Deeply Spiritual

Spirits are everywhere. Picture us billowing around you like steam in the bathroom when you’ve had a hot shower. We’re almost always invisible. Our bodies are gone but our essence remains, quietly attached to the places where we suffered, lived, loved and died. Most emotions only matter to the person experiencing them and the same applies to spirits. We just want to mind our own business. If we like you, we become protective and may try to reach you with warnings or advice. Ignore the Hollywood stereotypes which give us all a bad name. Most of us hate melodrama.

There are exceptions. Catherine Howard’s ghost is reputed to run along the corridors of Hampton Palace begging Henry for mercy, understandable since he’d ordered her beheading. I was over eighty when I passed on, so my spirit’s not up to running anywhere. Then there are the headless horsemen. As spirits, we don’t have bodies as such, but in my opinion, it would be very inconvenient to have to carry your head around under your arm. I would not dream of wailing in a storm when a death is about to occur, and I do not go about making noises in the night. Most unladylike.

I was born in 1890. My husband was killed in the first World War. I quietly haunt this house where I loved and lost and suffered. I’ve seen families come and go over the years since and shaken my head over some of their home decorating tastes, but I have never bothered anyone, and no one has bothered me.

Homes, especially old ones, are often occupied by multiple spirits from different times. Spirits are generally solitary, but we do encounter each other now and then. The house I haunt was built in the 1700s, so there are a few of us. There’s a little servant boy from that era who loves playing practical jokes. It’s very irritating, but he had a hard life and died young, so I make allowances. Let him have a little fun. There’s also a young lady who died of typhoid not long after her wedding in 1800. Sometimes we commiserate with each other. Sometimes we tell jokes though they're not always very funny a hundred years later .

Why haven’t you seen us if we’re all around? Has your dog ever growled at nothing? Has your cat leapt out of a chair for no apparent reason? Does your child talk to imaginary friends? Have you felt a prickling at the back of your neck, seen a glimpse of movement from the corner of your eye, had a premonition or a strange dream? Trust your intuition. One of us could be nearby.