When I was in middle school I didn’t know what I
believed. I was young and I had just became a Christian
but I had not read all of the Bible. I also had not studied
any other religions. I didn’t even understand the different
Christian church denominations. I had not experienced
the loss of a loved one. So the concepts of heaven and
hell were strange to me. Then there were all these things
like angels, guardian angels, demons, ghosts, and spirits.
It was a lot to try to figure out.
At that time there were a few big movies about
demons and ghosts. Over the coming years there would
be a flood of movies about them. I also had family that
showed me shows like Highway to Heaven and Touched
by an Angel. At first demons were something I thought of
as only in hell. So they didn’t scare me. But ghosts were
scary because they seemed to be something that people
couldn’t agree on how to define. Were they the minds of
those that had passed? Or were they just an image,
leftover energy from a human that passed? Or were they
some other kind of thinking thing that was here and
yet not here? Sometimes ghosts were seen and
sometimes they were not.
While I was growing up everyone said that I was
very sensitive and compassionate. One lady called me
empathetic and intuitive. I was always good with people. I
was good at forming relationships. I was a peer counselor.
I used to laugh at how much I really fit the description of my
sign, Aquarius. Then one day I meet a guy writing a book
about ghosts. He told me that my “sensitivity” would make
me more likely to see and feel the paranormal. I didn’t know
what “paranormal” meant. He explained and then asked me
if I had ever experienced anything that might be explained
by ghosts or psychic ability. A few things came to mind.
Ever since I can remember I have had dreams that
are interrupted by small dreams that don’t go with them.
For example, one night I had this wild dream a killer was
chasing me through my middle school. But when I ran in
the cafeteria, the part where the lunch tables go was the
side of a mountain. It was covered in trees. I ran in the
trees to escape the killer. But as odd as the mountain was
to be there, it was part of the dream. The next night I had
the same dream but as I ran down the hall toward the
cafeteria door the school disappeared. I saw a sheet of
paper with four history questions on it. I remember thinking
that one question was going to surprise the class. Then I
was again in the school headed to the cafeteria. The next
day in history the teacher announced a pop quiz. As the
paper lay on my desk, I looked down to see the quiz from
my dream and the question that would stump most of the
class. I got a 100.
In middle school I was a latch key kid. I was always
home before my parents. Where we lived there were a
number of homeless people. As I came home one day, I
was weirded out unlocking the front door. For some reason
I felt I should leave. I went next door to my neighbors house.
Later my dad told me that a homeless man had been in the
kitchen eating our food. He had broke into the basement.
Somehow I had just sensed the danger and left.
I had always just known before the phone rang that
someone was calling, I once took my mom the phone and said
it was her friend Melony before she had called. Just as mom
looked at the phone confused, it rang.
On my sweet sixteen bday I had a sleepover with two best
friends. I woke in the middle of the night. I was hearing footsteps
in the hall. I was scared and woke the other girls. We all walked
to the hall and looked. We all saw something that sent us running
back to the bedroom. Our screams woke my mom. We apologized
and said we would go back to bed but we could not sleep. We
were afraid that we would lie and just agree with each other about
what we saw in the hall. So I had us each write it down on paper.
We all saw an old man in overalls with a red and black plaid shirt
at the end of the hall near the bathroom. He was kind of standing
half in and half out of the bathroom door. He wore a blank
expression on his face. Still all of us felt that he was almost soot
covered. My step father later revealed that an old man burned
himself to death in the hall. All the floor had to be replaced and he
got the house for cheap from the family.
In middle school I kept going in this one bathroom and when
I was alone in the stall, the sink would turn on full blast. I would
wash my hands quickly and run out.
When I took Psychology in high school we studied auras. My
teacher said that she would give extra points on the next test to
anyone that could see her aura. She had previously had someone
tell her about hers. For some reason I was determined that I
would see it. I had no clue how to see one. But I heard her say that
your body puts out the most heat and energy from your loins and your
head. So I started staring at her head. At first she was pacing and
talking. But after awhile she sat on the edge of her desk in front of the
white board. At first I saw a white light rise over her head like the sun.
