Copyright (c) 2011 by Danny L. McMillin

In Part 1 of this two-part series, we learned about a haunted house in California, and talked through the situation with a client. In Part 2, what happened when we sat down to clear the house.

Clearing the House

To summarize, Jody had lived in her little house twice. This time she’d been bothered by increasing noises: thumping, pounding, footsteps, things dropping on the floor, all so loud that Jody had trouble sleeping. She was also seeing a ghost: a woman who appeared to be dressed like women in the ‘30s and ‘40s. The ghost had one thing on her mind: this was her house and Jody needed to get out of it. She kept saying it over and over.

Both times Jody cleared the house at my direction and asked her guides to keep the ghost out. Nothing worked for long and the situation was getting worse. When the ghost actually ran her hand down Jody’s arm, I insisted that she try clearing the house again, and that my crystal partner, Fallon, and I would do it with her.

It was now time to sit down and do some ghost busting to clear Jody’s old house in California. Fallon and I ran through the procedure together and gathered our own materials and were ready promptly at 6 p.m. We got Jody on the phone. She was ready with her salt and sage and surrounded by her crystals.

We started.

I called in everybody’s guides: hers, mine, the three Cavalier King Charles Spaniels she lives with. All the beings I work with, from my crystals and my crystal partner, Fallon, to Mount St. Helens, the dragon queen, Yellowstone, and so on. And the guides and protection for my multi-species family (my two Cavaliers and cat) and my home. Strong protection all around, which would keep us all safe and comfortable.

I then introduced myself to the house and to the ghost in the house, introduced Jody, and asked if the ghost would talk with us.

She promptly joined us.

By this time we had heard her name. Or Jody had. Her name was Martha.

When she first showed up, Martha was alarmed, insisting we were ghosts. She could also see a bright yellow light with us: that was my crystal partner, Fallon, but I didn’t mention that right then.

I was quiet and respectful.

“No, Martha, we aren’t ghosts,” I said. I told her that I was helping my friend with her house, the same house Martha insisted was hers.

“This isn’t your house any more, Martha. Would you like to discuss that with us?”

Jody was reporting what she was seeing and hearing. Martha was afraid. No kidding, hard to blame her. Ghosts were talking with her. I also felt her discomfort and confusion.

I focused on calming her down and keeping a quiet, loving presence in the work. After all, she didn’t know we were coming to talk with her. That had to be surprising.

I assured her that we were not ghosts. It also occurred to me that if she was Christian, she might be worrying about the devil. So I assured her we weren’t the devil. Or angels. Or bad guys of any kind. That we were human. Two human women, just like she was. Ordinary. Average.

She didn’t buy it.

I persisted. “We’re human. We’re just two women sitting down and having a conversation with you.”

She was quiet.

Now I was even more curious about Martha and her ghost status. Do ghosts think people are ghosts? I didn’t know, so I decided to start with the obvious.

“Martha,” I said quietly. “The date we were talking to you is July 22, 2011.”

“No it’s not,” she insisted. I know Jody had tried several times in the past months to tell her the date, and she had refused to hear it.

“Yes, Martha,” I said. “The date is July 22, 2011. I’m talking to you from Seattle, Washington. And Jody is talking to you from her house, which you say is your house, in California. You’re safe, Martha. You can talk with us.”

Both Jody and I noticed that Martha went quiet. I could feel her thinking about what we said. Or trying to think about it while dealing with astonishment.

“How can that be?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Scientists, people who study things, not even they know the answer. I just know we can talk with you. Two ordinary women living in the year 2011. Somehow we were able to jump time, so that we could go back in the past and talk with you. We’re in the future. We have much bigger cities now, and more people, but it’s still pretty much the same. Do you see that round yellow light?”

She did.

“That’s a crystal. He works with us. Maybe he’s making it possible.”

I gave her a bit to think.

“So, Martha, tell us what year it is where you are?”

I heard her say 1945. Jody heard 1947.

It was hard not to be excited about that. My goodness, we were talking to somebody in a different time period. My wild hunch was correct!

We chatted quietly. Jody and I both told her our birth dates. How we regretted that we’d never meet her in person. She relaxed enough during the conversation that she said she would have liked to meet us, to get to know us.

 I was beginning to wonder how we were talking to somebody in the past.

Why had that even occurred to me, that we might not be dealing with the traditional ghost, whatever that is? Well, that was easy. Because I don’t know better, really. I think about things and I try not to be limited by what other people think. Sometimes that gets me in trouble (okay, a lot of times). Now it turned me and my friend into time travelers.

But why? Sure, Jody’s house was the link. Then again …

Why Were We Talking with a Time Traveler? Maybe It’s The Way Station for Dead Things on the Other Side

Oh, no. I had a bad feeling about why we were talking with her.

