THE MOST BEAUTIFUL THING WE CAN EXPERIENCE IS THE MYSTERIOUS
Albert Einstein
GHOSTS AND POLTERGEISTS
Ghosts can conjure up terror in some, disbelief in most and total acceptance in a few.
I assure you they do exist.
An unfortunate misconception concerning ghosts is the fear of being harmed by one. You may very well cause yourself damage in a panic filled attempt to get away from a ghost, but the blame should be placed where it belongs — on you!
Perhaps you can rid yourself of, or at least soften the edges of such panic if you use a bit of logic:
IF ghosts truly exist, and IF they are merely manifestations or apparitions of what is often termed ectoplasm, well now! Clouds or fog or ectoplasm, or whatever term you prefer, in an undefined shape or even in the shape of a person, can’t possibly do you harm. At least I’ve never heard of anyone being stabbed, shot, choked, poisoned or even slapped in the face by a cloud or fog — or ectoplasm.
If any such apparition were hell-bent on causing you injury it would have an impossible ambition.
If ghosts can walk through walls, they can’t touch you — they would most certainly go right through you and/or you through them.
Actual ghosts don’t appear all that often, so we have little cause to worry about confronting one.
This is especially true if you accept the fact that, most times, ghosts are invisible.
When a ghost does become visible it is for a very specific reason and that reason doesn’t include causing you harm. Such a goal could only be attained during physical life.
Ghosts come back for very specific purposes, such as taking care of unresolved problems or business. Ghosts not only come back; sometimes they don’t leave in the first place if they don’t realize they’re dead. Until such time as something happens to convince them of their demise, they hang around, carrying on what they believe to be their normal activities.
Too hard to believe?
Cases of haunted battlefields upon which men and women violently and instantaneously died are plentiful, as are other cases in which entire families perished in sudden accidents such as flash fires or auto crashes. Such hauntings often include the sounds of children running, laughing and playing.
The White House holds more than its share of ghosts, according to Suzy Smith, author of PROMINENT AMERICAN GHOSTS.
Abraham Lincoln — who certainly met violent, sudden death — is one of the most popular ghosts in our nation’s White House, sometimes appearing to those who choose to sleep in his bedroom.
Although I cannot attest to its veracity, I have heard several times that when Winston Churchill visited the White House and slept in Lincoln’s bed, he arose the next morning and complained he hadn’t slept well because Lincoln kept him awake for most of the night talking.
Another popular ghost in the White House is Abigail Adams, wife of John, who, it is said, is kept perpetually busy washing and ironing clothes.
For understandable reason, the Presidents who have happened upon Lincoln or Abigail have avoided mentioning it.
All hauntings do not require exorcism. If it is a case of a ghost remaining earth-bound in order to attend to unfinished business, if he or she is capable of doing so, once the task has been accomplished the ghost will leave of it’s own choice. If it conveys to you that it needs your help and you give it, it will leave. In giving such assistance you will be doing the ghost a very big favor.
I had the opportunity to accompany my friend, Gundella, several times when she was asked to perform an exorcism.
In at least 8 out of every 10 occasions there was no ghost present in those homes. The near panic of the people in the house was triggered by poltergeist activity.
A definite difference.
Haunting, by the way, comes from the same root word as home. Haunting therefor means homing, or coming home.
The exorcism rituals performed by the Catholic Church are strikingly similar to those performed by Traditional Witches.
There are many, myself included, who have felt the presence of recently departed loved ones. I no longer attribute that to my imagination.
There are many, myself included, who have had vivid dreams of deceased people, dreams that included conversations that in turn included valid predictions of the future.
There are those I consider the privileged few who have seen manifestations of ghosts. There eventually came a day in my life when I was able to list myself amongst those fortunate people.
During research for a book into an unsolved mass murder that occurred in 1883, I was told that every November, on the anniversary of the murders, the ghost of one of the victims appears in an old, dilapidated cemetery. She always shows up there, it was said, around the time of the murders — between 11 p.m. and midnight.
