The Psychic Next Door: Ordinary People with Extraordinary Powers

by Karen Zimmerman

  People on both sides of Jason’s family share the same abilities. His paternal great-grandmother was a Portuguese curandeira, or folk healer, and almost everyone on his Hawaiian maternal grandfather’s side of the family are sensitive in some way. His Portuguese maternal grandmother and her family were also psychic. The Portuguese members of his family are descendants of Marranos, or crypto-Jews, who hid their faith and pretended to be Catholics in order to not break the law and go before the Inquisition. They maintained a lot of the spiritual and folk beliefs in the Sephardic tradition, which Sephardic Jews who were able to practice their religion openly have stopped believing.

  Today, Jason uses his abilities to aid ghost-hunting groups and perform house blessings.

  Adventures with the Other Side

  Jason primarily feels spirits. “They are energy, and create a strong pressure in the middle and small of my back,” he says. “I also visualize them in my mind, and sometimes I can hear them. I rarely see apparitions. There are smells that I get, and often I will feel pain or nausea similar to the symptoms of what the person died from; so, shortness of breath and chest pain for someone who had a lung or cardiac condition, for example.”

  He has learned to close down his abilities when necessary, and always when he is at work. When he was younger, and particularly in junior high, contact with the spirit world was fast and furious. “I remember being told, ‘Just tell them to go away. Tell them to go! Don’t acknowledge them.’” Two others gave him the same advice. “One was my cousin, who has since passed away and was a kahuna. My late cousin was many things, but one of them was a kahuna pule and a kahuna ho’ailona — a person who can be called upon to offer prayers that become conduits of energy and can affect a person (kahuna pule). He was called upon to offer prayers to make people well, get rid of bad dreams, bless houses and dispel spirits. He was also able to interpret dreams and signs in nature; ho’ailona is a sign or premonition. I would go to him and say that a spirit that I encountered somewhere frightened me. He would always say, “Don’t you know how to be firm with them? Tell them to leave you alone, swear at them if you have to, but don’t be scared of them if they are truly ghosts.”

  Jason told me that Hawaiians believe in many types of spiritual beings, and his cousin was referring to wondering, restless spirits called either lapu or wailua. The other advisor was his hanai (adopted) aunty. I was visiting my hanai auntie, who happens to live here in Sacramento, but was born on Maui, and she says the same thing, “Keli’i, (part of my Hawaiian name that people use as a nickname for me as my Hawaiian name is long, Keli’inohokula,) throw them down in front of you or behind you, but no let them bother you.” When they talk about throwing a spirit in front of you or behind you it means to send them back to wherever they came from — to expel them.

  Occasionally, though, shutting things off is difficult. “When I worked as a hospice social worker, it was hard, because I could sense death around some clients and knew that their passing was imminent,” he says. “I also volunteer for the Chevra Kadishah, the Jewish burial society, in my area. We wash and casket the body 24 hours after death and, if asked, sit with the body in the coffin until the services the next day. I have had a couple of spirits follow me back after doing their taharah (washing). I always do a Hawaiian purification ritual of sprinkling myself with water mixed with sea salt, and the Jewish ritual of washing my hands (we all do this who participate in a taharah) before we leave the funeral home. Both rituals are designed to break that psychic tie that may have happened during the washing of the body.”

  When he was a hospice social worker for the Sacramento AIDs Foundation, Jason saw a lot of death. Some incidents stand out. There was the time when he was at home. It wasn’t his shift, but someone he had gotten to know was close to death. He heard a disembodied voice say, “You have to come over today.” Jason drove across town. “As soon as I walked in the door, a staff member told me that they were going to start calling people. The patient died 10 minutes later.”

  He has seen several clients after they died, including his best friend, Tim. “I was living in San Francisco,” he recalls. “I was thinking about him at dinner. I got up and went into the restroom and looked in the mirror. There was Tim’s face. The next day I called, and, yes, he had died. The same sort of thing happened when my grandfather died as well.”

  In another experience, he had a client, Mike, who he would help bathe. Mike would support himself by leaning on Jason. “I was in the shower, and I felt a hand on my shoulder. I said, ‘Mike, this isn’t the way to say goodbye, but if you’re in trouble, hang on as long as you want.’ The sensation ended almost immediately.” In that way, Jason knew his friend had no trouble crossing over.

  Jason says his encounters with spirits during paranormal investigations are completely different. Most of these are what investigators call residual hauntings – trace or place memories. These spirits are more residual energy than an intelligent presence. Other common encounters include those who have an attachment to the place they are haunting, or are not fully aware they are dead.

  Other investigations are more active. Among the incidents that stand out: “When I did the Dead Famous Live television program, with Dee and Russ Disparti,” he says. “We did a séance at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery by Valentino’s grave, and we had an apported object appear during the séance.” (More on that can be found in the chapter on Dee Disparti.)

  “Another was an investigation up near Auburn, CA, with American Paranormal Investigation, when we encountered a demonic force that was disturbing several tenants in an apartment building. We saw red eyes in a cedar tree, heard brush breaking, and got nauseated at one point during the investigation. We caught some good EVPs (electronic voice phenomena) — great investigation.

