Category: Paranormal

In the late 90s a friend was visiting from out of town for a few days of paranormal discussion. We were sharing our life experiences and the subject of cemeteries came up. The following day we decided to explore the Rose Hill Cemetery near my home in Chicago. While driving through the cemetery my friend noticed a grave with her last name on it and we stopped to have a look.

The grave was for a teenage girl who had passed away in the 19^th century. We decided to both attempt to communicate with the child and stood silent near the grave. I had my head bowed forward and was looking at the ground and thinking about this young girl, asking questions to myself about how she might of died and how her family might of reacted to her death at such a young age.

I looked up then and experienced a change in vision. The summer afternoon was gone and I found myself standing along the same cemetery road, but it was unpaved, the weather was cold and I noticed a little snow on the ground. Focusing on what was around me I noticed a row of horse and buggies and people dressed in dark colors. I saw this image momentarily, perhaps for just two or three seconds, until my normal sight snapped back into place and I stood again in the summer sunshine next to the teen’s grave. It was somewhat frightening to feel like I was in a different time, but once firmly rooted in my own time, it was also a strangely good feeling that I had just been able to have a glimpse of this child’s funeral. I approached the grave.

As I stood directly over her grave plot I bowed my head again and closed my eyes and thought about what I had just experienced. A minute later I opened my eyes again, staring at the grass growing on top of the grave, and I began to see a white mist coming up out of the ground. I did not turn my head or move my eyes for a minute as I watched this mist move out of the ground and up into the air. I finally relaxed myself somewhat and raised my eye level and was aware that I seemed to be completely engulfed in the mist. It was a very good feeling as though I were somehow communicating with the spirit of the child. The communication was not with words, but just with feelings, that she was happy that we had come by her grave for a visit and were thinking of her. A minute later the mist disappeared and I moved away from the grave.

I spoke with my friend and told her about what I had just experienced, but soon discovered that the mist rising up out of the grave was not noticed and was part of my vision only. I decided to test the idea that only I could see the mist, now that she was aware of what I was seeing.

I stepped back to the grave and lowered my head again, closing my eyes briefly, and then opening them again. The mist came up from the grave again and repeated what had just happened. Several minutes later it disappeared and again I stepped away from the grave. My friend did not see the mist.

For one final test, we left the graveyard and returned with a 35mm camera and color print film. We repeated the experience again, but now my friend walked around me and took photos of me from different angles. One hour later we looked at the prints and soon discovered that Kodak paper could not pick up the mist – there were only nice shots of me looking as though I were meditating over a grave.

I have since returned to the gravesite several times and always experienced the same white mist coming up out of the ground and engulfing my body. I even tried going to different graves and trying to repeat the experience there thinking that my creative mind was causing me to have the experience. But the mist did not appear with other graves – only this one grave. While the experience may still be a figment of my own creative imagination, it has made me wonder about this particular young lady and why she would want to communicate with me through a mist.

I was in graduate school in 1985 in DeKalb, Illinois. This one late afternoon I brought a friend over to my apartment and we decided to take a walk. We had been talking about psychic events in our lives and I had just told Wendy about driving to the grave of a boy I didn’t know back in 1973. I happened to live next door to a cemetery and as we walked, Wendy suggested we walk through the graveyard. Wendy was picking my 1973 story apart, and as we walked through the graveyard, she said that one explanation to my story was that I was able to hear the dead speak from their graves. “How else could you have known where this boy’s grave was?” she asked. As we walked, Wendy said that she wanted to test me. She said that she wanted to pick out a grave at random, and that I was to tell her as much about the person as possible. I agreed.

Wendy walked away from me a distance of about 50 feet to a grave with a flat top, where the writing was visible only to her eyes. She sat on the grave.

I immediately began “hearing” information. “It’s a woman,” I said. “She was 76 years old when she died.” And with those two basic pieces of information, I began to talk about the woman’s life, revealing trivial details. Finally, I approached the grave, and Wendy stood up. We looked down and read the tombstone. It was a woman, and she had died at age 76. The rest of the details of her life we could not verify, but those two facts spooked Wendy and she became very upset. We returned to my apartment and sat in the living room.

Wendy said that getting the sex right was a 50-50 chance, but getting the age right had made her feel as though I had actually communicated with the woman. Again, she said, the other details about her life could only be verified if we contacted a living relative. So Wendy, being spooked, said out loud, that she wanted a sign from the woman to verify for her that we had actually communicated with her.

