The Supernatural

Do you believe in ghosts? This one is great because there's this huge group of people that are sternly convinced that there's no such thing - they are complete non-believers. And then on the other side of the fence are people that have had "encounters". First-hand experiences will change you, let me tell you. I admit, I've really changed what I believe over the course of my life and I wanted to share with you my own personal transformation, and explain how what happened to me has also changed my view about things even beyond the supernatural.

Alright, so I didn't believe in ghosts or pretty much anything supernatural. Seriously, come on, that stuff is just in movies. Visions appear, things fly around the room - I'm too rational of a person to fall for it. Everything had an explanation in my mind, right? Footsteps on the stairs when no one else is home - must just be the house settling - something falls and breaks up stairs - must be the wind. Never saw anything weird, never had a reason to doubt myself. Until...

I remember I was still a teenager, must have been around 16. My grandmother - my father's mom had passed away less than a year ago. She lived with us since I was born - she was really close - like my mom - since she was always there in the house and went with us everywhere. Anyway, she had this green chair that sat in her bedroom that I moved to my bedroom afterward. Not really sure why I did, but that's kind of irrelevant. So anyway, one night I couldn't sleep really well - tossed and turned - not sure why just felt unsettled. I think I had her on my mind. I remember waking up - the sun was just up so it was obviously just morning. I opened my eyes and saw my grandmother sitting in her chair looking at me. Clear as day. I was obviously taken aback. I thought I was dreaming - rubbed my eyes - pinched myself but she was still there. Clear as day. Now, again, skeptics right now will say I'm full of sh*t - but when something like this happens to you, and you yourself ARE a skeptic, you want to prove it wrong. Like I said, I tried. But I know I was awake, and there she was. Sitting still, didn't say a word - just looked me right in the eyes and smiled at me. I talked to her..."Nana?" No response - just the sweet smile. I was sitting up in my bed at this point. I didn't know what else to do so I got up from the bed. The moment I moved to get out of the covers she instantly was gone. There's instant - and then there was this. I mean really instant. Faster than I could even blink. I again was taken aback. I sat back in my bed and thought I was certifiably insane. In one moment I literally questioned my entire life and existence and the afterlife and everything. It was surreal.

So time passed and I never told anyone about it. I was still trying to figure it out. That's what I do - I analyze stuff (as you've learned about me if you know me). So I was absolutely determined to put this puzzle together. I whittled it down to two options: 1) She came back from the afterlife - it was actually her, now, in the present, her spirit anyways, and she came to visit me for some reason or 2) I was hallucinating based on a memory I had of her from my past - my brain re-created the image of her now based on a moment from my life. I went with #2 (we'll get into my religious beliefs in another post). So I had figured it out, at least in my own mind, rationalized it so. She wasn't there in the room with me at the present - my brain somehow created a realllllly vivid image of her based on a moment from when she was with me - I recalled a moment when I was a little kid - kindergarten I believe - when I had pneumonia and had to stay in bed for a long time - I remember her sitting in a chair watching over me from time to time. That was it. No Nana back from the grave - just an amazing scene I had painted. I felt really lucky to get to see her in such reality once again and happy I had figured it all out. Still no ghosts.

Ok, incident #2 for me. This one really shook me up and to this day has shaped my beliefs about a lot of things. I was in Ireland with my wife around 2001. One night we planned to go on this Ghost Tour - we get in a bus really late at night with a bunch of other tourists and we go around to all the creepy and haunted places in Ireland. Sounded like fun - especially because I didn't believe in ghosts. So off we went - we walked thru graveyards in the pitch dark and our guide told us stories about how people were murdered - graves dug up - all sorts of fun, spooky stuff. We drove by haunted houses, hotels, etc. Then we stopped at this abbey. Before we got out the guide said something like "this is one of the most haunted places in all of Ireland. There are some people that can sense the supernatural - maybe some of you have seen ghosts or felt something before. Walk around, check things out and see if you can sense anything. If you feel something or want to talk about what you see or feel, come talk to me. I won't reveal anything until we leave." So me, super-skeptic, bounced out of the bus and my wife and I walked all around the abbey - up the large stone staircase outside. Everyone was mulling around. I so badly wanted to see something - a movement, a ghost, hear a noise, feel something. I thought maybe I could will myself into believing. Nothing. Then we walked to the bottom of the staircase. Now it gets weird. I will explain it - and you'll just have to hear me out and choose to take my word for it - but I'm telling you I'm not lying. I just stared at this door and the stone around it - and a felt something. It was like someone was telling me a story of what happened - I couldn't see any ghosts and couldn't see anything acting out - it was like someone was reading a play to my subconscious about what happened. I stood still for several minutes just letting it play out. I wasn't sure why I could feel something or how. Then it was over.