  “In Virginia City, Nevada during a walk around town, I experienced chest pains in the middle of the street, staggered to the sidewalk, and had to sit down. I learned a homeless Vietnam vet with schizophrenia had been shot there a few weeks earlier at the same spot in the street; he died on the sidewalk where I had to sit down.”

  Jason began ghost hunting 14 years ago, when he met several people who investigated the paranormal. He joined a local group that later broke up, and today works with American Paranormal Investigators.

  Paranormal television is filled with “provoking” — insulting or taunting spirits to make them “perform” for the camera. Non-televised investigation groups do it as well, but it’s not part of Jason’s technique. “I really have trouble with that, because it was someone’s mother or grandmother or father or uncle. Would you speak to anyone like that in life? Then why do it to the dead?”

  There’s also much talk of “demons” in some groups. Jason says he had he never heard of a demonic entity until he came from Hawaii to California to go to college. “During a few investigations, I encountered negative forces. I don’t attribute that to evil intent. Can they do evil? Of course. Does that make them evil? Of course not.”

  Some “demonic” experiences, he says, often have to do with a lack of defenses. “It’s very important to protect yourself. You have to have spiritual discipline. If you are not disciplined, you can get hurt mentally — get depressed, irritable, no energy, etc.” People can get physically hurt. During one investigation, three people saw a fellow team member picked up and slammed into a wall by some sort of energy. Another man became extremely ill, and the car he was riding in was extraordinarily cold inside the whole way home.

  Protection rituals are personal, Jason says, and people should create their own. “It’s very important to protect yourself from negative energy,” he emphasizes. “If you do not ground and protect yourself and you do this kind of (psychic) work, you are a fool. It is like a doctor going into surgery without scrubbing up first – you will hurt both yourself and the people you are there to help. It also is part of the discipline of paranormal investigations as a sensitive and I do not believe it is optional if you want to do this type of work.”
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br />   Bless This Home

  Another way Jason uses his abilities is through a general house blessing ritual Hawaiians call pikai.

  “We take a wooden bowl, fill it with fresh water, add unrefined sea salt and fresh turmeric juice (this is optional). We use a Ti leaf, which is a plant we use for traditional medicine and to bring about spiritual balance and protection. I then pray over the water, asking God, the angels, and my ancestors to be present and to work with the water to cleanse and bring peace to each room in the house.

  He continues, “I then go through the house clockwise, and sprinkle water with the Ti leaf in each room, starting and ending at the front door. I sprinkle the people living in the house. I do a closing prayer, then I look into the water.

  “If there was an evil presence, the water will have bits of almost mucus-like substance in it, or the water will be cloudy. If it is clear, that is a good sign that nothing truly evil was in the home. I then take the water out the front door, command all that is evil and in the water not to return, and throw the water into the street and return to the house without looking back.”

  Some further rituals are added if it is a cleansing due to an evil spirit. Jason doesn’t discuss those cultural practices in a public forum because, if they are done wrong, it could make the situation worse. You also have to be given permission to do them: “My great-aunty and another elder, who was a Hawaiian kahuna and minister, are the ones who gave me permission to do pikai when I was 16 years old, back in Honolulu.” Nor will he talk about specific house cleansings, because, for Hawaiians, these are private matters, and are not discussed without the permission of the family who asked for them to be done.

  Protection comes into play for a house blessing, just as with a paranormal investigation. Jason uses visualization, and carries a Ti leaf with salt in it. He also asks for protection from God and asks his ancestors to be with him.

  As for the spirits he finds, he leaves them be, and doesn’t encourage them to “go into the light,” as the common phraseology has it. “No, unless I am asked, I do not urge them to go into the light. Both Judaism and Native Hawaiian belief say that some spirits are either allowed to remain for a particular reason or lesson, or have been given the opportunity to choose to come back. Others are waiting for their appointed guide to cross them over. Unless I am asked to when I bless the house, or the spirit asks to be helped, I do not believe it is my place to do that. It would be presumptuous of me - in Hawaiian, we say it would be maha’oe.” Maha’oe is a one of those things that a Hawaiian never wants to be called, Jason explains. Maha’oe has several meanings, but the gist of it is pushy, rude, nosey, stuck up. or trying to be a know-it-all.

  Friends and Family

  Because he’s Hawaiian, Jason says, he hasn’t been made to feel different because of his abilities. “It’s no different than being left-handed.” After all, he believes his abilities are hereditary from both sides of his family, and were nurtured by the culture he grew up in.

  Jason’s abilities make his husband, Michael, nervous. He grew up in a family that never talked about the paranormal. “He’s very encouraging of my paranormal investigating, but he doesn’t like to talk about it,” Jason says. “On occasion, he will ask me, usually when something unusual happens in our home, if someone is ‘visiting.’”

  Growing up, no one ridiculed Jason’s abilities, “In Hawaii, as I said, it was no big deal and none of my school friends growing up ever reacted negatively, I only experienced that kind of reaction here in California.” They would scoff, and say they didn’t believe in ghosts, but he noticed that these were the same people who wouldn’t go near the neighborhood’s reputedly haunted house.

