GHOSTS

     Television programs brings us a subject that fascinates me…paranormal events…ghosts. 

     The show, “Medium,” was a huge success and an Emmy winner for NBC, where Allison DuBoer uncover clues to missing persons and murder suspects through dreams and visions.  This is based on true-life experiences.

     Precognition, mediums, telekinetic, and ghosts have always sparked my interest.  I read about them often.  Sylvia Brown wrote two books on the subject, that I read, and a good book by Allison DuBoer that led to the television show.

     This season brings us “Ghost Whisperer,” about spirits that talk to a woman who can actually see them and they send messages to their loved ones through her, so they can cross over.

     Because I enjoy reading about ghosts I picked up the book, “New York City Ghost Stories,” by Charles J. Adams III.  I visited a couple of places that are known ghost haunts in New York, last time I was there, but to no avail.  I didn’t see even one ghost.  I wish I had.       

     New York has 310 square miles and over seven million people living in Manhattan.  It didn’t surprise me that there had been ghostly sightings throughout the City.  With all the old skyscrapers reaching into the clouds and old renovated buildings, there was bound to be tales of the supernatural.

     There was the classic bizarre tale told by John Haynes, a trolley motorman, of the Tombstone-Toting Ghost on Staten Island, gliding through the cemetery wall carrying a tombstone on his back.  He saw him again a couple of weeks later floating through a car and out a closed window.  It scared him half to death.

     I am inclined to believe the stories, because my mother was a sensitive woman who wouldn’t go to anybody’s funeral, because the spirit of that person would visit her in the night.

     One night, mother was startled and sat up in bed.  She saw her mother, Caroline, standing at the foot of her bed at 4:00 in the morning.  She asked her mother what she was doing there so late at night, and her mother said, “I just wanted to say goodbye, and I love you.”

     Mom was half asleep and said, “Goodnight mother, I love you too,” and went back to sleep.  The next morning she received a phone call that her mother had died at 4:00 a.m. that morning; the exact time she visited my mother’s bedroom.  A spirit saying goodbye?  Perhaps!

     Another time mother was crocheting in the living room and I was reading on the couch.  Suddenly, mother jumped up, scattering her crocheting across the floor.  She said, “Freddie has been in an accident.”  Sure enough ten minutes later the phone rang and it was the police, Freddie had been in an accident and was taken to the hospital with a shattered leg.

     How could I not believe what I just saw with my own eyes?  After all, mom did know the minute Freddie was injured.  It’s weird, I know, but how else can you explain it?

     I’m sure you have had an experience where you are thinking of a friend and you pick up the phone to dial her number and she was on the line.  Coincidence?  Maybe!  Telepathy?  Who knows.

     Whether you believe in physic phenomenon or not, it makes good television and great ghost stories around a campfire.  What do you think?  Are there physics who can read the future? Are there spirits that visit us?  The unexplainable is always fascinating.  It’s something to think about.