It is far harder to kill a phantom than a reality.

Virginia Woolf

The Ghost Eater and Other Stories from the Magical Bookstore

After House of Spirits and Whispers came out, one of my first author events was at Magus Books in Minneapolis. A popular and well-respected bookstore, Magus is frequented by college students from the nearby University of Minnesota campus as well as witches, wizards, herbalists, and magical people of all sorts. Because I’m such a terrible driver in the city, I had never been to Magus, even though I’d heard people rave about it for years. I was excited about making an appearance there and looked forward to meeting the fabled Roger, the Englishman who had started Magus Books fifteen years earlier. I didn’t know exactly what to expect, but I figured it would be an interesting experience. I brought along pictures of some of the spirits in my house, a homemade coffee-can safe that Leon, the former owner and main house spirit, had hidden in the basement dirt room, and a bottle of wine for Roger. By the end of the night, I had heard some of the most disturbing ghost stories I’d ever heard in my life, learned some new things about astral beings, and been followed home by a new ghost. I also sold a few books.

This author appearance was one of the few times I brought along a small entourage of friends. It was a good thing I did, as only four other people showed up—a young married couple, a man who hardly spoke but took copious notes, and a paranormal investigator. In retrospect, I attribute the small turnout to the probability that true haunted house stories are no big deal to people who work with spirits and cast spells on a regular basis. I had invited my former beau Rex, my friend and publicist Kelly, and my friend and fellow writer Carmine, who gave me a lift to the bookstore so I wouldn’t have to drive. Given the size of the group, I decided the best approach would be to set up a storytelling circle in the back corner where the book signing was going to take place. I had filled Leon’s homemade coffee- can safe with Tootsie Rolls and lollipops, passed it around with the spirit pictures, and started telling the story of my house. A few shoppers meandered around the store, and Roger listened from behind the checkout counter.

Fish-scale pattern similar to that on ceremonial robe worn by Asian spirit in doorway (this image is from Dover’s Japanese Stencil Designs).

The young couple said they were interested in haunted houses because the wife, Ellen, had lived in a very haunted house in Minneapolis—perhaps dangerously so, as at least one or two renters that lived there before her family moved in had died in the house. Ellen’s mom was pregnant with her when they moved into the old Victorian home. Ellen believed that her own psychic abilities were sharpened in response to living in this threatening, haunted environment, as a coping mechanism or possibly even a survival skill. Lori Bogren, from the Minnesota Paranormal Investigators Group, agreed, saying that one of their members was taking a break from investigating because she was pregnant and didn’t want to expose her unborn child to any negative entities.

Ellen said the most frightening thing her family experienced was seeing menacing faces appear in the walls and on the TV screen, and that her parents had taken a photograph of one of the faces. Her mom and dad’s relationship deteriorated after moving into the house, and they began to fight all the time. Eventually, Ellen’s parents split up, and they moved out of the house when she was around four years old.

Someone in the circle asked Ellen if the house was still haunted. She told us that the next renter after them, a man in his thirties or forties, lived in the house for less than a year before he was found dead inside it. She said that her family lost track of who lived in the house after that.

This sobering story actually stopped conversation while we let the idea of a killer house sink in. Then the quiet man picked up his notebook and pen. “What’s the address?”

Someone said, “So you never move there?” We all laughed.

As for myself, I had such an acute sense of dread while Ellen was telling her story that I said a protection prayer for all of us. I didn’t want any energetic connection to the old house. Even hearing the story made me feel at risk, like whatever was haunting the place might tune in to my awareness and fear, and become aware of me. I would never think of driving past the place to get a closer look. I was impressed when, after the reading, Lori matter-of-factly exchanged contact information with Ellen so Ellen could call if she ever needed help.

People are always asking me how I can live in a haunted house. I have had some very frightening experiences while living in my house, including waking up one night and seeing a dark man who glistened with an oily sheen standing beside my bed, watching me. Another time, I was pinned down in bed by something I couldn’t see. When whatever it was finally released me, I sat up in bed and swung my elbow backwards as hard as I could in case the entity was still around. Sitting up and wide awake, I felt it stick its tongue in my ear. For the most part, though, the spirit activity in my house is simply interesting and even companionable, rather than threatening.

