Speaking of the Dead

Such was the case recently when I was contacted about doing a ghost busting by a man I will call Andrew.  He had endured 15 years of arguments with no basis, sleep disturbances, angry outbursts without provocation, and a general malaise settling on anyone who spent any length of time in their house.  He was fed up with sleepless nights, weird little “house tremors” that shifted artwork off-kilter, and house problems having no real explanation (like why the flashing kept coming off one area of his roof, despite being nailed down in fifty-hundred-million places).  After hearing about me from a trusted friend, he emailed.

The pictures he sent were compelling.  His house appeared to me to be filled with smoke and fog, plus a group of very volatile, angry, aggressive ghosts.  The house was sealed up tight, except for the side door of their basement walk-out, which appeared to be the site of a spectral Battle Royale.  Bloodied and bent, that door looked to my psychic eye like it belonged in a horror movie.

Andrew and I talked, scheduled the ghost busting, and I got to work.

The group of ghosts numbered six — four adults and two children.  Only one of the ghosts, a man named Tom, emerged from the fog to speak.  In life, Tom was the stablemaster for a farmer, and he showed me a white farmhouse with a small barn.  Andrew knew the house immediately, as it had been torn down to make way for his neighborhood.  And yes, that’s how the ghosts wound up in his house — displaced by development. 

Slowly, the story of the ghosts’ lives and deaths emerged. Tom said he felt privileged to be a full-time stablemaster, caring for and breeding large draft horses, which the farmer sold after Tom trained them to a plow.  The farmer he worked for was a good man, with a wife who died in childbirth along with their third child.  As he said this, Tom cleared more of the fog and revealed the rest of the group — two housemaids, the farmer’s two children, and Tom’s sister, Dora Leigh.

Tom said an epidemic swept through the area, and the farmer’s children fell ill.  I felt reasonably certain that it was the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, based on how the ghosts were dressed, but whatever and whenever it was, people were dying like crazy.  The farmer had hired a housemaid after his wife’s death, and hired her younger sister as well, when the children got sick.  And then he packed his bags and left.  Shocking as this seemed to me, Tom said that people who could afford it were doing that, to avoid getting sick themselves.

After their father left, both of the children grew grievously ill and died.  And then the housemaid sisters got sick and also died.  Tom was visibly upset, and confessed that he was “sweet on” the older sister, and had hoped to marry her.

Out of the blue, a seventh spirit appeared — a big, angry man named John who I could see pounding on the side of the house near the bloodied door.  The more forcefully he struck, the more terrified the group inside became.  It was clear to me that he was after Dora Leigh, but I couldn’t see why.  Closer examination revealed a past life connection between them, a connection that ended with John in that life feeling wronged, and coming into this life seeking vengeance.  His whole spirit was fiery, consumed with rage.

I spoke to Dora Leigh, telling her that she needed to go to John, to confront him, and to work towards resolution.  She absolutely, under no circumstances, intended to do that.  She was as afraid of John in death as she had been in life.  I pressed the issue.  I pointed out that she was already dead, that he couldn’t make her “more dead,” and that as spirits, they were equal in power.  I tried to stress the importance of not carrying this animosity into yet another lifetime.  Work it out now!

She was terrified, but went to confront him.  I was with her, saw the fight start fair with each side speaking their truth, and left them going at it like a pair of rabid raccoons. 

When I came back to the group in the house, Tom told me Dora Leigh’s story.  John had stalked her, threatened her, and raped her.  Tom tried to protect her and keep her safe, but failed.  After Tom learned she was pregnant, he confronted John.  They fought, John fell, hit his head, and died.  While not exactly murder, Tom felt responsible, as he had meant the man harm.

Dora Leigh carried the baby to term and then died in childbirth.

After so much loss in such rapid succession, Tom was a man at loose ends.  The farmer never came back, so Tom sold the horses and livestock, closed up the house, and left to join other men headed to a “skirmish” to the east.  I expected him to tell me that he died in battle, but no.  He was hanged.  After the skirmish, he was brought up on charges, and put to death.  He didn’t know that his actions were a hangable offense, but was clear that he did do those things.  “Yes ma’am, I did.”

In death, Tom came back to the farm, gathered “his women,” and worked to keep them safe.  Part of that work involved becoming a powerful ghost, to be able to fight and keep John out of the house and away from Dora Leigh.  I knew immediately what that meant.

When spirits remain in an un-ascended, Earth-bound state for an extended period of time (beyond a year or so), their energy begins to degrade and they need to “feed.”  They do this by absorbing or ingesting the energy that we living humans give off.  Because we give off the most energy — big bursts of it — when angry or afraid, old ghosts become adept at doing things to stir dissent and to scare the bejeezus out of us.  

A ghost that is vengeful and raging (like John) burns through a lot of energy, so becomes what I call “a heavy feeder.”  And any other ghost trying to defend themselves against such a rage-filled ghost would need to do the same to have the power to succeed.

I confronted Tom about this.  He confessed that yes, they had been stirring up a lot of trouble for the family living in the house.  And he said that they had been eating their dreams.