As Wendy spoke those words, the smoke detector in my bedroom hallway went off. I rushed around the corner and looked up at it, and there was no smoke to set it off. I ran into the kitchen and grabbed a towel, and fanned the smoke detector, but it would not go off. Finally, I carried a chair into the hallway, climbed up and opened up the smoke detector, and pulled the battery out, and it went off immediately.

Wendy was very upset by what she thought was a “sign.” She was questioning how a spirit could make a smoke detector go off, and I was rambling on about how it was probably faulty and to not worry about it, as I could see that it had upset her so much. As we talked about how it had spooked her, Wendy decided to ask the spirit of the woman to do it again. Again, just as Wendy spoke those words, the smoke detector alarm went off. We both looked down at the battery that I was holding in my hand. We ran again to the smoke alarm and it finally stopped. Wendy became very upset again, crying, now thinking that some spirit was operating this thing even after the batteries had been removed. I tried to calm her down by saying that possibly the smoke alarm kept a charge and that it could go off, even after the batteries had been removed.

There is little mystery in guessing someone’s sex – even a dead person’s sex – given that you have a 50-50 chance of getting it right. I will even concede that when guessing the age of the deceased that going with a number in the 70s or 80s will be correct most of the time, so that narrows the odds of hitting it right. I do not like to think that spirits can follow people home like that and make alarms go off, but the second half of this experience, however it happened, was a spooky coincidence that made me rethink casual walks through cemeteries or any thought of attempting to communicate with the dead. Better to let them rest in peace. And a side note, I contacted a major manufacturer of smoke detectors a few years later. They informed me that the battery operated style of smoke detectors did not hold a charge after the battery was removed. The apartment management assured me the smoke detector was not internally wired.

One Friday evening in 1973 at age 16 I picked up my girlfriend, Ellen, and a mutual friend, Karen. The three of us sat in the front seat of my mother’s Pontiac and we took off for destinations as yet undecided.

Southwestern Pennsylvania was strung with never ending arteries of twisting two-lane pavement through rolling hills and dense forest. Some- times we just drove around looking for friends or parties. This evening Ellen and Karen told me the story of a young man in their class who they remember as limping through the halls for about a year before he finally died. To- night, they said, was the anniversary of his death, a tragic past played out two years earlier in junior high school. Since I was a grade level above the two of them, a senior now, I hadn’t known the boy, nor remembered him.

They named the cemetery where he was buried, possibly the largest cemetery in the county, on a countryside hill halfway between two towns and just off of Route 30 in Greensburg.

I had been to the cemetery before to visit the graves of relatives and remembered it as a maze of single-lane pavement that wound around hun- dreds of gravesites. It was dark and I asked the girls to climb into the back seat and keep their heads down because I was going to surprise them with my destination. I turned onto Route 30 and drove the three miles, entering at the wrought iron gate and began weaving carelessly through the narrow lanes.

The girls half sat up now and peering through the window noticed the gravestones and began screaming. I was driving too fast for conditions, but the screams made me want to move faster and turn corners sharper. I re- member coming around a bend and heading down an embankment, and then quickly made a sharp turn and drove the car up onto the grass andstopped.

The girls had had enough, I thought. We were all laughing and jumped out of the car, kidding each other about being in a cemetery after dark.

But then the girls turned and followed the headlight beam shining on a nearby grave and suddenly became silent. We had stopped at the young man’s grave and our headlights were illuminating his gravestone.

This was not a situation where the grave was lit up nearby, but the car’s headlights were directly shining on the headstone just a few feet away.

It was too much of a coincidence for any of us to imagine. Part of us wanted to get out of the cemetery quicker than we had arrived and part of us wanted to approach the grave and say something. I remember touching the gravestone momentarily, but the feeling of fear was more overwhelming and we soon drove away.

Without a handbook on life’s little mysteries there is no way to accurately explain what had just happened to us. Most likely it was a random coincidence. If we try to look to the paranormal for an explanation we seem to arrive at two theories.

The first would have the spirit of the deceased guiding the driver to his grave and the second explanation would have the thoughts of living relatives of the young man doing the guiding.