Another question I get asked all the time is whether or not I think spirits can hurt people. My answer had always been that I thought it was possible but extremely rare. Now, I wondered if I had been wrong. Ellen’s story rattled my sense of security. Was there such a thing as a killer house? In the 1970s, my sisters and I had been so scared by the book The Amityville Horror that for a while after reading it, we were too afraid even to go to the bathroom alone. I know questions have been raised about the accuracy of the Amityville story, but Ellen seemed down-to-earth and sincere.

Ellen also told us about being visited by the spirit of an ex-boyfriend who had committed suicide by jumping into the Mississippi River. She was respectful but matter-of-fact when she said that sometimes he had the distorted appearance of someone who had drowned and other times he looked like a Picasso painting, as if she were seeing more planes, or aspects, of him than is normally possible. I found this last detail very interesting, as I have seen a similar effect in some of my astral visions. Sometimes whatever I’m seeing has a Picasso-esque sense of proportion and spatial relationships. I call it the unfolded version of things because it reminds me of the 1970s-era math problems that presented some weird unfolded shape with the impossible to answer question, “What would this look like if it were put back together?” The only other reference I’ve heard or seen to this “unfolded” state was, once again, in the Peter Tompkins book The Secret Life of Nature. When Tompkins tells about the four-dimensional nature of astral vision (the type of vision the Theosophists referred to as “withinth”), Tompkins describes “a sort of four-dimensional sense of seeing an object from all sides at once and from inside as well.” He goes on to paraphrase well-known Theosophist Charles Leadbeater, using the example that if you had a cube of wood with writing on all sides, “viewed astrally, all the sides would be visible at once, right way up, as if the cube were flattened.”

Lori told us that if a spirit is earthbound and has not yet crossed over, he or she will appear as they did at death. The spirit will be the same age and in the same physical condition, and that’s why Ellen saw her former boyfriend in a way that reflected the manner of his death. Lori said the Picasso-type appearance might mean that he perceived himself as stuck in the wrong dimension. Once spirits have crossed over, they realize they can change their appearance to reflect the best or happiest time of their life, or the one most relevant to the person they’re visiting. Lori suggested that Ellen encourage her ex-boyfriend to move on and let him know there was nothing to fear.

I thought about seeing Leon’s spirit after we found the money and gave it back to his family. He had looked and walked like an old man, as if he had aches and pains and heaviness. The night I saw him, Leon had been in the spirit world for less than a year, and I believe he was still earthbound at the time because he was so concerned about the stuff he had hidden in the basement dirt room. When I saw the old-fashioned spirit sisters in my house, they had been spirits much longer than Leon had, and they looked like traditional ghosts—they were transparent and completely white, and they were floating in the air.

I asked Lori if the bookstore was haunted. She said that because of the magical work people were involved in, there were spirits and entities checking out the bookstore all the time, but that the store employees, who were highly skilled magicians and energy workers themselves, performed cleansing and protective work on a regular basis.

Then Lori, who is clairvoyant, told us about being part of an investigation in which a woman’s spirit was being abused by the spirit of the person who had murdered her in the physical world. One of the paranormal investigators and her spirit guide had created a protective space around the woman’s spirit, barring the abuser’s access to her, while the other investigators focused on persuading her to go to the light. The abusive spirit stood nearby and made threats. Lori could see all the astral beings, and everything seemed to be going smoothly, so she stood back to watch. The abusive spirit kept trying to get to the vulnerable spirit but couldn’t. Suddenly, a new entity appeared behind the abusive spirit. Lori said that some would consider the entity a demon, but in her opinion, it was just a form of energy that survived by consuming negative energy. The entity looked at Lori, then ate the abusive spirit and disappeared. And the woman’s spirit was able to cross over to the other side.

This story absolutely freaked me out. I believe that Lori was telling the truth about what she saw and perceived, and I was happy that the gentle spirit got free and made it to the light. But I couldn’t get my mind around the idea of any entity being allowed to destroy another’s soul. It defied my beliefs about the laws of the universe. I believe that there is a divine creative source in the universe, and I also believe that even this divine creator would never vanquish someone’s soul. But I listened to Lori’s experience and decided I would give the entire matter some more thought. Lori herself took what she had seen that night in stride, as simply a form of survival and, in this case, justice.

