Someone to Watch Over You

I began to realize, in the months that followed my father’s move from his home of over 50 years during the fall of 2009, that my mother was watching over him constantly.  It was pretty obvious that he could not remain in the house by himself.  They’d barely hung on last winter and there were two of them.  The house is far out in the country and tends to get a lot of snow, has a very long steep driveway, and requires a lot of maintenance.  Despite the fact that he’d never lived alone before our father was determined to get an apartment.  He was not going to a “home”!

He moved into an independent living apartment that he’d visited with my mother about a week before she died.  It was located in his boyhood town and was right up the hill from his major haunts: his doctor’s office, the Eat N Park, KFC, McDonald’s, and his favorite Rite Aid.  The fall was fairly painless.  He carried on life much as he always had.  He got up in the morning and went to either Eat N Park or McDonald’s for breakfast.  Then he’d watch TV in his recliner until lunch.  For lunch he would either eat in the dining room or if he didn’t like what they were serving, head out to KFC.  He run a few errands in the afternoon, then settle in for an evening of TV watching, a hot shower, and then bedtime.  He also had a lot of visitors during this period of calm adjustment.

The first thing I noticed was how he seemed to have this lucky star following him around.  The synchronicities just didn’t stop!  He often went out to the house (it had not been sold yet) to help clean up or mow the lawn.  My brother was very apprehensive about this – especially the mowing!  One day he loaded a bag of old magazines in the car to drop off in the recycling bin at the top of the road.  It was late summer and very hot out that day – around 90 degrees.  He got out of the car and heaved the load into the container.  When he went back to the car he discovered that the door had shut and locked, with the car running.  This is a pretty bad situation – he is alone, 87 years old, and is standing in an abandoned township maintenance garage parking lot in sunny 90 degree weather and locked out of his car with no cell phone.  But, one of the neighbors just happened to be driving by and noticed him there.  They picked him up and took him to their house to wait in the AC for the Triple A people to show up and let him back in his car.

Another time he accidentally left his apartment key in his apartment during one of his outings.  Yet as he stood at the door realizing he had no way to get into the building, the owner of the building just happened to pull into the parking lot and was naturally more than happy to let him in.

Winter came and with it came a great deal of snow.  He could no longer go out and drive around and this set him on a downward spiral of depression.  He began to tell me things – that he woke up one morning and saw my mother’s face suspended in the air on the other side of the room in front of the heat duct.  “Do you think she uses the energy from the heat to become visible?” he wondered aloud as he told me this.  He also told me that he could hear her sometimes when falling asleep or just waking up.  Sometimes she would sing to him, he said.

After the huge snowstorm he became lethargic.  A week went by before I was able to get out to see him as we were completely snowed in for many days.  He looked terrible.  He hardly talked and this is unusual for him.  Visits with him are normally very lively.  The visiting nurse had put him on oxygen 24 by 7 (at the time he was only on it at night).  Upon entering the apartment I was overwhelmed by the sense that his mother and sisters were sitting with him that evening.  They were all there – Grandma Mason, Aunt Mary, Aunt Ruth, and Aunt Lorraine.  As silly as this sounds - they were crocheting!  I couldn’t see them – I just knew this as soon as I walked in the room.  I left convinced that he was near the end.  Every time the phone rang I was afraid it would be someone calling me to tell me he was dead.  Subsequent visits were pretty much the same.  We arranged for visiting nursing care since we were afraid he would fall in the shower, or fall down in the apartment and be stuck laying there on the floor until someone noticed he didn’t show up for lunch or dinner.

That March I was unable to sleep one night and I’d given over to meditating to pass the time.  Suddenly a little spaniel dog trotted to the middle of my mental field of vision (I had my eyes closed), sat down, barked, and wagged her tail.  I knew this dog!  She was one of the dogs from my reading with Denise Lescano – one of the hunting dogs!  On cue, the man who I’d since discovered was my father’s Uncle Archie appears in my mind - vividly.  Not his whole body – just his head.  Interestingly this is the same type of apparition my mother usually chooses to be.

“Try not to get too upset over the things happening with your father right now,” he said.  “It looks worse than it is.  Everything will work out fine.”

Then poof – the whole thing was gone.  Great uncle, hunting dog, and all.

Then began a string of emergency room visits.  My dad would get chest pains – stomach pains – various scary symptoms and be taken to the ER.  The ER would check him over and not be able to find a darn thing wrong with him.  He’d go home.  Then he would feel guilty for having gone in the first place!

One night this happened I had to take him to the ER.  I called him on my way down and he said he would meet me at the outside door of the apartment building.  I pulled up to the side door he normally used but he was not there.  I waited for a few seconds and then began to worry that he was at the front or back door.  I was just about to pull out of the parking lot to check when I head a very loud, abrupt series of knocks on the front passenger side window of my car.  I turned my head towards the sound.  There was nothing there.  But just then my dad walked out of the door – I could see him walk out because after I turned my head towards this sound, I was looking directly at the door.  If that had not happened I would have driven away before he came outside.  I knew it was my mother!  She was making sure he didn’t end up standing outside in the cold when he was sick and on his way to the ER.

Within a couple weeks my father was hospitalized with pneumonia.  He was in the hospital for several weeks.  Spring came and with it a decision.  After having gone through all of this Dad couldn’t go back to his apartment.  He could barely stand up and walk.  We arranged for him to go to a nursing home near my house for rehabilitation.  Then we would have to decide if he could go home, or if he should move into assisted living.

My last visit to him in the hospital was on a fine early spring day.  There were no leaves on the trees yet.  As I drove down Route 28 my eye was drawn to the site of an abandoned coal mine on the hill.  I could see a pile of black coal dirt where the tipple used to come out of the hill.  When I was little the mine buildings were still there – I remembered seeing them at the bottom of the hill, next to the big pond where the barges used to come in from the river to pick up the coal.  All that is there now is a slab of concrete although the pond is still there.  From that moment on I could not stop thinking about that mine!

At home later in the evening my husband said he was pretty sure the name of it had been the Harmar Mine.  I googled this and found information about the mine.  The more information I found the more I googled.  Next thing I knew it was 2:00AM and my husband is begging me to get the heck off the internet and come to bed!  Talk about obsessed.

