High Strangeness In The Store

Had an interesting experience last Thursday,  I am a driver for a visually impaired friend, we went to a health food store in town, there were very few people in there, my friend had everything she needed and was about to check out, there was someone ahead of her so it was going to be a few minutes before it was her turn, so I decided to go back a few aisles and look around for a minute. There wasn't anyone near me, as I walked I was punched in my left shoulder, it wasn't a violent act, but it was harder than just a mere muscle twitch. I turned around fully expecting to see someone standing there, perhaps someone I knew or perhaps someone accidentally ran into me and was about to say "excuse me" or "sorry".  There was no one there, there was NO ONE there, I turned all the way around, I even said "what?" out loud, sometimes I get an answer, but there was no response. I don't know who or what that was, I just know it happened.

I didn't feel anything in particular (other than the shoulder punch), I didn't detect anyone or anything, but someone or something was definitely there, not sure what they or it wanted, that was as far as it went.

I have had strangeness happen in stores before, I have walked down a long aisle, all by myself, on concrete floors, and had things like boxed cereal begin to fall, one by one as I passed, maybe a few feet further, I have had to tell whatever it is to stop it, then I went back and picked up the boxes, it has happened on several occasions to me, fortunately it hasn't happened in a long time.

Good or Bad?

Everyone has opinions about spirits, ghosts and other unexplainable, paranormal things. I find many people, though certainly not all people, on the extremes of the scale of whether or not these represent good or evil. Either they believe that all things in this arena are evil, demons, restless spirits with nothing better to do than scare the bejeebers out of us... or they believe it all angelic, higher beings, spirit guides whose sole purpose in life (or after life) is to guide and protect us.

Either these things are all to be feared or all to be believed with no questions asked. I think I fell somewhere in the middle, I certainly don't believe it's all evil, and I certainly don't blindly believe it's all good either.

I generally don't know how to classify what I see, it just "is". Most of the time I see something, or hear something, or smell something, I just observe, rarely interact. I can usually tell the difference between an active entity and a residual (a recording, or memory), though sometimes I don't realize it's a residual until I see it for the second time. There is a good article about residuals on History's Mysteries blog, it's worth a read.

On the rare occasions when I am talking to someone about ghosts and such, more often than not, I get to hear a story about a negative experience, either the thing in the closet that scared them as a kid, the visit from the scary lady in white just before grandma died, the haunted house up the street where the witch lived (kids, don't go there)...

I often wonder why most people have little to no paranormal activity around them, and of the few that do, why does it nearly always seem to be negative or scary? Another thing I notice, is on the rare occasions when I'm discussing this sort of thing with someone, they often start getting scared, jumpy, looking around, it's as if merely talking about might make it happen, or perhaps for a few minutes, they are more open to the spirit world and that scares them. Just about the time I really start getting into the conversation, it's clear that they want to stop talking about it. I know of a few people who don't mind discussing this sort of thing, sadly I don't get to converse with them often enough, at least not often enough for me. That's probably a lot of my motivation for writing this blog.

Fortunately, or not depending on your point of view, with the populatiry of shows like Ghost Hunters and shows like it, it's easier to talk to people about spirit stuff, I can generally figure out is someone is open to the subject merely by asking if they watch that show (or other's like it), if they have watched it, they usually have strong opinions about it, either they think it entertainment only, or they really get into it, either way I can tell by what comes out of their mouth right after that. :-)

Oh well, life goes on... this is message number 49 for this blog. I tend to focus more on my other blogs, about living off grid, something I do every day too. I will give more attention to this blog, post more of my paranormal history, as well as posting my day to day experiences, good and bad.

Shadow Person Sighting

Just a quickie tonight, I worked at the Country Store today (Saturday), I was talking to a friend, he owns property in the neighborhood but doesn't live here, just visits on occasion, maybe the lure of the neighborhood will convince him to visit more often. We have interesting spiritual discussions, these discussion are too few and far between. but it is just how it works out. Anyhoo, we were sitting on the front porch chatting about our latest ghost related subjects, I could see into the store, no one was in the store. I kept seeing a shadow person walking back and front of the drink cooler. I figured my friend would want to know what I seeing right then so I mentioned it. He seemed to be a bit excited about it, he kept looking in the store, trying to see it I think. I did see it again several times after that, each time I would look away from my friend and looked in the store window, he wanted to know if I saw it again. :)

My friend is very observant, especially about people and human interaction, I suspect because of the type of work he did. It was important for him to be able to tell if the people he interacted with on a professional basis were telling the truth, and I believe that many of them were probably highly motivated to lie, or at least stretch the truth from time to time. I'll not go any further in that, but let's just say that it's interesting to interact with my friend as he learns about how much I see into the spiritual world. My friend asked me if things like that ever scared me, and honestly the answer is no, living people scare me more, these shadow beings and other things such as this are no threat to me. Sometimes I get startled, but even that is a fairly rare occurrence any more.

