A Haunting in Albuquerque

Originally posted July 12, 2009 at Gaia.com

Ghosts generally divide into two broad categories.  Some appear to be conscious beings, simply humans in spirit form, that act in the present moment, but others seem to be “recordings” that are nothing more than imprints of people and events of the past and that under the right conditions play back like a movie.  You’ve probably read, for instance, about incidents where entire fields full of soldiers from a long-past battle have suddenly appeared to onlookers, then faded into thin air.  Such spectral manifestations repeat the exact same actions whenever they are seen, showing no awareness of the living humans nearby and making no attempt at communication.

Gina told me about this while cutting my hair, prefacing it with the same words that so many of us use:  “I haven’t told anybody about this because they would think I was crazy.”  Whereas if we would all start speaking up, we would realize that these things aren’t crazy at all and that they are extremely common!  In many ways her story is a very ordinary tale of ghosts, but it is of special interest because it involves both kinds of apparitions.

For years Gina lived in a house in Albuquerque’s South Valley with her two children and at least three ghosts.  She reported that at the old house she often saw a pair of little girls dressed in “old-fashioned” clothing, perhaps from the late 19^th or early 20^th centuries.  The girls would always be jumping rope.  They were always in the same area, doing the same things, wearing the same clothes.  The place where they were seen was a wall of Gina’s bedroom, and she says that they appeared to actually go through the wall as they played.

The girl ghosts didn’t cause Gina or her kids any problems, but there was a somewhat more sinister presence as well.  This entity appeared as an older man, and he acted like an automatous person rather than a recording.  Whereas the girls never left their wall, the man could go wherever he wanted, and did, so that he was able to be more bothersome.  When Gina’s nieces were staying with her, the man showed up in their closet and scared them.  Gina’s boyfriend at the time once said that he felt like someone was staring at him and “breathing down his neck.“  There was never a specific sense of who this old man was or why he was making his appearances.

There was a more threatening manifestation as well.  A friend told Gina that if she made it clear that the male spirit was not welcome, he would have to leave.  I’m not sure where the friend got this idea, since troublesome ghosts usually seem to be much more difficult to dislodge than that.  At any rate, Gina tried telling the man to hit the road, and the next morning her daughter awoke with a long scratch on her leg.

Significantly, the family’s two dogs refused to come into the house unless something outside was scarier than what was inside.  Only thunderstorms and Fourth of July fireworks could bring them in, and then they stayed only in the living room, never going into any other rooms.

Gina moved across town, and none of the ghosts came along.  The dogs now happily live in the new house with the family and go wherever they please.  One has to wonder what the people who bought the old house are experiencing.

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P.C.: Dana’s Paranormal Client

Originally posted June 21, 2009 at Gaia.com

The following is a transcript of the first interview I ever did as part of my research into spirit entities and people’s experiences with them.  I’ve heard plenty of stories since, but this one remains remarkable because of the compassionate and high-minded way the subject, Dana, dealt with a being who was causing him considerable trouble.

I’m not necessarily endorsing the ideas expressed here about the fourth dimension, or white light attracting negative entities.  I’m presenting what was said without editing or commentary.

 

E:  So, Dana, you said that P.C. has been around for about a year.  I was wondering if he just appeared suddenly, or if you gradually became aware of him, or how did that work out?

D:  I suspect he’s been here since before we were here, and he started making his presence known to me three or four months after we lived here.  So it’s been about fourteen or fifteen months since I first noticed him.  And I didn’t believe in ghosts, spirits, so I just kind of ignored it; I thought, maybe I’ve got some anxieties I’m working out.  But it progressively became more and more apparent that there was something in my room besides me, in my bedroom.  And it never came into the living room, it never came into Karen’s room, it certainly never came into my massage area.  But it was there, and it started becoming worse and worse.

E:  And worse and worse meaning…?

D:  I would feel… well, little things started happening.  Like one thing was that my friends would come over with pet dogs, and the dogs would run around every room in the house, and they would stay at the border of my bedroom, and not go in.

E:  Yeah, I’ve seen that kind of thing.

D:  I’d be in bed, I’d shut out the light and get in bed, and I’d feel a presence, and it just freaked me out.  And I would feel like somebody was staring at me in an angry way all night long.  And I’d feel a wind, like I’d be lying there, and I’d feel like something was… I’ll have to show you this…like someone ran up to the front of my bed, you know, more like that, like violent.  [Grimacing and making threatening gestures]  And-

E:  Did you feel like he was trying to get rid of you?

D:  Oh, yeah, I felt like he was trying to keep me– I felt like if he could he would have torn me to shreds. It was awful.

E:  Gosh!