The very next day the Upper Big Branch coal mine in West Virginia exploded.

My husband was completely freaked out (again).

I went to visit Dad again and asked him about the mine.  He told me that after the Kinloch Mine closed in the 1930’s his father took a job at the Harmar Mine.  OK, so now I knew that the mine thing was a result of contact with Grandpa Mason, and “the spooks” (as my friend Joann collectively calls them) have knowledge of at least some things that are going to happen in the future.

My father did well during his rehabilitation but due to his tendency to fall - and his discovery of how he liked having my son and I visit him every day more than he liked driving to Eat N Park, KFC, and Rite Aid - Dad decided to move into an assisted living apartment near our home in the North Hills.

Uncle Archie was right: it looked bad at the time but it turned out for the better in the end.  My father thrives in this new environment.  He was always the social butterfly (pun intended) and needs human contact.  He likes playing bingo, going on field trips, and having other people around to talk to him.  He especially likes not having to worry because the nurses check in on him all the time and manage his medications.

The synchronicities and other dramatic manifestations have slowed down considerably since my dad is now in a safe environment and is being cared for around the clock.  But I know they are still there.  Aware.  And keeping an eye out for trouble!

How The Mind Works

My first Galantamine experience being pretty over the top, it wasn’t long before I tried it again.  It was during the huge snowstorm we had last winter.  I took the capsule at approximately 3:00AM as recommended.  I fell back asleep quickly, then “woke up” to see a large picture window on the wall across from my bed.  I could see daffodils, green grass, blue skies, bird singing – SPRING!  Realizing that we don’t have a picture window in our bedroom and that in reality we had three feet of snow at the time, I thought, Cool!  This must be my lucid dream.”  I got out of bed and hopped out the window.

So there I am, wondering around in this gorgeous nature scene.  I thought, this must be part of heaven.  And if I’m in heaven, God must be around here somewhere, right?  So there I am, I am wondering around looking for God and starting to feel kind of slighted because I couldn’t find him, when I encounter this cranky cleaning lady.

“You people!” she said.  “All you ever do is come here and make a mess!”

I wondered how anyone could be in such a place and still find a way to be a grouch.  “Have you seen God by any chance?” I asked.

“Try over there,” she said, pointing to a large building.

So I headed off towards it.  I went inside a big open lobby.  It was some kind of museum.  There was an exhibit room right in front of me so I went in.  It was full of lost things!  Remember in Reconnecting - Sychronicity, Dreams, and Antique Pianos I mentioned having to throw away an old stuffed Snoopy dog?  This old toy – falling apart and filthy beyond cleaning – came to symbolize all the pain and agony of cleaning out my parents’ house.  Putting that in the garbage was probably the most painful thing I have ever done.  And HERE, in this crazy galantamine induced lucid dream, is a room full of lost objects, and right in there in front of me is my old snoopy dog!  Good as new!

I pick him up and I am standing there hugging this thing and crying.  Then I remembered my stuffed lamb.  I had a stuffed lamb that was bought for me in the hospital the day I was born.  I had it until about fourth grade, when it vanished.  If I’m in some mystical place where lost things go, then my lamb should be here too!  So off I go in search … and then I noticed that there were other people there too, finding their stuff and either crying or laughing with delight.  That’s when I overheard someone say, “they have that book for sale again – “How The Mind Works”.  It’s really hard to get.”

Holy cow!  This I have to see, I thought.  So I went out of the exhibit and found a security guard.  I asked him where this book or pamphlet or whatever was being sold.  He directed me to a bookstore inside the building.  Eagerly I got in line.

“Do you have that book, “How The Mind Works”?” I asked.

“Sure,” she says.

“How much is it?”

“It’s free.  But first you have to read workbooks one and two.  They are $20 each.”

Whatever, I thought.  She obviously wasn’t going to give me one without my buying these workbooks.  I was carrying a back pack, so I opened it up and thought to myself, OK, Bill’s wad is in my backpack.  I have lots of money.  I stuck my hand in and pulled out a huge wad of $100 and $500 dollar bills.  Not funny! I told my mind.  Let’s try this again – I have Bill’s wad in my backpack, and it is all small denominations.  I pulled out the wad of money again and it looked normal!  I fished out two $20 bills and handed them to the checkout lady.  She gave me both workbooks and then The Book.  It looked old – the cover and spine were leather, but were also orange.  (Remember this – orange is important and will show up in dreams repeatedly over the next few months.)  I crammed them all into my backpack and then headed for the Starbuck’s I noticed across the hallway from the bookstore.

On the way over I ran into some of the people I’d seen in the lost artifact room.  “Hey check this out!” I told them.  “I just got a copy of a book called “How The Mind Works”.  I’m going over to Starbuck’s to read it.  Can you imagine what it might say in a book called “How The Mind Works” in a lucid dream?”

They were excited too and followed me into the Starbucks.  We were all sitting together at a table.  I unzipped my backpack – another zipper!  I unzipped that one – still another zipper!  I closed my eyes.

OK, I told my subconscious mind, this is not funny!  Open the backpack!

I opened my eyes and unzipped again.  Another zipper!  Perhaps it was punishing me.  I should try to be respectful.  I closed my eyes again.

OK, PLEASE open the backpack.

This time when I opened my eyes the backpack had turned into a load of laundry!  The dream began to destabilize.  I considered spinning but decided instead, screw this!

I woke up briefly and then went back to sleep.  I had several other less exciting dreams where I complained to dream characters about how I’d been wronged about that book.  In the very last one, I was lying on the sofa at my parents’ old house.  My dad and my brother John were there.  I was still complaining.

“Well the backpack is right there!” said my dad, pointing.

Sure enough – there it was on the floor next to the couch!  I grabbed it and unzipped it.  There was the book!  I took it out and opened it up.  Ugh!  It was full of 1950’s style psychobabble!

So I guess that’s how the mind works: it plays tricks on you!

Earthbound Spirit Encounter - The Auction

And now for something completely different ...

