Our First Haunted House
There were no more firsthand experiences with the paranormal until my daughter, Brittany, was born in 1985. We were living in an old Victorian two-story home on Greenwood Street by then. By that time, I was working the night shift as a reporter for a daily newspaper in Lebanon. During the day, I taught a couple of adjunct classes in theatre at Cumberland University. I would come in from the newspaper about daybreak, sleep until noon, then tumble out of bed, eat, shower and get to Cumberland for my first class at two p.m. The house I lived in with Sheila and our toddler daughter was about a block from the campus. Later research revealed the house had been built in 1901 to serve as a home for the college president, though it hadn’t been owned by Cumberland in many years.
More recently, it had been owned by the same family for forty years or so. The next-door neighbor (an elderly lady who had lived there since the flapper days) told me a brother and sister had resided there for decades. I never knew if they died in the house or not, but I wouldn’t be surprised. People didn’t rush off to the hospital every time they got a sniffle (or even had chest pains) back in the day. The house had undergone an amateur restoration in the early seventies, but by the time I bought it in 1985, it needed quite a bit more work. I purchased it from the family who had remodeled it, but Sheila and I still had to spend lots of money on it just for regular maintenance. It had been vacant for at least five years when we moved in, so it took months just to get it livable. Unforeseen money and tons of elbow grease were needed, but we still loved that old house. It felt like a comfy old slipper.
I definitely would not call our house on Greenwood Street haunted—no more so than any eighty-year-old house. My research did not reveal any particularly traumatic events happening there. People may have died in the house, but that was pretty much the norm back then.
My experiences with the house were all pleasant, but we did have a few unthreatening paranormal experiences there. Often when we pulled into the driveway with Brittany strapped into her child carrier in the backseat, she would point to someone we couldn’t see, saying: “There’s my lady.” This happened numerous times, and there was never anyone there. It seemed a bit odd, but we never made a big deal out of it—and within a minute or two, Brittany’s attention would always be diverted to something else important, like a passing butterfly or a doll that required immediate attention. Like most parents, we chalked the lady up to an imaginary playmate.
Brittany’s lady was a part of her play ritual inside the house as well. She often sat at a toddler-sized plastic table and had tea parties with her dolls. Sheila and I were frequently active participants in the tea parties, but if Britt was alone with her dolls you could hear her chattering away to her invisible guests. If asked to whom she was talking, the answer was invariably “my lady.” She also liked to sit on the steps going to the upstairs bedrooms and play with her toys, animatedly making up conversations for her various stuffed and plastic friends.
One night when I was at work at the newspaper, Sheila looked up to see Brittany leaving her toys behind on the lower steps and cheerily toddling eight or nine steps higher than we liked her to go, apparently in pursuit of something Sheila couldn’t see. She snatched the toddler up and brought her back downstairs, with Brittany protesting that she needed to follow her lady. After that incident, we put a removable wooden gate across the stairs so Britt couldn’t venture up more than a few steps. But this was nothing more than many parents go through trying to keep their young children from falling down the stairs.
I had become good friends with Laurel, the psychic I met while I was editing the paranormal newsletter. Every six or eight months, I’d go to Laurel for a personal psychic reading. I even took Brittany with me on several occasions. Laurel was very fond of Brittany and told me she felt that my daughter would prove to have psychic abilities of her own—perhaps even acting as a psychic/medium herself someday. When I mentioned Brittany’s lady to Laurel, she said this was nothing to worry about and that she felt this was a “protective spirit” who had my daughter’s best interests at heart.
I frankly never took Brittany’s lady too seriously until I met her myself. After working all night at the newspaper and getting my usual six hours sleep, my alarm went off. Time to get ready to teach my classes. As I reached over to turn the blaring alarm off, I was mystified to see a woman standing at the foot of my bed. I’ll never forget the image I saw—a middle-aged woman with short, light brown, bobbed hair, dressed circa 1940s in a tan skirt and burgundy sweater. Her outline was crisp, and the coloring of my curious new friend was sharp. However, she was transparent. Her features were perfectly clear, but I was a bit unnerved that I could also see through her. She had a kind smile on her face, as if amused by my reaction to her. I only saw her for a minute, but there was no question in my mind that she was real.
