Victorian

Portal to The Spirit World

~ Tara Theresa Hill ~ 2 Comments

I often receive spirit visitations in dreams.  My spirit dreams have a subtle difference from my regular dreams.  It’s hard to explain, but I feel as if my conscious mind is fully awake when I have these spirit dreams.  I have had full conversations with spirits who visit me while asleep.  Sometimes I remember everything and can record it in my dream journal when I wake up.  Other times, I can only recall how the spirit looked, what they sounded like, and how I felt being around them.  While I can never be sure if these dreams are true, I do know that the spirits who appear in my dreams seem as real as when I have had waking encounters with spirits.

In a recent dream, my husband woke me up and said that someone wanted to speak with me.  I looked and saw this young-looking, female spirit standing in my bedroom.  A white light was emanating from her, which helped ease my worries.  Her brown hair was tied up in a bun and she was wearing a long, white dress with a high collar.  She reminded me of someone from the Victorian era.  For some reason, I recognized her vibration which made me think that I either must have dreamt of her before or have felt her presence around my house.  Sometimes I will feel a spirit hanging around my home for a few days before they manage to make contact with me in a dream.

The spirit beckoned me to follow her, indicating that she needed something from the “other room.”  I wondered what room she was talking about.  Peeking around the corner, I saw that she was headed in the direction of my bathroom.

Upon entering what was supposed to be my bathroom, I found myself standing in a large room with white walls and grey, wooden floorboards.  There were boxes stacked everywhere.  It reminded me of a large attic that one might find at the top of an old house.  The lady walked over to a couple of boxes and told me that she needed them to be “lifted.”  My guess was that whatever she wanted was underneath the boxes.  I tried to move the boxes myself, but they were too heavy.  Calling out to my husband for help, he walked into the room and moved aside the boxes for us.

One of the floorboards was loose and rotted.  I bent down to see if it could be removed.  The ghost got very excited.  There was a small package hidden inside a space in the floor.  I kneeled down and pulled it up, passing it to her.

The second I did that, my husband and I were back in our bedroom, but the ghost of the young woman was still with us.  I wasn’t sure what else she wanted.  She kept walking about our bedroom, as if she was waiting for something.  Watching her as she moved about, I felt compelled to say that I knew her because I had seen her in our room before.

The woman turned and smiled.  “Now that you have acknowledged that you have seen me, I feel better and can go in peace.”

As she said this, all the light drained from her at once.  It was like watching a flower close its petals.  One second she was there glowing brightly, and the next, her manifestation had pulled itself into a ball before fading away.

The dream did not end here.  I was concerned with how quickly the woman had disappeared, so I called out to her, “Are you sure that you’re okay, now?”  There was no answer, so I knew that she had gone.  Now, came the weirdest part of my dream.

For some reason, I walked over to my closet door and slid it open.  Instead of clothes, the inside was filled with a rosy light.  When my eyes adjusted, I saw that I was looking into a hallway with golden walls and a ruby-red carpet.  Music and conversation filtered in from a party that was taking place somewhere nearby.  I stood there on the edge of this other world wondering what to do, when a young male spirit wearing a tuxedo appeared.

“Can I help you?” he asked.

“Yes, I’m looking for the young woman who was just in my room.  I want to make sure that she’s really okay.”

He nodded.  “She’s fine.  She’s at the party now.”  The way he said this, I got the feeling that the party was intended for her and that made me feel better about the situation.  Still, I was curious about this portal that had seemingly opened up in my room.

“You know this is my bedroom closet, right?” I asked the young gentleman.

He nodded again.  “Yes, but sometimes it acts as a portal between the worlds.  Here, come and see for yourself.”  The young man let me step inside.

I stood between the door frame in a T-formation with one foot on either side of the door.  I waved one arm inside the door.  “So, this is the Spirit World.”  I waved my other arm outside my door.  “And this is the Living World.”

“Yes,” he answered.

Satisfied, I stepped back onto my side.  Just then another male spirit came down the hallway, carrying something in his hands.  “Here,” he said.  “The young lady inside said that she wanted you to have this.”

I thanked him, took the parcel, stepped back, and watched the portal close.  I looked down and saw that the woman had given me a book.  It had a golden-yellow cover and appeared to be about “transportation” of some kind.  I put the book on my bedside table, meaning to read it later and got back into bed.  Yes, it was one of those strange dreams where I wake up in the dream, but am not actually awake.

When I finally woke up the next morning, a few things occurred to me.  I really believe that the woman was from the Victorian era.  Not only because of her clothing, but because books were expensive and hard to come by back then, so receiving one as a gift was a special treat.  Also, I personally love books and am happy that the spirits know that I’m a big reader with a large collection.

