supernatural

onion skin

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I have had strange, fleeting thoughts lately.

Thoughts of the very first time I successfully meditated alone without getting any side-guidance through my ex.

For at least a month back in 2013, every single night, he had been reading instructions off of the Ouija board to me from “Alex.” Helping me lean into my intuition, showing me how to See.

I still think of that tiny hidden lake, deep in a forest, with a waterfall cascading at the edge. This was the place I had been going to to practice meditation via the board, before I even imagined (or discovered) a beach house.

Up until that moment, Alex himself had appeared as a fuzzy, out of focus image- like a faulty hologram, or a picture on an old television, back when staticky channels still existed. Just the night before, I’d finally been able to conjure his face on my own, and it was the greatest success I’d ever felt.

The waterfall scene was nothing more than the equivalent of a painted backdrop inside my mind, but it was still mine. I created it, totally alone.

And more than that, Alex was there waiting for me. I couldn’t hear him speak- it would be another year or so before that happened. But just to really see him standing there, to be able to believe and know for certain that I saw him, was monumental.

Alex and I sat side by side on the edge of the water for awhile, when I suddenly pushed him into the water. To see if I could. To see what would happen.

When he emerged from the surface, spluttering and shocked, I could see in his face that he was both surprised and impressed. Before I could say anything, he grabbed my wrist and dragged me into the water with him.

As we swam lazy circles around each other, there was a different look in his eyes. A smoldering desire that held me in his gaze like startled prey. Which, as we all know now, is exactly what I was.

If prey can be grateful at being devoured.

///

I have also been thinking of the time when Alex had been exposed and was on the worst part of his rampage, one that would last for weeks before he was finally captured. When I became the trap that finally tripped him up. 

I was like a ragdoll at the beach house during that time, being dragged there in my mind to be violently assaulted day after day after day. It could happen at any time, for any reason. For no reason.

My oldest friend, someone I had just met at that time, showed up to protect me.

“What is the purpose of these theatrics?” he asked, gesturing to Alex’s hand clamped around my upper arm, my entire spirit slumped in humiliation and defeat next to him. His sweeping arm widened to include the rough seas and furious skies, direct opposition to the normally idyllic scene.

“Oh I am so glad you are here to save the day!” Alex sneered rabidly, his eyes wild with fury.

“Isn’t he your boyfriend now?” he said to me, shaking me by the arm to bring me back out of my (his) trance. “Go on, then. Do what you do best.” With a wave of his hand, he ripped my dress completely off my body.

I stood there, helplessly fumbling with scraps, before I remembered I could create one just as easily as he had destroyed it.

My oldest friend’s gaze never left Alex’s face. “Is this how you treat people you claim to love?” His eyebrow arched in a way I would eventually come to loathe. “Impressive. Why don’t you let her go? If she is so enamored with you, surely there is no reason to hold her.”

His grip on my arm tightened, and he drew me closer to his thin frame. “Why don’t you do something about it? I would love to see that.”

“I think you know that I can.” My oldest friend’s voice was calm, but his amber eyes flared with golden flame. “I think you know what will happen if I do.”

Alex threw me to the ground as if I was a pair of uncomfortable shoes, and surged forward to bring his face into the face of someone I was now realizing he knew very well. They were nearly the same height, and their faces together had so much energy it must have been flammable.

“You want to make this about our shit now?” he hissed through his teeth.

That was the beginning.

///

I have been thinking about the time that I found the basement in the basement because of a nightmare I’d had. How I went there in meditation and found myself crammed inside a steamer trunk. Soaked in dried blood, covered in bruises, emaciated, filthy, matted. Naked. Screaming.

Please, please, she wept in a high, thin voice, her eyes not even able to see me. I’ll do anything I’ll do anything. Please please I can’t please don’t please

How my oldest friend showed up without me speaking his name, sweeping her up into a crisp white sheet, pulling her tiny body against his chest. The way his eyes flicked over to mine, searching my face briefly before taking the three of us away from there.

