Three, No, Four Lovely Ghost Stories
by Josephine Laing
As I may have mentioned, I have psychic ability on both sides of my family line. So, I grew up with the life-saving blessing of premonitions and several other helpful paranormal experiences. For my own part, along with my empathy, I've been blessed with a few very loving visitations from those on the other side, those who have passed into the phase of life that we know of as death, those who have dropped their bodies and are one with spirit. I'd like to share a couple of them with you now.
The first one that I'll share happened when Frank and I were in our late twenties. My dear Uncle Vernon had passed away on a Wednesday. My older brother was informed and was asked to tell the rest of the family that the funeral would be on Saturday, down in Vernon's home town of San Pedro. Somehow, my brother forgot to call me up here in San Luis Obispo until Friday night. This was a favorite uncle of mine, so I really wanted to go, to honor him. But, I'd just put in a new garden and needed to arrange for it's care as we were planning to be gone for several days. Our animals would need someone to look after them, the house was a wreck from the week of work and we had no clean clothes. So, somewhere around 2:00 a.m. Frank and I finally got into bed after having attended to all of these details. But, in order to make the 10:00 a.m. funeral, a five hour drive away, we we're going to have to get up at 4:00 a.m. so we could get out the door shortly thereafter.
Exhausted and buzzing from the evenings frantic preparations, which came after an already long work day, I lay in bed dozing with my eyes not quite completely shut. Through that hypnogogic state, of not fully asleep, nor fully awake, I became drowsily aware of a soft glowing light right near my small bedside table. Slowly, the light began to call me up toward consciousness and as my eyes began to open a little bit more, I realized that it was my Uncle Vernon there, smiling at me, so lovingly. This woke me up a little bit more and I lifted my head a little to get a better look. He was wearing his tweed sport jacket and had his jaunty golf cap on, tipped off to one side of his head, like he always wore it. He seemed to have green and blue colors around him and he seemed to be present only from the chest up, like a living bust. Now I was waking up! Though still a little bleary, I hoisted myself up onto one elbow and he smiled big as life and said with a chuckle, "You kids stay home! I know that ya loved me. " And then just as quick as that, he faded away and was gone. I lay there astounded for a moment or two, but was really glad for the message. I rolled over, tapped Frank awake and told him to turn off the alarm clock, that Uncle Vernon had just visited me and told us to stay home. Frank said, "Gladly," and we both went back to sleep. The next morning, we woke in time to call Aunt Rita and explain that we wouldn't be coming. I told her about our situation and about what Vernon had said. She accepted the news graciously and said that she'd give our love to everyone there.
Some of you may know that driving when you are badly sleep deprived is very like driving drunk. Reaction times are slower and nodding off at the wheel can seriously endanger many folks on the road. I think my Uncle Vernon came to me that night to save not only our lives, but possibly many lives, and I'm very grateful to him for it. I'm sure it's no small effort to reappear like that once you've gone. I think it takes serious concern and lots of love.
This next story happened to the father of one of my best friend's. He told it to me while we were all in High School. At the time this took place, he was studying to be a chiropractor, and he had reached that part of his education where he was to begin his work with cadavers.
The event took place in one of those old colleges back east. The classroom was on the second floor of an old brick building and had windows that looked out into the tops of the nearby trees. Each student had been given a body to study. The cadavers were on separate tables and had been lightly draped with white sheets. My friend's father had been told that the body he had been given was of a woman who had recently died in an automobile crash. As he gently lifted and peeled back the sheet he saw that she was beautiful and young, maybe in her mid-twenties. He was instantly overwhelmed and pulled the sheet back up over her naked body and face as he reeled with nausea. He didn't think he could go through with it.
He walked right over to one of the windows to try and calm himself and gazed out into the green leaves of the trees with the lawn and college grounds beyond. As he was looking out, he became aware of a soft white light beginning to form among the nearby tree tops. It began to take shape and he saw that it was her, in a flowing white gossamer gown. Her long light brown hair played about her face and she looked him deeply in the eyes. She held his gaze for several moments, neither were smiling, just gazing into each other's souls. Without words, she communicated to him that she had purposefully left her body to science for a reason. She explained that she had gone to the trouble to do this so that he, himself, could learn from it. This was done intentionally by her in order to assist him, in the future, with the healing of other people whose bodies had experienced trauma. People who could benefit from his help in healing properly. She gave him her blessing and her love and urged him to go on with this sacred act, which was so necessary for his education. With that, she faded away. He stood there a moment longer, then he turned and with clarity and comfort, set himself to work.