Either of the latter two theories raises more questions that we were not willing to consider while we were still in the cemetery. Some distance away and thinking more rationally we wanted to believe that a spirit had somehow guided us, but the more prudent explanation was just a wild coinci- dence.

On Wednesday, November 9, 1994 I was sitting up late in my home office after I had worked on an edit of a story in my Dime Novels series, the Mount Greenwood Murders. I was sitting at my desk chair and thought of Jerry, my childhood barber and Godfather. Jerry died about 1972. The image was bright, of Jerry cutting hair at his shop in Greensburg, Pennsylvania. I thought of Jerry, and then the image moved to the chair next to Jerry’s, and I saw his nephew, Carl, also cutting hair, wearing the white smock he always wore. The vision then moved across the room to an interior door that opened to a staircase and I looked up the staircase. At the top of the stairs was the entrance to Carl’s home on the second floor where he lived. His wife was up there, I thought. Carl’s wife is up there alone. There was a feeling then of depression. This scene faded and I also thought of Jerry’s brother and how I saw him once when I was about 17 or 18-years-old at the place where he worked. This was a few years after Jerry had died. These images faded and I moved on with my evening. This event happened sometime between 10 p.m. on November 9 and 1 a.m. on November 10.

The following day, Thursday, November 10, my mother and I were talking on the telephone and she told me that Carl’s wife had killed herself. I asked when. She said the previous evening. The vision of this scene in the barber shop was the “screen shot” variety. I don’t recall what brought on my thinking of Jerry in the first place. This was a feeling as though I was being shown a film clip. The images appeared to be from the days I visited the barber shop in the 1960s, between the ages of about 2 and 12. The images were very bright and clear.

This is a follow-up to My Present: Black Tea Cups. The same colleague and I discussed my remote viewing of her the previous evening and decided to take the experiment one step further. The first experiment was designed to elicit details of her life in real time as a remote viewing. For part two, we decided to request details from the woman’s future. We were not specific about what type of experience to view and report, just something from the woman’s future.

The set-up for the experiment was the same. I would design the experience in my head prior to relaxing myself on the couch and closing my eyes. This time I thought about the woman and her future and requested that the relaxation part of the experience again happen quickly, that the same full- color and clear screen pop up, but that the scene being transmitted come from Joanie’s future.

I laid down on the couch and again the relaxation happened in less than three minutes and the full-color and clear screen popped up as requested. This time I saw a typical busy Chicago boulevard with parking on both sides of the street. I then noticed her fiancée’s car parked along one side of the street with no one inside. Seconds later a U-Haul brand moving van drove by and struck the side of her fiancée’s car. The van did not stop. I was witnessing a hit-and-run. I then “zoomed” to the cab of the van and viewed two men of Mexican decent wearing flannel shirts.

The following morning I showed the printed report to Joanie as I did in the first case. She read the account and commented that her fiancée’s car had not been the victim of a hit-and-run. I pointed out that the request was for a future event and that we simply had to sit back and wait for the event to happen.

Approximately a week later, Joanie came to work with news. The previous evening she had met her future husband in the city and they had parked their cars on opposite sides of the street. When they returned to their cars they discovered that his car had been the victim of a hit-and-run, struck along its side as I had reported. But as far as the details of a U-Haul brand vehicle with two Mexican men in flannel shirts, she had no idea. Several days later she reported to me that there had indeed been a witness to the event as a woman had come forward to police to report what she saw. The woman had told police that the vehicle that struck the car was a U-Haul brand vehicle with two men inside. The police then tracked down the vehicle and the couple learned that they were of Mexican decent. Were they wearing flannel shirts that day? We never foundout.

I felt this was a controlled and solicited clairvoyance experience (remote viewing) in full color involving one known individual who requested and approved the transmission in advance. It was a future event and transmitted in real time from a distance of possibly four or five miles. The personal affect was an awareness later that the event was indeed real.

This story was much more interesting than its part one counterpart because it involved events that had not yet happened. Even more interesting was the way the facts unfolded to the woman who requested them in the first place. While she was amazed that her fiancée’s car had indeed been side-swiped as a hit-and-run as told to her in advance, those facts were not stunning in a city as large as Chicago where minor accidents happened constantly. The fact that the witness’s account came several days later with two men in a U-Haul brand truck added more dimension to the event.