As a child I figured out gradually that there are basically two kinds of ghosts.  There were the kind like my grandparents - a positive, loving entity who can go where they want, when they want.  And then there were the kind that lived in the woods - the kind associated with Halloween, the spooky, the icky, and the scary.  These ones were usually stuck someplace.  Sometimes you run into a friendly one but they are still usually creepy.

Many years later in reading about spirits I learned that this is generally believed to be true.  The Bible says that "it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment" (Hebrews 9:27).  Most people take this to mean there is no such thing as reincarnation, but I have come to understand this differently.  Rather, at the end of (every) lifetime we die and face judgment.  Researchers of the NDE (Near Death Experience) refer to this as the life review, where you entire life is reviewed and you understand everything that you did, said, and thought along with all of the ramifications these things had on others.  So here is the process: you die, you go into The Light, and you have a life review (judgment).  At that point you are "in The Light" a "clean spirit".  If instead, when you die, you hang around and do not go into the light, perhaps because you think you are going to hell, or God doesn't want you, or some other such flawed idea, then you are no better off than you were when you were alive.  Actually you are worse off because you are living in the physical world with no body to interact effectively with it.  You are not in The Light, instead you are an "unclean spirit".  And you are probably living with a lot of self imposed beliefs like "I can't leave this house" and your beliefs become your own prison, at least temporarily.  I have come to believe that most earthbound spirit occurrences resolve themselves in time.  Most hauntings you hear about are less than a couple hundred years old.  If they were stuck here forever then the world would completely fill up with ghosts!

At this point I should interject that there is another kind of haunting known among paranormal researchers as a residual haunting.  Rather than an actual entity being there, a residual haunting is an impression of energy on an object or place that is a "memory" of something that happened there once.  So really it is an instance of psychometry (reading energy attached to an object) as opposed to an encounter with a spirit.

My mother and I had an interesting conversation once - when she was alive - about how often the Bible speaks of God being The Light.  And we couldn't help but wonder if beyond this being true, this is mentioned repeatedly so that when people die, they will actually remember they are supposed to go into The Light.

After the long introduction here is my most recent earthbound spirit encounter.  About a year ago we attended a local auction.  Being antique enthusiasts we do this fairly often.  This auction was different.  It felt creepy the minute I walked in.  Most of the furniture was really fascinating because it literally looked like it had been sitting somewhere untouched for the last 150 years.  The upholstery was original and very dusty!  In the back room was an entire table of Victorian toys - dolls caked with layers of dust and grime, tin toys, and other strange things.  As I looked at them I felt nauseated and dizzy.  There was a strange looking 19th century tricycle, kind of like this but child sized:

Out of the corner of my eye I see this little boy in knee pants sitting on this device frowning at me.  At the same time I realize he is not alone - he's got his entire family with him.  And they are hanging around (unseen) frowning at everyone because they are ANGRY.  Big time.

By that time we'd looked at everything and I was starting to get a migraine headache.  I also thought I might actually throw up if I didn't get the heck out of there.  On the way out be bumped into one of the auction house employees who we happen to know.  We stood and talked to him a few minutes and having the opportunity, I asked him where they heck this stuff came from.  He told me, proudly, that it had all come from a big old house on Negley Avenue that had been caught up in some estate problem for decades.  The house hadn't been altered or redecorated since the 19th century so all this stuff was real!  None of it was restored or reupholstered!  Isn't that great?  Isn't that amazing?

Then I understood what was going on.  This 19th century family had remained in the house in an earthbound state after death.  Somehow they had managed - either by luck or being able to influence their heirs - to keep the house unchanged for a very long time.  And they were content that way.  Then one day a truck pulled up and some men took all their stuff!  Shocked and horrified they'd followed their belongings to the auction house and well, they were not in a very good mood by that point.

So we left.  They were not interested in talking to me - just making me sick - but I do hope they gave up and went into The Light rather than following some unsuspecting buyer home from the auction.  I sure didn't bid on any of that stuff!

The Lucid Dream Pill - Galantamine

As these experiences continued I started doing more research and reading, including the topic of lucid dreaming.  There has been so much research done since the last time I studied this subject, which was probably at least 25 years ago.

One of the subjects being researched right now is the lucid dreaming "pill".  There is a substance found in daffodils and read spider lilies called galantamine that has been shown to increase the ability to lucid dream.  Apparently you have to be able to do it before you use the pill - just taking the pill itself is not enough.   The pill works by blocking the breakdown of neurotransmitters thought to be involved in dreaming and memory (this substance is also being tested in the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease).  Here is an article with the details.

I ordered a bottle from (what don't they carry?) Amazon.com:  Galantamine (GalantaMind), 4 mg - 90 Capsules

As directed I took the pill at 3:00AM - my husband Bill also woke up at the time and knew I was taking it.  This was to ensure that he didn't wake me up in the morning!  Shortly after taking the pill, I woke up in my parents’ bed.  Since I know the room was completely dismantled at that point, I knew I was dreaming!  I got out of bed and wondered what to do next.  This was so exciting!  My first lucid dream pill dream!  A few seconds later my mother walks in.  Wow!  We opened up the closet in my old room and it was full of my old clothes.  I could hardly contain my enthusiasm.  “In a million years, I never thought I would be standing in this room with you again!” I told her.

"What do you want to do?" she asked.

"Let's go shopping like we always did!" I said. 

We went to Kauffman's and shopped for hours!  That store is long gone of course, but in a dream you can do what you want.  We went to the one that used to be in Natrona Heights.  They always had tons of sale and clearance racks; we were regulars at this place back in the 1980's.

After that we went to watch a fireworks display from the top of the UPMC building in downtown Pittsburgh.  It was fantastic!  When it was over I suggested we jump down since she was already dead and I was dreaming.  One of the other dream characters suggested we didn't need to be that dramatic and why not just take the elevator over here?  So we went down the normal way instead.  Then we went to a restaurant and were having this fun, lavish meal when the dream started to destabilize.  I stood up.  “Everybody, spin!  It will stabilize the dream!” I yelled, getting up from the table and spinning.  When the dream still didn’t settle down, I told it “Stabilize dream!”  And it did.

