Jump Girl Read online

  During the next few years my dream world expanded, becoming a vivid, detailed reality in which I was a conscious participant. I wasn’t awake in all of my dreams, but when I was I found myself once again inhabiting the dualistic perspective of being both the main character of the dream and the observer watching it unfold. In moments when things were going awry in the dream or decisions needed to be made, I stopped the dream and redirected it to attain a desired outcome. As time went on, I developed techniques that allowed me to make changes with ease, and I became very good at it. The one thing that stayed consistent was the feeling of pressure in my third eye. The chakra between my eyes was always activated during the moments when I altered things.

  When I told Grammy about these dreams, she assured me they were normal and called them “waking dreams.” After taking up metaphysical study as a teenager, I discovered they are also called lucid dreams. A lucid dream is one in which the dreamer is aware that he or she is dreaming. Lucid dreams are usually quite vivid, with details of color, texture, sound, smell, and touch that feel similar to the waking world. During such dreams, your mind is conscious, allowing you to retain information clearly and to make decisions that alter the outcome.

  After having a few such dreams, I was able to know I was having one within moments of it starting, which prevented any fear I might have had regarding the unusual situations I found myself in. I learned that not only could I alter events, but I had the ability to manipulate my surroundings, much like an artist at a crafting table. I could change the way things looked, turning spooky houses into comforting ones. I could alter my own appearance if I needed to. I changed my outfit a lot, as I often became aware of wearing pajamas in public and needed to change to something more appropriate.

  I still have lucid dreams regularly, and I find them to be good places for receiving knowledge. Spirits and guides stop by for conversation and to give advice. Many of these visitors are familiar to me, people I’ve seen before, including the witch from the kitchen and spirits and guides who’ve visited me in the mirror.

  Often the information I receive in a lucid dream comes in the form of a download that enters my consciousness too quickly for me to understand it while I’m receiving it. When that happens I file it away for future use, and it’s available when I need it. In these moments of download, I am fully conscious, and I experience my mind being filled with quickly moving images fluttering by—sometimes in code, sometimes as pictures. I am both the receiver, lying on my bed or on a table, and the observer watching as the images pour into my mind. I’m never afraid when this happens, and I know the information I’m receiving is very important. I do retain bits and pieces of it upon waking, but never its entirety until I need it. That’s when I remember it completely, as well as where and when I received it.

  7

  Death Surrounds Me

  I have always known death as a teacher to be respected, not feared. Both my early introduction to the spirit world and the teachings of my grandmother showed me that death is as important to the human experience as birth. Both are gateways; both transform souls while opening the living to a deeper, more authentic view of existence itself. Both strip away illusion and show the true essence of who we are.

  Encounters with death are axiomatically encounters with the spirit world, with other dimensions and different states of incarnation and being. These were among my first lessons of life, showing me that beneath the layers of experience and ego, we are all born, we all die, we all seek love in the best way we know how. Most of us develop layers to keep our authentic selves protected from the world. Vulnerability and the special bits of wounding that each of us carry come closer to our true natures than the bravado with which we defend our egos. Death breaks through all that and exposes both the living and the dead to the reality of existence itself.

  As a young child, I was exposed to many faces of death: accident, illness, suicide, murder. At first I was simply an observer, watching and listening as spirits came to my grandmother’s house by themselves and with their living, or while tramping through graveyards at her side as she saw to the needs of the dead.

  One of Grammy’s self-appointed jobs was overseeing the graveyards in town. She didn’t do this in any official capacity; Whitefield had groundskeepers to mow the lawn and clean away debris. She took this responsibility upon herself because she figured that if she could see the dead and their needs, she should be the one reaching out to help them. She considered tending the dead and their living relatives the holiest work a person could do—not holy like going to church on Sunday and saying the Lord’s Prayer, but holy in the older, deeper sense of the word: holy without a particular deity, hallowed, sacred. Grammy used to say, “All people have in their soul the ability to recognize what is holy, and we all want our loved ones to be acknowledged with respect when their time comes.”

  I knew I was in some kind of apprenticeship and that my experiences with the dead were there to prepare me for the work I do today. I understood that as someone who could “see,” I was connected to death—we were kindred—and I would be called upon to do its work from time to time.

  In childhood, I found myself connecting to people shortly before their passing, as if death itself was instructing me to pay attention. I was often standing in the right place at the right time, ready to bear witness, hear stories, and share in the emotion when death came a-calling. I later realized this happened because I had been there before; I had been a medium in previous lifetimes.

  My father told me detailed stories of his time in the Vietnam War, speaking to me as if I were an adult. He told me about booby traps, grenades, and people who died because of them. He spoke of dreadful things he’d witnessed, the smell of fear, the sensation he would experience as death approached. I was never afraid of his stories. I accepted them as important, and I knew the dead needed their stories told and wanted to be thought of with honor and respect. These tales helped prepare me for experiencing death on a personal level.