See, my family runs The Way Station for Dead Things on the Other Side. I laugh when I say it. I’m not the person I’d think of to usher people across the whatever it is to the place where dead people live. Where they recover and do whatever they do next. But it happened a few years ago, when I started working with animals who were dying and could suddenly see the place where they were going, and animals and people waving them over.

And the day when Jody and I watched two of our friends go over there: Ralph the Deer had recently died, and Jody and I were lucky enough to be intuitively connected to Raymond the Bear as he died, talking with him and encouraging him as his friend Ralph came back to snuggle next to him and then get up and walk with him into the woods—and out into a sunlight field where my dead dad greeted them with a shout of laughter: “Only my daughter would send a bear and deer!” Really. Honest. True.

Oh, yes, I live a strange life. But now I work with my dad and with my animal friends as animals and people transition. But that’s a longer story. The point is, I can call my dad, Ray, and Raymond and Ralph to greet and care for transitioning beings. Jody can, too.

I had a feeling that this is what was happening.

“Martha,” I said gently. “How old are you?”

“Eighty-two,” she said.

In the late 1940s. She was old. And alone so far as I could tell, as I didn’t see or sense another human with her.

“Are you dying?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said softly.

Damn. I briefly struggled with my conscience. Here was an opportunity to learn something about connecting with other people across time. I could apply my analytical brain to asking a lot of questions. By asking her when the war with Germany and Japan ended, and what conditions currently were, I could learn the exact date we were talking to her in her time. I could find out why she thought we were ghosts, learn how long she’d been seeing Jody in her house (how does time run in different time periods?), what she was seeing, who she was and what she did, if other people were around. We could experiment and refine time travel. We could blow the world’s collective mind, get rich, maybe even do some good somewhere, plus tweak a few scientists.

Yes, I could pester a dying woman in her last moments. Or I could get her support as she died.

I knew she was alone. Jody thought so, too.

So I told her that we would stay with her, talking with her, while she died. I also said I was sending her help: and I asked Raymond the Bear and Ralph the Deer to go be with her.

They promptly did. Jody heard the alarm just as I realized what a stupid move that was. Send a bear to a dying woman in the wilds of California? What was I thinking? She’d be terrified of bears, especially such a huge one (Raymond was super-sized in life).

Sure enough, she panicked at seeing Raymond, and not even Ralph the Deer could help that.

Thinking quickly, I asked them to back off and assured Martha I’d send some different help while I called for my dad.

“Dad,” I said urgently. “I need to go help this woman who’s dying in California.”

Like most dads, he was already paying attention to what I was doing. “You want me to time travel?” he asked.

Why do people argue with me when I’m trying to get something done on a deadline?

“Dad, you’re a dead guy. You are time traveling.”

“Oh,” he said, like that had just occurred to him. Honestly, what do dead people do all day that it takes a living one to point out the obvious?

Then he turned, walked forward a few steps, took a few steps sideways and down, and he was suddenly standing beside Martha in the house. She saw him and relaxed. (Which raises another question there isn’t an answer to: Martha got pretty darned comfortable real fast with the situation; while Jody and I both felt she was a cook at the mines, I was wondering what else she was. Maybe regular average people like Martha and me and Jody were quicker to accept what was in front of us than most scientists.)

Jody and I told her we were sorry we couldn’t meet her in real life. Neither of us had actually been born yet in her time. By this time she was relaxing with us. Maybe dying mellows you, I don’t know. She said she wished she could meet us and get to know us.

Jody said we could meet after we were dead. We’d have plenty of time to visit then. (No harps in our futures.)

I told Martha what I was concerned about.

“There can’t be any more communication between you and us,” I told her. “Or between your time and ours. I don’t think it’s safe. We don’t know enough about it. But if you’re seeing us in your time, and we look like ghosts to you, and you look like a ghost to us, that means the connection is the house and I’m concerned for it. It’s vibrating between times. That can’t be healthy or safe. We don’t want the house collapsing on Jody, who is living there now.”

Both Jody and Martha thought that was a good idea. I wondered about that. You hear of buildings suddenly collapsing for no good reason. Maybe they were involved in a time warp something like this one. One thing’s for sure: we don’t know. And we were out Star Treking the trekkies.

I said, “We’ll stay with you until you die, Martha. Then my dad and our animal friends will walk you safely to the other side. When you’re safe, my partner, that light you see? His name is Fallon. We’re going to seal the doorway between the time periods, so there will be no further conversations between us.”

Wow, I sounded like I actually knew what I was talking about. Funny thing, it still makes sense to me. Even though none of us know anything about time traveling.

A few minutes later, Martha died and my dad and Raymond and Ralph escorted her to the other side. Jody reported that Martha was still leery of Raymond the Bear, who was trying very hard not to have hurt feelings. My dad held Martha’s arm as they walked, and Ralph walked beside her. Raymond was on my dad’s other side, walking discreetly beside them all.