But now everyone in the place is looking at us really funny.  In reality if someone got up from a table in a restaurant and did that - well the guys in white coats would be coming to take you away.  We decided it was a good time to leave.  Check please!  We were in the Pitt dreamscape and were walking down a sidewalk through a grassy area.  There was a gate at the end.  Dad was up ahead of us and he went through the gate first.  When we got there we couldn’t figure out where he went.  Then I saw him up ahead, around a clump of trees.  I told her to wait – I’d go get him.  When I got there he was being harassed by a group of teenagers.  They asked me what I was going to do about it.  I said “Well this is my dream, so this is what I am going to do about it.”  I whipped out a  2 by 4, swung it up over my shoulder and smiled at them.  They ran away.  When Dad and I got back to the gate my mother was gone and I woke up.  It was 10:00AM and I'd most likely had this dream for 3 or 4 hours!

She Leadeth Me Beside Sill Waters

This next happening actually ties in with research sited in “Hello From Heaven” (see recommended reading).  Research has been done on the frequency and types of ADC experiences people have.  A common theme is seeing your loved one on the other side of a body of water.  I was very surprised when I read this.  Mine has a little twist because being a longtime veteran of lucid dreaming; I decided to cross the water.  I gather from “Hello From Heaven” that most people do not attempt this – they either “know” that they cannot cross it or are afraid to cross it.

At this point we’d been cleaning out my parents’ house for several months.  It took forever and was extremely unpleasant.  In addition to the usual who-gets-what conflicts there is the strain of finding some place to take all of the stuff.  The primary source of misery for me was the early childhood memories getting stirred up.  One trait we seem to pass down is the ability to remember things from early infancy.  So here I am cleaning out drawers, and on the bottoms of the drawers are little foil stars that I stuck there when I was about 2 years old.  And not only can I remember that I did this, I remember why and lots of other things that were going on at the time – this is TMI when you are trying to clean out a house and cope with a recent death.  The only analogy I could come up with to describe what this was like is having to dig up your own corpse and decide which parts of it should be sent to the Goodwill.

It was in the middle of this struggle that I found myself standing in my parents’ house in a lucid dream.  Usually the house is exactly like it was when the lived there, but in this dream it was partially cleaned out.  I started get very upset.  I could sense that my mother was there but I couldn’t see her at the time.

“This is awful!” I lamented.  “There’s still enough stuff here that it seems like your house.  I can’t stand doing this anymore!”

I looked over towards the kitchen door and she was standing there.  She didn’t say anything, but smiled at me, opened the door, and walked out.  Naturally I followed.  Only instead of the deck being on the other side of that door (as it is in physical reality) there was a meadow.  At the edge of the meadow was a small river or large stream.  On the other side of it was a tree with a wooden porch swing hanging from the branches.  My mother was sitting on this swing.

I walked along the bank of the little river until I was almost directly across from her.  There was a place that was a little bit narrower so I decided to wade across.  The water was warm like bath water!  It actually felt really good.  It was moving and felt a lot like a hot tub.  I climbed out on the other side wet up to my thighs.  Then I sat down next to her on the swing.  She shot me this mischievous smile and said, “I can’t believe you actually crossed that.”

“You know I would have crossed the 100 foot deep river to sit here with you,” I said.  She knew what I meant – as a child I used to dream about this river that was 100 feet deep.  We talked about it a lot back in the day.

After that we just sat there.  It was timeless and it was perfect.  Nobody said anything because there was no need to.  Eventually I woke up and felt much better in a lasting way after this experience.

So I guess the take home lesson is this: if you have a dream like this, come on in, the water’s great!

Channeling Music

I would be an understatement to say I learned A LOT in that first reading!  It certainly validated that there was something to all of these experiences – the hair on the back of my husband’s neck stood up when he heard the part about the blue butterfly!  He remembered how I came home from that trip gushing about the butterflies being a sign, and at the time thinking yeah right.  He didn’t question my impressions nearly as often after that.  Although he did when I decided we should spend a whopping amount of money to record a CD of Grandpa Anderson’s music.  And I guess who wouldn’t think you were kind of nuts to spend a lot of money on something just because a dead guy encouraged you to do it?

As it turns out, he did more than encourage.  I left the notebook by my bed one night and spent the entire night being coached on exactly how to sing “The Last Rose of Summer.”  And then I woke up another morning with this name ringing in my ears: Chancery Olcott.  So I google that and turns out, well, he composed several of the songs written in the notebook!  The next night I find myself listening to Grandpa Anderson play, on his violin, an accompaniment to “The Last Rose of Summer” that really blew me my mind.  So I woke up and put it into Sibelius (music notation software) right away.  All of that time transcribing orchestra music paid off – I found I could write down what I heard in my dreams, as time progressed and I became more practiced at it - what I heard in my head.

Then I had a strange experience – I still don’t have a good explanation what this one is about.  But I found myself standing in the dining room back at The Aunt Farm.  And I knew I was dreaming because The Aunt Farm is long gone.  Grandpa Anderson walks in to the room.

“You know,” he says, “this whole thing would be easier if we used those wax cylinders.”

“Wait a minute!  Hold on – are you telling me you recorded yourself on wax cylinders?”  My mind is going a mile a minute – I’m remembering seeing these things at antique auctions – old machines that recorded music on cylinders that look like empty black toilet paper tubes covered in wax.  I didn’t know when they were invented but I knew they were around when he was pretty young – 1890’s at least.

“Yeah,” He said.

“And you know where they are?”

“Sure!” he said, and turned around.

“Wait!  Remember I’m not dead and I can’t walk through walls and stuff like that.  So don’t get too far ahead of me. OK?”

I followed him into the sun porch, which used to be his hangout back when he was alive.  He hauled open a drawer, looked confused, and pushed it shut.  Then he hauled open another drawer.  Same thing.  “Maybe they’re upstairs,’ he said.

So I follow him up to the master bedroom.  He pulls open another drawer, and another … it’s all The Aunts’ stuff!  I begin to realize: the image of the house came from my head.  I was never there when he was alive.  So the drawers are all full of The Aunt’s stuff instead of his.

