Help came in the form of our elderly and very grumpy next-door neighbor, a lady we called Aunt Ernie. She’d grab her broom and sweep the birds out, yelling, “Sally, it’s just a bird!” Regardless, the birds stirred up the nightmares in Mom’s mind and, without being able to actually see the birds’ flight patterns, it was like living in a horror house for her. For me too, but I could also see. It wasn’t just birds; it was also infestations of bugs, ants, flying ants, and beetle-like insects that we would find in all parts of the house—even when it was cold and nothing should’ve been surviving. My parents would call critter-control companies, but they could never figure out where the birds or the bugs were coming from. It was a mystery to the experts, and I didn’t know that we were seeking the wrong experts. We needed a minister, a priest, a medium, or all of the above. Not only were the birds wandering in mysteriously to frighten us, but the bugs would find their way into the home, and there were the ghosts that stood there, staring at us as we tried to sleep. Nobody else could see them, but I could see them, but I couldn’t do anything about it.
It wasn’t until I began embracing my psychic gift and researching both the light and the darkness of the unknown, along with networking with those who embraced the different worlds, that it dawned on me that my mom’s depression and her many undiagnosed ailments weren’t merely manifestations of genetics, but that the monsters that lived within that childhood home had sought either her, me, or both of us to take advantage of our empathic gifts. She didn’t know how to block it, as she was either frightened or completely unaware of what was going on. The energies I hated so much fed off of my mom, leaving us with only pieces of what had been a beautiful soul.
Every once in a while I tried sharing messages with Mom, hoping her response would be different. I hoped that messages from her family members in spirit would offer her some happiness. But instead of it making her feel surrounded by their love, she felt sad and lonesome, so I stopped sharing. It was easier to withdraw into the spook closet than to face the looks that I received.
The energies in the home only got worse after my dad took me to a local church to listen to a Presbyterian minister who did missionary work in Third World countries. His specialty was exorcism.
My dad was intensely studying the Bible at that time, and he was curious about the darker realm. With tape recorder in tow, we sat down in the pew to listen and watch video of a documentary.
I can’t remember the lecturer’s name, but even though I was only in the fourth grade, I found the man charismatic and not at all what I thought a demon hunter would be like. He began his lecture and then stopped after about ten minutes in.
“I forgot to pray,” he gasped. “We must pray in order to protect ourselves and to ask God to allow the recordings to work.”
The man said a quick prayer and then began again. The lecture, probably no more than an hour long, was absolutely fascinating for even a nine-year-old. When we got home, my dad rewound the cassette tape and hit play. We heard moans of unknown origin; to this day, thinking back to those sounds makes me cringe and feel ill. After about ten minutes of howls, cries, and moans, we heard the minister loudly say “amen,” and then the tape played perfectly.
Just a few nights after that lecture, I awoke to a man’s voice distinctly coming through the radio. He called my name and laughed at my fright. I recited the Lord’s Prayer, asking him to go away, but it continued over and over. I was afraid to get out of my bed, so I sat there, wide-eyed and crying. He finally stopped and I raced down the steps into my parents’ bedroom. By this time, they were aggravated with my bogeymen stories and just pointed to the couch.
My brother came home late from his job and went to sleep in his bedroom. It wasn’t long after calling it a night that he too, at twenty-one years of age, raced down the steps yelling that something was walking on his bed and it felt as if something was strangling and choking him. Chaos unfolded after that. Knives began disappearing from the utensil drawer, only to be found buried, point up, in our backyard. Rocks would be thrown at our home from the alley in back, and yet nobody was there. The final episode came when our furnace stopped working and my dad went downstairs to look at it. He yelled up that the pilot light had blown out. Although I was ill that day and lay on the couch, weakened by the virus, I had an awful feeling and yelled out for him not to do anything, but it was too late—the explosion gave my dad severe burns on his arm and face, and he was rushed to the hospital. The repairman said that the dial on the furnace was turned all the way up, but my dad denied touching anything, and nobody else had been down there. There wasn’t any other explanation, and without a word, the books on anything occult were taken out back and burned. After injuring my dad, the evil hibernated. The basement still felt creepy, but I didn’t sense anybody down there anymore. The infestation of birds and bugs stopped, and the shadows that I continually saw slithering up and down the stairwell were few and far between. And so the feeling of evil seemed to hibernate, but I still hated that house. I felt as if something would happen again, but I didn’t know what, when, or how. To stay away from the house, I signed up for every type of after-school activity that I could so I wouldn’t get home until it was time to lay my head on the pillow on the couch. My clothes were still in my bedroom closet and I would grab my outfit and change in the bathroom, but always still feeling watched.
I realized early on that it was easier to keep my spirit friends hidden from the family, but while doing that I concealed my true self. I stayed in the spook closet, physically and emotionally. At least I tried to. It seemed that I was what I now refer to as a ghost magnet. I put my attention on hating the home we lived in, thinking it to be spooky with hidden secrets. In retrospect it wasn’t the house, but the energy that ran amok there. It’s the same energy that I blame for stealing my mom’s hope, her health, and ultimately, her eyesight.
