haunted

rules to avoid seeing ghosts

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/// do not look down long hallways, especially if they have a mirror at the end of them

/// close your eyes as you turn lights on or off in rooms, just for a moment – they come in the betweenplace of light and dark

/// never look too long in a mirror, and never in large rooms with lots of shadows. the longer you stare, the harder it is to look away

/// keep ambient noise playing at all times to avoid or explain any shuffling or shifting in other rooms

/// don’t go into the basement or attic alone, ever. if you must go, speak out loud to yourself to keep from getting lost in the silence

/// leave as few reflective surfaces open as possible. any distortion, any vaguely lit shadowy surface is a place for them to show up

/// be settled by midnight and be asleep by 3am, or you might as well stay up until four. they will come for you in the Grey Place between awake and asleep during The Dead Hour

/// acknowledge them out loud if necessary. we share this space, but in this life and time, it is mine. please do not make this difficult for both of us. I see you. I hear you. give me space and grace.

/// do not sage/smoke cleanse if you do not know what you are doing because you will make it worse

/// do not taunt, tempt, or ridicule them. you will lose.

/// if you are very afraid, Hail Mary and Our Father are the strongest protection words can offer. you do not have to be religious. it might work better if you’re not.

/// if you used to know the words but find you cannot speak them in the dark, you are in terrible trouble. I can help you. I know the terror of 3am like few people on earth, and you need immediate help.

/// I believe you. you don’t have to convince me. I don’t think it’s weird. it’s not embarrassing. it’s real, and what is happening is real, and you deserve to be validated and acknowledged. if I can do nothing else, I can help keep other people safe from a thing that nearly devoured me. literally.

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I talk to “myself” all the time in my own home, and hell- even sometimes at work. Sometimes I’m talking out loud to someone I need to work things through with, sometimes it’s self-therapy, and sometimes I’m talking to the dead.

What I forgot about my friend’s house- what I always forget- is the moment I walk in the door, I am unable to speak out loud. I feel intensely that someone is listening. Someone that I don’t want to hear me.

I have learned from my previous stays to leave the kitchen lights on and to close the door to the spare bedroom until I’m ready for bed, but I’d forgotten about how intense the constant, low-grade panic really is. I used to think it was just the vibe between my friend and his wife until the first time I stayed there alone.

Nope. It’s the house.

When I say that the first night I was there I almost had to leave?

As soon as I got into bed, I blurred right into this incredibly vivid meditation. I thought about my apartment from 2013-2016, and instantly, I was there. I remembered every part of it- how it smelled at night, the way the kitchen floor felt on my bare feet, how it looked with just the undercabinet lights on, the weirdness of the stairs. All of it, as if I was actually really there.

It was so real it actually frightened me. I had to open my eyes to wash it away.

Also- lately when I go into meditation, I find the same person waiting for me, someone I usually am not really allowed to see this often. I am getting increasingly suspicious of it, and when I asked him about it the other night, he got the kind of evasively sheepish that I know entirely too well.

In March, I drove to the very end of the mainland of the Outer Banks, then walked the two-ish miles to the point. It looked almost exactly like the stretch of beach in my meditation, once I conjured up seventeen years ago. I broke down sobbing, my entire body lighting up with electricity.

Anyway, that’s where we go most nights. The more intensely I could see the beach, and see my old friend, the more intensely I could feel the ghost in the corner of the bedroom. He was standing half in the closet, staring right at me. It’s been so long since I’ve felt that kind of violent fury of my presence.

“Dude, I want to be sleeping in my own bed right now,” I even said out loud, into the dark. “Trust me. I don’t want to be here either. Just let me sleep.”

The moment I would slide back into being able to feel my feet on the cool sand, the warmth of his fingers twined with mine, the way I feel when he locks his eyes on me, I’d immediately be washed over with terror, panic, sickness. Smoldering resentment. Behind my eyes, I’d see the shadow running full speed across the room to leap at my bed.

“You see?” said my friend. “The more you dissolve the veil, the more you are forced to be seen. Are you sure you’re ready for this feeling again?”

I wish I could say it was easy to feel that intense visibility again, the terror and power of being able to see through the veil, but… it never gets easier. It’s deeply and profoundly terrifying, and also enormously empowering as well.

I (finally) binged the final season of The Good Place today, and once again, it was the exact right moment to see it. They got it absolutely right, ya’ll. More people who know the Universe.

Turns out, I think there’s a lot of us here right now.

And I’m just going to keep hanging onto that.