The facts are just too detailed to be anything other than what I am reporting. Coincidence? Well, there are many hit-and-runs involving side-swiped cars in Chicago and there is a large Mexican population here. Otherwise: It’s a satisfying and believable case of remote viewing.

The set-up: After discussing anomalous events with a colleague about 1995, the two of us decided to experiment. Joanie explained that she was going out that evening. She asked that I use my real-time event transmission abilities (I’m sure we called it something else) and tell her the following morning what she had done.

The experiment: Later that evening I laid down on my living room couch with a pre-determined request. I had designed the experiment in my head with the following requests: I would lie down on the couch and close my eyes and try to relax myself. The relaxation part of the experience would take no longer than three minutes. A clear and bright screen would appear for my viewing and I would be able to see exactly where Joanie was and what she was doing and I would be able to control the viewing experience – meaning I could move the “camera” around a bit at will.

As I laid down that evening my body relaxed very quickly as I had designed and the screen popped up suddenly. I seemed to be viewing Joanie from about the same height as if I had been standing in the room near her, about 10 feet away. The screen view was as though I were using my own eyesight, with the normal peripheral vision. She was in I guessed a restaurant and seated about the center of a large room filled with round tables. She was seated at a table with other women. The group was chatting and drinking from tea cups. I then looked down at the table top and zoomed in on one of the tea cups and noted that the cup and saucers were black.

I wrote all of this and other details down, printed the description out, and carried it with me in my shirt pocket to work the following morning. I bumped into Joanie at the coffee area that morning and asked what she had actually done the previous evening. She said that she had been out with the female members of her upcoming wedding party, that they were trying on gowns, and that she had treated them to tea at a nearby restaurant.

I asked where in the room were they seated, and she replied that they were about center in the room. What shape were the tables, I asked. Round, she said. I then asked what color the tea cups and saucers were. She replied that they were black. I then reached into my shirt pocket and displayed the printed sheet with the same details on it.

I felt that this was a controlled and solicited clairvoyance experience (remote viewing) in full color involving one known individual who requested and approved the transmission in advance. It was a current event and transmitted in real time from a distance of possibly four or five miles. The personal affect was an awareness later that the event was indeed real.

Having had no advance knowledge that this woman would be out with a group of women that evening makes the event hard to believe it was coincidence. While restaurant tables are either square, rectangular or round, the details of where they were seated, what they were drinking, and the exact color of the cups and saucers makes for interesting details.

The sender in this case had given her permission for me to remove view her that evening. I’m not sure why that is significant, but the viewing experience happened rapidly and was over with in about one minute’s time. Was the event a coincidence? Women drinking tea in a restaurant? Possibly. The black cups and saucers stand out as the most significant detail that is hard to explain away.

On Tuesday, February 14, 1995, I was standing in my living room. I had been debating about making a purchase. The item that I wanted to buy was not very necessary and the cost was $50. At that time, spending $50 would have cut into my weekly household budget and I was not sure that I should spend the money. I talked to Joyce briefly about it, and she thought that I should put off buying it. I said that I was going to meditate for the money. I laid down on the couch for about 15 minutes, relaxing myself, and then asking if there was a way that I could have the money to make this purchase.

Then I received a thought transmission. I received instructions to get up from the couch, to go into my home office and open my gray portfolio, and to remove a scratch-off lottery ticket where I had won a free ticket. I was to take this ticket now to the 7-Eleven just south of my home and buy a particular scratch-off ticket there – where the winning ticket would have “glowing” white along its edge. I would then receive my $50. My sister, Lolly, had just come over, and I immediately asked her to come with me. I got the ticket and we drove to 7-Eleven. I went inside and looked at the available tickets to buy – and one of them had a “glow” to its white edges. It was a winning ticket for exactly $50.

I bought the item that afternoon – a crystal ball.

The idea of someone requesting information from me and then getting real results was of interest to me, but I did not pursue the idea very often. Several years later, in 2000 now, I discussed anomalous events with an- other colleague. We were almost joking around about it when the woman said that it would be okay if I remote viewed her life.

Neither of us suggested a past, present or future time, so the request merely took on a generalness to it.

I had been to this woman’s home once for a holiday party. It is situated roughly a mile and-a-half from my home in the city of Chicago. My set-up for this remote viewing was simple: a quick relaxation and a full-color and clear screen.

