Another Ghost Tale

10/16/22 

I hope you have enjoyed my stories…they’re all true 😉  These are little ones that were experienced by me over the years.

I don’t like thunderstorms.Ever since I was small,they scared me. It seems that when I was very very young, lightning struck our house.Now I don’t remember anything but the leftover fear of lightning. There’s been times when I wanted to hide with my dogs. 

My dad knew this and he would tease me about it. I am not going to say wonderful things about him as if he was a perfect father because he wasn’t. As I grew up, he and I spent more time together. He loved deer hunting and one time I was “allowed” to go along. Not that I was into killing because I never have been. However, I Do enjoy the results. Instead of a rifle, I took my little Brownie camera. We were walking down an old logging trail, when my dad suddenly stopped. He was looking to his right and I peeked around him to see what had stopped him. In a small clearing stood a gorgeous 8-point buck. My dad whispered “ do not move”… he  slowly lifted his rifle up, and took aim. I was closer than I wanted to be as gunfire is LOUD. I stood as still as a statue and waited. I heard him pull the trigger, then I heard a click. Of course the buck leaps sideways and into the bushes he went. My dad smacked his rifle and fired again, but it was too late. Me, not sure being into killing, had my eyes squished shut tight. When I heard the click, my dad started cussing.( we later nicknamed him Cussing’ Jim) . Ohhhh he cussed a blue streak. The deer was in Elkton before it slowed down, I’m sure.

But, I digress… My husband and I lived a short distance from my parents so it was just a short walk for a visit. Every time a big storm was heading up the Chesapeake Bay, my dad (retired at that point) would invite me to come have a cup of coffee or some such excuse so I didn’t have to be alone.Or he would stop in for a visit until the storm was gone.

After he had died, I missed him a lot. We had become pretty good friends towards the end of his life.

One miserable, hot afternoon, shortly after his death, I was sitting in my little kitchen hearing the thunder rolling in the distance. I was not going to be scared…after all, I was an adult and shouldn’t be scared of lightning. The clouds were beginning to make the sky darker as they always do in a storm. I figured I had better close my windows. The last one was the big double window in the kitchen. I leaned out to wind them shut and I saw my dad walking down the little path to the house. I was surprised to see him as you can well imagine. As I watched him go by, he faded away. My dad was making sure that I was not going to be scared of the lightning. If I close my eyes, I can still see him, in his white tee shirt and  khaki pants .

More Ghosts

 I have been seeing/hearing from ghosts since I was a kid. I never saw them as scary or trying to scare me. I always understood that they were on a journey to say goodbye to people they had loved, or get unfinished things accomplished. Some ,l discovered, didn’t even know that they were dead. Of course, I didn’t know how to help, so I would grin and shrug my shoulders. 

I was married when I saw my first ghost and knew it. One day I was at the barn finishing up my morning chores. My husband and I had built the barn and house together ( with a lot of help.)  It was a small row barn with 4 stalls. We used one for storage and it had a nice tack room ; just enough for my Appaloosa horses. I loved it.One morning , as I was finishing the last stall, I heard my Dalmation barking. I stepped outside to see what was going on but didn’t see anything. All of a sudden, a man stepped into view. He smiled and waved to me. Not to be rude, I asked if I could help him. He said that he had been hunting in the State Forest and managed to get all turned around. It was rifle season after all … hunters continuously got lost .I asked him about his gun and had told me that he had put it down as he didn’t want to scare me. Ooooookaaaay. He asked me if I could direct him towards a certain road because that’s where he had parked his pickup.He had on a red plaid flannel shirt and jeans. The weather had not gotten to cold yet and he sure looked like he’d been walking awhile. Happy to see him gone, I told him what he had to head to find his pickup again. He thanked me and started walking down the driveway to get his gun. When he picked it up, he waved and yelled ‘thanks again.’ 

I went back to my chores and didn’t think much about the whole thing. Lost hunters wandered on to our farm being lost a lot anymore. People from out of the area got lost in the State Forest all the time, so it wasn’t unusual.

