The Ghost Photographer

by Julie Rieger

  I sit down, close my eyes, and get grounded. Almost immediately, I see a train set, but not an ordinary one. “I see a sleek-ass train set,” I say out loud. “In fact, I see multiple train sets.”

  I open my eyes again and Joe is staring at me with his mouth open. “We had, like, four or five train sets when I was a kid.”

  “Okay, well, your mother is letting you know that this is her; she’s here.” Joe’s mother also “tells” me that Joe is carrying around too much emotional baggage that’s weighing him down and holding him back in life. The messages and images are now really clear: “Your mom is opening up a trunk of some sort,” I tell him. “She wants you to see this trunk and put all of your stuff in it. You don’t have to say it out loud. Quietly put the stuff you’re carrying around in it, because she’s going to take it away from you.”

  Joe is just sitting there, crying. Meanwhile, I’m so honored to be part of their mother-son reunion. I didn’t have kids myself and have lived most of my life not having to be concerned with other people.

  More important, I realize in that moment with Joe that Roxane was right: You really do have to heal yourself first in order to heal others. I’d go so far as to say that it’s a law of nature. Consider the great crystal kingdom: Quartz crystals are actually self-healing. When they break, they grow hundreds and sometimes thousands of tiny triangular crystal points over the broken area. Eventually this broken area is sealed up with new crystal growth, and the crystal becomes a stronger version of its original self. Is that not a metaphor for life?

  I’d spent almost five years working through grief after my mother passed and grew in the most surprising ways, despite being broken. In some ways, I grew precisely because I was broken. And eventually, I became a self-healed crystal myself. I’m sure that Joe is now a self-healed crystal, too, whether he realizes it or not.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The Invisible Ecosystem

  I’ve written about superheroes. I’ve written about talking ferrets and math geniuses being chased by madmen. I’ve written about spies and demon-hunting soccer moms. I’ve created an entire world that centers around a paranormal judicial system.

  —JULIE KENNER

  If we reconstructed human spirituality painstakingly, we would end up with a magnificent tree whose branches go in so many directions, yet all trying to touch the heavens.

  —HENRYK SKOLIMOWSKI

  This world spins from the same unseen forces that twist our hearts.

  —DAVID MITCHELL, CLOUD ATLAS

  Images evoke emotions the way words used to do. That’s why everyone loves Instagram so much. Spirits understand this, which is why they often come to us in images and symbols. I’m convinced that’s also why they presented themselves to me in the form of ghost photography.

  After meeting Jacob and continuing my studies with my spiritual wolf pack, I learn that there’s a sort of invisible ecosystem out there. It’s not like the ecosystem here in the physical world; spirits aren’t eating others to survive or fucking up the wonderful interconnected universe the way we humans tend to do.

  Let me explain by way of an example: In the movie City of Angels, one of Brenda’s favorite movies, the world is populated by angels who hover around human beings, often in times of distress. Invisible angels provide solace to people everywhere: in libraries and hospitals, in traffic jams and grocery stores. They can hear the constant mental chatter that goes on in the minds of human beings and even choose to become mortal to experience human feelings like love—but they pay a big price for that: They lose their connection to the angelic realm. And the human realm, as we all know too well, is messy and complicated.

  That sets the stage of our “star” angel named Seth (Nicolas Cage) and a sexy surgeon named Maggie (Meg Ryan) who fall in love when Maggie “sees” Seth while she tries to save the life of a heart attack victim on an operating table—in vain. When Seth finally makes his presence known to the incredulous Maggie, the following conversation ensues:

  Maggie (about the guy who died): He should have lived.

  Seth: He is living, just not the way you think.

  Maggie: I don’t believe in that.

  Seth: Some things are true whether you believe them or not.

