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David Marsden brings mystery and magic into
lives made sterile by our fascination with technology. Visiting a fortune
teller may seem harmless fun. At a psychic fair you can buy crystals, aromas and
symbols etc offering you protection against supernatural agencies.
Doctors and psychiatrists provide psychoactive drugs to manage these
symptoms, and criticize "alternative" medicine and alternative therapy.
Religious organizations may condemn New Age groups and alternative
therapy, yet provide exorcists to evict the demons or spirits
that they do not believe in. Martyn Carruthers |
Haunted House
Sam and Linda invited me to visit their country home near
Port Perry (Ontario, Canada). It was hell to find and I'm glad that I left
early and that the roads are not so busy on Saturdays. Their home was located
near the end of a bumpy dirt road by a picturesque stream, surrounded by low
wooded hills, in a community that seemed to disapprove of road signs. Except
for a few hunting camps, there were no other houses around. My first thought
was "I wouldn't want to try to get here in winter".
The land thrived on neglect. It was an old wooden house, with
shingle covered walls.
It looked as if rooms were added to the house at different times, perhaps to
make space for a growing family. It had not been painted for many years -
and the last green paint was not attractive, with a lot of grey wood
showing. A small field behind the house held a large untidy garden, surrounded by a
deer fence.
I did not want to enter the house immediately. I felt
unpleasant and I wanted to gather my resources. I asked that we
drink tea in the garden, despite the 101 types of biting insects that Ontario is
blessed with. "Baby vampires" I call them.
I had met Sam and Linda at a meeting about preventing
learning disabilities. You could call them aging hippies. Sam
was always very relaxed. He was a musician, and
he recorded his music onto cassettes and CDs, which he sold, while Linda taught at a primary
school. They lived together with Trent, their 12 year old son.
After the workshop, Linda asked me for help with her son's
learning disabilities. I referred her to Martyn Carruthers in New
Brunswick. Linda asked if I knew anything about ghosts. I hesitated
before answering ... ghost stories is my hobby since I retired ...
I said that I knew a little. She invited me to check out her ghost stories
at her home and offered to cover my costs. I accepted, and here I am.
View from Outside
During our small-talk, I examined the house from the
outside. A darkness seemed to hover over the building, particularly over
the back extension, closest to the garden. I asked what they knew about the
house history. They said that the last owners sold it to them for a really
good price - in cash - for a quick sale. A title search showed a problem,
the house had been inherited by three children, two boys and a girl. The two boys had been
missing since the 1930's, and the third, the youngest child, a daughter, sold
the house a long time ago and was probably dead. Three other families had lived
here since that time. Sam and Linda chose to ignore the legal details as the
house was such a good deal. As Sam said - if they live there ten years - the
house pays for itself.
Sometimes when they went out, things moved, or fell
onto the floor; especially in the work room in the back extension.
Occasionally fresh food would become putrid overnight, especially if left in
that extension. Even cartons of pasteurized milk could sour if left in
there, and Linda didn't want to talk about what happened to eggs.
At first Linda wondered if Sam was playing around -
until a book she was reading in the work room started dripping goo
onto her legs. Sam refused to discuss it - if there was a problem he
said it was the quality of his marijuana.
Their boy Trent had chronic disease symptoms - he was often dizzy
and weak, and was a grade behind his age group at school. Linda had taken
him to physicians and alternative healers; food allergies or deficiencies
were suspected, but no firm diagnosis had been made. I got the idea that
Trent was was being fed every dietary supplement known to man. He probably
rattled as he walked.
My experiences in ghost hunting indicated that people
can get hurt - especially children. I wondered what was haunting the
family - and why. I took a few moments to do some breathing and
grounding exercises, then I asked to enter the house.
View from Inside
I entered the front of the house, through an entry porch into the
living room. A strong smell of incense seemed to be mixed with the smell of
marijuana. Their room was full of pictures and symbols from many cultures,
with small Hindu statues and colorful Buddhist posters. Their huge bookshelves
looked like mine, with many "old friends" visible. An enormous stereo
was surrounded by CD chaos. The room was visually pleasant but somehow generally
uncomfortable.
I asked Linda if Trent could go somewhere - so Linda
persuaded Sam to take Trent to get the next weeks' groceries, and then take
Trent to a movie. After they had left, I helped Linda enter a dreamlike state
in which she could contact whatever was in her home that was not available to
her ordinary senses.
Some people say that information can exist between or behind the
lines of the world - information that can move between worlds. This
information seems to have different laws, and it can be perceived in
abnormal states of consciousness, which includes some states of consciousness
called mental disease. I use a technical word to describe this information
which can harm humans. I call it stuff.
Stuff Happens
In my experience, almost every old house (and many new ones) has
stuff. You can call it what you like - "associations"
or "conditioned responses" or "etheric goo" or
ectoplasm. It's like cleaning out an old closet - under your shoes
and behind your jackets may be a lot of old things that you had
forgotten about - and each thing has some emotional charge - or a
memory - or both. And a lot of odd socks mutating into coat hangers
if your closets are like mine. Emotional debris from other times. Stuff.
The first step to clean stuff is to
recognize it. The next steps are to accept and to
empathically understand it. After that, the final step is to rationalize and
either integrate the stuff or return it to its "right place". Sounds
easy, does it? Cleaning stuff often takes hours - and
occasionally days - depending on the volume and toxicity of the stuff.
The front room contained a lot of stuff,
which we cleaned, although it did not seem particularly toxic. It was more
like the trails that snails leave when they crawl (?) over leaves.
