The Gray Zone
There’s a chill in the evening air in my part of the country and the evening sky is getting dark earlier and earlier every day. Yes, October is here. When I think of my associations with this month I always think that are scary or defy our understanding. Perhaps it’s because it’s the month of All Hallows Eve (Halloween) or that gnarled, leafless trees and dark country roads on a moonless night stir some primal fear of the unknown. But I have experienced my fair share of the strange and unexplained for most of my life. Sometimes I forget that not everyone has these same experiences, but I am used to eye rolls and skeptics. But in the spirit of the month of goblins and ghouls I thought I’d share a few stories of my own.
The Table
My husband and I were spending a lazy weekend in Virginia many years ago. We took the scenic back roads on our way home stopping in several antique stores. I spotted a beautiful antique dining table in one and, because my husband was anxious to get going, I made a quick purchase and arranged for the table to be delivered. On the day of the delivery, not one – but two – of the trucks broke down. When the delivery men got to the house they seemed agitated and said they couldn’t wait to get rid of this table. As soon as the table was brought into the house I immediately felt a really negative energy shift. Somehow the dining room even looked different and I could literally feel almost a static when I touched the table. After a couple of weeks the heavy darkness still hovered. I thought maybe I should have the table refinished so I made arrangements. After about 3 weeks the refinisher called and asked if he could return the table to me. He said there was nothing he could do and he wanted it out of his shop. As soon as the table came back I started to “talk” to it. I could feel the negativity that had been trapped in the table and told it that we would work this out together and it could release whatever it was holding. I spent several weeks meditating and clearing it, until one day it was as if a bubble had popped and everything felt aligned again.
Out of curiosity, I called the antique shop where I had hastily purchased the table to get some clue as to its provenance and where it spent the 100+ years prior to my acquiring it. While the antique dealer could not give me names of previous owners, she did tell me something odd. She said that the table belonged to a prominent family that suffered a series of tragedies and that they were very anxious to get rid of the table.
I have always believed that life, whether happy or sad, leaves echoes that etch into physical space and objects. Now I am much more cautious about what I bring into my home.
The Onlookers
A dear client of mine has a large historic home that we have worked on for years. One day we were working in the first floor dining room. I was hanging paintings and putting things in the cupboards when my client ran to the third floor to get something. When she walked back into the room she walked right by me and I continued talking to her as I was putting her dishes in the sideboard and she was walking around the room. Moments later I heard my client saying “who are you talking to”? When I looked up she was just entering the room and the woman that was there seconds before vanished. This is not unusual for me. Many times I see “people” that are very curious about what I am doing, or going to do to a home.
Just last month I was with clients that bought a very old stone farmhouse. I designed a modern addition but the existing structure needed to be reconfigured so we were meeting in the part of the house. We met where to old kitchen once stood and the closed-in staircase with pie shaped steps (not uncommon in old farmhouses was still there. When I started my presentation I had to stop because there were suddenly so many “people” crowded around to see. There were a few adults but most were children about 8-17. Because I forget that not everyone sees or feels what I do, I absentmindedly said I was distracted by all the people in the room. My client got that “Oh my gosh, she’s one of those” looks in her eyes. She said she didn’t believe in “ghosts” (I don’t call them that) but she gave credence to what I was saying because she was told that one family that lived in the house had 15 or 16 children and the last occupant of the house advised them that there was lots of activity in the house.
People and their homes have a very symbiotic relationship, so it’s no surprise that imprints can still be seen and felt long after the occupants have left.
Excited Mama
I was helping friends renovate their home and we made the trek to Lancaster County for a meeting at the custom cabinetry shop that would be making all of the homes cabinetry. We took separate cars, and on the way up my friends mother (long deceased and whom I had never met), showed up in my front seat. It was not the first time she came to chat, nor for that matter, was it the first time anyone has shown up to chat. She was absolutely giddy and told me that she was so excited for the new house and wanted her son to know that she was aware of all that was going on.
Perhaps knowing that her son would be a skeptic (although I have relayed accurate messages from her before) she told me to remind him of the incident with the curtains and the ketchup. Well, for some reason I have been chosen as a conduit to relay these otherworldly messages. And as wacky as they may seem, I always feel a responsibility to give whatever information has been passed on to me without editing or trying to understand it. When we both arrived at the shop, I told my friend that his mother “drove up with me”. Fully expecting him to listen politely and then change the subject, he smiled and said he knew exactly what I was talking about. He relayed to me the same scene she had showed me in the car, and it indeed involved curtains and ketchup.
No one knows with certainty what happens after we die. But is a pulse and a beating heart the only way to define life? Perhaps there is a way to be even more present in life without the impedance and limitations of a physical body.
I’m Leaving
Over the many decades I have been fortunate to only have encountered a handful of spaces with energy so dark that I had to leave, or would not enter at all.
I start every new project with a consultation. I meet at the home, get a sense of the homeowners and their needs and formulate a game plan. I like to come in clean, meaning I don’t want to know anything before I get there. I prefer to read a space and a persons’ energy without a filter or bias. Several years ago I got a call from a woman and we set up a consultation. Although she sounded lovely, she said that her house never felt right. I assumed she meant the decorating had never been quite right. I have to say I got a very bad feeling on the phone, but I shook it off as being overworked. When I pulled up to the house I got an immediate migraine. I felt pushed off my axis and contemplated calling from my car to cancel, but I didn’t think that was very professional. I know this is going to sound bizarre (but it you’re with me this far you might as well stay for the end of the ride) but the house actually seemed to be “cloudier” then the other houses on the street. Yes, I said it! It took everything I had to ring the bell and when I did the woman answered. Although she was very attractive, she had an exhausted look. She said the house was “unique” and it was “challenging” to live there. She said her children were always sick, there were strange noises and she never felt comfortable there. As we talked, I could see into the rooms beyond and they all seemed so dark, even though it was a sunny summer day. I have come to totally trust my intuition and gut and that day every fiber of my being was screaming get out of there. I told her that I believed there were energetic entities in the house that needed to be addresses and thus anything I did was not going to be helpful. And right at that moment a book fell off of a shelf in the other room!! I handed her back her check and gave my apologies. As I got to the safety of my car I felt as if I had just escaped the grips of something evil.
A year later I got a call from the same woman. She had sold the house (at a huge financial loss) and moved to a new home. She asked if I would consider taking her on as a client. When I arrived, much to my delight, the house was, well, normal. The energy felt good, and perhaps it was my imagination, but the woman looked happy and relaxed, as if a weight had been taken off her shoulders. She said her children were healthy and no longer afraid to be in their own home. She admitted she had reservations about buying the old house but didn’t trust what her intuition was trying to tell her. I suspect she finally listened.
These few stories don’t even begin to scrape the surface of what I have seen and experienced. I could tell you about the disembodied legs (in 18th c. shoes and leggings) that constantly climbed the stairs in my first home, the 2 entities that banged the pipes in the basement of my second house, but stopped abruptly when I shouted at them from the top of the stairs, or the grey cloud that was hovering in the corner of my son’s room. But by now I’m guessing that many of you are thinking I am an absolute mental case. But that’s okay, because these experiences have all reinforced my understanding that life is not black and white, but many shades of gray. We don’t understand the things that live in the gray so we doubt ourselves or try to make logical sense of everything and dismiss all else as gullibility, foolishness or flights of fancy. I am glad to be free of the confines that limit possibility, so I am available to experience the odd and unusual, and become even more curious about the things that I don’t have answers for. I can determine for myself if what I am experiencing is Trick or Treat.
Happy October!