One of the signs and symptoms of having a negative or demonic energy in the home is depression and oppression. Many attribute it to full-blown possession by the demonic energy, and, although that can occur, it is rare. It’s much easier for the energy to just cause chaos around those in the home instead of exerting the energy to possess the inhabitants. After the lecture, this situation got worse.
The negative presence in the house had already driven me to sleep on the itchy brown plaid couch in the living room, just feet away from my mom and dad’s bedroom. The taunting, nightmares, and scary feelings were just about driving me mad and all I wanted was to have the sanctuary of my own bedroom, but there was no haven in my home. When I wasn’t busy with after-school activities or dance classes, my only escape was when my nose was in a book. Only then could I ignore the stress of my mom’s illnesses, the stress of my sister’s drama, and the stress of my dad trying to hide from the stress. All of the emotions were a beacon to the negative energy that wanted to feed, and I was the target, or so my ego felt that way. In essence, the whole family was. I prayed every night that a miracle would occur, and we would move. To me, moving away from the negative was my hope that my mom would get better and that my sister would find her way home. It wasn’t until later, after working similar paranormal cases, that I realized that the negative would’ve followed, but to my nine-year-old brain and happily-ever-after heart and soul I saw it as an answer. The answer.
I made my bed on the couch, as I had for several years, even though I had a large room on the second floor colored in purple paint with a canopy bed. I instead opted for the uncomfortable wool couch and knowing that my parents were just a yell away.
I had just fallen asleep when I awoke to find myself drifting. I could touch the ceiling. I looked down to see my physical body on the couch, sleeping peacefully, and felt at that moment that if I didn’t pull myself back to my body that I would die and drift away—far away. I could see in the distance, something farther than the ceiling itself, a white energy, and knew that the energy was going “home” and I felt sad and lonely. I panick
ed and pulled myself down on to my physical body, took a deep breath, and jerked myself awake. My heart beat fast and I felt as if I had just died and come back to life. I felt someone watching me over my shoulder and swung around to see a young girl. She had long curly blonde hair and wore all white. It was a white that I had never seen before. It didn’t just sparkle—it emitted a sense of pureness and love. Her face was round, her cheeks rosy, and she spoke to me telepathically. “You are loved, Kristy. You are safe, Kristy.” Instead of asking questions or starting any sort of communication (something I regret to this day), I leaped off the couch and ran right through her and into my mom and dad’s room, where they simply allowed me to snuggle with them until I fell back asleep.
I had stopped talking to anybody about my strange happenings long ago, but I was shaken and so I confided to my mom. She turned ashen, and before I fully described to her what the little girl looked like, my mom described her to me—right down to the lace on her sleeves. She said she had a dream about her that night where the girl told her she would lose a child, and she began to tear up thinking perhaps it was a premonition of my own death, but I shared the message with her: “You are loved, Kristy. You are safe, Kristy.” That afternoon, my mom miscarried a baby that she wasn’t even aware she was carrying. She called me into the bathroom to help her call the doctor, and we both cried with sadness at the loss, yet also relief that it wasn’t my death that I witnessed, but my sister’s death. No, I don’t know for sure that the baby was a girl, but both my mom and I had a knowing that it was.
[contents]
seven
Shadows of Darkness
My family, as dysfunctional as most, was never the Sunday-night-dinner type when I was young and never became that as we grew, but we always got together for the holidays and we “kids” all had a close relationship with our mom and dad.
Mom was not a hypochondriac, but, for as long as I could remember, she suffered from various physical ailments and they only multiplied after she lost her father. My mom’s depression, the result of losing her entire family in a span of several years, began to take a toll on her physically and her eyesight began to deteriorate.
It was Christmas when we first noticed. Mom was always particular about clothes, and when I saw that the clothes she bought as gifts and what she had paired them with didn’t match, I thought perhaps she was just branching out. When I thanked her for the blue shirt and orange socks, she looked appalled. “Orange? Aren’t those socks blue?” Even after subsequent years of doctor appointments, nobody could properly diagnose her illness or offer hope. She never adjusted to the blindness and fought hard when various services tried to help her adapt. Instead, she slipped into a heavy depression, which affected us all. Her blindness prevented her from doing a variety of things, and her self-pity made me cry and turn it into my own self-pity. I wanted her to one day read a book I’d authored. I wanted her to help me choose a wedding dress and see me walk down the aisle. I wanted her to see what her grandchildren would look like and show off their pictures. I wanted her to show me how to apply makeup. I wanted her to cook me my favorite dish from her kitchen: chicken noodle soup. I wanted my mom—my whole mom and not just the shell of her.
My mom fell into a deep depression when her mom passed, and when her best friend and father passed away when I was eight years old, her depression lent itself to a mountain of health issues, including color blindness. When I was twelve years old, she lost her sight completely.
