Personal experiences: Part 5 – Possessed or Q and A with the Devil.

Statesboro High School

This is a six part story about a paranormal event that occurred in January 1980. As usual, it’s told without any embellishments and according to a document that I had written after the event.

The next morning as I was going down the stairs, I felt that the chain that the cross was on grow hot. It was an odd sensation. It was a definite heat, though I guess I could have been imagining it, too.

Shawn told me that every time he saw the cross, he had the urge to get me to take it off. Indeed, he insisted that I should take it off. Every time I went down the stairs, I felt the chain get heavy, and the urge to take it off come over me. I nearly once did so, but thought better of it.

A bit later on, back up the stairs, I was walking with Shawn towards the doors on the other side of the room when they opened for him. We walked through and they closed behind us. I asked how he did that, as I had felt no wind. He said, he didn’t know. He was just thinking that wouldn’t it be good if the doors opened and they did.

The next day, the temptation to take the cross off was so strong that I actually felt uncomfortable wearing it. The night, Shawn was trying to make me take it off, once again, and I was refusing as usual when he suddenly doubled up in what he said was an agonizing pain. The thought that I should give the cross to him entered my mind. I asked him if he wanted me to give it to him, and he said, yes. I almost did, but decided against it. With that choice, the pain abruptly stopped. I asked him if he would have worn it and he said: No, moods change, and he wouldn’t have given it back either.

Things become quiet after that for a short while. As I wore the cross, I felt protected. The camp went on and was coming to the end. It was only two weeks, but it felt like a very long two weeks.

On the last day, we were all clearing up after ourselves, and I found myself, ironically, being told to sweep the stairs with Shawn. We discussed what had happened, and I asked him about the voice he heard. I was curious about if I could talk to it and asked some questions. Shawn agreed.

The first thing I asked was if Robert Rice died there, and the answer was he didn’t, nor were his ashes upstairs.

I then asked if this was the Devil. The answer was yes. Had he tried to get me before? Yes, he had and was trying to get me now. I asked, why me? It answered that it had failed before and it didn’t like failing and it was trying to possess me. I asked why me and I was told that I was more vulnerable than other people and I expected him to get me. It also said it had posed as my subconscious mind, pretending to be someone who was helpful. I asked if it was after anybody else at the camp, but it said it only me.

I then asked about the pressure we had felt in the stairs. What was it? He said it was trying to frighten us, and it was a stupid thing to have had the séance. I asked what it was trying to do to Shawn when he said the Lords Prayer backwards. The answer was that It was trying to possess him.

I asked if he had succeeded, but he said, no because he hadn’t done it long enough. He also said that he had possessed many people, but they didn’t know it. They just thought they had a bad temper.

I asked if I was interfering with him and if I was a danger to him. He said yes and I was. It told me that the cross gave me some protection, and so did asking for God’s help, but an imaginary cross was not powerful enough and I couldn’t ask for God’s help all the time and I was most vulnerable when I was asleep. It had decided to use the staircase because I had to use it to get to the bathroom. It had taken over Shawn because he was my friend and was using it as a stepping stone to get to me. It also said that it had blown out the lights.

My mistake had been leaving Shawn on the stairway at that time and telling him about my experiences, which left him open to such things.

I asked a few more questions, but all Shawn was now getting was ‘stop it you bastard!’ I stopped and Shawn came ‘back’. He told me that at first he had let me talk to this thing, but after a few questions, he had lost control and it sounded like two people have a conversation. He also couldn’t remember any of what had been said, something I later found out that this was typical of a channel. He also said that sometimes he was reluctant to answer my questions because he felt he was lying.

With what I know now, many of those answers actually make no sense, nor do they ring true.  My feelings are that it was certainly not the Devil, imagined or otherwise. Also, if Shawn felt he was lying, and he didn’t say which questions were lies, then there’s no reason any of it could have been the truth.

I seriously doubt that any of it was true. If Shawn felt it was a lie, then there is no reason to tell me what was really going on, except to tell me what I thought I wanted to hear, and what it wanted me to hear.

This, of course, does beg the question if any channel you get is true.

