Spirits, The Afterlife and the Sixth Sense

The Beginning When I was about 8 or 9 years old, I awoke one night. I sat up in the bed and looked through the doorway to the ajoining room where my brother slept. We had a little table with two chairs that sat directly in front of the closet doors. There was a little boy sitting in one of the chairs, playing with something. It was not my brother. I crawled to the end of the bed to get a better look. He turned and looked at me, got up and walked through the closet door. That's right, through the door. I waited and waited for him to come back, but he never did. I remember asking my mom later if any children had ever died in the house as we were not the first people to ever live there. I remember reading something about spirits staying where they were comfortable, even at my young age. I don't think my mom really believed I ever saw him, that it was a dream or something. Funny that I can't remember any dreams from that time in my life but I still know what that little boy looks like. Personal Experiences Just so everyone knows, I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything. Everyone has their own beliefs and should be comfortable with them. On with the show. I've had many encounters with "The Other Side." Spirits or ghosts, if you want to use that term. I don't. I'll try to pick out the most significant encounters. The single most significant encounter was with my Ma-Ma. She died in April 1999. My Ma-Ma and I were very, very close. It took us a while to get there but when we did, it was a beautiful relationship. I watched her suffer and slowly slip away, heart and kidney disease robbing her of the things she loved to do most. She loved to cook big dinners, sit on her porch and visit with her family. At the end, her family had to do for her. After her death, I laid in the bed, meditating. In my meditation, I put myself on her porch. Meditation is hard for me. Its difficult to actually put myself somewhere, where I'm looking out of my own eyes at everything instead of looking at myself somewhere, if I explained that correctly. But I did this time. I love the autumn, so I made sure it was that time of year. The air was crisp, the mountains were full of deep fall colors but the sun was warm. I was drowsy and relaxed with my feet up, my eyes half shut, when I saw a movement across my field of sight. I looked to my left and my Ma-Ma was sitting beside of me. She smiled and laughed. Boy, did she have a goofy laugh!!! I would have known it anywhere!! She didn't speak and neither did I. I felt such love and happiness from her and within myself. I knew she was okay. That's all I needed. Another experience happened while I was in Germany in 1998. Besides feeling the entire time that I had lived there in another lifetime, I developed the worst case of strep throat. I was so sick that I stayed in a type of suspended animation for a three or four days. I remember looking at my host sister, knowing who she was but not being able to remember her name. I had posters all over the wall across from my bed, where every morning I could wake up and see Jon Bon Jovi's smiling face. But as I tossed and turned one morning, I looked up to the wall and saw all the faces, but none of them were rock stars. They were very worried faces and I could hear them chattering back and forth amongst themselves. It was as though I had a whole army of people watching over me. I wasn't frightened by them at all. I wrote it off as hallucination until The Medium, who I will describe in another segment. When the Drunk Boyfriend lived here in 2001, a series of intense things happened relating to Hyper-Boy. Hyper-Boy's father was hitting the skids and the bottle HARD. I had no idea at the time though that he was physically and emotionally abusing my son, but my Ma-Ma made sure that I found out. The first thing that happened is that I began to sense that she was near. My Ma-Ma was a very strong woman and her spirit was just as strong. I kept having a vision of her from my past. I was probably 12-14 years old at the time and she had become very angry with my grandfather for being gone too long. She became so angry she jumped in the air and threw her cigarette case down on the floor and cussed, something she never did. I began having this vision very frequently as I walked through my living room. I sensed very strongly she was angry about something. The second in this series of occurrences was Hyper-Boy's half-sister, who I would occasionally take to school. She came in one morning about dawn. Normally she would crash on the couch until time for us to get up but that morning she came straight to my bedroom. I was half awake and wanting to doze off for another half of an hour until she said, "Inanna, there's a lady outside your house. She's mad. I think its Hyper-Boy's grandmother." Yeah, I woke up. She described her as a grey haired lady and she was jumping. She opined that perhaps she was just coming to check on him like her grandmother did her at school. Her grandmother has been dead for 20 years. Drunk Boyfriend and I worked separate shifts so as I was coming, he was going and vice versa. I didn't mention the lights coming on, the noises at night or the grandmotherly sense, although his family were believers themselves. After one night though, I had to tell him. I was laying in bed with Hyper-Boy when my dog at the time, a little Yorkie named Jessie, started growling. The house was dark but I couldn't hear anything that would cause her to growl. I sat up in the bed as she looked out my bedroom door. There is a small field of vision between my doorway, the hallway wall and the living room. I saw a hovering light over the chair. I have a picture window in my living room with dark maroon curtains which I keep closed 99.99% of the time. That window faces away from traffic as I live on a one-way street. At the time, I had a big Lab in the backyard that barked at his own shadow and the window is too far off the ground for anyone to shine a flashlight in and if anyone