D:  And… P.C.’s not friendly.  So he’s my client now.  I can call him P.C..  So, about six months into this, Karen started hearing me scream in the middle of the night, “Get out! Get out of my room!”  Her room is there [pointing].  We have separate bedrooms.  And she would…and finally one morning she asked me; I said, “Karen, there’s something in my room.  I know I sound nuts, but”– I thought that was what was going on.

And I was doing a massage one day, and I had a client bring her ten-year-old girl, Abby.  And Abby looked up at me and said, “Dana, is there a ghost in the house?”  I said, “Well, I think so, Abby,” and the client kind of freaked out, and the client was in the room with her daughter.  I told Abby the story, and I said, “I think he’s in my room, and I don’t know what’s going on, but he’s not happy.”

The way I would deal with this entity is, I‘d say, “Go away!” and I’d turn over, I’d bury my head under the covers and I’d just turn away, and I’d just ignore him, but I could feel his presence at the foot of my bed just,  just standing over me.  I mean, you can see the expression on my face [threatening grimace]-it was that kind of thing.

And Abby said, “I think he sleeps with you in your room.”  And I said, “Yeah, he’s in my room.”  I said, “Abby, do you know what he wants?”  She said, “No, I don’t know what he wants.  Maybe he’s angry because you made all the changes here.”  I said, “Oh.”

You know, this place used to be a house, then a warehouse for storage, and then a house for other people, but the next week I had a client come, who said, “I was a social worker for twenty years. I came to this house fifteen years ago.”  I said, “What happened?”  She goes, “Well, there was this man living there, he smoked, he drank.  He had three little girls, and they were taken away from him for being abusive.”

Let me put it this way: I would never have used this term two years ago, but my old house that I lived in was clean.

E:  Oh.  Uh-huh.

D:  This is not.  And so, I said, “Yeah.”  I said, “Well, so do you think I should explain it to him?”  So that night I sat down at the foot of the bed with the light off, and I said, “Listen,” I said, “I don’t know who you are, but you know, I can tell you the social worker story.”  The social worker–

E:  He was the abusive dad.

D:  He was extremely abusive, he beat and raped his daughters.  And he lived here.  It made me sick when she told me that.  And they got taken away.  And he’s dead, this man.  And I forgot, I gave him a name at that time, like Tony or Jeff…I forgot the guy’s…Jack… I gave this guy [a name] and I started talking to him from that name.  I said, “Look, I made the changes here because I’m creating a healing center.  This is a healing space.  I didn’t mean to encroach on your territory.  But we need to come to some agreement.  You need to get out.  This is my space.”

It didn’t work.  His visits started happening all throughout the night.  I’d wake up every hour; I’d feel wind on me, and a couple times when I woke up really quick and looked over, I would see dark, a dark outline in the room, and it scared the hell out of me.  I started sleeping on the couch.  I started talking to Karen about moving.  I said, “Look, I know this is a commercial building.  I hate to give it up, but I can’t live here.”

E:  No.  You needed serious help with this.

D:  And, uh, so I said, I’m just going to ignore him.  I kept turning my head, and I’d wake up and I’d feel him and I’d wait in my room and I’d just be terrified.  And it’s odd, Elene, the more terrified I got the stronger he got, and the more terrified I got, the more I could see him.  I could see his outline, I could feel his energy; it was an energy, it was so clear.  So one night I burned sage in the room and turned the light on, and really smoked up the whole room, the room was so smoky you could hardly see with the light on.  I heard Karen scream.  He was at the foot of her bed all night.

As far as I know he’s never come in the living room.  When I told you he can’t come in the living room, I don’t know if that’s true.  What is true is that I’ve never experienced him in here.

So I started consulting.  I started reading the Tibetan Book of the Dead.  I started reading about Purgatory.  And I called my friend Bill– I call him “Big Gay Bill.”  He’s a good friend, he’s very spiritual, very esoteric.  He’s like a big six-eleven gay guy.  And he’s kind of out there, he believes in stuff like this.  And I said, “Hey, Bill, this is going to sound strange, but this is what’s going on.”  He said, “Oh, yes, my dear friend.  Occasionally that happens.”  I said, “Well, how do I get rid of him?”  And Bill helped me reframe this.  The answer isn’t to get rid of him, because he’s probably not going to go away.  This is probably that guy who was abusing his girls, who is now dead, who is here, and doesn’t think he’s dead.  And the more I was reading, the more I realized that this is a stuck being.  I started thinking, because all my attempts to make him leave have failed.  And I was willing to pay thousands to hire a professional exorcist to come in here and get rid of him.  But the truth is, that doesn’t work most of the time, number one, and number two, it’s bad karma.  Here you have a disturbed soul, and you’re throwing him out in the cold.  And I started thinking about it, I mean, what would I do with a client who had troubles like this?  A counseling client?

