George and Gladys

In the early spring of 2010 my husband and I were talking one evening about his mother’s ghosts and her extreme fear of them.  Bill’s mother is 90 years old.  Her second husband, George, committed suicide about a year before my mother did but in a much more dramatic way: he shot himself in the head.  I was at work the day this happened.  Bill called me and after insisting that I sit down he told me what happened.  George took out his false teeth and emptied his pockets onto the nightstand in the bedroom.  Then went out into the back yard with a revolver, stuck it into his mouth, and pulled the trigger.  Bill’s mother was in another part of the condo but she heard the noise when the gun went off.  She found him in the back yard and went screaming to the neighbor’s.  They called 911 and the rest is what you would expect.

Bill’s sister stayed with their mother for a couple months after that happened.  During that time they could sense George in the condo.  They could hear him walking around and even feel him brush past them.  Bill spent one night in the condo (the night after it happened) and he said he slept with his back to the window all night, for fear he would see George standing outside in the back yard or worse – looking in the window!

Eventually they got creeped out enough to contact a local priest, who came to the condo, tossed some holy water around, and convinced George that he really, really should go into the light.  What’s done is done, you’re dead now, and you’re freaking out your survivors.  So please – get on with it.  George apparently took the priestly advice as the condo quit oozing spooky vibes afterward.  However he almost always turns up when I have a reading – the medium will say to me “I have a man here who says he shot himself in the head!”  That’s George!  Often he is with my husband’s grandmother – his mother’s mother – Gladys.  They first time they showed up I had no idea who Gladys was until Bill listened to the recording of the session and was shocked to recognize his grandmother.

George and Gladys are now my mother-in-law’s direct line to the other side.  They try to help her out like my mother helps my Dad out.  Problem is she’s freaking terrified of them.  She often “senses” George, which doesn’t bother her so much, but they also come to her in dreams which she really hates.  She says they want her to go with them.  She is afraid if she does she’ll die.  I doubt it – they will probably just take her on a wild lucid dream experience.  And if not, she is 90 and her departure from the Earth plane is likely to be sooner rather than later, and wouldn’t it be easier to go with them in a dream than hang around and be tortured to death by doctors milking her insurance company?  But that is another topic entirely.

George is also a great messenger, I discovered quite by accident.  As I began in this article, one evening Bill and I were talking about this.  As I went to sleep, I went into a meditative state and sent George a mental telepathy.  I thanked him for trying to help Bill’s mother out and apologized that his reception had been a bit – cold – and asked him to please not give up on her.  Oh and by the way – if you see my mother tell her I said “Hi!” and ask her to give me a call sometime.

That same night I had a massive lucid dream visitation –the subject of the next post!

Dream Cell Phone Contact

I have had many experiences where I communicate with my mother via cell phone in a dream.  I have posted one before, but many of these experiences are brief and I decided to post them together for this reason.

The first time I really talked to my mother following the immediate aftermath of her death it happened via mental telepathy.  This completely freaked me out as I had never experienced it before.  I have since read books about mediumship and learned that this is actually rather common.  I think that during these visits my subconscious mind conjures up the cell phone to pacify my conscious mind, which is usually in mix since I dream lucidly.  The first time this happened is in my post, The Dream Cell Phone – A First Method of Contact.

I also believe this happens more often than I remember when I wake up, unfortunately.  I will be experiencing a completely normal dream when my cell phone rings.  I answer it (in the dream) and it is my mother.  I recognize that this is something special and that I am dreaming.  I stop whatever I am doing, sit down, and talk to her just like I did when she was alive.

On March 8, 2010 this happened and my mother told me not to forget to set my clock ahead for daylight savings time.  This may come across as negative or interfering to some, but when she was alive she always called to remind me, not to be a busybody, but because it was just part of the way she showed she cared.  It was not a long conversation – the cord to the phone kept tangling up and I asked her to hold on while I unplugged it to let it unwind and plugged it back in.  Unfortunately this also ended the call.  I pressed Send to see the number the call came in from.  It was her phone number from the home she lived in almost all of her life.  I tried calling the number back but I got the “this number has been disconnected” message that I would get if I tried the number in waking reality.

