Take a moment to watch this short video featuring Dr. Gabor Mate
The night that I walked into a house claiming demonic activity, I knew that I should not have. The result of ignoring a ‘gut feeling’ was over a week of spiritual, emotional, and physical illness. I remember sitting on the floor of the bedroom in that house, my teammates arrayed on the bed; I knew that the darkness that surrounded us was ripping holes in my heart and mind and was influencing my friends to behave oddly and out of character. I saw that my camera was malfunctioning in ways that it never had before; I could not take photographs. My recorder spit back loud interference and static; I could not record the activity in the room. I knew that this energy was what we call ‘evil’, in the sense that it sought to confuse, disconnect, distract, divide, and create despair. So why did I stay, when the second I stepped into the foyer my entire psychic alarm system warned me to turn back?
We become disconnected from ourselves in the way Dr. Maté describes when we decide that what we think the world wants or expects from us is more important than our internal alarm systems or our gut feelings or instincts. In my case, my kryptonite is a desire to please. I did not want to let down my team by backing out of a dangerous situation. Of course, they would have understood completely; but I did not give them the chance. I had decided that my own emotional, spiritual, and psychological well being was less important than possibly disappointing my team and the client. I am socially conditioned to seek out others’ approval; I have developed a skill for divining what somebody wants or needs and attempting to supply it for them. This poses a problem in research of any kind: if you seek to please those with whom you are collaborating to the detriment of your own inner compass, you may miss the truth about the case you are investigating and the motivations of those involved.
There are other ways that this disconnection from your core instincts can sink you in your pursuit of the truth. Excessive curiosity can lead one to a sort of arrogance, where you believe that you can figure out a great mystery if you read more, collect more data, conduct more investigations, or write about it from multiple angles. If you keep attacking a problem, it will eventually yield up all the answers. This is my greatest sin, but also my greatest passion; sometimes, it is difficult to disentangle dedication and devotion from arrogant assumptions about one’s ability to ‘solve’ the most intransigent conundrums of the universe. The evil in the house I ‘investigated’ (more like ‘succumbed to’) was not something that had an answer, because I was incapable of posing the right questions. Whatever was there would have laughed at my questions, anyway; one of the characteristics of demonic phenomena is its resistance to logic and reason. When one brings a desire to understand that which resists understanding, the result can be a frustration that leads to despair.
Other forms of disconnection look like a desire for fame, for attention, for money, or for status. The line between true investigation and research into the paranormal is so often blurred by the entertainment industry that I wonder if anyone can trust the ‘evidence’ that emerges from programs designed to sell themselves. I remember the moment I realized that looking cute for the cameras while ‘chasing ghosts’ had replaced any serious attempts at reaching honest answers. It was the beginning of my spiritual crisis.
What do I ask of paranormal investigators? Of parapsychologists? Of anyone studying the nonphysical phenomena that hovers between dimensions? I ask that, in addition to collecting data, to analysis, to publication of findings and reports, that you pay attention to your instincts. Allow your ‘gut feelings’ to guide your way through a difficult case, even if that seems unscientific. Following your deepest compass, your inner voice, will lead you to the truth eventually; and sometimes, it will lead you away from a situation that poses a spiritual danger to your soul.
—Kirsten A. Thorne, PhD; founder, International Society for Paranormal Research
“Surviving Death” on Netflix examines the Big Question: does human consciousness survive physical death? The various episodes cover near death experiences (NDE), ghosts and apparitions (including crisis apparitions and near-death visions), a two-part program on mediums and mediumship, signs from the dead, and reincarnation. The reincarnation episode follows up on some of the most famous American cases: James Leininger (see more about this compelling case here: https://psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/articles/james-leininger) and Ryan Hammons (https://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/boy-says-he-remembers-past-life-hollywood-agent-n327506).
My purpose here is not to review the individual cases or the series as a whole, but rather to discuss two scenes that exemplify the challenges of psychical research. Nicole de Haas appears in the “Medium” episodes, as one of the leaders and featured physical trance mediums at a mediumship development seminar in the Netherlands. When Ms. de Haas in a trance state, or when she’s behind the curtain in a darkened seance room where she produces ectoplasm off camera, she speaks in various voices that transmit messages to the audience/client. One voice is that of an elderly doctor, and the other is that of a nine-year-old boy. All of the various voices sound like de Haas herself, using vocal gymnastics to sound like her spirit guides. That does not mean that she isn’t channeling these characters; they have to use her physical voice to express themselves. And yet, there is the uncomfortable and inescapable realization that she is not providing anyone information that is not easily found on the Internet.
One of the main participants in the series is searching for evidence of his father’s continued existence after a sudden departure from this world that left him in a deep state of grief. He consults various mediums throughout these two episodes; de Haas initially impresses him and his family with details about the “green car” his brother in law owned and an oft-repeated phrase his father used in his family restaurant: “hook ’em up”. However, all of this information is easy to find on Facebook and on other sites. Does this mean she looked it all up beforehand and used the little boy voice to transmit this information to the family? Not necessarily; but the look of disappointment on her client’s face as he realizes that his father probably did not come through is heartbreaking.
The second uncomfortable moment comes when Ryan Hammons, now 15, is taken to California to meet the daughter of Marty Martyn, who was a Hollywood extra and a talent agent (he died in 1964). Ryan, as a child, recounted Marty’s past life memories with remarkable accuracy. However, by the time this documentary was filmed, he has very few actual memories. He is ceremoniously flown to Los Angeles for the big meeting with Marty’s daughter and niece, who was the only one who knew him as an adult. Ryan’s mother is very enthusiastic about this trip, but her son is clearly uncomfortable and self conscious. The meeting between families is excruciating to witness. Ryan cannot identify relatives and friends in family photos; he has no recollection of the incidents Marty’s niece recounts; and he can’t answer anyone’s questions in order to ascertain his identity as Marty reincarnated. There are long moments of strained silence. When the meeting is finally over, it’s clear that Ryan has not made a convincing case; in fact, he has made no case at all. However, prompted no doubt by the producers, Marty’s niece and daughter make encouraging statements about Ryan’s previous personality.
Ryan and his mother end up at the grave site of Marty Martyn; she has her arm around him, comforting him unnecessarily, because it is not at all clear that Ryan is upset, grieving, confused, or anything but embarrassed and overwhelmed with all the attention. What stands out in this story is a simple fact: you can’t force memory to return once it has fled. There is no holding onto the past; Marty Martyn is, quite simply, not a part of Ryan Hammond’s life anymore, and that is entirely appropriate. James Leininger is clearly still affected by the death of his previous personality; he still relives his death trapped in a burning plane that was crashing near Iwo Jima during WWII.
