Books

About “Staying – When the Hereafter is Here on Earth”

We’ve been inundated, accosted even, by our primetime television programming.  Each new season of television brings us the next adventures of ghost hunting crews, celebrity ghost stories, haunted people, places or things.

 

Truth be told, the oldest form of story-telling, and arguably the most compelling, are ghost stories (just add a campfire for an extra-creepy effect).  When confronted with cold, hard paranormal evidence, most skeptics will concede that there is something unexplained going on.  But for believers, the evidence always seems lacking.  It is simply not enough for them to know that a place is haunted, they must also speculate as to why.  Why did a spirit choose to stay attached to the earthly plane?  Why haven’t they “crossed over” or “moved on?”  Could it be the infamous unfinished business, or perhaps a more mundane rationale?  Or is there a more sinister motive?

STAYING seeks to go beyond the traditional ghost story by exploring the motive a spirit has for haunting. In each case, I have had some form of communication with the ghosts involved.  Using background information and information I receive psychically, I can make a determination on the reason a spirit has decided to remain.  In many cases, this provides closure to others involved in the experience, particularly if the spirit is a loved one.  In others, the information I provide simply broadens the history of a location.

The spirits of people who have died are still, first and foremost, people.  In my experience as a psychic medium, I have found that we don’t lose our personalities, or motives, after we die.  Therefore, if a home or barn or ship is proven to have an abundance of paranormal activity, we can usually assume that the spirits who have stayed behind are human and are still very much attached to whatever or whoever they loved when they were alive.  I have examined a haunted farmhouse whose owner remained to ensure the fulfillment of her last wishes, and a haunted battle ship whose crews still roam the decks.  In each of these cases the spirits needed to fulfill a sense duty.  I have even worked in a park office that was inhabited by a long-dead Native American shaman who restlessly patrolled his sacred lands to ensure they were paid the proper respect.

Occasionally, a spirit will choose to stay to communicate with loved ones in an effort to right some wrong.  In one heart-wrenching case, I communicate with a murdered woman, at the request of her family, in order to produce evidence that will lead to the conviction of her killer.  While the case is on-going, the leads have given the family hope.

Just as there are human spirits, there are inhuman spirits. Some of these are benign and amount to little more than the spiritual equivalent of wild animals.  One could equate the presence of these bothersome spirits to a mouse infestation – annoying, but not immediately harmful.  That is, unless you make friends with the spirit.  In a unique instance I examine the home of a woman with one of these inhuman spirits running amok.  However, in spite of her insistence, my client seemed far from willing to let this being leave.  She had entered into some kind of strange codependent relationship where she was constantly feeding the being her attention and fear.  This relationship began to define her life, and the being, of course, loved the attention.  This case follows my attempts to help my client and ultimately figure out what was occupying her home.

Finally, one could not assemble a book on haunting without also addressing the ever-intriguing “demonic haunting.”  Essentially, this variety of inhuman spirit haunting is very aggressive, very intelligent, very nasty and very difficult to get rid of.  They can range from being irritating to being violent and destructive, and they typically work cooperatively.  This type of haunting is exceedingly rare and usually occurs in places that have seen horrifying tragedy, human suffering or where they have been invited.  STAYING wraps up with an examination of the childhood home of my extended family.  While this home warrants a book of its own, it makes an interesting study of demonic and benign inhuman spirits.

These cases, and many others, round out STAYING and give a broad perspective to skeptics and believers alike.  I will releasing this book chapter by chapter in the months to come.  I hope you enjoy it, and I hope you find answers.