The visiting spirits

Courted by ghosts.

Mar 27, 2024

Some months ago I carried a glass of wine to the TV room where my mom was watching a hockey game. She sat in her arm chair, her legs up on the ottoman in front of her, a blanket on her lap.

A side table divided the space between her chair and a couch which was angled slightly away from the wall facing the TV. It is there on the couch where I usually sit when I stay with my mom.

That evening, the moment I stepped a foot across the threshold, I noticed peripherally that my seat was taken. A slightly hunched elderly person sat in my spot. Stumped, I wondered if I missed the doorbell and mom had invited someone in.

I turned my head toward the couch as I entered the room. There was nobody there. My spot on the couch was empty.

I dismissed this incident, sat down and tuned into the game. Mom and I commented about the players and soon, the first period was over.

She left the room to do the dinner dishes, I left to shut down my laptop in my room with a door.

When I heard mom's footsteps pass my room I knew it was time for the second period. I went back to the kitchen to top up my wine and returned to the TV room.

Again, as soon as I stepped one foot across the threshold, my seat on the couch appeared occupied. Just like before, I saw an elderly person, probably male, sitting in my spot, his back slightly hunched, watching the game.

“Who's watching with you?” I asked mom as I stepped into the room.

“What do you mean?” she inquired, giving me an inquisitive look.

“Someone's sitting in my spot,” I told her. “Twice now, I saw him. Right when I'm about to cross the threshold.”

Mom looked over to the couch.

“There's nobody there,” she affirmed.

I shrugged my shoulders and sat down.

After a while, mom started asking me for details. What did he look like, this ghost of mine? Was it a man? Young or old?

She had been widowed for about three years and had lost her youngest son to cancer six months ago.

“It didn't look like Silvio,” I responded, referring to my just-turned 50 year old brother who lost his life to Glioblastoma last summer.

“Then it was your father,” she said with determination. “He used to watch the game with me.”

My father wasn't a hockey person - he preferred watching curling and tennis - but he indulged mom occasionally when she watched an NHL game with the Toronto Maple Leafs. The only difference then, when my father was alive, was that it was he who sat in the chair, and mom sat on the couch.

“I don't know,” I replied. “ It didn't look like someone I know.”

I did know it wasn’t my brother. He was tall and lean with a straight back, and the person on the couch was elderly with that tell-tale posture of someone who had aged and curved over time.

Didn’t look like my dad though, although the apparition wasn’t clear. I only saw an outline.

***

A few weeks later, my deceased brother's family came to Ontario for a visit. They live in British Colombia.

I cleared out of my room with a door at my mom's house and returned to the family house in the city to free up the bed for the visitors. My college-student son, who also lives with grandma, came with me. His bed would go to the two ladies - my brother’s partner and her 9-year-old daughter. My room (with a door) and bed would be used by my nephew, my brother’s 16-year-old son.

While back in the city house, the only place where I can work (write) is at my antique oak dining table in the open concept part of the house. There is no room with a door available for me there, so I arrange my laptop and other writing implements at one end of the table, leaving the other part available for the family for meal consumption.

The space at the dining table works fine when no one is home. Although it's less conductive for intense fiction writing requiring deep concentration (which requires quiet and solitude), I can and do get other projects accomplished from that spot, despite frequent interruptions.

Have you met teenagers? They are constantly cruising the kitchen…

One day, I was editing a novel I've been writing on and off for about four years. The menfolk (my son and his dad) were absent, but my teen girl was home. She was in her room where she spends most of her time when home.

I took advantage of the relatively empty house and began reading and editing my chapters. My traction was great, my propulsion moving forward, my concentration focused. I was pleased with the quiet and lack of interruptions and found myself deeply immersed in a romantic scene, able to hone in and visualize the current events.

Suddenly, I felt the air shift around me. A subtle yet substantive draft wafted past me.

For a moment, I thought the dog had barged his way back inside from the back door located off a small hallway at the end of the kitchen. I couldn’t see it from my vantage point as I was facing in the opposite direction, away from the back door.

It turns out it didn’t matter, for the dog was fast asleep among some pillows on the couch in front of me in the living room.

