My in-laws were visiting us for a couple of weeks, earlier this year, just as I was beginning to create this website. At the time, I had a rough draft of some of the content, and was beginning to find my voice. I am blessed with a mother- and father-in-law who are just lovely people and supportive almost to a fault, so it was natural for me to talk about what I was working on, and have a show-and-tell over lunch one day. They listened intently, read some of the things I had written, and then asked just one question: But how does this work?
I assumed from our conversation that they meant: How do you do what you do? Which is a big question. I answered with a story. The story of Seth.
Seth was a young man who died in the 1970’s, and was haunting the house of a nice family in 2013. I got a call from the mom, who had heard about me through my husband. She was at her wit’s end. For years, their house had been beset by weird electrical stuff and strange noises. But the situation was escalating, culminating with her daughter unplugging a lamp to stop it from turning on spontaneously, only to have it continue to turn on spontaneously.
I asked the woman to email me a picture of the outside of her house, which she did. Lovely home, but to my psychic eye, it appeared to be engulfed in flames and sinking, with a ghost waving at me from one of the windows. We scheduled a ghost busting for the following evening.
I can remote view (topic for another post….), so I do this work by phone, pulling my energy through the connection to actually see into the person’s home. I did that, and there Seth was, none too happy to see me, because he seemed to think I was the ghost police and he was busted. Which I sort of am, and he sort of was.
We got to work. Seth didn’t want to talk directly to me, but was quite happy to talk to the mom, with me acting as interpreter. So that’s how we operated — the mom asked questions and he answered them, with me as a go-between.
Seth’s story was a long one. He was born into a family with a domineering, violent father, and Seth had an older brother who preferred to talk with his fists. Education was not valued, and I’m not sure Seth finished high school. At 19 or 20, he had a girlfriend, but was reluctant to talk about her.
At this point in the proceedings, the mom of the house asked, “What about the baby?,” and Seth flipped out. “How do you know about that?,” he growled. She said that one of the many strange sounds they had heard over the years was a baby crying.
And out the story came. Seth’s girlfriend, Maureen, was pregnant. Very pregnant, actually. They got into a heated argument and he hit her. Hard. She fell to the floor and never got up. He did not think he hit her that hard, but she died as a result of it, and the baby with her. He felt profoundly guilty. He was arrested, and there was an investigation. Other people in the house at the time of the argument corroborated his story, her death was ruled accidental, and he was released.
Maureen’s brother was not happy about this, and soon after, he hired someone to kill Seth. Which the someone did. But after Seth’s death, there was no investigation.
At this point in the reading, Seth became monumentally angry and his energy expanded exponentially. Lights in the house flashed, the woman’s son was doing homework at the dining room table and his laptop crashed, and her husband’s phone went dead. Seth started screaming, “I deserve better! I’m a f-ing human being! They didn’t even try to find out what happened to me!” And then repeated it over and over and over.
We felt bad for him, and said so. Murder is murder and a life is a life. There should have been an investigation, no matter what the situation. We said that, too, and our apologies on behalf of humankind seemed to affect him in a positive way, and he followed the screaming with crying.
To her great credit, the mom of the house asked absolutely THE best question at that moment: Did you ever tell Maureen that you were sorry? That got his attention. No, he hadn’t. And then the mom finished her one-two punch with: Don’t you think that would make a difference to her?
“It’s too late, why would she listen to me, I killed her for God’s sake,” he rambled. But I could see him thinking. I saw my chance to broker a deal and took it. I asked if he loved Maureen and he said yes. I asked if Maureen loved him and he said yes, “Before.” But he didn’t believe that she could still. I said, “Since you and Maureen are both dead now, you could speak directly to each other. If I arrange that, would you tell her that you’re sorry?” “Of course,” he replied. And I said, “And if she accepts your apology, could you make peace with your life and your death?” “Yes.” “And would you ascend?,” I asked. “Yes.”
And then everything happened all at once. Seth raced around their house, un-doing all his booby-traps and electrical mischief; his energy completely changed and all the anger was gone, replaced with hope; I became aware that Maureen had already ascended but was willing to come and talk to him; and then BOOM! she was there. I have no idea how I could see her, because I generally can’t see ascended spirits, but there she was.
Seth and Maureen met spirit-to-spirit and it was intense. He apologized, she accepted his apology, and there was an exchange of genuine love and affection between them. She said she bore some of the responsibility for her own death, feeling that she had provoked the argument with him, and then goaded him on. And he said he bore some of the responsibility for his own death, feeling that maybe he had provoked some people, too. Forgiveness quickly followed.
It was a beautiful moment to witness, and within a few minutes Seth seemed at peace, said his good-byes to the mom of the house and her family, and I opened a portal to the other side. He ascended with Maureen and was gone.
The mom took my advice and followed the ghost busting up with a house cleansing, to clear out residual spirit pollution, and emailed me a few days later to thank me and to say that the difference in their home was astonishing. The house was quiet, the lamp was plugged in and working normally, her daughter’s persistent headaches and backache were gone, and the constant bickering had ceased. I replied that I was happy to help.
And my in-laws seemed to think that the story of Seth was a most satisfactory answer to their one question.