Later on in the evening when we were done with dinner, I settled down to read the local newspaper. It was getting cold finally…I remember thinking that I would have to get winter blankets for the horses from the big storage trunk.I decided to check the front page news and see what had happened that week. I was shocked to read an article about a hunter who had deer hunting and had accidentally killed himself. He apparently had been in a deer stand when he was getting down, he’d dropped his rifle. It hit the ground in such a way that it must’ve fired. These were mere suppositions because he’d been hunting alone. It was so terrible and I felt awful for his family. 

All of a sudden, I gasped! There was a photo of the same man who had been at my barn this morning.. Yet the news article reported that he had died the night before , when another hunter found him.

. Go figure…..

Ghosts?!

10.7.22

How many believe in Ghosts? I know I sure do. Many people think that they are always scary and out to make people terrified. Well, there are many who don’t want that. There’s the wicked ghosts that follow some people and try to make life miserable or so incredibly frightening that people think they are going crazy. But some are “stuck” midway between the living world and the dead; some don’t realize that they have died. There might be visits from a ghost who didn’t get to say goodbye because they died an instant death. These have been my experiences…. 

My early memories of ghosts began when I was in my 20s. There could have been some earlier but I didn’t realize that I had been visited by a ghost.  I had met a guy so very long ago who became a first true love. Only he never knew… the attraction was there but nothing ever happened. We both went our ways ..I got married and he was moving from one gal to the next. Years later, I was working at a racing barn ( thoroughbred racehorses) in a nearby town and had volunteered for the morning coffee run. I was not looking my best,like many people who work in horse barns. After putting my order in, I sat down on one of the stools at the little counter to wait. I could hear miscellaneous bits of conversations but ignored them. 

All of a sudden I was grabbed from behind and spun around on my stool. It was the guy that I had adored many years before. Turns out that we were both single and that he had to head back to work. Later that week he called me and we got together for dinner. And so it went….

 One day in June I had just gotten home from work and my phone rang. There was no internet nor cellphones then. This was a real telephone that was hung on a wall in the kitchen. I could not take photos with it, and gosh, all it would do is deliver calls. Turns out that the caller was a dear friend who I had known in school. He and “ my guy “ were also friends. He was the bearer of bad news. There’d been an accident earlier in the morning and my guy had died. Sitting in complete shock, it hit me that around 2AM that morning I had gotten a phone call from him. He always called me “Krissi”and wanted to know if I could “ come out to play “ meaning that he wanted for me to meet at the bar where he was.Well I needed to be up at 5 AM for work and replied no , I had to work later on. We said our see ya laters, and I went back to sleep. 

That’s the thought that hit me like I had hit a wall. If I had gotten up at least to make sure he had gotten home safely, or had driven to get him and took him to my place….. what IFFFF….For  years later I have dealt with those “What ifsss” …

 The next week was a blur. I don’t remember much of it at all. A dear childhood friend has also been killed in a head on crash and down I went again. It was almost to much to handle. Viewings and funerals ,like I mentioned, it was stress overload. I held it together until I was waiting in line to give my condolences to my friend’s family and lost it. The tears would not stop and I couldn’t stop sobbing I’m grief. I survived though it didn’t feel like I would right then. 

Passing through the days in a glaze of sadness I realized I might survive this torture. One night about a week later, I was awoken by the sound of someone in my little house. I was upstairs in my loft with no way to get to a door for exit. So I grabbed a quilt, thinking that I would throw it down on the burglar , then dash through the door. That’s the only plan I could come up with in the middle of the night. 

