In my last book, I laid my soul bare, wondering if embracing the paranormal world may have influenced the tragic outcomes of my father and son. I think I made a good case for myself and, if nothing else, hopefully I helped a few readers choose their paths a bit more carefully. That’s my greatest wish. But as in all true stories, as life unfolds, more happens. Our understanding changes and deepens, and mysteries unravel, leading to a core truth. I believe we must always work to find the truth, even though it may be buried deeply in the heart of a mystery wrapped in an enigma. For me, this truly describes ghosts, spirits, and the afterlife.
I was born into a psychic though religious family. Many of the females in the maternal line, including both my mother and her mother, were psychic. My grandmother descended from Alice Nutter, one of the infamous Lancashire Witches executed by King James in 1612.
But I’d fought against the very idea of these psychic abilities for most of my life, unable to reconcile them with my religious upbringing. Out of necessity, I finally began to embrace my psychic abilities. Shortly after doing so, my only child, my son James, was tragically killed at age twenty-four by a drunk driver, followed closely after by my father’s suicide. This seemed more than just a coincidence. Then my son’s returns from the other side began, and forced me on a difficult journey of despair, self-blame, and, ultimately, acceptance. My father returned only once—to snap his fingers in our faces the night we found his body. James still returns. But the premonitions James had of his own death and the actual events leading up to it were far stranger than mere coincidence. This true story was all recounted in my first book, a psychic memoir titled A Haunted Life: The True Ghost Story of a Reluctant Psychic. In my darker moments, when I missed Dad and James the most, my hard-won acceptance wavered. I still had doubts; I still had questions. I knew I still didn’t have all the answers. And I knew I had to dig deeper, for my own peace of mind.
This is a book about my ongoing experiences with hauntings, whether they involved the return of a loved one after their death or a spirit I ran across during a paranormal investigation. I gathered the stories from investigators, friends and family, even a few strangers. You’d be surprised at how many people these things happen to. Or maybe you wouldn’t be—I have a feeling anyone who picks up this book already knows that ghosts are real, that death isn’t the end, and that strange stories of similar instances abound.
I grew up in a family who knew these things happen from personal experience. There were always spooky tales being told. Many may have sounded too crazy to be true, but they were told as gospel to us kids. I remember one family story that used to freak out my cousin Joyce. Our great-grandmother’s brother earned the nickname Peg-leg after he lost his lower limb in an accident. Right after it happened, he suffered from what are now known as phantom limb pains. That’s what the condition is called when you lose an arm or leg, but your brain hasn’t quite caught up with the information and thinks it’s still there. Sufferers swear they can still feel the limb attached, just as it always was. Often, the phantom limb is causing them some kind of pain or itching, that sort of thing.
In Peg-leg’s case, he swore the toes on the missing leg were crossed. He begged anyone who came by his house to help him. The “leg” was excruciatingly painful for him.
Peg-leg’s relatives had buried the appendage in the cemetery in a burial plot that had long been reserved for the old man. Finally, Peg-leg talked one of his family members into digging up his amputated leg and checking the toes. The relative went on this macabre mission to the cemetery, spooked by the task. And sure enough, when he dug the leg up, the toes were crossed. The relative uncrossed them and reburied the leg.
Yesterday upon the stair, I met a leg that wasn’t there. Of course, I’m being silly here, paraphrasing the old Antigonish poem, but this is what we grew up with in my family—haunted houses, psychic abilities, weird stories, and just the right mindset on a dark night to make it all even creepier. You may have grown up with the same thing. If not, welcome to my world! Settle back, turn on all the lights, and read this book. Whether you are a believer or not, the true stories contained within will make you think. And if you are a skeptic, they may just change your mind.