Other Lives

        Have you ever felt like you’ve known someone before—in another life you lived before you were born as the person you are now? Ann, the protagonist in my novel Echoes of the Moon, has that experience—and I have, too. In fact, the people I felt that way about turned out to be some of the most important ones in my life.

        The first one that comes to mind is a childhood friend I met when I was 9 or 10. She seemed so familiar right from the start—I just felt like I already knew her. And she understood me so implicitly; we could laugh together, cry together, share secrets and behave outrageously together. Even before I was old enough to consider a belief in reincarnation, I knew we had known each other before. Our friendship ended up lasting for over 20 years. And just recently we’ve found each other again!

        Even more uncanny was the experience I had with a man I fell in love with in my mid-20’s. Powerfully drawn to each other from the start, we spent an enormous amount of time together; we always had so much to talk about. And there really was genuine love between us. But he wasn’t able to give me the romantic relationship I wanted. One night, as I was lamenting once again over this man I couldn’t have, an unexpected, intense flash of knowing came to me. I realized that we had loved each other long before we had ever met in this life; I could sense the numerous lives we had been through together. Our purpose, I knew, had been to explore all the different configurations of love—husband and wife, brother and sister, parent and child, friend and friend. And I realized that, in this life, we were simply experiencing another configuration. This didn’t provide an instant solution for my pain, by any means. But I think it really did help me move on. A few years later, I met a man who possessed some of the same qualities I had loved in this one—plus more. And I ended up marrying him.

        I guess it isn’t surprising that my most intense reincarnational experience happened with my husband-to-be. The story of how we met, far from our homes in different parts of the US, is amazing enough. And then there’s the flash of intuition that impelled him to approach me on the night we met. (More on all that in a future entry.) Suffice it to say, our relationship was powerful from the start; just a few hours after we met, the nearness of him already seemed so familiar. Our minds just seemed to spark and dance together when we talked. And by the second night, I knew I was falling in love with him.

        A few months later, as we were chatting on the phone, I admitted I had the feeling that I’d known him before. He said that he’d had the same feeling about me. And then I had a sudden flash of another life where we had been together. I actually saw what I had looked like! I knew that I had been his protector and helpmate that time, and that one of his reasons for coming into my present life was to return the favor. I knew, too, that we had acted out this pattern through a series of lives, taking turns taking care of each other. As I began to tell him all that, he floored me by filling in pieces of the story before I could say them, even describing the physical appearance I had seen in my mind! Incredible! I’d already had an idea that our relationship would be extraordinary, but that conversation convinced me even more. Now, twenty-five years later, we’re still together, and we’re still the kind of couple that people notice because we seem unusually close. Funny how that turned out …

        Do I really believe that I knew these people in other lives? Yes, I think I did. I suspect that all of us live many lives in this vast, richly creative Universe of ours—and that, if we open our minds, we can discern pieces of our own amazing histories. We would probably discover that we’re all much more deeply connected than we thought.

    

Ghost in the Closet

        As children, most of us were probably frightened, at one time or another, of the monster lurking under the bed or in the closet. I never dreamed that, as a college student, I would be witness to a string of eerie paranormal disturbances, some of which really did emanate from a bedroom closet.

        As I’ve mentioned before, these strange events took place in the home of one of my friends. The room where the disturbances occurred did have a bit of a history; an older family member had been convinced, years before, that there was a presence in the room. She had never felt at ease there. Years later, when my friend “inherited” the room, and that presence began to make itself very strongly known, I happened to be one of those who experienced it. I heard the eerie rapping on the walls—which would occur in different places in the room—sometimes very close to where one of us was sitting, and sometimes in response to what that person had said. I felt the pervasive, unnatural cold that would settle on our clothes and skin. And I heard the distinct sounds of thumping and banging that sometimes came from the closet. Needless to say, everyone wanted to stay away from that closet—and my friend decided she felt safer with a tall, heavy bureau wedged against the closet door. But: when items began disappearing from all over the house, she developed a sinking feeling about where they might be. And I was with her on two of the occasions when she finally opened the closet.

        I’ll never forget the chilling sense of shock I felt over what we found in the closet. On both occasions, the missing items from the house were indeed there—plus some other things that no one had realized were missing. We found a magazine, a ticket stub, drawings, photos, plaques, and other items, intermixed with the old clothing and books stored in the closet. One item we found, a magazine illustration, didn’t belong to any of us; we never did figure out where it came from. A couple of the paper items we found were actually crumpled. And, on the third occasion when the closet was opened, the items we had so carefully placed on the shelf had been tossed onto the floor of the closet. Very disquieting.

        Was all of this a hoax, or some crazy practical joke? I really don’t think so. I knew everyone who lived in that house; my friend and her brother were genuinely terrified about what was happening there, and I can’t imagine either of them carrying on a hoax that ended up lasting for over a year and a half. Their mother, a no-nonsense sort of woman, certainly wouldn’t have done it. And the other person in the house was too ill to be physically capable of it.

        I also can’t find a rational explanation for the entire range of strange occurrences that took place in that house. Even if some of it was hysteria or exaggeration or a mistake, that certainly wouldn’t explain everything. And: having been there to witness these things first-hand—I could feel, on a deep level, that I was in the midst of something totally beyond normal comprehension. My view of reality was never the same after that.

        I’ve come to believe that our everyday world exists side-by-side with other realities that are largely beyond our perception—and that energies from those unseen realities occasionally seep into our familiar world, producing strange phenomena that we can’t explain. Maybe, sometimes, something in our own consciousness attracts or feeds or stirs these energies; I wondered about that in the case of my friend, who was a brazen experimenter in the paranormal. The presence in her home became much more disruptive after her explorations began. I wonder, too, whether the spirits of deceased people don’t always entirely leave our world, hovering between the seen and unseen, with their presence echoing back to us in what we call “hauntings”. Maybe this was true of the presence in my friend’s house, who apparently lingered for decades before the really severe disturbances began. Or maybe this “presence” was more a trace, an impression of a deceased person’s energy that was left behind. So many intriguing possibilities …

        What do you think?