Furthermore, I had suspected for some time that my closet was a portal.  In fact, the day before that dream, I had placed a goblet of water on my dresser which is not far from the closet.  I light candles to my ancestors and spirit guides on my dresser and always put up a fresh glass of water for them.  This sends “Love and Light” to them to help them on their spiritual missions in the afterlife.  At any rate, this spirit visitation leads me to believe that C.S. Lewis, the author of The Chronicles of Narnia, got it right.  Portals to other worlds really do exist and you never know when you might find one.

What do you think? Do you believe that portals to the spirit world or other dimensions exist? Let me know in the comments section below!

To read another story about spirits hanging around my closet, check out: My Cat Sees Orbs.

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The Banishing

~ Tara Theresa Hill ~ Leave a comment

While this story is my own, I have changed the names of those involved to protect their privacy.

Growing up with Wiccan high priestess, Lady Rhea, for a mother made for an interesting time.  Aside from glittering Enchanted Candles, crafting perfumes, and giving clients psychic advice, my mother occasionally performed banishing rituals to remove negative energies from close friends’ houses.  This was much different from the spiritual cleansings that she did to purify a space.  These spells involved deeper, older magick.  For those of you who don’t know, Wiccans and Pagans often spell magick with a “k” to differentiate from the stage “magic” that magicians use as entertainment.

When I was a teenager, a close family friend of ours, started experiencing a lot of problems.  Anne had a big house with several people living there.  Over a few months, her family experienced a slew of bad luck with illnesses, financial setbacks, and a rise in heated arguments.  While various circumstances could lead to this happening, Anne felt that something in the house was “off,” so she asked for my mother to give her a reading to see what was going on.

Mom shuffled her cards and turned them over.  Taking a final drag of her cigarette, she shook her head.  “Oh, no…This is not good.”

“What is it?” asked Anne.

Mom turned over more cards.  “What I’m going to say might sound ridiculous, but I need you to listen to me.”  Anne nodded.  My mom paused before continuing, “The cards indicate that there is something inside of the house that is causing the problem.  It’s a negative entity of some sort.”

Anne’s adult son, Peter, who was also seated at the table turned his head at this news.  He said that he had recently woke up and saw an apparition of a bat-like creature with a human face hovering over his bed.  He hadn’t mentioned it before because he thought it was just a nightmare.  Mom looked back at the card reading.  She turned to Anne’s son.

“Can I see your room?”

He nodded.  Even I tagged along upstairs.  After hearing Peter’s story, I didn’t want to be left alone.  Mom entered the room.  After a minute or two, she nodded.  “Yes.  Whatever it is, it’s upstairs and it generally stays in this room.”

We went back downstairs.

“What can we do?” asked Anne as she made more coffee.

“You can light some white candles and incense to help cleanse the space, but ultimately, I’ll have to do a banishing spell for you,” said my mother.

I almost choked on my soda.  Mom always prescribed candles, prayers, incense, that sort of thing.  She only spoke about conducting rituals for serious problems.

“Great,” said Peter.  “I’m staying downstairs on the couch until this thing is gone.”

After Peter went to hang out with some friends, Mom asked Anne about the history of the house.  A large, three-story, white, Victorian house, it was the kind that you see iced with snow on picturesque Christmas cards.  The house had been remodeled in the years following an older relative’s death.  Mom asked if there were any strange events that had happened in the house.  Anne said that there was one.

The last owner of the house had met a tragic end.  Two hours before his daughter’s wedding, he had excused himself saying that he would be right back.  While everyone was in the house getting ready, he left the car engine running and sealed himself inside the vehicle with the windows shut.  Without any warning to his friends or family, he had committed suicide on the day that his daughter was to be married.

“Why’d you even buy the house?” I asked, after Anne was done telling the story.  I was about fifteen then.

“TARA!” Mom glared at me.

Anne laughed.  “It’s okay, Rhea,” she said.  “We didn’t find out until years after we bought the house.  Some neighbors told us.”

Later on, I shivered as we got into the car.  Even though I had been over Anne’s house hundreds of times, I was afraid that the ghost of the dead man was going to jump out at us in the driveway.

“Could Anne’s neighbors have made up that story?” I asked.

“Perhaps,” said Mom, “But I don’t think so.  That negative spirit has caused trouble before.”

“What are we going to do?”

“It’s okay,” said Mom.  “We’re going to get rid of it.”

“How?”

“You’ll see.”

The first thing Mom did was call our coven members.  She told them that she needed their help doing a special favor for a dear friend of hers.  They all knew about Anne and were happy to help.  I had already been initiated and since we needed as many people as possible, Mom decided to bring me along.

A few days later, our coven met at Anne’s house.  We went upstairs to the second floor where all of the bedrooms were located.  My mother turned off the lights and then lit some candles.  She and her partner cast circle to help protect us during the ritual.  Then we all started running clockwise to create a cone of power while chanting a Wiccan banishing spell that is sacred to my mother’s coven.  As we did this, we were running past the bedroom doors which were all standing wide open.

