On the Other Side: A True Story

I recently received the following anecdote from Shannon:

It was November 23rd, 1993, the day before Thanksgiving. I was spending the night at my best friend Lexy's. I was enjoying the simple luxury of being allowed this time with her, because until a few months before, I had lived with my mother and had grown up in a Steven King novel of physical and physiological torture. But now I was living with my grandmother who, while seeming to resent having me in her house, was completely dismissive of who and where I spent my time allowing me freedom for the first time in my life.

Lexy and I were laughing over something silly when her older sister Ann walked in with the cordless phone. She was simpering over the person she was talking to.
"Oh that's so amazing" she squealed, "I can't believe you could see that!" This went on for some time until she handed the phone to Lexy. After a few seconds, to my great irritation, Lexy was making the same gushing sounds.

Lexy handed me the phone, "You have to try this! He's physic, he'll tell you things that'll blow you away!"

"Yea, no thanks" I pushed the phone back at her. I wasn't going to let some fraud turn me into a giddy idiot.

"Come on" she begged, with her sister chiming in.

Finally grumbling, I took the phone and said through clenched teeth "Go ahead, tell me all about myself!" I was going to carve him up like a turkey and pass back the phone.

There was a pause, and a bemused young man said "I don't know, I know you're scary!'

Very satisfied with his answer I handed back the phone. It really set me on edge that anyone who had psychic abilities could treat them so casually. I had a degree of them myself, and had ruthlessly turned them as off as much I could. I couldn't fathom being at ease. It was a war I had been fighting with myself for a great deal of my life. My mother had almost convinced me anything along those lines was the work of the devil, as she herself had been indoctrinated. I wavered between the fear of the things I could see and complete denial.

The phone made it's way back to Ann while Lexy laughed at how rude I had been." Eric's a really nice guy" she was saying, "you'd like him if you gave him a chance."
I shrugged it off. "Not into his little parlor tricks."

Much to my surprise, Ann kept trying to pass back the phone. "He wants to talk to you" she persisted. Finally I took it and made nice for a few minutes rather then be rude to Lexy and her sister. I was relieved when Ann took it back as soon as she could and left.

"Apparently he likes you" Lexy teased.

"He's nice, you were right, but I think he just gets a kick out of me. I was the only one who wasn't blown away by him." Privately I was wondering how Eric would have felt if I had turned the tables on him and started digging around in HIS head. Surface reads are the easiest things to do. But, since he had respected my space and didn't try to dig, I would extend the same courtesy. I was kind of surprised and amused with myself, that over the next half hour my mind kept drifting back to him.

Ann returned with the phone, "he wants to talk to you" she said flatly, handing it to me. She turned on her heel and walked back upstairs to her room.

I looked at the phone, and Lexy "She into him? I don't want to step on any toes."
Lexy shook her head, "I don't think so, I think she's into his friend Kenny."
"Oh, well do you mind if I talk to him for a little bit? I don't want to be rude to you."

She waved it off, "don't worry, enjoy yourself." she grinned, "I'll be here all night."

So I took the phone, and to my utter amazement 5 hours passed in the blink of an eye. After a couple of hours Lexy had gone to bed, and I spent the night getting to know one of the most vital and electric people I would ever meet.

I feel I should stop here and explain a little bit about Eric. His energy is intense, he's like chaos. When he decides he wants something, it's happened before you even knew it was on the table. Suffice it to say I was his girlfriend by the end of the night and a month later we were engaged. At 16 I can only say I was dazzled by his attention and fell for him very quickly.

With his encouragement I soon started seeing my abilities in a different light. Within weeks I could describe events that took place in area's we would drive or walk through, see spirits, hazy images of the future, people's true natures with hidden thoughts and images and found my true gift of seeing into the past. Often key events that took place in someones life that molded them into who they are. Eric's strength was looking into the future, channeling, seeing the same aspects of peoples hidden selves as I (hence his little session that night with Lexy and Ann) and receiving visions. It was a whole new world for me, once the door was cracked, it banged open.

With my new sight I became more afraid of my grandmother's house which was almost 200 years old and had mirrors from the civil war era that would show me frightening almost fun house versions of myself when they weren't hazy with orbs. There was a clock from the same period that would chime at weird times or start and stop when I came home. There was also shadow people who would follow me from room to room. Many was the time I would call Eric scared to death, demanding he tell me how to turn it off. "There's no going back" he would tell me, "you can't walk through life with your eyes closed." He had confidence I would get my bearings eventually and learn how to deal with it.

In the meantime, Eric's best friend Kenny and Ann who I had grown much closer to due to Kenny's obsession with her, had formed a tightly knit group. That's when things really started to happen. Ann would see shadow people walking through the walls of her house, moving up the stairs and gathering at the chandelier in the dining room. She would also feel people touching her and sometimes calling her name. Kenny would see the same shadowy people, and feel the air around him move as though there was a strong breeze in a tightly closed room. Crosses would appear in the wooden grains of his bedroom door. Things would be moved around his house, his cats would hiss and snarl at things unseen, and he had horrible nightmares of seeing his face in a mirror with blood running down the glass. For all of us, electric clocks and lights and appliances would short out or have surges. To this day I have problems with electricity. I blow out watches, lights, streetlights, etc.

Lexy and I drifted during this point, I was so busy with Eric and this unworldly experience that Ann and Kenny were also going through with us, that I turned more towards them. I was also struggling to go through the process of becoming fully emancipated as I coped with my mother's increasing viciousness, so I didn't have much to give Lexy at that point. As far as my mother was concerned, Eric noticed as I suffered through her visits and phone call rants, that she paralleled the activity going on around us. When the supernatural activity was really strong, she would get even more ugly, even threatening my life. When things were calmer, she was also.

