Ghosts Among Us - James Van Praagh [5]
“It’s out of my way,” I said timidly.
Mike picked up a rock and aimed it at my head. I was petrified. In a threatening tone, he said, “Do what I say, or I’ll crack your head open.”
I walked with Mike a good forty-five minutes to the train trestle. It was in the most out-of-the-way location next to the Clearview Expressway. No one was around because no one would have a reason to be there. By then, Mike had already thrown down the rock, so I figured he was goofing with me. When we arrived at the trestle, Mike told me to sit down and take off my sneakers.
“C’mon, Mike,” I said. “The joke’s over. I’m going home.”
Mike got angry again. “Do it, or I’ll beat you up.”
I quickly untied my shoes and handed them to Mike.
Holding my shoes over the expressway, Mike said, “Tell me I’m great, or I’ll fling them over.”
I didn’t know which was worse—getting beat up by Mike or getting punished by my father for losing my sneakers. I thought Mike was crazy, and I just wanted to get away from him. I started to run away, but Mike grabbed me and threw me down. My hands and face hit the ground hard.
I began to plead. “Why are you doing this?”
“Because I can. Don’t you know I’m great?”
I started to run again. This time when Mike caught me, he held me over the zooming afternoon traffic. I was scared to death; he was crazy enough to drop me.
“Put me down!” I screamed.
Mike just laughed.
Suddenly the ghost I had seen standing next to Mike in the classroom returned. He looked the same, only this time he seemed to be brighter. The ghost sent me his thoughts.
I am Michael, Mike’s dad.
“Your father is talking to me,” I said to Mike.
“What are you talking about?” Mike yelled back.
“Your father is here with us.”
Mike put me down on the ground and looked at me like I was the crazy one.
“Your father is saying that it was not your fault. He was drunk and got into a car accident.”
Mike stared at me.
“He says he was supposed to go to your Little League game, but he didn’t show up because he died the night before.”
“That’s not true,” Mike insisted. “My mother said he left us.”
Mike’s father told me that his wife lied because she felt too guilty about having an affair. She had asked Mike’s father for a divorce the day he died.
“Don’t blame yourself,” I said. “It wasn’t your fault. He says he is very proud of you, and he’s sorry that you didn’t know the real story about his death.”
Mike threw my sneakers at me and ran away. The ghost thanked me for telling his son the truth.
I felt sorry for the ghost, but thanked him for saving my life.
Mike never spoke to me again. I learned from my mother that Mike’s father did die in an auto accident. A year after that incident, Mike disappeared from the neighborhood. I later heard he went to military school in upstate New York.
STARTING OVER
The older I grew, the less interest I had in ghosts. I spent a year in a high school preparatory seminary and realized that although I was searching for the answers, the Catholic Church wasn’t the place I would find them. When I entered public high school, I was too wrapped up in being a teenager to deal with the other side. I was still very intuitive, but I sort of closed the portal to my visions. By then, I had entered San Francisco State College and was majoring in broadcasting. I wanted to pursue a career as a TV comedy writer.
After college, I moved to L.A., where I got a lot of odd jobs in the film business to learn what it was all about. One day Carol, a friend from the office, asked me to go with her to a séance. I wasn’t sure that I wanted to start this whole business with ghosts again, but I went, mostly out of curiosity. There I met Brian E. Hurst, a gifted and popular medium. At one point in the séance, Brian turned to me and said, “The spirits tell me that you are a gifted medium and one day will be doing this work too.”
I thought to myself, No way! I’m not this crazy. I’m going to be