All my life, I had figured if I ever saw a ghost, I would be paralyzed with fear. But the experience wasn’t scary at all. My immediate reaction was one of interest and fascination.
I was so fascinated by what I had seen, I told my students when I got to the college. Interestingly enough, no one seemed to think I was insane and we spent a few minutes just talking about ghosts in general. Quite a few of them even had their own personal stories to share. Even back in 1987, it was amazing how many people would admit to having seen a spirit.
This was my first episode of seeing a ghost, but it made me remember some of the stories my mother had told me about her spirit encounters. At her apartment in Nashville, she used to see the transparent ghost of an African American man standing outside her bedroom in the hall. She was so shaken by her first sighting of the apparition that she called me knowing I had had spiritual experiences with Eileen/Patience and would be sympathetic. The next time we got together, she admitted to me that she had seen spirits on a very irregular basis all her life.
But anything supernatural or occult truly frightened my mom, and she didn’t like to talk about it. She told me that when the original Boris Karloff movie Frankenstein came out back in 1931, she went to the theatre with her two brothers to see it—not really knowing what the movie was about. She was so terrified, she jumped up from her seat and ran out of the theatre, leaving her brothers sitting in the theatre alone. They ribbed her for her lack of courage on into adulthood. Mom never mentioned seeing ghosts to me again, but seeing Brittany’s lady myself made me start wondering then if the ability to see them, even occasionally, might be hereditary.
After we’d lived in the Victorian house on Greenwood Street about five years, I got a job as editor of a small-town weekly newspaper in the adjacent town of Mt. Juliet. We sold the house when Brittany was four and moved so I could be closer to work. I hated leaving the house on Greenwood, but I felt that if I was going to edit Mt. Juliet’s newspaper, I needed to be a part of the community. We moved into a small, modern, brick house in a subdivision near a lake. Brittany loved to go down to the shallow creek behind the house and play with two of the neighborhood kids about her age. She was known to bring several slimy, creepy, swishy little critters the kids found in the creek up to the house as presents. The little house was peaceful and serene—a pretty typical slice of Americana.
Past Life Memories
Our year spent in the creek house saw no paranormal apparitions or manifestations of any kind. Brittany never mentioned seeing her lady and I certainly never saw her again, so I concluded she was attached to the house on Greenwood. However, I did experience one metaphysical event while we lived in the house by the creek.
After Sheila, Brittany, and I had gone to bed one evening, I awoke in the middle of the night after an extremely vivid nightmare. I never had a dream like it before or since. The dream/nightmare was set in pre-World War II Nazi Germany. I was in the dream, but I was very different than I am now. I could feel deep inside that this was me, but I didn’t look anything at all like I did, at the time, in 1989. I have dark brown, curly hair and gray eyes. My features are kind of Mediterranean with a Roman-type nose that dominates my face—like it’s the first thing to enter the room. I’ve had a number of people tell me I look Jewish even though I have no Jewish heritage. But in the dream, I was blond and very fair-skinned with deep, translucent blue eyes. The only similarity was that I was very light of frame, just as I really am. In the dream, I was a radio announcer and I was broadcasting a message that was very anti-Adolf Hitler. Perhaps this was right before Hitler became chancellor of Germany, because I can’t imagine my anti-Hitler news would have cleared the censors after his ascension to power. In the middle of my broadcast, four or five of Hitler’s Brown Shirt thugs burst into the sound room, snatched the microphone out of my hand, beat the holy hell out of me, and carried me off to what seemed to be some kind of prison where I was severely tortured, abused, and generally mutilated. I was in the middle of one of many torture sessions when I abruptly woke up in a cold sweat, shaking.
