Tag Archives: spiritual

Some strange things are happening at Casa River..

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*Cue the Twilight Zone music*

This post may be a little woo woo for some of my readers and that’s fine. I’m a very grounded skeptic at heart and I swear if these things didn’t happen to me I wouldn’t believe them either.

If you’re a long time reader you’ll remember I wrote about the bizarre things that transpired during my mother’s last days in hospice. I can’t explain any of them, but I was there. They happened.

I’m an only child and my father died when I was young. My mother and I were close. She was a very spiritual woman and believed in a lot of things I don’t. Her death in 2014 hit me hard and deciding what to do with her ashes took me a few months. After burying half of them with a memorial tree on our property, I decided to take the other half back to the Jersey shore where we spent countless happy hours as a family.

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She adored the ocean.

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It was an emotional journey returning to the place she loved and saying goodbye.

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But I felt her with me and knew she’d approve.

I was a bit of a wreck that day, drained and raw. So when we returned to our hotel all I wanted to do was crawl in bed for a nap… but then I saw this on the counter.

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A white bobby pin that wasn’t there when we left. The same type of white bobby pin my mother used every day. The ones I had to special order at a beauty supply shop because no one carried them. The ones my mother would obsess over if she didn’t have enough.

I don’t use white bobby pins.

I certainly didn’t bring one with me to New Jersey.

No, the maid hadn’t cleaned our room while we were gone and left one. I checked.

Scoff all you like, but I know it was my mother’s way of telling me she was okay with my decision.

For the last 9 years that bobby pin has been a talisman and has lived on the bureau in my bedroom where I carefully dust around it. Until the other day… when I had just finished reading a book about a girl who lost her mother and believed she could communicate with her from beyond the grave.

I finished the book, went into our bedroom and it was gone. I looked everywhere. Under and behind the bureau, in all the drawers, behind my jewelry box and perfume tray. My husband didn’t take it. No one else was in the house. Lord Dudley doesn’t jump on the bureau but on the off chance he had, I scoured the room, searched in every corner and under the bed. I even emptied the vacuum cleaner. Nothing.

Just… gone. There that morning, gone in the afternoon, and I can’t explain it.

I also can’t explain this –

Remember when I posted about the recent storm and our loss of electricity? When my husband and I had an epic six hour gin rummy match by flashlight?

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We used a blue deck of cards I had in the drawer. Naturally I won because gin rummy was my mother’s game and she taught me well. Hope springs eternal for my husband, but he rarely beats me.

Wanting revenge, he pulled out the deck last night and we played again. I was skunking him and after I’d just dropped another gin… double points thanks to a spade… he complained about not drawing the jack he needed and picked up the deck to check how far down it was.

The deck we had just recently played with for 6 hours.

The deck that has been in the kitchen drawer, untouched, ever since.

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There wasn’t a single jack to be found. None. It was a deck of 48 cards.

Did Lord Dudley remove them all? Doubtful.

Is there a jack burglar on the loose in rural Maine? Equally as doubtful.

I’ve been joking lately about our house being cursed due to all the renovation nightmare mishaps, but damn. Now I’m really beginning to wonder.

What the hell is going on?

😳

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Going out on a limb… Part 2.

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If you’re back this morning it must mean you want to know how my reading with the psychic went back in 2013. Funny, eight years later and I still have to pinch myself when I think about it. Roll your eyes, scoff, write me off as a nutcase… I don’t care. I would have done the same if I hadn’t experienced it myself. You know me…I’m a pragmatic chicka. A realist. There have only been a handful of things in my life I can’t explain…. and this was one of them. So jump aboard the crazy train and thank Swinged Cat  for opening up my archive with his request for sharing weird experiences.

My evening with spirits…. **Friends only**

 January 29th 2013 at 9:47am by rivergirl

I’m not sure I know where to begin.

And if I start rambling, please forgive me…it was a very emotional experience.

The psychic was a lovely woman who made me feel completely at ease. There was no incense, no crystal ball, just a table and the prerequisite box of tissues. She instructed me at the beginning of the session not to volunteer any information. Only to acknowledge or negate what she said. So for all you skeptics, there was no way she was pulling details of my life from me since all I said for an entire hour was yes or no.

I have to say it felt surreal. The moment we started she told me there was a man, who she felt was my father, waiting for me. I won’t go into all the details since none of you knew him….suffice it to say she had him down cold. There was nothing she related that wasn’t completely accurate. She had his personality, his job, his appearance, his love for my mother, his wartime experience, his poor health, his dry sense of humor, his love of the sea. She saw him surrounded by books, artist’s brushes, animals and gardens. She spoke of his grief over the loss of his brother when he was young, of his regrets in not being able to watch me grow up, his sense of duty towards his widowed mother and awful sister.