And then, maybe a year later, when it was he and I that were face to face.

“You are a whore,” he snarled in a voice I’d never heard before. “This is what you do. Another little project. And you don’t care about anybody but yourself, as always. Oh no, you claim that you love us, you really promise you do, but…” His mouth tasted lemon. “How can you? How can you love anyone but yourself and the power you hold over us?”

My mouth let out a string of horrible, vicious, crude obscenities. I wanted to be as foul, as disrespectful, as blasphemous as possible. It was all I could think to do- the rest of my entire soul felt like it was falling down, down, down into some kind of putrid abyss.

These days, I am starting to see he may be right.

We didn’t truly speak again for maybe four years. He was never far away, and as he promised me in 2010, if I ever called for him out of fear or desperation, he always showed up and was kind and respectful. But I’d fall asleep instantly, sucked into a charybdis of emptiness.

He couldn’t wait to get away from me.

///

I think about him as well. My biggest secret, the one I’ll probably never speak out loud. The first time I realized the truth from the way I caught him looking at me, when he didn’t think I could see.

Up until that point he had been another guardian, a point of counsel, and a source of extremely raw and brutal feedback. The kind of truth that cuts like a scalpel on your ego.

It is hard to reconcile that as well. Someone who should be a stable force, a truly exceptional example, suddenly becomes erratic, furious, demanding, desperate.

There is an intensity between us that feels like profound love and electric anger and a heavy, wistful melancholy. It is ancient. We have loved each other so many ways, and it has never been enough.

When he laughs, his head tips back and you can see all of his teeth. It feels like a rare jewel to see it- he is so serious, solemn, austere. To be able to give him joy, rest from his burden, feels like the greatest success one can achieve. But to be wholly seen by him feels like being stripped nude on livestream. Bleeding. Raw.

Whenever we have lives together, one of us gets murdered. Usually while the other watches. Our love is eternally doomed. It is searing with fire and soaked in blood. It is clandestine and forbidden.

I am capable of intimacy, I am certain.

I just have to find the ability. The soft, fleshy place I keep revealing to others, only to have them try to plunge their white hot brands into it.

I want to be loved and not possessed. Just once. Just once.

And so… we peel.

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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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If you think about the Universe as kind of a management structure, with The Creator (not a person but an energy like sunlight or flowing water) at the top, the next level of authority are angels and demons.  Both of these creatures have limited to no actual interaction with human beings, and they know for a fact that they’re on a higher level than we are.  They see us maybe as fish in an aquarium?  Hamsters in a wheel?

Either way, angels only “protect us” (in a more vague sense, like watching over the whole world) because they are instructed to.  If anything, they’re resentful because they don’t get to live real lives- they never know the agony and ecstasy of being human.  Their entire existence is complex, difficult work, the task of literally holding the fabric of time together and maintaining the balance of the Universe (that is not the same as “saving the world”- we are responsible for what we’ve done to this place, not them).  I mean I’m sure they have other things that they’re responsible for, but it goes beyond the scope of what I can imagine.

And demons are similar in that they don’t really interact with humans outside of sucking them dry to power themselves- essentially using humans as batteries.  And they do that by luring humans into trouble, into selfishness, into outright evil.  I watched a documentary about cartels on Netflix and they talked about the members laughing hysterically as they burned a man with a blowtorch and chopped bodies into pieces.  That’s what it’s like to be the power source of the darkness.

It’s Destroy vs. Create, Harm vs. Heal, Give vs. Take every single second of every day for all of eternity.

I picture angels like soldiers or warriors.  Skin made of armor, eyes filled with fire, extraordinarily tall (like nine, ten feet), with faces that are both beautiful and terrifying, and ethereal to the degree of not resembling humans much, if at all.  I imagine if you really saw an angel, it would shatter your brains.  I think often when someone says they’ve seen an angel, they’re really seeing their guardian.  Again, I don’t think angels are ever given specific humans to care for, but honestly- what do I even know?  I could be entirely wrong.

