There is Time

Ecclesiastes 3: 1-8
To everything there is a season,
and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant,
and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
A time to . . .
 . . . well, that's the point, isn't it. The verse seems to be about doing things at the right time, but what it is equally about is time. Time comes and time goes, and when the time to do something is gone, it is gone. There will be new flowers next season, but they won't be the same ones. There will be new life, but it will be someone else's.


Time, it seems to this porch stoop philosopher, is the one constant that no one is able to escape. The wheels turn, the seasons come and go, the blooms drip, the boobs droop, the hair thins. The skin creams go on, but the wrinkles form anyway. We think when we are young we can avoid the ravages of time, but we learn better. *Ha, ah, ah (evil laugh)* The joke is on us.

We ignore the passing of time to our peril. Even though we are constantly admonished not to worry about the past or the future, but to live in the present, we can look at time passing, and he seems to be running away from us like a mischievous street thief who has just lifted our wallet. "Too late," he taunts as he turns the corner and disappears from sight, along with every opportunity we have let pass.

Time is not the only constant we need to reckon with. The other one that wrecks carefully laid plans and plays havoc with our deep seated need for security is Everything Changes. No matter how comfortable we get or how carefully we plan, sooner or later the transmission fails or someone gets sick or the job goes south, and we have to scramble to weather the storms created by the changes in our lives. Pandora opened the box and added the element of chaos to our lives, and we all must deal with it.

Enough about us. Here's the question I was puzzling on lately. What about ghosts? What about spirits? Are they affected by the laws of time and change? Are they unaffected by time? My guess, is they can't avoid the forces of the universe any better than we can. They may be in a different place, seemingly existing under a different set of rules, but even they can't change the laws of physics. They cannot stop the sun in the sky any more than we can. So, no matter how long a ghost has haunted a crumbling castle or treeless moor, their season of haunting may be longer than the average, but it will end, just like everything else, and something else will take their place.

Oh, did I mention? Another universal truth . . . we are all replaceable.

Don't call them Ghosts

The Spirit Children of Fontaine Manse:
A True Story

I read this book about four years ago. I was attracted by the title and the cover image of the child looking out of the window along with its being a true story.

Kathleen McConnell falls in love with the Louisville, Kentucky house known as the Fontaine Manse as a 19 year old. She often sees it while riding by on the city bus and frequently sees a child looking out of the window. She dreams of living, not just in any house, but of living in that house.

Many times I saw a little girl standing at the upstairs window. She always waved as the bus went by and I'd put the palm of my hand flat against the window. I knew she couldn't see me that far away, but I'd made the gesture to return her wave.

Eight years later, in 1971, married with children and a baby on the way, she and her husband buy the old house, which has been languishing on the market for years, at a bargain price. Shortly after moving in, she realizes that they are not alone and that she must make peace with the spirits of the house if they are to live together safely. She wisely begins to communicate respectfully to the spirits and gradually learns more about them, starting with the fact that there are three and they are all children.

As they come to know and trust her, they help her out by hiding her husband's gun which he keeps under the mattress (and which she is afraid her children might find) and watching out for baby Duncan, playing with him to keep him entertained and once even saving his life. While she is never able to ascertain the exact identities of the spirits, she is able to draw some conclusions about how they died and why they are still in her home. After becoming very ill and having a Near Death Experience, she is even able to see them.

There she was–the same little girl I had seen years ago. She was standing at the front window of Duncan's nursery, holding the rag doll from the old toy box in the attic, silently saying, "It's me, it's me . . . "

Kathleen McConnell is not a professional writer, but she tells a clear, coherent tale, and it is the story itself that is compelling and heart wrenching. I have to admit I sometimes skimmed over the details of her daily household routine to get to the action sequences.