YOU WERE WHAT?!?

That’s right, the ghosts were eating the family’s dreams.  I had never heard of such a thing.  Ghosts in your house means you are bombarded by disrupted and disruptive energy all the time, which makes it hard to sleep well.  But eating dreams?  That is next-level stuff.  

I had A LOT of questions.  Did the people get to finish having the dream first?  What did sucking a dream out do to them?  Does a ghost doing that deprive a person of REM sleep?  How do I know if a ghost is EATING MY DREAMS for God’s sake?  Tom did not answer, choosing instead to show me the process: ghost stands at the side of a bed with a sleeping person in it, waiting for the energy of a dream to drift up, and then sucks that energy right out.

I was horrified.  It looked like Harry Potter attacked by Dementors.

Tom gave a shrug of his shoulders and said, “Energy is energy.”  He led me to believe that their dream eating came about by chance, not as a result of some top-secret ghost training event.  He said it was, “Like the phrase, ‘if you see something, say something,’ only ‘if you see energy, eat energy’.”  He was so blasé about it, I was speechless.  And determined to ascend them out of Andrew’s house.  Enough already!

I checked back on the pair outside, discovered them talking (progress!), and invited them in.  The children needed to confront their father about his leaving, so he showed up (yet another un-ascended spirit), followed by his wife (ascended), who he needed to apologize to.  All the spirits were working on all the things that had them stuck, and I delivered my “get ready to ascend” speech.  I told them that they needed to do four things: 1. unburden themselves of any baggage laid on them by someone else; 2. take responsibility for their own life and death, including all choices made and not made; 3. learn whatever lessons this life taught them so they wouldn’t have to learn them over and over again; and 4. forgive themselves for being human, and make peace with their life and their death.  They did this at different speeds, and one-by-one were ready to ascend.  I opened a portal, ascended them, and then checked in with Andrew, my living, breathing client.

Andrew was as gobsmacked as me by the whole dream eating thing, and grateful to have them gone.  But mostly he was amazed by how quickly he went from feeling angry, desperate, and hostile towards the ghosts for all they had put his family through, to feeling sympathetic to their plight.  He couldn’t get over how human they were.  In all the years leading up to this, I think he built up in his mind that his house was infested with demons and monsters. 

His final thoughts were of how empty and quiet his house felt once the ghosts were gone.  And of how he wished he hadn’t waited so long to seek help from someone like me.

I did a psychic reading awhile ago, for a woman to speak with the spirit of her deceased father.  During the reading, she asked about her ex-husband (still alive), to which her father replied without hesitation, “He’s a weed.”

The father then showed me a scene in which his daughter was a rose bush.  The rose bush was beautiful, but stunted and with only one, small flower.  Next to the bush was a giant thistle, towering over the rose, stealing light and nutrients.  In the scene, the rose wasn’t asserting its power in the flower bed.  The rose was allowing the weed to flourish and to take whatever it wanted from the rose.

Weeds, in the form of people, have problems that are more pressing than yours, needs that are greater than yours, and goals that are more important than yours.  Weeds are opportunistic, grow where there is the smallest opening for them to grow, and steal what they want or need from their surroundings.  We all know people like this.

Human weeds come in two basic forms: the thistle and the dandelion.  The modus operandi of each are slightly different, but the end result is generally the same: they are both energy thieves.

The thistle plant grows large and fierce.  It has big, spiky leaves that literally poke the surrounding plants out of its way.  Thistles grow tall and bloom abundantly, producing an overwhelming number of seeds.  What is not readily apparent, however, is that the thistle is not well-grounded and has a small, shallow root system.  Thistles, if grasped at their base, are actually quite easily removed.  Bullies are usually thistles.

By contrast, the dandelion plant grows from a tap root that tunnels deep into the soil and  puts up a fight if you try to remove it.  Dandelions anchor themselves to one spot, choking out any plant that previously grew there.  They don’t cast shade on the plants around them, but they do steal nutrients, produce abundant seeds, and colonize the area.  Over time, one dandelion will come to dominate their patch of soil.  Clingy, needy people are usually dandelions.

In conceptualizing this post, I wasn’t sure where to go from here with this analogy.  In my real-life flower beds, I pull the weeds and toss them in the compost bin.  But for human weeds, we can’t go around killing them and tossing them in dumpsters.  We will go to prison, and they will never learn.

And then it came to me in a flash:  Oh, good Lord, I used to be an effing weed.  Painful to admit.  Impossible to refute.  I was a weed of the dandelion sort, never a bully, but always a master at stealing the energy out of a room.  I got kicked out of a lot of rooms.  I was barred from many more.  And eventually, I found myself in a life full of nothing but weeds.  And I do mean all weeds, all the time.  I HATED IT.  “Those people” failed to understand that my problems were bigger than theirs, my needs greater than theirs, my life more important than theirs.  They fought me for energy and attention.  I ranted.  I raged.  And then I learned.  And I changed.