Confused, I turned my head slightly to the right toward the kitchen. Did my daughter emerge from her room? Did she open the back door?

I turned my head toward the kitchen I saw a phantom shape, almost invisible but with a clear outline of flowing hair, move swiftly along the length of the kitchen island.

I blinked, trying to adjust my focus.

There was no one there. Only empty space.

Weird, I thought.

I immediately recalled the hunched-over person occupying my spot on the couch at mom’s house. He, too, was like a phantom, with only an outline coming into form. Except, in his case, he wasn’t moving.

This girl-ghost, or spirit, was moving enough to stir the atmosphere and cause a draft.

To reassure myself that I wasn’t imagining things, I stood up and checked the hallway and the back door.

Empty, and closed.

When I returned to my space at the table, I picked up my phone and messaged my daughter.

Were you just up here? I inquired.

Her room is in the basement.

No, was the answer.

Weird, I thought again and went back to my editing my novel. I dismissed the incident as a figment of my (overactive?) imagination and resumed reading and editing.

Other than occasionally taking a sip of coffee, I remained focused on my screen.

And then, it happened again. Another distinct yet very subtle swoosh in the air next to me, making me look up and to the right toward the kitchen. Somebody just walked by there again.

It was clearly a younger person, probably a girl, with flowing long hair.

This time, I messaged my mom.

There's a ghost in my house, I told her. Someone's walking around my kitchen when I'm writing.

She asked if it was my father or my brother.

I can't tell who it is, I admitted. But probably not. Neither of them had long hair, and I could clearly see this ghost’s tresses trailing behind her head.

Probably a girl, I told her.

Etymology, psychic mediums and neuroscience

The Oxford English Dictionary states the earliest known use of the word paranormal is in the 1900s, citing evidence from 1905 in the writing of L.I. Finch. Digging deeper, I discovered the L stands for Laura, but not much else is divulged. There is a book called, Metapsychical Phenomena (not a spelling mistake): Methods and Observations.

I found this interactive site which allows you to turn the pages of this book. Click the image to take you to the site.

The book is interactive: click this link to open the site an turn the pages in the book

I haven't read the book but might do so. Wouldn't it be fascinating to find out what people - scientists - from the early 1900s thought about ghosts or spirits? I'm curious to see if religion played as significant a role as I predict it might…

Moving on, Merriam-Webster defines paranormal as something not scientifically explainable, supernatural.

Wikipedia says “paranormal events are purported phenomena described in popular culture, folk and other non-scientific bodies of knowledge whose existence within these contexts is described as being beyond the scope of normal scientific understanding.” It includes those beliefs which pertain to

extrasensory perception (such as telephathy)
spiritualism
pseudosciences
ghost hunting
cruptozoology
ufology

Writing community friends

On a personal level, I have heard stories from neighbours and even a popular blogger, Mark Petruska, who talked about his own ghostly experience in a podcast with Wynne and Vicki on The Heart of the Matter. You can find it here:

Podcast about a paranormal experience
Episode 41: Enter if you dare with Mark Petruska

Interestingly, Mark also felt a change in the physical atmosphere, although a little more drastically than I did with the girl-ghost in my kitchen.

Psychic mediums

People close to me who have suffered through loss and trauma of loved ones have found solace in the writings by Matt Fraser, the American psychic medium who wrote the book We Never Die: Secrets of the Afterlife (among other titles). Prior to becoming a professional psychic, Fraser trained and worked as a paramedic and physician assistant. It was during his time as an Emergency Medical Technician when he realized he had an ability to help people emotionally and developed his innate ability to connect with people who have died/transitioned into the next realm.

Naturally, Fraser has a lot of critics, and the skeptics are particularly vocal, yet those who encountered ghostly sightings and believe in them attest to his ability to shed deeper understanding into their intimately personal paranormal experiences, which led to a sense of serenity, ultimate acceptance and elemental healing.

Metaphysics and Spirituality

The metaphysics who trust in the power of thoughts and intuition encourage an open mind. They use tools such as Tarot or Oracle cards, numerology or astrology to tap into our inner voice and allow our inner guidance system to help point us in the desired direction.

