Sighting: J-walker Sat. 29 Dec. 2007 1:15am

I was on my way home from work and I was traveling down W. 6th towards MoPac. As I was crossing Guadalupe near the Post Office I noticed someone walking on the sidewalk headed South. The thing is, he didn’t stop. This was a slim roughly light complected male wearing a dark knit winter cap and he looked to be about 6′ tall. Now for this post I am going to have to make a case for why in my opinion this was not a flesh and blood person.

1. There were several cars in the four lanes of W. 6th St. I appeared to be the only driver who noticed this and tried to move over. Everyone else kept driving at the same speed.
2. When I say he didn’t stop, I mean did not flinch, hesitate or do anything else to alter his motion. It was as though there were no street in front of him with cars moving across his path. If anything he seemed to go faster in the street.

Could this have been a live person who was just J-Walking? Yes. I know a few people who are indifferent to rules like stopping at a crosswalk and such. It was the fact that no one noticed him and he didn’t seem aware that there was traffic in the road that made me suspicious. I am still threatening to talk to a professional ghost chaser about this. I am definitely sensitive but it just seems to happen at random. Well maybe not random. I don’t regularly travel down W. 6th to the freeway.

“Spirit” Encounter 9:25pm Tuesday 25 Dec. 2007

I was sorting ad printouts and the “presence” went by me to the left and rear of me. I still don’t have any idea who or what this is. I know what the classic explanation would be in certain Christian circles. But before I write it off as a demon I am trying to figure out what exactly it is. I am not a ghost investigator but I know of a few I might ask. Hopefully it is some one instead of some thing. Why do I put it that way? Because people are a little less likely to have full blown agenda they are working on. More on this when it pops up again.

Presence at work

I noticed this a week or so ago but didn’t document it. I was talking to my boss Thursday night, 13 Dec. 07 out on the production floor. I was standing in front of a desk. Something came up and bumped into me on my right side. It startled me and for a split second I saw it in my peripheral vision. I want to say I felt a field of energy or an aura or something. We’ve had a couple of ghost stories told about people who died in the building years ago. I don’t think this is that and I really don’t know what it is. I’ll update this post a little later if I think of anything more about it.

Apparition Sighting - 2:05AM

Ghost, apparition, spectre, astral body…I’m never sure what to call these things. I was driving home from the store a little over an hour ago. As I was coming down my street I saw something translucent and human in appearance standing in front and slightly to the side of a car. I jerked the wheel a little to swerve when I saw it. I passed the car and looked in my driver’s side mirror and there was nothing there.

12:15am Ghost Sighting

Dad and I went about five miles down the road to a spot away from the lights to see if we could spot any meteors. This is a place in north Austin on E. FM 734 (Parmer Ln) about a quarter mile east of the Samsung plant. It is a place where the City made an opening for a road to be cut in the future and haven’t done anything with it yet.

I set up my camera to try and capture some images of the sky, particularly Orion’s belt, which is one of my favorite constellations. I took several shots and after seeing one meteor and a possible moving star (Binary System) we decided to leave. I took down my camera tripod and loaded it under the back seat and got in the truck. As I started to put the truck in reverse to back up a couple of feet before pulling out on the road. I was looking in my rear-view mirror as I did that and when the backup lights came on, I saw an African-American couple standing outside a sports car parked behind my truck. The man was looking right at me in my driver-side mirror. Seeing them, I shifted to Drive and pulled out onto the road.

Now this would appear normal, except:

1. I was outside my truck the whole time we were watching the stars no other vehicles pulled off the road and/or came up behind us.
2. Neither Dad nor I were preoccupied with music or anything, and especially not to the point of not being able to notice a car pull up, even if it had its lights and engine off and was coasting to a stop. In such a case the driver would not have had control over more than the brakes and even that not very well.
3. The couple was standing in front of their car and the doors were shut. Not only did we not hear them drive up, we didn’t hear the car doors shut when they got out.

I drove down the road to the next left turn exit and turned around. I told Dad what I had seen and he said he didn’t hear or notice anyone pulling up either. I tried to look to my left to see if I could see the couple and the car. Traffic was up to about 50mph. I saw a grayish-white blur and what looked like a gray Firebird or Camaro.

My opinion, based on what I saw, is that these were ghosts. My speculation is that they perhaps died on that road and come to that spot.

Polterkitty

I just walked in the door about a half hour ago, and I think I may have a cat ghost in my house. I stepped in the door, I turned around and locked the deadbolt, turned back and saw 15 feet in front of me something shaped like a cat (yes with a tail) facing away from me and then it disappeared.

I don’t think it was Max. My friend JR’s cat who was attacked and had to be put down last year. Max was a Manx. This cat had a full tail.

When I wrote this post about the running shadow figure, I said that I intend to document these experiences. So here’s another one I can’t quite explain.