René' Descartes, one of the fathers of modern science said that everything had to be provable and repeatable, in order to exist. Unfortunately, this prevailing belief in our culture precludes a great many of these types of experiences and disregards them as false or else labels them as anomalies and then disregards them. So, even though a fairly significant percentage of our population, (including some of our own trusted friends or loved ones,) experience events like these, (or other paranormal experiences like the very common deja vu,) somehow, we mostly still all agree to pretend that they don't exist. But perhaps someday soon, we'll all acknowledge the flaw in Descartes theory and start to wake up to and embrace our whole true nature which includes our natural human capacity to sometimes experience events like these.
The third visitation that I'd like to share, happened to me late one night when I was about sixteen.
I had been a misfit in the elementary school where my mother traded her teaching skills for her children's tuition. I hated the wool skirt and knee socks of our school uniform and always kept mine bunched up or shoved down to get their itchy fabric away from my skin. My hair was thin and wispy and looked like straw and I was too shy to have many friends. Fortunately, a young boy in my class named Ricky Swallow was similarly left out of the "in crowd." He was a little overweight and a bit too lively and candidly funny for most. So he and I got to pal around a bit together.
The school had a music teacher who was a true delight. She pulled beautiful four part harmonies from us students every year for the school's Christmas choir show. During practice and performances Ricky and I got to stand next to each other on the risers. He in the tenor section, me with the altos.
Anyway, by this time, I hadn't seen Ricky in years, but our former teacher was taking her new young choir students to perform at the local Mortuary, Forest Lawn, near my family home in the North Hollywood area. Not only did I want to see her and hear all of the old songs, but I thought just maybe, Ricky would be there too, and he was. After the show was over, he and I stood out by the cars reminiscing and having one of those lovely long chats as everybody packed up their things, locked up the buildings and left one by one.
Pretty soon, Ricky and I were the only ones left, so we thought we'd better take off. He hopped into his car and sped off down the hill and I got in mine. True to form, it wouldn't start. So I got out, wiggled some wires, rummaged around in the back, found some Spray Start, opened the carburetor, sprayed it in, managed to get it going, shut the hood and thought I'd better let it warm up awhile and remember how to purr smoothly. There was a really good song on the radio, I think it was the Moody Blues, one of those long late night radio treats that disc jockeys sometimes give. So, I sat there listening and remembering fondly the evenings events and childhood days gone by. Then, it was time to go. So off, on down the hill I went.
When I got down to the main gate, I was astonished to see that it was closed. The radio announcer had just said that it was past midnight and there I was confronted with these ten or fifteen foot tall vertical black metal fence spikes with little black metal flames or leaves adorning each one at the top, a virtually unclimbable barricade, many hundreds of yards long. The mortuary building, off to my right, was dark with only it's porch lights on. The crypts and mausoleum were up on the hill behind me, also all shut down, and I was flanked on either side by literally hundreds of acres of manicured rolling hills filled with graves.
It slowly began to dawn on me the depth of this tactical error that I had inadvertently made. I sat there with my motor running and the headlights on, wondering, really wondering, exactly what I should do. This was long before the days of cell phones and I couldn't seem to muster up the courage to get back out of the car. So, I just sat there.
Then, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed some movement, way off to the left. I looked, and there in the pitch dark was a man, a very elderly man, tall and thin, walking along the fence line. He steadily made his way toward the gate and as he came into the distant light of the building far off to our right and then into the light of my car's headlights, I saw that he was wearing a formal tuxedo with long tails, a starched white shirt and astoundingly enough, a top hat. Appropriate attire for an undertaker, perhaps a century ago. He walked right up to the electric mechanism of the rolling gate, touched his hat in my direction and gave me a tiny upward wave of his hand without looking at me, fussed with something, maybe pushed a button, escorted the gate as it slowly slid open and then stood by it's side, waiting. Not knowing exactly what to do in a situation like this, I gave him a little wave, also without looking at him, as I drove on through and then headed directly for home.
