Meeting The Spirit

I wanted to tell you of a strange little meeting I had a few weeks ago with The Spirit that inhabits the back of the store next door to the Copper Gecko. I work up there one day every two weeks, not much, but it's sure fun to talk to the tourists who come in. Recently, we've got a writer from Washington DC who is conducting interviews with older Superiorites for the history of Superior he's writing. He interviews them in the rear room of the Copper Gecko. His name is Joaquin. Well, this day, Joaquin came in, asked me if I were Nancy, and got all excited and said that Leslie told him I could talk to ghosts. I said, not exactly.  But he asked if I'd take him next door to meet The Spirit. I said, okay. It was slow and we didn't have any customers. (Plus we have the key to the shop next door. It's empty, except for the model home furniture that's for sale and all the beautiful clothes of the owner's late wife, which I have been buying a lot of, by the way,for she was my size. But that's another story...) Anyway, I led him through the main room, through a small hall in the middle of the room, past the bathroom, where I first felt The Spirit several weeks ago, by way of the clenching in my heart, which I took to mean it had passed of a heart attack. Anyway, we ended up in the back room facing the back door and we turned to face each other. Suddenly, I was 'aware' (psychically aware) of Joaquin's face being slapped repeatedly, excitedly, like The Spirit was saying, "WOW! Look at me, you fool! You're here and I want you to feel me!" I said nothing to Joaquin,but watched his face intently, almost grinning I'm sure because The Sprit was so darned excited to be getting to meet The Writer. "What's wrong?" Joaquin asked suspiciously, "What's going on?" "What are you feeling?" I asked, smirking a bit. Gosh, the dude's left cheek was getting psychically pummeled!! "Uh, he's trying to get your attention by slapping your cheek," I said. "What!" Joaquin's eyes sprang open. "What's he look like?" He looked fearfully over his shoulder and I looked too, half expecting to see The Spirit. "I don't know," I said, "I'm only feeling him. I can't see him. But he sure is trying to get your attention." "I can't feel anything," Joaquin grumped, turning to leave the room. (Yeah, it's kind of silly standing in a darkened room with a total stranger you've only just met, now, isn't it?) Anyway, we made our way toward the front of the building and I stopped briefly by the bathroom, telling Joaquin that was where I'd first felt The Spirit. Joaquin still couldn't feel a darned thing. "I guess I'm just too egotistical," he admitted. "I can't feel anybody else." "Okay," I agreed. "In that case, I bet you'll make a fine spirit yourself someday when you die." We laughed and left the buidling. But it was pretty much an eye opener for me and I wanted to share.

Ghosthunter

I had a visit from a ghosthunter yesterday. It's not every day that a ghosthunter calls at your home. And it's not a typical occurrence to get to speak to one. But I did. And it was spooky fun, just the same. Currently, he's not an active ghosthunter. He started a unit of ghosthunting while he was in college and has a good bit of notoriety because of it. He told me his full name so I could Google him and darned if he doesn't pop right up there. Since he isn't actively ghost hunting now, why did he come to my home for a visit? Well, he's a security device technician and was there to install some widgets on the windows so if we had an Unwanted Visitor who tried to get in, it would set off our alarm.

He said he had visited our home once before, last summer, after we'd been broken into at Memorial Day. He came back to install a loud siren on the roof and our friend Tom was there to let him in. I asked him if he got any 'vibes' from our front room.

"I didn't today," he said, "but I did last summer. Your house felt old. Or at least like there was a lot of activity there. A lot of people. That kind of thing."

"It's not that old," I defended. Actually, the house is younger than I am, built in 1956 and since I was built in 1949 that's probably why I think of it as a new house. "But there's a lot of history in this area and that may be why it feels like there's a lot of souls or spiritual presences around."

I told him a bit about my early attempts at channeling and receiving information. He was more of a pragmatist.

"I'd like to prove there's a definite link between what the scientists know and can point to definitively and what the spiritualists believe. We're getting better at it all the time with more specialized equipment. And there's lots of proof in some of the better digital recorders and thermal units out there." He launched into some highly technical jargon about some of the equipment they got to use when he was in the ghosthunters association back in Chicago. I could dimly understand what he was talking about. Technical stuff is fine but I believe more from a gut level sort of thing.

He commenced to telling me about a Victorian house they had studied one night at the insistance of the owner who felt it was haunted by Al Capone. He said they recorded a powerful E.V.P., a loud intense whisper on a digital recorder that was screaming for Amanda to get out! Out! OUT! The hairs stood up on my arm. (I find other people's ghost stories so much more interesting than my own.)

"Did you find out who Amanda was?" I asked, breathlessly.

"Nope. Never did. But we found out later there was a fire in that house. So we figured that urgent 'shout' must have been for Amanda to get the hell out!" he grinned. "I'm a big fan of E.V.P.'s."

Hmmm, I've never actually recorded an E.V.P. And I've never actually seen a ghost either. But if I had to choose, I believe I'd rather record the E.V.P. than see a spirit. Just me, mind you. I have no qualms about talking to spirits on the other side and sensing their information or the signs they give me to see. I've even felt sensations they want me to feel, at times. But whenever I hear of my friends or loved ones having actually encounters with those who have passed, like seeing them I mean, then I get shivers down my spine and the hairs on my arm stand up. That's just me.

So we chatted for a few more minutes, and I urged the young man to spend a bit of time writing down his experiences for it would make a grand book. He's got one cohort who has a show on Sci-Fi of ghost hunting and here he is in the Arizona desert installing security devices for those of us trying to protect our assets.

You never know who you'll meet, do you?