From: Weewil Grokyu Area: Metaphysical To: All 14 May 94 13:59:08 Subject: ghost story UpdReq This was orignally posted in the 'Ghosts' echo, but my sysop asked me to put it over here, too. So....... In article 'Ghosts', Kit wrote: K> channel... I'm interested in hearing from anyone who has anything to say on K> this matter... belief or dis-belief... experiences or maybe just something K> you saw that you cannot explain... Please post back... Okey dokey. Last summer I lived in my van in a friend's driveway. Her house has always been a sort of hotbed of psychic activity. She had been complaining about a ghost there who kept walking down the halls and throwing books off shelves, ice out of the freezer, etc. But I accepted her invitation to stay there anyway. I didn't think I'd ever meet a ghost. ("Those things just don't happen to ME", and all that.) I didn't run into the ghost and had pretty well worked myself into a state of disbelief until one night when I had to sleep on the couch, and all of a sudden there's this pocket of air conditioning around me, and a very distinct presence. (The heat was on, by the way). Something was standing over me. I lay there freaking out for a minute, politely asked it to buzz off, then ran and got into bed with my pal and did my damndest to pretend I wasn't there at all. Self-delusion is a worthy hobby in such cases as this. One night we got brave and decided to channel the ghost. We had a Wiccan high priest with us and were pretty sure we knew what we were doing. We had a round chart with the alphabet on it, crystals, some candles set out for protection, and then we started. He was there right away. He wouldn't give us a real name, but made us call him Toad. (That's my niece's nickname, and he had heard me talking about her.) He seemed to think if he gave us his real name we could hurt him. We talked further and found out he had lived on that land in the early 1920's, and was murdered and wanted revenge. He was a Quaker farmer and his body had been thrown into a lake, but that's as far as we got. We were on the back patio doing this channeling, btw, because that's where he was the strongest. He also said that he got REALLY lonely, so I told him to drop by the van and hang out if he wanted to. Boy, was THAT stupid. No one can ever accuse me of having an overabundance of common sense. That night, there he was. In fact, for a week he was EVERYWHERE I went. I would be at work and would feel the cold pocket, so I'd call my friend and ask her to channel him. She could never do it. But I could and did, like the idiot I had become. I knew very little about this stuff so I didn't know that he could get stronger the more I channeled him. Isaac became my own personal CIA operative. No matter where I went, there he was. It was like having a Siamese twin. I finally got tired of it and was telling another friend about it, this one a German family trad who had spent her life practicing the Craft. (Her handle is Insect Mother. (Hi, mom!)) She told me to come over, knowing that Toad would accompany me. We channeled him for something like 6 hours straight, and found out a whole LOT about his life and death. We found out that Toad's real name was Isaac (last name withheld because I promised.) He was a Quaker farmer who lived in this town in the early 1920s. (The area where he had his farm has always been Quaker, wtb) His wife was having an affair with his half-brother, Edward, and they decided to kill him. (Or at least, I think _Edward_ decided to kill him.) So one night he was sitting in his chair by the fire talking to his wife, and Edward sneaks up behind him with a shotgun and blows him away. (Isaac felt his wife was supposed to be distracting him.) Then they set his body on fire, (he was still alive at this point and felt everything), and then they threw him into a nearby lake. His body was never recovered, and everyone thought he ran off for some unknown reason, although his mother died believing he was murdered. The main reason why Isaac was hanging on to this plane was because (and here my jaw hit the floor) Edward was *still alive*, in a nursing home here in town, and he wanted him to know that someone knew what he had done. He wanted revenge. (Real Quakerish of him, huh?) That whole evening held two elements which convinced me that ghosts exist. See, despite all this I had become pretty darn adept at the art of self-delusion, and was happier thinking I was just going nuts rather than believing all this was happening. The first thing was--I saw Isaac. It wasn't the form of a man, but it was like this mass of energy hanging near the ceiling, and I only saw it out of the corner of my eye for a second. If you looked directly at it, it was gone. I asked Insect Mother where he was, and she pointed to the spot I just described. I