“I don’t think you realize how long you’ve been gone,” I said.  “I’m talking like, forty years.  Everything in this house – it’s gone now.  This dresser is actually in my house in Pittsburgh.  There’s really nothing here anymore.”  I looked down and saw a CD lying on top of a pile of junk in the drawer.  “Hey look!   Know what this is?  It’s a CD!  It’s like a record.  This is what we’re going to record your music on.”

But I guess between the appearance of the CD and my pointing out how long he’d been dead, I broke the spell somehow.  When I looked up he was gone.

I did try to find these things, but the house was cleaned out long ago and none of my cousins remember seeing anything like that.  So I think it is a safe bet that they are gone but I will keep my eye open at the auction.  You just never know!

Meeting Grandpa Mason

I have this silly little head game I play.  If it ever comes up in conversation, I say that I never met my grandfather when he was alive.  Most of the time this comment goes right over the head, but now and then someone gets my meaning and gives me either a strange or a knowing look.  I will also clarify – this is not the musical grandfather – that was my mother’s father.

This happened in about 1996 so this is the first trip I’m posting in the Way Back Machine.  But since Grandpa Mason was the second person to show up in my first reading, I am going to take a brief detour and post about my past history with him.

At the time this happened, my sister and I were getting back into the family genealogy project.  Our family has been researching itself for at least four generations; Linda and I picked up where my mother left off.  The odd thing is we weren’t even researching my dad’s side of the family when this happened.

My sister was living in California in those days.  She was flying in that evening for a visit.  I’d left work early so I could pick her up at the airport.  It was about 3:00 in the afternoon and I had a half hour or so before I had to leave, so I decided to lie down and take a short nap with my dog.  The dog we had at the time was Crystal – a nervous, yappy American Eskimo Dog.

I fell asleep, then opened my eyes and found myself lying on one of those sofas with the bumpy irregular upholstery that everybody seemed to have in the 1960’s and 70’s.  I sat up and there – right in front of me – were my deceased grandparents.  They were sitting in front of a window across the room from the sofa.  Really bright white light was streaming in through the window behind them.  Grandma was sitting in a chair and Grandpa was sitting on the ottoman that matched the chair, slightly in front of her.  My mother was sitting in another chair off to the right (she was alive then, but was still in this dream for whatever reason).  They (the grandparents) just radiated this intense feeling of warmth, love, peace, happiness ….

I’d never been in this room before but I recognized a lot of my grandmother’s furniture.  I am pretty sure she still had that chair and ottoman in the apartment she lived in during my lifetime, and her floor lamp with the embroidered shade, antique table, and some other things were also there.  To the right was a doorway going into another room that looked like it was either a dining room or a kitchen.  What is difficult to convey is how REAL all of it was.  I remember the way it smelled.  I remember the way it felt.  I knew it was somewhere they’d lived before I was born.  Lucid dreams are very much this way – they seem more real that waking reality does.

They hadn’t said anything at this point.  They were just smiling at me.  The dog was also on the sofa with me so I picked her up, carried her over, and put her on my grandfather’s lap.  He started petting her and I said, “Well, I guess she isn’t afraid of ghosts!”  They all laughed!

However in waking reality something had woken up the dog, and she was beginning to growl.  Even though I was asleep and in this lucid dream I could feel the dog growling next to me.  I knew that in a few seconds she was going to bark and wake me up.

They knew it too – they all stood up like it was time to go home – just like the end of a normal family visit on planet Earth.  Grandpa Mason was standing right in front of me and I can remember exactly how tall he was, how he looked, how he smelled.  There was something that caught my attention about his shirt.  It didn’t look like a normal store bought dress shirt.  It was very white and very starched and carefully laundered.  I started to get kind of emotional and teary eyed.  “At least I got to meet you once!” I said.

He gave me a hug goodbye.  He was tall, thin and had very broad shoulders.  Then the dog barked and I woke up.  I was completely freaked out!  Still crying a little I called my mother and told her all of this.  She immediately clammed up.  This was before they were very comfortable with the fact that I did this kind of stuff (and that they did it too) so she was rather evasive when I described the room.  Years later, when all the fear about these experiences had blown over, she told me that it was the living room of the little house in Kinlock where they lived in after Grandpa retired.  She said it was Grandma’s favorite house.  She had to move away from it after Grandpa died – she moved from there into the apartment where she was living when I was born.

When I picked my sister up at the airport I told her this story right away.  She looked at me kind of funny.

“Didn’t you ever hear that story about how Grandma saw Grandpa the day after he died, standing at the foot of their bed?”

“No!” I said.  “It happened five years before I was born!”

“Oh, I guess you’re right!” (They always forget I wasn’t there)  “Well, she did!  It was in broad daylight – she walked into the bedroom and there he was.  She never did tell us what they talked about.  But anyway – she said that he was wearing a shirt she made for him right after they were married.”

If that isn’t enough eerie history with this grandfather, there is one more story.  This is part of the whole I-was-originally-supposed-to-be-born-in-1956-drama of my childhood.  Somehow I went on a 13 year detour and by the time I finally showed up, I was shocked and horrified by how old everybody was and the fact that 3 out of 4 grandparents had died off.  In first grade one day they took us all to the school library and read us this story about family relationships.  There was a grandfather in this story and as soon as I heard it, I freaked out and started bawling and screaming.  The teachers could not get me to stop it so they took me to the nurses’ office, who also gave up and called my mother to come and take me home.  After rocking me in the rocking chair for a while she got me to settle down enough to tell her what happened.  And then she told me this story.

“When the other kids were little Grandma and Grandpa Mason came over every Sunday after church.  And he always brought a bag of penny candy for each kid.  But the funny thing was, he always brought four bags.  He never told us why he did this and I usually ended up eating the extra bag of candy.  But I think it was because he knew you would be born someday.”

I quit bawling and life returned to normal (for the time being, anyway).  Years later she denied this insisting she made the story up to get me to shut up, but did have to admit that he DID bring four bags of penny candy each week.  Why?  I guess I should ask him the next time I see him.