E:  That’s an interesting point that I’ve never heard from anyone else.  Because most people aren’t worrying about the entity–

D:  Yeah, their attitude is, “Fuck them.  This is my house.  Get out.”  The problem is, that’s the same attitude the spirit has.  And so, I got all my courage up.  I talked to Bill more, and I started reading more, and talked to some other sources.  And I came to the conclusion that this guy, it was a guy, a) didn’t think he was dead, b) was pissed off that I made the changes here, and c) wanted me the hell out of his house.  And d), had nowhere else to go.  He was wandering here because he had nowhere else to go.

So Bill gave me some clues.  He said, “This being is trapped in the fourth dimension.”  And I thought, oh geez, Bill’s lost it, and now I’ve lost it too.  He said, “No. Listen, Dana, this being is lost in the fourth dimension.  We’re in the third dimension.  The fifth dimension is where we go back to the light.  The fourth dimension is the transition period, and it’s not supposed to happen.  It happens if there are unresolved issues.  This being is lost in the fourth dimension.  Now, in Catholicism we call it purgatory (or they do).  In Buddhism, it’s one of the bardos.  Most traditions of the world have some kind of name for this transitional place.”  In that case, it happened to be my bedroom, my house.

So I started thinking, and I gave him a name.  And the name P.C., my Paranormal Client, came about because I was so afraid of him that I needed to humanize him.  I needed to get some kind of control back.

I keep the sage in my room still, but I rarely burn it.  What I did was, I shut the door, turned all the lights off.  It was midnight, and I had a conversation with him that night.  Oh, and Bill also told me, “Surround yourself with golden light, and send golden light to him.  Because if you surround yourself with white light, he’ll come to you.  That attracts them naturally.  Send him golden light, and it needs to be the light of love.  Absolute love doesn’t fear death, absolute love doesn’t fear evil.  Absolute love doesn’t fear malice, because absolute love knows that you, as a being and a soul can’t be hurt.  You have to get in that place.”

So I had a dialogue with him, without telling him he was dead, saying, “Obviously we’re cohabiting together.  We need to come to some agreement.”  And as I was talking, I saw the dark shape again.  The room got chilled– I don’t know if it was the room or me, but there was a chill that I felt.  And I had a really straightforward dialogue with him.  This was about ten months ago.  I was very clear about what my needs were, and that he had more work to do.  That it was OK for him to do the work and move on.  And to do the good that he was here to do.  That he was here for a reason, but when he was ready to, there was a time and a place for him to go.  He doesn’t have to stay stuck here.  I said, “Look around.  Look at the changes.  If you still lived here, could these changes have happened?  Just think.  Think.  You’re not here anymore.  Maybe there’s another place for you to go.  Maybe this chapter’s ended and now it’s time for a fresh start.”  The anger and the rage was so extreme, I felt it actually… there’s no words for it, but this is what I felt, Elene.  Whoo [demonstrating], and it came through me.  And I felt no fear.  I said, “Is that all you got?  I ain’t going anywhere.

So, we’ve been cohabitating since, and I have little or no fear of him.  Sometimes he catches me off guard with a quick rush in the middle of the night.  I say, “P.C., I’m going to bed.  If you keep it up I’m going to burn some sage and keep the damn light on all night long with the window cracked.”

E:  And that does seem to make a difference?

D:  I put out the threat.

E:  I mean, that does seem to be not good for him?

D:  Oh, he hates that.  He hates that.  Absolutely hates it.  And I don’t like doing it.  So I told him, you know, “You can have the whole house during the day, be in any room, and at night, you can even have this bedroom too.  Just be in your own space, and when you’re ready, start looking for your next move, because it’s time for you to transition.  This place no longer serves you.  It’s my turn to be here now.  And someday this place won’t serve me.  It’s time to move on.”  And I started to, slowly, when I talked to him, when he shows up in my room at night, I bridged the gap and told him, “You’re dead.  You’re not here anymore.  I know that you don’t want to hear that.”

E: And the reaction is?

D:  The reaction is either that he goes away, or rage.  I thought he was gone for about three months; I felt nothing.  A few weeks ago I felt him again.  I wonder if it’s possible for them to start to make that transition a little bit.  You know, start to go halfway, and then come back as they get scared.

E:  I don’t know.

D:  He’s not a happy entity.  He’s not here having fun.

E:  Also, the flow of time could be quite different from his point of view.

D:  Oh, interesting.  I never thought of that.

E:  I think sometimes also there’s, um, there’s openings, and sometimes there’s not.  It’s my impression because sometimes I feel that my guy’s trying to get to me and can’t, and I can try to get to him and I can’t, and other times it’s just so clear.

D:  Yeah.

E:  But those are some of the questions I’m trying to take up, actually.  I’m trying to really get at, “What are the mechanics of these things?  What’s really going on?  What are the commonalities of everybody’s experiences?”

D:  Sure.

E:  So yeah, that’s interesting, because that is not unusual for a presence to go away and come back.