One day during the thick of it I was sitting on the steps leading down to the basement where I watched Eric pacing. He was showing me where this all started for him.

"I was in high school, and my one friend Becky asked me to talk to her friend Heather. She was scared for her. Heather had recently lost her aunt Susan, who had been like a mother to her. She had started dabbling with some pretty dark shit. She had been messing with an Ouija board trying to talk to her aunt and she got in over her head. She started talking to this spirit named David, he seemed OK, he was a little boy who had drowned. He was nice enough to her, but soon another entity started coming through. He used to terrorize her."

"Why did Becky ask you to help?"

"Because everyone knew I was very religious."

"Doesn't being very religious, studying the Bible, and having an open mind to things like the occult, contradict each other?" To me it was all confusing. I had had it drilled into me that God was little different then this evil tyrant who sat brooding up in the clouds, eagerly watching his creations for the tiniest infraction so he could gleefully cast them into a fiery hell.

"You can't study the Bible and not figure out there's so much more out there then we can even begin to figure out. There's no way to scratch the surface in one lifetime. That's why I don't rule out anything. These things are real, to ignore them because you cherry pick which passages to study would be ignorant and blind."

"Maybe even in our case, dangerous" I observed.

He nodded, "So she would sit here, and we would be talking, and she would go into this trance and this being would come through. He would talk about things, in riddles sometimes. He would give predictions, like their being one world currency, politics, things that would happen in my life. He even told me that someday I would meet the Parish."

I looked at him stunned, "do you think he meant me?" my last name was Parrish.
He again nodded, "Oh yea, he said, you think you're something? Just wait until you meet the Parish! I had thought he meant a church, but now I know better."

I sat there in stunned silence for awhile, with this eerie feeling that I had been watched my entire life by something evil.

"There was many things in riddles, things I've never figured out. Couldn't even remember them all now, he just enjoyed playing games with us. As time went on he got more cryptic and taunting. He told us through Heather that in life his name had been Henry Bisby Kane. That he had been a preacher in the 1800's in Arizona. He had taken his congregation out to a cave and sealed them in by making everyone believe it was the end of the world. He never let them go. Even now he preys on lost souls and draws them in. He's full of rage, very cunning and extremely dangerous. Heather had made a deal with him to let her see her aunt one last time. She was down here-"
Suddenly I could feel my blood run cold.

"Shannon? Shannon what is it?"

I heard him from a great distance. I was almost in a faint. I saw a figure walk from the wall a few feet away from Eric had been standing. It was slender, in a stained white dress, brittle hair and the flesh melting from the bones. As I looked on in horror, it ascended the steps in an odd jerky gait and passed through me to disappear through the door at my back. The feeling of it moving through me was like nothing I can even begin to explain. The horror of it, the understanding that death itself had just scraped through me, I couldn't breath. I was shaking so hard I felt my teeth rattling and gasping. My heart raced so hard I though I might just die on the spot. I couldn't even speak. Eric was frantic. Finally I managed to draw in a full breath and burst into tears. "He showed her" I sobbed, "He showed her what her aunt looked like, NOW, DEAD, A CORPSE!!! The f**king thing walked right up these stairs, right through me!"

The next hour is a haze in my memory, I know it took him a long time to calm me down, and for me to stop shuddering.

When I was able to hear the rest of it, he explained to me that I had just described what she had seen, right down to the dress.

"Are we safe from this? Every day now Ann or Kenny are freaking out about something they've seen, we're seeing things all the time, can this hurt us? And what happened to Heather?"

"She's OK now" he said reassuringly. "The last time she channeled him I went toe to toe with him, begged God to save her, quoted scripture and banished him from her in Jesus' name. I'm not trying to say we did an exorcism, but we made it uncomfortable enough he seemed to have moved on. She straightened out after that, grades went back up, she stopped wearing all black, stopped having nightmares and channeling. The really interesting thing is she doesn't remember much of it all. She remembers hanging out down here, but not the channeling or seeing her poor aunt, or the nightmares or anything. No idea of why unless it's her way of subconsciously protecting herself by blocking it out."

"Have you tried to talk to her about it since" I wondered out loud.

"She just shuts down, she wants nothing to do with it, it's like talking to a wall."

"Defense mechanism" I agreed.

"Yea, most likely."

Later that night after I fielded a frantic call from Ann who thought something tried to grab her arm when she was walking down the stairs of her parents house, I was walking down the hall by Eric's room. I thought I heard something drop. Forcing myself to be brave, I walked into the dark room, and as I was reaching for the light I saw a hand come towards me. All bravado fled and I screamed the house down until Eric came running in.

"This has got to stop" I said grimly, "We need to do something, we can't just sit around waiting for it to screw with us!"

"I could try to channel" he offered quietly.

He had on a few occasions channeled this one spirit, who was kind and very dear to me. It had explained to me it had been with Eric always and was one of his guardians.

"How do you know that if you trance out, Kane won't come in?"

"We don't" he replied uneasily.

I looked at his broad shoulders and took careful note of the way he out massed me by over 50 pounds and towered over me by almost a foot, and asked him what would happen then. "Would he kill me? Go after your parents? Burn this place down?"
He shook his head, "he can only use my voice, my body is protected. He would never be able to cross that threshold."

"How do you know?'

"Heather would have tried to kill me wouldn't she?"

"Alright" I firmed up my failing courage and managed to sound much calmer then I felt, "let's just do this, either way, I need some answers."

