Mastering the Mind

     In his book The Art of Life, Ernest Holmes said: "You must become the master of your own thinking. This is the only way you will realize freedom and joy." I really do believe this is true. And I've been thinking a lot about how to become the master of my thinking.
     We Americans, it seems, are constantly bombarded with suggestions from advertisers and the news media: "buy this," "do that," "eat this," "fear that." I think we're also influenced by the ideas and attitudes of the people around us. Conventional religion blasts us with messages about what we should believe and how we should think. And then there are the messages we hear in our own heads—messages that probably didn't come from us to start with, but came from the people around us when we were young. "You are this," "You’ll never be that," "This is what you can expect from life." Becoming the master of one's thinking seems like a difficult task indeed.
     But I believe we really can liberate ourselves from any idea that doesn't serve us. This requires practice, focus, and determination—but thoughts can be changed. We are free to examine every idea for its validity, and for its value in serving the best in us. Even if someone has been suggesting, for our entire lives, that a certain idea is the right way or the only way to think, we are still at liberty to discard that idea. And then we get to practice and reinforce a better idea in its place, until it becomes a part of us. I've started working on this myself, and I've had a bit of success. For the sake of having greater freedom and joy, I think it’s definitely worth the effort!

                                    Author Ann Young
                      Fantasy, Paranormal Fiction ... and Fact
                            www.annyoungparanormal.com

Ghost Encounters: Ghastly Coldness

I’ll never forget the first time I experienced that sudden, unnatural coldness that’s described so often in ghost stories. I don’t profess to understand why these sudden drops in temperature happen, but I can tell you that they really do occur.

During my college years, I witnessed some incredible haunting phenomena in a friend’s house. I saw and heard things I hadn’t thought possible—such as rapping on the (second-story) walls, objects moving by themselves, a stereo turning on and off when no one was near it, and more. My friend’s bedroom was the place where most of the disturbances occurred.

For some reason, I went into the room alone one day, something I didn’t usually do. Almost immediately, an eerie, instantaneous chill settled on my clothes and skin; I had never felt anything like it. It was like being chilled by a sudden, frigid blast of air, but there was no blast. Then, before I could even think, a wordless terror surged up; the sour taste of bile shot up into my throat, and I had to get out of there. I remember gulping down ginger ale afterward, trying to kill the awful taste, as I struggled to unparalyze my mind and figure out what had happened.

I hadn’t seen or heard anything bizarre this time; that eerie cold was the only thing. But I realized that a part of me much deeper than the conscious part had reacted to that cold with a kind of primal terror—as if, perhaps, I was engaging with the unseen presence in the room on a level of consciousness primarily hidden to me. A rather chilling idea.

You might be wondering if I ever went back into the room after that. In fact, I did, a number of times. And the manifestations would actually escalate over the next year and a half. Why did I keep going back? As terrified as I was, I felt totally fascinated by what was happening in that house.

I had always been a staunch pragmatist who didn’t believe in anything intangible. But now I was witnessing so many strange things that hinted at other levels of reality and consciousness, other forms of existence. I just had to experience as much as I could. Even after the house was sold, and I ended my association with the friend who had lived there, I had to continue exploring, seeking experiences, and delving into the mysteries of the paranormal. Hauntings, psychic phenomena, astral projection, spiritual healing, reincarnation, Wicca—I had to learn about them all.

I’ve come to believe that some of the deepest mysteries really do exist side-by-side with our ordinary world—and that everyday reality is just the merest sliver of what our incredible, multidimensional Universe holds. Those of us who seek to explore these things will certainly experience the extraordinary. I know, because it's happened to me.

What do you think?

Paranormal Witness: Trumbull County UFO

Enjoy the Paranormal Day Party!

May 3, 2016 

http://www.hauntjaunts.net/paranormal-day-party-invite/

I saw an intriguing account on “Paranormal Witness” called Trumbull County UFO—the story of a mass UFO sighting involving both private citizens and police personnel from multiple jurisdictions. I’m always especially interested in UFO sightings reported by police; police officers are trained observers, after all. And in my mind, the police are less likely to perpetrate a hoax. When multiple law enforcement personnel are involved, that really gets my attention.