Recently I had another rather long and involved cell phone contact dream.  I took, before bed that night, about 1/3 of an African Dream Bean.  It started out as a vivid but  normal dream.  I was lying on a sofa in what looked like my parents’ living room.  It was arranged like it was in the 70’s with the sofa under the big picture window.  But it wasn’t an exact replica of the room either – it just resembled it.  I was taking a nap under a blanket and my son Henry was sitting in front of the fire in the fireplace.  The cell phone rang and I’d answered it.  It was my mother, but I was very tired and not very lucid at first.  I was complaining about my job and about how when I got home I was so tired all I could do was lie here under this blanket.

Then I noticed a bright light outside the window.  I pulled the curtains back.  “Wow!” I told her.   “It’s the moon!  There’s a full moon and it is huge and so bright!”

I got up and went out the kitchen door onto the porch.  The deck was not there yet – just the old slab porch that used to be there.  I was describing the moon and the constellations to her.  “I am looking at Cygna the goose and the Northern Cross,” I said.  “I am not sure why I am seeing these now because they are summer constellations!”  I realized I was dreaming.  I began describing the dream stargazing to her as this is always beautiful and amazing.  The moon in the sky was almost as bright as the sun would be and yet I could see all these vivid constellations with fabulous multicolored stars. 

I went around to the front of the house to see if the Northern constellations were visible but they were covered with clouds. 

“Remember when I got that astronomy book for Christmas?” I asked her.  “I remember studying it that following summer.  I wanted to see Orion the Hunter SO BAD!  But it was summer and those constellations weren’t up in the evening.  I actually got up at 4:00AM just to see Orion the Hunter.” I reminisced.

The clouds were clearing in the North as I checked again.  There was a patch on the ground that was phosphorescent, like the plants in the movie “Avitar”.  It caught my attention for a moment, and then I started telling her about “Avitar”.

The Northern clouds cleared away and I was standing in the front yard talking with her about the North Star and the circumpolar constellations.  The dream totally changed and I found myself walking along a sidewalk still talking with her.  I was now bright and sunny.  At one point I lost the connection but she called me right back.  As we talked I got the distinct feeling that we actually talk more frequently than I remember, and that my problem is more related to mediocre dream recall than lack of contact.

Knowing full well that I was risking ending the dream, I said, “Can I ask kind of a personal question?  I don’t want to offend your or anything.” 

“Sure – go ahead,” she replied.

“Did you really die?  I mean, I don’t think I dreamed that.  I played harp at your funeral.”

There was a slight pause.  “Yes,” she said.  “I did.”

“Then I have to tell you how incredibly, completely grateful I am that I can still talk to you!  I mean – with you just totally GONE it was really awful – unbelievably awful.  In addition to being my mother you were pretty much best friend too.  And I know that we have to get over these things and move on to do the things we are here to do, and let the other person move on to do the things they need to do.  But to be able to talk from time to time is just this huge blessing, and I am really thankful for it.”

I don’t remember exactly what she said, but it was an acknowledgment and an indication that she was happy to talk also, but I got the feeling that I was getting so gushy that I was embarrassing her a little bit.  So I changed the subject.

“So is it fun over there?” I asked.

“Yeah, actually it is!” she said.

And then I woke up.  Definitely thumbs up for the African dream bean!   While talking about it at breakfast my husband was stuck by the fact that we didn’t really talk about everything that has gone on with my Dad lately.  He’d had a heart attack and for a while we didn’t think he was going to recover. 

It’s not that we never talk about dad – but we didn’t that night.   Looking back on the experience  it’s as if I had temporary Alzheimer’s – I could easily remember getting a constellation book for Christmas in 1984, but I couldn’t remember anything about what had happened in the past week.  Maybe this is a protective device that is put on me so that my mother can’t interfere with the life lessons I have to figure out for myself.  The purpose of the contact is to maintain the relationship or just experience each other – not to “help” me by “cheating” and telling me the outcome of my current challenge.  And if I start to get too lucid – and there is a risk that my line of questioning will veer off towards answers she cannot give me for my own good - the contact ends.