We closed and locked his bedroom door after leaving word with his mom we were going to be watching a movie. I turned the ringer off his phone and pager, and perched on the side of his bed. I held his hand and watched for any sign of fluttering of his eyelashes. He always closed his eyes when he went into a trance, and the only thing that changed was his eyes would slowly open when he had made the connection. He squeezed my hand reassuringly and I sensed him leave. I can't explain it more then that, I just felt him leave. I gently laid his hand back down by his side and waited for his eyes to open. It took much longer then usual. First I noticed the side of his mouth draw up in a smirk. His cheek twitched. The head turned ever so slightly towards me, then his eyes slowly opened. I watched them slowly sweep the room before they settled on me. They were no longer green, they were muddy and dark. They're not his eyes I thought frantically. Even when he had channeled his dear guardian, his eyes had only become slightly more clear and emerald, these were not the same eyes.

"You" he whispered.

The smirk remained. I knew precisely who I was dealing with. "So we finally meet" I said calmly. "I had wondered if you would come."

The smirk grew. "You called me."

"How did we do that?"

"You keep visiting me."

I stayed silent for a moment, waiting for him to tell me what he had come for. Eric's body twitched, his hand spasmed. I laid my hand soothingly on his. The being didn't even notice.

"Yes" he said after a moment. "You're wondering who I am. I am the keeper of souls."

""So what do you want with Eric and I? Our souls don't belong to you."

"They will" he sighed.

"Never" I assured him.

"You don't love him" he turned Eric's brilliant gaze on me. "You never did, and he knows it."

"I wouldn't expect you to understand love."

"I know all about you" he continued raspily. "I know everything your mother did to you, I was there when she broke the chair over you."

I gasped, I had never even told Eric about that. He knew I had been physically abused, but he didn't know how bad it was. "She has split personalities, are you trying to tell me you were one of them?"

"So weak" he smirked.

"You're calling me weak now?"

"No, her. But you were always meant of be one of mine."

The eyes drifted closed and Eric's hand started spasming again, and a moment later he moaned and started thrashing.

"Eric? Baby! Wake up, come back! Eric, honey please!" I pulled him up in my arms and rocked him.

He dropped his head on my shoulder, "It was him."

"Oh yea, got to say I'm not fond of all of your friends."

He raised his head and smiled tiredly. I was happy to see his eyes were once again a dark green.

"What does he want?"

"I think he really wants us both."

"What else did he say?"

I repeated it, right down to him affecting my mother. "That would make sense" he nodded, "if she has a fractured personality, and her depression keeps her down, she's very easy prey for something like him."

"But why would he bother with me? Did he know I was going to grow up and be with you someday?"

"I think he targets anyone like us, who are strong and spiritual, maybe having strong physic abilities make us more vulnerable, because we're linked to the other world and more open to them. I think he must target us young because it might be easier to break us then."

It wasn't long after Eric went to bed, channeling sessions always exhausted him. Since I had been staying with his family for the past few months, I went into his mom's room and watched TV with her until she turned in for the night. I however lay awake all night trying not to jump at every shadow that danced on the walls or every little sound.

After that things became worse for the four of us, Ann was convinced things were after her whenever she was in the house, Kenny was seeing things and my mother was making my life a living hell. Even going so far as to taunt Eric that if she ever managed to get me back in her house, I would never make it out. To say it escalated is somewhat of an understatement. I was exhausted, as was Eric. Dreading what I knew had to be done, I held off as long as I could.

Finally after a few more weeks, we decided to try to channel one last time. I was going to try to find out how to get rid of Kane in our lives once and for all. I was nervous, I didn't know the scripture like Eric, I had no idea of what I could actually do, but I knew my own strength.

I wish I could relate the conversation that took place between Kane and I when Eric reluctantly managed to push himself under, but to be perfectly honest, much of it is gone from my memory. I remember him telling me he has always been there, and wasn't the only one. We were of special interest to him, because of our strength and ability's, and I remember passionately arguing, but I couldn't tell you about what. I have a sense at one time he started challenging me and revealing things I wasn't allowed to keep the knowledge of, but they're far gone. I think this session took place for almost an hour. It went on and on until finally those squinting muddy brown eyes rolled up and Eric seemed to pass out. I was so exhausted, feeling as though all of my energy, even some of my life force had been drained away, I just stretched out and put my head on his shoulder. I knew sooner or later Eric would swim back up. I must have fallen asleep because the next thing I knew I woke with a start to see Eric's brilliant green eyes.

"Hey you, I think we did it." He passed a hand tiredly over his face and sat up.
I got up and began to slowly pace. I couldn't stay still.

"He left, I think he he might be banished or at least gone for good. I don't feel him anymore."

I know we talked at length about what had been said between Kane and I, but as I said before, I don't remember too much of it. I can say things did calm down, Ann stopped seeing things, as did Kenny. Eric and I hadn't told them about his channeling, so they didn't know we believed the source of this nightmare was gone. The fact that they stopped experiencing things as soon as this took place, was proof enough for Eric and I.

Now at this point I would like to wind this all up with a quick happily ever after spin, but in fact Eric and I didn't stay together much longer. We started fighting too much, and he became obsessively controlling and I became defiant and withdrew completely. At 16 and 19 I don't think we had the life skills to balance two A type personalities. But the interesting thing about the aftermath of this all, (and I'm the only one of the group who believes this) is what happened to each of us. Eric's control issues went to an even darker place, and he started having issues with drinking. Ann who had been this "good Girl" became very loose, and most of her friends lost all respect for her. Kenny who was the most social person I had ever known, who lived for his friends, became dark and bitter and pushed most of us out of his life. I didn't go back to my mother's, but was able to get my own place and go out on my own. I spent the next 5 years in an abusive relationship, where as a stripper, the drinking and drugs almost finished me off. It really seems like we each became the manifestation of our dark side. The impulses that we might have been able to balance and resist before, destroyed everything in each of our lives that had meant the most to us. I find this to be an eerie coincidence.