I know that when I’m writing documents with the aid of my guide, some things flow amazingly well, and I can sense what feels like a connection, or a corridor. Other things don’t however, and I get a sense of anxiety or frustration and I end up erasing what has been written because I’m clearly not either in the space for writing, or the information I need just isn’t available to me as yet.

Sometimes there is also a tendency to write what you think is true, rather than what comes to you, assuming anything comes at all. It’s a trap that’s easy to fall into, and interestingly enough, those are the things that I find out more later on.

In regards to the entity at the camp, I really haven’t gotten any answers I’m happy with yet. I’ve channelled that it was an opportunistic entity who knew who I was, but… that doesn’t feel completely right. I feel I’m still missing something, even 33 years on.

For me, near enough isn’t good enough, but sometimes it’s all I have at the time.

Next: Afterwards

Personal experiences: Part 1 – The presence on the stairway or don’t go there alone in the dark.

The dark staircase

This is a six part story about a paranormal event that occurred in January 1980. As usual, it’s told without any embellishments and according to a document that I had written after the event.

As a youth, my father insisted that I play in a brass band, and so I ended up playing that Euphonium. So every year I would end up going on a god awful band camp to play awful music that your family would end up politely listening to in the inevitable end of camp concert we’d subject them to.

Between January 13th and 26th, 1980, I attended one of those camps for The Victorian State Youth Band.

During this camp, quite a few unusual events occurred.

After the camp, I took it upon myself to write it all down, lest I forget. I’m glad I did, as I had forgotten most of it. What follows is my slightly edited version.

This camp was held at a Christian boarding school which, I recall correctly was called St. Patrick’s College in Ballarat, Victoria, Australia, which is a historical gold mining town.

There were two large rooms for sleeping in, and one of them led to a landing and a stair way.

When going down the steps that lead to the showers, a then friend of mine, (let’s call him Shawn), claimed that he got an uneasy feeling there and he didn’t like going down there at night.

At the time, I dismissed this as just being in his mind so he dared me to go down there myself. I did, and I did feel uneasy, but considering I did it in the dark, I would naturally feel that way.

There was nothing special about the staircase. Just two flights of steps winding from the boy’s dormitory down to the boy’s shower block.  As a rule, it was well lit, though the light bulbs kept on blowing. Five times in total, which is also something I have noticed occurring whenever there appears to be some type of spirit energy play going on. It was that, or just bad wiring!

Hanging on one of the walls, was also this abstract painting on the first landing. It was like a red angry face, and I didn’t like it. It gave me the creeps. Personally, if I had to put what happened down to anything, I would have to say that this entity was connected to the painting. In my experience, such things are possible, and it would certainly not be the last time I’d see something like that.

It wasn’t very long, though before we both felt a slight tingling in our mind every time we went through the double doors that lead to the stairs. It was a pricking sensation, like walking through a field of static electricity. It was almost as if some force was pushing against you. This gradually got stronger over a matter of days. It certainly didn’t take very long for it to become noticed by several of us.

Now, more than likely, this was the power of suggestion at work. I know what I felt (and considering I was always under some kind of psychic attack back then) I may have been more sensitive to it. I couldn’t speak for Shawn, though. I just accepted that he was feeling what I was feeling, and of course, everyone else joined in.

It’s like your tongue. You don’t feel it, even though it’s always there. But if you think about it, then you notice it, and somehow it doesn’t seem to fit into your mouth correctly.

So I certainly can’t discount that people focusing on feeling weird would not have produced something from their own minds.

It also could have been a group phenomenon brought on by suggestion and then our minds creating this.

What probably didn’t help was that I had shared a few of my own experiences, as I was want to do in my youth. I didn’t have many people I could talk to back then, and it was still all exciting and dramatic for me.

So, by taking about possessions and attacks, I’m sure I fueled the imagination of others.

Now, whether we attracted something or something was already there, or we made the entire thing up, I am not sure, but the things that followed were out of the tackiest Hollywood horror movie.

Interestingly enough, as I told the others about my experiences, these black beetles filled the dormitory and fell around my bed. Strangely enough, none fell around the stairway or the toilet area which was only meters away.