Then around it I saw a light yellow colored light. I was startled. Had I
really seen it? I had to of seen it. What else could be causing what I
saw? I had no clue what she had been lecturing about anymore. I just
raised my hand. When she called on me I said in a low voice, “It’s yellow.”
She looked at me with her mouth hanging open. Then she laughed and
said yes. The whole class broke into chaos. They forced me to explain
what I had seen and how. We spent the rest of the class with others
trying to do the same.
There was a period in high school where witch stuff was popular.
My friends and I pretended that we were in a coven and we had inside
jokes about spells. We played a game once called “Light as a feather,
stiff as a board.” But we never believed it was real.
The ghost book author laughed when I told him all of my
experiences. He told me that I should be ghost hunting. He wanted me
to go do things with him after graduation. I declined. But the idea that I
was more “sensitive” to ghosts bothered me. I asked my aunt about it
and she told me she didn’t believe in ghosts. She said that she thought
if a person came back it was as a good spirit or guardian angel. She
said that ghost images were just left over electrical energy from our
bodies. She said that if it had thought it was actually a demon. She said
that demons would look like ghosts to freak us out. Then I got really
freaked out about demons attacking me since I was “sensitive.” My
grandmother and aunt told me that as a believer in Jesus I could cast out
demons in his name.
This temporarily made me think that I was bulletproof and demons
couldn’t hurt me. One day the school had a bonfire party as part of our
school spirit. Someone had a real Ouija board. It was hand carved and
everything. Supposedly something was carved on the bottom but you
could never see it. Feeling fearless I played with the board. I put it on
the hood of a car and we used it. We each accused the other of moving
the pointer. I wanted to see the bottom. I tried to flip the board. It acted
like it was made into the hood of the car. It felt like it weighed a ton. I
couldn’t flip it. It freaked me out, but I figured it was a trick. I later
remember bragging that the wood must of had magnets in it. Later my
brothers and sisters had one that was the board game. We were using
it and asked for a sign that someone was there. A book flew off a
bookcase and we all ran out of the room. \For awhile my sister was like
glue to me. She kept saying she was seeing an old lady in black clothes.
I got so paranoid that when I was home alone, I would not just walk
into an empty room. I would reach around the wall and flick on the light.
Then I would loudly scream, “In the name of Jesus I cast thee out,
Demons!” I finally confessed my fear to my aunt and she said that I could
ask God to make me INsensitive to spiritual stuff. So I did. I prayed to stop
being sensitive. I stopped watching horror movies. I just stopped
acknowledging spiritual things. Unfortunately, I also stepped back from my
relationship with God some too.
Years later I reopened my heart to God. I also then lost some people
I held dear, including my dad. Each time I woke in the middle of the night
aware something was wrong. Later I got the call that they had passed. I did
this four times with loved ones. Once while married my sister in law moved
into a house. I couldn’t go in the house. It made my skin crawl. I felt like
something in me was screaming at me, like it was mad at me for being there.
I felt like someone was saying, “This is my house. Get out.” I told my sister in
law about it. Turns out that My husband’s grandmother died there. My sister
in law read that burning sage in the house would cleanse the spirits there. I
sorta laughed and shrugged like that was silly. But after she did it, I didn’t
feel anything there anymore.
Then I had my son. I know that I was on drugs. But at the hospital, my
husband, my son, and I were sleeping and something woke me. I looked
towards the door, still groggy. I could have sworn that three men were there. I
knew that one was my dad and one was my grandfather. I was confused as to
the identity of the third man. As I came to full awareness I realized that the men
were not there, in the flesh, and I felt altogether. But they had been there.
I was certain that they had been there. I started to cry. My dad had come to get
an up close look at his grandson.
So what do I believe now? I believe that my dad’s spirit didn’t leave without
saying goodbye to my youngest brother. I believe he saw his grandson. I believe
that I am empathetic and caring. I believe in God and Jesus. I think that I have
experienced a lot of strange things in my life. Beyond that, I STILL don’t know
what to believe.
