OCCULT VIEW

Are ghosts real?  Throughout history people have had countless experiences with ghosts.  I’ve known people who had their own personal experiences.  These stories are true; the ghost experience is real.  The real question is…what exactly are ghosts?  Are they only a common type of hallucination? 

The occult view has its own theory of death.  According to occult theory, all living things have an ethereal body double that matches our physical body.  The ancient Egyptians called it the Ka.  Today we’d call it our aura, or chi, or life force.  This ethereal double is not our mind or soul, but seems to be the conduit or interface between the soul and physical reality.  Maybe it’s the pathway wherein the spirit and brain connect; where spirit, matter and the quantum force of electro-magnetism interact inside our neurons.

When we die, this ethereal double is separated from our physical body.  During near death experiences, this is the experience of observing one’s body and surroundings.  It does not have to be a death experience; there are stories of crisis apparitions, someone in deep distress can suddenly appear to loved ones far away.  Since the ethereal double (or ghost) exists inside of time and space, it is able to observe and interact (in a limited way) with physicality.  It is interesting that ghost phenomena can be largely interpreted as manipulation of the electromagnetic force, albeit with a purpose.

However, when separated from the physical body, the ethereal double cannot long survive and the double/ghost itself will “die”.  What follows is the part of the near-death experience where the deceased enters the tunnel of light.  This is the passage from our world of time and space and matter, into the endless world of Spirit beyond.  Shedding of our double, the soul forever departs our universe for whatever is after. 

ORB

Sometimes, after death, a person does not want to move on.  It could be because of some turmoil or tragedy, tasks left undone, regrets, or entrenched attachment to this world.  In their ethereal state, they might even think they’re still alive, but in a somnolent dream-like state.  Ghosts seem to attach themselves to a place, replacing their attachment to their body.  Their degree of self awareness will affect if and how they interact with our world.  Many ghosts are invisibly sleepwalking around us right now and we’d never know it. 

FENCE ORB

In my Jan. 14 ‘09 blog, I wrote about a friend’s true near-death experience.  He did not get to the point of seeing a tunnel of light.  But he did encounter other ghosts in the hospital.  By examining these near-death experiences, we get valuable clues about how the “other side” works.  For instance, it seems ghosts can communicate with each other.  I’ve been to a haunting investigation where it seemed that multiple entities inhabited a location.  I suspect that ghosts might be drawn to others of their own kind.  Who wants to wander bodiless alone?  And a more powerful ghost might attract a following of other lost souls, even dominate them.  As time goes by, the ghost will lose its original human shape and eventually end up as a circle of ethereal energy…an orb.  

In my opinion, once a soul leaves it’s “ghost” behind, it leaves earth for good.  Can a medium contact the dead?  Maybe a medium can whisper to earthbound ghosts, but not the ghostless dead.   However…it just might be possible for our loved ones, outside of the circles of time/space, to contact us.  Someone with mediumistic abilities once told me that a man and a woman were watching over me.  She described my grandmother, but as a beautiful young woman, and deceased friend with uncanny accuracy.  I like the idea.  Maybe, just maybe, our loved ones do watch over us.  When the dead enter their tunnel of light…their loved ones are there waiting to greet them.  How did they know to show up in the first place?  They must know what we are doing!

I think near-death out-of-body experiences are the most fascinating, enlightening and important events.  I had the privilege to know someone who had such an experience.  His name was Glenn, and he was a close friend of mine who suffered from the same type of cancer that killed famed football player Walter Payton…bile duct cancer. It is a pretty rare form of cancer.  He told me his story after his experience.

The operation to remove the tumor was radical, called the Whipple Procedure. They were successful in removing the small tumor, but my friend nearly didn’t survive the operation itself. He was in intensive care for three weeks, and nearly did not make it.  Immediately after the operation, my friend had complications; there was an infection inside him that would not go away. The doctors brought him back to the operating room to try to find it. 

He was in intense pain; they put him under.  Then…he saw himself on the operating table. He was looking at himself from several feet away, and the doctors seemed very worried about him, as if he would not make it.  Glenn was outside of his body. My friend had been in such intense pain for so long, now he was totally free from it. He was watching what was happening before him as the doctors worked on him, with a sense of detachment. 

Then he noticed something.  He saw two people standing beside him, watching his body on the hospital bed sympathetically. The two were a sad looking adult man and little girl.  Somehow my friend knew that the man was the little girl’s father.  And they were not alive either.  Glenn felt that the two had died together, perhaps in a car accident, many years or even decades ago.  The style of their clothing was not current.  And Glenn had a knowing that the father felt so guilty about causing the death of his daughter that he could not leave his life behind.  And the daughter so loved her father she would not leave his side.  Glenn remarked that time seemed different on the other side and if we pause before going to our final destination, time slips by.

My friend turned and spoke to them out of concern.  He asked them what were they doing here…and told them that they should not be hanging around a hospital.  He told them that they were no longer alive, and they should leave this place and go on to where they were meant to go.  The man listened to Glenn and Glenn seemed to get across to them, because suddenly he had a feeling of peace come over him, like he had done the right thing.  Then the spirits of the father and daughter vanished. 

