When Ghosts Speak - Mary Ann Winkowski [85]
When her children grew up and moved out of their two-bedroom home she decided to completely renovate it—she wanted it to be comfortable and practical for her as she aged. When the contractors began to take down the ceiling in the kitchen, they were pelted with a torrent of silverware! All the missing forks, knives, and spoons came raining out of the ceiling. There must have been fifty or sixty pieces.
When I arrived, I met the very crabby ghost of a man who was quite peeved that we had discovered his secret stash. He’d been a butler for a posh family and had been outraged when the children had decided to sell off their parents’ silver. He had followed the woman home from an estate auction and for the last ten years had taken great delight in hiding a few pieces of silver from every collection she purchased. He admitted that it hadn’t been as much fun in later years, when the woman finally decided that it was perfectly acceptable to mix and match silver patterns when setting her table, thus becoming less concerned if pieces suddenly went missing.
Moving all that silverware must have required a tremendous amount of energy, and after the children moved out, I believe it became increasingly difficult for him to carry on with his petty thievery. Once he was discovered, he admitted that he was indeed a bit weary of the whole thing and crossed over without any fuss at all.
If you are a flea-market fan or a tag-sale shopper or someone who has furnished your house with high-end antiques from estate sales, it is likely you are hosting an earthbound spirit or two as well. You don’t have to stop bargain shopping, however. In chapter 12, I’ll give you tips for helping to protect your purchases from any earthbound spirits who may be intent on coming home with them.
I Was Invited
When I’m asked to clear out spirits and the ghosts tell me they were basically invited in, I have to admit that I do become frustrated. The thing is, I receive literally thousands of requests for help each month. Many people contact me on the basis of my reputation—whether they’ve heard of me from friends or family, or heard me speak on a radio show, or attended one of my lectures or workshops—and they are the ones who usually have strong intuitions about being in the presence of an earthbound spirit.
Other people don’t have a personal reference when they call or write or contact me through my Web site. These folks are often worried; some are frantic, and a few I’d characterize as desperate. They’re reaching out to me because they are experiencing serious problems with their health, their homes, or their families and, having exhausted all the logical explanations for the troubles they are dealing with, are calling me as a last resort. Many are so anxious for me to visit their homes that they call again and again, ignoring the message on my answering machine that says it can take me up to four months to return their calls.
And more often than not, when I finally do arrive at their homes, I encounter earthbound spirits with attitude problems. When they learn that I can see and communicate with them, they wonder why I am there at all. After all, these ghosts tell me, they are attached to the person or home only because they were invited to stay. When I question the people who called me, I often find out that, yes, they were recently using a Ouija board/had a séance/tried a dark witchcraft ritual/attempted to cast a spell.
I try not to get upset with these folks—at least not the first time I’m called to their house. Most people don’t fully understand the powers of such acts. But the simple fact is this: While some earthbound spirits attach to people who are innocent bystanders, so to speak, others are drawn by the energies that surround metaphysical