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GHOSTLY INTERSECTIONS

A Lifetime Of Extraordinary PerceptionsBy Mary Jane Monahan

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2011 Mary Jane Monahan
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4634-0735-3

Chapter One

Ghost stories have abounded in my family for at least the past 150 years. These are stories that have been passed down through generations of both sides of my family and provided many interesting times around the kitchen table with relatives or just my parents, my sisters and me.

These stories have not been investigated, and I cannot prove one story anymore than another. I only have my parents, my sister, aunts, uncles and their friends to trust and believe they saw and heard what they said they did. These stories were repeated over many years and never were elaborated or changed in any way. This book also includes my own ghost stories from my childhood to the present.

I have long thought about writing down the happenings with the supernatural beings; seeing and hearing and sensing these spirits of the dead that have shared my life as far back as when I was 9 years old. That is about the age I started this interesting sojourn. I essentially grew up seeing dead people as the little boy in the movie said.

What is a ghost? I used to ask my mother "what are they and why are they here?" she used to say they are people who have died and come to warn us of a death or impending danger and some just don't want to leave or possibly can't leave. Since then I've read they are an imprint on the atmosphere from some past event and not really ghosts (some call this a memory event and are not solid but transparent), some say they are people who do not know they are dead who died suddenly or someone who resents being dead, who weren't ready to go or who had some unfinished business (these look as solid as you and me), some get attached to a place or a person and in some cases a "thing" such as a piece of furniture and won't leave, and so on. There are some people who don't believe they exist at all. I think I've heard and read every explanation there is out there as well as every reason as to why they don't exist as all ghost book readers have. My mother used to say, paraphrasing Shakespeare, that there are more things in heaven and earth than dreamed of in man's philosophy.

One thing I would like to add is this. I've read many books that speak of hauntings and ghosts, which are in reality demons. I wish people would make that distinction. There is a huge obvious difference in that ghosts have walked the earth as humans. As we all know, demons have never walked the earth as humans.

I'm going to start my stories by saying I do know ghosts exist and they are not products of my imagination. Believe it or not, I'm grateful to these spirits who inhabit my home and share my life because rarely is there a dull moment! Mostly what I have experienced are pranks. I've had some destruction of property, but not much. I will also say I've never felt I was in danger or whatever I experience is of a bad nature.

Old houses, new houses, and middle aged houses can be haunted. It doesn't matter. It's anywhere a ghost decides to unpack his ghostly duds and for reasons known only to the ghost in some cases.

My sister carol and I seemed to have inherited this gift of seeing and hearings ghosts, or as our Mother called it, the discerning of spirits, while our sister Joyce, ever the analytical one, did not. For her there is no gray area. Being in the medical community, everything is black and white; logic and reason are her mantras.

Some say they don't believe because they haven't experienced it. How can you not believe something when so many people have experienced and written about it for hundreds of years! Not only have people written about ghosts but stories like mine have been passed down through generations. I have never experienced walking on the moon but I'm sure it was done, although I've read a theory that says it was not done and the walk was done in the desert. Some people just don't believe anything unless they see it with their own eyes and then they will try to find a "logical" explanation. Sometimes granted there are logical explanations for odd occurrences. But once the occurrence has been thoroughly investigated and no logical explanation found, then I go with a haunting of some ilk.

In watching some programs on TV, I would see the naysayers saying things like it is all imagined and it is something we heard before that affected us, people exaggerating, etc. In their minds, it's anything but a ghost. However, they only go over things that people have seen or heard. Is my flying dishwasher rack my imagination? Read on!

I cannot in retrospect say my sister Joyce has NEVER experienced something she could not explain. There was one time around Christmas, the first Christmas after our Mother died that she had an experience that she still puzzles about. She was writing her Christmas cards at her dining room table. She had decorated her house with all kinds of holiday things. One thing in particular was a motion sensor decoration that played a holiday song whenever anyone would pass by. It drove her husband crazy. This particular day, she was alone in the house when the little decoration started playing its song. She looked up, and for some reason she still can't explain, she said, "Mother. If that's you, do it again." And the little decoration started playing its song again. Her logic and reason escaped her that one time.

Chapter Two

A ghost book should always have a story about the legendary woman in white. My mother had a story about a "woman in white" when she was a child. When she would wake up early, she could hear her parents in the kitchen talking; hear dishes and utensils being moved around and the smell of breakfast being cooked. She loved those mornings. One early morning she was lying in bed and looked into the hall and saw the woman in white drifting down the hall. My mother screamed and her mother came running up the steps. She told her she was dreaming. My mother knew she was not asleep. After that, she frequently saw the woman but never screamed again. She would just watch her drift out of her sight. She said it was as if the woman was not aware of her watching.

One instance that my father related to us while my sisters were young was that during the depression, he left for work at 3:00 a.m. It was dark as pitch outside at that hour and it took a minute to adjust his vision to the blackness. There were no streetlights at the time. The neighbors across the street had white lawn furniture in their front yard. My dad always used that white lawn furniture as a focal point to adjust his eyes to the darkness. Once he walked out into porch in the darkness of a chilly October morning and stood on the front porch and as usual glanced across the street to the furniture in the yard. he said he saw something white, all right, but it was low to the ground and moving. He thought it might be a white dog at first. Then he said the "white thing" rose upright, about the height of a man, turned and seemingly looked at him, turned again and glided toward the front porch and disappeared at the front door. The door handle was on the right side, the "white thing" disappeared into the left corner of the door against the house. After he calmed himself, he realized he had to go to work, shrugged and started his walk to work in the darkness down the middle of the street. That shrug is what we all had to adopt when we saw or heard something. It was either that or possibly adopt Joyce's thought of making new doors through...