  At eight years old I had my first close encounter with death. My aunt’s best friend Jennifer died in a terrible car accident. She was someone I had known and seen regularly, and she was only fifteen, one of three teenagers who passed because of their own negligence. They died only minutes from the regional high school they attended, and their deaths left a mark on the community for years.

  The adults were gathered in the kitchen of my grandfather’s house, speaking quietly. They didn’t want any of us kids to hear what they were saying, especially my aunt, who was devastated by the death of her friend. I hid in the shadow of the hall with my body pressed up against the stairwell. I knew I wasn’t supposed to be listening, but I also knew that I had to hear, I had to know; not because I was nosy, but because it was important for me to learn. I’ve had many moments like this in my life, when my psychic mind tells me: Pay attention, listen up, this is for you to know. When this happens, I respond naturally without questioning why. As a developed psychic medium, I now see that my higher self surfaces at these times. I direct myself subconsciously to look, listen, and pay attention.

  My grandfather told everyone he’d gone to the scene of the accident when he heard about it on his scanner. He worked for the town road crew in Whitefield, and he knew just about everything that went on. When he heard that some teenagers had been in a crash, he drove to the site to see if he could be of assistance. The accident was horrific, leaving the victims barely recognizable. He said they had to use the Jaws of Life to remove the door and get the bodies out. The two boys were both killed on impact. Upon hearing this, I felt a deep pain in my chest and felt so bad for the people who loved them; still, I was momentarily hopeful because he hadn’t said that Jennifer was dead at the scene. I thought perhaps she was only hurt badly and might recover. In my heart, though, I knew that wasn’t true. My grandfather continued his story, saying that my aunt’s friend had survived briefly as a “vegetable.”

  When I heard this, I made a little gasp from my hiding place at th
e edge of the doorway. No one saw me except Grammy, who shifted her gaze and looked me straight in the eye. Then I knew she had been aware of me the whole time and was telling me to keep quiet. I moved deeper into the shadow of the hall but kept listening.

  I was overwhelmed with grief to know that Jennifer had been trapped in her body. I knew that “vegetable” was a way of saying she was in a coma, not thinking, not moving, stuck in place. I was relieved when he said her parents had decided to pull the plug. I also knew they would struggle with that decision for the rest of their lives, and I felt deeply sad for them.

  Jennifer’s death stuck with me for a long time. She was the first young person I knew who had passed. Another reason it stuck with me was that I’d known her. I’d been to her house, played with her old dolls, listened to her records, and let her paint my fingernails. She wasn’t old or sick; she was filled with life. But now she was dead, just like that. Her death introduced me to the concept that death did not play by rules of goodness or fairness. Death had rules all its own, and we, the living, had to accept them.

  I remember how sad my aunt was, and I tried to tell her that I saw Jennifer standing next to her basement door whenever I walked by her house, but this information didn’t comfort her. I don’t think she believed me.

  8

  What Lurks in the Dark

  In locations on the earth that hold high levels of spiritual energy, contact from the spirit realm is more likely because the energy in such places gives spirits the fuel they need to expend in order to communicate with us. Throughout time, humankind has been drawn to such spaces and has built churches, temples, astronomical observatories, and spiritual centers there. Geomancy, the study of earth energy and the art of manipulating it, has found that ley lines cross at these sites. Ley lines are the earth’s equivalent of our body’s blood vessels and energy meridians. As the human body conducts energetic flows through its vessels and meridians, the earth has its own underground waterways and electrical currents. Where ley lines cross, vortices of swirling, pooling energy form. These places are more highly charged, more vibrant, and filled with life force. Like electrical outlets, these locales don’t determine how their energy will be utilized; the power is there for the taking. They also function as charging stations for the dead. The earth’s energy makes it easier for the dead to connect to the physical plane and to be witnessed by people with spiritual sensitivity.

  Smaller vortices are present in places that are haunted—that is, filled with spiritual presence. When a death occurs that is connected with an act of violence, a high emotional charge, or trauma, a scar can be created that keeps the spirit attached to the location of their demise. In some cases the spirit doesn’t even know they’re dead, and they wander about the premises confused, repeating actions they performed in life. When circumstances force such a ghost to share space with the living, they can be mischievous and troublesome because they’re discomfited by the activity in their house. They’re just as surprised by our presence in their home as we are by theirs in ours. While ghosts generally do not hold a personal vendetta against the living, they are drawn to certain individuals, particularly mediums, insofar as they provide a conduit or channel through which interdimensional energy flows more easily. Spirits of all sorts are drawn naturally to the brighter luminosity and energy of mediums. They go to mediums the way a moth goes to a flame.

  Having psychic luminosity does not in itself determine skill; skill is learned and developed. Without skill, the average person with a disposition toward mediumship experiences spirit activity in a haphazard, uncontrolled manner. When an untrained medium comes in contact with a ghost, they often feel like they’re the victim of a haunting because disembodied activity seems to circle around them. Sometimes musical instruments play or voices are heard in conversation. This takes place most often where there is already a source of power for the spirit or where ley lines cross.