         This particular story is fascinating, too, because it includes many of the actual communications from that night, retrieved from the Police Archive. It was amazing to hear the reactions of these seasoned, no-nonsense officers as they began to realize they were dealing with something they couldn’t explain.

         The Trumbull County incident took place in Ohio on December 14, 1994. It all began when a call came in to Dispatcher Roy Anne Rudolph of the Liberty Township Police Department. A man reported seeing some type of aircraft angling downward in the sky, with flames trailing from behind. Roy Anne’s first thought was that this could be a plane in distress. But other calls soon followed, with citizens reporting lights in the sky that didn’t appear to be any kind of plane—they hovered without noise, were strangely colored, and one of the callers again saw fire coming out the back. A call even came in from the media, who had received a report of their own.

         In the actual conversation between Roy Anne and the media, she could be heard making jokes, trying to laugh off the sightings with wry good nature. But because of the number of calls, she finally decided to ask an officer to investigate. She expected that he would probably go there and find nothing, laying the matter to rest. Still, she didn’t want to send a message about a possible UFO over the radio, so she used her own phone to call Sergeant Toby Meloro. He went to the site to investigate.

         As Meloro approached the area, a man, obviously frightened, flagged him down, insisting he had seen “a huge light in the sky” over his house. Meloro drove on a little further, and to his amazement, he did see a bright light, a red pulsating light, and a large, indeterminate object. “Maybe it’s a UFO,” he said over the radio to dispatcher Roy Anne, who listened in disbelief—and then sheepishly called the nearby airbase to check on the sightings. She was told they were seeing nothing on radar within a “60-mile diameter of Youngstown—nothing out there.” Meloro, still onsite, drove on a little further toward the bright light. And then his car just stopped; he couldn’t restart it. His portable radio went dead as well. Now he was alone and cut off from communication with Liberty.

         While Roy Anne tried unsuccessfully to reach Meloro, his disabled police car—with him still inside—was hit by “a huge light”. He climbed out with his hand on his pistol. He could see, hovering above the tree line on a double, wooded lot, a huge object enveloped in blinding light. “The light was so intense that I had to shield my eyes,” he said. “It was almost like looking at the sun.” The object was about the size of a football field, and there seemed to be a “structure there”, but he couldn’t distinguish what. The object made no sound as it hovered. And then it began to move off. Now Meloro’s car restarted, and he heard the radio come back on. Finally in contact with Roy Anne again, he said he needed a few minutes to gather his thoughts. And he sat, trying to make sense of what he had just seen.

         He didn’t want to make a report about seeing a UFO; “they’ll think I’m crazy." So he told Roy Anne over the phone, not the radio. And then the other reports flooded in. Hubbard and Hartford Townships called in. “Every agency in the county’s got a visual on it, that I can hear,” someone reported. “Multiple departments have sightings,” another voice said. Officers in various locations could be heard pursuing the object, trying to catch up to it. Even “sergeants and seasoned veterans” were excited, Roy Anne said. Toby Meloro, still onsite in his car, was hearing all this. So, with police lights blazing and sirens screaming, he took off after the object.

         One officer in Brookfield climbed up an old radio tower to observe the strange sight in the sky. There were “four discernible colors,” he said: red, yellow, green, and blue. “Please be a plane, please. I ain’t ready for this,” he said.

         At Toby Meloro’s request, Roy Anne called the airbase a second time, reporting multiple sightings; again she was told they were seeing nothing on radar. By this time, she wanted to see the strange object for herself. One of the officers at Liberty, going against policy, did take her out to the site. Gaping at the strange object through a set of binoculars, Roy Anne saw “something hanging from the bottom, with a red light on it.” The object was “just still”, and she wondered, “Why am I not hearing it?” Then it just shot away, still without sound.

         Sergeant Meloro, meanwhile, had continued to chase the object in his police car. But he never did catch up to it. He felt angry, he said, because he really wanted to catch it and see what it was. The strange events of this night would leave a lasting impression on him—and on Roy Anne Rudolph as well.

         “I get teased endlessly,” she said in the Paranormal Witness account. “Other officers in this get teased endlessly.” She wanted to believe that what she saw was related to the airbase. “But it was like nothing I’d ever seen or experienced.”