Yet…he sensed other figures in the distance, dark shapes wandering the hospital corridors.  Other lost souls.  Hospitals are really the most haunted of places. Then Glenn was suddenly outside the hospital.  He said he was walking the hospital grounds with such a feeling of peace.  Then…he heard a Voice.  Not a literal voice, but an impression, telling him “it’s not your time yet…you have to go back”.  He did not want to return to his body, he wanted to stay and be at peace.  Then, then next thing he awakened in terrible agony, back in his body in the hospital room.

Three years after his first operation, I learned what was meant by the Voice.  It was his time, but not quite yet.  Three years after his near-death experience his cancer returned.  I recall it was a truly gloomy rainy day when I went to visit him in the hospital.  He was in a coma.  I talked to him wondering if he could hear me, if he knew I was there.  But I knew that from his experience, he no longer feared death.  He had long abandoned any grudges or grievances he had, he became a changed man.  And the next day when he passed away, I knew he would be happy he did not have to return a second time.

Glenn

Glenn told me this story several times. I asked him afterwards…what was he wearing?  Do spirits wear clothing?  Glenn said he recalled that he seemed to be perfectly dressed, with a freshly pressed shirt (Glenn was always a fashionable guy).  Could it just be a hallucination I asked?  No he said, he had plenty of hallucinations and delirium during his hospital stay, and this experience was utterly different then anything like that.  He said if he had a choice, he would not have returned.  Physically he withered from the consequences of his operations.  He used to be a robust 250-pound man, now he was 140 pounds.  But at the same time, he had attained a renewed inner peace and generosity of spirit.  And we both wondered what was meant by what the Voice said…it’s not your time…yet. 

Three years after his first operation, I learned what was meant by the Voice.  It was his time, but not quite yet.  Three years after his near-death experience his cancer returned.  I recall it was a truly gloomy rainy day when I went to visit him in the hospital.  He was in a coma.  I talked to him wondering if he could hear me, if he knew I was there.  But I knew that from his experience, he no longer feared death.  He had long abandoned any grudges or grievances he had, he became a changed man.  And the next day when he passed away, I knew he would be happy he did not have to return a second time.

Quite a while ago I visited the infamous Bachelor’s Grove cemetery with a couple of fellow ghost enthusiasts.  Bachelors Grove is a decrepit abandoned cemetery outside Chicago with a famous reputation for being haunted. 

It was really overgrown when I visited it. We all had our cameras ready, our recording devices on.  We looked around examining the area, took pictures and wondered if we’d possibly capture something out of the ordinary.  What I like to do when I visit a haunted place is to do a tarot card reading there.  It is my personal way of trying to make contact with whatever might be around.  I will do a layout with my deck of cards which I have owned since I was a teenager.  It is the only deck that I seem to get results from.  Perhaps my years of ownership with it is responsible for that.  I have had some interesting readings with that particular deck over the years. 

After looking around, I did a card layout on one of the tombstones.  There are not many intact tombstones left in Bachelor’s Grove, and few remaining I could lay my cards out on (picture above).  Know what?  I felt sort of weird doing a layout on someone’s gravestone.  It almost felt like desecration.   Heaven knows Bachelor’s Grove has suffered terribly from desecration over the years.  The place has a sad atmosphere, a feeling of loss.  I feel the cemetery’s abuse has been partially responsible for it’s haunted state.

Bachelor’s Grove has also been a place where people would practice occult rituals.  Who knows what practices, what acts, have been performed there over the long decades?   I can only imagine everything from amateurs trying to summon the dead or demonic, to genuine occultists, to criminal activity.  An abandoned cemetery attracts this type of activity.  If dark ceremonies are performed often enough in the same place, it will create a link with the darkest regions of the Unseen World.   I believe this is what is responsible for the haunted status of Bachelor’s Grove, a corruption of its original purpose, by the invitation of dark spirits by those summoning them.

And here I was doing the very same thing, if only on a tiny scale.  It is disrespectful to use anyone’s final resting place for such purposes.  I was using the cards trying to contact whatever was there, like a form of channeling.  If there were entities lingering around, the cards were an invitation to make contact.  Spirits cannot force themselves on us, but we can invite them in.  And that is what happened next!

After my visit to Bachelor’s Grove, I experience a bout of bad luck.  Nothing remarkably awful, just random bad events, one after another.  Enough bad luck that I began to wonder what the heck was happening, this was all very peculiar. Eventually I started to worry…I was getting a sense of unease which I can’t quite explain.  I talked with one of my comrades who joined me at Bachelor’s Grove, and he said he was having some bad experiences after the visit as well.  

One evening, sitting at home, I took some random pictures.  I was startled to see orbs in some pictures.  Never before had I ever see any orb in any photo at home.  I don’t take orbs in photos too seriously, as there are many explanations for them, but sometimes orbs can indeed represent something more.  I decided that something might have followed me home from my visit to Bachelor’s Grove.  I had invited something in.  So I thought it was time to purge any potential negative presence. 

The ultimate protection from any possible entity is to have a connection with a higher spiritual source, depending on our belief system…our concept of God or a Higher Self.  As living human beings, we are all mighty spiritual beings, stronger then an entity that we might encounter.  But if we don’t realize this, then we can be victimized by an entity.  Spiritual power is useless if we are passive and don’t understand our potential.  On top of our own inner strength, we can call on a Higher Power, which is superior to our own efforts alone.  We must truly believe in this Higher Power, but if we have this belief, we can banish any threat.  Which was what I did.  Afterwards, my bad luck also disappeared.  I learned a lesson…maybe reading cards on a gravestone is not such a good idea.