I told Fallon it was time to close the doorway between time periods. I watched as two big dark doors closed together, with a thin gold light between them. Fallon then moved from the top of the light to the bottom, and the door was sealed. Jody’s amethyst crystal cluster, James, then scurried up to the door, kissed it, and rejoined us.

And our time traveling was over.

It takes a lot to make me speechless, but that experience did, for a few seconds anyway. Then I thanked all our guides for joining us and ended the session.

I noticed that we were being watched. This happens a lot when I do my work, and I suspect it happens to other people. Nobody can mind their own business. One person I worked with telepathically showed up, smiling at me, and I smiled back. Someone else, someone powerful and curious about what we’d just done, started to look closely at Jody.

“No, you don’t,” I scolded him. “You leave her alone. Don’t go near her. You deal with us,” I said. He turned and regarded me and Fallon, and then left.

Then I yelled at Jody’s guides. “What the heck is wrong with you people? When she asked you to clear the ghost in her house, or make her feel safe, you did nothing. She’s stepping into her work now, and you have to pay attention.”

Here’s hoping they do.

What We Learned from Our Ghost Adventures

Personally I’ve never been fond of ghosts, ghost stories, horror stories, any of that. I don’t like being frightened. Plus not much of the hoopla ever made sense to me. The ghosts I’ve met in real life haven’t been as scary as some of the beings I’ve met who aren’t ghosts. Including humans.

I believe that the ghost stories we hear are often stupid stories dominated by suspicious, naive minds that have accepted the crap that comes down from our cultural and religious and government institutions. Over time we allowed these institutions to deliberately inflict fear on us to collapse our minds into fear-shrouded boxes they could control. If we can break through the boxes, maybe we can help bring the world back into balance.

I think perhaps our ancestors who were more attuned to our animate universe knew better about things we can’t normally see, whether they are ghosts or something else. They weren’t as susceptible to easy control of fear. They were living ‘outside the box.’ Maybe.

Clearly ghosts are real. But we’ve decided what they are without asking them. Sometimes they are dead people or other beings with agendas. Sometimes, as in the case of Martha, it’s obviously something else.

The difference in this case was that I did the ‘think outside the box’ bit. My habit is to be analytical and skeptical but open to possibilities. With a clear-minded approach, we can be open to the ‘What if’s’ that allow us to explore and discover new things, or re-discover old ones that we’ve lost touch with. Like what ghosts really are, and how we can learn about the mysteries of the universe simply by being open to the experience.

I’ll never know why we were able to connect with Martha. I know that houses are strongly connected to us, and that two women dearly love the little house that each insisted was theirs. Jody is digging into archives to see if we can find out something about the real Martha. All we really know is that, at the end of her life, she had a conversation with two women in the future, and because of that she died surrounded by new friends and was safely escorted to whatever it is beyond death, starting with my family’s Way Station for Dead Things on the Other Side. In the last few minutes of her life Martha let go of fear, became friends with two women in the future, and let kindness help her.

One part of me will always regret losing the opportunity to learn more about time traveling, even while I’ll always know that setting it aside to bring assistance to a dying woman was the best and most compassionate choice. There will be other opportunities. Better be.

What I do know is that preconceptions keep us from experiencing the world and the universe as it really is. We are afraid of ghosts, or we hunt them for TV shows. Certainly I’ve talked with shamans who build bridges of light to help souls move on. But there’s clearly more to death and dying that what we think of as ghosts.

How long was Martha seeing Jody in her house? We’ll never know. It could have been only a few hours in her last day of life, even though Jody was aware of her for over a year. Martha could have been actively trying to get rid of her, and maybe we saved Jody’s sanity, and possibly her life, by intervening.

Which makes me worry about ghosts. When we go out and ‘bust’ them, are we hurting a living person in a different time period? I hope not.

I know that my crystal partner, Fallon, played as big a role in this adventure as Jody and I did, as my dad and my animal friends did.

Did the House Get Clear?

After Martha left and the doorway between times was sealed, Jody went off to do the clearing of the house. She spread sea salt in all the rooms and outside, set out bowls of salt water to absorb residual vibrations, smudged the house and yard and herself and her dogs. I finished the clearing of my house and family as well. I also told Jody to take a bath in salt water and rest for the night. No TV. She objected to that (and mostly ignored me, it turns out), and I said, really, we’ve just done something scientists and adventurers dream about. And we don’t know the consequences. So rest up and make sure you’re healthy.

Yes, the house is clear. It immediately felt better, and the next day Jody sounded lighter and happier than she had in months. It has remained clear. Martha has not been back.

Jody and her house and her family are off on new adventures. Which is as it should be. I know Martha is, although I haven’t asked my dad about her. It just doesn’t seem necessary. My job is done.

I’m still wondering, though: what’s next for me and Fallon? I can hardly wait to talk to another time traveler. Well, okay, one besides me. And Jody. And Fallon.

But one thing I do know: it will be an adventure. We’re up for it.

© 2011 Robyn M Fritz