My Paranormal Life

Abandoned cemetery, Dekalb County Georgia

I have always felt spirits. When I was a child, from about three to five years old, I could sense things in the house we lived in. It was an ordinary ranch house in the Garden Lakes subdivision of Rome, Georgia, a seemingly harmless house, but I had an imaginary friend whom I now believe to be a child spirit. I named him/her Doe A Deer, like the song. I can remember that I actually saw Doe A Deer, and that he/she was an actual child. I never thought about who he/she was, just accepted the fact that this was my friend. This was a good, friendly spirit.

There was also a bad spirit, or spirits, in the house. At night, I used to wake up terrified and not know why. I would often run across the hall from my room into my parents room, and I remember having to get up the courage to navigate those three steps, because there was something at the other end of the hall. Of course this could have been simply child’s fears, but I can still feel the “things” at the other end of the hall. They were real.

I also had a terrible nightmare when I lived in that house, a dream that stays with me even now. I was outside in our yard and my dad had pinned my brother up on the laundry-drying device we had…a kind of umbrella-shaped thing (only without the fabric of an umbrella) you could spin around and hang laundry from. Dad was spinning my brother around on it, and while he didn’t seem to mind, it kind of upset me. I went inside the house, and there was an evil woman there. She came towards me and I tried to get away but she grabbed me and put me in a cardboard box she had on the kitchen table. I remember her pushing down the lid as I was fighting and crying. Then my mom came in and said in a sharp voice, “What are you doing to her?” The woman let go of me and left the house immediately. Then I woke up.

Nothing else stands out from the rest of my childhood, except for a feeling I had for old houses. I always was drawn to old houses, and could feel something very unique in most of them. My grandparents’ house in Knoxville, for example, was built at the turn of the century, and had clawfoot bathtubs and a big attic. I can remember being transported as if into another world when I was in that house. I would go off by myself and “feel” the past, not only there but in nearly any old house I went into.  I think I really entered another dimension. My parents used to say “I’ll bet you’re going to grow up to be a historian” but it was much more than a simple interest in history. I was able to enter into the world of the past, of the spirits.

As an adult, I have lived in several houses where spirits made themselves known to me. First, in college, I lived for a year in a beautiful Gothic structure in Athens, Georgia that was built in the late 19^th century. I lived upstairs, and used to hear footsteps at all times of the day and night. Usually it was the sound of someone running down the stairs, at breakneck speed. Then they would get to the bottom of the stairs and stop. I would wait for the front door to open, as I hoped it was one of my roommates on their way out, but it never did. I would go look down the stairs and there would be no one there. Usually when this happened I was the only one home. We also heard things moving in the walls at that house, almost like the sound of someone breathing. But it was inside the walls.

I had another odd experience while living in Atlanta in my late 20s. I bought a piece of fabric at an antique store, and planned to use it as a tablecloth. It was cotten cloth with designs on it, maybe a batik. The man who sold it to me said it had been an altar cloth. I didn't really think anything of it, just like it because it was pretty and interesting. I brought it home with me and left it folded up in the linen closet for a while. One day I remembered it, and decided to air it out on the porch, then put it on my kitchen table. I went outside, where it was a very nice sunny spring day. I walked to the edge of the porch and opened up the cloth and started shaking it to get the dust out. As soon as I did, a wind came up and started blowing the trees. It got stronger and began to blow the plants around on my porch, and blew my hair into my face. I stopped shaking the cloth and looked up at the sky. These huge dark clouds had moved in, and now blocked out the sun. The wind really started to howl. I got scared and knew it had something to do with the cloth. I folded it up quickly and put it down, then went inside, leaving it on the porch. It rained for a while, then cleared up. Later in the day I took the cloth immediately to the trash can and threw it away. Someone said I should have burned it, but I would never had done that. It felt like doing anything other than getting rid of it immediately would have unleashed more power into the world.