After five years, the family sold the house, but before moving, Kathleen was finally ready and able to help her young spirits find resolution and peace. It may seem to the reader that she takes a long time to get to this point, but she was living in a different time, and information about how to help wayward spirits was not as readily available then as now. She also did not feel comfortable talking about her experiences with her children and her husband, her children because she did not want to scare them, her husband because he seemed skeptical. It was only after she wrote the book that her children admitted that each had his or her own story to tell about the ghost children of Fontaine Manse.

To learn more about this book and read an interview by the author, click on the link under this title.

Unfinished Business

I'm reading a very good book about reincarnation. I've been aware of reincarnation since I first read about Bridey Murphy in the 1980's. While the case of Bridey Murphy remains unproven, there have been many cases since her, and much research done in this area.

This research has found that most people do not remember lives as famous people, but as ordinary ones. The statistical percentage of people who have been regressed and taken through multiple lifetimes through out history match the statistical probabilities. Dr. Wambach (Living Past Lives) found that subjects reported lives split evenly between the two sexes (50.3% male and 49.7% female) across all time periods. Also, the spread of rich, poor, and middle class matched the percentages for the time periods described. You can read more about this book by clicking the title of this post.

There are interesting parallels between the reasons why some people spontaneously remember a past life or feel the need to visit a psychotherapist and experience hypnotic regression to help them deal with problems they have as a result of past lives and why some spirits linger on our plane as ghosts.

Researchers who have studied the narratives of people who have been regressed back to prior lives have found that the moment of death is critically important in whether they transition smoothly from one plane of existence to the next and whether they carry emotional baggage into their next life. The trauma of a painful death or one that caught the person by surprise may manifest in the next life as an irrational fear or avoidance of particular situation associated with the death. They may even experience physical ailments that disappear after they are regressed and allowed to remember their death. Some find comfort in completing unfinished business, such as saying goodbye to their loved ones or telling someone they are sorry for past wrongs. For these people, memory of the past brings healing.

But, these are the ones who, although surprised by death or suffering through a painful death, have moved on and are dealing with the issues of a new life, with its opportunities for growth and development. They, at least, are moving forward. Ghosts, on the other hand, are also frequently found to have been surprised by death, suffered a painful, perhaps brutal death, or have unfinished business that they will now never complete. But, they are not moving forward. They are stuck in place, out of phase with their lives then and life now. I find it sad that there are so many spirits who have lingered for many years unable or unwilling to move on.

There is, of course, no simple cure for this, but if you go on a ghost tour or investigation, keep in mind that the spirits you seek were once living, breathing personalities such as yourself and remember to keep the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. And if you get the chance to help one of them pass over, I hope you will take it.

FYI: The photo is of my dad who died last April (07), and the flooding river is the mighty Missouri during the great flood of 1993.

Patiently Watching Ghostcams

First, a little information for anyone not familiar ghostcams. A ghostcam is a webcam (short for website camera) which broadcasts from a location that is purportedly haunted. Hence people watch them primarily in an effort to spot ghostly activity.

Historical sites have discovered that one way to increase interest in their properties is to take a cam, which may have originally been put up for security purposes, which is hooked into a computer which is hooked into the Internet, and have it broadcast images at regular intervals at a website where people may come watch it around the clock. Additionally, some private individuals set up these webcams in their own homes. The historical sites need  people to visit their properties and donate money for upkeep and renovation. These buildings are expensive to maintain. Private individuals may do it hoping that allowing strangers to view the activity in their home may help them uncover proof of paranormal activity. What other reasons there may be, I leave up to your imagination.

There are more ghostcams posted on the net every year. Some are at public sites where anyone may view them. Others belong to forums where you must register to be able to view their cams. Many people sit in front of their computer screens and look at ghostcams every day . . . and every night. How many people? No one knows. There is no way to keep track of their activity, but they look and they observe and sometimes they see things that shouldn't be there.