  Inspiration and Putting Abilities to Good Use

  I asked Jason if there was anyone who inspires him to use his abilities. He mentions several relatives, particularly his late maternal grandmother and his oldest sister, who is still “very practical” about it. “A couple of good friends, Dee Disparti, an excellent psychic and sensitive I know who now lives in Carolina; Loyd Auerbach, a well-known parapsychologist I have had the privilege of working with; my late cousin, Carl Naluai Jr., who was both a traditional Hawaiian spiritual healer as well as the chazzan (cantor) at my synagogue and a student of Kabbalah; some very close personal friends in the Pagan community; and a couple of authors I have met who have really inspired me for various reasons: Jeff Belanger, Michelle Belanger, Hans Holzer, Elliot O’Donnell, Peter Underwood, Dennis Hauck, Janice Oberding (a wonderfully talented author and investigator and a very supportive, humble individual), Antonio Garcez.

  “And then there is the author who, way back in fourth grade, first inspired me to think about collecting ghost lore and seeing this not just as something that happens to me, but a part of a discipline: Sybil Leek, the famous British witch and psychic. I had the honor of meeting her when I was a young teenager.”

  Jason thinks his abilities are best used to help others: to help those in fearful situations feel comfortable again in their homes and personal lives; to help people come to terms and find peace with the spiritual reality that there is life after death, and that that world does interact with our own; to help spirits who ask for help; and to restore balance to a particular place.

  Finally, he says, “I think it is important to help others with the same abilities to know that they are just that: abilities. They are nothing to be afraid of, provided you are respectful of them and do not do rash or risky things with those abilities, like calling up spirits or unnecessarily provoking them, and that the person experiencing them is not crazy.”

  Being able to help people, to put their minds at ease and take away any fear they have is among his greatest joys, he says. The experience of being assured that there is something beyond this life brings him great joy.

  As for those who want to follow the path of the sensitive? “Read, read, read,” he urges. “Find a sensitive you trust and talk to them. Even go as far as to ask them to teach you. Learn how to meditate, and create a methodology to ground and protect yourself. Always be respectful of the spirits, the place you are investigating, and the people who live there or use that space. And don’t be a thrill junkie!”

  I asked Jason, as I asked everyone in this book, what he wants others to know about people like him. He laughed, and replied, “I am a pretty regular guy who just happens to have the ability to communicate with spirits, and who has been taught to help people who are troubled by them.”

  Chapter 5

  Dee Disparti

  Dee Disparti came into my life when another paranormal investigator brought Dee and her husband, Russ, to investigate my haunted bookstore. Dee is an imposing presence — psychically, physically, and otherwise. She radiates a certain power and a calm self-assurance that can sometimes be intimidating. To know Dee is to know that her powers are genuine, they make her humble, and she’s happy to share what she knows.

  She has been a paralegal, and owned a tearoom and construction company with Russ. She currently teaches classes, writes, and heals people using the help of spirit doctors and Reiki. She also does private readings.

  Like some others in this book, Dee’s abilities run in the family. “My Grandmother Wainscott was very psychic,” she says. “She would start cleaning house and cooking because a relative was on their way to visit. No one would call or send a letter to let her know they were coming. They all knew she would be ready for them when they arrived. I can never remember her being wrong.”

  When Dee was age three or four, her grandmother taught her how to use a pendulum, in the form of a needle and thread, to determine the gender of an unborn child.

  After that, Dee says, her grandmother treated her as if she was special, began listening to what was happening with the young girl, and explaining the psychic side of life.

  From the time Dee was very young, a tall man in a robe made entirely of white light stood at the foot of her bed each night. A hood covered his face, and two other beings stood on each side of him. �
�I always just thought of them (these other beings) as dogs, as I had no other frame of reference,” she says. “I still don’t know what they were, but they were also made of white light.” The tall figure told her that he was there to protect and watch over her. He was there nightly until she was 12 or 13; there was no question in her mind that he would keep her safe.

  Dee doesn’t know what it’s like not to be psychic — it’s normal to her, and she takes it in her stride. She isn’t sure how to explain the things that happen to her. She’s a friend of Jason Lindo, another subject in this book, and they often share experiences. “A handful of years ago, I was talking to Jason about something I had seen and he called it a vision,” she says. “Well, until that time, I had never thought of it that way. I can sit in my office and ‘see’ what is going on at a great distance while talking to someone, and I didn’t realize until just a few years ago that this is called remote viewing.”

  Dee has studied, taken classes, asked for guidance, and walked the psychic path, which has not been without roadblocks. “The first time I spontaneously went into a trance state, I called the minister of a spiritualist church we attended. He told me that I couldn’t be doing what I was doing because I hadn’t had the proper training. I found that very strange. If the Universe wants us to do something, we will do it, even without so-called proper training.”

  For Dee, the whole world is her paranormal oyster. She says being a psychic medium is like being a lighthouse — a veritable homing beacon. “Even when you shut yourself down, spirits come to see what is going on. Some come wanting help. Most come just to see what is happening.”