Getting Real: Professional Medium Reading One

I did my homework before I took this step.  I had read about a dozen books by this time (see Recommended Reading Page) and learned about the Veritas Project at the University of Arizona.  This project has completed but resulted in more research into the survival of consciousness and mediumship, as well as a non-profit organization The Windbridge Institute For Applied Research in Human Potential.  Beyond being just another research program about ESP type stuff (the government has been doing this for decades) these programs actually studied mediumship in a controlled laboratory setting.  And they were able to rate and certify the mediums based on their accuracy rate!

According to the strict scientific definition, a medium is "an individual who experiences regular communication with the deceased".  That pretty much makes me one.  So this is where I get up in front of a crowd of people and say "Hi, my name is Laura and I am a medium".

Anyway, through a long (boring) process of looking for people who were certified by these programs in various ways, and had good recommendations, I eventually located three different mediums.  The first reading I had was with Denise Lescano.  Denise resides in Florida.  Not that it matters - everybody I found does readings over the phone.  There is no time or space on the other side.  It doesn't matter how far apart the medium and the subject are.  These folks also conduct their readings under the same conditions as the laboratory experiments.  They go to great lengths to set things up so that they know nothing but your first name.

It was a sunny but cold day in late November in 2009 when I had my reading with Denise.  As suggested, I'd arranged for a quiet place where I could relax and nobody would interrupt - in my cat room by the fire.  I had it during the day while my son was at school and Bill knew what was going on and purposely avoided coming in so as to not mess things up.

She called me and explained a little about how the process works, then had me relax and concentrate on who I wanted to contact (Mom?  You there?).  The first guy she got I had no idea who he was - turns out, he was my dad's uncle Archie!  Denise did warn me that I could get information for other people, and they all knew full well and I was going to run over and play the recording of this reading for Dad the very next day.  So tons of relatives I'd never heard of - but he had known very well - showed up to tell him  

Next was my dad's father - Grandpa Mason!  I never met him when he was alive (but I did after he was dead, and I will post about that when it is time for a "way back machine" post).  He told her I was "a coal miner's daughter" - a family joke because Grandpa Mason was actually a coal miner.

At this point Denise says "hold on, there is someone here - I believe it is your mother.  That's who you really wanted to hear from, wasn't it?  She says to not worry - she is here but wants to let a few other people say hello first."  Which is EXACTLY the kind of thing my mother would say.

After a few more of Dad's childhood relatives recorded their greetings, Denise went back to my mother.  "She says she gave you a sign," she explained.  "She is showing me a picture of a blue butterfly."

"Yes!" I said excitedly.

"You were somewhere and you saw a blue butterfly?  Or one was following you?"

"Several, " I said, and told her the story about the train ride and the butterflies.

Then I got to hear from all of the Aunt Farm aunts, Grandma Mason, Grandma Anderson - they were all there.  It was hard for Denise to separate out all of these family members.  It was hard to do that when they were alive too!

Then a shocker: "I have a man here who committed suicide by shooting himself in the head!"  This is my husband's step father.  He did commit suicide by shooting himself in the head, about two years prior.  He was there with "Gladys."  I had no idea who Gladys was until Bill listened to the recording.  That is HIS grandmother!  George and Gladys show up at almost all of my readings.

My mother did not want to tell Denise that she too had committed suicide.  She lead her all over the place - the knee replacement, the infections, the beginning of dementia - but eventually I had to rat her out.  Denise was shocked - she said they almost always tell her right away (she has worked extensively with suicide survivor groups).  My mother got upset and apologized profusely for doing that and went on for a few minutes about how awful it was when Dad found her body.  I found this very interesting because I could not get her to talk about the suicide at all before this.  I had a few short dreams where I encountered her and tried to ask if she went into the light that night, or if she stayed earthbound until after I lost contact with her after her funeral, and who came to help her cross over (Jesus, sisters, parents?).  I mean, inquiring minds want to know!  But she would just look away and not answer or vanish outright.  It was another year before she was really willing to talk about it.

By now it was nearly the end of my hour and I asked if I could talk to Grandpa Anderson.  She got him easily (they were all there - going back many generations as she put it).  I asked about the music.  He told us he had classical lessons on violin and piano growing up at a local music store, and he was pretty sure there was still documentation that the store existed that was findable.  He gave the name of a violinist who was his role model - Fritz Kriesler.  I'd never heard of this guy and neither had Denise, but my classically trained violinist husband recognized the name immediately.  This guy - like my childhood piano playing displayed - was into a lot of Romantic style phrasing and RUBATO.  Then Grandpa told me to go sing - he said I had a huge range (turned out to be almost 4 octaves) and it would be like Susan Boyle.  People who had known me my whole life would be shocked when they heard me.  He gave me information for the CD and even better - he followed up with even more information via dreams - more posts on that to come!

Where The Music Came From

An adverstisement for
our piano - back in the day!

OK, so this unbelievable piano falls in my lap (continued from Synchronicity, Dreams, and Antique Pianos).  After it is safely installed in our house I remember that I have all of my childhood piano music packed in a couple of file boxes in the cubbyhole.  So I venture into the cubbyhole and drag it all out.  As I am sitting there in the bedroom sorting this music, I being to remember and think.

I got a piano when I was 12 years old.  It was a hand-me-down from the church.  A huge old upright, it was once a player piano until someone did a - what would you call it - a player-ectomy.  It still had the place where you put the rolls in and since that mechansim was long gone it gave you a pretty good view of the hammers and soundboard.  Anyway, this thing got moved into my parents' basement - which served the function of way today would be called a family room.  My mother produced a big pile of piano music.  Where did this come from?  I never thought about it then, but now I realized it must have come from the Aunt Farm!  And given the age of the stuff, at least some of it must have belonged to Grandpa Anderson (my mother's father).  From what I knew then he was a traditional old time fiddler.  What I didn't know at the time was that he was also classically trained on violin and piano in the 1890's - early 1900's.

While going through this box I found it - two handwritten manuscripts of tunes he'd written down, in the 1930's it appears, most likely to teach my uncle how to play.  Between the two of them they have 116 songs of varying age and origin - a very interesting collection!  And more than enough upon which to base a CD!  Funny thing is though, I couldn't figure out how they got in there when I'd never seen them before!