hadn't mentioned that I had seen him, nor had I reacted when I did so. (I wanted to see if I was imagining it, you see. No such luck.) The second thing was when she took a piece of string and hung a button on the end, then attached it to this cabinet so it could hang down free. She asked him to see if he could move it. The button starts to twist v e r y v e r y slowly. It looked like it weighed a thousand pounds and someone was trying to move it. I tried to pass it off as gravity and such, but it was NOT moving in a symmetrical manner. It looked just like some very weak person was doing his damndest to twist it back and forth, but finding the effort nearly impossible. Well, after this, (when Insect Mother had finally managed to calm me down and pry my lips off the ceiling), we set about figuring out what to do about this wacky ghost of ours who wasn't going ANYWHERE until he had set things straight with his brother. Only, Isaac/Toad wasn't telling us his whole plan. See, the more we channeled him the stronger he got. He liked me ALOT because I was new to all this, and he could slide through me like water through a straw. No pesky shields to get through and all that. I was going to be a BIG help in setting old Eddie baby straight. A couple of nights later we had a 'family dinner' at the house where I was staying. Insect Mother and my landlord, the Wiccan High Priest, and assorted children and Significant Others. The wanted to channel Isaac again because they were getting kind of nervous about his intentions, so they did. He kept lying to them about everything, and it was pissing me off. He'd promise to stay in the channeling room while I left so they could talk to him without me, then he'd follow me. He lied about all sorts of things that night. I better insert something here about something that had happened before the dinner party. A few nights before, I had been sitting on the patio looking up at this huge tree, and I saw this man dressed in a Union Army uniform hanging from the higher boughs. (I NEVER have 'visions', and it had been a long time since I had done any chemical substances of any sort, so I had no idea what it was. But it scared the living hell out of me.) We find out at the dinner party that old Isaac was in the KKK, and the young man I saw in the tree had been taking part in a parade with a military theme. He was dressed in a Union uniform, and later that night made the mistake of visiting a local underground tavern, getting drunk, and bragging that the Union had really kicked the Confederacy's ass in the war 60 years earlier. (Obviously, this kid was NOT from around these parts.) They took him out to Isaac's farm and lynched him. Why did I see him hanging so high up in the tree? Trees grow an awful lot in 70 years' time. I saw him on the same branch they hung him from. The night I had that 'vision', I also had a really bad nightmare about it that I didn't share with anyone. Then later I found out about Toad's part in the whole thing and I kept remembering the nightmare over and over again. This, too, did not make me any fonder of old Isaac. Well, this new information brought old Toadie into a new light for me, and seriously pissed me off. He in turn got angry with me for being angry with him. (Apparently, pettishness follows you when you won't give up this plane.) That night, Isaac tried something out as I was driving Insect Mother and her family home. He had been trying all night to see if he could bring about some kind of physical reaction in me, just to see if he could do it. (He almost made me throw up three or four times.) I think he was 'working on me', but in all honesty, I didn't know why, and I'm still not sure. Then Isaac decided HE wanted to drive Insect Mom home. I don't remember much about that ride. It was like I was pushed aside, and he was driving. (He did pretty well, I think. At any rate, we made it there and over to my boyfriend's house, and then he crawled back into the woodwork. He despised my boyfriend, so that was like a rubber stopper between Isaac and my conscious.) All I remember from my host's house to Insect Mom's house is a few patches here and there, and Isaac sitting there throwing silent jabs and taunts about Insect Mother's "powers", which he was trying to convince me were nonexistent. (He failed.) Then I got to my boyfriend's place and everything was okay again. We knew by the next day that Isaac had to go. We sure as hell weren't gonna send his brother a letter telling him we knew what he had done. We spent an entire afternoon explaining to him about karma and revenge and relating it all to his strict religious beliefs, (which apparently didn't preclude hanging guys from trees for wearing the wrong outfit), and after an hour or two of constant prodding, we finally got through to him. We sort