Cousin Eugene Explains it All

This post goes hand in hand with my last post, How I Learned to Stop Hating Christmas. I had this dream a year or so before the one where I went back to 1976. I had it at the beginning of The Dreading Time – the couple of years between the decline of my parents’ health and my mother’s death.

I was really suffering over the dead family thing and really dreading losing my parents. I didn’t think there was any way I could face life in a post-parent world. I didn’t think there was anything in my future but becoming a Crazy Cat Lady.

I had a lucid dream where I found myself in a mansion. I’d been to this place before but not for many years. The rooms go on one after another in all directions to infinity. In each of the rooms there are people engaged in a different activity. I was wandering around in this place observing. If the inhabitants noticed me or realized that I was not dead like they were, they didn’t give any indication of it.

After wandering around for a while I found a room where they were playing cards. “Hot damn! The Aunts will be here!” I thought. The room was pretty crowded and I am elbowing my way around looking for my aunts. Then I saw a man sitting at a table like he was waiting for someone. Like maybe me? As soon as I made eye contact with him I knew he was a family member, even though I didn’t recognize him as anyone I knew. I went over and sat down across from him.

“Look, I know it is probably against the rules,” I begged. “But I REALLY need to talk to the aunts! Can you call them here? Even if you can just call Aunt Gerk – can I just talk to Aunt Gerk?”

Editorial comment: they all had weird nicknames. We have Aunt Biggie, Aunt Margie, Aunt Gerk, Aunt Mainie, Aunt Lo Lo, and my mother was Snooks.

This guy looks at me very compassionately and starts to tell me this story about how he was orphaned as a child and grew up in an orphanage. On and on this story went each part being more fantastic than the last … he totally blew my mind. When he finished I was sitting there with my jaw on the table.

Then he asked, “Do you think this would have been any easier to live through if I’d know about it before it all happened?

I shook my head no.

He walks around the table, puts his arm around my shoulders, and says, “It’s not that we don’t love you and care about you. It’s just that if we tell you things, sometimes it just makes it worse. Poverty is better endured in ignorance.”

Then I woke up. I thought what the heck? First thing I did that morning was speed dial my mother (who was at this time still alive). I told her the entire dream.

“Oh!” she said. “In my Father’s house there are many mansions.”

Click. That’s it! That’s the place! She could toss out a Bible verse off the top of her head to explain any paranormal experience.

“And that guy? That’s my cousin Eugene. You never met him. The last time he was in Pennsylvania was in the early 1960’s when he came back here to erect a tombstone on his parents’ grave. All that stuff he told you - he told ME the exact same story over at the Aunt Farm, and I was just as shocked as you were! And it is all true! His parents really did die when he was a child and he did grow up in an orphanage.”

I took several spiritual lessons away from this encounter.
1) Poverty is better endured in ignorance. Generally dead people don’t say a whole lot. But when they do it is usually very profound. I took this statement to mean spiritual poverty – the state we all exist in while living in the material world. Sometimes it does more harm than good to know what is going to happen before it happens. It is bad enough that it happens at all! It can really ruin your ability to deal with the present.

2) Don’t get so hung up pining after that dead that you ignore the living. OK, people die. And then they go back to the other side and they are fine. Our relationships with them don’t end. We are just separated for a while by a barrier that isn’t quite real. But it is still a barrier. Meanwhile there are almost 7 billion souls groping their way around the material plane with us. We’ve got all of eternity to hang around with our dead loved ones, but only a finite amount of time to have experiences with our fellow sojourners on Earth. And the bonus is you get to take these new relationships with you when you depart as well!

Cousin Eugene says: Go find someone who is still alive and pay attention to them today.

How I Learned to Stop Hating Christmas

I will come clean – I have been a Christmas hater for many years. Why? Because almost all of the people I used to spend Christmas with are gone! And the places I used to spend Christmas at are gone! The great die off in my family started in the 1990’s, although my grandparents were all gone by 1984. Once your aunts and uncles start dropping like flies the holidays have a way of becoming about as welcome as … well .. flies!