   My little Finnish flag was knocked over from my fireplace mantle. I clearly heard footsteps from the kitchen and the living room. So I waited for a good moment and made my move. Over the loft that quilt went, down the ladder I went and I had the sliding door open when I noticed there was no one there. Glancing at the clock ( don’t know why) and saw it was 2: 10 AM . Almost the exact time that my love would have been driving home..A kitchen chair slid out and someone sat down. The cigarette ashtray moved over to the chair and I saw smoke coming from it. All of a sudden I knew. I relaxed and said “ why hello Charlie “ . It was almost like the whole little house was enveloped in a warm hug. I knew it was him. Not quite sure what to say, I stood there. A few seconds later, there was a noise behind me. I turned to see what the noise was and there was a flying squirrel!  In my house! It sat down on the coffee table and looked at me. Grabbing a kitchen towel, I figured that I would have to chase it so I could put it back outside. No…. It quietly waited for me to pick it up from the table. Outside we went…with me, sitting it down gently on the deck. Of course the little squirrel jumped to the nearest tree and was gone.

Still in a daze of big surprises, I stepped back inside. As I did, the smoke from the cigarette was snuffed out, the chair slid out, my front door opened and closed as though someone had gone. My little house was quiet again.. That’s when my tears started flowing.

I knew that I had been visited by a ghost that was saying goodbye to me … to make sure that I would be okay. I never actually saw a shape or form that let me know who it was, but I didn’t need to. Doing some research later on that day, I learned that spirits who needed to say goodbye would visit again the place they felt most welcomed and at ease. Every so often I would hear from him, starting with my Finnish flag flying off the mantle and the same warm hugs and I know that he’s still watching over me. 

AWOL

10/7/2022

Yes, that would be me. Massive apologies for not keeping up with my life online. No excuses but I had to deal with things that I never thought I would have to. I don’t know how much I have allowed to be public but I had an awful time being divorced. The divorce itself was not bad, but prior to that, life was pretty terrible. I won’t go into it much but the end result is that I got the proverbial short end of the stick. Should I have fought for more of what should have been my share of the sale of the farm? I should have, I realize that now. Back then, there was no way I was mentally able to keep moving forward, let alone have enough money and the mental capacity for a big court fight. 

He took everything materially that was a huge part of me and my life and it almost crushed me. My horse business was slowly torn down, the horses that I adored eventually became old and left me, one by one. I was told that I was not to have any more horses. That when the farm was sold, “We” were going to buy a small house very close to where he grew up and my sweet Briana would be boarded somewhere. Very involved story short, I decided that I was not going to be going along with that idea and moved out. I learned much later how I had been dealing with a narcissist.

 I had to sell Briana this past Spring as I couldn’t afford to care for her the way she (and all animals) deserved to be cared for. She was sold to a pal of mine and as far as I know, Briana is fine. Sometimes I wake up in the morning and think I have to get busy and get the AM chores done. But… I have no chores to do. 

During all this time, I was also scammed. When it first started, I knew Nothing about things like this. Sure, I knew about phone scams, but men who said all the right things and made others believe their sweet words? I had No Idea. I was a horsewoman and not aware of sickos who lied and basically stole money from others. It turns out that there were women who did the same thing. To write this now is embarrassing for me. I am a smart person… not some silly woman who falls in love with someone she never met. But I did. It was the worst time in my life that I ever had to deal with and I guess I was a perfect person to steal from. Since all of this happened, I have learned that a lot of women have been scammed. It isn’t that they are little old ladies but to have one’s emotions played by a professional thief who knows what to say and do to entice these women to send money to them. 

So, the past few months and years have been incredibly difficult to get through. Did I make wise choices?  No, I didn’t. I made some amazingly stupid ones. I have been facing bad situations and have dealt with them. I have healed and I am stronger than ever. My trust level is non-existent now and it’s going to be a long time before I blindly trust anyone, especially men. In no way do I blame all men, but I sure pay attention to what they say now.  Will I ever trust enough to give my heart? Maybe so, but it’ll be a while.

So! That’s what I have been doing for the past so many months and years. I am back… maybe not the exact same woman I was before all of this began. I am wiser and more willing to call it “bullshit” when I hear it. I’m a stronger, smarter woman than I ever was before.

I promise you that I won’t be so long in between posts. Some might even be funny! 

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