Caves seem to give off the most other worldly feeling when you enter them. One will almost immediately have a sense that there is “something else” with them after they enter into the darkness of the cool caverns.
I know, for myself, that a cave is one of the few places on earth I feel uneasy entering alone. Even if there are others spelunking about, I like to have someone with me whom I am personally acquainted with; someone who has my back, because I will inevitably get an eerie sense that some unidentifiable something or other is pacing itself deliberately behind me.
Spelunking: the sport meant to bring out the paranoia in all of us. It’s the next best thing to watching an Alfred Hitchcock movie or reading a Stephen King novel. Well, of course, while causing a bit of fright or paranoia, those things are only outweighed by my thinking of ever marrying again. That makes me very paranoid. But, that’s for another story on another day.
Where does that odd sense of “something else” around us (when nothing tangibly can be seen) come from? I believe I understand that sense and can answer that question. At least, indulge me as I try.
I feel my own experiences have taught me that alive and living all around us are what I refer to as “spiritual imprints”. My spelunking experience reference may have a different feel, but it is still akin to walking into a home you have never been in before and simply feeling “odd”, as if something is not quite right. Or, just the opposite can be true, when someone walks into an empty house they’ve never been in and feel “at home” or simply good.
The events that are happening to us every day are being imprinted within the area where they are happening. They contain their own energy. Very often, even the least sensitive of us will pick up those spiritual imprints as “feelings” or a “sense”. Just like the entering of a cave often creates this feeling that “something else” is around us, we will feel that way in upon entering a quiet previously unknown space or even within a noisy gathering.
Haven’t you entered a gathering, whether church or disco, and suddenly felt overwhelmed with a good or bad sense of things? Of course you have. We all have. That, too, is a sense of the overall “spirit” of things. I’ve actually started into a room or event and almost immediately turned and left from being overwhelmed that something was wrong. Just the opposite, I’ve walked by a table of people chatting or a room where I could see an event as it happened and wanted to stop and join in. There was simply a good “vibe” that made me want to meet the people or join in the event. A time or two (or more), I’ve done just that! I’ve introduced myself to strangers or joined in at an event where I was not previously meant to partake. That’s never plagued me with rejection because the very reason I wanted to join in was the “you are welcome” feeling that overtook me within observation.
Given my own sensitivity level, sometimes those spiritual imprints can be overwhelming. I’ve actually had to change hotel rooms or hotels because I could not sleep in a room where the spiritual imprints were so grotesque or disturbing that it was too disconcerting to remain. Thankfully, we are not all quite as “turned up and tuned in” as I seem to be…but, still we all have a level of that, even when we may not always identify with what it is exactly that is disturbing us.
Spiritual imprints are very different than a spiritual being that has not quite found its way out of the earthly atmosphere. A spiritual being that is confounded about where it’s bound is more often than not called a ghost or a spook. Certainly they can be a bit spooky. No doubt.
Of course, entering a home decorated with white leather and black vinyl can be spooky, too. Not because there is a haunting entity, but because I find it extremely distasteful. It was hard when I entered “Graceland” (home to Elvis Presley) to know if I was truly feeling the presence of Elvis or if my uncomfortable feeling that I needed to leave as soon as possible was simply coming from the décor. Discernment is obviously a concernment for me. Oh, the woes of a psychic decorator. Of course, we all have our burdens to bear.
Graceland definitely has a vivid set of spiritual imprints. The house is pulsating with an energy that is palpable. You don’t have to be psychic or psychotic to feel it. There are many places that have that kind of energy. Often battlefields will have a sort of lingering “feeling” about them.
In my own hometown there is a court where the famous “hanging judge”, Judge Parker, hung many an outlaw, often without much of a trial. I cannot even enter the area of the gallows without growing ice cold and quite ill. It’s not a good energy in the area in general and I’ve heard it commented on by many people who have visited and were speaking with me outside the realm of talking to me as someone psychic; simply speaking to me as fellow visitor. Judge Parker’s courthouse gives people the willies.
However, apart from the spiritual imprints in that particular place, I feel certain there are some of the actual ghosts of those who have died there and should be moving on. It’s a place that out and out gives me the creeps, while simultaneously, it makes me sad.
Yet, there are not only spooks that can be spooky and spiritual imprints that can be disconcerting, there is also in existence spiritual visitation from the “other side”. It’s all confusing and difficult to clarify. Perhaps that’s why Don McLean sang, “…and the three men I admire most, the Father, Son and the Holy Ghost; they took the last train for the coast, the day the music died.”
Well, okay. Maybe not.
Interestingly enough, all mediums are psychic, but not all psychics are mediums. If you’re not familiar with the term a “medium”; a medium is someone who can contact people who have crossed over; someone we perceive to have died. I am a reluctant medium. I don’t try to contact the other side, but the other side most definitely tends to contact me. Through that portion of my odd skill set I have learned how very different a spirit speaking to someone from the other side is than a spirit that is earth bound within its state of confusion.
