Part Six: A ghost story.
(Taken – abridged – from the introduction to the book Many Voices, One Mission.)
I’m handing over to Jane for Part Six of this series (I’ll take up the story again next time):
One dark and stormy night in the winter of 2002 there was a knock at the door and there, standing on my doorstep, was a tall, dark, handsome man… (I suppose I had better rewind here to put you in the picture as this is both a “ghost story” that is rather close to home and also a romance, as it is the tale of how Michael and I met.)
‘In my early twenties when I had first moved into my cottage, I was very relieved to find that it had a peaceful atmosphere with no sign of any discarnate presence – unlike my childhood home which had been haunted. The cottage was a bit of a “hovel” in need of restoration and for the first few years whilst saving up for this I was actually unaware of what was in the attic as it had been totally sealed off for some reason. During the renovation work the loft was opened up to make a bedroom and it was only after I started to sleep in that room that I began to experience the odd incident where I would wake up with a start in the middle of the night absolutely petrified at the sight of a grey, blob-like shadow coming towards me and, with my heart pounding to bursting point, I would shout at it to leave me alone! Other times I would awaken suddenly in a terrible panic, not knowing where I was and with a feeling that I was suffocating. Not being prone to flights of fancy, I had always just shrugged these incidents off as imagination but by 2001 the nocturnal disturbances in that room became so frequent that it finally dawned on me that my own house might be haunted.
Around that time a work colleague, whose father had recently died, asked if I could recommend a medium for her to see in the hope that her father might communicate but, as I hadn’t been to a spiritualist church for years, I was unable to help (I stopped attending as I had more than sufficient proof of survival and, not being a “message junkie”, I preferred to rely on my own intuition for guidance). However, one day shortly afterwards whilst Christmas shopping, I felt drawn to go into the spiritual book shop in my local town and there on the notice board was Michael Reccia’s business card. I had found a medium that I could recommend to Lynne! I had seen Michael take the service at a nearby spiritualist church fifteen years earlier, and he had stood out in my memory as an exceptional medium because of the unique quality of his spiritual philosophy (little knowing then that the earnest young man on the platform would one day be the love of my life).
Private sittings were subsequently arranged for Lynne, my friend Angela and myself – hence the knock at the door on that dark and stormy January night …and the tall, dark, handsome man on my doorstep was, of course, Michael. (I have to tell you that at this point the story also has a farcical twist because, to my surprise, Michael was dressed identically to me. A fairly uncommon coincidence for a man and woman generally but even more remarkable when I tell you that our chosen “look” for the evening was black trousers with a hideous Rupert Bear-esque combination of red jumper and yellow shirt. What on Earth had possessed us? Or was it some cosmic joke signifying that one day we would become “twinned” in the same spiritual mission?)
Lynne and Angela had their readings first with Michael (and yes, Lynne’s father did come through) and then, amazingly, when my turn came, the very first thing Michael told me was that one of the rooms in the house was giving me trouble – the reason being that a little boy was “stuck” there. Apparently he had died of consumption as a toddler but hadn’t moved over to the Light because he was trapped in reliving the panic of his last moments. Michael went on to assure me that the little boy meant no harm and wasn’t even aware of my presence but that in my sleep-state I was picking up his panic of being lost and dying and that grey shadow was his depressed aura. Michael told me that the child needed to be moved over and that I had to meditate and pray for this to happen but, if it didn’t clear up after a while, he would come back and sort it out.
Can you imagine after twenty years of living in a place to then discover that it was actually haunted? I was now in a situation where I was scared of being in my own home and the tricks of my imagination were far worse than any of the incidents had been. I certainly daren’t sleep in the attic room any more and so moved into the little bedroom downstairs. I did do the prescribed meditations and prayers for the little boy as Michael had instructed but, having little faith in my abilities on that score, after a couple of anxious weeks I telephoned Michael to ask if he could come back and check whether the boy had gone.
So, back Michael came (and this time I had put on a skirt and floral blouse as insurance against any repeat “style plagiarism”) and checked each room in the house. All were found to be clear until he came to the attic, where he could see a little boy in floods of tears by the fireplace. Michael spoke to him telling him to stop crying and asking him if he could see him – which the boy could. Then, having got his attention and calmed him down, Michael asked the boy if he could see the person standing next to him, and at that point the little boy’s face lit up at the sight of a spirit in beautiful Light who had appeared (presumably some relative that the boy recognised) and he took their hand and they both disappeared through the wall …and that was that.
Michael advised me that there might be a residue of negative vibration for a while but it would lift, and he suggested that I keep the windows open for a few days. He thought the boy had been there for quite a while (perhaps two-hundred years) but explained that, although that is an eternity in our terms, for the boy it would only have seemed like a few moments because his perception would be of it just being “now”. I wondered why someone from the spirit realms (such as his mother) hadn’t come to rescue him before, but Michael explained that some souls become so trapped in their own negative thoughts on passing that they cannot see those who try to help them from the spirit realms because of the difference in energy frequencies. The boy, on the other hand, could see Michael because their vibrations were both of the Earth plane, thus allowing Michael the opportunity to communicate with and distract the boy for long enough to break his thought pattern and get him to see the rescuing spirit.
That night I had to force myself to sleep in that room again – with the light on and my dog with me for “protection” – and I can’t say I got much sleep because of the combination of me glancing around the room every two minutes checking for “ghosts” and Molly padding around the bed checking whether it was time for her breakfast. After a few weeks, however, my confidence was restored and I never had any trouble in that room again.
So, a very happy ending to what the uninitiated might consider to be a ‘ghost story’ …as for the romance, we had to wait a further four years for the next instalment, as Michael will explain to you in the next part of this series/ Incidentally, several years ago the spirit of the little boy came through to Michael (but appearing as a young man this time) to thank us for releasing him…
Continued in Part Seven.