We cleaned the front room and each room in the main house - and then
we stopped for some green tea before opening the door to the back
extension. Linda said that she often felt sad in that extension, although
the windows overlooked both the garden and the stream, through which you
could watch a parade of Canadian wildlife.
She said that Trent had claimed the room as his own and seemed to like it.
We talked more about Trent - and Linda started crying
as she described Trent's problems at school. He was intelligent, but
couldn't concentrate. He wasn't hyperactive, quite the opposite, and a
diagnosis of attention-deficit-hyperactive disorder (ADHD) just didn't
fit. He could never seem to finish his homework, instead he would just
stare through the window at the garden. (he seemed to like looking at
the garden, but couldn't be persuaded to help maintain it, and might cry if Sam or Linda were digging or planting
there).
Finally, we both looked at each other, sighed and nodded;
and went to the door leading to the back extension, which contained Trent's
bedroom and a work room. Well. There's stuff ... and then there's
STUFF!!! We opened the door. I cannot easily describe what we found there.
Stuff Can Always Get Worse
When I talk about esoteric phenomena - which is not so
often as most people think it's too weird - I talk as both a therapist and
a ghost hunter. I am open to the idea that esoteric phenomena are dissociated
emotional debris reflecting relationship issues. And I am open to the idea
that we are normally only aware of four dimensions - and
six senses - with many more available to human consciousness.
I try to avoid using words like "possession",
"demon" and "exorcism" as the words are so
emotionally charged, and elicit unpleasant memories, fearful reactions or scorn.
But, I must call these phenomena something more understandable than
"kinesthetic image schema". I refer to associations of dead
human beings as ghosts, to things from other dimensions
as entities, and follow Martyn Carruthers' example by referring
to "spirit possession"
as dead person identification.
The back extension was filthy with
STUFF!!! and a horror for Linda. Although there was nothing really new
for me, I felt disgusted and in need of a shower. At the door to the work room,
an aggressive ghost immediately threatened us, and there were two more ghosts
behind it that were more passive - more like two dark, sad zombies, one tall and
one short.
In the adjacent room, Trent's bedroom, we found two
entities. The larger was about a meter high, crawling like a caterpillar,
with a flowing surface that seemed to absorb light, without being
black. The smaller entity was by the window and more mobile - it looked
like a big, lively amoeba with a semi-transparent surface and a pulsating
interior. The ghosts, even the aggressive one, seemed to be
terrified of the entities.
This was the just the start of the real work, which took
hours. A few times I worried about Linda, but she insisted that we
continue as she didn't ever want to do this twice! We made one break, to walk
around the house and for Linda to phone Sam and ask him to take Trent to
his favorite fast-food restaurant after the movie, to delay their return.
Of the three ghosts - two were the two missing brothers
who had inherited the house. The older one was aggressive - it didn't know
that it's body was dead. Their bodies had died of some wasting
disease and were buried - perhaps under the garden. The third ghost - the
smaller zombie - was Linda's own dead child, whom she hadn't mentioned
- a miscarriage that had occurred when she and Sam slept in the room that
was now Trent's.
The entities were far older - if human years
have relevance to them. It seemed that they had been summoned here by Ojibwa
(Chippewa) Indians, who lived here before the Europeans arrived, at the same
site as Sam's house. This made sense, Sam's land was flat, near a stream and
surrounded by good hunting. The entities had apparently been used in magical
rituals that steal energy and power from enemy warriors. After the Indians
left the area, the entities had apparently continued to suck life energy
from young males - including the two brothers who had died here, and Linda's
baby ... and Trent seemed to be on their menu.
Although it seemed that the entities were merely fulfilling
their mission in this world; we evicted them, and perhaps they will never return.
Feedback
About four months later, I received a phone call from
Linda that Trent was enjoying what might be called a recovery. I visited
them once, when I was in the area. They said (and I agree) that the house
is now warm and welcoming. They had made the back extension into a sort
of greenhouse and moved the garden to the front of the house. Trent was
pleased with his new bedroom, on which Sam had spent quite a lot of
money to motivate and ensure his move.
Afterword (by Martyn Carruthers)
Childhood fairy tales and Hollywood horror movies provide
scary stories of ghosts and the unquiet dead. Stories of zombies, werewolves,
mummies and evil spirits are mingled with sorcery and black magic. Stories
about divination by mediums in s�ances; reading crystal
balls or using tarot cards or spiritualism remain commonplace. Witness the
astounding success of vampire and Harry Potter tales, and the popularity of
divination using Ouija boards.
Ghosts, goblins and hobgoblins reside in fairy tales ...
and in our minds. Your willingness to walk in a cemetery at night
may expose how close you live to a world where not all dead corpses rest in
peace. The symptoms associated with spirit possession resemble those of
dead-person-identification. The solutions offered by exorcism and
dead-person-dis-identification are each appropriate according to your
subjective reality.
The consequences of reckless trespass into other
realities can include excitement and fun - and also suicide, disease
symptoms, psychosis and broken homes. Whichever metaphor you prefer, you
live in more than one dimension, and news from abroad can upset your
equilibrium and perhaps your health.
We help people access
world-views in which the strange phenomena described by David Marsden can be
safely explored and satisfactorily resolved. (Martyn Carruthers)
Esoteric Coaching
. Curses
. Black Magic .
Ghosts . Demon
I am a retired psychotherapist living near Toronto,
Canada. I investigate ghost stories. You can email me at:
or ask Martyn for help.
Click HERE for help with ghosts,
discarnates, etc Plagiarism is theft.
Copyright � David Marsden 2002
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