  Some things are true whether you believe them or not. Maybe I should have that printed on my V-neck T-shirt instead of Julie the Evil-Ghost Slayer. That’s what Brenda suggested the first time I was grappling with the ghosts showing up in my photos. “I use the example of City of Angels all the time,” she said, “because it so beautifully illustrates how spooks are everywhere, which is why it’s not a big deal to capture one on film. I’ve been doing it my whole life.”

  So if we all had eyes to see, what might we see? Well, keeping it simple here, we’d “see” something like an ecosystem. Based on tons of esoteric literature that’s been written over the millennia (and continues to be written to this day), here is my take on it.

  For the sake of presentation, let’s just say that at the top of our ecosystem we find what we call God or Jesus Christ, if you choose to believe. It’s where we find the Cosmic Muffin, the Holy Ghost, or Universal Energy. Some cultures use the term Atman, the Spiritual Life Principle of the Universe, the Almighty, Divinity, Yahweh, Supreme Being, Providence, Godhead, the Maker, oh God, oh Lord. I think we can all agree that whatever it is, it deserves a capital letter.

  Next on the rung we find archangels like Saint Michael or Saint Uriel. Archangels are like taskmasters vested with the responsibility of dealing with certain shit on earth that we can’t get together. Saint Michael is referenced in the Old Testament. When a Jewish friend of mine suggested that Saint Michael would only appear to Catholics, I reminded her that he appears in Judaism, Islam, and Christianity; he also appears in Anglican, Lutheran, and Eastern Orthodox traditions. Basically, Saint Michael is a pretty neutral dude who defends the Supreme Being Out There (hallowed and whoever be thy name) and assists souls at the hour of death. He’s also a sort of chief lieutenant charged with keeping dark forces like Satan at bay. You want him on your side. Call Saint Michael and he shall come.

  By the way, according to biblical literature, there are seven archangels that correspond to the seven days of the week. This is extremely convenient for the French and other Europeans who always manage to find a saint whose day falls on a Friday so they can have a three-day weekend. Even better is the saint whose day falls on a Thursday. If America is such a Christian country, I often wonder, why don’t we have more days off?

  If there’s anyone who might be considered the first “angel expert,” it would have to be nineteenth-century philosopher and esotericist Rudolph Steiner. In The World of Angels in Man’s Astral Body, Steiner describes angels as “spiritual beings” that work together “with wisdom and set purpose in everything that takes place without our being conscious of it in our bodily sheaths.” They’ve been working on our behalf since ancient Egyptian times and are still hovering around us as we go about our daily lives in our dumb “bodily sheaths.”

  It’s interesting to note that according to Steiner, we humans in our bodily sheaths can only perceive information from angels when we’ve become clairvoyant. “Conviction of what they are doing can come to us only when we have achieved a certain degree of clairvoyance and are able to perceive what is actually going on in our astral body,” he writes. “The Angels form pictures in man’s astral body and these pictures are accessible to thinking that has become clairvoyant.”

  Moving on in our ecosystem, we have our friendly—or not-so-friendly, depending on the circumstance—ghosts. These spirits were once human beings who stick around the astral plane for any number of reasons. They might be stuck in a bardo, an intermediary place between death and rebirth where ghosts linger sometimes in perpetuity (which is not to be confused with purgatory).

  Our pets are also included in this ecosystem. They bring us the purest form of unconditional love and emotional support and never bug us to go to the mall or buy them the la
test iPhone. But what would you say if I told you that in addition to your cat or dog, the animal world is also present with you in spirit form? Or that it was time to get in touch with your inner giraffe?

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Is That a Hawk on Your Head, or Are You Just Having a Bad-Hair Day?

  How it is that animals understand things I do not know, but it is certain that they do understand. Perhaps there is a language which is not made of words and everything in the world understands it. Perhaps there is a soul hidden in everything and it can always speak, without even making a sound, to another soul.

  —FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT

  Maybe it’s animalness that will make the world right again: the wisdom of elephants, the enthusiasm of canines, the grace of snakes, the mildness of anteaters. Perhaps being human needs some diluting.