I'm happy to report Eric and I found our way back to being friends, each married and doing much better. Our lives have returned to being back under control, Kenny has recently followed suit. Ann is still caught up in it from all accounts. Still playing fast and loose. It's also interesting to me that the two stronger ones (Eric and I) pulled back from this first. I think when you open the door to this kind of thing, the consequences can last a lifetime. Another modern example that quickly springs to mind is Mel Gibson, and the downward spiral his life took after he made "The Passion."

Now if you're thinking this all sounds just like the Poltergeist film series, you couldn't be more accurate. It really seems like the writers of the films had first hand experience with this entity. Almost everything about the Kane we came to know from personal experience is relayed in this series. In the opinions of Eric and I, it's completely based on the real entity and his story. You can find references to Kane the stealer of souls in popular fiction, such as Nora Robert's Key Trilogy series. You can find little towns in Arizona named Bisbey, or places where there's references to that fateful expedition. I believe we're not the only ones who have had experiences with him.

Frankly, it never feels over, when Eric, Kenny and I get together weird things start happening. It feels like a live wire that still hums with power.

So, anyway, that's my weird story. Not a ghost story exactly, but every bit of it is the truth, and had a huge impact on the lives of 4 kids who opened Pandora's Box.

Many thanks to Shannon!

On the Other Side: A True Story

Among the Spirits - Part II

"There are an infinite number of universes existing side by side and through which our consciousnesses constantly pass. In these universes, all possibilities exist. You are alive in some, long dead in others, and never existed in still others. Many of our "ghosts" could indeed be visions of people going about their business in a parallel universe or another time...or both." - Paul F. Eno, in Faces at the Window

Last year Irene hosted friends at her house in Wales, including her nieces' boyfriends who, for the most part, were skeptical of the paranormal. Irene decided to hold a brief seance in order to 'stir up' the spirit activity in the house. Then each of the boyfriends sat in the dark parlour for several minutes. The activity is documented in the videos and screen captures. Herbert didn't disappoint...he was very active throughout the sessions. There were at least two children present as well...most likely Myra, Herbert's daughter and Annie, Herbert's wife, who comes forth as a child.

You will notice in the first few seconds of the first video a clear EVP states 'good luck' and the boy on the couch replies 'thank you very much'...though, he later said that he never heard the EVP and doesn't remember responding to anything. In the same video, there are a few interesting anomalies. The first is a bright burst of light in the upper left corner. This is Herbert, who has been in front of the television, checking out the camera. Later on, a 'signature orb' manifests and vanishes near the floor by the boy's shoes. There is significant orb activity throughout the three videos as well as curious 'flashing orbs' which we have yet to explain.


Click for video 1







Click for video 2





Click for video 3




"The day which we fear as our last is but the birthday of eternity." – Seneca

In the following excerpt from Irene's yet unedited and unpublished manuscript, she details the social and paranormal history of her house in Wales as well as her relationship with the home's 'spirit family':

"The children had now grown up and Brian and I decided we would move to the countryside which had always been in my blood. Some of the happiest times in my life had been those ones living in my village. The hunt was now on to find a house and now with the technology of the computer it could be done in our spare time. Each evening we would log in and trawl through all the sites advertising homes for sale, houses all over the country but nothing seemed to stand out. If they weren’t out of our price range they were either too small or had no garden as such. Month after month and still nothing jumped out at us, there was one house that Brian liked but the first time I saw it well it was way out of our price range. We carried on looking and now every few days this house seemed to crop up on the computer and each time although Brian was drooling over it, we had to turn the idea down. Then one day it was there again and this time the price had been dropped and now the house was within our price range, so there it was. We made the arrangement to see it, couldn’t pass it over the deal was too good. 220 miles and 4 hours driving later we pulled up at the address the seller had given us, she had decided to meet us and cut out the estate agent fees. Well that was alright with us. As we sat there in the car opposite the house we could not believe what we were seeing if I say it had the wow factor I would not have been exaggerating, it was fantastic. The double Wrought Iron ornate gates at the end of the drive led the eye up to the house.

A beautiful Edwardian Villa standing in its own grounds with mature trees. We got out of the car and walked through the gates where we were met by the owners who explained that the house had stood empty for a few years. Walking down the side of the house we came into the rear garden, I was blown away by the size of it. To the rear of the garden was acres and acres of rolling fields with cattle grazing, we proceeded to the rear entrance of the house and went inside coming first into the breakfast room with its slate floor that carried through to the kitchen which to me was big enough to hold a party in. Next into the dining room and then into the parlour, off the parlour was another kitchen this would have been the old original one then out into the hallway, here there was a lovely mosaic floor and a sweeping staircase and ornate spindles and newel post. To the right off the hallway was another room, the sitting room with it's big bay window and very ornate ceiling this was obviously the best room in the house. The upstairs mirrored the rooms downstairs with the master bedroom having the bay window.

After the tour of the house we returned to the kitchen to talk and as the conversation was taking place I took my chance to have another peep upstairs. I approached and opened the door to the master bedroom and as I looked over toward the bay window, I saw a young woman with black hair tied up wearing Edwardian clothes standing looking out of the window as if viewing the garden to the front of the house. She was only there for a split second but she was there. Coming down the stair case a rush of cold went through me as if something was running up the staircase and I knew then that the house had at least two ghosts, now I understood why the house had stood empty for a couple of years.