  My first experience with haunting came when I was eight years old and my family had just moved into a beautiful old house on Elm Street in Whitefield. My parents didn’t know the house was haunted before we moved in, but soon it became clear that something weird was going on. The fact that I was a natural medium guaranteed that I would have personal experience with the ghost in the house. At the time, I found the encounter unpleasant; looking back, I see that it was a necessary lesson on my path of spiritual development.

  From a mundane perspective, the house was a wonderful place to live. It was a huge building that had been turned into a duplex, with each unit having three bedrooms and two baths. It had a large enclosed yard, and it was located on a side street close to the center of town, making it ideal for walking to school. Our apartment was on the back side of the house, away from the road and attached to a two-story barn. Our neighbors in the front of the house were family friends.

  Shortly after we moved in, I started to feel like someone was watching me from just out of sight, purposely trying not to be noticed. I found myself turning around and looking over my shoulder to see who was there, but I didn’t see anyone. I was sure the person watching me wasn’t living, but I had never experienced a spirit that hid from me before. The sensation of being covertly watched made me afraid to go upstairs alone, which became problematic because my room was on the second floor.

  As the weeks moved on, I began catching glimpses of someone out of the corner of my eye or in the bathroom mirror when I walked down the hall to my room. I couldn’t fully make out the image, but I knew he was a middle-aged man, and I could tell he was not happy we were there. His presence seemed strongest when I was upstairs alone.

  Sometimes I couldn’t avoid being in my room alone, so I developed a set of rules that kept me safe and sane. Grammy Brown had given me my bed, and I believed that her essence in the bed worked as a protective talisman. If I ran into my room and jumped onto the bed, the spirit in the house couldn’t get at me. While I was on my bed, nothing could step through the barrier surrounding it. I could still sense the spirit there and occasionally see him, but the protection of the bed rendered him powerless to spook me or cause me harm.

  In addition to creating shelter on my bed, I set up a safety zone in my closet. It was a small space with an overhead light; the floor was just big enough for me to sit in it with my dolls or a stack of books. I made it my fortress of solitude. I could expand my aura to fill the little room, leaving no space for other entities. My closet was better than my bed because I didn’t have to worry about seeing the man hovering outside my protective space.

  Over the years I’ve often thought of this situation, and I used to wonder why Grammy didn’t just come in and kick the angry spirit out. I know now that she was left out of the equation so I could learn to manage my gifts on my own. The safety techniques I created for myself came from deep within my subconscious. My higher self reminded me that I had the ability to create protective boundaries using my mind alone. The circle of protection that surrounded my bed could just as well have filled my whole room or the entire house, but as a child I didn’t know my capacity; I simply called upon wisdom that surfaced with need. Now, as an adult and a skilled medium, I realize that we all have the ability to protect ourselves from the unseen world by expanding our aura and remaining calm. Spirits need our energy to do anything, and we can refuse them the use of it. By holding onto a talisman, such as my bed and the closet, I anchored my belief that my energy could not be used and told the spirit it had no power over me. Neither the bed nor the closet actually had any power. The power was mine.

  As the months passed, winter forced us to spend more time indoors, and my parents began to notice the strange happenings too. They started to see things from the corners of their eyes and hear noises in empty rooms. Sandy began to have fainting spells, usually at the top of the stairs. There was no apparent medical reason, and we never found out the actual cause. However, the fainting spells did stop after we moved out of that house, which leads me to believe they were connected to the ghost.

&
nbsp; Other disturbing things happened there. In the middle of the winter, we began to smell gas. My parents called in technicians more than once, but they were never able to find a leak, even though they agreed they could smell it too. One afternoon my mother fell while coming down the stairs, catching her wedding band on the smooth banister and tearing her finger. She was terrified and felt someone had pushed her down the stairs.

  The small room at the back of the house between my parents’ bedroom and the barn was originally meant to be an office. However, it was so cold that we only used it as storage. No matter the time of year, walking into that room felt like walking into an icebox. Even in the heat of summer you would need a jacket to spend any time in there. Along with the cold, the room somehow seemed to demand that you leave.

  All these unexplained experiences led my parents to seek background information on the house. With a little research they discovered it had been owned by an undertaker who had committed suicide by hanging himself from the rafters in the barn. Later they met former tenants of the house who told them about finding handprints on fogged mirrors and hearing a man talking in the hall. All of the prior tenants they spoke to had left because they believed the house was haunted. Now my parents felt that way too.

  We moved out of that house within a year, seeking a place with less unpleasant roommates. Our friends in the front of the house stayed put because they had experienced no ghostly activity. With my knowledge of the spirit world, I understand this to mean that no one in their family had sensitivity as a medium. Therefore, our side of the house, with its multiple mediums, was a more appealing place to haunt.