What do I make of these moments? Nicole de Haas seems to be creating voices and relaying information that she did not obtain in a paranormal fashion, judging by the documentary; no cameras are allowed in the seance room, so there is no way to know if she actually produces ectoplasm. Ryan is a normal teenager who had extraordinary memories that have now vanished. Nicole de Haas might produce amazing and life-changing readings for her clients that do not appear on television. Actually, I’m sure she does; but is what she does paranormal, or simply the confirmation of the obvious messages that she knows people need to hear when they are wading through the deep waters of grief? Did Ryan experience some kind of extrasensory perception, soul connection, or mild possession by Marty Martyn, or is he truly the reincarnation of the deceased actor? Is it possible that his statements were rather vague, but once an eager parent seized them, the narrative coalesced?
So much of what we study in the field of the paranormal relies on believing, on taking at face value, someone’s narrative, or several people’s narratives. I could be completely wrong about Nicole de Haas. She might be an authentic physical medium with extraordinary skills, and I could be the ignorant skeptic. I’m am prepared to accept that possibility. This points out the need for deep and ongoing research; one documentary is not going to provide enough proof for or against physical and/or trance mediumship, for or against the reality of reincarnation, or the truth of the near death experience.
I want to believe everybody. I do not want to think that someone would deliberately mislead anyone in the pursuit of fortune or fame. I know, however, that this happens; human beings fall into temptation on a regular basis. I also know that once something extraordinary and anomalous happens, there is an additional temptation: faking evidence or phenomena in order to keep the attention coming. This creates a mix of authentic and fraudulent paranormal phenomena that ends up tainting an entire case, resulting in investigators ignoring or discounting data that might otherwise have been deeply insightful.
This is the eternal frustration of the paranormal investigator. We have to live between truth and falsehoods, lies and revelations, stunning evidence and demoralizing disappointments. It is very easy to be the skeptic; far too easy. We can decide that a whiff of fraud destroys an entire case, no matter how carefully constructed and researched that case might be. We can leap on one piece of questionable data and decide to deride and ignore years of work. It’s satisfying to the ego to rip someone to shreds on Facebook, crying fake and foul. It is far more difficult to entertain the possibility that extraordinary claims could be true.
It requires far more from me to think that perhaps Nicole de Haas is truly channeling spirits and producing ectoplasm, or to accept that Ryan Hammonds is the reincarnation of Marty Martyn. It means that I have to keep working, investigating, thinking, writing, and searching for the truth. That’s work. Most people don’t have patience for this level of work, this depth of inquiry. I understand that; I am regularly tempted to play the skeptic and write something snarky about a medium or a case. Then I remember my own paranormal and anomalous experiences, and recall how it felt when my reputation was tarnished at work after revealing them. I remember the derision of people in my own family and the pain that lingered for years as a result. That keeps me honest. And compassionate.
For my Soulbank readers, I am pleased to report the creation of my new research and investigation project, the “International Society for Paranormal Research”, or the ISPR. Soulbank will continue to be the official blog site for this society, and I will soon start up the social media machine.
The ISPR was born out of a deep, existential crisis. Allow me to elaborate. As many of you know, I was very active in the Southern California paranormal ‘scene’, for lack of a better word, that used to meet fairly regularly on the Queen Mary in Long Beach. There were a great number of “ghost hunting” groups at the time (2008 to 2013 or so), and the popularity of the paranormal shows on television was at an all-time high. It was during this time that I started the Paranormal Housewives (still ongoing–check out paranormalhousewives.com and our FB page), an all-female group of investigators with a very diverse background, brought together by a common interest in all things mysterious and unexplained. We helped families with hauntings, we investigated countless sites of historical and paranormal interest, and we landed on television more than once. We appeared on the Ricky Lake show (https://www.tvguide.com/tvshows/the-ricki-lake-show/episode-38-season-1/a-ricki-halloween/381207/), Ghost Adventures before we formed the group (https://www.travelchannel.com/shows/ghost-adventures/episodes/linda-vista-hospital), we recorded a sizzle reel for our own reality show and were “shopped” to multiple networks, we gave countless interviews, appeared on the local news, landed an article in the Los Angeles Times (https://www.latimes.com/socal/daily-pilot/news/tn-cpt-1028-paranormal-20111027-story.html) and other newspapers, and so on and so forth. In other words, we were almost famous.
It was the “almost” that was our near undoing. High hopes for a reality show were dashed. The requests for interviews and television appearances faded, along with the popularity of the entire genre of the paranormal. Teams dissolved all around the state. We stopped meeting at the Queen Mary. With the pandemic, it no longer made sense to get together in enclosed spaces and huddle together seeking spirits. There were other issues, as well: teams are hard to maintain. Establishing common goals and guidelines was difficult; expectations, hopes, and dreams were not always easy to reconcile. And then, of course, there was the thorny issue of the “evidence”. It wasn’t clear that we had convinced anyone about the existence of the afterlife, in spite of the hundreds, if not thousands, of hours we spent reviewing our audio for EVP. We sifted through video, audio, photographs, and documented our impressions and experiences as we all discovered newly acquired clairvoyant and psychic skills. I wrote hundreds of pages about our experiences, presented our data, and waited for the public to be as excited as we were. That rarely, if ever, happened. I used to post our best EVP begging for public commentary, and nobody listened or commented. That used to keep me up at night. My disappointment convinced me to give up. However . . .
Paranormal research is a passion. You don’t engage in it to convince skeptics, to be on television, to make a ton of money, to find fame online, or to rub elbows with the VIP of the paranormal community; but I am proud of what the Paranormal Housewives accomplished, and it was often thrilling and exciting, especially because it seemed that the general public was truly fascinated by what we did. It wasn’t the public that lost interest; the media did. I’m not sure we knew how to recover from that. The truth is, paranormal research of any kind–whether the classic “ghost hunting” version, the traditional seance and medium modality, or the intellectual investigations of the Society for Psychical Research, is often work done alone, without accolades, without fame, without media interest. What I finally understood is this: that is just fine. I don’t care if the general public doesn’t review my ‘data’, or whether or not anyone in the entertainment industry finds my work interesting enough to create a show around. I don’t mind that most of the time, an investigation might simply be three or four people with a shared need to explore the non-material worlds that surround us.
