by Daria Kacie
“Of course I do!” laughed Lizzy as she took the opportunity to lighten the mood. “I’m kidding Karen. You know, I know, you’re not crazy! The thing is, you’ve never said anything about this. Have you been holding out on me?”
“I never had an issue until yesterday,” Karen answered.
“Yesterday? What happened yesterday and why didn’t you say something last night?”
“It was a long story I didn’t want to go into last night. I thought I was imagining things.”
“So, you’ve been living here for a couple of years, and then all of a sudden you’re having paranormal activity in your house?”
“Yes,” said Karen. She got up from the couch and moved toward the kitchen as Lizzy followed.
“Has something recently changed? Do you feel threatened?” pushed Lizzy. She felt a little frightened and intrigued.
Karen shrugged her shoulders again as she closed cupboards and pushed drawers back into place. Softly she said, “I don’t know what to think. Yesterday, I was alone in the house and I heard knocking. I thought someone was at the door. When I got to the door there was no one there. I was back in the laundry room folding clothes and then four loud knocks sounded like they were right behind me. They sounded like they were coming from inside the room. Then after I dropped the kids off and came home, all the faucets were running full blast. I tried to blow it off like the kids left the water on, but my gut told me that wasn’t the case. It all scared the shit out of me! That was one of the reasons I came over to your house.”
Lizzy had always been sensitive and had never once felt any weird energy at Karen’s house. Lizzy’s sensitivity to energy and people had heightened as a teenager. She would often get scared because the anxiety would build insider her to a fevered pitch until she wanted to scream. She could feel something was wrong but never knew exactly what. How is that helpful? she had asked God a hundred times. Karen knew that Lizzy had some kind psychic and precognitive abilities. She had known her long enough to see outcomes of many of Lizzy’s predictions come true. It never bothered her, but she knew there were times that it did bother Lizzy.
“Do you feel anything?” asked Karen.
“I don’t. I’m sorry. I’m not sure what to say. I can say for sure that you’re not crazy, but beyond that, I got nothing!”
“I would appreciate you staying here tonight Lizzy,” said Karen as she began hanging the pictures back on the wall.
“Well, it’s not a problem, but you know this is how all scary movies start, right?” Lizzy said with a smirk.
“Oh shut up Lizzy!”
“No, I’m serious; it’s how all scary movies start. Two women innocently brush off some ghostly encounter as a case of the house settling or kids playing tricks and then there is Jason all hockey masked up in the closet waiting to squish our heads or something.”
“Lizzy, seriously, shut up!” Karen was obviously not amused.
Lizzy’s tone changed quickly to serious, “Karen really, what do you think is going on?”
“I don’t know Lizzy. You’re the damn psychic, you tell me!”
“You know that isn’t my thing. I mean I do feel things sometimes but I don’t usually get information like that.”
“How do you know if you’ve never tried?” Karen countered.
“I have tried! My God, you think I haven’t tried? I’ve tried my whole life to make sense of the feelings or intuition I get. It’s not that easy.” Lizzy felt her own exasperation from years of attempting to interpret her ‘feeling’ data. You know I’ve studied and worked toward having more control over it. I wish the information was consistently clear for me but it isn’t. Sometimes I’ll get something loud and clear and sometimes it’s like walking through mud; really stressful, annoying mud!”
“I’m sorry Lizzy. This isn’t on you. I’m just freaking out and want some answers. Something or someone invaded my home!”
“I’ll stay tonight and we’ll see if anything occurs and go from there.”
Karen had to admit she felt none of the tension from the day before. They ordered pizza and watched Bridget Jones Diary for at least the 10th time.
“I’m sleeping in your room tonight. You know that right?” asked Lizzy.
“Duh,” Karen said with a smile.