D:  Well, he’s gotten a lot less potent since I’m clear that he can’t touch me.  I didn’t know that was possible, I thought he could come get me.  Now that I know he can’t, or that if he can, then he’ll have to materialize enough, but he won’t have super powers.  He’ll show up and we’ll fight man to man if he shows up that way.

E:  That’d be kind of cool.  [laughing]

D:  I don’t want to fight him.  He’s a forty- or fifty-year old, chain-smoking, high coffee-drinking, skinny, wrinkled old guy.  He doesn’t need to get hurt!  What he does need is to move on, and I sure would like it if he was gone.

E:  Oh, yeah.  You’ve answered a lot of my questions.  How did you get clear about the idea that he doesn’t realize he’s dead?

D:  Well, Bill told me that.  I’m not clear.  I think he’s in… I don’t think he’s in denial, I think he’s resistant.

E: So this is a theory that’s consistent with the facts, but it’s not like something that you got directly from the entity.

D:  No, no.  Not at all.

E:  Um, do you ever get an impression that he does want some kind of help from you?  That that’s why he’s… hangin’?

D:  I thought of that.  And I thought of, you know, when I was a boy, I was abused.

E:  Oh, no.

D:  And I thought, maybe he feels that energy, and he wants me to say it’s OK.  And I thought maybe I’m supposed to forgive the people who abused me.  A person in particular, because it happened at about the same age that it probably did to these girls.  But I thought, no, I think what I’m supposed to do is just let that go.  And I thought, maybe it is my grandfather who’s coming here to ask for forgiveness.  The truth is, I don’t know, and I’m not that empathetic, you know.   Forgiveness– if I need forgiveness from somebody, I need to ask for it.  If I can’t get it, I need to give it to myself.  That’s his job.

E:  It’s also not unusual, even if there’s not a direct link between the two situations, it’s sure not unusual for us to keep finding ourselves in similar situations.

D:  Yeah.

E:  Over and over and over.

D:  And it’s ironic that his presence was abusive to me.

E:  Exactly.  That’s just what I was thinking.  You’re being abused again.

D:  Eh…not anymore.

E:  Well, now you’re not allowing yourself to be abused, but yeah, that’s the type of situation.

D:  Interesting.  It gave me an opportunity for a sense of boundaries, and it gave him an opportunity to correct his behavior.  Which for the most part, I have to say, good job P.C., he’s done pretty good.

E:  Is there anything that he seems to be interested in?  Is there anything that seems to please him?  Other than scaring the pants off of you?

D:  [laughs]  He digs that.  He takes the energy from it, like it feeds him.  He hates being ignored.  He hates… I can tell you what he hates, he hates being ignored, but he goes away if it lasts long enough.  He hates direct confrontation.  He hates it when I’m courageous and standing strong.  He hates that.  What does he like?  I don’t know.  I’ve never felt him happy.

E:  That was my impression.  I was wondering if there was, you know, like a carrot as well as a stick that might be applied, but….

D:  What would he need?

E:  I don’t know.  He’s kind of the man that has everything.

D:  I think what he needs is redemption.  I think what he needs is to go to where he needs to go, and he’s terrified.

E:  Um, if he perceives himself as a bad person, he may feel that there is every reason to be fearful, you know, that he will be judged and he will be punished, so that he can’t dare go.  It’s just a thought.

D:  But isn’t part of healing facing the music for what you’ve done?

E:  But those of us who are aren’t that developed may be just trying to avoid jail, you know, run to Mexico or something.  Stay there as long as possible before getting caught.

D:  Interesting.

E:  There could also be… what people perceive at times to be, perhaps with earthbound spirits, and I don’t know if any of it applies for this time, but kind of a classic thing is, a lot of times they’ll hang around for, like, drinking, smoking, sex, drugs, you know, adventure types of things.  For him, the idea of a healthy atmosphere and healthy people may be very attractive because that’s something he hasn’t experienced.  I don’t know.

D:  He doesn’t like it.  Just look around here– the colors, the way the… he doesn’t like it.  It’s not cluttered.  It’s a clean space.

E:  So it’s not something that’s attracting him.

D:  No, he’s not attracted here.  He’s stuck, he feels stuck here.

In further conversation, Dana reiterated that he did not wish to call in an exorcist or any other type of help because he felt that P.C. would enjoy the attention and only be encouraged to stay longer.  He also did not wish to do anything violent or hurtful toward this entity because he didn’t want to create bad karma.  He pointed out that this is a disturbed soul who deserves compassion.

Dana very much emphasized the idea that spirits cannot hurt us unless we believe they can, and that human beings are far more powerful than we realize.  On the Earth plane, we are on our own turf, he said, and spirits are not nearly as strong as we are here; there is no reason for us to be vulnerable to them.