Fast forward a few days.  We had a gig at the Ramada Inn in Ligoner - it is a standing gig we have had for years.  Earlier that day we had a musical friend for lunch and I showed him these notebooks.  Later that day we went to Ligonier.  There are two songs that we do where I have to play fiddle.  I am a lousy fiddle player  but that night I sounded great!  It was like my arms and hands suddenly knew what to do.  On the way home I made the connection - I'd touched those notebooks only a few hours before.  I have had psychometery (reading objects) happen to me before.  I tried to play the same songs the next day and I sounded just as bad as ever - like I was strangling a cat.

While I was at the National Flute Convention in New York I bought a series of books we'd been trying to find for a long time.  Published by Oxford University Press, they are style guides for music of various periods.  One of them is the Romantic Period (early 19th century) and it included a CD of music recorded on wax cylinders and marking pianos (recording pianos) in the 1890's.  One track is a piano student of Schumann playing a piano piece in the true romantic style.  The hair on the back of my neck stood up.

Why?  Fact is, nobody ever taught me to play piano.  I just did it.  After the church gave us that piano, it took me about three months of messing around before I was playing Beethoveen piano sonatas.  Aunt Mary & Uncle Harold (my father's sister and her husband) came to visit and were all impressed - Uncle Harold used to tell my parents to send me to Juliard.  Later on when I played for piano teachers they were always correcting the way I played - sometimes the left and right hand were not perfectly together, and I sped up and slowed down a lot (there is a term for this - rubato).  But nobody was into rubato in the 1970's!  Yet here I was hearing this person who was taught to play by Schumann - playing the same way I did as a kid having never been taught anything!

That's when I realized it: I'd been somehow channelling Grandpa Anderson's music.  And given that Grandpa Anderson had some serious issues and that things were getting weirder by the minute, I decided I had to KNOW once and for all if this was all just a figment of my wild imagination or if this was all for real.  I decided to book an appointment with a professional medium.  If this person told me all of the same stuff I was getting without knowing beans about me - then there must be something to it!  If not, well ... then I could try and go back to being normal?  Not that being normal was ever a possibility for me ...

Birthday Message: A Sychronicity

Many ADC's take the form of a sychronicity - something unusual that happens and you think, that just can't be a co-incidence!  It involves something closely associated with the deceased person, usually with a deeply personal connection.

The fall after my mother died I had my 40th birthday.  I was dreading it for a number of reasons - heck - who doesn't dread their 40th birthday!  I wondered if I would really feel terrible having a birthday after my mother died, and I am not very excited about being over the hill either.  So I pretty much decided to ignore it.  Still, the dreading of it made the two weeks before a bit tense.  I find it is often like this - the dreading of "whatever" is worse than the actual "whatever".  Nowhere is this more true than for Christmas - but that is another post.

So the birthday came and went.  Nothing happened.  I didn't feel any worse on that particular day and I was well on my way to forgetting it.

Then a day or so later - I can't remember exactly - I had a stream of numbers running through my dreams.  39403940394039403940394039403940394039403940 ... all night!  I was kind of going in the background and every once in a while it would break through and become very hard to ignore.  At the time I knew that it had something to do with my mother, but it being a stream of digits I didn't get it.  It is sometimes very difficult to access the left brain during sleep, even when fully lucid.  My deductive reasoning can be pretty far off and I miss the obvious.

So the next morning I woke up and was getting ready to leave - I had to be somewhere fairly early in the morning.  I realized, once awake, that the digits were 39 40 39 40 ... the significance being I was 39 turning 40!  I thought, was that Mom?  Then I thought, naw - I am just starting to imagine stuff because of all the experiences I have had so far.

I got in the car, started it up, then turned on the radio and hit "seek" like I normally do.  The dial stopped on a station we do not get.  I have never had this station before and I have never picked it up since, but that day it was as clear as a bell with absolutely no static.  It was 95.1 - there is a 95.1 in Washington DC (257 miles away) and Washington state (2400 miles away) both of which are pretty improbable!  Over this radio station that I shouldn't be able to receive I hear these lyrics, from a Simon & Garfunkel song circa 1966,  loud and clear:
Yeah, it's gonna be all right.
Yes, the worst is over now the morning sun is rising like a red rubber ball.

Besides the obvious message here this song has a meaning for me that only a few people - my mother included - understand.  It is one of my earliest memories.  People in my family also tend to be able to remember being much younger than the general poplulation.  I can remember my first Christmas, and I was between two and three months old!  My memory of this song is a little later - that summer or fall - I was able to walk and was toddling around on the porch wearing nothing but a diaper.  I was carrying - ironically - a red rubber ball and this song came on over the radio.  I guess the irony of this situation stayed with me.  My mother was also on the porch and also remembers it.  We used to talk about this kind of stuff all the time.

That is how I KNEW that was my "happy birthday" from my mother on the other side!

PS - ghosts - or spirits or people on the other side or whatever you choose to call them, can manipulate electronic devices and electricity.  Including, apparently, very distant radio signals!

The Dream Cell Phone - A First Method of Contact

I had a dream that my husband and I were on my parents’ deck rehearsing some music.  We had a disagreement about something and started to bicker.  I got annoyed and went into the house.  I decided I was sick of this diet (I started a diet with Bariatric Weight Loss, and eventually did loose 50 pounds), and I wanted a dang fried egg!  Besides, I reasoned, you can't gain weight from something you eat in a dream. [Note: I Lucid Dream - see the Lucid Dream page for more information]  While I was making the fried egg my cell phone rang and it was my mother!  I started telling her about the disagreement and other dumb day to day stuff, just like I did when she was alive.  I ate the egg at the kitchen table, still talking to her.  Then I walked out to the sun porch and noticed something strange.

“Hey, you’re not going to believe this, but the forsythia bush is blooming.   But it's fall!  Isn’t that only supposed to bloom in the spring?  I am going to check it out,” I told her.