I learned to manage my attention-getting behaviors.  I became more passionate, less melodramatic.  I learned that milking a situation for sympathy is annoying.  I noticed how often I did just that, and quit.  I learned that stealing energy from other people is bad.  I quit doing that, too, and learned that exchanging energy with other people is not only possible, but wonderful.  I learned how to listen without interrupting. I grew to like it.  I learned that lots and LOTS of people have problems bigger than mine.  And most importantly, I learned that oftentimes what I need is not the favors I used to bum, but hugs and encouragement to do those things myself.

I now look for and work towards true reciprocity in my relationships.  I seek the yin-and-yang of life, where I get my needs met, you get your needs met, and nobody has to take anything from anybody.  I am getting better at standing on my own two feet.  I am less angry, more generous, more aware of the abundance in my life.  And I love my life A LOT more than I did when I was a thieving weed.

And so……this is where I shall go with my human weeds analogy:  if you are a rose, please don’t give up what is rightfully yours without a fight.  You have rights and needs, too.  Also, please don’t surrender and sacrifice just because you feel bad for a weed.  Weeds are thieving, master manipulators and con artists.  If you have weeds around you, gently (or vehemently….) pull them out.  And don’t feel bad about it afterwards — they will move on.  They will move flower bed to flower bed until the only place they are welcome is in a field of other weeds.  And they will learn, and you will be free to grow.

And if you are a weed attached to a rose, step back into the weed patch and let the rose flourish.  There is no danger to you in doing this.  You don’t need to steal energy and resources to get your needs met.  Trust me, rain will fall on you wherever you are.

It is, to me, an alarmingly, personally, painfully simple fact that a flower bed is too nice a place for a weed.  In the story above, the woman’s ex-husband kept coming back to her with increasingly desperate tales, asking her for money (post-divorce, mind you!).  And on more than one occasion, she gave it to him.  She could not afford to do this, and her sacrifice meant she could not retire.  He was not entitled to that money.  To me, it was a con and he was stealing.  He needed to be told NO!, to be removed from the cushy flower bed, and to be forced to face hardship in order to learn self-reliance.

In my own story, I needed to struggle to learn.  I needed the bootcamp of weed-on-weed combat in order to identify my strengths.  Actually, to discover that I had strengths at all.  Like me, human weeds need to face the ordeal of growing in a crack in the sidewalk, or in a field of other weeds, to change and evolve to a more equitable way of being human.  Pulling the weeds out of the flower bed of your life is not a mean thing to do.  It is the same as blocking calls from con artists — necessary for your self-preservation, and a tough-love message to weeds everywhere that stealing is bad.

I am not sure if there really is more death than usual around us right now, but the covid-19 coronavirus pandemic certainly has us feeling that way.  The virus is snatching young and old, healthy and not, and stealing them away from our families, circles of friends, and communities.  We are conditioned to expect the unexpected from car accidents, cancer diagnoses, and heart attacks, but this feels different — somehow both completely chaotic and eerily personal.  Which is terrifying.

The virus seems to stalk us like a shadow monster on the loose in our midst.  And where there is normally safety in numbers, this predator must be faced alone.  Because in order to best our chances of survival, we have to stay in and apart (much like holding very, very still in the presence of a living, voracious T-Rex).  Which means that in the presence of this predator, we are cut off from the comfort and power that comes of physical connections.

What to do with our collective anxiety (who will be next?), shock (not them!), and grief (how are we going to live without these people?), is a big problem.  Maybe later we will be able to stop stress-eating and binge-newsing, but not right now.

However…….there is something much more constructive that you can do right now.  You can make what I have dubbed “The Covid Call.”

The Covid Call?  Yes.  The Covid Call.  It’s the call you make to the someones in your life whom you’ve had a falling out with, the ones you haven’t spoken to in awhile, the ones you didn’t mean to drift away from.  You call, and you say, “Covid-19 has me thinking about mortality.  We didn’t leave things on very good terms / We haven’t spoken in awhile / I don’t know where the time went……”  And then you say, “If this virus takes one of us, I don’t want things left this way.”  And you make amends.

I did this myself with my brother, sister, and mother, after a falling out left us giving each other the silent treatment.  After making The Covid Call to each of them, we were able to air grievances, resolve what needed to be resolved, and be back on speaking terms.  And I feel better having done that.  Like, in the midst of all this crap that I can’t control, I took control of something important: tying up loose ends.

In my work as a psychic medium, nearly all of the readings I do are for people who died with a lot of relationship-related loose ends.  These loose ends create a heavy spiritual burden, as they bind a spirit in guilt, shame, and regret.  And as long as a spirit is bound this way, it is stuck in an Earth-bound state, unable to make peace and ascend.  Which is not good.

So, what I am suggesting is that while you are banned from all your usual social activities, with extra time on your hands, consider making The Covid Call.  Tie up a few loose ends.  Resolve some unresolved stuff that has the potential to bind you in guilt, shame, and regret.  Your soul will thank you.  And, I bet, the person you call will thank you.