I have always experienced the dead - since my earliest memories. Several experiences particularly stand out. At age 13, while my dad was in Vietnam and my family lived in El Paso, TX, I awoke one night to the sounds of a loud party going on in the living room of our small house - complete with happy laughter, talking, glasses clinking, silverware being dropped, etc. I got out of bed and saw my mother standing in the doorway of her bedroom opposite mine, looking terrified. She looked at me and asked if I heard it, too. I walked down the darkened hall to see what or who was there, toward the noise - my mom was frozen in her doorway with fear. When I reached the source of the "party," and flipped on the light switch, there was absolutely nothing - no one - there at all, and not a thing out of place.
At age 19, I was staying with my widowed grandmother in her Alabama home out in the county (no traffic lights or city sounds), and she put me up in my grandfather's old room - where he slept before he died. I awoke to the loud sounds of the crickets outside on the summer night, and lay in bed just thinking how happy I was to be visiting my grandmother. Suddenly, the sound of the crickets immediately stopped, and there was absolute silence. I looked toward the foot of the bed and saw a large, glowing yellow orb floating around the foot of the bed and toward the head of the bed. Contrary to being frightened, I thought that this was just Grandpa, wondering who was sleeping in his bed. I felt comforted by the thought that he was there, and I suppose he didn't mind his granddaughter being there. So, then in the next instance, the orb disappeared and the sound of the crickets chirping resumed.
Forward a decade and a half to married life in California... For five years after having given birth to two healthy boys, then ages 10 and 6, my husband and I tried to have a third child, with no success. Finally, my husband started to announce that he wanted "no more children," that it was not meant to be. I told the family that it seemed to me that there was a child in Heaven waiting to be born, who was meant to be a part of our family and just was not with us yet.
One night, after a fight with my husband over the matter, I left to go sleep on the sofa in the family room. I was not asleep, but crying softly because of the fight. Then, in the middle of the room, not four feet from my face, a gentle, young man's voice (but no image) announced, "Don't cry, you will have another child." I sat up and looked around, but I was not scared. It was a message that gave me great comfort, and I lay down to sleep. In fact, I remember feeling so safe that I rolled over and had my back to the point of the sound's origin. Indeed, within two months, I was pregnant with my third son Michael, who has been the most loving and truly gifted child for almost 15 years now.
When Michael was about a year old, we had a photo taken at Christmas of him in my arms, in a bedroom on the other side of our house from the Christmas tree and decorations. Several photos before and after that picture looked perfectly normal, but the one of baby Michael and me had sparkling Christmas colors all over our faces (and only our faces) - as if someone had decorated us with twinkle lights! At another point, my husband was angry with our older sons for not doing a chore they were told to complete, and he punished them by having them sent to their rooms for the rest of the night without any TV. The next day, HE said he heard (when totally alone in the family room) a young man's voice behind his back say in a scolding tone, "Stop the anger, be kind to your sons."
I once was sitting on the floor in the family room, watching television, when I had the distinct sensation of an electrical charge migrate from one side of my body and out the other, with a sort of breeze following. I could only interpret the experience as that the unseen co-inhibitors of our house had walked right through me! Since we moved into this house, my husband and sons always joked about "Larry" being a funny name, and they even called our pet bird "Larry."
After almost 8 years in the house, and after the disembodied voice episodes and one levitating fruit bowl incident, I found out from a neighbor that a college student once lived in our house and had died at some point shortly after graduating (but not at the house). His name was Larry.
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