To describe what it looked like, it was short, perhaps 3-4 feet tall, the height of a child, I could see the rounded top of the head, but no other features like shoulders and such. It looked like a very solid, 3D shadow that was walking in front of the drink cooler. I didn't get any feelings from it, I didn't feel like it was good or bad, it was just there. I have never seen this particular one before, at least not that I can recall. I don't know why it was there or what it may have wanted. I guess I need to start carrying my camera and voice recorder with me for these occasions, in the past up until now, I would just observe, I rarely interact except for the occasional comment I might make, like "Yes, I see you...", or "I heard that...", or if they do something like knock something over, I might say "Wow, that was impressive..." or something like that.

I could only see this one for a few seconds at a time, I have successfully trained myself not to look directly at the things I see in my peripheral vision, usually if you look directly at something like that it will usually vanish immediately, the longer I can go without directly looking at it, the longer I can usually see and watch it.

The other thing I feel I should mention here is that I don't control this, I can't make it happen, it is random, often daily, sometimes multiple times a day, I don't go looking for it, I don't try to make it happen, it just does. Now I can make more things happen if I talk about it, but for the most part, it is random.

OK, so this wasn't as much as a quickie as I thought it would be. :)

A Day In The Life

Since I've seen spirits and other such activity all of my life, I tend to forget that most people don't see these sorts of things, at least not on a daily basis, many of you must wonder what it's like, is my daily life like The Amityville Horror or like the movie Poltergeist? Hardly. Though there were a few "interesting" occurrences during my early teen and pre-teen years, it was nothing like you see in the movies.

Well, let me give you a theoretical day in my life.

I wake up, I go to the bathroom, I wash up for the day, I get dressed, I take my dog out for a walk, I see a bird in a tree, I go to water the garden, I see a bird fly by, I walk back to my house, I fix breakfast, we eat. I do some computer work, I see a bird out the window in the bird bath. Now it's time for lunch, so I fix lunch and we eat. I take the leftovers outside to feed the wild animals, a few birds sit in a tree, watching me place the food on the ground. I do the dishes, work on a few more chores around the house. I do more computer work. Now it's time for dinner, I look around to see what I can fix, the phone rings, it's my Dad, I talk to him while I fix dinner, I hear a sound outside and look just in time to see a hummingbird leaving the feeder. We eat dinner, I do the dishes, do a few more chores, do more computer work then it's time for bed.

Seems pretty ordinary wouldn't you say? Did you notice the theme here? Yes, the birds, now if you replace the birds with spirits, then you would have a typical day for me. Perhaps not that often in fact, usually once or twice a day. The reason I used birds as an example is birds, for most people are an everyday fact of life, you go outside, or look outside and you will probably see a bird, though most of you wouldn't notice the birds, they are so ordinary and such a common occurrence, the fact is eventually you would (probably) notice if you didn't see birds after a while, how long do you think it would take? I remember right after 9-11, when all of the airports were shut down, we lived near DFW airport, and seeing airplanes in the sky was completely normal, but I will tell you that it was eerie when days and weeks went by with no aircraft of any sort in the sky, the lack of them was noticeable even though we didn't really pay attention to them otherwise.

Now, I'll repeat my theoretical day with the spirit activity.

I wake up, I go to the bathroom, I wash up for the day, I get dressed, I take my dog out for a walk, I see a shadow dart near my feet, I go to water the garden, I see a spark of light float by, I walk back to my house, I fix breakfast, we eat. I do some computer work, I see a blur of a person walk past the door. Now it's time for lunch, so I fix lunch and we eat. I take the leftovers outside to feed the wild animals, on the way back in, I see someone looking through the window, watching me place the food on the ground. I do the dishes, work on a few more chores around the house. I do more computer work. Now it's time for dinner, I look around to see what I can fix, the phone rings, it's my Dad, I talk to him while I fix dinner, I hear a sound outside and look just in time to see something amorphous streak by. We eat dinner, I do the dishes, do a few more chores, do more computer work then it's time for bed.

As I said, that sort of day would be a lot of activity, I usually see one or two things a day, some days more, some days less, most of the time I don't try to investigate it, I see it, and I go on with my day, it doesn't scare me, sometimes I am startled, the same way you would be if someone jumped out and said "boo".

That's just about it, if you have any questions, please ask, I love talking about this. :)

More Mobile Home Spookies

A couple of days ago, I was cleaning a home that is behind the store where I work weekends. I have cleaned this place before, it is a rental that my boss owns. I have had experiences in this place before (click here) This time when I went there, it felt much better, a lot better than the first time I went there. Sound carries in a strange way there, I can hear things like cars driving by, much clearer than I think I should, I don't know if it's just the way the house is situated, it's pretty far from the road, and on more than one occassion I went to a window or the front door to see if someone was driving up, it turned out to be cars on the road, no where near the house.

This time when I was cleaning, I had the front door open, I had already cleaned the front room, swept and mopped the floor, I was working on the kitchen. I walked back into the front room and on the floor, in front of the door, there was a piece of wood, this had been broken off a larger piece, possibly part of the deck or trim around the door, this piece of wood shouldn't have been there, I had just cleaned that part of the house and I would not have missed a piece of wood this large. It was 3 inches long, and maybe 1/4 inch thick, it was laying on the floor, just inside the door. I went outside to see if there was someone around, no one was anywhere near the house. I swept the wood outside and asked for whatever did it to do it again. It didn't happen again, but that was strange. It didn't scare me, it just made me realize that there is still something there.