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So last night when I got sucked into an “Alex” hole and was picking my way through his discography, his voice blew out my speakers. That’s never happened before, and was fixed by a restart. However, in the interim, his voice became distorted and- let’s just say it- downright demonic.

I get a lot of displeased faces that invisibly surround me when I decide I’m going to listen to his music, and that sucks because I still really deeply love his music and wish it wasn’t like playing a pungi in front of a cobra. But I know it’s not wise, and that just makes me more indignant.

I can do whatever I want. Don’t try to warn me. Don’t try to be the boss of me.

I can’t really describe what it’s like when the veil between worlds gets sketchy, but I suddenly realized I’d done a foolish thing by listening to his music after midnight, in the dark, in my bed, slightly intoxicated (IMAGINE THAT, says absolutely no one). It’s almost like the sides of my vision rupture slightly, and shadows and tiny flashes of light like sequins on a dress burst all around me. I start hearing things that aren’t real. I start to feel a bit like plastic wrap has been draped over my mouth.

When I was brushing my teeth, rushing myself to bed, an oily little voice appeared in the back of my mind. That voice only has one source, the shadowy little confidence man that may or may not have greasily convinced people to cause trouble since literally the beginning of time. I haven’t heard that voice in at least seven years and immediately had a visceral response. But as always, after a moment or two, I started to get lulled into a kind of sedated confusion, and suddenly, my triumvirate protection system appeared.

Before I could say anything, they each sat on an edge of my mattress and said, “Just go to sleep. Go to sleep. Now. Go to sleep.”

This morning, I decided I should listen to him some more, because this is what I do, and also watched an interview with him I’d never seen before. Every time he looked into the camera I felt like I’d been pierced with a knife, but I think his eyes do that to everyone. His speaking voice also has the strangest effect on me. It’s not the same as the oily voice I heard last night, but it still brings out such interesting reactions from deep in my rib cage. Certain inflections and phrases, ways he flips his hands or twists his mouth…

I think I want to believe that there is a separation somewhere, that the man I loved and the one that tried to kill me are not the same. Is that Stockholm Syndrome? I don’t know. Is that the part of me that still loves him and is still actively trying to rehabilitate him? I guess we’ll find out.

Oh, I know it doesn’t matter, and maybe it’s not even real, but I forget sometimes how close I am to trouble, and no matter what anyone else believes, I have to protect myself at all times.

It’s never over.

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Q: any advice on how to haunt someone after death? Like say you met with foul play and either want to haunt the perp or point someone to a clue. (sorry if you’ve covered this)

I… don’t recommend that you do this.

In order to “haunt,” you have to not cross, which means being a ghost, which means being trapped between alive and dead, filled with longing for Home but with no idea how to get there.  Bound by the agonies of your life, without a concrete form in which to resolve them.

I have the deepest sympathy for ghosts- it’s a horrible sickness, and the longer you’re a ghost the harder it is for you to understand how to go Home.  You never, ever want to be a ghost.  Child ghosts are a shattering tragedy to me.  Poor lost babies, wandering the world invisible and alone.

Trust in the Universe making things right, because it will.  You never need to seek revenge or harm another, because that person will receive a bill for their actions.  If you take vengeance into your own hands, you turn that ugly energy at yourself, and you now adopt their debt.

If this is hypothetical and you’re saying, “Okay if I was murdered, how would I direct the person to my killer?” Well that’s hard, because mediums that report crimes are very rarely believed.  And again, if you crossed, you’d immediately lose your need for revenge.  The only way to hold onto that energy would be to not cross, and therefore be trapped in a much deeper hell than some foolish person would be worth.

That’s the great irony, I guess.  As a ghost, you have the desire for revenge but no way to execute it, and as an unliving person (someone who has crossed over) you have ways to help people put things together but no desire to see a resolution to a matter that no longer matters.

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Q: What was your scariest supernatural experience?

A: There are a few that I can think of immediately.

One night, the shadows on the bedroom wall started moving at the corners of my eyes and I kept hearing whispering and footsteps, so I sat up in bed with my hand pressed over my heart, my eyes darting around so I would stop having a “corner” of my eye, panting in terror. Just then, my cat pushed the door open, and when it creaked loudly, I screamed my husband awake.

Another night, I somehow ended up sitting on the bathroom floor with my face pressed into my knees, waving a wild arm over my head to try to “swat” away everything I could feel swarming over my head, whispering, “Please stop, please stop, please someone save me.” The first time I saw dementors I thought yes… that’s exactly it. That’s exactly what it feels like.

