m looking forward to reviewing all of the HD video footage I took, too. I didn’t know it until about 10 minutes before the hunt, but my camera has night vision! I was so stoked to see what I’d get. If I got anything good, I’ll post it, I promise.

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