It is the ghost of a victim who was buried in another cemetery several miles away.
It was something I decided I definitely wanted to see for myself.
Three others and I arrived at the old cemetery shortly before 11 p.m. It was an exceptionally cold and dark November night in Michigan. We stumbled about in the cemetery, aiming flashlights at headstones and tree roots — at least those we were fortunate enough to see before tripping on them.
I don’t know exactly why — perhaps an innate reverence for the dead — but we all spoke in whispers as we made considerable noise crunching dead leaves under our feet.
At first only with benefit of flashlight, I could see a large tree over in one corner at the back of the cemetery. Once my eyes adjusted to the darkness I was just barely able to make out the shape of that tree, but at least I could see it.
As I glanced toward it for perhaps the 10th time that night, I beheld what I could only term a formless cloud, not quite touching the ground. The night was crystal clear; there wasn’t a trace of fog in the cold air. Completely puzzled as to what it might be, I continued to stare and was surprised when I saw it move! It was at the left side of the tree and would proceed to move BEHIND it only to appear again on the right side. The apparition took the form of a tall, slender, vertical cloud.
I turned to my companions to tell them I might have spotted Eunice. When they looked toward that tree, one of them proclaimed that it was indeed whom I thought it was — and that Eunice always entered the cemetery from that corner.
There is no one or no thing that can convince me I didn’t see what I saw.
Eunice’s ghost had just made one of her pilgrimages to her father’s grave.
Now to the poltergeists.
There are many that tend to think of the terms poltergeist and ghost as synonymous.
Not so. Instead, these terms represent 2 distinct phenomena that have nothing in common.
The cause of this confusion undoubtedly can be blamed, at least in part, on dictionary definitions of poltergeist as well as its etymology. Poltergeist comes from the Greek words, poltern (noisy) and geist (ghost). This sort of activity certainly can be, and often is, very noisy indeed but it has nothing whatsoever to do with ghosts or disincarnate spirits.
Students of parapsychology agree that exclusively incarnate, or living, people cause poltergeist activity. Such things are thought to be cause primarily by youngsters who are going through the emotional roller coaster ride of puberty.
Theory holds that some youngsters, overflowing with fervent energy fired by confusion, anger, and perhaps even trauma, cause such activity without even being aware of it.
Puberty is not the easiest of times in our lives. There are emotional as well as biological changes going on, changes that youngsters don’t understand, changes with which they sometimes can’t cope.
The inability to cope is often caused by the youngster’s powerlessness to talk about what they are feeling.
Their emotional pots boil over and the energy has to escape in some manner. It does.
This is how poltergeist activity is defined. The energy does escape and manifests in such things as books falling from shelves or tables, pictures suddenly dropping from walls and crashing to the floor, windows opening or closing, window shades going up or down, televisions and radios turning on or off, toilets flushing — any number of startling and noisy occurrences that happen without explanation.
There came a time when I was grateful for my knowledge of poltergeists. Yes, adults can also trigger them if those adults are sufficiently upset or under great stress, and tend to internalize their feelings.
At that particular time in my life I was a prime target in serious need of the "safety valve" of poltergeists.
There had been a number of deaths in my family during a brief span of time. There were also other unfortunate happenings with which I could not cope. In my attempt to preserve what little ability to handle problems I still possessed, I packed up and moved to another state – on the opposite end of the continent.
Suddenly there I was. I knew but a handful of people and was only somewhat settled into a house by myself, except for my pets. It soon occurred to me that I had traded one set of stresses for another. The stress and tension were still with me; they were just different types.
One night, when I was on the edge of falling asleep, there was a loud crash. I was quite tired, so merely reminded myself that my cat enjoyed exploring his new surroundings and had probably knocked something over or off onto the floor. I would deal with it in the morning.
That next morning I looked around in the rooms to find just what the cat had done to cause the noise.