Thankfully, Lizzy and the comic relief made her feel relaxed and normal again. Later, the two friends were finding it hard to drift off to sleep. They were both squirmed around attempting to get comfortable. They must have asked each other “What’s that?” ten times. The neighbor’s dog, Rudy, started barking. Both girls looked at each other in the darkened room wondering if it was animal instinct sensing some spirit wondering around or just a stray cat garnering Rudy’s attention. Karen’s neighbors called Rudy into the house and everything went silent. Karen and Lizzy held their breath for a moment, anxiously waiting to see if something scary would happen. When nothing out of the ordinary presented itself, they both finally drifted off to sleep.
They rolled out of bed at 6:00 a.m.
“Oddly, I slept really well,” said Lizzy feeling refreshed and ready for coffee.
“Me too,” said Karen.
Lizzy needed to get home. Karen’s children would be home by 3:00 p.m. Lizzy was glad Karen wouldn’t have to spend the night alone. Lizzy helped Karen clean up the destruction in the kitchen and hang the pictures in the living room.
“I’m out!” announced Lizzy. “Will you be ok until the kids get home?”
“Yes,” said Karen. “I don’t feel any of the tension I felt on Friday. Isn’t that strange?”
“No, it’s good,” Lizzy said in relief.
Driving home, she did wonder why she hadn’t noticed anything at Karen’s house. She had psychic experiences her whole life, but they were impressions, words and sometimes pictures or feelings. There was a time when she was confused by her abilities and tried to push them away. In the end, that wasn’t possible. She found out over the years that several family members had abilities as well. This made her feel more comfortable with what several psychics had told her were her gifts form God. She had always envied Mediums, but she certainly did not see dead people. Feeling a little envious of those who could, she wondered if someone with those gifts would have known what was going on at Karen’s house.
Chapter 3
Karen’s situation had rattled Lizzy’s memory bank. Lizzy had been exposed to the paranormal at a young age. She could remember her first exposure like it was yesterday. Three little girls, two five and one six years old, sitting in a circle holding their Barbie dolls in their laps. Sheila, the oldest of the three leaned forward and whispered to her “and all the cabinet doors and windows in the house were opening and slamming closed! My mom said, ‘That’s it! We gotta get outta here!’ and we did! We went to Aunt Paula’s house that night. Mom packed the next day and we moved.” Shelby was nodding in agreement clutching her doll to her chest.
“What was it?” Lizzy asked.
Sheila shrugged, “I don’t know. Mom said it was a ghost.”
“Like Casper?” Lizzy was now curious.
Sheila tried to explain the best she could. “It’s when someone dies and then they come back but you can’t always see them, but they are there. I’ll tell you what though, they can be pretty noisy and scary!”
In some way, Lizzy knew what she meant and didn’t like how she felt. She had not experienced death first hand. She was transfixed with Sheila’s story.
“And that’s not all,” Shelby nudged Sheila in the side with her elbow. “Tell her about the rest.”
“Well, my mom got really freaked out the other day and said she heard loud breathing in her closet. She thought it was one of us in there hiding and kept telling us to come out. We heard her calling our names so we went into the room to see what she wanted. When she saw us standing there, she started acting upset and yelled at us to leave the room. When she finally opened the closet door, no one was in there!” Sheila took a quick look around as though
someone might be listening before she continued. “I heard her tell Aunt Paula that she found out a man had hung himself in there!”
Lizzy’s breathing got shallow as her heart raced. She wasn’t sure she knew what it meant, but didn’t want to appear stupid in front of Sheila and Shelby. She messed around with the dress on her Barbie and finally got the courage to speak.
“So, there is a dead man in your mom’s closet?” She felt prickly as goose bumps slid up her arms.
“You can’t see him, but she hears him in there sometimes,” Shelby added.
“I don’t like that!” Lizzy said loudly.
“Shhhhhh! We’re not supposed to tell!” Sheila shot Lizzy a dirty look and Lizzy knew to shut up. She didn’t want her new friends to be mad at her.
“I never want to go in your mom’s room!” Lizzy whispered.
“We won’t.”
That was that. The girls never went into that room, but Lizzy never forgot.