What do I care about? The community of people who find this work fascinating, compelling, and endlessly mysterious. I care about the investigative process, the sifting of data, the interpretation of audio, video, the information from our various devices, and our experiences. I care about our impressions, our feelings, our instincts, as much as I care about the hard evidence; it’s all part of creating a larger picture, a weaving together of different strands of information that leads to conclusions and to truths that are larger than anything the laboratory can prove. I care about research, about our forefathers and mothers who engaged in this work; I care about our history, our collective past, and how we wish to create the future as investigators. This is about the search; our common desire as paranormal researchers to go beyond the superficially obvious and to penetrate the veil. There are far more questions than we have answers for. This journey will take our entire lifetime, and perhaps far more than one.
Now I can introduce the International Society for Paranormal Research. Our mission statement:
The ISPR is an open organization dedicated to investigating and presenting evidence for all aspects of the “paranormal”, including, but not limited to: all manifestations of human consciousness in post-material form; alleged hauntings of homes and sites; poltergeist activity; the work of mediums, psychics, clairvoyants and empaths; anomalous experiences that include UFO activity or any other unusual or unprecedented event, sighting, or manifestation. We are:
Open to all amateur and professional investigators who wish to contribute their data and conclusions for review;
A forum for investigators and researchers to share their research and data, but also a site for meaningful conversations among investigators regarding methodology, personal experiences, concerns, and questions;
International in scope, since we are all interconnected more now than ever, and paranormal phenomena is not restricted to one, particular country;
Non profit, with no financial or professional interests that would interfere with our primary mission;
Not a ‘team’ of investigators, but may announce investigations and/or invite participants.
Are you interested in working with me on this project? I will announce here the social media sites and the eventual website for the ISPR. Let me know if you have evidence that you would like to share with us. I am excited to get back into the game and start the search again.
Every now and then, I like to dust off my critical mind and find an article that–yet again!–seeks to describe all paranormal phenomena as a by product of brain functions, ‘stress’, or some other physical or psychological glitch in the system. The latest assault on the paranormal comes from this source, which you are welcome to read in its entirety should you feel inspired: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/out-the-ooze/201507/why-some-people-see-ghosts-and-other-apparitions
Here is a quote that I find interesting yet dismaying: “A recent study by Kirsten Barnes and Nicholas Gibson (2013) explored the differences between individuals who have never had a paranormal experience and those who have. They confirmed that experiences of supernatural phenomena are most likely to occur in threatening or ambiguous environments, and they also found that those who had paranormal experiences scored higher on scales measuring empathy and a tendency to become deeply absorbed in one’s own subjective experience.”
One of the most common assumptions of scientists and psychologists when dealing with anomalous experiences is that the environment or the brain itself PRODUCES the paranormal experience. There are so many variations on this assumption: blind spots create the effect of seeing something out of the corner of your eye; variations in the electromagnetic field produce the feeling of a presence or being watched; variations in infrasound create feelings of doom or dread; sleep paralysis and the hypnagogic state bring our dreams into reality; or environmental contaminants make us hallucinate. The article under discussion here states that both stressful and boring environments create the necessary conditions for the brain to hallucinate ghosts. If you are a sensitive person, an empath, or simply prone to self analysis, your brain will supply you with visions. The problem with this hypothesis should be fairly clear, but allow me to break down my objections:
Instead of assuming that conditions and brain states CREATE the paranormal experience, it is more likely that the proper CONDITIONS lead to the ability to perceive non-ordinary realities and presences. You can study the brains of meditators and mystics and exclaim that the changes you see in their brains have created their visions, or you can conclude that the changes in their brains are the result of sustained and focused connection with “God” or the world of spirit. The brain changes are the result of their spiritual practices, not the cause.
The same can be said for people who enter trance states, ingest psychedelic substances, engage in intense religious rituals, or in any other way alter their consciousness with the express intent to contact the world of spirit. Yes, the brain changes in response to the substance, activity or intention of the participant in any kind of ritual, because the brain is accommodating and facilitating the connection, not creating it.
This does not mean that you can’t genuinely hallucinate while under the influence of drugs, carbon monoxide, or some other physical agent. What’s the difference? In genuine cases of spiritual contact, there is logic, emotional impact, a sense of the divine, a coherent story, or the fulfillment of one’s deepest intentions. There is, in other words, a sense of the holy or sacred that accompanies one’s vision, a transcendence that serves to elevate the experience to another level of reality and often ends up changing the life of the person who has witnessed or sensed the presence. I have, unfortunately, endured an episode of carbon monoxide poisoning when I was a teenager in Spain–I woke up disoriented, confused, and seeing strange things. I knew immediately that this was not ‘paranormal’, but something that was sickening me in body and mind. I have also had multiple surgeries where I struggled through the effects of anesthesia and other drugs, and it was always clear that those effects were not at all supernatural due to their chaotic and irrational nature. There is simply no way to compare the effects of drugs and poison to a true, spiritual experience that leaves you in awe.
And, finally, to reduce spiritual experiences to brain effects or environmental stresses completely ignores centuries of human experiences of the holy and the uncanny. If you reduce the power of religion to, for example, the stress Jesus felt while wandering through the desert, you have denied the most powerful aspect of humanity: our ability to connect to higher realities and transmit those messages to others.
Our brains serve as a sort of ‘reducing valve’ for an overwhelming amount of information that we cannot possibly process in its entirety. This quote from Aldous Huxley is quite famous in certain spiritual circles:
“Each one of us is potentially Mind at Large. Each person is at each moment capable of remembering all that has ever happened to him and of perceiving everything that is happening everywhere in the universe. […]
But in so far as we are animals, our business is at all costs to survive. To make biological survival possible, Mind at Large has to be funneled through the reducing valve of the brain and nervous system. What comes out at the other end is a measly trickle of the kind of consciousness which will help us to stay alive on the surface of this particular planet.” https://www.ianmack.com/aldous-huxley-dont-mistake-the-trickle-for-ultimate-reality/
And yes, Huxley wrote this after his experiments with mescaline; and yet, think about it: there is infinitely more information ‘out there’ than we are able to process. If some event, circumstance, drug, or stressor hampers the brain’s ability to filter out the greater reality, extra information can sneak past the gates and flood us with ‘paranormal’ experiences: messages from the gods or from God, spirit contact, or the ability to perceive what is normally blocked from view. How do we know what is ‘real’ and what is the result of a brain on overload? “By their fruits you shall know them”: this refers to false prophets, but it could easily refer to false messages or hallucinations. A good tree cannot produce bad fruit; likewise, true spiritual contact, ‘real’ paranormal experiences, are life changing and profound.