I’m not sure what type of beetles they were and if you asked me to identify one now, I wouldn’t be able to as there are a few varieties that are black, fly and swarm.

These ones apparently just dropped dead once they reached my bed, and I’ve no clue if that is normal behaviour or something that was unique.

I will note, though, this happened at two different times during the camp, the second time being after a group of boys had messed around with a ritual.

I’ve not actually seen anything of that nature occur before or since.

Next: The séance. 

Paranormal series: Being adaptable or Swinging like a pendulum.

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One thing I have done several times in the course of my lifetime was change what I actually believe in.

In fact, like a pendulum, I’ve swung back and forth on several subjects as new or compelling experiences or evidence comes up.

Each time I seem to get a bit further, and each time more of the missing puzzle pieces seem to fall into place. What is important is that I need to acknowledge when I am wrong and believe me, it is a blow to the ego because you doubt yourself and call your entire reality, and your own credulity, into question.

Also, when you’re trying to be a credible source, anything that is shown to be wrong can hurt your reputation.

But that is the illusion.

Personally, I’d trust someone who is willing to admit they had it wrong and will take new evidence into account. At least you know they are doing their best to be honest and trying to find out what is really going on.

Of course, there is also the hope and excitement that something really is happening.

What if all those phenomenon are real? What if the house you live in really was haunted or what if we were really being visited by aliens from other worlds?

And the same goes for things such as past lives and the like. Part of us wants it to be real, even if we can’t prove it.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not suggesting that they are not and I’m not suggesting they are fake either. I’m saying that making things fit to try and prove our case will, in the end, discredit it.

We need to try and remain as objective as possible, and not become attached to results which actually end up proving nothing, or hurting our case.

For instance, for myself, I have either remembered or created past life memories of things that may or may not have happened. I honestly can’t tell you which. I have no way of proving it, and only other psychic people seem to validate them or claim to share certain memories.

But are they making it up, too? Are they fitting their own created thoughts to match mine? There are no easy answers.

I can only go on my feelings, and if something feels right, then I’ll trust in that. However, I should also point out that something can feel mostly right, but you still feel you’re missing part of the story, or you don’t have all the facts.

And that’s where you need to look deeper, and continue researching the answers.

Thankfully, from time to time, I do get validation of certain things I have done and happily they occur before I mention them to anyone.

When I get confirmation of events or memories before I mention them, it helps a lot. I’ve had various people arrive at the same conclusions about who I was without me telling them a thing.

And it helps, yes, but it certainly doesn’t make it sound any saner or believable.

As always, I try to remain critical about things, but accept the evidence as it comes and see how likely other explanations are and hope people aren’t making it up or telling me what they think I want to hear. (Fortunately, there are cases where I know they were not.)

However, one thing I had learned is you should be careful what you wish for, and messing around with the paranormal  can really spiral out of control very quickly and end up becoming a nightmare.

This is the case with people who mess around with Ouija boards, and end up feeling there is something following them around.

The Ouija board is actually a game, however when used as a device to contact spirits, it may produce undesirable results. To date, I don’t think anyone has been able to use one under scientific conditions, making their validity debatable for getting answers, however that does not mean they don’t leave people open for mischievous entities or spirits to cause trouble.

When I was a preteen, I remember we tried to hold a couple of séances. We cut out the letters and numbers, lit candles and messed about with that once or twice. Nothing happened. Nothing ever came of it and it certainly had no impact on my life.

There was one other séance I took part in, though and that in 1980. I was fifteen and got caught up in the excitement of what appeared to be a haunted staircase.  Certainly very odd things happened during a two week period, and no doubt we, as teens, gave it the energy to do so.

As some may find it an interesting story, I’m going to retell it in full over the next week or so and make some observations about those events.

Next: The haunted stairway. 

Paranormal series: Science or fiction or just the facts, ma’am.

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Back before the net, it was a lot harder to know what was fact and what was fiction.

For instance, if you went to a health food shop and they told you that the herb Echinacea helped your immune system, you would accept that as a fact.