She hopped from doctor to specialist, to psychiatrist and doctor again, to finally be diagnosed with lupus and put on heavy medication, which accentuated her already deep depression. We were grateful for an answer, but a year later, the physicians said that she was misdiagnosed, yet didn’t have any answers again. We had hoped that it was just macular degeneration, but that too was ruled out. The doctors were stumped. They explained that it was as if her retinas were completely eaten away, and that the disease she had was rare, only a few thousand cases in the world, and it was genetic and there was no cure. They called it retinitis pigmentosa; they weren’t completely certain that was the proper diagnosis, but they needed to call it something. The name of the blindness didn’t matter to any of us—we just knew that in the end, my mom would never ever see again.
[contents]
eight
Watchtower
A field that sat far back from my school was used for the outdoor gym class. It was nicknamed “the cornfield” as it had once been farmland. The cornfield overlooked a major street in Detroit called Grand River. With only a chain-link fence separating us from the outside world, I often sat outside the fence and lost myself in daydreams.
The soccer game was in full swing, and my teacher called me to join the team. Reluctantly, I ran in. I wasn’t an athletic child, but instead was what could be referred to as a delicate runt, so it wasn’t odd for my classmates to run around me instead of play with me. Yes, I was the one who was always chosen last in gym and who cowered in the corner during dodgeball, begging to be mercifully hit so I could sit out the rest of the game, but this day was most unusual. As I pretended to play, I immediately felt as if I were taken outside my body and put into another time.
I knew that my name was Debby and I was a runaway teenager. I sat on the torn-up vinyl seat of a dirty blue Buick. The thirty-something Caucasian man sitting beside me was scrubby looking and smelled awful. He had promised he would protect me. I didn’t want to be with my mom and dad, and even though I was hungry and sad, it had to be better than home. My parents were constantly fighting and didn’t care anyway. They probably didn’t even know that I was missing. The man told me that he had to stop for a second and parked his car near a field. He got out of the car. I watched him take a deep breath, put his hands on his head, and then come over to my side of the car. Before I could react, he grabbed me and pulled me down beside the car. He roughly pulled down my pants. I screamed. He smacked me hard against the side of the mouth, and I could feel blood rolling down my cheek, toward my right ear. I whimpered as he continued to hold me down and rape me. I closed my eyes and prayed, “God, I’m so sorry. Please, Mommy and Daddy, please, I’m so sorry. Please let someone find me. Please help me.”
“Kristy!” Someone was screaming my name.
I had fallen to the ground, sobbing.
“Kristy, what’s wrong?” my sixth-grade teacher asked me.
I shook my head and looked around. I was back in the cornfield with my classmates and everyone was looking at me as if I were crazy.
“I think a bee stung me on my leg,” I quickly answered. I knew I shouldn’t lie, but I didn’t know how to explain what I had just experienced and not be checked into the funny farm.
“Okay, run to the bathroom and let me know if we should call your parents.”
My mom and I always had a pretty good relationship, at least before I reached my teenage years. I could tell her just about anything and she didn’t judge, but I was always afraid of discussing the visions I saw, the feelings that I had, and the things that I just knew. I had tried early on, and I could tell that she was uncomfortable. From an early age, I loved reading horoscopes, but if I read hers aloud, she’d tell me to put it away—and that I shouldn’t read stuff like that. I never questioned why she felt the way she did; I felt it was easier to ignore. But that day had me shaken up, and, of course, there was a note that went home that told of the incident and a possible bee sting, so I had to tell her. I felt the truth was the best way anyhow.
Mom didn’t judge me that day and instead reacted with concern. I’m sure she was taken aback that an eleven-year-old experienced a rape, and yet she was confused as to how to deal with it since the rape victim wasn’t really me. She asked if I thought the girl had been murdered. It was a question that still bothers me. I didn’t know. I didn’t think so, but I didn’t know for sure.
The visions I received were unpredictable, but constant. I could be walking t
hrough a grocery store, pick up a jar of peanut butter, and see the image of a grandmother dying from cancer, her family standing all around her and praying for her soul’s safe journey. Or I might talk to a teacher about an assignment, only to be shown an image of her cheating on her spouse. It became a constant chatter in my head that didn’t stop, and it was all bad. I wasn’t seeing babies being born, job promotions, or happy news. I saw only death and darkness. I couldn’t prevent it. I was no superhero who could change bad things to good, so why was I seeing all this? Was I being punished by witnessing such awful things? It wasn’t until later when I explored that same question that I realized it was because I was allowing the dark to envelop me. I concentrated on the dark, and the more I was angry about it, the more darkness shrouded the light.
It became apparent then that it wasn’t just the house—it was much deeper and darker than that. It was also me.
I loved people, and still do, but I just couldn’t seem to have a close friend in school. I’d ask classmates to come over and spend the night, but they’d rarely agree. I was asked several times to sleep over at their homes, but I wanted to also have them at my house. Even though I hated my house, I wanted a sense of normalcy. I’d sit at my desk and look out the windows that faced the street and cry out for a true friend.
For my tenth birthday, my mom agreed to let me have a sleepover.
Messenger Between Worlds Page 4