         “Everybody denied knowing or seeing anything,” Toby Meloro said. “But I felt there was nothing wrong with what happened. This was something unexplained that happened in the town I live in.” He had never believed in UFO’s, but he felt unquestionably certain that what he saw that night wasn’t any kind of familiar object in the sky. He did contact NASA and the military after the incident, but they claimed to have no knowledge of it. The Trumbull County sightings still remain unexplained.

         An intriguing story. I’ve never sighted a UFO myself, and I’m not convinced about extraterrestrials. But: I’ve heard a couple of personal accounts that really caught my attention. Two people who didn’t even know each other told me eerily similar stories about a strange, silent object hovering above the trees near their homes—in two different states. And I’ve heard other stories, like the one from Trumbull County, that seem to have a strong validity to them. My feeling is that something outside the ordinary really is happening in some of these cases; I think these people really are seeing something that is beyond our familiar reality. The Universe is such a vast place—filled, some say, with a multitude of realities. Who’s to say that these strange sights in the sky aren’t sometimes a glimpse of a different reality that has somehow intersected with ours?

       What do you think?

"Celebrity Ghost Stories": Dee Wallace and Della Reese

Enjoy the Paranormal Day Party!

May 3, 2016 

http://www.hauntjaunts.net/paranormal-day-party-invite/

        As always, I’ve been browsing the paranormal shows on TV, in search of true-life ghost encounters that seem substantial and honest. I recently saw two accounts on “Celebrity Ghost Stories” that really caught my attention: the stories of Dee Wallace and Della Reese. As I watched their stories—which they recounted with such honesty and emotion—I was reminded that, in moments of need, a strong bond of love between people really can reach across the boundary between life and death.

         Actress Dee Wallace, who has been in 75 movies (including “The Howling” and “E. T.”), told of a paranormal experience involving her father. Growing up in Kansas City, Kansas in a “financially challenged” family, Dee Wallace had a deep, loving bond with her father. He would call her “button nose” and “my bright light”, and they shared moments of incredible closeness. But there was also a painful side to their relationship; he was an alcoholic who was never quite able to recover, and she never knew when he was going to be drunk. He had served in the Red Cross during World War II, and had witnessed a great deal of tragedy; according to her mother, he was never the same after that.

         When Dee was a teenager, her mother finally separated from her father, and she took Dee to visit him on Christmas Eve. Dee described how he seemed so embarrassed during that visit. And then, that February, she got the news: her father had committed suicide. He had shot himself in the head.

         That night, grieving alone in her room, she blamed herself for not doing more to help her father. “Maybe if I had loved him just a little bit more …” Later, while she was lying in bed, she was startled by a bright light that appeared in her mirror. Eventually it moved out of the mirror and “hovered into the middle of the room”. And she heard her father’s voice: “Hi, button nose. It’s daddy.”

         He told her he knew she would be blaming herself—and he reassured her that his death was not her fault. Then he told her he loved her. She was profoundly moved by his words of comfort; she thanked him, and told him she loved him, too. Then the bright light moved back into the mirror and faded away. Years later, Dee Wallace still thought of this visit as a very special gift from her father. And she felt “forever grateful that this last moment with him was with his light, not his darkness.”

         Singer and actress Della Reese described her own true-life encounter with a parent who had died—her mother. The “Touched By An Angel” star told the story of a house she once bought, a house with a swimming pool where her daughter could play. About a month after they moved in, the two of them were enjoying the pool together. The air was cold, and Della told her daughter to stay in the pool while she went inside to get some towels. Feeling chilled herself, Della dashed toward the patio doors leading into the house—not realizing that her daughter had closed the doors. Della crashed through the glass, and fell into the jagged pieces that had showered onto the floor.

         Terrified and bleeding, Della couldn’t get her footing on the bloody glass, and she cut herself even more as she tried to struggle up onto her feet. Her daughter ran to get their neighbor, a doctor. Terrified that she would bleed to death before help could come, Della prayed for someone to help her. And then she felt strong arms slowly pulling her upright; she got onto her feet and went to one of the patio chairs, sinking into it. A familiar fragrance came to her—cold cream and vanilla, her mother’s scent—even though her mother had been dead for ten years. Then Della heard her mother’s voice gently telling her that she was going to be okay.