I have not mentioned the fact that documented and verifiable paranormal experiences are abundant and well researched. The Society for Psychical Research, for example, has published volumes of excellent evidence for the existence of ‘ghosts’, telepathy, near death experiences, mediumship, out of body experiences, and so much more. The SPR has been around since 1882 and included some of the most prominent and respected scientists of their time. Their work continues today. Gary Schwartz in the Department of Psychology at the University of Arizona has carried out fascinating experiments in afterlife communication. I could go on and on, but the point is: before one decides what is ‘science’ and what is not, you must do your research. There are centuries of evidence that spiritual energy is real and communicates with us on a regular basis. You don’t need to be an empath to receive these communications, but you do need to allow that such experiences are possible; if you block the full range of human consciousness with your materialism in the name of science, you lose the most profound aspect of our humanity: our connection to spirit.
The end of the article offers advice for the psychologist faced with the patient reporting paranormal contact:
“There are really only three possibilities:
The event really happened, just as the person has reported.
The person believes that the event has really happened, but it has not.
The person is fabricating a story for some reason.”
I am not entirely sure how the psychologist would know that the event has not really happened, in the case of the second scenario. I would recommend option number 1, assuming that there is no serious mental illness present (although, some argue that schizophrenia, for example, is simply a case of a reducing valve that does not work well and allows too much information in without context or intention).
In the end, we simply cannot assume that we have access to the full display of reality that the Universe contains. Some of our brains are more plastic, more open, than others, for a multitude of reasons. Why not treat those people for whom the larger realities intrude as wise instead of crazy? Why not see what doors open for psychology and science when this extra information flows through freely, without judgment or skepticism? And, of course, why not educate yourselves in the rich history of the ‘paranormal’ and realize that the science is, actually, already settled?
The medium Marthe Béraud with an ectoplasmatic structure (materialization) on her head. Marthe Béraud also performed under the names Eva C. and Eva Carrière. Photograph taken in 1912 by German parapsychological researcher Albert von Schrenck-Notzing M.D.(1862 – 1929).
When my mother informed me that my cousin had passed away, I knew immediately what had happened. She had no information that day, but after we hung up, I struggled to contain the flood of images surrounding his death. I found a quiet place, asked for permission to contact him, and then I spoke to him. What happened during the 30 minutes that we spoke, and the images and knowledge that were shared with me, is something I cannot share publicly; however, I can say that it was very difficult to manage the emotions that my connection with him produced in me. I prayed for him, I spoke to him about God, and I tried to guide him to something familiar, someone who might lead the way. After it was over, I ‘heard’ a deep, resounding voice say, “thank you.”
I was not raised to have such experiences. My father was an academic and a skeptic, and although my mother was freer in her world view, she saw me as someone with a big imagination and prone to fantasy. She did not take my paranormal knowledge seriously and refused to allow me to take it seriously, either. Anything that might inflate my ego she was sure to shoot down, and communicating with the dead, in her opinion, was a way of drawing attention to myself. So, I learned to disappear as much as possible and not say or do things that others might find odd, weird, or incomprehensible. I gagged myself and throttled my natural instincts. But one’s true nature has a way of breaking through all resistance.
When I was walking home after contacting my cousin, the skeptic’s voice cropped up; was I making this up? Was what had just happened a delusional, wish-fulfillment fantasy? I decided that, if my details were wrong, if my cousin had NOT died the way I saw that he did, I would give up on the idea that I could talk to the deceased, or receive any information from them. I would, in other words, give into the world’s low opinion of mediums and psychics and continue the not-so-venerable tradition of self hatred.
I recorded everything that came through to me on my phone, so that later I could check my accuracy. When I arrived at home, I cried to my husband. What I had seen and experienced was hard; it had broken my heart. If I had ‘make it up’, there is no explanation for why I would choose something so terrible to invent. The next day, there was more information about my cousin. Everything that my family told me had transpired was exactly what I had seen. I had not been wrong in any of the details save for one, and the one I ‘missed’ had been an auto-correction of previous information that had been true. Of course, some of what came through could not be verified, as it was information that only my cousin could have had. I had seen and sensed what had happened to him; now, the question was, had I helped in any way?
I set up an appointment with a psychic medium that I had met once, long ago, who struck me as compassionate and gifted. Although her student, who did most of the reading, missed many pieces of information and was wrong more often that she was right, the professional medium honed in immediately on what I needed to know. “Yes, you did help him. He thanked you. He has crossed over; he is not here anymore”. There had been no leading questions up to that point. She simply knew. She confirmed what I had seen and sensed, and added a couple of details that explained what I had experienced during meditation that didn’t make sense to me at the time. Some of the ‘hits’ were so specific, not even a super-skeptic could possibly be left unmoved. It was a reading that went on a long time, much longer than planned, because family members kept coming forward. In the end, though, everyone who wanted to say something was able to do so. And although I recognized when one or both of them was filling time or bridging gaps with generic information, there was enough there to convince me that indeed, I was able to reach someone who needed help, and in some way, I was able to guide him.
Does that mean I can call myself a medium? I don’t feel comfortable with that word, but I suppose so. I do what mediums do, and I’ve done it for decades, even when ridiculed or marginalized for it. I have never taken money for my time, although I respect the fact that you can’t work at this for free, once you are open to sharing what you can do with others. I think many people, if not all people, could develop these gifts for themselves; and yet, most people are afraid of this kind of contact, feeling it to be somehow outside the bounds of acceptability. Our culture is fascinated by death and destruction and terrified by the prospect of life as a never-ending reality that changes form, but not essence.
Most people seem to prefer the idea that we die and do nothing but rest for all eternity in some kind of oblivion. I believe that American culture is profoundly fearful of life and mistrustful of its continuation in a new form. We hide and protect ourselves from the grandeur of existence, the riotous explosion of forms radiating energy and consciousness. We distract ourselves, we make ourselves small and unobtrusive, and we hide from our most powerful connections to Spirit. Sometimes, however, Spirit itself doesn’t allow you to hide, to deny, to ridicule or to pretend. Sometimes, Spirit simply refuses to allow you to be anyone else but who you actually are.