Later, I told my friend Ted Hughes about the ghost-eater story to get his opinion on it. Ted is extremely psychic, almost more at home in the astral world than the physical one. He lives in northern California on Mount Shasta, a magnificent place with such a strong spiritual vibe that it’s reputed to be the magical home to everything from Lemurians to leprechauns. Many of the area residents are involved in energy healing, magical work, shamanic practices, and earth-centered spirituality. Ted’s reasoned response to the ghost-eater story was that there is a place for every being in the universe. He said spirits and other astral beings usually only make trouble when they are stuck in the wrong place. Ted told me about one of his friends who was doing shamanistic healing work for people with harmful energetic attachments in their auras. Ted’s friend would remove the offending energy form and send it to be cleansed by the energy of the sun. The friend called Ted when he himself was beset by astral beings wreaking havoc on his aura and health, to the point where black oily stuff was oozing out of the bottoms of his feet. The man had gone to different doctors to get treatment, but none of them had been able to help him.

Ted journeyed to gain insight on the situation and discovered that the astral beings were angry with his friend. Ted explained it to me by saying, “How would you feel if someone sent you or your friends to the sun to be burnt to a crisp?” Ted told his healer friend to change the energy-clearing process he used. Instead of sending unwelcome astral beings to the sun, Ted and his friend started working with the beings so they could go back home. They asked for a gateway to be opened to receive the beings back where they belonged. For those beings that didn’t want to go home, they requested that they go to an energetically compatible place where they could be safe and also not harm other beings. Ted said it was kind of like a swap, helping everyone get back to where they belonged. Within a few weeks, Ted’s friend was feeling better. Hearing Ted’s far-out stories of the astral world, tempered with his low-key positivity and problem-solving approach to things, is one of the things I enjoy most about our friendship.

I was a little wired when I got home the night of the book signing, and I went to bed with a sense of anticipation. I had the feeling something was going to happen. I had been super freaked out by the killer house and ghost-eater stories, but Roger’s vibe was so positive and strong that I believed if anything did happen as a result of my visit to the bookstore, it would be all right. I went to bed but woke up an hour and a half later and saw a spirit standing in the doorway of my room. It was a young Asian man, whom I sensed was Japanese. He was wearing a ceremonial black and silver silk gown that had a pattern on it that looked like stylized fish scales. He felt familiar and friendly, even though I had no idea who he might be.

The spirit smiled in a friendly way. In a calm voice, he said, “You must remember, things are not always as they appear.” Then he disappeared.

I had a “singing skin” feeling after this experience, which is how I describe the super-charged, buzzy way I feel after a positive spirit encounter. It’s a physical kind of hypersensitivity I get when something really moves my soul, like hearing a chillingly beautiful piece of music on Christmas Eve or standing at the top of Machu Picchu in Peru with Levi smiling beside me.

I have not been able to come up with any solid explanation for seeing a spirit from an era and culture so different from my own standing in the doorway of my room. I did ask Roger later if the spirit was connected to him personally, but he said no. Yet, it seems logical to me that the spirit was somehow connected with the bookstore, since I only saw that spirit one time, and it was the night I had been at the bookstore. One possibility I’ve considered is that the Asian spirit was a guardian of the bookstore. Or, he might even have been a guardian of one of the books at Magus. (One used-bookstore owner I know believes that books possess some form of sentience, a concept I had never considered before but find really intriguing. And intuitive coach Jodi Livon, who conducted a very helpful psychic reading for me recently, told me she usually can’t read ghost stories because she can feel the actual spirits coming through when she does. With my book House of Spirits and Whispers, she said she mostly tuned in to my energy, which she found “positive and strong,” although she did have to put down my book a few times.) Magus does sell ceremonial weapons at the store, including a Kunai wooden athame, which is a replica of an ancient Japanese tool and weapon, so it’s possible the spirit was associated with that. Generally speaking, though, it’s used or antique items that are most likely to have energy or spirits attached to them.

Maybe the spirit’s smiling message was in regard to the ghost eater. That’s my best guess for now, since my overriding question that night was whether or not any being could truly destroy another’s soul. Perhaps the Asian spirit’s cryptic message meant that the ghost eater only appeared to consume the abusive spirit, when in reality he was just removing him from a situation where he didn’t belong.

Postscript to this story: When I contacted Lori Bogren from the paranormal group to get permission to use her name in my book, she clarified for me that, while the entity did appear to devour the abusive spirit, she has the same basic philosophy as my friend Ted. She believes “when it comes to the spirit world, no energy being can destroy the energy of another. They can capture it, hold it in check, send it or force it to go somewhere … at most (the critter that ate the spirit) would imprison it until the critter released it by choice or until something else came along and released it.”