And by far, the scariest one was while my ex and I were split up, about a month before we “banished” “Alex” to the island. We’d lost our home in this mess, and living with my parents. Their house was violently haunted (but now looking back on it, and having slept in my parents’ house since, it wasn’t the house that was haunted at all), and during that time I heard two little girls giggling in the back bedroom in the middle of the night, a man who sat in my father’s chair all night long and stared at me with burning eyes, a cacophony of footsteps on the ceiling all night long, and that one time I got poked in the forehead while holding blankets over my head, so sure of my safety.

But the worst night by far was late late at night, after my parents had gone to bed and while I could hear them both snoring. I heard heavy, ominous footsteps above me slowly cross the living room through the kitchen towards the staircase behind me. I stopped being able to think a coherent thought (which happened a lot back then, honestly) and then I got this image of a withered old woman brokenly crab-crawling down the stairs with blood pouring out of her mouth and eyes over and over and over and over and over again as I sat frozen in terror, silent tears pouring down my face. As soon as I was freed from this horrible cycle of thoughts, I rushed myself into bed so I could be safe in sleep.

That kind of primal terror is so different than any other fear you can feel. It’s why I don’t watch scary movies. I’ve been frightened enough for at least one lifetime. I also think it’s why I still have dreams where I have to say “Hail Mary” and “The Lord’s Prayer” to keep myself safe.

They’re only just behind me, all the time. I’m sure of it.

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Q: What do you think about going years, never feeling connected after a hardcore loss of a loved one .. like zero signs? I feel because I am so open to it (want it) from one person is why it has not/will not happen. Maybe its for a reason.

A: I get this question a LOT from people.

We all want to know our loved ones are with us, and it’s devastating when we feel abandoned.  But this sort of ties into my previous answers.

So imagine you’re someone’s sister/mother/grandmother/daughter/cousin in this life and you die tragically, leaving everyone bereft and heartbroken.  Everyone is calling out to you for a sign, and you can’t wait to reach out to them.

But then you get over to the Other Side and it turns out you have a loved one from another lifetime that’s in trouble.  They’re sick or they’re possessed or they’re in danger.  You have to run to take care of them.  Over There, time is meaningless, so what takes a few moments for you is five, ten, fifteen years for the people you love.

Or maybe you have to bounce back to Earth with someone else you love to help them.  Maybe you get recruited to be someone’s difficult baby.  Maybe you’re trying to reach out but you don’t know how to get through, because your signs aren’t clear enough.  They don’t see you.

I can’t explain why loved ones disappear, especially the ones some of you are looking for most.  I know it’s awful and it hurts, but because I believe in reincarnation, I really believe that once you get to the Other Side, there are SO MANY people who need you, miss you, love you, want to kiss you and be near you that it’s easy for them to get wound up in reunions and realize later that decades have passed down here.  If you can take comfort in anything, it’s that the ones you love are so loved Over There that the people who are happy to see them back Home is a line so long that it’s taking years to get through.

They still love you, but it’s also easy for them to forget the pain because they know you’re coming Home to them someday.

It’s hard for us.  We don’t have that certainty.  We just have the loss.

How to tell if your house is haunted

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Items randomly go missing and reappear where they should have been all along

Strange noises while you’re in the shower, like footsteps or knocking

Faint music/whispering/laughter from another room

The feeling of being watched from corners of rooms or ends of hallways

Flashes of light out of the corner of your eye

Swearing you just saw someone walk by, but there’s no one there

A sudden influx of insects/birds/bats coming into your house

Waking up in the night with the feeling you’re being stared at

Waking up any time during the hour of the dead (3 a.m.)

Strange marks appearing on your skin- fingerprint bruises, scratches, red welted circles

The feeling of a room being “loud” or “crowded” when it’s not- the subway station sensation

Strange sightings in the background of mirrors

Abrupt and severe changes in room temperature

Getting chills/goosebumps seemingly out of nowhere

Suddenly feeling like your throat is closing, or you want to hysterically cry without reason

Rotten or pungent smells, also the smell of smoke or incense

Things falling over on shelves or off of counters without explanation

Doors opening/closing, or even the sound of them opening and closing with no sight of it

The windows on the house feeling at though they have “eyes” and are watching you

Feeling as if someone is standing right behind you

Televisions or lights turning on/off out of nowhere

Electrical issues, especially in a car or with small appliances

An overwhelming sensation that you “don’t belong” in a room or that you aren’t “allowed” to be there

Pets that stare at “nothing” and go absolutely insane or act terrified without cause