Visionary Fiction discussion

Just an update that I have added a number of very interesting stories to my WordPress blog relating psychic/synchronistic/paranormal events which I have experienced over the years. I will be adding more as time allows. As always, the events themselves are fascinating, but they are fleeting, while the underlying system that allows these events to occur is not.

Tom
https://thoffmanak.wordpress.com/

Tom Hoffman

I do ghost hunting as a sometime hobby

Cool! That must be interesting. I never got into that at all. I guess I didn't want to see or find one. My daughter saw a ghost (same ghost on 3 occasions) but it was a very positive experience for her. I think it was someone she had known. I'm more interested in the mechanics of it all.

Good times: being out in the fresh air, on summer or autumnal nights, moonlight, breeze, apple cider...great activity

That is so great. We have a very active group here on Cape Cod where we have lots of hauntings and ghosts. So many of the houses here have spirits, mostly gentle and sometimes one or two that like to pull pranks. What absolute fun!

I wonder why gentle ghosts would hang around this world instead of moving on?

I'd forgotten until I saw this post, but I once saw something. We had an old cottage in Wales with a history. It had a chimney seat around a log fire with a stone mantle, and this figure was leaning against it - nonchalantly. He was dressed all in black. It looked like silk with black lace cuffs and wearing black tights and black shoes with silver buckles. Someone with this kind of costume would never have been in a rural cottage. He was obviously some kind of nobility. I wasn't the least bit scared; we looked at one another, then he disappeared.
What do you make of that?

I believe that ghosts hang around for several reasons. One is they aren't ready to leave and two, they cannot find the portal to where they are destined. There are many other reasons . . .
Esme, I believe that person had come to give you a message, which you readily accepted (you weren't scared) and he was someone from your past life. (Brother, I think) being confirmed on that.

How interesting! I also felt he was from a past life. There was another figure there who again mystified me. She was young and wearing Scottish plaid underneath her long apron. But my feeling about her was that she was a maid servant. She didn't seem interested in me and disappeared without looking at me. No idea if these 2 figures were related in some way. I only hope that somehow they will both find their way home.

Esme wrote: "What do you make of that? ..."

Hoot! What can we possibly make of it? Nice anecdote, but how can any mortal ascribe the cause? :D

Esme wrote: "I'd forgotten until I saw this post, but I once saw something. We had an old cottage in Wales with a history. It had a chimney seat around a log fire with a stone mantle, and this figure was leanin..."

Hi Esme -- wonderful story. I've had poltergeisty events for a week or so on the tenth anniversary of my dad's death. There was no doubt at all that very weird things were going on in the house in town and at our lake house. It was quite reassuring in a spooky sort of way. Also had poltergeist events at very stressful times in my life that I'm quite sure were me. That was just plain wild and weird. Now, back to ghosts. My daughter saw a ghost in her dorm room in college. All blue and translucent, staring out her window, and wearing "old fashioned" clothes. He turned and looked at her and she was not scared at all. He showed up two more times at different locations (one in a motel on the Al-Can highway to Alaska). The last time she saw him he was losing his sharp edges, getting kind of fuzzy and blurry. She was lying in bed and he walked over to her and touched her forehead with his index finger. She was not scared at all. Past life thing I'm sure. I did my intuitive thing and what I saw was a young man at a university in the 1890s or so. He had gotten a job there as an assistant professor or something like that, and was late for his first class. He was very excited about it and was running like a madman trying to get there on time. Lovely old campus. In The Thirteenth Monk I based the Blue Spectre on the ghost my daughter saw.
Do you think your ghost was wearing mourning clothes? Details are everything.

All I can say is, I was so mystified and surprised at the time I didn't start speculating, (spectrelating!) on what the black clothing meant. Maybe in his day it was the 'done thing' when someone near to you had died. How interesting that you have woven your daughters blue ghost into your story.
All these visions I had were long ago, 20 or 30 years ago. I also had a poltergeist experience, but I no-longer have these experiences. My feeling now is that they came from a part of myself which no-longer needs such experiences.

You hit the nail on the head. I no longer need those experiences either.

Ahhhh!

I think what I'm getting at here is, these sort of experiences are psychic rather than spiritual.

I think I wrote on my blog that psychic abilities are simply a by product of connecting to our inner self, and only a room we pass through on the way to somewhere else. Another thing I see is people not resolving their earthly emotional issues and trying to escape into the spiritual world. We're here on earth for a reason and we need to deal with all the issues that go along with that.

I certainly agree that spirituality isn't something where we escape from life on Earth. And while we decide to be here we also need to face our issues. However, there is no judgement from 'on high' which punishes us for deciding to escape. Today in the news we were told that Terry Pratchet (his books, Disk World etc. sold in the tens of millions) was diagnosed with an unusual kind of Alzheimer's disease and he campaigned for people to be allowed to die medically in the comfort of their homes.

Yes, I agree with what you wrote. Earth is a pace yourself school. I've read a number of Terry Pratchet books. Love them. I'm sorry to hear about his illness, and I agree with his thoughts on death with dignity. So sad to see a mind like his fade away from this world.

It's amazing: the news today has been FULL of Terry Pratchet, (he died yesterday) his recorded voice and many well-known writers who love him and say great things about his incredible understanding of life and death. Death itself was a main character, and Terry now is shaking hands with him! He said recently that his rare kind of dementia meant that he had enormous difficulty putting on his shirt in the morning. He turned it round and round, not knowing its orientation, yet he had no trouble with actually saying the word!

He died?? The article I read must have been old. I read a long one yesterday where he was doing pretty well with it. Dang. He was such an amazing person.

Yes, he died yesterday. That's why he's been all over the news. So many people and writers who knew him were commenting and praising him. One man, whose name Ive forgotten for the moment, worked with him as a partner. They both had the same sense of humour and used to ring each other up to have a laugh. Even when him dementia was crazy. As I said he campaigned for assisted suicide, but his family said he died naturally in his bed with his cat beside him. I could cry!

That really is a shame that such a wonderful mind and spirit had to go.

That really is a shame that such a wonderful mind and spirit had to go.

I just googled BBC Terry Pratchett. There's a piece by Philip Pullman talking about him. He's also an interesting writer. Maybe you could try googling it too.