Every year it would start. I’d think about the Aunt Farm. My mother’s parents had a small farm. When they became unable to take care of themselves, three of my mother’s maiden or widowed sisters moved back in to take care of them. Once they had both died, the sisters found this to be a comfortable living arrangement and over the years you get aunt + farm = Aunt Farm. One of them had a boyfriend who became known as The Advaark. You can see why I miss these people – they were funnier than hell!

The Aunt farm is of course long gone. The house is still there owned by one of my cousin’s adult children. But the place – the endless card game, the bottomless coffee pot, the constant stream of puns and witty jokes – all relegated to the dust bins of history.

The remnant would gather at my parents’ house. No kids, no excitement, a much smaller buffet table. And then someone would remark, “Well, there’s another Christmas over with.” Cheery. Prozac anyone?

And now even that is gone. It is just a few of us huddling around a table in the Chinese restaurant! Last year was particularly horrible. I didn’t even put up a tree. People would ask “what are you doing for Christmas?” I’m pulling down the blinds and sitting in my house with my fingers in my ears, that’s what!

So what happened?

The second year after my mother’s death I realized several things:

1) I was prepared for this. Specifically prepared for this. I found it a cruel joke at the time, but about a week before my mother died I had a lucid dream. I was taken back in time. I was sitting in the sandbox in the back yard of the house across the street, waiting for my friend Lisa to return from the bathroom. It was a sunny summer day in about 1976. Simultaneously I was 100% conscious of both that time and the present. As my 6 year old self and my 39 year old self compared mental notes I had an epiphany of sorts. I realized that if I were back there I would miss the people I have now – but did not know yet then – just as much as I now miss the people who I had then and are now dead. I realized that most of my friends were exactly what I was – unknown children growing up in Podunk towns in the middle of nowhere. And just where the heck would you ever find, let alone buy, and antique flute or harp in 1976? I would not be able to do ANY of the things I am now doing in 1976 because there was no internet. No Ebay. No Amazon.com. And I also realized that if I had all of my favorite people all at the same time I wouldn’t have much time to spend with any of them. Maybe it was better than they were spread out over time?

And then I pondered tattling on Lisa’s little brother for throwing sand. After all I was 6.

I woke up from this dream thinking I was nuts for spending all my time filled with dread over my parents getting old and dying. This was a golden age! Both of them were still alive, my son was young and living at home, and my husband is alive. What the heck am I whining about? A week later my mother died. Short golden period, I thought sarcastically. But over time I came to a deeper understanding of it, especially the part about not having time for everyone if you have them all at once.

2) The ADC contact continued and I came to know on a very deep level that these loved ones who have crossed over are FINE. It’s one of those things that you think you know because you’ve been told so (by religious authorities usually) but until you have to walk through that valley and make peace with it yourself, you don’t really KNOW it. Once you do know it at that level your fear of death disappears. As I’ve said before it is not a “get out of jail free” card from grief, but as the grief resolved itself I found myself in a much better place than I was when I was merely dreading my parents’ deaths.

3) I learned to trust the future to deliver more good things. At least a little bit. In the dreading days I felt like my parents would die, my kid would grow up and leave, and then my husband would die and I’d just end up living with hundreds of cats. But now I’ve learned to trust that yes – there are more favorite people out there in the great unknown that I can’t even imagine yet. They will show up in my life, even if it is while I am at the animal shelter adopting cats. After all both my son and my husband were in that great incomprehensible future in 1976, so is it really that hard to believe that there are more of them to come?

So there you have it! This year I surprised myself my discovering that I liked playing harp in front of a Christmas tree. So I put one up in my harp room. And I did not get mean or depressed. I had a good time at the Chinese place with the people who are in my life now. Who knows, next year we might even do something really radical like open presents under the tree on Christmas morning! There will only be three of us. But so what? We are here now and that is what counts. And my mother and the aunts and uncles? Well, I know they are in the “many mansions in My Father’s house” playing cards and having a good time because I’ve seen it with my own eyes (or at least my third eye). My mother said it best when she chewed my ass out two months after she died:

“YOU of all people should know THIS IS NOT A PROBLEM!”

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!