(And let me tell you…she had her down pat also. My hateful aunt who the psychic called spoiled, entitled and bitter. Fittingly, she is as alone in death as she was in life. Nice to know you really do reap what you sow. 👍)

I think the most amazing thing I came away from this experience with was the knowledge that our loved ones are always with us. My father said he was glad I had found a good man who loved me. That we were secure financially, that we were happy. He knew my husband had been in uniform and was older than I. He spoke of the big building project we had undertaken (the barn!) and how well we worked together as a team. He said he had been worried for me in my early teenage years right after he died because I, how shall we say….ran a little wild. (Which I totally did!) He said he appreciated the fact that I care for my mother… and to please have patience with her… as he had to, for she is not a strong woman.

The psychic told me of my father being there the night of the Marine Corps ball and how lovely he thought I looked in my dress. Of how proud he was of me for finding my own voice after so many years of being a shy wallflower. (Yeah….I know, hard to believe but at one time I was.) He wanted me to know that our beloved beagle Hiram was beside him now as he had been in life….which made the animal lover in me rejoice. He told me to lead the life I wanted to lead…that it is the regrets we take with us. And even though I never felt neglected as a child, his biggest regret was that he worked too hard and too long and didn’t spend enough time with my mother and me. He spoke of many little childhood memories I had all but forgotten. He spoke of the grief he carried over the loss of my brothers and sister. (My mother had multiple miscarriages early in their marriage) As I said…it was surreal.

Though I did choke up a few times….I didn’t babble. Which is surprising because even after all these years, I can’t often speak of my father without crying. I think I might have been too stunned for tears. My jaw was probably hanging open half the time because even though this was exactly what I had hoped for…part of me didn’t believe it could really happen. I’d happily crossed over into the Twilight Zone… and no one could have been more surprised. But aside from the other worldly vibe? The over all feeling of the evening was peace.

And love….above all, love.

For 35 years I have missed my father…. and wished over and over again that he could have shared my life as a teenager, as a young woman, as an adult. And now, the most remarkable thing I realized?

 He has.

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I’m going out on a limb here….

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I’ve been meaning to share this with you for a while now… ever since Swinged Cat  asked me about it in the comments of this blog. 

“It” being strange and/or supernatural events. If that’s not your thing, no problem….  feel free to skip the next few posts.  It wasn’t my thing either. Until it happened to me. Not so easy to ignore then.

As most of you know I lost my father when I was 14.  I was an only child of older parents and a total daddy’s girl.

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Dad and me, baby

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His loss shook my world to it’s core. Heck, I’m 57 years old, and to be honest I still haven’t gotten over it.  Anyway…. back in 2013 my best friend gave me a very odd Christmas gift.  “An Evening with Spirits” which was an hour long private session with a psychic. Now before you roll your eyes (like I did) it should be noted this was her daughter’s old college roommate and not some loon on the street corner. She’s traveled the world, studied numerous religions and spiritual disciplines, worked with the most respected people in the field ( you’re rolling your eyes again, I know…  because I did it as well). But I assure you, my girlfriend is the most down to earth, no nonsense, grounded New Englander you’re apt to meet so if she said this woman was the real deal and forked out a major amount of money for a reading? I had to go along.

The following is copied from my old blog site, and while I normally don’t do that type of thing…. it was written right after the experience and was a harbinger of things to come. Read on if you’re interested.

A Twilight Zone moment….. For Friends Only

Added: Saturday, January 26th 2013 at 6:38am by rivergirl

Friends only because I really don’t need a larger crowd of people thinking I’m crazy.

As you know, I’m using my unique Christmas present this weekend and will be visiting the psychic I posted about earlier. Me, seeing a psychic. And they say pigs don’t fly.

So yesterday I’m sitting on the couch reading an interesting book about Tibet. It was full of legend and lore and spirits and demons…..which got me thinking about my upcoming reading. Basically I was wondering if it would be amazing or a total waste of time.  Contact with my late father would be a dream, but we all know how rarely those come true. Flooded with bittersweet memories of my father, I put the book down and looked up at our mantle where an antique English clock of my father’s sits.

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It’s a pretty little thing that my mother gave us 29 years ago when my husband and I moved into our first home.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t work. Hasn’t for the entire 29 years we’ve owned it and since it has a rather special pedigree….

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I never wanted to take it to just any repair shop to be fixed. Call me lazy, call me cheap… but there you have it…. it doesn’t work.

Until yesterday when I was sitting on the couch thinking about my father and the damn thing started ticking.

I’m not kidding…. I almost had a heart attack.

My jaw dropped, and I think I started shaking.

I jumped up to make sure I wasn’t hearing things and I swear by all that’s holy the stupid thing was working.  After more than 29 years.

WTH!

Coincidence? I don’t think so.

Crazy lady hearing things? I’d be the first to say so if it hadn’t happened to me. The clock ticked for almost half an hour, and naturally stopped right before my husband got home from work.

Other people talk about experiencing weird things like this and I scoff. But I’m here to tell you when it happens to you? All bets are off.

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