         Della’s neighbor did arrive, and he summoned an ambulance that took her to the hospital. As she lay on a gurney with two doctors standing over her, she heard one of them say that he wasn’t sure they could get blood into her quickly enough to save her. Again, she felt terrified she would die—and again the scent and the comforting presence of her mother came, telling her she would be okay. Her mother stayed with her until after the blood transfusions began. And—in spite of having lost 7 pints of blood, and needing 1,000 stitches to close her wounds—Della Reese did survive. She had no doubt it was the presence of her mother that had saved her.

         Two amazing stories. And I’ve heard similar ones from people who were visited by a deceased loved one in a moment of crisis. I think all of these stories serve to demonstrate the power of love between people: a power that can reach out, even across the boundary between life and death, to bring comfort when it’s needed. Just one more of the wondrous aspects of our existence in this remarkable Universe.

Ann Young

Author—Fantasy, Mysticism, Paranormal Fiction … and Fact

www.annyoungfiction.com

When A Ghostly Visitor Comes To Call

         Ghostly visitors can appear in such a variety of forms: dark or light, as sparkles or flashes, as silhouettes or solid-appearing figures. I’ve seen all of these. I think there are many reasons why they appear in so many different ways, with most of the reasons having to do with the visitor itself—its energy, intention, focus. But I think there’s another factor, too.

         I believe that the emotions and attitude of the viewer can strongly affect what he or she sees when there’s a spirit afoot. I remember an incident that happened in the home of my friend, the place where I first encountered the paranormal.

         I wasn’t there myself for this particular event, but my friend told me about the night when an apparition manifested on a poster in her bedroom. Several members of the family witnessed this, and they all agreed that a face appeared on the poster. But they didn’t all see the same thing.

         If I remember correctly, one saw a demonic face, one a more God-like face, and my friend saw someone else completely. That has always intrigued me. My feeling is that each person, through the filter of their own attitude and emotions, saw their own interpretation of the restless spirit that was haunting the house. Maybe, when attitudes are strong and emotions are especially high, the witnesses aren’t going to be able to truly understand what’s manifesting. An encounter with the paranormal, after all, can cause such intense reactions in people—particularly fear. And do those strong reactions make it even harder for us to understand these things that are outside our normal comprehension to begin with? It seems very possible.

         Another interesting thing I’ve discovered is that ghostly visitors are not always the spirits of deceased people; they can actually be the astral bodies of living persons—or phantasms of the living called thought-forms. I know this because I’ve seen them, and recognized some of them as people I knew!

         Either intentionally or inadvertently, the astral body of a living person can become separated from the physical, sometimes traveling a great distance from the body—and sometimes being visible to psychically sensitive people. In my experience, these visitors usually appeared as filmy, insubstantial figures of themselves, fairly recognizable, and mostly luminous white. Sometimes I’ve been startled by them, but rarely frightened. (For more about astral projection, read my blog entry “Traveling Without the Body” at http://annyoungfiction.blogspot.com/2012/06/traveling-without-body.html).

         It’s also possible for a living person—again, sometimes intentionally, sometimes not—to project a thought-form in his or her own image. This can happen when a person merely thinks about being in a certain place, or strongly wants to be there. This kind of visitor has no consciousness of its own, but can appear very distinct and solid.

         I’ve seen some of these over the years—mostly figures of people I didn’t recognize—and they looked substantial enough to really startle me. Since they were pretty static, without movement, and didn’t seem to have a conscious energy, my theory is that they were inadvertently projected thought-forms that I just happened to pick up on. There were some times when they appeared solid but also dark and indistinct, like they were standing in a shadow. That was a little unnerving, I’ll admit! In those cases, I closed my energy to them as best I could.

         The conclusion I draw from these experiences, and many others: when a ghostly visitor comes to call, we aren’t always going to be able to understand exactly what we’re seeing; we might not even be able to tell whether we’re seeing the figure of someone living or dead. Intuition, in my opinion, is the best guide in dealing with a spirit visitor. I never disregard any feeling of fear; it could be just an overreaction, but then again, it might be alerting me to be cautious. And in situations where I don’t feel threatened, I make an effort to remember to put out a prayer or blessing for my visitor. Who knows—that just might be what it needs most …

         What do you think?