Demons are much more into using their appearance to control and terrify.  They’re more accessible because they’re lower creatures.  They think they have the same power as angels but honestly, and this shouldn’t be a shock, but goodness love and kindness are infinitely more powerful than lust power and selfishness.

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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:  you mention mediums here, and i’m wondering how you feel about mediums, and whether you’d consider yourself a sort of one. (sorry if that seems like it should be obvious?)   

I think most are fakes and frauds who prey on people looking for comfort.  I have very little patience for people who claim to be able to speak to the dead for others’ benefit.

I’m also kind of arrogantly firm about certain beliefs I have.  People don’t have to believe me, but I literally dgaf about what anyone else says on the matter.  I know what’s Really True, because I sacrificed/donated seven (eight?) years of my life to it.  I’m not weaving a fantasy, I’m reporting the news.

I also think it’s interesting when people say they believe me as a person who they know and trust, but don’t really believe what I’m saying (and I get that a lot a lot a lot).  I’m not sure how you jive with that level of cognitive dissonance, but that’s for you to sort out, I guess.

…But at the same time, I get that skepticism.  It’s a lot to absorb.  Let me also say people send me messages alllllllll the time about supernatural experiences they’ve had, hoping for help or advice or guidance, so you’re totally not alone, and I’m here for you if you need to get something off your chest.  I believe you.  I don’t judge you.  And you can tell me anything, no matter how weird.

Someone else asked me once if I consider myself a medium and I…. guess?  I mean if anything I really do consider myself a witch, whatever that even means.  It sounds less hokey and less serious, I guess.  I won’t attempt to talk to your family members and I do not have messages for you, other than the general theme I say here always: your family loves you and they want you to find peace with their death.  They’re not as far as you feel like they are, even if you don’t see signs of their presence.  You’re not alone, and when you die you get to go Home no matter what you do, so don’t worry.

I love the dead, and I have a very deep relationship to them.  I think that I’m a channel through which True Things travel.  I do believe that I have healing powers, and that I purposely absorb the suffering of people I care about in order to lighten their load.  The things I say about the dead are given to me more than they are conjured from my memory.

I feel like these are the only real important things that I do, to be honest.

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Q: What is a demon exactly?

You know that whisper in your ear, that one that tells you to do things that you know are wrong?  The things that cause shadenfreude or the things that give you that sneering side smirk and sneaky little heh heh heh feeling in your belly?

That’s what a demon is.

I also think that vampire stories are largely about demons.  Being invited into a “home” and having your life slowly drained out of your body until you are left feeding on others.  When I was sick, I was also a severely selfish, nasty, viper-mouthed, tantrum-throwing brat.  Everything light and pure and good about me was siphoned out and replaced with darkness and hardness and cruelty.  It took a long, long time to work that poison out of my body.

You don’t have to believe in demons for them to believe in you.  They live on anyone’s sadness, fear, rage, selfishness and self-hatred.  The weaker you are, the more you give them, and the more they want to take.  It’s why people who are depressed are shown to be shrouded in shadows, in black smoke, in thick oil.

I’m not saying that everyone who is sad or a jerk is “possessed” by demons, by any means.  But I am saying that they are out there, and they’re constantly trying to encourage people to do the wrong thing.  That’s why it feels so easy.  That’s why sleep paralysis often has the same themes, even for people who know nothing about them before experiencing them.  Everyone knows what evil looks like.  We just pretend that we don’t.

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Q: Why are you cosmically connected to rock stars? Why isn’t it like…Bob from accounting.

 

A: Right?  I know.  Trust me, it bothers me.