Brian used to travel down from London every weekend to decorate and do work on the house to ready it for us to move in. It was on one such weekend that he had his first experiences of the unusual happenings this house had to offer. As the bedrooms were the first rooms he was working on he had decided that he would use the sitting room downstairs as the room to sleep in. On this particular night he was woken by the bed shaking, as he sat up he realised the whole house was shaking. Getting out of bed, he ran to the window to see if the farm over the way was running some heavy machinery that could be vibrating the house but all was in darkness. Asking the neighbours the next day if they had felt anything strange, he was told no nothing they had all slept well that night. There were no reports on any earth tremors or anything natural that could have caused the house to shake it was just one of those mysteries. The following weekend, early on the Sunday morning as he was lying in his made up bed in the sitting room he was awoken to the sound of a woman singing. He lay there listening for a few minutes before he realised it was coming from the old parlour, the singing was of hymns sung in a chapel.

We moved in a few months later when the house was liveable. I had already told Brian about our two residents but he had not been put off buying the house. Little did I know that the two we had was not the only ones, there was another spirit. That of the daughter who is active in the house also another, the step mother, only she is not with the house all the time but is more a sort of visitor. It's easy to know when she is around as the clanking of pots and pans can be heard as if she is putting stuff away in the cupboard in the old kitchen. There are no pots and pans in this room it is now kept only as a utility room.

Researching we discovered the history of the house; it was built by Herbert Morgan, a Blacksmith and Deacon at the local chapel for his wife Annie. Annie had been to the North to visit family, the year was about 1905. On returning home she begged Herbert to buy a house up there that she had fell in love with. Herbert did not want to leave the village he was born in and so decided to buy some land off of a local farmer and on this land he built for his wife an exact replica of the house she had fallen in love with. The house took some years to build but was finally completed in1910 and Herbert and Annie moved in. As time went by Annie gave birth to a little girl Myra and all was well until when Myra was eight years old Annie fell victim to Tuberculosis and passed away. She was buried at the graveyard of Herbert’s chapel.

Herbert was finding it difficult to raise Myra on his own so he asked Gladys, Annie’s sister to come and live at the house and help raise Myra. Shortly after Gladys moved in the tongues in the village started wagging and Herbert after a period of time asked Gladys to marry him and become Myra’s stepmother. But Herbert’s true love was Annie and when Herbert passed he was buried with his beloved Annie down at the chapel and the grave they are in is the only one that has the house name written on the tombstone.

Now we were living in the house and after we had moved in the previous owner handed us a framed photograph that had been in the downstairs toilet and asked us to keep it, saying it must stay with the house even if we were to move again. The photograph was an old sepia one showing a very handsome young man, Herbert about thirty and a pretty dark haired woman Annie, the lady I had first seen upstairs in the bedroom. Standing in front of them was a child of about six or seven this was Myra and the professional family photograph showed them all in Edwardian dress, more then likely the last photograph taken of them as a family. It was the first time that Brian was able to see what they looked like.

It is nothing to see them wandering through the house and Annie has even been seen walking down the drive. We are used to having them around and they don’t worry the dogs, so I would be loath having to move them on unless they were causing problems or needed help because they themselves were ready to go. This was their house before ours and it is the love for the house that keeps them here. Sometimes it’s not always good to remove something that brings a positive energy to a house as it leaves a door open for something nasty to enter. I believe the energy of my spirits is good for this house and they have helped me on more then one occasion. And I feel safe having them about.

There was a time when I had my mother who is in her eighties come to stay and on one of the nights she was here there was a terrific storm. The wind was blowing a gale and thunder and lightning sounded as if it was direct above the house. Mum was nervous, I found it exciting as the lightning looked fantastic in the sky and the thunder that followed echoed across the valley. It must have hit a power line as all of a sudden all the lights in the house went out. Not knowing how long the power cut would last I made up my mind to find some candles. I knew there were some in the cupboard under the stairs and got up to go and get them, “I am not staying here on my own in the dark” mum said, as she rose to her feet and tried to follow me. I was worried she would fall in the dark so I told her to hold on to my hips as we made our way to the cupboard groping through the dark with only the light of a cigarette lighter. I tried to open the cupboard door but it wouldn’t move, it was always sticking and no matter how much I tried I couldn’t get it open. By now mum was panicking, suddenly I felt a presence next to me and took my hand off of the door handle and stood back away from the door. I was just about to go and take my mum back to the sitting room, the only light being that of the cigarette lighter when the door of the cupboard flew back with such a force as if yanked open by unseen hands.

It is not uncommon to open the kitchen door and see a small cat like shape flash across the floor into the far corner and disappear. It was known that at one time a cat lived in the kitchen of the house this cat sadly lost its life on the road outside. One cold winter's night I decided to go to bed early as the house was quite chilly, I had just got into bed and was squirming around trying to get comfortable. The door was open and the landing light was on, suddenly I heard what sounded like a cross between a scurrying/flapping noise coming from above me as I looked up I saw what I like to call an astral critter. It was a mass about one foot long, black in colour and at quite a speed travelled across from the doorway along the ceiling and disappeared through the wall on the other side of the room. Getting out of bed I went downstairs to where Brian was watching the television, and re-laid my story to him, his words were “you're tired, your eyes are playing tricks on you” so I left it at that and returned to bed. Roughly a month later Brian was in the sitting room which is situated directly under my bedroom where I had seen my little critter. He was laying on the sofa which was on the same wall as my bed was against upstairs when all of a sudden he heard the noise and saw a small black mass go across the ceiling from the door and disappear through the opposite wall. Now he was a believer of my little critter, his description was exactly the same. The house I know is built on several Ley lines and I believe this little fellow was just a traveller along that particular line. It is said that paranormal entities can and do follow Ley lines.

There was a time when after my daughter in law Della had been out to do some shopping for me she came back and just dropped the change on top of the refrigerator. I didn’t bother to move it as it was only coins and left them lying there that night when I went to bed. When I got up in the morning they had been piled neatly on top of one another in size of the coin with all the queens heads facing upwards. I wanted to mention these happenings as during the TV show that was to follow these happenings were re-enacted."