I quickly sat up in bed and frantically looked around the room in every direction. I was stunned to find myself back in our bedroom; I was so certain that the dream was really happening. Sheila was sound asleep, and I didn’t bother her. I got up and went to the bathroom. Turning the sink’s faucet on, I splashed water in my face hoping this might bring me back to reality. What happened next has haunted me ever since. Staring back at me was the face of the blond radio announcer. I knew the dream was over—the cold water saw to that. But the face that was looking back at me was not my own. It was unmistakably the face of the man I had been dreaming was me. Although I was quite literally terrified, I was also fascinated and continued to gaze into the mirror for several seconds.
I felt empathy and compassion for what he had been through—because I had somehow experienced it myself. I looked slightly down toward the sink while all the while still keeping the vision of this blond, blue-eyed intruder in my line of vision. As I looked down, he did the same. It was truly as if this reflection was me—except it looked altogether like someone else. I looked toward the door and yelled for Sheila. When I looked back in the mirror, my reflection had reassumed my normal features. I was me again, albeit sweaty and still shaking. I went back into the bedroom and found Sheila still sleeping away. She’s not easily awakened; my shriek had certainly proved insufficient. I went back to bed, but I’m not sure I ever went back to sleep that night. This episode rattled me to such an extent that I didn’t sleep really well for months. I couldn’t get the images of that blond, blue-eyed “me-but-not-me” out of my head. The memories I had of the abuse and torture he suffered were so intense for several months it actually made concentrating very difficult.
I never had another nightmare about this unfortunate man whose memories I shared, and it took me a very long time to get him out of my head. Was this an experience of a past life remembered? I had believed in reincarnation since my first encounters with Eileen in New Orleans. Living multiple lives in order to perfect your soul is both more logical and more compassionate than believing in a God who would condemn you to eternal damnation after only one lifetime.
I told my psychic adviser, Laurel, about the dream/nightmare (and subsequent vision in the mirror), and she was certain I had had a past-life memory. She further explained that many believe that time is actually an illusion and is only a convenient way for our simple minds to understand the expansion of the universe. If this is true and all time happens simultaneously, then for one brief moment I became a blond radio announcer in Nazi Germany, and he may have become a newspaper editor in our time frame.
But the most relevant aspect of this experience, as pertains to my daughter Brittany, perhaps had more to do with genes than a discussion of reincarnation. I had told Laurel about my mom’s lifelong, sporadic experiences seeing apparitions, as well as my own single encounter with a ghost. When she first met Brittany as a toddler, she had sensed that Britt had a special aura about her—a propensity for future psychic abilities.
“Your mom saw apparitions,” she said. “You saw the one spirit and had the reincarnational dream, and Brittany is very psychic. I’d have to conclude it’s hereditary.” Maybe she was right, but at the time I felt about as psychic as an old sock. I was more concerned with editing the newspaper and maybe learning lines to plays.
But her words did make me think, especially later in life, when I began having precognitive dreams on a fairly regular basis. I often dream about people I don’t know or about situations to which I have no connection in the present. The dreams are always much more vivid than regular dreams, and I always remember them in great detail upon awakening. Then later that day or perhaps later that week, I will meet that person or end up in that certain place I’d dreamed about. Also, the people and situations are never very important, and I have no control over the dreams. I can’t ask to dream about winning the lottery and expect to see a ticket with the winning numbers. I suppose these precognitive dreams have a connection to the theory that all time happens at once. Just the fact that I have them at all, and that they come true, could be a genetic clue to the abilities I would see later in my daughter.
For a brief moment, I connected to my blond Nazi-era doppelganger. I experienced his life and felt his pain, and he probably experienced my life and perceived my reality in some way. But regardless of the machinations of how this quantum, interdimensional ballet may have played out, I have been firmly convinced ever since in the reality of reincarnation and in the psychic gene that might link our family.
Life Trudges On, Reincarnation or Not
By the time Brittany was four years old, Sheila and I had decided to divorce. We went our separate ways and agreed on a plan of shared custody of our daughter. Brittany would stay with Sheila for one week, and then me for one week, Sheila for two weeks, and then back to my house for a week. Then the schedule would repeat.
It was a bit confusing, but I did not want to be a weekend dad. I wanted to play a day-to-day role in my daughter’s life. Brittany and I have always had a very close relationship. We were more than just father and daughter; we were like best friends.