Lizzy was sure that it was that first brush with the paranormal that drove her curiosity about other dimensions, spirits and the supernatural. All her life she was drawn to stories and movies that investigated the unseen worlds she believed existed. She spent many a school night in bed with a flashlight and a book. She read Amityville Horror in 8th grade and couldn’t sleep with the lights off for a month. After that, she tapered off on reading stories that scared her. She realized things had a heavy impact on her and that she was too sensitive to expose herself to much of the horror genre. She was drawn to it all the same. She couldn't get enough of ghosts, big foot, angels and hauntings. If it had a supernatural twist, Lizzy wanted to know about it. Now, here she was, smack in the middle of something she had only read and heard about.
After arriving home, Lizzy grabbed her laptop and began some in-depth research. Apparently, it was quite normal for activity to come and go. Sometimes ghosts would lie dormant for 50-100 years. Sometimes a trigger, like remodeling, would cause a spirit to become active. There were stories where a type of person or family would be the trigger. Still, Karen’s house was relatively new and Karen had lived in the house for two years with no occurrences. Why would Karen suddenly start having problems now? she wondered. She found a listing for a Paranormal Investigator who lived in the next town just a few miles away. Lizzy felt her heart begin to pound hard as she picked up the phone to call the number. Suddenly she felt silly and almost hung up, but the phone was picked up on the first ring.
The Ghost Busting Business must be slow, Lizzy chuckled to herself.
“Paranormal Investigators, this is Jeremy,” the voice said on the other end of the line.
“Yes, Hello…,” the words came stammering nervously out of her mouth, “I was wondering if you can tell me a little more about your group, or services, or just what it is you do.”
“Essentially we attempt prove scientifically whether a location has unexplained or paranormal activity. We actually attempt to debunk any claims of a haunting. That’s it in a nutshell.”
“What if you can’t debunk it?”
“Well, then we discuss with the home or business owners what we find. It seems to help people either way. If we are able to find an explanation for the ‘spooky’ things they are experiencing it often gives them relief. If we find there is activity that we can’t explain it helps the client feel validated. Often times people feel they are crazy, so validating their experiences makes them feel better.”
That makes sense, thought Lizzy since she saw Karen going through that exactly. “If someone has activity do you help them find a way to stop it or get it out of their house?” asked Lizzy.
“No,” Jeremy said quickly.
“How is that helpful?” Lizzy was disappointed.
“We are scientists, not spiritualists. We attempt to stay neutral. If they want a clearing or a blessing we recommend they call their local Minister, Priest or Shaman.”
“Do you ever use psychics?”
“Not really,” said Jeremy. “We have had requests and a few people claiming to be psychic have accompanied our team, but we don’t collaborate with them.”
“I’m surprised by that!” said Lizzy. “It seems like you would kind of want to have a one stop shop for something like this. It’s already difficult, I imagine, for someone to call you and then to find there is no real solution to their problem must cause some frustration.”
“We stay neutral,” Jeremy explained. “We have no desire to get mixed up in the ‘religion’ of anything. We have a couple of Ministers willing to do blessings for people but they prefer to only do such things for their congregational members. Are you having an issue?”
“A friend of mine just had a couple of very strange incidents happen in her home and I’m trying to help her out if I can.”
Jeremy laughed and said, “So it’s for a ‘friend’?”
“Yes, it really is for a friend! I feel quite certain she is having a supernatural experience and if you don’t have the solution to remove or clear out the problem, then I don’t think you can help me,” Lizzy could not hide her frustration or disappointment.
“Look,” said Jeremy sensing Lizzy’s annoyance. “We can’t be all things to all people. The spirit realm is complex. Most people don’t want to get into the thick of any religious or spiritual conflicts.”
“Well that doesn’t make sense to me. The whole thing is a ‘spiritual issue’ and not to address that head on seems ridiculous!”
“I’m sorry you see it that way Miss,” said Jeremy. “Our goal is scientific. If you want to gather psychics and do cleansings and blessings maybe you should start your own group!”