How long can you expect to watch a ghostcam before spotting any activity? Well, that depends on what kind of person you are and brings me to the following observation: People in the digital age of instant everything are IMPATIENT! They want what they want and they want it now. They want results, and they want them yesterday. Hence, some people quickly start to see ghosts everywhere they look, on the floor, on the walls, in the folds of curtains, in the waves of people's hair. Anywhere there are shadows cast, they see faces. There's a name for this phenomenon: pareidolia , but I like to call it apparitionus impacientum. They want to see, therefore they see. You can be like them or you can accept that the process might take a little longer since real ghosts don't appear on demand or onto fit anyone's schedule.

I confess that I succumed to apparitionus impacientum myself. I wanted to get in on the fun that everyone else seemed to be happening! After watching the Ordsall Hall cams for a few months, I started to see lines and shapes and spots that resembled a variety of characters. The first one I "saw" looked like a court jester. My favorite was an old king with a long beard, but I woke up from my delusion and admitted to myself, that as fun as the game of looking for people in the pixels had been, they were not real. They usually appeared in the stairway with the dirty stucco wall, and they never walked on out into the room. When I decided to turn on the logic circuit in my brain, I reasoned, ghosts can move. Ergo, if it doesn't move, it isn't a ghost.

Which brings us to an anomaly spotted recently on one of the Ordsall Hall ghostcams. A sharp-eyed watcher noticed that what appeared to be a candlestick on a sideboard along the back wall of the Star Chamber was in a different position when the cam refreshed, which for that cam, happens every 15 seconds. The viewer saved the images and posted them to the forum for viewing, and voilá, a comparison of positions shows that not only did the object move several inches to the right, but a cap from 6 minutes later showed it back in its original spot. This happened at a time late at night when no staff were present.  If you would like to see the original caps and read the forum discussion, click on the title of this post.

*UPDATE* The object may be a cross or crucifix and not a candlestick as first thought. One of the members of the Ordsall forum stated that on one of the many investigations held at the site, a medium reported that there was a ghost of a monk that was associated with a cross who was upset when it was moved during renovations. Is this the same cross? Which makes us wonder who moved it? Did one of the other ghosts move it, so that the Monkish monk would move it back? Was this a spirited prank, one ghost to another? 

I have seen some examples of paranormal activity caught on ghostcams, but only a few. Besides the candlesticks, there were the balloons that did a merry dance around the room,  a ball of glowing light, a dark wispy shape, the face of a young girl among an adult crowd. If I were to do a percentage, it would be a tiny portion of those caps posted by viewers, but those few are thrilling. For those who are truly interested in looking for evidence of ghosts, check out some links and if you find one you like, you have something to do on those days or evenings when you have a little time on your hands. Conclusion? Yes, you may actually be able to spot paranormal activity on a ghost cam, assuming there are ghosts present (i.e. the place truly is haunted), but this is an endeavor for people who are both persistent and patient, because it takes both to catch a ghost!

Haunted Hotels

What is it like to spend the night in a haunted hotel?
I can't say my experience was typical, but it might be.

It wasn't something I planned. It was an accident. We were tired. We had already had a full day sightseeing in Cornwall. It was dinner time. We only meant to stop long enough to visit the little museum honoring Daphne du Maurier and take a photo or two of Jamaica Inn as we drove through Bodmin Moor and then look for a hotel in the next major town.

I had read some of du Maurier's novels and seen the two movies inspired by the inn: Alfred Hitchcock's 1936 version of Jamaica Inn, starring Maureen O'Hara and the 1982 version starring Jane Seymour. The museum had already closed for the day, but to our great surprise, we discovered that Jamaica Inn is a working hotel. Rather than drive on, we inquired as to whether there were rooms available.

At the reception desk an earnest young man seemed apologetic that the cost was so high, perhaps sympathetic to the dollar's low value against the pound. He said the price was less if we didn't want the breakfast. Jamaica Inn is in the middle of a moor, a pretty isolated location. We assured him we would want the breakfast and the price was no more than we had paid at other hotels on our trip through Cornwall.