Ann Young

Author--Fantasy, Mysticism, Paranormal Fiction ... and Fact

               www.annyoungfiction.com              

Paranormal Witness—"The Real Haunting in Connecticut”

         I recently saw an episode of “Paranormal Witness” that really caught my attention. It was called “The Real Haunting in Connecticut”, and it told the story of a rather dark, malicious haunting experienced by the Snedeker family. Their account—unlike many I’ve seen—seemed credible and solid. And their story got me to wondering exactly why some people experience this kind of malignant haunting.
         The problem began after the Snedekers moved into a colonial house near Hartford, Connecticut—a house that had previously been a funeral home, and still had mortuary equipment in the basement. The family’s eldest son, 13-year old Phillip, had been diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and they rented the house to be close to his cancer treatment center. Carmen, the mother of the family, didn’t really want them to stay in this house; but finding a place to live hadn’t been easy, and she and her husband felt like they didn’t have much choice. So Carmen blocked off the embalming room in the basement, and put Phillip’s bedroom down there so that he could be close to a bathroom when he needed it.
         According to the show, Phillip was awakened by someone calling his name on his very first night in the house, and he felt immediately convinced that the house was evil; he didn’t want the family to stay there. But they did.
         He would begin “seeing things” as well as hearing voices; he and his two brothers would also discover, as they explored the area under the counters in the basement, a sticky substance on the walls and floor that looked like blood. Phillip and his middle brother Brad would also see four cloaked apparitions lurking in a corner in the basement—but Carmen would find no intruders when she went searching. All four of the Snedeker children were becoming terrified to be in the house, but Carmen didn’t believe in ghosts, and she scolded Phillip for scaring the others.
         As the family continued to live in the house, Phillip became increasingly sullen, and he complained of hearing voices calling him every night. After the family had been there for about a year, he moved his bedroom into the embalming room—and he began to change even more. He started writing obsessively in a journal, and he became aggressive and angry, often fist-fighting with his brother Brad.
         And then, one day when she was cleaning his room, his older cousin Tammy would chillingly discover what he had been recording in his journal: dark, violent drawings, and notes about killing, murder, and death. Strangely, even though Phillip was dyslexic and had trouble writing, the words were perfectly written—because, he said, “the man had helped him.” Carmen would also discover that her son had been cutting himself on his arms. “Something was telling me to do it,” he said.
         The problems involving Phillip finally reached a peak when his cousin Tammy stepped in between him and Brad to break up yet another fight. Phillip ran into her room and began tearing it up—and then shoved her across the room with a strength that seemed impossible for a boy who had been so ill. After that, the haunting phenomena began for Tammy; unseen hands pulled her covers down during the night, and also tugged at her bra and went up her shirt.
         Carmen, concerned for the safety of all the children in the house, felt that something had to be done. She still didn’t believe that anything paranormal was happening, and she felt that Phillip was somehow responsible for all the mischief. So: she talked to his doctor about the disturbing behavior she’d been seeing. The doctor felt that Phillip could be schizophrenic and should be committed. So Carmen allowed her son to be taken away. At the hospital he delivered a chilling message to his mother: “Now that I’m gone, they’re gonna come after you.”
         And she did become the next target for the haunting. While she was taking a shower, the shower curtain wrapped tightly around her face and body, cutting off her breath; Tammy intervened, tearing a hole in the curtain so that Carmen could breathe. And then things escalated for Tammy as well; again, her bedcovers were tugged, and later, unseen hands groped at her. She described the “growling, coldness, and smell” of the unseen presence as it came for her. And she, along with Carmen, watched in terror as a rosary around Tammy’s neck levitated and then crashed to the floor. Finally Carmen called the church for help, and an exorcism was performed on the house.
         The account on “Paranormal Witness” didn’t indicate whether the exorcism was successful. The family moved out of the house in October 1999, and Carmen had her son released from the hospital. The show didn’t reveal how he fared after he returned home. But, sadly, his cancer returned 24 years after he first became ill. He passed away in January 2012 at the age of 38.
         Phillip did record an interview before his death, admitting that he had been “more fascinated than frightened” of “the things that were in the basement.” And, rather chillingly, he described how evil can “find its way into the little nooks and crannies in your life, and begin to manipulate you …”
         If this story really is true, it raises some interesting questions. It seems there were probably several angry, manipulative presences lingering in the house; so, would there have been problems for anyone who moved in, or was there something about this family that made them especially susceptible? My feeling is that there probably would have been some amount of strange activity for whoever lived there, but—maybe the Snedekers really were particularly vulnerable.
         Their situation was a stressful one; Phillip had cancer, devastating news for any family. They’d had to leave their home in upstate New York for an unwelcoming house in an unfamiliar city—without their father, who stayed behind to continue working. Did all of this make the family more vulnerable to the energies in the house? And was Phillip—in his weakened physical and mental state, and with his admitted fascination for the “things in the basement”—was he the most susceptible of all? It seems very possible.
         I also wonder exactly why these dark, angry presences became trapped in the house. Were they the spirits of deceased people who had been traumatized by seeing their bodies being processed by the funeral home? Had they not realized they were dead, or not wanted to? Or—were these souls somehow traumatized by the way their bodies were handled? Was there some mistreatment? So many possibilities …
         What do you think?