Now, who he was, and what he was doing way off in the bushes, in the dark, I don't know. Maybe he was an employee. But I don't think so, I think he was an overseer of that sacred ground and came forward to help maintain the peace, both in the cemetery and in my heart. And I am heartily grateful to him for it.
Okay, one more, a quick one. This on happened in New Zealand. Frank and I had just arrived in Wellington from the Ferry and hadn't yet rented a car. So we shared a taxi van with several other travelers and set off to deliver all of us to our respective destinations.
Frank and I had been availing ourselves of farm stays and home stays and had arranged with an older woman named Sylvia. She had shared with us on the phone that she was looking for a way to make a little more income and thought she'd try opening her home to visitors. We were to be her first guests.
As the cabby and I were busy rearranging and unloading bags from his trailer onto the sidewalk, Frank, alternating with a stately elder gentleman, were shuttling our bags up to the front door of the house. The man smiled and murmured a few words in my direction as he gathered up our things and I looked forward to being properly introduced at the door, once we were all ready to go in. When I got there, I was cordially greeted by Sylvia and she showed us to our room. Frank went with her to see the rest of the house as I excused myself to briefly freshen up. Before I had made ready to leave the room, Frank returned and said that the place was very nice and that Sylvia loved tennis and was in the middle of watching a game. I asked how her husband was and if Frank had enjoyed meeting him. He said, "No, Sylvia shared that her husband is dead. He and their two teen-aged children died in a car crash late one night the previous year." I said, "Well, who was that man then?" Frank asked "What man?" I went on, "The older gentleman who was collecting our bags." Frank said he hadn't seen anyone. He went on to say that Sylvia had shown him a photo of her family. It was up in the kitchen. I went up and there he was, smiling at me with Sylvia and their two children by his side.
I suddenly knew that being as we were her first in-home-guests, he had come to make sure that all was well before she embarked on this new venture. Frank and I had apparently passed his purview and were welcomed by him into their home.
With love, only love, a very Happy Halloween, Dia de los Muertos and All Saints Day to each of you.
© 2011 Josephine Laing
As I may have mentioned, I have psychic ability on both sides of my family line. So, I grew up with the life-saving blessing of premonitions and several other helpful paranormal experiences. For my own part, along with my empathy, I've been blessed with a few very loving visitations from those on the other side, those who have passed into the phase of life that we know of as death, those who have dropped their bodies and are one with spirit. I'd like to share a couple of them with you now.
The first one that I'll share happened when Frank and I were in our late twenties. My dear Uncle Vernon had passed away on a Wednesday. My older brother was informed and was asked to tell the rest of the family that the funeral would be on Saturday, down in Vernon's home town of San Pedro. Somehow, my brother forgot to call me up here in San Luis Obispo until Friday night. This was a favorite uncle of mine, so I really wanted to go, to honor him. But, I'd just put in a new garden and needed to arrange for it's care as we were planning to be gone for several days. Our animals would need someone to look after them, the house was a wreck from the week of work and we had no clean clothes. So, somewhere around 2:00 a.m. Frank and I finally got into bed after having attended to all of these details. But, in order to make the 10:00 a.m. funeral, a five hour drive away, we we're going to have to get up at 4:00 a.m. so we could get out the door shortly thereafter.
Exhausted and buzzing from the evenings frantic preparations, which came after an already long work day, I lay in bed dozing with my eyes not quite completely shut. Through that hypnogogic state, of not fully asleep, nor fully awake, I became drowsily aware of a soft glowing light right near my small bedside table. Slowly, the light began to call me up toward consciousness and as my eyes began to open a little bit more, I realized that it was my Uncle Vernon there, smiling at me, so lovingly. This woke me up a little bit more and I lifted my head a little to get a better look. He was wearing his tweed sport jacket and had his jaunty golf cap on, tipped off to one side of his head, like he always wore it. He seemed to have green and blue colors around him and he seemed to be present only from the chest up, like a living bust. Now I was waking up! Though still a little bleary, I hoisted myself up onto one elbow and he smiled big as life and said with a chuckle, "You kids stay home! I know that ya loved me. " And then just as quick as that, he faded away and was gone. I lay there astounded for a moment or two, but was really glad for the message. I rolled over, tapped Frank awake and told him to turn off the alarm clock, that Uncle Vernon had just visited me and told us to stay home. Frank said, "Gladly," and we both went back to sleep. The next morning, we woke in time to call Aunt Rita and explain that we wouldn't be coming. I told her about our situation and about what Vernon had said. She accepted the news graciously and said that she'd give our love to everyone there.