The Quantum physicists accept energetic frequencies as a part of our natural world, referencing Albert Einstein who coined the phrase Everything is energy. It’s hard to argue with this statement when we know each and every thing - alive or inanimate - can be broken down into atoms. These atoms, the building blocks of everything in the universe, are in constant motion, creating and sending vibrations into the environment.

It is this part, the vibrations of all of the atoms in and around our immediate orbit, which may cause us to see or feel premonitions. There is bound to be a neurological (scientific) explanation for these events, but I am not the person who can explain it.

I’m just reporting what I saw (and felt).

Neuroscience

Scientific American describes ghosts as supernatural spirits and delves into possible explanations. I did not passively accept however that mold (for instance) may play a factor in ghostly sightings. The article also suggested carbon monoxide poisoning, the power of suggestion or even low frequency sounds might play a part in paranormal sightings. (None of these concepts played a part in my own circumstances.)

However, I do accept that brain trauma, psychedelic/hallucinogenic drugs, excessive alcohol consumption, injury or illness and severe sleep deprivation can and do alter our perception of reality.

Meanwhile, the Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences says this about paranormal activity:

From the perspective of modern neuroscience all behaviors and all experiences are created by the dynamic matrix of chemical and electromagnetic events within the human brain. Paranormal experiences might be considered a subset of these neurogenic processes.
Source: https://neuro.psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/jnp.13.4.515

It is suggested that specific classes of paranormal experiences were sometimes due to subtle changes within brain chemistry and brain electromagnetic activity, particularly when in deep bereavement a short time after losing a loved one to death.

Clearly, the scientific application to explaining the paranormal is vast and detailed, but this newsletter is not a scholarly thesis or an academic paper, and I do not desire to convince anyone of anything.

I am simply sharing my story.

Public perception

So what should I do about these paranormal, ghostly premonitions (other than write about them)? They felt so real to me, although I was neither scared nor unsettled. Still, the hesitation to share my story persists; do I really want to hear people tell me my experience is ludicrous or be declared as overly imaginative?

“You can't see dead people,” they say to me dismissively, and I in turn say nothing.

I never said I saw dead people, I think to myself but simultaneously wonder how to explain (to myself, or to anyone really) what had really happened.

There really was an old, hunched-over man who sat in my spot on the couch and watched the game on TV with my mom. I saw him clearly, twice, if only in shape and as an outline.
The girl in my kitchen, with the flowing long hair, really did cause a disruption in the atmosphere which I felt as a draft. I saw her clearly, twice, although she disappeared quicker than the old man, probably because she was on the move. She, too, was a shape, an outline, albeit a moving one.

Should I just chalk it up as some unexplained neurological activity? Is my brain playing tricks on me?

It may be noteworthy to mention the dog didn’t react to the girl-ghost’s draft-causing journey through my kitchen. He wasn’t with me at my mom’s house when the old man came for a visit.

Concluding remarks

Neuroscience may still be its infancy at this time, at least relatively speaking in conjunction with digital technology, but we do know our understanding of the human brain has evolved and advanced in leaps and bounds in the past few decades. However, much remains to be uncovered about brain activity and human perception of paranormal events. The skeptics in particular wish to attach evidence-based science to things unexplained.

With the internet’s continuous and exponential growth, I would say finding absolute truths will remain beyond reach. For every study to state one thing there’s a study to say the opposite. (You must have noticed this, particularly relating to the vaccine debates during the pandemic). Ultimately, what you believe may not jive with what someone else believes, yet you cannot force someone to adapt to your perspective or take your experience as gospel. This is particularly true when it comes to intimately personal experiences such as feeling connections (paranormal or otherwise) to departed (or transitioned) loved ones.

Are you really the kind of person who would tell someone who lost a child, a spouse, a loved-one they are imagining the connections they feel with the departed (transitioned) individuals?

As far as my ghostly sightings are concerned, I am not afraid. There is nothing to be afraid of. Although I don’t believe the girl-ghost is someone I know who has died, it is not completely outside of the realm of possibility that the man sitting on the couch at my mom’s house could be my father’s spirit. He was old, he was hunched… and he was sitting there beside mom.

In some fashion, this is a comforting sentiment.

Thank you for reading.

Room with a Door

Discussion about this post