You really didn’t have many ways to verify that it was true and really, if someone who was in the business of knowing such thing told you this, why would you doubt them? That was their job after all.

I did look up such things in herbal books that were in the metaphysical bookshops, however, they give the same information, so it appeared to validate what I was told.

Trouble is, many things are told to us based on vague or apocryphal information.

It took me years to realize that Echinacea did nothing for me, and it was the vitamin C in the complex that was actually helping and the claim that it helped ended up being based on very shaky evidence.

It does seem that once people believe something, they are very reluctant to change that belief, even in the face of new or overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Long term readers of mine might know that I used to be an avid follower of Tuesday Lobsang Rampa. Many things felt right and made sense to me, and the rest I would just accept on faith. However, it was the rest that, while clearly wrong, seems to be ignored by his followers.

For instance, he made a lot of predictions about world events that should have occurred by now. From my observations, none of them have actually happened, but that doesn’t seem to bother his fan base, who just seems to completely ignore such things and never call them into question.

Any suggestions that he might be wrong are ignored or met with hostility.

This is generally typical of people who choose to believe in something but refuse to look at any inconsistencies critically.

The question is: Why?

When something is so clearly shown to be wrong, why aren’t people calling such thing into question? When something has inherent contradictions in the philosophy (and I’m looking at many cults, faiths and religions here) why do we resist looking at it or dismiss them as not important?

Just because some parts are wrong, it doesn’t mean it’s all wrong. And just because some parts are right, it doesn’t mean it’s all right.

We stymie our own growth and give our power away to others by refusing to think critically about everything.

You might say, I’m a researcher for the truth, and I use the word ‘truth’ very loosely here because the more I look, the more I see that there are no hard and fast rules, but there are come consistent universal laws that seem to apply to everything.

When I write about something, I write about my own observations and experiences. I’ve always done this, though I have been just as guilty of being dogmatic about a particular belief system, even if there were some blatant inconsistencies there.

Now, I know this type of talk might seem weird or even hypocritical coming from me, as I have written about belief systems, astral levels, alternative time-lines and many other unprovable subjects.

However, I do try and come from a place of observation and research and try to find other alternative explanations.

Next: Adapting to new evidence. 

Empath series: More on psychic burnout or how many hats do I have here?

Image-1 (6)One of the things that contribute to psychic burn out are the requests for help that I get on a pretty regular basis.

For instance, I get frequent requests for help by e-mail.

I would say, they would come at the rate of around four to six a month, and while not very many in the overall scheme of things, each one does take a fair enough of time to deal with as I will answer all mail I get.

Some of them are just thank you for doing what you do, e-mails, and those are always wonderful to get.

However, most are people asking for help on some level.

The type of requests I get  generally fall into the below categories.

–          People who are in real trouble and need help now.

–          People who have genuine questions about experiences that have happened to them.

–          Those who want answers to somewhat frivolous questions

–          People who want answers to questions that can’t be answered.

–          Those who ask the same question over and over until they get the answer they are looking for.

Let’s look at them one at a time.

People who are in real trouble and need help now

This is something that can’t be ignored. Sometimes, it is a matter of life and death, and I can feel this, so I will respond as soon as I can.  Sometimes I can help the person in one reply, but more often than not, it can be a long term project until you help get their life turned around. Generally, though, it can be a very rewarding correspondence.

Contribution to psychic burn out: 1-2 out of 10

People who have genuine questions about experiences that have happened to them.

I get these ones the most. People have had experiences they can’t quite explain and are not sure what to do with them. Many of these are things like soul calls or what might be a psychic attack. I try to answer them best I can. 95% of these types of e-mails are one-offs, and I never hear from them again after I answer. As a rules, I often enjoy answering these types of questions.

Contribution to psychic burn out: 1-2 out of 10

Those who want answers to somewhat frivolous questions.

I get these occasionally and it’s generally someone who has some relationship issue that they want answered. As a rule, these e-mails tend to be very long, and (sometimes a little rambling) so it takes more time, and energy to get through it, and then work out what the question is, and what answer (if any) can be given. The relationships in question are about potential ones, and not ones that they are already in.