Some of you may know that driving when you are badly sleep deprived is very like driving drunk. Reaction times are slower and nodding off at the wheel can seriously endanger many folks on the road. I think my Uncle Vernon came to me that night to save not only our lives, but possibly many lives, and I'm very grateful to him for it. I'm sure it's no small effort to reappear like that once you've gone. I think it takes serious concern and lots of love.
This next story happened to the father of one of my best friend's. He told it to me while we were all in High School. At the time this took place, he was studying to be a chiropractor, and he had reached that part of his education where he was to begin his work with cadavers.
The event took place in one of those old colleges back east. The classroom was on the second floor of an old brick building and had windows that looked out into the tops of the nearby trees. Each student had been given a body to study. The cadavers were on separate tables and had been lightly draped with white sheets. My friend's father had been told that the body he had been given was of a woman who had recently died in an automobile crash. As he gently lifted and peeled back the sheet he saw that she was beautiful and young, maybe in her mid-twenties. He was instantly overwhelmed and pulled the sheet back up over her naked body and face as he reeled with nausea. He didn't think he could go through with it.
He walked right over to one of the windows to try and calm himself and gazed out into the green leaves of the trees with the lawn and college grounds beyond. As he was looking out, he became aware of a soft white light beginning to form among the nearby tree tops. It began to take shape and he saw that it was her, in a flowing white gossamer gown. Her long light brown hair played about her face and she looked him deeply in the eyes. She held his gaze for several moments, neither were smiling, just gazing into each other's souls. Without words, she communicated to him that she had purposefully left her body to science for a reason. She explained that she had gone to the trouble to do this so that he, himself, could learn from it. This was done intentionally by her in order to assist him, in the future, with the healing of other people whose bodies had experienced trauma. People who could benefit from his help in healing properly. She gave him her blessing and her love and urged him to go on with this sacred act, which was so necessary for his education. With that, she faded away. He stood there a moment longer, then he turned and with clarity and comfort, set himself to work.
René' Descartes, one of the fathers of modern science said that everything had to be provable and repeatable, in order to exist. Unfortunately, this prevailing belief in our culture precludes a great many of these types of experiences and disregards them as false or else labels them as anomalies and then disregards them. So, even though a fairly significant percentage of our population, (including some of our own trusted friends or loved ones,) experience events like these, (or other paranormal experiences like the very common deja vu,) somehow, we mostly still all agree to pretend that they don't exist. But perhaps someday soon, we'll all acknowledge the flaw in Descartes theory and start to wake up to and embrace our whole true nature which includes our natural human capacity to sometimes experience events like these.
The third visitation that I'd like to share, happened to me late one night when I was about sixteen.
I had been a misfit in the elementary school where my mother traded her teaching skills for her children's tuition. I hated the wool skirt and knee socks of our school uniform and always kept mine bunched up or shoved down to get their itchy fabric away from my skin. My hair was thin and wispy and looked like straw and I was too shy to have many friends. Fortunately, a young boy in my class named Ricky Swallow was similarly left out of the "in crowd." He was a little overweight and a bit too lively and candidly funny for most. So he and I got to pal around a bit together.
The school had a music teacher who was a true delight. She pulled beautiful four part harmonies from us students every year for the school's Christmas choir show. During practice and performances Ricky and I got to stand next to each other on the risers. He in the tenor section, me with the altos.
Anyway, by this time, I hadn't seen Ricky in years, but our former teacher was taking her new young choir students to perform at the local Mortuary, Forest Lawn, near my family home in the North Hollywood area. Not only did I want to see her and hear all of the old songs, but I thought just maybe, Ricky would be there too, and he was. After the show was over, he and I stood out by the cars reminiscing and having one of those lovely long chats as everybody packed up their things, locked up the buildings and left one by one.