And who I am is someone who has allowed herself to speak to and for those who have moved on. I hope to be able to share that talent with others who are open to it and take it seriously. This is not an ego project, something to brag about, or an ability that makes me feel special or superior; quite the opposite. I am terrified and humbled by it, and I work very, very hard not to misinterpret what I pick up. I would appreciate support and genuine interest; my only purpose is to help and to educate, if anyone is willing to listen. My support system is very weak within my family; my husband is always there for me, however, and for that I am eternally grateful.
I am planning to start my own, small business doing readings for donations. If anyone is interested in taking these first, few steps with me, simply send me a message. I can be reached through this site or at kirstenthorne@gmail.com.
May you have a blessed day in the midst of so much uncertainty and chaos.
Death popped into my inbox recently and into my life. Someone wrote to me about losing his father to Alzheimer’s, wondering how–if the brain does not produce consciousness–his loved one could have been so completely lost to the world. Around the same time, I lost my cat Nod. Nod was family. She helped me raise my daughter. We had her for 12.5 years, and she was the soul of the house. My husband stayed with her while the vet injected her with a lethal cocktail. I ran away and cried hysterically in the parking lot. What do Nod’s death and the loss of my reader’s father have in common? One, fundamental, question: where is my loved one now?
Here was my response to his question:
“First of all, my sincere condolences on your loss. Our family lost someone recently, so I understand the tremendous pain and confusion. My grandmother had Alzheimer’s, and I have had multiple surgeries where my consciousness was altered by anesthesia. So, I understand how vital this question is. My grandmother had moments where a different level of awareness would operate, even in the worst of her disease. Suddenly, the light would go on, and she was ‘back’—of course, nothing about her diseased brain had changed; yet, she would go ‘online’, as if plugged in to an entirely different level of consciousness. There were no medical explanations for this. In my own case, of course anesthesia would knock out my everyday, operating consciousness. However, on more than one occasion, I became aware of myself on the operating table and was able to ‘see’ what the surgeons were doing to me. Once, I saw myself with my eyes closed and a mask on my face, even though I had made the anesthesiologist promise me that no mask would be used during surgery (the very idea terrified me). I remember confronting the shocked doctors about that fact. There was no way that I could have known what they were doing via ‘ordinary’ consciousness. So, there are different mediators for consciousness. This higher awareness is like the generator kicking in when the electricity fails. Another common metaphor is the television set or the radio—if the machine is damaged, the signal is scrambled or lost, but the signal does not cease to exist. The brain interprets, filters, and modulates consciousness, but it does not create it. There are many (countless, really) examples of the brain being “offline” and conscious awareness finding another way to make sense of one’s surroundings and circumstances. The lucidity in one’s dying moments that so many nurses and family members report (and I have witnessed) is not due to a sudden recovery of the brain, but to a higher consciousness going online, a switching over to another system. Another example are people with traumatic brain injury who are still able to execute functions that biology would tell you are impossible. I had a friend who had half of her brain removed and lost no significant function—nobody could explain her complete lack of disability given the catastrophic injury she had sustained. There were experiments with mice where so much brain was removed that they should have been utterly non functional, and yet they ran mazes based on memory that should not have been there at all if memory was stored in the brain. So, your father is still conscious, but at a far greater level than he was before. Exactly how this works or what form we take is still part of the great mystery; but everything points to the same conclusion: consciousness is not dependent on or created by our brain. I hope that is of some comfort to you during this difficult time.”
Even if one fully accepts that consciousness continues on, there is nothing that erases the physical pain of losing your loved one. After deaths in my own family, I would feel the loss as actual pain in my body. It would affect my stomach, my back muscles, my energy levels, my ability to sleep, my concentration, and show up as depression and fear. Loss of the physical presence of your loved one is brutal. There is nothing that erases that, not even knowing that their consciousness continues, because we don’t know HOW their consciousness continues; my kitty can’t sleep on my chest anymore, and my reader can’t talk to his father anymore.
Sometimes, the signs that our loved ones leave for us can create even more pain and confusion. Nod has appeared in many, many, ways; she has jumped up on the bed and walked up to me; but when I reach for her, there is nothing but air. She can’t appear in her physical form. It’s as if she were both here and not here; exists and doesn’t, in equal measure. In that sense, she is like Schrodinger’s cat, both alive and dead at the same time. I have felt that acutely since her passing, as I did when my grandmother passed away and when my two friends from Wisconsin killed themselves. They, too, left tantalizing evidence that their energy was still active in the world, but I could not talk to them or reach out to them. If they decided to come to me, they did; but when they decided not to, the loss and emptiness was overwhelming.
A few things are clear from my experiences with the ‘transitioned’ states of my loved ones: I cannot force contact, I cannot predict it, and I cannot control the form that it will take. Contact does not respond to or respect my fantasies, desires, and needs. It happens when it happens, and each time someone makes the effort to reach out to me, I try to respond with gratitude and grace. Lately, however, I’ve been stuck in depression over the magnitude of the losses. Like my reader, I wonder how it is that it is possible for consciousness to continue in the way that I have observed. It feels like energy and memory, sparking reactions and effects in the physical world. And yet, it also serves to remind me that so much of what makes this life meaningful is the sheer physicality of it, the warmth of a hug, the sensation of petting your kitty as she sleeps on your chest, the electricity of a kiss, the joy of shared laughter. I want to use all my five senses to reconnect with my grandmother, my cat, my friends–and yet, I am asked by the Universe to redefine my senses in order to make contact. I am asked to connect on a far more subtle level, one that requires energy, concentration, meditation, and an intense ability to observe and tune in.
This refinement of the senses in order to contact one’s loved ones is not simple, because it can be clouded by grief and depression. It is hard to focus on the signals when you are wracked by sadness and overwhelmed by loss. For all of you who know exactly what I am talking about, let me make one thing very clear: the essence of who our loved ones are, their essential pattern of energy, their personality, does not disappear. However, in order to appreciate it, we can’t be in a state of denial, deep despair, anger, or resentment. We have to accept the physical losses and the radical change in the nature of the relationship. Once we have accepted the loss and let go of the need to hang onto to form, we can clear a channel for communication.
I feel for all of you who have endured a loss. It’s a long process to come to terms with our own emotions. Grief can overwhelm the body and the mind with such force that we wonder if we will ever feel ‘normal’ again. We will. It takes time, patience, and abundant love. I have felt the love and concern of my loved ones from beyond this world. They want to know if I am OK. Well, not yet; but I will be. Death tends to bring up every trauma that we have suffered through, every death to which we had to adjust. It is soul work, and it hurts.