  —CAROL EMSHWILLER

  I’ve never met an animal I didn’t like, and I can’t say the same thing about people.

  —DORIS DAY

  I love all furry animals (okay, maybe not hairy spiders) and am glad we’ve finally come around to acknowledging the value of their emotional support, but here’s the thing: Animals have been worshipped and idolized forever. It doesn’t take much historical sleuthing to find animals revered by everyone from ancient Egyptians and Greeks all the way to present day—and I’m talking about everything from beetles, bats, birds, and baboons to cows, cats, camels, and crocodiles. There’s also our Western zodiac with its ram, bull, crab, lion, scorpion, goat, and fish; and there’s the Chinese zodiac with its rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, snake, horse, sheep, monkey, rooster, dog, and pig. Native Americans worship bears, whales, and hawks, among other animals. We also associate animals with our football teams and state flags, and incorporate their attributes into our language and habits. Some of us swim like fish, fuck like rabbits (the only time “fuck” has been used as a proper verb in this book), walk at a snail’s pace, and are as strong as an ox—not necessarily in that order.

  It’s a veritable psychic petting zoo out there, so is it really a surprise that spirit animals are as prevalent as guardian angels or spirit guides? That’s a rhetorical question, by the way, and I’m going to answer it first by way of another dear friend, Sari Baumann.

  I met Sari a few years back when she worked as an ad sales executive for E!. We met under circumstances that were not unlike when I met Alex Van Camp. Apparently I have a reputation for being too tough in meetings. I can have a rough exterior that only a few special ones can break through. I could be nicer, I guess, but my inability to suffer fools overpowers any pleasantries I could possibly muster when every sales executive from every media outlet on earth comes knocking at my door.

  Sari is one such exec. Our first encounter goes something like this:

  A PowerPoint slide comes up on the large screen in the conference room where we’re gathered. This particular slide has a rather lofty claim stating that the cable network with whom she is employed reaches an egregiously large percentage of the US population. I think the number is upward of 70 percent.

  “I find this hard to believe,” I say during her presentation. “In fact, there’s no way in hell it can be true. Looks like creative math to me.”

  Sari takes a long pause, looks straight at me, then responds with this little gem: “Huh. I hear we’ve been in this position with you before, so before I defend a statement that was devised by someone other than me [their marketing department], let’s just say that you’re right unless I can personally prove you wrong.”

  I can’t begin to tell you the utter joy I feel when someone shuts me down. I immediately respect her will, guts, and fearless pregnant pause. I want to be her friend.

  And so it is. We quickly become friends, and not your ordinary, run-of-the-mill, hang-out-every-once-in-a-while friends. We become very close. Finding out that she’s a millennial lesbian is an added bonus, because meeting a sister lesbian in the corporate world is like finding a twin you lost at birth. It doesn’t take long before I tell her about my ghost photography. (Only much later does she tell me that she thought ghost crap was hocus-pocus until we met.)

  Our bond is anchored in wicked humor, arts and crafts, and various oddities. Our dads have the same birth date, we both manipulated our way out of college foreign language by saying we had a learning disability, and I’m pretty sure she wet the bed until she was twelve, too. I think that qualifies for a check mark in the bonding column, yes?

  So our story begins on our first Christmas season as friends. We decide to have dinner together at an Asian fusion restaurant in LA called Rock Sugar. Imagine a huge airy place with high ceilings, giant gold Buddhas, and more of those annoyingly beautiful waiters and waitresses. In any case, this isn’t exactly the first place you think of to celebrate Christmas, but you give and take in any relationship. Sari lets me call it our “Christmas exchange,” even though she’s Jewish. And I agree to eat Asian-fusion food because that’s apparently a very Jewish thing to do at Christmas (at least in Los Angeles and New York).