Pretty soon, Ricky and I were the only ones left, so we thought we'd better take off. He hopped into his car and sped off down the hill and I got in mine. True to form, it wouldn't start. So I got out, wiggled some wires, rummaged around in the back, found some Spray Start, opened the carburetor, sprayed it in, managed to get it going, shut the hood and thought I'd better let it warm up awhile and remember how to purr smoothly. There was a really good song on the radio, I think it was the Moody Blues, one of those long late night radio treats that disc jockeys sometimes give. So, I sat there listening and remembering fondly the evenings events and childhood days gone by. Then, it was time to go. So off, on down the hill I went.
When I got down to the main gate, I was astonished to see that it was closed. The radio announcer had just said that it was past midnight and there I was confronted with these ten or fifteen foot tall vertical black metal fence spikes with little black metal flames or leaves adorning each one at the top, a virtually unclimbable barricade, many hundreds of yards long. The mortuary building, off to my right, was dark with only it's porch lights on. The crypts and mausoleum were up on the hill behind me, also all shut down, and I was flanked on either side by literally hundreds of acres of manicured rolling hills filled with graves.
It slowly began to dawn on me the depth of this tactical error that I had inadvertently made. I sat there with my motor running and the headlights on, wondering, really wondering, exactly what I should do. This was long before the days of cell phones and I couldn't seem to muster up the courage to get back out of the car. So, I just sat there.
Then, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed some movement, way off to the left. I looked, and there in the pitch dark was a man, a very elderly man, tall and thin, walking along the fence line. He steadily made his way toward the gate and as he came into the distant light of the building far off to our right and then into the light of my car's headlights, I saw that he was wearing a formal tuxedo with long tails, a starched white shirt and astoundingly enough, a top hat. Appropriate attire for an undertaker, perhaps a century ago. He walked right up to the electric mechanism of the rolling gate, touched his hat in my direction and gave me a tiny upward wave of his hand without looking at me, fussed with something, maybe pushed a button, escorted the gate as it slowly slid open and then stood by it's side, waiting. Not knowing exactly what to do in a situation like this, I gave him a little wave, also without looking at him, as I drove on through and then headed directly for home.
Now, who he was, and what he was doing way off in the bushes, in the dark, I don't know. Maybe he was an employee. But I don't think so, I think he was an overseer of that sacred ground and came forward to help maintain the peace, both in the cemetery and in my heart. And I am heartily grateful to him for it.
Okay, one more, a quick one. This on happened in New Zealand. Frank and I had just arrived in Wellington from the Ferry and hadn't yet rented a car. So we shared a taxi van with several other travelers and set off to deliver all of us to our respective destinations.
Frank and I had been availing ourselves of farm stays and home stays and had arranged with an older woman named Sylvia. She had shared with us on the phone that she was looking for a way to make a little more income and thought she'd try opening her home to visitors. We were to be her first guests.
As the cabby and I were busy rearranging and unloading bags from his trailer onto the sidewalk, Frank, alternating with a stately elder gentleman, were shuttling our bags up to the front door of the house. The man smiled and murmured a few words in my direction as he gathered up our things and I looked forward to being properly introduced at the door, once we were all ready to go in. When I got there, I was cordially greeted by Sylvia and she showed us to our room. Frank went with her to see the rest of the house as I excused myself to briefly freshen up. Before I had made ready to leave the room, Frank returned and said that the place was very nice and that Sylvia loved tennis and was in the middle of watching a game. I asked how her husband was and if Frank had enjoyed meeting him. He said, "No, Sylvia shared that her husband is dead. He and their two teen-aged children died in a car crash late one night the previous year." I said, "Well, who was that man then?" Frank asked "What man?" I went on, "The older gentleman who was collecting our bags." Frank said he hadn't seen anyone. He went on to say that Sylvia had shown him a photo of her family. It was up in the kitchen. I went up and there he was, smiling at me with Sylvia and their two children by his side.
I suddenly knew that being as we were her first in-home-guests, he had come to make sure that all was well before she embarked on this new venture. Frank and I had apparently passed his purview and were welcomed by him into their home.
With love, only love, a very Happy Halloween, Dia de los Muertos and All Saints Day to each of you.
© 2011 Josephine Laing