I was fatigued from all the walking we had done that day and had been hanging back letting my husband and our traveling companion, Mary, take the lead on the negotiations. I knew the hotel was quite old and I entered the conversation by asking, "What are the rooms like?"

"Oh, very nice," he assured me.

"Nice new? or Nice old?" I asked.

That's when he got this funny glint in his eyes. He turned to a coworker who had just come down the hall and said, "I'm going to put them in rooms 3 and 4." *cue spooky music*

After the paperwork was done, he lead us through the restaurant, behind the bar, through another door and up some stairs into the original part of the inn. As we walked down the hall, he asked me, "Are you in the single?

"No, I said," I'm in the double," and pointed back to my friend, "She's in the single." Did I sense disappointment on his part, a joke gone astray? Perhaps just my overactive imagination. We turned the corner and came to two doors facing each other across a short hall. He put a key in the lock of Room 4 on the right, knocked on the door, and then turned the key and opened it.

"Warning the ghosts," I asked? He smiled without answering and repeated the ritual for Room 3 across the hall. As he showed us around the rooms, he told us that the original parrot from the Jamaica Inn sign grew too old to stay in the hotel and now resides with him and his wife across the road in the village where apparently it adores his wife and despises him.

The bedrooms were small as one would expect in an ancient building, but adequate, with slanting floors, antique side tables or trunks, beautiful beds (ours was a 4-poster), and surprisingly large modern baths. At the time we stayed there (April 2006), they had recently completed major renovations which included modern, beautifully-tiled bathrooms, and a new wing, built to match, at least in look, the original inn. The reception area, copies an older structure which was torn down, even to copying the slant in the roof. You can see the dip in the roof  in the photo above, as well as the new wing beyond.

We went downstairs and had a marvelous dinner in the Smugglers Bar restaurant, which was busy with customers, and must enjoy a good reputation in the area. It occupies the ground floor of the original inn with the bedrooms up above and has all the low beams, wooden benches, antiques and cozy fireplaces one would want.

After dinner, as we sat on the bed and read, my husband informed me that according to the brochures, Room 3, the one across the hall, the single where our friend Mary was to sleep was reportedly the most haunted room in the inn. This left us with a slight problem: tell her or not tell her? I finally reasoned that there was a good chance nothing at all might happen, and if she knew the room was haunted, she might find it difficult sleeping, so we decided to keep it to ourselves and assume that all would turn out for the best.

As we snuggled into the bed, the rain storm that had been approaching began in earnest, and there was much banging (from what I never figured out), and doors rattling from gusts of wind and changes in air pressure, but no ghost walked through our walls and we heard no ghostly horses or wagons from ancient smuggler ghosts in the inn's yard outside the window.

I woke several times that night, but was so tired from our day's labors that each time I fell quickly back  to sleep; in fact I would have been hard pressed to stay awake, ghosts or no. I woke once and thought about getting up and going to the bathroom, which was just a few short steps away, but decided that I would rather wait until daylight than leave the perceived safety of the four-poster bed and my husband's side. The truth: I was much too chicken to put a foot out of the bed!

At breakfast, we were anxious to ask Mary about her night in Room 3, but all she would say was she heard some strange noises and pulled the covers up over her head. Whether or not the man in the tri-cornered hat that has been seen walking through the wall of Room 3 made an appearance, we shall never know. After breakfast, Mary and I wandered around the inn taking photos, enjoying the ambience of the place. We visited the smuggler's museum, which is quite interesting, with a section dedicated to Daphne du Maurier and to the novel Jamaica Inn. My husband thought we would never leave the gift shop, but we did. From there we drove out to Bodmin Moor and climbed Rough Tor, but that's another story.