But I will do the work, because love is stronger than any force in the universe. It is from that love that we take these forms in the first place, and it is to that love we will return.
I have been gone for a long time. However, there is a good reason: I have been writing a book on the broader topic of spirituality that includes personal details that I have not revealed on Soulbank. The following is a chapter from that book–I hope you enjoy reading it and will be looking forward to more ‘teaser’ chapters.
I read a book one night: The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself by Michael A. Singer. Mr. Singer believes that anyone can achieve enlightenment at any point by simply allowing reality to exist and flow through us without the mediation of our emotions, thoughts, and judgments. A quote that nicely sums up the main thrust of his book is this one: “Deep inner release is a spiritual path in and of itself. It is the path of nonresistance, the path of acceptance, the path of surrender. It’s about not resisting energies as they pass through you.” (250) I decided that if that is ‘all’ that it took to become enlightened, that I could do it. And so I decided to put into practice everything that Mr. Singer suggested.
The first night after I made this decision, I lay on the floor and cried. Emotions needed to flow through me in order to not control and dominate my life and my decisions. I released the pain of my daughter moving to England and taking away the security blanket for my life, exposing my fears and vulnerabilities. I writhed in anger over the mass shootings of recent weeks, the tragic situation at the Southern border, the fact of the hottest July in recorded history, and the deep, painful divisions that our country is living through. I felt like a bottomless pit of pain, but after awhile, the intensity of what I was feeling subsided, and there was a measure of peace.
The next day, I decided that my emotions, judgments, preferences, desires, and fears would ‘pass through me’ without affecting my clear view of reality: the present moment. I downed a theanine gummy (an amino acid present in green tea that is supposed to help with anxiety and lack of focus) and drank a mug of English Breakfast tea while playing Scrabble with my husband. About 30 minutes later, I started to feel very, very strange. The room lightened and colors intensified, and I experienced the bizarre sensation of my head opening up and allowing my consciousness to expand into the room. I seemed to be losing myself as a body and became more of an awareness. The instant reaction was fear. I didn’t want to ‘go’ where this bizarre process was taking me, because I had not intended to experience cosmic unity today. I wanted to hold on to the everyday, mundane reality that I love so dearly, which included taking my turn at Scrabble; but the Universe was not allowing it.
Panic sets in for me when I cannot find a ‘reason’ for a sensation or an experience, and when I cannot control the sensation or experience. I was not directing this expansion of my mind, nor could I stop it from happening. One hundred milligrams of a theanine gummy intended for children could not possibly be the causative agent for what felt like the beginning of a full-blown psychedelic trip. Instead of allowing panic to take over and determine the course of the next hour or so, I lay down on the sofa and decided not to fight the process, even if it made no sense to my terrified mind.
I cried and shook as waves of emotion and energy passed through me. I do not know what had to be released, for any sense of myself as an independent entity vanished, and I was simply a being experiencing something that I was unable to name, comprehend, or describe. “I” was not there to perform those functions. My job was to stay on the couch and not fight it. Indeed, I doubt there was any way to fight the experience, for ‘it’ was far too powerful to be managed.
After about an hour or so, I was able to sit up. I was woozy and confused by what had transpired, but I felt clear, in the way one feels after crying hard for a long time. I was even able to continue playing Scrabble, losing for the second time that weekend. I would love to say that my experience on the sofa cleansed me of my ego and took me straight to Enlightenment, but I found myself angry and resentful about losing the Scrabble game and realized, yet again, that I had not achieved the goal of life ‘passing through me’, even though I had just experienced life passing through me while pressed into the couch! What happened?
I have written before that I do not believe in a ‘path’ or that such a thing as “Enlightenment” truly exists. In fact, I view the concept as an ideal that can easily turn into a spiritual trap where the ego involves itself and starts charging money for the experience at a nice resort where people can smoke toad venom and enlighten themselves instantly. The idea that anyone could ever become–in Mr. Singer’s words–that “open, that complete, and that whole” seemed impossible, idealistic, and in a sense, a denial of human nature at its most fundamental level. We are material beings safeguarding our survival, and to think that we could ever simply allow reality to pass through us without creating meaning around it is something of a pipe dream. After all, do any of us KNOW anyone who does this? Can any of us say that we have met an Enlightened being? And how do we KNOW that someone has achieved such a state?
Stories about gurus who devolve into licentious and criminal behavior are everywhere. I had friends I respected as spiritual seekers who took the content of their cosmic experiences and used that to open psychedelic retreats and charge significant amounts of money to be ‘guides’ for others’ transformative experiences. So many people I know are trying to earn a living selling Enlightenment to lost and desperate souls looking to be happy. I am deeply wary of anyone who profits from spirituality. I watch myself carefully when I write for an audience, even if that audience is very small. I do not know what Enlightenment is, and I do not preach anything to anyone.
And yet, how do I explain experiences that force me to ‘give up’ and allow emotions and strange energies to run through me? How do I explain the psychedelic or spiritually transformative experience? I do not explain it, because I have come to the conclusion that explaining those moments is fundamentally impossible. The force behind such cosmic connections is so mysterious and ineffable that words, even lots and lots of words, do very little to transmit the meaning of the experience. I do not know if these tsunamis of spiritual openings have anything to do with what we think of as Enlightenment. After all, right afterwards, I experienced anger and fear, irritation and resentment, and I did not get the sense that I was ‘liberated’ from any of those emotions.
I think about the basic teachings of Jesus, and they are pretty basic, indeed: Love one another. Easy to say, very hard to do. I think that, in the end, if you can manage to love yourself and others enough that you don’t cause any damage and can perhaps sow the seeds of compassion for the human situation, then you have accomplished as much as can be expected of yourself and others. I am someone who reacts, holds on, rages, refuses to accept a great many situations I find unjust, and is generally quite emotional. I do not think that I am capable of allowing my emotions, thoughts, and judgments to flow through me without any identification with them.
I am willing to admit that I could be wrong about Enlightenment. Perhaps it is achievable by some people; maybe I know someone who fits the criteria, and I am not aware of it, because that is how unenlightened I actually am. When Mr. Singer states, “You truly can reach a state in which you never have any more stress, tension, or problems for the rest of your life”, I want to throw the book across the room. I do not know if I WANT a life without stress, tension, or problems, because all those undesirable states and situations propel me to take action and figure things out. Without resistance, there is no pushing through to the other side of your limitations. The chick must peck her way out of the egg in order to build the muscles to survive. If she passively accepted her state of being in the egg, she would die.