The other night a friend was texting me about some events in her life. Although I consider her as one of my best friends, she met me through our previous work association and she lives in another town entirely. Ergo, while I speak with her daily, I have not visited her home and know a minimal amount about her extended family…sisters, mothers and cousins and such, as often our conversations are through text (she’s enough younger than I that texting is her main way of communicating) messages. Therefore, texts are more limited to her immediate family; her husband, child and pet menagerie or current events.
My friends are so wonderful. They accept me for who I am and love me, even while having a friend who is a bit…well…”different” can be a bit of a challenge. Oddly, they’ve come to recognize when I’m speaking psychically or simply as myself, often without a hitch. It’s as if I’m both fluent in French and English, they understand both languages, and the conversation flows without my having to explain much. They simply “know” the difference.
Within a texting session with my friend, out of the blue, she text me a picture of an older sister. I have never met the sister and was kind of surprised when she suddenly sent the picture with her sister’s name, merely texting that this was that particular sister.
Suddenly, I felt overwhelmed by the feeling that my friend’s father, who had crossed over when she was four years of age, was right beside me and he was telling me that the sister whom she had sent me the picture of looked just like him. So, I text: “She looks just like your dad.”
Again, my friends are used to this oddity within our conversations. Although she had never sent me a picture of her dad and did not speak of him often (because she was so very young when he had passed); she didn’t miss a beat. She merely text back: “Yes. She looks just like my dad and they were very close.”
Then, I text to her that I felt her dad had said that to me. She acknowledged that she had realized that something was up given what I had text. She had thought it was a message given to me, since I didn’t know the information from my own knowledge. I then text her that her dad saw her as very young. He thought of her with him tousling her hair and sitting on his lap.
What I had actually thought I had “heard” was: “Picture her with tousled hair sitting on my lap when she was very young.” I had interpreted that to mean that was how he pictured her. I thought it was a strange message. Although I had changed it a bit to be more clear, I still thought it was odd.
My friend text back to me, “Okay. I was four when he died.” I knew that was her way of saying she was thinking that was weird, too, and that it held no real meaning to her…well, for about three minutes.
Suddenly, I received a text of, “OMG!!! Carolyn, I’m going to take a picture of the picture hanging over my back from where I am sitting. You won’t believe it!!”
When she did send me the picture, I was quite shocked. There was a picture of my friend at four years old with her tousled hair sitting in her daddy’s lap. I had no knowledge of the picture or certainly that where my friend was texting me from, the picture hung right over her head.
We both had tears come to our eyes. It was so touching.
Had my friend had a ghostly encounter? No. Not at all. She had had a visit from her dad who was speaking through his spirit and using me as his “telephone”. He had simply called to say “Hello.” and to let her know he was around her and loved her.
Why did he choose that moment to do so, given that I have been in my friend’s life for five years or so? Who knows? One thing I have found to be certain is that if someone wants to speak to us from the other side, it is up to that spirit whether they do or not. It doesn’t take candle lighting or dancing by a fire (although, I’m sure that can be entertaining). It simply takes us listening.
Spirit is how we all truly communicate. It’s our highest most pure form of communication. It’s how we “recognize” others without knowing why. It’s how we are often attracted to another without knowing why. It’s how we know someone isn’t feeling well, even when we’re just standing by them in a movie line and have no knowledge of their life. It’s why we can be thinking of someone and our phone will ring and it will be that very person we were just thinking of…even if we have not heard from them in years. It’s how we feel sure we understand someone speaking an entirely different language that we do not know.
It’s how I “know what I know when it’s things I shouldn’t be able to possibly know”. It may be a crossed over loved one, your own spirit, God’s spirit, or whoever has the knowledge of what I may need to know that may help another who is speaking to me…but, it’s all spirit. Spirit is talking all of the time. We just have to learn to listen. Surprisingly for someone who is such a jibber-jabbering person…I happen to be a great listener.
How do I know the difference between a spiritual imprint, a spirit speaking with me from the other side and a ghostly spirit? The easiest explanation is that I simply “do”. The same way you know if it’s Bob or John, you’re two best friends in life talking to you or if it’s a total stranger.
For me, a spiritual imprint seems like a fragment of time that has imprinted the experience of that fragment within a closed contained area. It’s as if it’s been archived and my being able to perceive it pulls it out of its file and makes it come to life again. Spiritual impressions or imprints will sometimes tell me the story of an event or events in a building or area, but it’s isolated to that area. In other words, it’s not something I may have picked up outside that environment or that I will pick up again once I’m not in the environment.
For me, it’s much like when you are at an event that you don’t feel good in. When you get home the energy of that event dissipates and you feel better. You’ve left that energy behind. I’ve been to many a conference that I was so delighted to get out of the energy because I felt so drained from it that I couldn’t wait to get home, even if it was just to go to bed. I know you’ve had similar feelings. Often, we will even feel drained or get headaches in a space or event that is filled with bad energy. The spirit of that will pull us down.
A spirit speaking to me from the other side is totally different. It feels as if it’s in the “now”, even if on earth the entity has crossed over years and years before. It feels as if I’m merely speaking to someone that I know…even if I don’t know them, because they are revealing themselves to me through spirit. Just as I understood that my friend’s dad felt that her older sister looked just like him, for me, it’s no different than having actually had her dad standing there telling me that…uh, except I can’t actually see him and it’s sometimes hard to understand what they are saying.
