That Time I Was Low-key Possessed

Life has been hectic enough over the last few months to have kept me away from the YGS community for far too long - but, as it usually does, an experience has occurred and sent me running back to you! I'm not exactly certain what category this experience should be slotted into as it's a little bit spiritual, a little bit ghostly, a little bit personal growth... A little bit "who knows"! That said, I am going to write this as it occurred chronologically - meaning the recounting has the benefit of hindsight that I, of course, lacked as I experienced it in real time.

The whole thing began on Wednesday, June 16. Once every year, I take a particular form of hallucinogenic substance that has been shown to have a positive impact on depression. I'm not here to justify or promote the taking of any substance. The experience isn't a physically pleasant one nor is it emotionally a walk in the park - it makes you really take a hard introspective look at yourself and that can be difficult. I believe it puts me a bit more in touch with the other side as well - in previous experiences, my grandparents have come through quite clearly.

This time was different than last year's session as it had already been a hectic few weeks and I was rushed as I was about to leave town for work and wanted to do this first - so, I shied away from taking the really deep dive emotionally as I just didn't have the "umph" in me to handle something so intense. At the end of the day, I was left feeling "off" - like a picture hanging crooked.

Hindsight: By ingesting said substance, I made myself visible to whatever energies were floating around my home at the time and one particularly negative energy/entity in particular - furthermore, I showed weakness by shying away from the hard stuff. I still had the positive shield, guides, and energies that normally surround me in place, however, so all "it" could do was hover like a dark clouds over a cook-out...menacing but harmless.

I left town at the end of the week (Friday, June 18th). I work as a freelance model so being able to be "in the moment" and creative on your feet is very important - and the entire time, I still felt "off," blocked, off kilter. As the trip drew to a close by June 30th, I pulled up to my second to last shoot of almost twenty. I was tired and road-weary but was feeling that final burst of energy like a horse with its head pointed towards the stable. During the shoot, we were using lasers. Hoping to make the beams show up in the photographs, the photographer wanted to put smoke into the air - to do so, he used a white sage smudging stick. I instantly felt like it was a bad idea but, foolishly, allowed it to go ahead anyway. By the time we were done, the basement where we were shooting was thick with smoke.

Hindsight: I was effectively smudged without intent - the process weakened my natural defenses, opened the door for whatever might be hanging about and that baddie that had been dogging me since June 16th waltzed right in.

This is where things begin going down hill with frightening speed. Every day for the next nine days, something negative would happen.

Thursday, July 1st: Everything possible got in my way as I was trying to get home from the trip making a 3 hour drive into an 8.5 hour journey. I was also a bit sick during the drive and received some troubling news from my doctor about my own health (without getting into detail, issues regarding uniquely female parts of the body) when I, at length, got home.

Friday, July 2nd: I totaled my beloved car of 16 years while parallel parking (talk about freak accidents - who totals a car while PARKING?).

Saturday, July 3rd: One of our collectible vintage glasses exploded in my hand.

Sunday, July 4th: One of our three cats -the youngest, our only boy, Little Mann- became deathly ill with a sudden upper respiratory infection.

Monday, July 5th: Our little boy's infection grew so bad that he could not breathe and was gagging, we spent the entire day in and out of vets trying to find someone who could help him. Finally, we did but the solution came with the diagnosis of feline herpes, which will potentially bother him for the rest of his life and could spread to the other two. The whole thing boggles me because they are all exclusively indoor cats, they get the best food, filtered water, they've all be vaccinated against the virus, have no contact with other animals and both my husband and I are meticulous about washing our hands before we touch them, taking off our shoes and changing our clothes as soon as we get home.

Tuesday, July 6th: I had a wicked migraine and our little boy nearly aspirated his medication.

Wednesday, July 7th: I got a parking ticket.

Thursday, July 8th: My hand got caught in a vintage electric fan with metal blades that was on high at the time. My right thumb was nearly cut in half vertically and I passed out in front of my horrified 9 year old nieces in a dramatic spray of blood.

Friday, July 9th:...I was too afraid to leave the house for fear of what might happen. I was effectively this thing's prisoner. There was no way I was going to put my nieces into the car with me - I just knew something horrific would happen.

During this entire period, my cats were behaving strangely - Little Mann (a male tux less than a year old - usually healthy as a horse and a little jester), of course, was ill, Chablis (all black with one white spot, female, 4 years - usually cautious and reclusive around strangers but otherwise very engaged, submissive and very sweet) was very anxious, hid most of the time and was "verbally" aggressive to Little Mann, and Vera (female tux, 4 years - the smallest but the dominate cat and my "familiar") was very clingy and constantly in my face, clearly concerned.

Friday evening, my husband spoke to one of our neighbors, Em, who is our resident go-to-gal for all things spiritual. She is a sensitive and very "in tune." He explained what had been going on and she said she would come up and help me out. I sent the nieces out to catch fire flies with my husband, and Em and I got started. As soon as she walked in, she could sense something violently "off" both about me and in our home. As she walked around the flat, she sensed that it was the strongest in areas where we have no images of or artifacts from our family displayed. Items that I had brought home from the trip (I always thrift as I go) had particularly strong negativity around them. She explained that it wasn't so much that the items I brought home had anything attached to them (a relief since virtually everything in my home from the dishes to my clothes is at least second hand... If not third or fourth) as that the negative energy/entity that was attached to me was behaving like an animal scent-marking its territory - the things that happened to have been with me on any leg of the journey, of course, were the first things that were available for "it" to "mark."

This energy/entity had been alerted to me when I ingested the hallucinogen - I was already weak at my sacral chakra - when I was smudged without intention, the weakness, my own doubt about the situation all combined to leave me wide open and this thing slipped right in - it then went to work trying to control and dominate me by attacking me at my core (my health, my "kids" [ie the cats], my beloved car) and isolating me from the world (once again, the car and damaging my right hand... Let me tell you, you really need the thumb on your dominate hand to do just about everything, the intense fear). As animals sense this sort of thing more keenly than humans and black cats are oft believed to have the ability to dispel "evil spirits" - that explained their odd behavior, this thing was too much for them to handle. She performed a ritual of her own and then we smudged the whole place with Paolo Santo - during the entire process, Vera sat on the dining room table watching in complete calm as though she knew what Em was doing.

Once Em was done, the entire place felt... Less crowded, like the air weighed less - even I felt lighter, the fear and foreboding were gone - "it" was gone. It is now Sunday the 11th of July and nothing further has happened. Little Mann is making a full recovery.

Incidentally, while she was here, Em confirmed some of our suspicions about our resident spirits. She sensed our man in the corner of the bedroom and a female energy who moves throughout the home spending most of her time in the guest room (where my nieces sleep on their visits) and the kitchen. She also noticed quite distinctly that my bathroom has NO activity whatsoever - so the "no shower stuff" portion of my "Paranormal House Rules" seems to be observed!:-D