I first noticed our "visitor" immediately after bringing home our new baby daughter. Like a nice wife, I decided to spend the first nights on the couch with the newborn baby. What I didn't realize was that I was being watched.
A month or so prior, I took a trip home to visit my mom. My husband went with my son and some friends to a special native sweat in Kentucky. They had a fun time, and stayed overnight at the host's house. The host happen to mention that they've had experiences at their house with a ghost. Apparently, the previous owners had a young daughter who had died a few years earlier.
Our friend Mike, a medicine man helper who is very attuned to the spirit world, said he felt the ghost's presence as soon as he stepped outside of the sweat that night. He spoke of feeling her sadness and isolation.
At one point on the way back from the sweat, my son threw a kicking and screaming tantrum until he looked up and stopped crying and laughed. "A pink bunny," he said. Mike and the others looked at each other and thought,
uh oh.
"I think that little girl ghost followed us home," said my husband to me one night a few weeks after their trip to Kentucky. "Why," I asked. My husband spoke of hearing strange mischievous knocking sounds. "Oh," I said and didn't think twice about it. Besides, I was the stay-at-home mom who spent most of the time in the house, and I hadn't noticed a thing.
It wasn't until the middle of the night, while sleeping on the couch with my baby girl nestled at my side on the inside of the couch, that I realize my husband may be right.
The last couple nights, my daughter had slept on her boppy pillow at one end of thc couch, and when she woke up, I sleepily nursed her and then put her back on her pillow to sleep. By the middle of the third night, however, the baby has been a little fussy and I have been comforting her back to sleep as we lay on the couch together.
I am in that "in-between" state of half sleep/half wake when I sense a shadow enter the far side of the room and float towards us on the couch. I feel an energy take a hold of my baby and feel her (as clear as day) being lifted up in the air. My whole consciousness jumps awake and I instinctively send huge waves of peace and love to the shadow. I am able to wrestle the baby back to my arms.
I bolt upright, the baby stirs a little, and I put her back to sleep on her pillow where she finally falls into a deep sleep. I turn on all the lights, adrenalin pumping, hands quivering, and light some sage to purify the room.
I manage to calm myself down, trying to reflect on what just happened. I realize that it must of been a spirit or ghost that connected with us. The vibe wasn't bad, nor is it good, it is neutral. But none the less, it was scary. Although, it didn't take the baby away from me on a physical level, I felt the baby being taken from me on some sort of level. I feel sick revisiting that feeling over and over again. It felt as real and potent as if it was my husband lifting her up.
What gets me the most is that I have no control over this situation. Normally, I feel quite safe and secure locking doors, living in a safe place, to make sure strangers don't enter my house at night. But what in the world does one do to keep ghosts out? This is a whole new world for protective services.
As well, I don't like the idea of some ghost stealing my newborn daughter's spirit away! And what for? What are they doing to her? Are they being nice? I am supposed to protect her. I feel so heart-broken that I can't protect her. How many times has it picked her up without me knowing. So many unknowns. I am such a rational person, and I hate the mystery of it all. I start to think that the ghost is stealing her spirit away and then going to enter her body. I think about all I went through the last nine months carrying this little baby just to loose her. I start to think other crazy things too.
Thankfully, not long after, my husband gets up for work and asks why it smells like sage. I tell him to sit down and feel better after I tell him the story. He says that it probably was the little girl ghost, and that she probably just wanted to pick up the baby. Little girls like babies, he said, that is just what they do.
That makes me feel better, but I am still not liking the idea of a ghost in our house. All day I am a little uneasy about the whole thing. Around ten or eleven o'clock everyone is sleeping and I am on the couch again. The lights are dimmed as usual, and all the hairs on my body seem to stand on end. There is a "spooky vibe" to the whole room all of a sudden. I admit, I am totally spooked out. But I am an adult, and it is silly to be scared. Especially of a little girl ghost.
I start thinking about how sweet little girls are, and try to calm myself down. Then all the scenes from the movie "Exorcism" start to play in my head and I turn to the only thing I know for protection. Softly, out load, I start to pray. I pray to Buddha, the enlightened ones, to
Tunkashila, the Great Spirit, Grandmother earth, my guardian angels. I ask them to look out for us, especially to protect my new daughter. My prayer last about a minute, and I finish off with "
mitakuye oyasin," the dimmed lights turn up an obvious notch.