Still holding the cell phone, I went downstairs and went out the back door.  I saw that the forsythia bush was not blooming.  What I was seeing were roses blooming that had grown through the forsythia.  There was a huge rose trellis behind the shed that had four sides.  Both yellow and deep pink roses were blooming on it in huge numbers, and then overgrowing into the yard in all directions.

“You are not going to believe what your roses did!” I told her.  I described how they were growing everywhere in abundance.  I was running through them and throwing petals up in the air.  Then I remembered the wisteria bush at the Aunt Farm [see below of explination].

“Hey, do you think that giant wisteria bush that we saw back at the aunt is still there?  Do you remember that crazy thing growing up that huge pine tree in the back?” I asked her.  She said she thought it was still there.

The dream changed, and I was sitting on an enclosed porch with my mother that was on the side of the house where the bedrooms are (this porch does not really exist).  She had her cane and I was helping her come down the steps from the porch door, so that we could go back into the house.

Note: I looked up rose color symbolism on the internet: Deep pink roses mean gratitude, and yellow roses mean friendship and happiness.  A blooming  bush means development and personal growth.  Eggs can symbolize creativity.

The Aunt Farm - when my grandparents got too old to live by themselves, three of my unmarried aunts moved back in to help take care of them.  After my grandparents died they kept the arrangement.  And it was an old farm - hence the "Aunt Farm".  One of them had a boyfriend who we all called The Ardvaark!

The dream cell phone becames a regular method of contact from this time on.

Mediumship At Work This Past Week

I decided to interrupt the long dialog I have going on my experiences with my mother to write about a series of events that happened just this past week.  It felt like a major milestone for me - instead of these things being entirely an "inner" experience, for the first time they were occuring specifically for the edification of someone else, and I was the intermediary.

Last year some long time friends of ours from one of our musical pursuits was diagnose with lukemia.  This couple had suffered a great deal over the year before that due to an accident suffered by the wife - Toni - when she fell off a ladder.  Having her husband Bob dealt this blow while they were still struggling to deal with the fallout from Toni's injuries.  She made a pretty remarkable recovery - we all feared she would be confined to a wheelchair.  But as anyone who has gone through something like that knows, there are always long term complications to be dealt with.

I think on some level we all felt that Bob would recover because it would be just too unfair otherwise!  We heard through a mutual friend that Bob wasn't doing well a month or so ago - was still in the hospital undergoing a lot of treatments but things seemed to be taking a turn for the worst.

Then this past weekend I had a dream where I saw Bob's newspaper obituary.  It was brief and I almost forgot about it, but something the next morning jogged my memory.  I told Bill about it and suggested that he should call Toni because Bob might not be here much longer if the dream meant what I felt it did.

So a few days later Bill did call and Toni told him that they had stopped treating Bob's cancer because it had advanced too far, and had sent him home on hospice care.  She invited us over to see him, as he had been enjoying all of his friends coming to see him as people heard about what was happening.  She asked him who told us and he made some kind of excuse, not wanting to tell her over the phone that his wife had some freaky dream!

On Friday night we went to see Bob, who although weak was still very much himself.  I was really nervous about this visit!  Nervous because I felt I'd been tasked with giving them a message, but I didn't know what - or giving them a reading, which I don't know how to do!  Or maybe offending them badly and being run off with torches and pitchforks.  But I sucked up and went because you have to learn to trust the process, and I really wanted to see them before Bob crossed over.

We get there and go into Bob's room, which is absolutely cracking with otherwordly energy.  As soon as I walked in I got a mental image of a man we met when visiting Toni in the hospital a year and a half before.  He also had lukemia from what I remembered, although this was long before Bob had his diagnosis.  I remembered him telling us about how he discovered he had it after he was just dog tired for weeks, and couldn't figure out why, then when to the doctor and the next thing he knew he was getting chemo!

Bill took his violin along because Bob also plays, and in fact had taken a few lessons from Bill over the years.  When Bill took his violin out I realized who was behind it - Grandpa Anderson!  I realized that Grandpa Anderson REALLY likes my husband - thinks he is a great violinist and wishes he could've played that well when he was alive.  But my husband is kind of leary of Grandpa Anderson, party because he's dead and partly because he was a character when he was alive and well, he had some issues.

So Grandpa Anderson is all excited because Bill showed up and is going to play, and I realize he has some connection to the zillions of friends and relatives Bob has hanging around helping him out through this process.  I know they are there because I feel like I am connected to an electric fence, and if I let my eyes de-focus I can kind of make out the outlines of them, like auras.

In the subsequent conversation I learn that the nice guy we met while Toni was in the hospital has since died and he is the first person Bob wants to see on the other side.  He won't have any trouble finding him because he's already there - that's why the image of him popped into my mind the minute I walked into the room.

I tried to do what I've heard other mediums do - I asked them if anyone close to them who died was into collecting or keeping up with obituaries.  They didn't take the bait so I thought maybe that was my queue to shut up.  After all these people are deeply religous and leaning heavily on their faith during this crisis, and maybe they don't want to know that we are here because of a psychic dream and that the room is full of dead people (albiet ones that are already in the light and are there to lend support).

But alas, after we left Bob to get some rest and went downstair to talk to Toni and her sons alone, Bill outed me.  Toni asked again how we knew and Bill said because I had a dream.  And the reaction was pleasant and curious, so I told them the whole story including the high points of what happened to me when my mother died.  I explained that someone in Bob's past family history knew my Grandfather and went through him to get a message to me, for no other reason that to let them know that Bob will be OK and that, well, their loved ones on the other side know what is happening and care enough to hunt someone who can bring them this message.

I could tell that this comforted them a great deal.  It is one thing to have faith that you have been taught and trusted because you made a conscious decision to do so, but another to KNOW.  And the knowing is on many different levels.  As we go through life's experiences we (hopefully) move farther on the contiunium from mere belief to that kind of knowing.  I think having a validating experience that can only be explained by paranormal means is often a jumpstart to that kind of knowing.  At least I hope so.

I am encouraged because this ability is starting to become more outward focused instead of being exclusively a solitary experience.  Because honestly for it to be an inward experience alone would seem like kind of a waste, when there is a whole world out there dying inside because is it afraid of death.