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13 years ago
I’m a fairly avid viewer of all shows about the paranormal on the TV, although am getting a bit jaded about “Ghost Adventures” show.( “If this is the Portal Of Hell why don’t you come up and GET US” has always made me squirm)…I believe in ghosts, certainly. Have never seen one, that I’m aware of , but I certainly have HEARD a few.
Coming from England to America years go I stayed in the Worcester, Mass house of my new husbands family. Sleeping in a small room off the kitchen in that house, I was woken up one night by loud banging on the back door very near the room I was in. I got up and went to the door, thinking that someone out on the main road had had an accident and needed help. No-one was at the door.In the morning I mentioned the loud banging to my husbands old Swedish grandmother who was staying at the house. She said, matter-of-factly “Oh, Ja, that would have been old Kirsten (actual name not remembered) ..she came to tell me Goodbye…they always do” One more time I heard the night time knocking on the door. Old Grandma Hannah Holstrom said the next morning “Vell, I guess I won’t be seeing HER this side of the Pearly Gates”…very sweet old lady she was. And a certain candidate for invite into the Pearly Gates..if Thats what she wanted…
Another time in Mount Kisco, N.Y. I took an afternoon bath at my friends house (while my bathroom was being renovated). The house was empty. Big stone mansion that house was. Luxuriating in the suds I heard loud footfalls stomping up the stairs outside the bathroom. Slow, measured clomping like big boots. I grabbed some towels round me , opened the door a crack and peered through the door. There was no-one on the stairs outside. The footsteps sounded all the way along the corridor outside and stopped at the end of the passage where my friend had a small sewing room. I don’t really understand the mechanics of something without muscles rapping on walls, slamming doors or walking along a corridor in heavy work shoes but it does and they do. So……..
I believe we encounter these phenomenon as we become more aware of the possibilities. Consider Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle and the observor effect in physics. We interact with reality as we put our attention to it…
I don’t know if that’s true, Dawn,because very few of us, I imagine, go through life on the lookout for ghostly happenings…my experience is that they simply arrive out of the blue while we are making shopping lists, reading a book, putting a baby to bed or involved in other mundane everyday activities. I haven’t read Heisenbergs Uncertainty Principle …I’ll have to look into that. I WAS brought up aware of the curious and inexplicable ..my mothers library reading material was of photographs of pencils writing on walls unaided by human hands , photos of amorphous humanlike shapes in ectoplasm and all that stuff. The paranormal was bread and butter to my Mum. You might say I was weaned on it. And I’m certainly not geared to ghostly happenings. I’m a firm believer in the existance of…and don’t want them making their presence known..
I made a common mistake when referring to Heisenburg Uncertainty Principle; what I meant to bring up was instead the Observor Effect – here is a brief definition from Wikipedia:
In science, the term observer effect means that the act of observing will influence the phenomenon being observed. For example, for us to “see” an electron, a photon must first interact with it, and this interaction will change the path of that electron.
As far as experiencing the paranormal unbidden, say while writing that grocery list… I think once somone’s mind has been opened they will interact with reality differently – their subconscious will always be operating on that basis. My Mum was also aware of the ‘unseen world’ and I was told many times my grandmother was a seventh daughter of a seventh daughter and a finder of lost things. The mother of my best friend in jr high had a library like your Mum’s and I just loved to visit there…but some books I was too scared to even look at!