“Well maybe I will!” and Lizzy hung up abruptly.
Lizzy pondered her conversation with Jeremy. She felt like she had been left dangling and if she felt that way, others probably did too. When Lizzy had an issue, she was tenacious about finding resolution. She felt even more determined to figure something out since it was for Karen. It wasn’t as if she had never contemplated these kinds of issues. Years of Bible study as a teenager came rushing back. There was a lot of talk about battling darkness from the Pentecostal church she had attended. Lizzy felt a knot forming in the pit of her stomach. She remembered some of the reasons she had pulled away from her church, all churches actually. The dogma and the hypocrisy had finally become too much for her to swallow. Like a little black and white video in her head, she could see the Minister emphatically warning his parishioners of the Devil’s sneaky ways to ruin good Christian’s lives. The Devil may well be doing so but the constant focus on it drove Lizzy further away.
Memories came flooding back of a time period that was quite painful for Lizzy. She had pulled away years ago because the focus on the Devil became so prevalent that it began interfering with her desire to focus on what she believed to be the light of God. It was the pulling away from participating in church that was painful. Lizzy had been so conflicted about the dogma that she didn’t agree with, that she had made herself sick. She wanted answers for things that the Ministers could not seem to answer. Their answers, when backed into a corner would be, “just stay away from ‘that’, it’s of the Devil.” The ‘that’ could be anything from a question about ghosts to why people on an island, who never heard of Christianity, were apparently going to hell. She simply could not participate further. She lost some good friends at the time. It seemed she was thinking and protecting herself from the Devil more than she was focusing on the Light and her faith in God. She had been indoctrinated for many years. She did believe there was a battle of good and evil, but preferred to focus on the positive rather than the darkness. She wasn’t sure if this was some kind of battle, but the weight of the past began to rear its head.
Being clinical and scientific like Jeremy’s group was not enough. Acknowledging that there was something unexplained did not fix the issue if there was a haunting or an attack. Many religious factions simply played paranormal activity off as Satan. Is it ALL Satanic activity? Lizzy had wondered about
this as a teenager and wondered the same thing now. It seemed that many Christians, and those in the churches she had attended, subscribed to a practice of labeling anything that was paranormal or supernatural as the Occult and Satanic. She couldn’t swallow that. She had many questions though, and her main concern was that Karen and the kids were safe.
Lizzy bounced around the internet and found some local psychics who claimed to have experience with hauntings, but there were not a lot of resources for blessing homes. Most websites said it was best if the homeowner did the deed. A few sites simply talked about general reluctance of most Ministers to get involved. Really? Lizzy thought. What is this, a mugging in New York City and no one wants to get involved?
Lizzy spontaneously hopped into her car and drove to a little church down the road from her house. She wanted to get some answers. A small white house had been converted into a neighborhood church. A sign on the door boldly stated “Christ’s Chapel, Non-Denominational, All Are Welcomed.” Lizzy heard a cynical voice pipe up in her head yeah, yeah, yeah.
She entered the foyer of the Church and an elderly man approached her. “Welcome,” he said and reached out to shake Lizzy’s hand.
“Are you the Pastor?” Lizzy asked.
“I am. You can call me Pastor Michael.”
Nice. Lizzy thought, Surely a Pastor named after an archangel will have some answers. “I am not a member of your church but I have a question for you.”
“Shoot,” Pastor Michael said with a smile as he waved her to a sitting area in the foyer.
“My friend is having a, well a ghostly or paranormal experience at her home. I wanted to know if you might be able to do a blessing for her.”
Pastor Michael’s smile faded quickly. “We do blessings for our members only when requested. We don’t believe in ghosts. We believe that demons may masquerade as past loved ones or a number of things. I don’t think we can help you, but thank you for stopping in.”
“That’s it?” Lizzy gasped. The swiftness of his brush off surprised her. “It’s black or white? There is no middle ground here?”