Orb in Reed House hotel room, Chattanooga Tennessee

The most significant experience I have had was in the house I lived in right after getting married. It was in Decatur, Georgia, just a regular 1950s brick ranch house. When I first looked at the house, my friends lived in it, but were thinking of selling. I was attracted by the warm, homey feel it had. We eventually bought it and moved in, but from the moment we moved in the homey feeling was gone, and instead I felt nervous and uncomfortable in it. Soon afterwards I started smelling odd things from time to time – cigar smoke, perfume, mothballs, bacon—smells that would appear and disappear completely at random. They were very strong, and definitely not coming from any natural source.

I was pregnant at the time, and went to bed very early every night. Our bedroom shared a wall with a smaller room we used as a den and t.v. room. One night, after I’d fallen asleep but my husband was still up watching t.v., I heard him open the bedroom door. “Are you okay?” he said. “Yes, I’m asleep. Why?” “Oh, never mind. I must be imagining things.” This happened again a few nights later, and then again, and finally I asked him what was going on. He told me that as he was watching t.v., he kept hearing the sound of someone crying. Each time, he would turn the volume down on the t.v., and hear the crying that seemed to be coming from my room. He thought it was me, but I never was crying, but sleeping. This went on for months, and finally he stopped coming in to check on me, though he kept hearing the crying.

We finally moved out of that house about a year after my son was born. The last night that we officially owned the house, my husband went back to gather a few last minute items we hadn’t yet moved, and the baby and I stayed behind at the new place. When he got back from cleaning he was shaken up. He said that after he had gotten all our things out of the house, he went back in to sweep. Each time he cleaned out a room, he would close the door and move on to the next room. He said he would pass back by cleaned rooms and find the doors opened. Finally, he heard a door slam in the back of the house and decided to leave. He is not easily frightened but was obviously upset.

Other experiences involve a healing ability and dreams that come true. Several times I have held my hand over someone (usually one of my children) and feel warmth coming out of my palm. The children feel the warmth and feel better. The most significant experience of this kind was when at the age of five or six, my son had fluid on his hipbone and suddenly couldn’t walk. We took him to the ER and they took x-rays and told us it would eventually be reabsorbed by the body, and that he should rest for several days. He was in a lot of pain and slept in bed with me that night. I woke up before him, and held my right hand over his hip for quite a while, sending healing energy to him. He woke up a while later and said “Mom! My leg isn’t hurting at all!” He jumped out of the bed and was able to walk completely normally, which was amazing given he had to be carried in to bed the night before.

My premonitory dreams occurred only once, over the period of about three months in my late 20s. I had a series of dreams about insignificant things which later materialized. One was a dream about an old abandoned building I drove by on my way to work every day that had been standing desolate for several years. In the dream I was with a dear friend in the upstairs window of the building. We were looking across the lawn at a bulldozer that was coming to tear down the house. We were very upset, and rushed downstairs to try to stop them from coming. Then the dream ended. Two or three days later I was on my way to work. I saw a bulldozer standing in the yard of the house. On my way home, the house was gone.

The second dream involved my boyfriend, with whom I had recently broken up. It occurred the night of his birthday, He and I were supposed to have gone out during the day to celebrate, but he had stood me up. I went to bed very angry. I dreamed that he called me the next day and said “I am so sorry about yesterday. My sister came into town unexpectedly and said she would take me out to eat anywhere I wanted to go. I told her I wanted to go to the Grill in Athens, so we drove up and spent the whole day there.” The day after dreaming this, I called him to berate him for standing me up on his birthday. He said, “I’m sorry! I went to Athens with my sister and we didn’t get back till late.” I told him about the dream, and how weird it was that he actually had gone to Athens with his sister. He replied, “Oh my God. You’re freaking me out. Do you know where we ate lunch?? The Grill.”  

My daughter is also a psychic, perhaps stronger than me. She lacks any training but is in touch with spirits in my mom's house and at her school. She is a healer as well. Is this hereditary? Is it something we can hone and develop and really put to use? I wonder.