So, my final assessment?  What do I think of staying in a haunted hotels? My experience was invigorating. I would do it again in a heartbeat. We didn't capture any spirits on film. The most we can claim are some odd banging noises and the sensation for me that someone sat down next to me on the bed while I was filing my nails. What I am sure of is that at Jamaica Inn, the food is excellent, the beds are comfy, the bathrooms modern (always a plus), and the atmosphere compelling.

The Truth, the Whole Truth and the Relatively Real Truth

Every time I look into one of these metaphysical topics, I run into Einstein and his views and I always find myself agreeing with him. I promise I'm trying to be objective and look at other people's ideas, too, but he believed that reality, the real world, exists outside of and apart from the independent observer, even as he stated that each of us observes and experiences reality differently depending on our motion, as in standing still vs. speeding train or speed of light. Others say that truth is a construct, a communal agreement agreed upon by all parties, up for interpretation or negotiation. Ooh, the truth is what we make it? That's a tough one for me to swallow. It goes against my grain.

So, what about that search for truth? Is it necessary? Are there many truths? Can you have yours and me have mine and both of us be equally right? Did the elk bump into my son as my son perceives, or did my son bump into the elk as the elk would have it? Well, that probably doesn't matter. As Sancho Panza says, "whether the rock hits the pitcher or the pitcher hits the rock, it's going to be bad for the pitcher." *smile*

Frankly, I find people who have decided what the truth is and are looking merely to prove they are right tiresome, don't you? What if the truth is a complete surprise? Can you give up your preconceived point of view and embrace it? Change may be a constant, but it is also a constant irritant. We prefer the womb, the original nest, where everything was known and predictable and comfortable.

Whatever the truth is, I have this conviction that it is our obligation to seek it and find it and not accept any shiny fool's gold version of truth, however appealing.  Painful truths, unexpected truths, delightful truths, our lives are full of each, and then there are the mysterious undetermined truths like what are ghosts and can we determine whether they are real or the imaginary constructs of troubled minds.

I'm a mystery fan; enjoy reading them and watching them, and we all know the great detective is the one who refuses to settle for the easy, convenient truth, who rules nothing out, who examines all possibilities with as much objectivity as he or she can, and in the end, we sigh with relief, because the truth is finally out. In the game of hide and seek with truth, we are the seekers; we must always be the seekers.

A Certain Slant of Light

The novel by Laura Whitcomb,
not the poem by Emily Dickinson

This is the best ghost story I have ever read. I stumbled onto this book by first-time novelist, Laura Whitcomb, and couldn't put it down. I loaned it to a mature 8th grader, and she finished it and loaned it to her next door neighbor, all in the course of a weekend. From there it went to a fellow teacher. Within a week, four readers had devoured this story.

It's a ghost story, but it's also a love story: the story of two ghosts who meet and fall in love and how they free not only themselves, but two living teenagers from their own individual versions of hell.

Helen, who has been a ghost for 130 years has only been able to keep herself from being dragged into a watery hell by attaching herself to various living hosts through the years. She is lonely, but resigned to her circumstances, until she is startled by a teenage boy, a student in the English class of her current host, looking directly at her.

This is how she meets James, a spirit who has been wandering around near his former home since his death in World War I. He shows her how to take over the body of classmate, whose spirit has departed, leaving a living shell behind. They are able to be together for a while, but struggle to deal with the issues left behind and the demands of the very different families of the young people whose bodies they now inhabit. Ms. Whitcomb writes beautifully and compellingly of their love and attraction to each other and of the issues that must be settled for them to be together.

I rose and began to flow slowly away. I could feel the flutter as I passed through James––he had put out his arm, pretending to stretch, as I was leaving. We were as close to touching as one spirit and mortal could for a moment. I started to imagine putting my arms around him but was stopped suddenly by a wall of cold blocking me. Blinded, I reached up and felt wet mud, the slime of a leaking dirt cellar or the bottom of a grave. I had let Mr. Brown leave me behind. I pushed against the coldness, and it gave way in messy pieces, the chill now running down over me like rain on my face. I had no voice with which to call out. I dug through the mud, hearing students laugh, buses, trash can lids rattling. I felt cement under my feet and then the darkness was pierced with white. I was sitting in the back seat of Mr. Brown's car, the sun blinding me in the rearview window.