How I know I’m correct or not within a message giving event is only through affirmation that someone who knew that person in life can give me by affirming what I’m getting. Just as with my friend’s dad, I may interpret it wrong, but be clear about the message. With affirmation the message can come through in completeness.
Now…I ain’t afraid of no ghost, but I must tell you that my experience with actual ghosts is very minimal. I have some different friends who have extensive experiences with contact of the ghostly kind and they feel that my own energy sort of makes actual ghosts want to leave me be. At first, I thought that fact was perhaps not good! However, it has been told to me often enough that there must be some truth to the fact that it’s more that the entities feel humbled or even shy about bothering me. This relieves me, as I hate to think I out spook the spook!!
I recently decorated the home of a doctor. His handy man, him, his wife, his housekeeper and several friends of his warned me that they had experienced ghostly encounters in his home including, but not limited to: voices, party type sounds in the living area, toilets flushing (when no one was in the bathroom), lights flashing, etc. His housekeeper (who I know personally, as well) didn’t know about the ghosts and one day I was working in another part of his home when she yelled, “What did you say?” I had not said anything and the television was not on. She swore she heard two women speaking together, even though she could not understand what they said.
I’m thinking… “Really? I sound like two women speaking at once? Oh my!!”
I believed everyone involved, but beyond sitting in a bedroom and having all the lights dim while on the phone with a friend one day, which may have been an electrical problem…I was not visited. Yet, since I believed them, I would just tell the implied ghosts that they had a choice to move on and it might be delightful to do so. The doctor said that after I finished his home he did not hear or see them for months. He still hasn’t. But, about a week ago his housekeeper said she “saw a form” cross the living room and no one was there but her. She wasn’t frightened, simply surprised.
What I feel is different between the crossed over spirits who communicate with me and those who are confused and still connected in a more physically bound way is that the ghosts seem to be literally “more physical” in their actions. They may move things, make noise, speak out loud in a way that can be heard by the physical hearing in another. That is not normally true of a crossed over person who has transitioned to the other side. While I can “hear them and see them” it is not in a physical way. It’s definitely in a way that they are using their “inside voice”…inside my head mentally. They may do some things to get my attention…using energy to flash lights, mess up my phone, talk through the phone…anything electrical is a tool for spirit, but in general there’s just not the same “heaviness” that is felt when a ghost is about.
To make it seem more complicated, a ghost that finally understands that it needs to move on and enters the other side will then be a “spirit”, but not a ghost. Go figure.
I suppose knowing the difference in spiritual imprints, spiritual visitations and ghosts is the same as my closer friends learning my dialog and eventually understanding when I’m speaking through Spirit and when I’m merely being Carolyn…after a while they just “know”. I have learned within my years of being me and having constantly been bombarded with the different ways of communication from a higher source what is what. Eventually, I’ve learned the different “languages” of spirit. It becomes natural when it’s all you’ve ever known.
I’m often asked how I know if a thought is mine or someone else’s that I’m picking up psychically. That, too, is through years of coping with what intuitiveness brings into your world and simply learning the difference. The main thing is removing one’s ego and knowing oneself better than anyone else. If I’m “hearing” something that doesn’t seem like something I would normally think myself…I know that because I know me. I have to discern the difference.
Recently, I had the spirit of a departed brother of someone I’m close to trying to convey a message. I only knew it was his brother because his brother’s spirit told me and because it was not someone I would have had any reason or need to hear from. Ergo, I felt sure it was this crossed over brother. However, the person he was trying to contact did not feel comfortable acknowledging the contact, so I couldn’t have affirmation, as I had received with the picture my friend had sent me of her dad. Just because the person I’m close to wasn’t open to hearing the message or believing it was his brother doesn’t make it less truth. I have to believe and have faith in what I “get”, even while taking my ego out and being willing to be wrong.
Oddly, how I became even more certain it was his departed brother was that, without realizing he was doing so, that person wrote me things that were equal to what was in his departed brother’s message to him through me. He didn’t realize he was repeating or saying what his brother had said because he was not open to seeing. It made me happy to know that even though the message was not wanted, it was still received.
The other difference in a spirit from the other side and those simply still connected to their physical being on earth is that, normally, the contact is made to give a message of love and peace to someone they love or who needs their guidance and the message is not self-gratifying. Ghosts seem to hang on to their needy and sometimes greedy physical sense of things. Bless their ghostly hearts.
If asked how one knows if they have psychic abilities or if they are psychotic, I answer that most of my “voices” are heard from within, they have purpose and often are smarter or more clear than I know I can humanly be. They are not evil or trying to get me to do something that is unseemly. If your “voices” are outside yourself and telling you to kill John Lennon or if they are coming through a barking dog and, again, telling you to do evil…yes, I’d go see someone who might give you some medication and extensive treatment. Either that, or change your boyfriend/girlfriend. Just sayin’.
By the way…what ARE in those caves?