That evening I laid down and closed my eyes and within about three minutes the screen appeared. The screen was in full color, but of a dark nature as it pictured darkness outside. I was looking at the outside of her brick two-flat. As I stared at this scene, the image moved to the right and pictured the two-flat next door and south of her building, and then framed the second floor. The scene then dissolved and pictured an interior room of this second-floor apartment and depicted an elderly man sitting up and alone on his bed. There was no movement of the man and he was simply sitting and staring and I received a telepathic thought: the man was dying. In fact, the man was in the final phase of dying.

I wrote down the events as I had seen them and printed the material out and reported the story to Joyce. Then considering the material that I had gathered, I decided not to report the information to the woman. I went to work the following day and did not discuss the story. Another day passed and I was again at work and overheard the woman talking to another employee. She said that she would be leaving work that day to attend a wake of a neighbor who had passed away.

I immediately tuned into the story I was hearing and soon asked the woman if I could speak to her privately. Once alone, I asked her if the neighbor was an elderly man who lived on the second floor of the two-flat next door. She acknowledged that the man had lived there and was someone she had known for years.

This was a controlled and solicited clairvoyance experience (remote viewing) in full color involving one known individual who requested and approved the transmission in advance; and one unknown individual. It was a current event and transmitted in real time from a distance of about one and-a- half miles.

In May 1994 I was considering another purchase, this time a treadmill. Joyce and I had gone out shopping one weekend and were pricing the units and had found one under $400 that we were considering. Then when we were back at home sitting in front of our big screen television, Joyce raised a question. She said that while getting the television seemed like a coincidence, shouldn’t I at least test the idea and go into a meditation and request a treadmill. I agreed and that evening went into a meditation and asked for the treadmill. I sat up now on the couch and Joyce and I looked at each other, almost expecting the telephone to ring, but it did not.

The following morning I went to my office for the book publisher I worked with and received an unusual telephone call. One of the leading manufacturers of treadmills was calling me because I had been the acquisitions editor for several years for an annual book where hundreds of products were rated, including tread mills. He explained that his company’s treadmills had been rated a best buy several years in a row and it was something they bragged about at conventions. I explained that I had just given up the project to another editor, but that I would pass the information along.

I spoke with the current editor who said the book was well into production, but that it was possible to squeeze in another review if needed. She realized that the author of the treadmill section was new this year, telephoned him, and caught the oversight. The author had forgotten to contact with one particular treadmill manufacturer. She passed the information back to me and assured me that the author would contact them that day and complete a review. I then called the manufacturer back and explained that the problem would be resolved and that his products would be fairly reviewed and if the author thought so, may still be judged a best buy. During the end of the conversation I said that I was happy to help resolve the problem, and mentioned that my wife and myself were in the market for a tread mill and that we would now be looking his products over as well. We hung up.

Five minutes later the gentleman telephoned back. He asked me for my home address and said that he wanted to place a top of the line treadmill in my home for a test period. As acquisitions editor I did not test products myself, but could have done so. I explained that now that I was no longer editor, it would be a little stretch to think I could test one of the products myself. Finally, I agreed, since I knew that we also had a writer in the field also testing the same product.

Three days later a treadmill arrived in my living room, which I enjoyed for a short period, and then donated it to a local not-for-profit. Joyce thought that the universe had listened once again.

In August 1993 Joyce and I were sitting in our living room talking when I brought the subject up about buying a rear project big screen television that I thought would fit nicely in our 18 x 24 foot living room. “Plenty of space for it,” I suggested. Joyce wasn’t actually against moving one of those sets in, but did not think that we could afford it at the time. “Do one of your things,” she said. Joyce was referring to my recent meditations where I was attempting to interact with information in the universe and she suggested that I simply ask for a big screen television and see what happens. We both laughed, but a moment later I laid down on the living couch and went into a short meditation. A few minutes later I sat up, looked across the room at Joyce, and said “It’s done. I have spoken to the universe.” Immediately the phone rang.

A relative was calling from a Chicago suburb with a question. She was buying her husband a new big screen television and wanted to know if we wanted the old set. She remembered that I had enjoyed watching it at their home and remembered that I was interested in owning one. The
coincidence in the timing between our conversation, my meditation, and the phone call was uncanny. A few weeks later I picked up the set and enjoyed it for many years.