The struggle for survival shapes and creates us. Of course, sometimes we must give up the fight. Nobody wants to die flailing and screaming, although I suspect I might be one of those who do not ‘go gently into that good night’. I will probably resist until the last moment, when I surrender myself to God with a completely open heart. And perhaps, we are supposed to surrender to God on a regular basis, just to remind ourselves who is in charge. Resistance might be futile, but it is so very human. I am here to be human; I am not God, nor do I aspire to be a spiritual leader.
There is something liberating about stating that you do not have a clue how something works. I do not understand the overall design of the Universe, how consciousness works, what God is, or whether or not enlightenment is possible. What I love is the process, the ‘seeing through a glass darkly’. I suppose I adore the mystery, the fight, the illumination, and the falling into humanity and ignorance, only to climb back up and start the process all over again.
May you enjoy the journey as well, and if you find yourself enlightened along the way, send me an email explaining how you got there and what it feels like. I’m guessing not like I’m feeling now. I want iced cream and a nap.
Dear Readers, (in case any are left)
I apologize for the extensive delay in posting. After I declared that there was no spiritual path, I was not sure how to follow up. After all, the entire point of this blog site was to address issues of a spiritual nature, and Soulbank in many ways WAS an important part of my spiritual path. So why would I declare that all of this was an illusion?
I spent the better part of the last 20 years deeply engaged in questions related to life after death and survival of some form of consciousness, in addition to reading everything that I could get my hands on that was in any way related to paranormal phenomena, mostly what we call spirits or ghosts. What I needed was some kind of direct experience of God, the universe, the Goddess, the cosmos, whatever you wish to call that which transcends human experience and yet somehow produced it. As you all know, I experienced a sudden memory of my death from a heroin overdose as Mary, a foster child who died in the Haight Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco. That memory kicked off a strange series of events in my life. My emotions bubbled to the surface, and I was overwhelmed with traumatic memories from not only Mary’s life, but my current one. I had no idea that the bizarre physical, emotional, and perceptual symptoms were due to a recognized phenomenon: spiritual awakening, or spiritual emergence. It was a total transformation, one that continues on unabated (although not nearly so intense) to this day. I can only describe it as a completely unexpected trip to my subconscious mind, where I met God and assorted spirits and guides. Was it real? It was at least as real as my everyday life. If you wish to call our day-to-day existence an illusion, then I would say it was MORE real than said illusion. It’s very difficult to explain the process to someone who has not experienced it. I was not seeking this out, because I didn’t even know what it was. The process shocked and surprised me precisely because it was utterly unpredictable and was orchestrated by some force far greater than me; it was so awe inspiring and humbling that all I could do was bow down to it and give up.
I still wake up at 3:00 AM feeling like I’m about to crawl out of my skin and overwhelmed with energies that I can barely comprehend. I stretch, jog in place, pray, fall to my knees, and wait for the spiritual episode to run its course. I am something like a conduit now for cosmic energies. I don’t know to what end or for what purpose this is happening to me. It started on June 26th, 2017, and rolls forward.
With that in mind, what I would like to do is revise my statements in the last post. I don’t think that there is no such thing as a spiritual path; I think that most humans cannot understand said path. I certainly do not know why this is happening to me, or where I will go with the cosmic downloads of energy, visions, mood swings, and my new perspectives. All I can say is this: I take more action now for the people I love, and the people I love number far higher than before. I feel intense empathy for the plight of human beings and our planet. I want to do something, no matter how small, to ease our collective sufferings and to celebrate our accomplishments and our innate beauty and promise. I am showing up and ready to work for something better. I want to create small spaces for peace and beauty that perhaps, one day, will grow larger and affect more and more of us.
I have become a beginner and am starting over. The journey begins with the small hope that you are all still out there, that you care, that you want to help me raise the collective vibration; I still love to talk to ghosts and read about where memories are stored in the brain, and figure out how time was created, and whether or not space actually exists; I remain curious, dazzled by life, and ready to research any fascinating topic. The difference is, I no longer feel agonized in the process, because I found out that I’m eternal and the Universe loves me. Even if that statement makes you want to roll your eyes, consider that it might possibly be true. I can’t convince you of that; all I can do is ask that you go find the way–however you choose to do it–to answer the question yourself.
This site is no longer about proving anything to anyone; it’s about creating a community of curious seekers and adventurers who are dedicated to enjoying this human experience. Much love to you all,
I dread the ‘reveal’, the ‘outing’, of Kirsten as Paranormal Investigator; or, God forbid, Ghost Hunter. This happens, eventually, at work or at church, which is part of the reason I have joined and abandoned eight churches in five years. The voice changes, lowers: “so . . . ” they say, as if they were about to ask me about a sordid affair I’m having, or query me regarding illicit drug use, or any number of other unsavory possibilities, “I hear you . . . hunt ghosts”. Then they giggle, or raise their eyebrows, cock their heads, and smile in that particular way that tells me that they are thrilled that they have just discovered that I am mad or stupid. They are normal in comparison; they are infinitely stable, acceptable, and logical when standing next to a GHOST HUNTER. Then come the questions. I feel heavy, trapped, and exhausted by this point, because I know exactly how the conversation is going to go. I usually fall into a chair and prepare myself for the stereotypes, the ignorance, and the criticism that is about to come my way. Yes, I could simply refuse to discuss this topic with people and walk away; but deep in my heart, I still think that I have the opportunity to change hearts and minds. And no, it doesn’t usually happen; but hope springs eternal. So, without further delay, here are the Top Three Most Annoying Questions for the Paranormal Investigator:
1. So you believe in ghosts???
No. I don’t believe in them. I don’t believe in you, either. I see you and am talking to you, but I don’t BELIEVE in you. You are not God or Jesus or Buddha. I am interacting with you. Therefore, I ascribe some reality to you. You seem rather material and solid, and you are asking questions that I can hear, and I am responding to you, so you exist–materially and spiritually. Now, for that word, “ghost”, let’s drop that already, OK? Nobody knows what a ghost is. All we can do is describe what we think it is, but since we are talking about a non-material entity that manifests itself in a variety of mysterious ways in this visible universe, let’s stop pretending that we know its identity and purpose. Oh, and if you’re envisioning Caspar floating in a sheet, can we just end this miserable conversation right now???
