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“Have any of you had experience with ghosts? My friend Lisa has seen them at the Hotel Colorado.” Carol, our book club discussion leader asked at our review of Jodi Picoult’s Leaving Time.
“Yes!” I piped up. One Memorial Day, I worked in my old office in Building 500, a reported ghost-filled location on the former Fitzsimons Army Medical Center. This gray energy drifted past me when I came out of the restroom on the old maternity floor. I knew it was a ghost. I wasn’t scared. I remember a beauty and peace about it.”
Throughout history, various cultural and religious organizations believed that because autumn was a time of transition, they should review their lives, access what needed to change, and honor the dead. As a result, special days commemorate this time, such as the Jewish High Holidays, the Christian All Souls and All Saints Days, Mexico’s Day of the Dead (Die de los Muertos), the Celtics Samhain, and the Navajo Nation Ghaaji.
How interesting that so many peoples recognize now as a spiritual time. The Celtics described it as a couple of days when a thin curtain separates the spirit world and our world. It seems this has been lost in our own country with the mega marketing efforts around Halloween. As a kid, it was always jarring to be hauled to church the day after for services honoring souls and saints alike.
A discussion with a little 9-year-old Italian girl on a train headed to Naples from Rome drilled into my adult brain how phony Halloween is. Holding a lovely pot of golden chrysanthemums, she explained in her best English that she and her family were going to her grandma’s house for All Souls’ and Saints’Day, and the flowers were for the family grave site. I asked in “my best Italian” if she knew what Halloween was. She didn’t. We passed by a jack o’ lantern poster in a bar window. I stumbled describing an illuminated cut-out pumpkin.
Now, back to our bookclub discussion, Carol quickly went on to another topic. I was disappointed no one else mentioned ghostly experiences.
Maybe I am just weird, but I have had five other times that felt ethereal. Because they have brought me comfort and guidance, I am going to share them with you. My hope is they will help you in some way. Two of them were dreams, one was an intense feeling during a yoga class of all places, another that I was receiving help with a sticky problem, and the final one I don’t know how to explain; however, I detailed it in a blog I wrote in June of 2014. It is titled “The Power of Grandmas.”
This above experience occurred in Ireland on a sacred sites tour with Jyoti Wind. I contacted Jyoti when I started to write this blog. She told me, “I think in our day-to-day lives, we try to deepen our understanding of what life is, what life’s meaning is. What are we here to experience? And for some people, that might be through prayer, or psychic readings, or dreams, or allowing our imaginations to take us into inner dimensions.”
In 1970 the evening after giving birth to my first child, from my hospital bed I distinctly saw the nursery located down the hall and my late grandmother, Georgia Rose, who died in 1969, guiding my mother, who had passed in 1964, through the nursery. My grandmother said, “Look, Rose, here is Elizabeth’s baby girl!” I had had no drugs during the birth and refused to take a sleeping pill the nurse wanted me to swallow that night.
Months after my beloved Aunt Jean died from Alzheimer’s, I dreamt she climbed the 14 steps up to the front door of my Tudor home and rang the bell. By the time I got to the door, she was walking back down. I knew she had come to say goodby and to thank me for the care I gave her.
My father’s sister, Aunt Kay, who also died of Alzheimer’s, seemed to have “come along” on a walk one afternoon with me and my dog. I was so frustrated that my house wasn’t selling. Since it felt like she was there, I told her all about it. Within a couple of weeks, the house sold. It seemed to me Aunt Kay was with me the whole time and helped facilitate the sale.
At a family gathering over 40 years ago, my Great-Aunt Mary ripped into me when I expressed I would like to have a fourth child. I never knew why she did this. The exchange was painful and embarrassing. At a yoga class two years ago, I had the distinct feeling Aunt Mary was next to me. She told me how sorry she was for deriding me and apologized.
I don’t know about you ladies, but I can use all the assistance I can get on this journey. I’m glad I have gotten some extraterrestrial help along the way.
Copyright – Elizabeth J. Wheeler, October 23, 2021