One reason I liked this story and why I'm writing about it here is how well and genuinely the author addressed the issue of why Helen and James had been trapped as ghosts. This remains a mystery until the last few pages of the novel, but in the end, you understand that any of us could have been similarly ensnared. This novel has a lot to say about the issues of free will, self-determination, the nature of hell and the possibility of redemption. I won't tell you how the story ends, but I can tell you that you'd better have a full box tissue handy!

Spirited Ghosts or Ghostly Spirits?

What is the difference between a ghost and a spirit? You can click on the title above to go to the Wikipedia entry for a formal discussion of the terms and the languages and traditions, the etymology of the words, but what really matters is how people use them today.

For most people a ghost is something you see. According to Wikipedia, "the term ghost has been replaced by apparition in parapsychology, because the word ghost is deemed insufficiently precise." This makes sense to me as well. Apparition, from the same root as appear. A ghost, then is what someone might see, an apparition, an image.

So, what is a spirit? Are all ghosts spirits? I don't think so. As I have mentioned in the previous post (New Year, Time Slipping), some ghosts are apparitions seen as part of a residual haunting, but incapable of interaction. They are just images of what once was. They do not possess a spirit. The spirits of the persons involved have passed on.

But sometimes the spirit is present and capable of appearing or speaking or even manipulating objects and energies. This is also referred to as an intelligent haunting. Some people may experience a visit from a loved one who has passed, but others may wander into the territory of a hostile spirit, and this can be unsettling and even harmful. The spirit may or may not be visible (a ghost), but these spirits are just as real as that which animates each of us. As you think and therefore you are, so it goes for the disembodied spirit. It is from these spirits that investigators are occasionally able to get answers to questions in the form of EVP's (Electronic Voice Phenonmenon). (*Note: it's also possible that an EVP may be part of a residual haunting.) Some spirits may also interact with investigators by lowering or raising room temperature or causing a higher energy reading on an EMF (ElectroMagnetic Field) meter.

So, we call upon the friendly spirits to be with us, hope that the spirit of a loved one may join us from time to time, but after seeing an apparition on the stairs, we will likely turn pale and declare, "I think I saw a ghost!"

Empty Seats at the Table

This Christmas season my mind is on empty seats at the table. Since last Christmas both my husband and I have had our fathers pass on to the next world. My father-in-law spent the last three years of his life in a nursing home, and his wife passed long before him, so the table at which he might have sat for Christmas dinner is long gone, but my mother recently commented that this would be her first Christmas without my father. I can't help but wonder if he made a quiet, unnoticed appearance there at her table. The good news is that there were other family members there, so the chairs around the table were full. If he did come back, Perhaps he sat at the organ, where he used to sit and practice hymns, and watched his family around the table from across the room.

This all leads to what is really on my mind and that is ghosts that come back, not because they are attached to people and want to check in on the family left behind, but those that are attached to places and the things that they have left behind. A friend of mine owns a house that contains three apartments, and it seems that the ghost of a man is occasionally seen. His description matches that of the man who built the house. He appeared in one instance to an elderly woman who was living there with her granddaughter. He seemed surprised to see the old woman and asked her what she was doing there. This ghost appears to be lost, living in the house he built, mostly unaware that others are the real occupants. This story is not unique, of course. Many people report having to talk to their resident ghosts and win their agreement to allow them to cohabitate the premises.

I have to quote a Bible scripture, which is also a truism: "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. ... For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." In the case of ghosts, it appears that those who have treasured their earthly possessions too strongly, may find it hard to leave them behind. Talk about the old ball and chain. There's a lesson here for all of us.