Irene Block ©

NOTE: Herbert Morgan...B. 1883 D. Sept. 13, 1957 - Annie Morgan...D. Jan 3, 1922 age 38 from tuberculosis - Myra Morgan, daughter 8 year old when mother Annie died B. 1914 - Gladys Morgan, stepmother and aunt to Myra.

Spirit Rescue International
Providing no cost professional spiritual help, support and guidance worldwide
SPIRIT RESCUE INTERNATIONAL - HAUNTED HELP
Spiritual, paranormal and supernatural guidance and support using remote viewing and other complementary therapies - all are welcome

Among the Spirits - Part II

Among the Spirits - Part I

Screen capture of Irene Block during a 1998 episode of her television show. An actual photograph of her spiritual family, the Morgans (Herbert, Annie and Myra), is superimposed

“We are not human beings on a spiritual journey. We are spiritual beings on a human journey”...Stephen R. Covey

A few months ago I started to correspond with Irene Block, a remarkable and talented English woman living in Wales, who has the ability to recognize and communicate with earthbound spirits as well as see events from the past and in the future. The reason we started to converse was not for a specific purpose but more likely part of an inevitable course. In the short time I have known Irene I better understand that those who once physically resided on this plane should be respected and allowed to reveal their personal history and current situation to us. Irene is also the founder of Spirit Rescue International, a non-profit spiritual, paranormal and supernatural guidance and support group that uses remote viewing and other complementary therapies.

“The paradox of reality is that no image is as compelling as the one which exists only in the mind's eye”...Shana Alexander

I could sit here and attempt to tell you about Irene but I will oblige her to do so in her own words. The following are excerpts from Irene's yet unedited and unpublished manuscript. This excerpt describes an episode when a paranormal television production crew filmed in Irene's home in Wales and Irene didn't tell the medium who she was or that she knew the spirits in the house:

"I received a phone call from a friend of mine, a well known Medium who herself had been contacted by a London production company asking her if she knew of any homes that were haunted for a television program they were wanting to shoot, could she suggest mine. I wasn’t too sure of this but said she could pass my telephone number on to them, so they could contact me, in the meantime I would think about it. Within 24 hours I received a phone call from their London office. The man who was on the other end of the phone introduced himself as the producer. He told me that the program was going to be about a celebrity medium who would come into the home, talk with the spirits and find out who they were and why they were there. Well my curiosity, I am ashamed to say, was getting the better of me, I decided not to tell them who or what I was, just to let them think I was a housewife living in a haunted house.

I discussed it with Brian and we decided to go ahead and do it, there was no money to be made by doing it. The only reward the producer said that we would get was the history of our house. I didn’t have the heart to tell him I already knew it. It was arranged for one of their interviewers to come out and talk to me about the program the following week. The week seemed to fly by and it was not long before a car with two young men in it pulled up on my drive. Going out to meet them I was introduced to a lad called Marty who was the interviewer and the other lad was Tom. Tom was a cameraman. Marty was very good at his job and soon put me at ease. He was clever with his questioning about the house, before I realised it I had told them all they needed to know about the house and it's spirits. So here we were talking about a television programme about a house and a haunting and the fact that the idea of the show was that the celebrity medium would come in and by being in touch with the spirits, sort out who they were, why they are here and solve the haunting....but wait, I have already given them all the information they needed.

As I said there was no money in this for us, our reward was to have the history of the house which I had already given to them. The only money that would change hands was one pound coin which had to be paid to us to seal the contract we signed. Funny thing is they must have forgot to give even that to us. As we waited for the day to come when they would all arrive from London, more and more I had the feeling I didn’t want this to happen and nearly called the production company many times to cancel it. On several occasions I would ask my guides what should I do and the answer always returned the same “out of this will come three.” I had no idea what they meant but decided in the end they knew best. The film people wanted anyone there that had seen things happening in the house so my mother and sister and nieces came down from London. The day of the shoot was soon upon us and the crew turned up in droves. Special lights and cameras were rigged up in the house and garden it looked like something off of a movie set...God only knows what the villagers thought was going on. I know there was a lot of curtain twitching.

The first days shooting was taken up with interviews being shot. They wanted to know all the things that had happened in the house, like doors slamming, things being moved, the coins that were found piled up in neat little stacks in the kitchen even the Black shape that I call an astral critter that travelled across the ceiling that both I and Brian had witnessed and much more. They even had a child actress to re-enact part of the apparition of Annie that I saw that first day standing looking out of the bedroom window. A child because someone on the team made a mistake and didn’t book an adult. They filmed the child at the bedroom window, she had been dressed in Edwardian clothes for the filming and looked beautiful. Then they filmed her sneaking into the kitchen and stacking up the coins. They tied fishing wire to places to cause special effects like on the under stairs cupboard door to make the door fly open as it did on the night of the storm and had me and mum shuffling out there in the dark acting out the part of the power cut that day when trying to find candles. Someone had to pull the wire at the right exact moment, at least 12 takes of this was filmed and my elderly mum was getting tired doing the same thing over and over. Retake after retake was shot all day until the producer was satisfied with what they had filmed. All this time they had no idea who I was and what I did, that’s the way I wanted to keep it.

That night a very tall man arrived, who was the parapsychologist and he put a camera into my bedroom which was to stay there all night in order to see what it could capture. He asked us not to sleep in that room that night and if we could just before settling down to sleep go in there and switch it on. With this, after a busy day, the crew all left to go to their hotel for the night.