When I first moved in I found a screw fastened on the end of one of my kitchen cupboards and took advantage of its auspicious placement by hanging a clock on it. It was surely too far up to fall target to a cat.
And yet, it wasn’t there.
When I glanced around I eventually saw the clock against the base of a linen cabinet on the opposite wall. It had removed itself from that deeply embedded screw and literally flown across the room, hitting the cabinet and falling to the floor.
I immediately decided it was time for me to let go of all my negative thinking. I did, and that clock has stayed on the side of the cupboard.
There have since been other signs of ghosts and poltergeists in my life since I moved to Florida.
I find them interesting and, in a sense, amusing.
But such eerie happenings – caused exclusively by poltergeists – make far better horror storybooks or movie plots if a ghost or demon is blamed.
Credit, however, is definitely misplaced. Poltergeist activity would be better defined as a form a psychokineses, from the Greek words meaning "movement with the mind."
It has taken me several years to open my mind to such things. Now the personal experiences I am relating in these printed words are, I assure you, the absolute truth.
These are not my "beliefs", for such a word connotes room for doubt. To me it is similar to saying I "believe" one plus one equals two, or I "believe" the world is round. I don’t "believe" such things – I know them to be irrefutable facts!
I have felt, for several years that living in a "haunted house", or one with poltergeist manifestations, would be interesting. The house in which I now reside has provided me with the opportunity to prove myself right.
The clock in the kitchen that literally flew across the room apparently primed the pump for other strange happenings.
It happened with a second clock located in a bathroom. This particular clock runs on a battery and the battery had been dead for at least three months. Whenever I glanced at that clock it would remind myself it needed a freshening. Then I would promptly forget it. It wasn’t all that vital; I have several clocks in my home.
It suddenly started running again, after remaining idle for all that time. I heard the ticking, looked at the clock and noticed the sweep second hand was moving. No one had replaced the battery. It should not have been capable of ticking and running – but it definitely was and still is.
The clock episodes would pale in comparison to other poltergeist experiences.
My kitchen floor is white. The table at which my "significant other" and I sit is located at the edge of the kitchen. There was no way in which both of us would fail to notice what would appear on that kitchen floor later in the evening of that day.
I got out of bed to go into the kitchen to get a drink of water. When I turned on the light there was no way it which I could fail to notice a "difference". Across the length of that white floor were black drops – about the size of a dime. When I stooped down to touch one of them I decided they were similar to thick black grease. I know they were a bit difficult to get rid of with hot water and soap the next morning.
Then came the instance of the yellow vinyl chair on the back porch.
The chair was attacked by mildew and eventually showed far more black splotches than yellow vinyl. While in a supermarket I noticed a spray bottle that claimed, "mildew remover" on its label.
Reminded of the yellow chair, I purchased the remover, with plans to use it the next morning.
I didn’t get the opportunity to clean the chair. Early the next morning I was sitting on the back porch and glanced at the chair in the increasing light of dawn. There wasn’t a speck of mildew on it and no, no one else had cleaned it. The product I had purchased the day before was unopened and still in the plastic bag.
Then came a time when a poltergeist performed for only Jim when he opened the cupboard to get a cup. The cup for which he reached suddenly moved, sliding across to the opposite side of the cupboard. When he told me about it I had no reason to doubt it.
Two of the ghosts that have visited me were, unlike the formless cloud of Eunice, in human shape.
The first appeared when I was on the verge of falling asleep. Sensing there was someone looking at me, I opened my eyes and saw a young woman with curlers in her hair and wearing a light blue chenille bathrobe. The moment I returned her stare she turned and walked out of the room. I was so convinced that she was a living person that I got out of bed to look for her. She, of course, was not to be found.
In wondering about who she could have been in life, I decided she was probably the ghost of Ruth Carver. Ruth and her two-year-old son, Townsend, were chopped to death with a hatchet in a gruesome unsolved murder I had researched and written.
Eunice White had appeared to me, why not Ruth?