Communicating with the Dead

Tags: Paranormal :: Afterlife :: Metaphysics :: Eschatology :: Religion :: Skepticism :: EVP

This may strike some of you as a rather odd topic. Some of you may believe such contact is possible, others may not. I was listening to Coast to Coast AM this morning on the way home from work and George Noory was interviewing a couple of people who have recorded EVPs or Electronic Voice Phenomena. I walked in the door and shut it. When I turned around to lock the deadbolt I heard something very faint. It was like a conversation or someone saying something. I didn’t ask whomever it was to repeat themselves. I just made a mental note to document it, as I am doing now. An hour or so later my dad woke up and he told me that the neighbor next door passed away last Thursday. I’m not going to say it was him. I’m not going to say it wasn’t him. Both events happened. I hear about one not very long after experiencing the other.

When I woke up this afternoon I watched the movie White Noise. Now to the undiscerning ear, most of these clips sound like someone in a car who has pushed the SEEK/SCAN button on their radio and because they are in the middle of nowhere (too far from a strong enough signal) the scan doesn’t settle on any one station and keeps bouncing around. They hear little chirps and quips, with an occasional word or two that they can make out.

I’ve always had an interest in paranormal phenomena. The first of two instances of contact with the dead was the day Elvis died. It was the summer before my freshman year of HS. We were living in Fallbrook, California at the time. I was lying on the couch in the afternoon. The stereo was on but nothing was playing on it. As I was lying there I slipped into what I would find out later was an altered state of consciousness. I remember looking at the dial on the stereo and my field of vision tunnelling. I had been thinking about Freddie Prinze, Sr. when I said, “Elvis Presley is dead.” Then I snapped out of the state and tried to correct myself because I had been thinking about Freddie Prinze, not Elvis. Then I went over to a friend’s apartment and when she answered the door, she said, “Did you hear, Elvis died.”

I didn’t get officially involved in metaphysics and the paranormal until May of 1978 when I was 15. A couple of my neighbors were heavily involved in esoteric religion, TM, and other things. I wasn’t raised in church. That came later. So when I started to overcome my self-centeredness enough to realize that there was something more to the world than just my little corner of it, people were there to introduce me to metaphysics and the paranormal. Now we never tried any contact with the dead, no seances or OuiJa boards. I was learning to meditate and about astral projection. I was still “into” UFOs, although I didn’t have enough money to buy all the books and magazines about them.

So a couple of months later my grandmother died here in Austin. We were pretty close. I don’t think I was allowed to properly grieve, nor did I understand at the time that it was necessary. I moved back to Texas in 1979 and finished high school here in Austin. I was living with my mom in my grandparents’ house and I was walking towards my bedroom, which had been their bedroom when they were there. For an extremely brief moment, I mean a split split split second, in my peripheral vision, to my right, in what years before had been my Aunt’s bedroom I saw my grandmother. She was standing there grinning at me the way she used to when I was a kid. When I turned my head to look in her direction, she disappeared.

This was sometime between 1979 and 1983. I just don’t have an exact year. In April of 1983 I converted to Christianity. I used to use the words “got saved” but since those words sound like a bad parody of the Got Milk? commercials and because since becoming Orthodox I no longer believe in the notion of assurance of salvation I no longer say that. I converted. I believed. I believe. Whether I’ll be saved is up to G-d. But I digress. Contacting the dead is frowned upon in some circles of Christendom and forbidden in others. Being contacted by the dead carries with it the same range of opinions. I have attended churches where they teach that all contact with the dead is the activity of demons. The word “demon” rolls out of people’s labelmakers and gets pasted on a lot of things. It has become a convenience word when we fear or don’t understand something. I am not saying possession doesn’t occur, but if I’ve got the sniffles I’d really rather you gave me a Kleenex than an exorcism.

For a number of years I actually believed that what I saw in that house was a demon and not my grandmother. I don’t believe that anymore. I really think it probably was her. Otherwise there would have been other occurrences and stuff happening. When there are demons running amok in a house you don’t get just one pleasant appearance to one person and then nothing ever again. I cannot remember, but I may have actually tried to repent of that incident…like it was something from which I needed to repent…like it was my fault. There are people out there who believe that if you have a premonition or something pops up in the corner of your eye that you’ve sinned and need to repent and renounce your association with whatever demon is taunting you. By the same reasoning if someone cuts you off on the road and/or gives you the finger, you need to repent of that as well.

Give me a break.

I don’t know whether turning 40 had anything to do with it. I had been drifting away from certain doctrines of certain churches I had attended for a number of years. I never was able to completely denounce science. But as 39 was coming to a close I started examining my life, relationships, associations, beliefs, philosophies and so forth. That is what led me to walk away from the Republican party and that is what led me to renew my interest in the paranormal.

That one day in the early 80s was the only time I ever saw my grandmother. I never saw my grandfather after he died a few years later. But by then I was pretty well sold at that time on the idea that such contact was not for today. I did get an impression years later when I was living in California for the second time that they were both in heaven and were praying for our family.

Every now and then I see and hear things that I cannot explain. I’ve started making note of them. I have given up discounting them or writing them off as demonic. That is a mistake. Just like opening yourself up to anything and everything without self-regard is a mistake. There are mysteries in the world. Some are divine, others aren’t. Our science isn’t able to explain all of them the way a lot of skeptics would like. We talk about them on shows like Coast to Coast AM. We make fun of them with movies like Ghostbusters and we get the pee scared out of us with movies like The Ring. Those are forms of therapy. I’d rather we did that than just ignored them under the guises of faith and intellect.