Not getting a lot of sleep lately...  pneumonia for the last two weeks, and my fibro med has the lovely side effect of insomnia...  So as it approaches 4 AM on this surprisingly warm night, I am going to keep my promise and attempt to recount some of my ghost hunting tales...

My experiences of spirits started as a small child, long before I knew what a "ghost" was...  apparently my mother was aware of a spirit standing over my crib, in the brand new house she had built for her in Guelph.  She didn't know who this might be, so she trundled down Victoria Rd to the York Rd Baptist Church (later to become the Triangle Photo Centre) and talked to the minister there...  He visited and being psychic, proclaimed it was her mother!  My grandmother Rose died when I was not quite ten 11 months old.  My father, whose drinking was escalating,  was at times very violent.  He couldn't hold a job for long, so my younger sister Judy and I were often left in his care while my mother went to work at the local hospital.  When his mood turned violent, I would ask the angels (who I saw quite clearly, and assumed everyone else did) to help me hide.  The directed me to closets and behind the furnace and I remained safe.  In grade school my mediumistic predilections were noticed by neighbours, and some would have the gall to take me downtown to Woolworth's (on the bus) on the pretext of having a sundae or a muffin.  What I learned, sadly, was that they wanted to get me away from my mother to pump me for future-based information.  I was not very old before I became guarded about this whole psychic thing.  I did do a speech at school on Bluenose Ghosts, after a family trip down east in 1966 - I got an award!

By my teens I was totally turned off - I loved reading and studying about ghosts, and even advanced my skills, but not for the purpose of letting people know.  I struggled with my concept of death and God - it created a terrible stress for me, when the Presbyterian Church was a huge part of our family life.  I drifted toward Spiritualism, and began visiting the Spiritualist Church in Brantford.  There were two pivotal events in highschool that haunted me for years - the death of a classmate, which I foretold in September, and the death of a teacher the next year.  I will continue my story as it appears I have run out of room for this blog entry!