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I often talk to ghosts who have stayed to seek revenge, and to the earthbound spirits of homicide victims who have vowed to bring their murderers to justice. It can be quite difficult to convince these ghosts to cross over. Most feel they have an important mission to fulfill; they don’t want to leave until they’ve succeeded in righting the wrong they have perceived.

Seeking Revenge

A few years ago, an old man with a thick Slavic accent called me because he believed that “the spirits” had been sent to him by someone alive, to haunt and punish him. As I’ve mentioned already, I know from my own Italian background that such beliefs are not only common in the Old Country but often quite justified. As I spoke with this man over the phone, I could tell that there was indeed a ghost in his house, so I set up an appointment to meet with him.

The Slavic gentleman lived an hour or more away from me, in one of the wealthiest parts of Cleveland. His majestic home occupied nearly an entire city block, more a monument to his wealth than a place to live. When I rang the doorbell, a butler wordlessly answered, and I felt as though I’d stepped onto the set of some lush movie about the upper class in Europe.

I was ushered into a den. The old man was sitting behind an enormous desk in the center of a room filled with expensive, dark wood furniture polished to a high sheen. The eighty-year-old motioned for me to sit in a wingback chair across from him and told me his story.

He explained that he had been in the import-export business for most of his life, and it soon became clear that there was a shady element to his dealings. He not only referred to having been surrounded by “violent people” in his life, but hinted that he actually might have killed someone. Between the creepy, silent butler and the conversation, I found myself looking around the room for a quick exit should the need arise—which is when I saw the ghost. He looked to be about forty-five years old.

Before I could get the ghost’s attention, he began shouting a litany of foul names at the old man, ending with a pointed “murdering son of a bitch.” I was aware that the spirit was speaking a foreign language, but as I’d learned relatively early on, my ability to understand what ghosts are saying somehow transcends language. I don’t have to communicate with them out loud; I sense and understand their words, as they do mine. It’s hard to describe, but I can detect when spirits are speaking a different language because the words sound different—not so much accented as somehow vibrating differently in the air. It’s another aspect of my abilities that I don’t fully comprehend.

After he finished his rampage, the ghost turned his attention to me. “That kind old man,” he began sarcastically, “murdered me. I was a professional arsonist, and I did a lot of work for him, burning down buildings.” The ghost went on to explain that he’d tried to blackmail his employer for extra money; in response, the old man had had him killed. His body was thrown in an abandoned well on a deserted property, never to be found. Because the dead man had no family or friends, no one missed him, and a police investigation was never even opened. In response, his spirit hung around, determined to make the old man’s life miserable, to make him pay for his crime. It had been twenty years.

“At first, very little bothered him,” said the ghost, “but now he’s getting old and he’s starting to feel the pressure. I used to mess with the wiring, but now I’ve found that just yelling at him does more visible damage.”

The old man blanched when I asked him if he’d been having trouble with the wiring in the house. He had. “Why did you ask about that?”

“Well, ghosts often affect wiring just by their presence, so it’s a good clue that you might have one hanging around.”

“That’s true,” the ghost chimed in. “Only once I figured that out, it was easy for me to hang around any frayed old wires and just wait for a fire to start.”

“But in your case,” I added, “the ghost knew this and was actually