Frozen Time and Other Signs from the Dead

Have you ever heard of a watch or clock stopping at the moment of a person's death? Paranormal researcher Louisa E. Rhine, in her classic book Hidden Channels of the Mind, reported on several instances when timepieces froze at the very moment someone died. She and her husband and fellow Duke University researcher Dr. Joseph B. Rhine interviewed thousands of people over several decades to record their paranormal experiences with the hopes of finding some scientific basis for such phenomena.

While one might conjecture that souls are energy and when they leave the body they could "short out" a timepiece, that doesn't explain why some of the clocks that were reported stopped were often located in the departed's home miles away. Perhaps, the dead wanted to send a message, reassuring their loved ones they still exist and are fine? Or perhaps the soul is everywhere and so distance is an illusion?

From telekinetic fruit to unexplained noises and dancing window shades, Loitering at the Gate to Eternity: Memoirs of a Psychic Bystander shares the tales of people whose contact with recently departed loved ones forever changed the way they view life. Featuring more than 100 stories of the paranormal, the book is now available at Amazon.com or at a bookstore near you.

Feeling the Energies of the Dead

I remember many years ago when I was a student at the University of South Carolina, a bunch of us loaded into a car and decided we would visit the state penitentiary graveyard nearby. Why? I don't know. I guess college kids do strange things. We were told that this particular cemetery was where men who had died in the electric chair—or in prison if no one claimed the body—were buried.

While rumor had it that the cemetery was used to bury executed prisoners,

that was not entirely the case.The cemetery also contained the infant

daughter of a female prisoner and unclaimed inmates, most of 

whom died of disease, according to a recent pamphlet about the cemetery.

I remember it was a sunny spring day. We were laughing and joking about our adventure. When we got to the prison grounds we began driving down a dirt road that circled the facility. It entered a more wooded area and slowly the day grew more shadowed and heavy. By the time we reached the small prison graveyard, no one was talking and we were all feeling incredibly uneasy. The small cemetery was dark and the simple tombstones looked forlornly grim. Despite it being midday, the area was unnaturally overcast. This was the final resting place for some very troubled souls. I don't think that fact had sunk in until we were staring at the forgotten plot of land that lay claim to their last remains.

We didn't linger. While I can't explain it in terms of logic, we felt that our presence was not welcome there. We were trespassers. Our driver quickly turned the car around and headed back in the direction in which we had come at a fairly fast clip. When we finally left the prison grounds, the day returned to being warm and bright again. It was a truly unnatural experience even for someone who didn't believe in the supernatural.

In my recent conversations with psychics while writing Loitering at the Gates to Eternity: Memoirs of a Psychic Bystander, I was given to understand that every object and every place is imprinted with the energy of its owner or of any event that transpired nearby. If that's true, then it would certainly explain the sense of malice and dread we felt when we visited that prison graveyard.

I wrote several stories that illustrate this point. One involves a grand old house from the Underground Railroad era that imparted energy from its history as a hiding place for slaves. Another tale describes a woman's difficulty in house-hunting because of the discordant energies she sensed in many of the properties she visited. To read about this, and more than 100 other stories of the paranormal, look for Loitering at the Gate to Eternity this September at Amazon.com or at a bookstore near you.