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.

Children and the Other Side

It's been said that children and the elderly are more likely to see departed loved ones and friends on the Other Side because they have one foot in our earthly world and one foot in the hereafter. The young have just stepped into the physical plane and the elderly will soon be leaving.

Young children can see the strangest things!

I remember when my youngest daughter was about five years old, I took her with me while visiting someone who lived across the street from a cemetery. As we climbed up the front steps, she turned, pointed to the graveyard across the street, and began giggling.

"Why are you laughing?" I asked. She pointed to the graveyard, again, which looked deserted to me, and said a man there was waving at her to say "Hi!" I stood there a moment, straining to see something that was beyond my abilities, then smiled down at her. She was quite convinced that a friendly man was greeting her. Who was I to disagree?

One book I read recently suggested a child may be demonstrating their psychic abilities with the following:

• Stating facts they have no way of knowing—describing a thing or event without a logical source for that information.
• Long conversations with imaginary friends—involved conversations with imaginary friends that only they can see. These may be spirit guides or grandparents. The child might mention talking to them, and being taught by them.
• Prophetic dreams—dreaming about things that are about to happen (precognitive dreams).
• Astral projection—flying in a “dream” around the house and reporting all activity going on there, when they should not know anything about it, as they’re supposed to be asleep. (Astral projection is sometimes referred to as out-of-body travel.)

The youngest participant in the upcoming book, Loitering at the Gate to Eternity: Memoirs of a Psychic Bystander, is currently eleven years old. He's quite psychic and his parents shared three stories about him. The first one took place when he was only four in a graveyard. Although he is the only child who shared his stories with me, I have no doubt from conversations I've had with other parents that psychic ability is not all that uncommon in young children. We just learn to rationalize away our paranormal experiences as we get older, usually with the help of skeptical adults.