At one point as I was running past Peter’s room, I saw a pale face glaring back at us from the dark.  The apparition was about three or four feet off of the floor.  The face glowed white and had three dark spaces where the eyes and mouth should be.  I didn’t dare break the chain and by the time that I had come around again, the thing was gone.  After the ritual was done, I mentioned the incident to my mother.  One of my older friends who was also in the coven turned to me.

“You saw it too?”

In addition to the banishing spell, we also said prayers that night to help the previous owner’s spirit move on to the light.  After the ritual, everyone was much more at peace in the house and Anne’s family life returned to normal.

If you have a real ghost story that you would like to share with The Ghost Post, send an email with your contact information to Tara Theresa Hill at theghostpostreporter@gmail.com to set up an interview. 

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A Haunting in Yonkers

~ Tara Theresa Hill ~ 1 Comment

One of the most haunted places that I have ever been in was the apartment building where I grew up in Yonkers, NY.  During the six or seven years that we rented there, my parents and I lived in two different apartments.  One was located on the fifth floor and the other was on the second floor.  All of the paranormal activity took place in the second, larger three-bedroom apartment.

Things started off weird almost from the second we moved in.  I remember my mother cleansing the place with Florida water, smudging the doorways, and mopping the floors. Something about that place wasn’t right.  It felt different from our former apartment.  I think I was about seven years old when we moved in and I instantly felt strange there.  My parents’ bathroom terrified me.  I was always afraid that someone was going to come out of the shower stall and try to grab me.  I didn’t feel that way about the other bathroom that was located toward the front of the apartment though.  I took all of my baths and showers in the front bathroom and insisted on keeping the back bathroom door closed whenever I was in my parents’ bedroom.

Then there were the strange echoes that spoke our names.  This happened to everyone in the house.  We would suddenly hear someone calling our names.  I would hear mom or dad calling me from some other area of the apartment, but when I went to them, they’d say that they never said my name.  This happened to my parents, too.  They would hear either me or think that the other person was calling for them.  This got very frustrating and was particularly eerie whenever it happened because you didn’t know if you were really being called or not.

Other times, I would be playing in my room, deeply immersed in a game when I would suddenly feel someone watching me.  Usually, I would get scared and run and find my parents.  This got a bit better after we got my dog, Bambi.  He was extra-protective of me and I believe that he guarded the house in a spiritual capacity.

One summer day, I had a friend over and we decided to play with my mother’s Ouija board.  I had told my friend that I thought our house was haunted and wanted to see if I could contact the ghost.  I lit a white candle and brought a bowl of water just as I had seen my mother do many times before in her stores and me and my friend sat down to do our first Ouija board reading.  Mom saw what we were doing and must have got a kick out of it because she didn’t stop us.  We had a few false starts where either my friend or I were pushing the planchette, but soon it was flying over the board, spelling out messages.

“Hello.  Is anyone there?” my friend and I asked the board.

The spirit responded back with, “Yes.  Hello.”

My friend and I looked at each other.  I swallowed.  “Are you the ghost who is haunting this house?”

The spirit responded back, “Yes.”  We started giggling a bit out of nervousness, but I warned my friend that Mom told me that we always had to be respectful of spirits.  “Have you been in my room watching me play?” I asked.

“I have been in all the rooms,” said the spirit.  “I used to live here.”

At this point, my mother came over and started taking down the notes for us because they were coming so fast.  The spirit identified herself as a woman who used to live in a mansion that had been on the site where our apartment building now stood.  Having read enough ghost stories to know about unfinished business and trapped spirits, I asked, “Why are you still here?  How did you die?”

The spirit spelled out, “I hung myself.”

“Okay…Time to say goodbye now, kids,” piped my mother.  She jumped on the board with me and said, “We’re very sorry to hear that.  We wish you peace.  I’ll light a white candle for you to help you cross over to the other side.”  The planchette spelled out “Yes, thank you, and goodbye,” and my mother closed up the board.  When I asked her about it later, she said that the board was just probably messing with us and not to read too much into it.  I asked if we could move, but my mother said no.  We had to learn to live with the ghost and vice versa.  I decided not to play with the Ouija board anymore after that.

That winter we had a series of terrible snowstorms.  My father went out to help people shovel and dig out their cars.  One of the people was an elderly woman who happened to be a local historian.  She invited us in for coffee and hot cocoa and asked us where we lived.  When we told her, she started telling us about why there were huge slabs of slate in the wooded area that surrounded our apartment.  Back in Victorian times there had been mansions in this area where people like the Rockefellers hosted and attended great balls.  A lot of the mansions had been knocked down, the grounds bought up, and real estate moguls had built new housing on top of them.  She winked as us, “But I still like to think that you can feel the spirit of those people in the air around here, don’t you?”

I stared at my mother.  She turned to the lady.  “You have no idea,” she said.