2. You’re so smart; why do you believe this stuff is real?
Well . . . thank you for the compliment. I am, like, SO SMART. So to prove that to you, let’s deconstruct your assumptions, turn them on their head, and force YOU to define reality. I already discussed the ‘believe in’ issue. Let’s move on to ‘this stuff’: what you mean by this is ANYTHING that you don’t understand or that you can’t sense. If your definition of reality is challenged by what others have discovered, or simply by other people’s observations and experiences that point to something beyond the everyday, ordinary reality of collective consciousness, then you decide to attack someone else’s cosmovision. In other words, if you don’t perceive it or understand it, it doesn’t exist. Let’s talk about the word “real”: this is one of those words like ‘love’ or ‘ghosts’ that simply can’t be defined in a simple, straightforward way. What you REALLY mean by this word is this: real is what is real to me, to my community, to my colleagues, to my family, and is supported by my values, ideologies, politics, beliefs, and stereotypes. If what you experience falls outside of what my community values, or what makes me comfortable, or what my church says, or what my chem professor told me, in other words, if YOUR experience causes me discomfort because it falls outside of what I am willing to accept in my life, I will turn on you and label you delusional or strange. The labels keep you at a distance and allow me to continue to live in my little bubble.
3. Can I go with you on an investigation?
No.
Truth is, most people who ask insulting questions of a paranormal researcher are, deep down, fascinated by the varieties of anomalous consciousness (ghosts). They want to know more, but they’re afraid. I understand that. It’s wise to be afraid. At some point, they admit that they are scared of what I do. So I ask them: “What are you scared of?” The answer is, usually, “I’m afraid that ghosts are real”.
That’s where the conversation can start. Yes, my dear, ghosts are real. Now please stop calling them that.
Anyone who meditates on a regular basis knows that some strange material can float to the surface of our minds. I used to dismiss such information as a product of random, subconscious associations, but now I pay attention. I realized that what I used to ignore was teaching that I didn’t want and lessons that contradicted what I desired to believe. It seems, sadly enough, that I don’t grow as a human being unless I suffer the pain of reality contradicting my illusions.
I was far away in space during a meditation where I quickly vanished as a ‘person’. I found myself in an odd, geometric void where there were several points displayed in front of ‘me’, or the observer. A master teacher was explaining that the points represented versions of the self. During our lifetimes, we create multiple copies of the true Self, typically by assigning them roles to play. There is the self as mother, teacher, wife, daughter, and so forth. We come to identify with those roles, and therein lies the pain and suffering that so many of us experience when we realize that the roles we play are primarily determined by our culture, family, country of origin, media, and other forces that act upon us in hidden ways. The ‘false selves’ are only painful when they separate from the true Self and take on a life of their own, divorced from a higher, ultimate reality (some call this God, the Divine, the Field, or the Theory of Everything). When the role-identified ego fragments view themselves as independent, the emotional pain grows and intensifies every time we fail to meet the ego’s standards, which are tied to our culture’s definition of success. We become bad mothers, poor teachers, disappointing wives, or bankrupted entrepreneurs. There are an infinite variety of ways we ‘fail’ in our culture: we are old, fat, unattractive, and unsuccessful. Every negative judgment we struggle with is a result of identifying with a false construct of the self that has broken off from the True Self and become autonomous.
Our very culture, the medium in which we live and act, promotes the fragmentation of the self. If we are ‘unsuccessful’ at any of the roles assigned to us, then we will spend money to ‘fix’ the problem that our society created for us. We chase solutions to invented problems, and the people responsible for selling us said ‘solutions’ become rich and powerful at our expense. To some extent, we are all responsible for selling ourselves and others the lies of our culture: how many times have we promoted a damaging, false view of who we are ‘supposed’ to be that is in service to a diseased, dominant culture? If we think that we are substandard employees, daughters, sons, parents, citizens, and so on, we exist in a perpetual state of self loathing and criticism, making us far less likely to pursue avenues of change in our environment, politics, educational system, or social networks. How do you keep the population from rebelling or protesting? Make them believe that they are not good enough to try. I have classrooms filled with students who believe that there is no point in attempting change of any kind. They passively accept the version of themselves that their communities and cultures promote, consciously or otherwise.
While I floated in this space of false selves, I decided that I must be ‘the Observer’ who understood the lessons; the student, if you will. But the Voice, very gently, asked me: “Who observes the observer?” This sounded to me like one of those impossible Zen scenarios where there is, for all intents and purposes, no answer. I was then led to, and ‘infused’ with, the Observer of the observer, and discovered that it was God; but God was me. I was God. Of course, this upset the little ‘me’, who considered this blasphemy. The little observer started protesting that she was a miserable sinner, far from God, and that this truth that I was experiencing could not be true (a tautology if there ever was one). This was now the second time that I have been shown that the true self is God. After all, God experiences herself/themselves (no pronoun works here) in an infinite variety of forms and beings, and I am one of those beings whose true identity is with God.
If we were all to believe this, instead of the lies and distortions that we DO believe, how would the world change? Indeed, the world as we know it would look utterly different (to be clear, I am not talking about the ego delusion that one is God; that’s entirely another problem. I am talking about the actual, true, real Self through which God experiences creation). How beautiful our experience on Earth would be if everyone followed the path of the true Self. It’s too painful to see how far we are from that vision. Perhaps the whole point of life on Earth is to overcome the vast distance between our repressive cultures/constructed selves and our true nature. We come back here again and again, learning and remembering these lessons in various ways, in differing circumstances. Pain and suffering are the most effective teachers when we are ready to accept the falling away of the myriad, scattered, ego selves.
This is why we pray, why we meditate, why we alter our consciousness: to get closer to our true identity and to realize that fundamental change is possible. To make that change requires those little selves floating out there in space to self destruct under the weight of their false values and internal contradictions. Losing those fragments hurts. Those painful identities don’t seem to actually ‘die’: they become ghosts and haunt our collective consciousness forever and ever. But they don’t have to define me anymore, or crush me under the weight of their unprocessed emotion. I choose to send them to the far corners of the Earth, where they can rattle their chains, moan and lament, and scare the paranormal investigators and urban explorers. For that is where they belong, after all: in the agonized and remote regions of our worst fears.
I will keep moving towards the Light, which we all need to do long before we die.
The Soul Bank: Stories, Research, Essays, (B)Logs 