of 'out-logicked him'. It was up to God to seek revenge, after all. (By this time, I didn't need anything to channel Isaac. I could just tell you whatever you asked. He started doing this through me AND Insect Mother, so we put away our divining crystals and just talked. It was easier.) We finally convinced him to let us throw him a proper funeral and release him from this plane. He finally went to "see" his brother, and forgave him. (I saw this. A figure with a round brimmed hat, in a black outfit with a black vest but no tie, standing over the bed of this shrivelled old guy who seemed to be asleep.) I think all of us felt much better for reaching this new level. We sewed a poppet, and Insect Mother took a piece of garnet to represent Isaac's heart. He suggested a biblical story to be read. (Darn good thing, because I had NO idea what ex-living fundie Quaker KKKers wanted read at their funerals.) We suggested the best funeral would be a quasi Christian/pagan thing, ending with us tossing the poppet onto a fire. It worked for Isaac, so we drew out our plans. That night, we went to the house where it all started and held circle--me, Insect Mother, her Significant Other, the lady who owns the house, and the Wiccan high priest. Five of us. We held a funeral for Isaac. The story he picked for me to read was the story of Abraham, who took his son Isaac and put him on the altar to sacrifice him to God. An angel told him that he didn't have to do it, (god was just teasing, I guess) and he burned a lamb instead. The significance of this finally hit me as we stood in that circle--the story, the sacrifice, the fire. We went through a ceremony, then Isaac 'put himself' into the poppet. (I have no idea how to explain that.) Then we put the poppet onto the fire and prayed. After about 10 minutes, Insect Mother, the houseowner, and I felt Isaac go at the same time. It was an ecstatic feeling, almost like flying. We could all hear him jabbering happily, but not out loud. It was weird. It was like the greatest release you've ever felt. (I think it was at this point that I decided paganism was too cool, and that it was the the path I was meant to take.) Isaac was finally free. We took the circle down and had a beer. A week or two later, alone, I took the poppet's ashes and spread them to the field behind the house. I figured Isaac would have liked that. Later, we made a few attempts to find some historical records of Isaac's existence and such, but then we stopped by an unspoken agreement. None of us were afraid we wouldn't find any record of Isaac. We were more afraid we would. See, if I NEVER prove this guy was here, I can write it all off to my imagination, and I won't have to face the horrible reality of the way he lived and the way he died. I'm perfectly content to chalk up that week and a half to my imagination. It's easier that way, despite all the wonderful feelings I experienced when Isaac finally left. Incidentally, we did quiz Isaac quite a bit about what it was like on the other side, but I don't know that I trust the answers. He wasn't *quite* on the other side, you know? One of the best things he told us was a little past life history (as best as he could see it.) He told us that Insect Mother and I had been mother and daughter before, that my landlord was also a past mother of mine, and that the two of them had been sisters in one life. He also told us a little about the other people in our lives. And you know, whether any of that is true or not--it was the nicest gift he gave me. We've all been family ever since, and I've always needed a family. Isaac wreaked hell on my life for a week or two, and I was stupid for not putting up the proper shields, I guess, and even dumber for channeling him when I was alone, but I did it anyway. It was a lesson, and a damn good one at that, but I don't pursue such lessons anymore. Plus, I'm now an official apprentice and know better about such things. This plane is scary enough without screwing around on the others without any knowledge of what I'm doing. It's been almost a year now since all this happened. Insect Mother still has that piece of garnet--Isaac's heart, we call it--and she takes it out and thinks about him from time to time, just as he asked. He's not in it, though. He's finally free, and I'm happy for him. And I'm grateful that he brought me closer to my spirit family. Every problem brings with it a gift, as Richard Bach says, and that was a good one. Whether you believe all this or not is irrelevant. It happened, there were witnesses, and I would frankly love to have it all explained away. But no matter how much I try to delude myself, I know it happened, and I know it changed me. I reckon that'll have to do. Again, Respond, Quit, ?Menu 201434369420143436942014343694201434369420143436942014343694718