Myself and my family stood around talking for a while about what had happened and what would be happening the next day before retiring to bed. Brian and I had already decided as the camera was in our bedroom that we would sleep downstairs in the sitting room with the dogs to keep them quiet. My sister, Mum and my nieces went upstairs to the guest rooms and on the way one of them went into my room and switched on the camera as asked. Besides Mum getting up in the middle of the night to go to the loo all remained quiet.

The second day, the team arrived early and again started to set up cameras and lighting. They took shots of the house and surrounding area, done some more filming indoors with us and as the evening drew near they started taking night shots in all the rooms and the outside of the house. About 7PM a 'flash car' drew up in the drive, it was a Porsche. This was the medium arriving. He was brought into the house and introduced to us. I recognised him straight away from other television paranormal programmes. He was young and quite good looking and I watched my nieces faces as they went into swoon mode...I could tell they thought he was fit.

Time was now getting on and they decided to shoot the main part of the show that involved the medium coming up with all his stuff and exorcising the house. I had already made it clear to them that in no way were they going to be exorcising my spirit family and had been assured that he wouldn’t. He would only get rid of anything that was negative in the house. I had to giggle at that one, knowing that there was nothing negative in my house. I was looking forward to how they were going to get over that bit. Still they had no idea about me and when I had shaken hands with the young medium I had got nothing from him where as I would normally do if someone had a strong gift. The medium started his walk about the house feeling for energy as he said. Well I knew there was high energy about I could feel that my spirit family was not impressed with all this going on. As the cameras were following us about we went from one room to the other and he was sensing someone here and someone there although I knew he was on the wrong track and the rooms he was entering had nothing in them at all. I just went along with it.

Then I followed him as we went up the stairs. A cameraman was filming from the top and another was filming us going up. The first room he went into was what would have been the nursery in the old days. As he stood by the bed he told us a child had died in there under strange circumstances. I felt nothing coming from that room, in fact it was the one room that never has any paranormal happenings. Into the next room and again he felt a spirit. Nothing was there and by now I was feeling sad for him. Obviously all this crap he was coming out with was for effects for the show. As I stood there watching I felt a presence coming from the room next door, my room. So I said, “I think there could be something in the next room I think I heard something” we all followed him into my bedroom. As I entered the room I was hit by the energy of one of my spirit family and it was not nice, I felt anger. The medium stood by the bed and told us someone had died in it, the first thing that went through my head was if that is so it’s going back. It was a brand new bed and I had even helped Brian take the wrapping off of it when it arrived. He must have realised at that moment and saw the look of amusement on my face then tried to say that someone had died in that very position that the bed was in. Pity the lights were out or he would have seen above my wardrobe an old fashioned light pull cord attached to the ceiling. This is where the bed, in those days, would have been placed. It was me that did not want the bed in that position when we moved in and had it put up against an entirely different wall facing a different way. Next he said while someone was dying a lot of prayers were being said in this room. I should think so, after all my spirit family had been very religious and I had already told Marty that day of the first interview that Herbert was a deacon at the chapel. Only one person had, in fact, died in that room and that was Gladys the second wife and step mother to Myra. So maybe he was picking up on that well in my head I gave him 2 out 10 for that one.

As he continued to ramble on I felt someone come close to me and tried my hardest to push it away but it was too late. Suddenly I began to trance, it was Gladys “what are you doing in my house” she said with a broad Welsh accent. She was in a very distressed mood and I was told later by one of the cameraman that he could see through the camera lens my face morphing and it had shaken him up. They certainly had not expected that and after I wasn’t too pleased either as I had previously told them to behave themselves. The young medium came running around the bed, he had now realised what was happening and was concerned because he thought I was just a housewife who had become possessed. He grabbed my head and held it to his chest. I had already come out of it by now but he kept saying to me “come forward Irene, come forward.” Now I was fully out of it but decided to stay where I was as long as I could, I told my sister this later and said to her “you would do the same if you had your head stuck in the muscular chest of a young man” she laughed and called me something I can’t repeat on here.

The producer was beside himself with pleasure having actually caught a paranormal moment on camera and kept asking me to do it again to which I just laughed thinking to myself you silly man. I think the medium was a bit put out but I had not done it on purpose. I had felt the energy in the house building up for a couple of days now...even spirits have to let it out somewhere. It was decided by the producer to do a Ouija board session; my little sister looked concerned about this as we, as kids had always been told by Dad not to play around with these sorts of things. “Dad wouldn’t like it” she said, “Dad won’t allow it.” I replied to her, then facing the producer I told him that would never work in this house, and I was right...it wouldn’t.

Then the medium asked us all to hold hands for a séance and just before we started the producer asked me if it could be me that channelled the spirits. This concerned my little sister again and as I looked over in her direction, there was my father from spirit standing between her and my niece. At this point I let go of the hand of the medium and that of Brian and told them I wanted to go to the loo. Actually I wanted to go upstairs to the bathroom to have a chat with my guides. I told the sound man to turn off his earphones as I was wired to sound and didn’t want him hear me. I went upstairs and one of the camera people followed me up with a camera just in case she was able to capture something paranormal again.

Sitting on the side of the bath I tuned into my guides and asked what I should do and the reply was to go with it...they would lead me. With that I went back downstairs to be met by a young guy with a big grin on his face. There had been two sound men upstairs and their sound had not been turned off. I must have blushed from head to foot. We all settled down again at the table and held hands. Within seconds the medium dropped his head to the table as if starting to trance. A voice that he described later as a negative spirit came out although I knew he was not channelling anything and that the voice was actually him, but I never let on. He's still under this supposed trance and started arguing with this so called spirit. It would say one thing and he would say something else, then those magic words came out of his mouth “get out get out of this house.” How I stopped myself from laughing I will never know. My sister on the other side of the table was barely able to restrain herself from laughing as well. With that the medium then came out of his so called trance and looked at me and said, “It’s no good” he won’t go.