Apparently believing a man should be married, I took my fourth and last stab at matrimonial bliss with Balinda, a woman I met doing community theatre. The union lasted about a year and a half, and the only good thing to come of it was my son, McCartney or “Mac.” Mac was six years younger than Brittany. The custody arrangement for him was more typical. Mac lived with his mother in another town but was close enough he could stay at our house every other weekend. Like most kids, Britt and Mac argued fervently one minute and played together like the best of friends the next. But the age difference made a difference. By the time she was twelve and he was six, Brittany had become very protective of her little brother.
After my latest matrimonial fiasco, I became the theatre critic for a weekly newspaper, the Nashville PRIDE. This allowed me to continue with my writing—and also provided free tickets to plays and movies, giving Brittany, Mac, and me weekend activities.
Before long, I was using my degrees again and teaching theatre and speech at Cumberland University. During the weeks Brittany came to stay with me, my mother lived with us so I could work. My mom took Brittany to school, picked her up, then served as a live-in babysitter till I got home from work. As a result, Brittany and “Mima” (as she dubbed her grandma) became very close—probably much closer than they would have been if Sheila and I had remained married.
I also directed school plays at Cumberland and usually also taught summer classes while directing shows at theatres in Nashville. My free time was spent with my two kids. I guess I finally learned my matrimonial lesson after my divorce with McCartney’s mother in 1993. I have never remarried.
Every other weekend, McCartney visited us. I’d drive the sixty miles to Murfreesboro, Tennessee, to pick him up, and he’d join in on whatever activity was going on at my house. Mac and Brittany were very close growing up. But McCartney was always a huge devotee of any kind of sports, and that put him at a disadvantage at my house because I never cared anything at all about team sports. But there was plenty else to do. We all three loved to swim, and I had a membership at the local YMCA. So we spent lots of time in the pool. Board games were a major diversion, with Mac usually ending up the winner—he’s extremely intelligent. Lots of movies, lots of plays, and of course, the kids would frequently accompany me to rehearsals for whatever play I happened to be working on at the time.
Ouija Gets a Second (and Ominous) Life
My old circa-1974 Ouija board was still around—and I had told the kids the stories of my adventures chatting with Patience and other entities, so they were familiar with the concept. One evening when Brittany was about nine or ten, she had several little girls over for a sleepover, they unearthed the Ouija, dusted it off, and brought it to me. I had been grading papers, but I put my work aside. Apparently they had been telling each other ghost stories, and Britt had chimed in with a few Patience Worth/Ouija episodes I’d shared with her. One thing led to another, and they wanted to try their hands at some Ouija magic. Since my own experiences with Ouija had always been totally harmless and fun, I didn’t see any reason not to show them how it worked.
I briefed them on the basic techniques and they partnered up and gave it a whirl. At first nothing much happened. Their only responses were useless gibberish. Finally, I volunteered to participate. Brittany and I started getting yes and no answers to questions—then simple sentences. This loosened everyone up, and the other little girls started getting results without me. I went back to grading my papers.
So from then until Brittany was fifteen, we’d occasionally take out the Ouija board and have fun with it. I truly considered it all a harmless game. Sometimes we’d pick up Patience, but more often than not, we’d tune in to some lonesome spirit mostly wanting to talk about the woeful events surrounding their own demise. Naturally, Brittany was full of questions concerning whatever boy she was interested in at the time—or she would want to hear predictions concerning her future. It didn’t do much good to tell her that if these really were spirits, they probably didn’t have any clearer insight into her future than she did. Occasionally, McCartney sat in on these sessions with the spirits—but he was never as interested in it as Britt was. But treks into the paranormal world, via Ouija or me telling ghost stories, played only a very minor part in our lives.
In 1995, I had to have two spinal operations due to a staph infection I’d picked up on a camping trip. I am told that I nearly died, but my immediate concern was that it was the most agonizing pain I’d ever felt. I was in and out of the hospital for a year, so without tenure, I had to give up my teaching position. However, I continued with my theatre critiques, writing and editing at the Nashville PRIDE.