That is it. Enough of this toughing it out crap. I stand up and go into my bedroom where my husband is sleeping. He senses my entry and half awakes. I stand there like a scared little girl, and whine, "I'm scared." I tell him what happens, and he says to just sleep in the bed. I grab my daughter and happily sleep next to my husband, baby in the middle. My husband has more experience and confidence in the spirit world than I do, so I am feeling much better.
In bed, it takes me a while to fall asleep. The walls creak, and the tv cracks from time to time. It is not usually this noisy I think. But I am confident that it's just my imagination. My husband wakes up after a load crack a couple times but falls back to sleep quickly. In the middle of the night I wake up and have to go to the bathroom. Hesitantly, I leave the room, and happily note that the energy of the living room is now perfectly fine. No ghost vibes. I fall back to sleep fast.
When my husband and I talk again that evening about it, he mentions that he heard a lot of noise, like creaking and cracking, after I came to bed. I heard it too but it seemed like just the house being a house. No, he said, I was in that "in-between" state and it was intense. He tells me that the little girl was in a wheelchair, and that she probably was still in her wheelchair in her ghost form. "It sounded like she was trying to get into our [small] room but her wheelchair kept hitting against things," he confessed to me. Great, just great, I think.
A week goes by and I learn to fall asleep really fast and not to think about things too much. Until one night, for some reason my daughter and I are sleeping at the foot of the bed together, which happens to be the side closest to the door. Again, I feel the baby being lifted from me. This time I scream my husband's name, but my eyes are closed and I feel more like I am trapped in a dream state. I become a wild women with my screaming and eventually I wake up out of it.
Another week goes by and my husband is talking to Mike on the phone about what to do with the ghost. Mike wants to come to the house and do a ceremony to invoke his helper spirits and other enlightened spirits to come and help "Terry", the ghost, cross over.
That night, after the phone call, my husband is watching television with my daughter fast asleep on the couch wrapped up in blankets on her pillow. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees the baby flip forward off the couch, pillowing falling on top of her. Luckily, bundled as she was, the baby is fine, and barely stirs.
There was no way for the baby to have fallen off the couch. He said it looked like someone hit the pillow causing it to flip off. He figures, Terry overheard the conversation about trying to get rid of her, and like a little girl, acted out.
"Not cool," I think. No one hurts my baby. Get Mike over here now!
Thankfully Mike does come. He fills his crow pipe, and we all sit down in a circle. He says he senses her presence. There is a chair there for Terry to sit and join us. Mike starts by talking to Terry. He says that he is here to help her, and not to be afraid. This isn't about us wanting to kick her out, but it is about helping her get to where she needs to be. He knows that she is sad, and feels trapped. He understands why she has followed us to this house.
Apparently, Terry's parents were not very nice. The neighbors admitted to finding dead animals, carcases all over their property. Mike thinks that the animal spirits of that land were mad, and could of put a curse on the family for disrespecting the animals.
When Terry saw Mike, my son and the other visitors having childish fun at her house, it was probably the first kid she has seen. She liked their light energy and followed them home.
"I want you to have the experience of becoming a mother yourself," says Mike. "I know you want to, but it is not okay for you to go and pick up the baby." We are here to help. He tells her to please follow the spirit helpers and go to the light. It is a beautiful place, and people who know will meet you there. That is where you need to go in order to be all you can be.
Mike invites her to sit on the chair and be with us, however he senses she is hiding somewhere in the house. He takes the sage bowl and smudges off the house looking for her. He says he finds her hiding in a corner in my son's room.
Back in the circle, he starts to sing sacred Lakota songs which invites in his spirit helpers and
tunkashilas. We all take turn saying prayers. We all say that we love her and want to help her. We don't want her to think we are kicking her out. We are not. We are trying to help her cross. Mike also has special protective tobacco we smokes on us to help protect us all.
After, he says, he cannot feel her anymore. He thinks she may have run away. He goes around the house looking for her. He says he doesn't feel her. I don't know exactly how things work, he says, but he hopes the spirits have grabbed her and taken her back. And I hope so too.
And that was that. He leaves us to wait and see.
I hate this not knowing. I am a bit scared of her. If she flipped a pillow then, what will she do to us now? Oh God oh God...
So far so good though...