Personally, I find those types the hardest to answer as I don’t have clue what is going through the mind of the other party. Most of the time I don’t get any answers. Sometimes, I do, but that’s more the exception.

Contribution to psychic burn out:  6 out of 10

People who want answers to questions that can’t be answered.

I get this from time to time and I simply just don’t have answers, other than generic advice for someone. I’ve had some e-mails sit in my inbox for almost a year before I finally get something.

General rule is: If I don’t feel a flow in answering a question, then it’s a very bad idea to force it and I hate giving bullshit, generic answers, that anyone can give.

Clearly, I feel bad when I can’t give an answer because part of me feels that I should be able to, but on the other hand, I’m not the repository of information. Yes, I do get a lot of things that flow easily from me, but there are times when I feel a great resistance, and pursuing any answer will cause a massive drain on my energies.

In fact, trying to do something that doesn’t flow tends to be the biggest drain on psychic energies.

Contribution to psychic burn out: 8-9 out of 10

Those who ask the same question over and over until they get the answer they are looking for.

This type is the most frustrating. No matter how many times you give someone an answer, they will come back asking the same question in a different form. They will also ignore whatever you’ve just said, and also ignore any questions you’ve asked them.

The most frustrating thing with this type of person is that they are demanding, ungracious, and seem to think that you owe them something.

Generally, the answers they need to hear are not the answers they want to hear. In the end, the responsibility for knowing what is going on, or resolving their issues is their responsibility.

The problem with drain occurs when there is no equivalent energy exchange. You’ve put all you’ve got into helping this person, but you don’t receive anything in return.

Contribution to psychic burn out: 9-10 out of 10

Now, being altruistic, I would just love to help everyone all the time and fix up their lives for them, and answer all their questions, but I’ve found that it’s just not possible, at least, not without making myself very sick.

In the end, there is little choice but to shut down for a while and look after yourself.

Next: Should we charge for our services?

Empath Series: Psychic burnout or I’m too exhausted to think of anything witty to write here.

Psychic burnoutI took some well-earned vacation this month. (Hence the lack of blogs.)

As usual, I find that I tend to collapse into a heap, and while the body is willing, the spirit is not.

In this state, even thinking is an effort and answering questions is difficult. It’s even hard to read anything longer than a paragraph, and forget about writing anything.

I call this psychic burnout.

It occurs when you do too much, for too long, without a break.

Personally, I seem to arrive at it every eighteen months or so with generally fourteen or so months where I start to feel the exhaustion.

Psychic burn out is mostly borne of frustration that you feel like you are being used and depleted, and there is no end in sight, or even any recognition that you’ve moved a mountain or two.

People would certainly experience this type of thing in their day jobs, especially if they are good at it, but receive little or no recognition.

If you’re trying to be spiritual, you will tend to resist the urge to say or do anything about it, however, this leads to anger and frustration, and the sense that you are not allowed to let yourself go, and then frustration at the fact that you don’t allow yourself to get angry.

You may even feel like shouting at people who won’t leave you alone: What part of f*&# off don’t you understand? But still you don’t, in case you hurt or offend someone.

In Bach Flower Remedy terms, this is known as a Cherry Plum state: The fear of letting go.

The psychic burnout state is a horribly frustrating one to be in because it stops you from doing what you want.

It literally hurts to try and think about answers or subject that you have no clue about. (I liken it to a psychic knife in the third eye area.)

There are several reasons this occurs, the main one being that you’ve been running on empty for too long.

If you are an Empath, and you are often connecting to others to try and help them, reaching the burn out level happens too easily, especially if the flow only goes one way.

Generally, while the desire to help others is always there, there is only so much you can do.

I find the remedies that help her are:

  • Cherry Plum: Fear of letting go.
  • Olive: Exhaustion
  • Elm: Feeling overwhelmed.
  • Oak: Being pushed past your limits
  • Holly: Getting angry, and then repressing your answer and get annoyed every time someone tries to get you attention.
  • Impatiens: When you start to feel irritated with everything.
  • Red Chestnut: Concern about others.
  • Willow: If you feel hard done by.

Next: The type of calls for help that I get.