Symptoms

Symptoms-

Footsteps coming down the stairs but no one is there.

Shadows figures there one moment + gone the next.

Flickering lights. 

Knowing I am not alone at times I am alone.

Cold spots. Hot flashes. Flashes of white, color, black blurs. 

Tingling on my arms. Yes's resonating in my gut. The heavy pulling feeling on the back of my head. 

Being touched on my arm, back, side, leg. Feeling my hair stroked. Hearing my name + hellos. 

Dreams of apparitions in places where I have sensed them. Dreams of things that have happened + of things that have yet to happen. 

Deja vu over + over again + again. Knowingly random, strange things. 

I have this strange fascination with visiting old historical sights( mansions, homes, working farms, battle fields, places where George Washington slept). There is something about the energy, the built up passing of time, the accumulation of things that have happened that makes things happen. Or maybe I am just allowing myself to open up. I grew up in a very old house + it was there I had my first experiences. Things went bump in the night + walked freely around the that house. 

Across the street from that house was a cemetery. I used to feel I knew that I could see dead people coming + going. I used to stand on a mound of dirt in the playground next to the cemetery + look in. There was a grave with my name on it. One day, I mustered up the courage to go into the cemetery + check out the grave. As I entered the cemetery, I was acutely aware I wasn't alone. I felt a strange tingling sensation building up at the back of my head. I heavy feeling forming in my gut that told me I was not alone. I could feel people behind me but when I turned around no one was there. I reached the gravestone + realized that the name on the gravestone was my name but not for me. Rather it was the families that it belonged to last name. I was relieved but as I walked back out I was very aware of the collective presence of people all around me but I was yet alone. This was the first time I felt the symptoms strongly. 

This is where my tendencies towards dark things began. This is when I began to connect the symptoms with a connection between this world with the next. I was seven or eight. I learned early on that other people do not have these experiences or suffer from these symptoms. I learned to suffer in silence and to power of denial. 

My whole life I have had strange experiences. Some build up after being or living in a place for a while. Others are instant- like a punch in the gut or a pulling on the back of my neck. My skin prickles with goosebumps. My ears ring + buzz. The buzz becomes something more. I feel a pressure in my head. I know this pressure is sign of a presence. For me the paranormal is physical. Sometimes I clam up + hurry on. Sometimes I open up. Either way I cannot control it. I cannot make things happen but I have learned how to block them. I have learned how to shut it off + swallow it back. But still I cannot separate experiences from the physical symptoms. 

Physical symptoms run in the family. My grandmother was born with a caul over her face. According to folklore this was a mark of the psychic gift. I am not sure it is a gift but it was definitely a symptom. A physical manifestations of something more than meets the eye.  My grandmother always said she just knew things + she did. She also had a propensity towards dark things + negative thinking. She was a fearful woman who you would find sitting, smoking + staring off into the distant surrounded by a ring of billowing smoke. Somehow I always knew she saw things in the swirling clouds of smoke. I knew it was best to leave her be when she was in this state. She would emerge from this state + announce so-and-so would call or state that someone was pregnant or that something would happen. She was always right.

My mother had little patience for her in these states. She would state my grandmother had an over active imagination. But yet my mother also has a touch of the mystical. My mother would often dream of dead people visting her at night. She would see + hear things lurking around the house.  I saw things too but never understand the where the same things until later. When I was older + we had moved away from the house, my mother began to talk about the things she experienced.

As I got older, it seemed to me we moved from one place to the next with spirits lurking about. I now realize it wasn't so much the houses we lived in but rather me. By then, I had discovered ways to keep the symptoms at bay. Alcohol numbed them + drugs shadowed them. Even after getting cleaned up-I discovered another way to keep things at bay- never being alone. I feel in love for real, true, forever love + I wasn't alone. Things began to fade + the symptoms didn't induce so much fear. The symptoms retreated significantly. Then I returned to them on my own through the tarot + a curiosity to understand + open up. 

There wasn't- and isn't- a place to go or a way to turn off the symptoms. They occur at home, at work, on the subway, in restaurants, museums, public restrooms. I cannot turn them on or off. It isn't constant + it isn't sporadic. I am fascinated + fearful. The most I have learned to do is to block them as the occur. I have discovered some tools that help. Mediation + grounding. I have grown to believe in the power of the bright, white all powerful light- my way of saying god or the goddess, the ever present being of life + love. It is this belief that makes it possible to began to face the paranormal +deal with the symptoms.