tried, Nick would have barked his head off. The best way I can describe the light is a hovering large spark, like one from a Roman candle with sparks coming out from it but not pulsing. I was transfixed, afraid to blink and not to mention, for the first time, a little scared. I'm used to lights coming on by themselves and the TV has turned on by itself. None of that scared me, but that light did. It heightened something in me. The next morning, I met Drunk Boyfriend at the door and told him about it. He sat down on the bed and said, "You know, I haven't said anything but things have been weird lately." He related laying in the bed and hearing the sound of a cat jumping off of my kitchen counter, knowing that my cat was outside and his was laying in the bed next to him. When he would get up, there would be nothing there. Jessie would wake him up whining and growling, just as she had me. He got the feeling he was being watched, he would wake up and the bedroom light would be on... on and on. When Hyper-Boy finally told on his dad and I took him to court for custody, it all stopped. There's more, but I will save them for a later post. The Medium Through T-Bird, I met a guy I will call Frank. I didn't know it at the time but Frank was a medium. I'm careful with people who claim such things, believer or not. He seemed genuinely uncomfortable in my presence. He told T-Bird's mom, KC, that she had a lot of spirits around her. He told T-Bird after meeting me he had never encountered a person with so many spirits around them. He said I made KC look like a lonely person. He said the people I had around me filled the room and stretched around the block, like a popular club or something. Frank was overwhelmed by my spirits. Frank told me things about myself and the people in my life that made my skin crawl, for days. It got to the point we couldn't even chat on the computer. It became uncomfortable for me even, as a certain coldness would creep around me until I had to use a blanket just to sit at the computer. The kicker was when he told me about being sick in Germany (his words were - sick in a faraway place) and that my spirits had watched over me and revealed themselves. Even as a believer, I found that hard to fathom. I had not told anyone about what happened except my host family. The Spirit Carriers For lack of a beter word, I suppose I am a spirit carrier. Someone who takes a legion of otherwordly beings wherever I go. Which is fine with me. Sometimes I know they are around and when I've needed them, they haven't let me down. When I go, they go with me and I try to bring them all back too. Sometimes though, spirits get "dropped off" or just decide not to leave for a while. T-Bird lived with me for three months in 2000. One night we were sitting in my living room, our children asleep in their respective bedrooms when we heard a baby cry. A baby. Not a four year old and a toddler, a baby. We both said, "Little T." I was to be Little T's godmother. Before I left Michigan after T-Bird's wedding, I laid my hand on her stomach and Little T had kicked me. I had no doubts, as did T-Bird, as to who that cry came from. (For those who did not read my preceding posts, Little T was T-Bird's first child who was born prematurely and died soon after birth.) When T-Bird left, she took Little T with her so she could terrorize her brother by hiding his pacifier and stealing his toys. T-Bird however brought a spirit she didn't take with her. T-Bird and Chay have different fathers. Chay's father, Big D, was killed in an industrial accident when Chay was three years old. After his death, they would smell his cologne in their house and he would visit Chay. Chay is highly advanced and can see spirits as well as communicate with them but has learned how to block this out, for the most part. Big D, who I never met while he was living, certainly took a shine to me. After T-Bird moved, I had gotten out of the shower and was standing in my bedroom when I noticed an odd shadow from the corner of my eye and that oh-so-creepy feeling I was being watched. When I would turn to look, the shadow would retreat. This happened several times. I knew who it was. I felt who it was. I told KC about this and she laughed and said, "Yeah, that sounds like him." One particulary irritating day when I felt his presence as I stood with all my womanly delights showing, I threw on a robe and went into the living room. I addressed him by name, thanked him for coming by and then said, "Okay, you've had your fun, NOW STOP LOOKING AT ME NAKED!!" He left for a while but he's come back. Now, when I feel that feeling, I just say his name in very warning tone and he takes off. I know he is laughing behind my back. Raunchy Spirits!! What It Means To Me I believe in an afterlife. I believe that afterlife is based on your faith. I believe in reincarnation and that animal spirits cross over as well. My idea of heaven is not pearly gates and streets of gold. My idea of heaven is a small cabin in the woods where the Autumn breeze blows, where I can run in fields of late Fall flowers and lay in crisp leaves and smell the never-ending Indian Summer. I can pet and love any creature and naturally, I will have a lot of cats and my dog Ivy. I know that every religion has their idea of heaven, nirvana, afterlife and in-between life. Like I said, I'm not here to convince anyone of anything or prove anything. Religion and beliefs are personal, as are heaven and hell. I don't quite think it would be fair though for a Wiccan to have a Christian heaven, or vice versa. Not that spirits can't visit each other but at the end of the day we are all entitled to our own nirvana. I am also entitled to believe that all around me spirits swarm and guide and protect me in my daily life. I believe that the spirit never dies and therefore, love never dies either. I believe spirits have the capabilities to comfort us in our times of need, warn us in times of trouble and best of all, to love us unconditionally, forever. Next Time: More stories from here and beyond