My first thought is that it’s to keep me quiet.  Because the minute you mention a famous name, people start to doubt you.  The first time I told the story online, I changed the names of everyone (like I did here), so people would just read the story and not start a “fact-checking session.”  I just needed to get those words out somewhere, to explain what I’d just survived.  Here I did it for legal reasons, because the site is public, searchable, and the last thing I really want is to get snared into a case of slander.

To claim something as crazy as, “Oh I loved this dead guy but also he was a semi-famous musician but also he was a demon,” is like literally the most fucking weird shit anyone can say.  And that’s not even the fucking weirdest thing that’s ever happened to me, so.  It’s very alienating.

But also, maybe it’s like “What Dreams May Come,” where someone comes into my life “dressed” as someone else so I can place a face to the person who has come into my life to help me.  I thought about it obsessively when things with “Alex” first ended, when I wanted to convince myself I was insane.  When believing I’d had a dip into pure psychosis was better than what really happened.

I mean maybe it was never Alex, you know?  Whoever he is is someone that is really, really good at mimicry, so.  I mean there’s a great chance it was only ever a demon, and never Alex at all.  To be honest, that answer hurts so much I can’t think about it being true.  I’ll just wait until I die to find that out, when it won’t matter as much anymore.  It will make watching his soul be destroyed a truly magnificent moment.

But there was a time I really loved him, you know?  There’s a photo series that keeps coming up on another social media site I frequent where he is flirting with whoever is taking his picture and his eyes are dark and mischievous and his smirking mouth makes my heart like a pebble skipping across clear water.  And I just.  I just.

In the early days, we asked Alex if he knew any famous people.  He said that being “famous” is kind of a …. joke over there.  Like it’s something you get teased for.  People only really ever identify you as that person, for better or worse.  So when you’ve had a Really Famous life, you have experiences here AND there that no one else really understands, which creates a little… group.  Clique?

Anyway, he said yeah, of course he knew people who are recently dead and famous musicians.  He had a little crew of people he talked to a lot, people we also occasionally talked to (more often whenever Alex became sick and they started to intervene to warn us that he was waaaayyy more ill than we knew).

I honestly think the fact that I know other musicians is really only coincidental, not that I have some kind of cosmic tie to them.  Actually, one of them hasn’t been friends with Alex in a long, long time (pre-Alex) and is only really my friend.  Also I, interestingly enough, am not a fan of his music from this life, though others are.  So I mean…

tl;dr: maybe I am, maybe I’m not.

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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: If I can’t feel my deceased loved ones around me, does that mean that they have moved on to the beyond or are they keeping their distance because they know I’m afraid of spirits?

A: What I have experienced in my life is a mix of ghosts that are Here, and the actual dead, which are Over There.  Ghosts are people who don’t want to go Home, mostly because they’re so fucking angry about how they died they refuse to let go of it.  Or they’re children and they don’t understand that they’re dead.  The longer you stay in this harsh darkness, the harder it is for you to ever go Home.  If there is a Hell, it’s being trapped between worlds.

One of the “jobs” on the other side is trying to convince ghosts to go Home, by the way.

If your loved one embraced their death and goes Home, they become not just the person you loved but all of the selves they’ve ever been.

Being alive is like being an onion with its skin still firmly sealed shut, and dying is becoming one peeled open like a lotus blossom.  Alive, you’re one person only, with hints and glimpses of people you’ve been before (”I can’t believe I did that, it’s so out of my character.”  “I have always been afraid of the ocean and I don’t know why.”).  When you’re dead, you’re everyone you’ve ever been.

There are those that immediately come back here to try again.  Some people lose touch with the earthly world and become enmeshed in their Welcome Home party.  Also, time is different there.  What is years and years to us could feel to them like a day.  There’s a lot to see and remember and there are a lot of people who are so happy to see you again.  It’s a big soft bed with clean, cool sheets after the longest, worst day ever.
I do believe that when you’re in trouble, when you are in danger, when you are afraid, the people you love are watching out for you.  They just might not be the people you remember right now.

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