  We’re excited to exchange Christmas presents, which we’ve made by hand for each other. Sari is quite gifted at stringing together the perfect beads with the perfect charms for bracelets. She also has an exquisite talent for making Shrinky Dinks—custom-made Shrinky Dinks, by the way, no tracing. They’re impressive, I must say. My crafts come in the form of pottery, metal sculpting, and jewelry making.

  We barely sit down for five seconds when I place two gift bags on the table and say, “Go head, open.”

  “Hold on, killer. You gotta give me a minute or two to acclimate to our new surroundings,” Sari says with her trademark sarcasm.

  “Okay, fine, you smartass.”

  I proceed to order for the both of us, which means that I order enough for a family of seven. The dishes keep on coming, from pot stickers to Indian flatbread to green curry to Princess Chicken. (Princess Chicken is code for terribly overpriced but delicious fried chicken swimming in sugar syrup. You can get the same thing at KFC: chicken strips with a packet of honey. That little tidbit just saved you eighteen dollars.)

  Finally we exchange gifts. Bracelets, pendants, pottery, and Shrinky Dinks cover the table, which radiates a certain indescribable warmth. When you make something for someone, they can feel you in that object. The creator leaves their imprint. To me this is the highest form of generosity.

  After surveying our handiwork and gathering the tissue paper scattered on the table, I look up at Sari and feel my left eye squinting. And there I see, perched on Sari’s head, a spectral-looking hawk. “Sar,” I say. “Don’t be alarmed, but I see a hawk on your head.”

  “Get it off me; I hate birds,” Sari replies, shaking her head. She’s used to the crazy paranormal-spiritual shit that flies out of my mouth on a daily basis, so she isn’t surprised by my comment. She’s also the only person I know who got attacked by a nonpredatory winged creature at a bird store.

  I continue to watch the hawk flap its wings right over her head, a little awestruck. “I can’t get it off of you,” I say. “I think it’s your spirit animal.”

  “I don’t want a hawk to be my spirit animal,” she replies matter-of-factly. “Can’t I have something cute and fuzzy? Or a bear? I want a bear.”

  “Um, not only do I not understand what’s happening right now, I’m pretty sure this isn’t Total Request Live. I know a little somethin’ about spirit animals, but this shit is bananas.”

  “A monkey. I want to be a monkey. Come on, a hawk, really?” Sari replies.

  “Oh for God’s sake, let’s look it up and see what the Internet machine says about having a hawk as a spirit animal. You’re driving me batshit.”

  “How about a bat? Oh wait, I think I’d rather be a hawk. Okay fine. Look it up,” Sari finally insists.

  I reach into my handbag for my trusty iPhone, wondering if maybe the Princess Chicken is giving me hallucinations. But the hawk is still on her head when I look back at her, wings slowly flapping.

 
I search online and find a brilliant site called whats-your-sign.com that has an entire lexicon of spirit animals and their significance. In a video on the Internet, founder Avia Venefica describes animal totems or spirit animals as “a representation of an animal, energetically speaking. They’re an affinity, an affiliation, or a connection to an animal.” Each person has a different animal that, “because of its behaviors, its environment, its proclivities, its attributes,” relates and reflects our inner psyche in profound ways. “Animals are of a wild, pure consciousness,” says Venefica.

  Presumably, if you want to experience certain qualities in your life, you can focus on a particular animal energy: an elephant for patience and wisdom, for example, or a lion for strength.

  Here’s a taste of what Venefica’s site has to say about the hawk, which I share with Sari at the table:

  If the hawk is your totem, you are extremely perceptive. You see things others miss. Your vision goes beyond the physical too—you have a knack for seeing into the souls of people you deal with. You might call it a gift of intuition. You just have a sense, or an “aerial view” into what is going on in the hearts of people.

  It goes on to say that hawk people are honest, loyal, direct, and protective; they’re also visionaries and problem solvers who can see the big picture.

  We both stare at each other, a bit stunned. “That sounds just like me,” Sari finally says.