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More on the Paranormal 11/23/2012 10:04:41 AM
At least one spooky experience has occurred in almost every life, one incident which it seems could not have happened, yet did. If we would each record our experience, we could perhaps gather enough data to begin understanding these events.
More on the Paranormal
My great objection to stories of the paranormal on TV is that they almost always seem to involve an evil entity who has it in for the homeowner and must be eliminated via some form of exorcism. This makes for high drama but is hardly a realistic study of the mystery on the other side of the veil. How many homeowners do you know who have had to call in an exorcist to rid them of a threatening ghost? I never met one. In the only haunted house I lived in, the ghost didn’t threaten the residents at all. He was a chilling presence and we feared him, but I have to admit the fear was in our own minds. He ignored us; he seemed wholly intent on getting into that upstairs bathroom to perpetrate an evil act planned long ago.
The most intriguing paranormal story I’ve read appeared in Reader’s Digest years ago, and described an event that had occurred some time before. One of the side-panels had blown out of an airplane in flight, sucking out one of the passengers in that row of seats who fell to her death. The second passenger had avoided a similar fate by fastening her seatbelt just before the event occurred, and in this article she explained why. She’d heard a voice telling her, “Fasten your seatbelt; you’re in for a rough ride.” Luckily, she hadn’t questioned the command, but had promptly obeyed it.
Stories like this suggest to me that the paranormal has our interests at heart far more than it has evil intent. Certainly my aunt’s weird early-morning phone call, summoning her to the her dying mother’s side, was a blessing to our whole family. Not only was her help needed, but her mother died more peacefully after having a final reunion with her youngest child.
The Pagans who went before us never doubted that there was another dimension we couldn’t access directly. Our Christian tradition has convinced us that the devil lurks just beyond the veil. Best not to call him forth. Best have nothing to do with the paranormal, and if it forces itself on you, call in the exorcist. Yet almost everyone has at least one experience like that of the above-mentioned flight passenger, a moment in life which could have proved fatal yet mysteriously did not. A voice, a hunch, an angel communicating, the collective unconscious rushing to our aid—whatever it is, it’s helpful more often than not, and should be investigated. Not the ghosts in haunted houses, but the voices that come to our rescue in crises, should be the focus of the Paranormal Societies.
I would love to document these experiences, which I find fascinating. There were other incidents of the paranormal in my life. For one, there is the weird two-party dream I wrote of in my book, The House of Music. It was a real dream and I really shared all its details with someone, unfortunately not an opera tenor, but a woman in a dream-analysis group I attended. I’d written the dream down and I read it to the group, describing the exterior of the house in Vienna with its stone face and curved windows, the carriages arriving, well-dressed people in the clothing of the early twentieth century emerging, climbing the steps, entering the house, then sweeping upward in their elegant outfits to the second floor where a group of musicians were tuning their instruments in preparation for performance. In the dream, I could almost but not quite identify the performers, the music they began playing, and also the arriving guests as they surrendered their outer garments to attendants and found seats. I felt they were all very familiar, I’d been here often before and I might even have been a friend or relative of the cellist in the ensemble—yet I couldn’t quite remember the times past.
When I finished reading the dream, I looked around and noticed that one woman in the group had gone starkly white, so much so that another member grasped her hand and asked what was wrong. She sputtered, “That’s my dream! I’ve had exactly that dream a dozen times! All those details—so clear—even to the horse manure in the street, and the shiny windows of the house, newly polished!”
I confessed that for me, too, it was a recurring dream. She—her name was Evvie Dahms and she later became a close friend—urged me to go with her to a former-life research group to find out if we’d known each other and actually attended musical soirees at a house like that. I’m sorry to say that I reacted just as Elise does in the story—I was scared and I refused. She pleaded; she felt there was a special significance to our sharing the dream. But I didn’t want to open myself to a possible charlatan.
She kept trying to persuade me. She called several times; she pointed out that this was a rare occurrence, that people’s dreams were often very similar but not in this kind of detail. We shouldn’t pass up this opportunity to learn more. But though I groped for memory, I didn’t want to involve a past-life researcher. I didn’t know or trust him. I’d heard it was possible, through hypnosis, to plant memories in the mind, and I feared I was vulnerable. I could see myself getting involved in a big hullabaloo over something that probably never happened. I remembered the story of Bridey Murphy, so convincing and yet finally exposed as a hoax.
Despite this one disagreement, Evvie and I became close friends, with the kind of closeness that normally only develops over many years. In subsequent years, we got together at least once a week, and often talked of that shared dream and the possibilities it opened up. After she died, I came to regret that I hadn’t taken the opportunity to explore our shared past lives if indeed they happened. What I then feared knowing, I now would love to know. After her death, I wrote The House of Music to explore the question of reincarnation in depth and try to convince myself of something a dear friend had never doubted. Though I didn’t entirely convince myself, I grew less skeptical as time passed. I now believe there is a distinct possibility that some memories of a former life survive. My grandson, as a small child, used to tell the most amazing stories of shipwrecks at sea. I assumed they came from a TV show, and I paid little attention to them, but now I wonder if they might have been past life memories. I wish I’d listened and explored the question.
