When Ghosts Speak - Mary Ann Winkowski [14]
“So tell me,” he added, “why do you keep going?”
I looked at him and kept my gaze steady as, barely stopping to take a breath, I blurted out everything. I told him about my grandmother, and the funerals, and the white Light, and the nuns at my grade school, and the ghost in Joanie’s kitchen.
And then I told him to stop staring at me and watch the road.
Ted didn’t say a word for the rest of the drive. When we got home, he carried our daughter into the house and put her in her crib. I was in the kitchen, setting up the coffeepot for the next morning, when he appeared in the doorway.
He braced a hand on either side of the door and looked straight at me. “Okay,” he said. “I’m ready.”
“For what?” I asked.
“Go ahead,” he said grimly. “Just go ahead and do it.”
“Do what?” I asked, truly bewildered.
“Wiggle your nose, or whatever it is you do. I’m ready.”
I didn’t know whether to cry or laugh. As calmly as I could, I straightened Ted out on what it was I did—and how it didn’t resemble Elizabeth Montgomery’s character on the television show Bewitched in the slightest. Mostly, I reassured him that I was the same person he’d always known; I was just particularly popular at funerals.
He made his peace with my gift pretty quickly. Aside from a few frantic years when he asked if our daughter was talking to earthbound spirits every time she had an imaginary friend (she wasn’t, although our younger daughter is able to), our life pretty much picked up and went on much as before. I’ll admit that not many husbands would have taken such unusual news in stride. It’s just one more thing I love about the guy I married.
A few years later, by the time I was twenty-two, it was quite common for me to be going to funerals on my own. Without my grandmother “managing” my appearance, people felt free to ask me questions. The most common question I was asked was “If you can see ghosts at funerals, can’t you see them other places?” When I responded that, yes, I could see spirits outside funeral homes, people began to ask if I would visit their homes. They were sure, they told me, that they had ghosts living in their houses. And often they were right.
I could make the white Light at will, and I felt I was old enough to tell a ghost to leave without needing the imposing personality of my grandmother to back me up, so I began visiting the houses of relatives and friends of the family whom I met at neighborhood funerals. Word of mouth was the most effective way to pass on information in our close-knit neighborhood, and before long I was going to fewer funerals and spending more time traveling to homes where people were living with, and bothered by, earthbound spirits. Just as my grandmother could lift a curse, so could I clear a house of an energy-disrupting spirit.
As the children grew older, our lives changed to meet their needs. We moved to a rural area about an hour south of Cleveland where they could enjoy a more bucolic childhood. Ted changed from working as a mechanic to managing a car dealership. I worked full-time as an animal groomer and enjoyed raising and showing dogs. (And yes, animal spirits can become earthbound just like human spirits.)
As word spread about what I could do, I found that I was getting more and more calls to visit people’s houses and rid them of ghosts. It wasn’t an easy time. I really felt I had to do my best to get out to every homeowner or businessperson who called me in. Earthbound spirits can wreak havoc in homes and be detrimental to people’s health and moods. If someone strongly felt they had a ghost or negative energy in their house, I wanted to do whatever I could to help clear out the spirit and improve the situation.
At the same time, I was a busy working mother of two. Ted and I had also begun welcoming foster babies into our family. So sometimes, I was a busy working mother of three! Then Ted’s aging parents moved in with us. After I did a few local radio and newspaper interviews, the calls from people having trouble with earthbound spirits increased. Overwhelming doesn