I told my wife that I felt something. I didn't know how or why and it was really weird and creepy and not like anything else I ever felt. She said I should go talk to the guide. So I did - I went over to him and explained what I had "felt". Something about a little girl banging on the door, calling for her mother - she was in pain - something about lepers - to be honest, I can't even remember the whole thing to this day. But then it was clear - and I described it to the guide. He looked me in the face and smiled. He told me that what I described is exactly what had happened there a long time ago - the whole thing - from the little girl who lost her mom and everything. I felt like someone shot me. It was so overwhelming and such a rush. It was like nothing I ever felt before - to have this script play out somehow and then realize it was true! He said the place was haunted and has been ever since and that many people can see the visions I saw. Only I didn't actually "see" anything this time - just "felt" it somehow.

So I know this was real - I couldn't have just luckily guessed what had happened. No way. Then I got to thinking again - were their spirits really trapped there? Did they die but get stuck there for some reason in limbo for deeds they had done. Again, scratched that off my list. And after much thought, I came to one giant conclusion - and this is still what I believe to this day: that when events happen, under certain circumstances, depending on the severity or magnitude of the event, something about that event actually "sticks" to a given place. It's there forever, in some sort of additional dimension or something - one that is not affected by time. So one place may have thousands or millions of events stuck there that have happened in that place - they have an essence - they play over and over again in that place but most people can't see or feel them. Some people - psychics - children - me in this case, even if just for a moment - have the ability to tap into them sometimes. Something in their brain can get into this other set of memories. Maybe some people can actually visualize the events - at least our brain makes it seem like it is actually there - like when people claim to see ghosts in their house - like me with my grandmother. I believe she actually sat next to my bed when I was a kid and that moment as a teenager, I somehow tapped into it and could "replay" that moment. When I was at the abbey, for whatever reason, I could "replay" that moment from a long time ago - I could see the events, the characters etc. It made sense to me, as strange as it did seem. It explained both of my incidents - and it made sense how some people - these special people - could go into a house they've never been in and say it's haunted. Maybe the memories from that house are always playing there in those other dimension. And these people can tap into it from time to time. It explains many ghost sitings - people who claim to see the ghost of a person that died in their house or something - the person didn't come back. It's just a memory that was somehow captured there and someone can see it somehow.

I know it sounds wacky. Again, until something happens to you, like it did me- first-hand, I can understand why it's so hard to believe such things. But my theory about my grandmother initially - that I was just "reimagining" her based on a memory - could not be applied to the abbey in Ireland. I was never there. I never had a memory of that little girl or that woman - I couldn't have recreated something that I never experienced. So it was something about that PLACE - something had to exist there. And maybe we all have the ability to see things in places sometimes - maybe we have to be completely open-minded and put ourselves into some weird state. They always say children see ghosts all the time. I wonder if when we're young, we haven't turned off that part of our brain that lets us into those other worlds - and as we get older, reason takes the best of us and we slowly lose the ability.

I think about this stuff - that's what I do. I still to this day love to talk to people about their supernatural experiences because I love believing in things that I can't always explain. I try all the time to get my mind back into that state and to this day, have failed. I'm hopeful that one day I'll have another experience - maybe even one that disproves my theory - because knowledge of the unknown is just as exciting as thinking you have figured it out.

******************UPDATE****************************
As an update to this post, for those of you that are still skeptics or interested more about my "vision" in Ireland, here is the place. with a slight description of the events that happened there that I was able to "tap" into. Just seeing the one photo gives me shivers still...