      Sources: “Paranormal Witness”, Season 2, Episode 208: “The Real Haunting in Connecticut”     http://www.syfy.com/paranormalwitness/episodes/season/2/episode/208/the_real_haunting_in_connecticut

Ann Young

Author—Fantasy, Mysticism, Paranormal Fiction … and Fact

www.annyoungfiction.com

Spirits Dark and Light

         As someone who’s courted the paranormal for decades, I’ve encountered more than a few ghostly visitors over the years. They’ve manifested in a variety of ways: dark and light, as sparkles or flashes, as silhouettes or solid-appearing figures. Their presence hasn’t always been easy to handle, but these visitors have had a profound influence on my life and my view of reality.

         No one has to convince me about life after death, or about the idea that people who have died can make themselves known to us. I don’t need proof of the existence of non-corporeal beings who were never human. And I don’t need convincing that we who are human are a melding of body and spirit, with the spiritual part being able to separate from the physical—at death, and sometimes while the person is very much alive! (More about that in a future entry.)

         I really have seen a few visitors who didn’t appear human at all. They didn’t have five heads or razor-sharp claws; their foreignness was much more subtle, and much less scary, than that! I remember seeing one that manifested as a moving pattern of light and dark over the wall. I knew it was a presence of some kind—its energy seemed very much alive, and its movement seemed to be part of that aliveness—but it didn’t have a body as we do.

         There was also a night, years ago, when I woke up to see a huge figure filling the doorway to my bedroom. I had a sense of a male energy, but he didn’t seem human; his face was indistinct, his body broad and square, and he was clothed in a robe-like garment that was scattered with points of white light. I wasn’t sure what he wanted from me, and I definitely felt uneasy seeing him. My sense was that he really was a different kind of being, from a reality other than our own. I just wasn’t so sure I wanted him visiting me!

         I’ve also seen ghostly visitors who were the spirits of deceased people I knew. Several months after my mother passed away, I was startled to get a quick glimpse of her sitting in an armchair in my living room—looking very solid and distinctly like herself. I had a sense that she wanted to communicate with me, and that she wanted me to recognize her and know she was there. I don’t think it was a coincidence that she appeared so recognizably and clearly.

Just a few weeks ago I had another interesting experience. The spiritual center I attend was having a food auction that was named for one of our members who had died. As I was standing in line, chatting and waiting for my turn at the food counter, I got a quick, peripheral glimpse of someone standing in the doorway to my left. I got a distinct impression of a broad, solid figure there, but I couldn’t distinguish who. When I turned to look directly at the person, no one was there! Then I realized who I had seen; it was our friend, the one the event was named for. The figure did have her shape. And it made perfect sense that she’d be standing there watching everyone enjoying the food, just as she did when she was alive.

         Having had these experiences and many others, I’ve come to the conclusion that our familiar reality is surrounded by a non-material dimension through which various kinds of spirit visitors can manifest to us. And I believe that there are still other dimensions/realities beyond that—a multidimensional Universe—through which we all ultimately travel as our souls evolve on their journey. What do you think?

 

Ann Young

Author—Fantasy, Mysticism, Paranormal Fiction … and Fact