At this point we all took a break and went into the kitchen. The medium and producer went off into another room and I know they were talking about me. On their return they looked at me and said they had a problem. The medium said, “we want you to channel the spirits as we think you have an affinity to them and we think they may talk through you.” Yea, I thought to myself, and don’t you know it". As we again took our places at the table and the cameras were running the young medium said, that he had channelled a spirit by the name of Michael who had gotten into this house. Michael had done something really wrong in his lifetime and had been a farmhand on the farm over the back. He had been jealous of his wife and hit her in the face with a hot iron disfiguring her for life. Nice one, I thought, and made a mental note to check that story out knowing if it was true, someone in this small village would know the story. Also I knew that the farm had been in the same family for a couple of hundred years and if anyone would know of this legend it would be them. The producer had come up with the idea that if I channelled this spirit Michael that the young medium could then take control and exorcise it from me. What a laugh!

We proceeded again and all eyes were on me. At first nothing was happening but after a short while I felt my breathing start to get heavier and began to channel again only this time it was Annie the first wife. Annie, again in a welsh accent, began to ask why we were here and that she could see us. Someone asked her where Myra was, to which she answered “in bed where do you think a young child would be this time of night” after a brief spell of silence I began to come out of trance.

Now this is where it gets interesting. The producer was nagging me to try and channel this negative Michael but I already knew you can't channel something that doesn't exist. I mentally asked for the help of my guides. I wanted to know what to do. The answer came “relax Irene, reach out and you will find a lost soul that needs to be sent across.” I did as I was told and tried to relax. I could hear them talking at the table but the conversation seemed to be in the background. Next thing I knew a pillar candle flew off of my mantelpiece and across the room. With that, the chair one of my niece’s was sitting on jumped and was pulled back hitting a cameraman in the leg. "Keep filming" they said, I could feel the atmosphere in the house had thickened and the room was very cold. As I concentrated I felt an energy moving around the table towards me, it felt angry and confused. As it approached I thought to myself, "OK here we go, I am trusting you lot up there to get rid of this", meaning my guides. The next thing was this entity through me was arguing with the young medium who was telling it to leave this house. The banter went back and forth for some time and my breathing was so heavy it was surprising my chest did not burst (I know this from watching the program when it went out on the television). Then as quick as a flash this entity left my body and I knew it had been sent over by the spirit world. As I started to come around the young medium dived up from his chair and placed one hand in front of my chest and one to the back all the time yelling at the entity to leave my body. I remember thinking to myself you're too late mate, it’s already gone. So that was his great exorcism, was it. Certainly not my way of doing things.

With the show in the can they all packed up and were gone from the house in less then an hour. It felt nice to get my home back but before I could sit and relax with my family I had something else to do. I went upstairs and thanked my spirit family and apologised for what had happened. Next I thanked my guides for the help and protection they had given and most importantly I reinforced the protection around my house and all who was in it, with this, the house settled down nicely.

It was around two months later when it went out on the television and we sat there impatiently waiting to see the finished show. We had already been told they would send us a copy of the show on DVD but not until it had been shown on television. Maybe they were worried that if we had seen it before hand we would have had some complaints about it. So much had been cut from the show and it was made to look as if the young medium was the hero of the day, still that’s what it was all about really he was the celebrity after all. The house was described as a Victorian villa when I had already told them it was Edwardian even to the year it was completed in. They said that the locked off camera upstairs that night had picked up the sound of footsteps walking through the room. It had indeed but these weren’t any phantom footsteps they were my mother's walking along the landing the time she went to the loo. My mother being of an age where she shuffles along and we all recognised her steps as we heard them on the TV...still, it gave us a good laugh. They also said that during the night when the cameras were left in the house running (of which there was only one a video camera in my bedroom) that we all had been sent away to a hotel for the night so nothing would contaminate the recording. Wish I had known that it was jolly uncomfortable sleeping in my sitting room with six dogs. One thing I will say the special effects re-enactment of my little astral critter could not have been done any better...it was so like the very night it happened.

All in all I know these shows are for entertainment only but they must have made some big money out of it as it was repeated and repeated over here and also was shown abroad and in the States, so I was told. Brian, well he must have been out of pocket by over a thousand pounds in loss of wages and travelling the 440 miles back and forth from London what with petrol and that. My dining room table was scratched all over from the weight and movement of the cameras that were not on tripods that was £1300 pound down the drain. But wait we all still had the one pound for signing the contract or did we...no, that’s right, not one of us received it.

Weeks went by and I was still not able to understand my spirit guides words “out of this will come three” until one day I was contacted by a man named John whose family home had also appeared in one of the episodes of the show. He explained to me that he had been having problems for years but after they had been filmed for the show it had escalated to such a pitch that it was becoming unbearable to live in. He had been in touch with the production team who put him on to the medium from the show but very little help was given except the medium sent him a couple of crystals. Everywhere he and his wife went after the show had aired they were recognised and people would come up to them in the street and talk about it. It was whilst out shopping one day that they met two women who claimed to be mediums. The conversation got round to the program and finding out that the family were still having problems the Mediums offered to help. Now things for me started to fall into place. This is why I had also had to do the show."

Irene Block ©

NOTE: Tomorrow, I will post the 2nd part of this post. Irene receives guests in the house, some who are skeptical of the 'spirit family.' Videos and screen captures included...Lon


The ghost of Herbert Morgan looking out an upstairs window of the villa

Spirit Rescue International
Providing no cost professional spiritual help, support and guidance worldwide
SPIRIT RESCUE INTERNATIONAL - HAUNTED HELP
Spiritual, paranormal and supernatural guidance and support using remote viewing and other complementary therapies - all are welcome

Among the Spirits - Part I