It Came From Outer Space…

I went to school in St. Augustine, it’s readily recognized as one of the most haunted cities in Florida, given it’s the oldest city in the nation, and we had our fair share of ghostly encounters while we were there. It’s going to take me a while to catalog them all, but here are a choice couple.

The first ghost I remember seeing at college I saw at about one or two in the morning. A friend and I were staying up on the mezzanine with another friend helping her study, and I started to see a face hovering by the fire place in the corner. It was a woman and I got a feeling of overwhelming sadness from her, and felt she was looking for her son.

A few months later I heard a story about a little boy who was supposedly sometimes seen in the dorm rooms on the first floor. If people had toys in the dorm they would find them moved around, and they would sometimes see him running around on the mezzanine. The urban legend goes that he fell through the railing off the mezzanine and died; he was chasing a ball.

My first ghostly experience that I can remember clearly I was about six or seven years old. I was going to school, and I kept seeing a cat following me down the street when I would turn to look at it I could swear that I was sometimes seeing the wall it was walking in front of through it.
I went home and told my family because I couldn’t understand how this was possible. My friend at school was firmly convinced this was a ghost cat. My family thought I was “telling stories” and should stop.

It was about seven years before I encountered anything again properly.

This is not to say that I didn’t try to find things before that. I read books on ghosts and tried all sorts of different ways to make the spirits contact me or turf them up, make them do things, experiments listed in books like leaving glasses of water out for them and things like that. I’m fortunate really that I have good protectors because who knows what I could have brought to my grandparent’s house given we lived near a Viking burial mound, but then again those people died long enough ago that their spirits are probably thoroughly at rest and cannot be disturbed.

No, it wasn’t until we moved to a little bungalow down the street that I met the humming woman. My Mum and I moved to this residence when I was almost fourteen. It was a little cottage bungalow that had previously been owned by an elderly couple. We were in essence house-sitting for another couple who were going to move in when they retired, and as long as we didn’t mind them remodeling things a bit while we lived there, we could stay there.

On a particular day which was summer holidays I was waiting to go into town to meet my Mum to get my school uniforms, when there was a very lound BANG! from the back porch. I went haring out there and found that there were builders knocking down the porch. They’d thought no one was home because we didn’t have a car in the driveway and I’d been in the front room playing music and trying to do some homework and hadn’t heard them come up.

They apologized profusely and in traditional British fashion I went and made them some tea and brought them out some biscuits to prove all was right in my world, and then busied myself getting ready to go out. As I walked out the kitchen towards my bedroom I heard someone humming in the hallway. Definitely not a builder a high pitched female hum, just a few bars of a tune not enough to work out what the song was. I said, “Hello?” but nothing.

A few days later I heard her again. Mum’s theory, which stands not quite proven, to this day is that the builders knocking the porch down disturbed the woman who had lived there before, as she liked to sit out in that porch and watch the fish pond, from what our landlords tell us.

In my excitement to find out more I went down to our local New Age store and got myself a red candle and lit it and asked her to talk to me, but I didn’t find much more out. I think my long-winded explanation of why I wanted to talk to her may have put her at ease and meant she could rest once more because I was going on, “we’re not going to destroy your house, we really like this place, it’s just the porch was going rotten, and the people who own the place are really nice. We’re taking care of the fish…” and so on.

Until we emigrated the next year those were the main ghosts of note that I saw.

I attended a group ritual yesterday for the first time in over a year. It was a great deal of fun, and I’m glad that I went. It was a long drive to get to where the ritual was behind held about almost two and a half hours but that was good too because it got me to drive on the interstate which is something I often chicken out of doing if I can. I could have this time but it would have meant the drive was over an hour longer.

The friends who were hosting the ritual were very prepared to the point of having a ritual meal and having a circlet made, and symbolic weapons. They work much along the way I do which is that a lot of the ritual is left to inspiration at the moment rather than pre-written and pre-planned. There were twelve of us participating overall, and the energy and sentiment were well harnessed and well intended.

It seems that whenever a group of pagans from different walks and groups come together there’s always some sort of politicking that happens but thankfully nothing came of it to ruin the ritual it’s just souring. Things didn’t come to a head on that until afterwards, and turned out to be a discussion between the two groups’ leaders. I hope that things can be resolved, but I don’t. I like group work, but I don’t know if I can do it more than every once in a while on special occasions because it seems that there’s going to be politics that happen no matter what the group is for. I saw it when I helped my Mum with Sunday School that there would be internal friction between certain people because, “so-n-so changed the flowers,” or “such-n-such is friendlier with the vicar.” I think it’s going to happen no matter what the group is involved with.

But overall I feel that the ritual was a great success. It was an “Ascension” ritual for a friend, which meant she was reaffirming her faith and her intention to carry on her path of self-discovery and magic. I was called to represent one of the corners, and I blessed her with Strength and Longevity, others gave her Self-Confidence, Self-Esteem, Balance and so on. She said she felt like she was floating after things got underway, and I know a lot of energy was built up.

I thought I would start with one of the more recent experiences we’ve had.

I’ve always wondered if my son might be my grandfather come back to us but it’s one of those “don’t want to read too much into it”. There’s been some strange coincidences like him having my grandfather’s blood type A+ when both my husband and I are O-; and the fact that my grandfather’s favorite song “Skye Boat Song” has long been the only lullaby that will get him to settle down especially if we’re not at home.

I do, however, talk to my grandfather and have asked him to be my son’s guide and help him out, watch over him, especially at night.

My son has several times, especially when he’s been learning to walk , asked what looks at first glance “thin air” to pick him up, and for a while he’s been very interested in pointing to the ceiling and asking “Who?” “What?”

The other morning he asked me “What?” and pointed. I was running down a list of things it might be, “wall, couch, shelf…” but suddenly something struck me. It’s been a bit “stressball” here lately and I’ve shut down a bit psychically because of it. I asked him if someone was there, and he nodded, and I felt out, opening myself back up and got the impression of my grandfather being there. I asked, “Is it Granddad?” and my son shook his head pretty fervantly, and then came over and put his hand on my chest, where my grandfather’s spirit had been when I was experiencing entity attachment and I laughed, “Ah, right not your Granddad. My Granddad. Mommy’s Granddad,” and he nodded and laughed, and kept pointing up and going, “Da-dada, Da-dada.”

My son is doing very well, much progress has been made. He is thoroughly “out of the woods”. I’m not sure if he really was ever “in the woods” although it felt like it in parental panic mode early in the morning functioning on an hours sleep and tons of coffee at the hospital.

For more details on what happened with him my personal blog has the full information. I can’t bring myself to re-type everything too many bad memories.

I’m fully embroiled in my article. I’ve been able to get information from a couple of other cities which was nice, and funny in some respects when one agent got a “little” confused and started explaining to me that I couldn’t fix a car in my house…of course she had probably just got to work in her time zone and perhaps wasn’t fully awake yet.

I’m going to do a series of posts on ghostly encounters that I’ve had. If anyone has had a ghostly encounter they would be willing to write about and would like to share I would be excited to hear about it!