In Angels and Engineers, I share the story of discovering a ghost in our hotel room in Las Vegas, NV.**
As I’ve explained in both Angels and Engineers and After Here The Celestial Plane and What Happens When We Die, ghosts appear as they did just before they died. However, I have never seen a ghost who was naked or wearing hospital garb.
I once read an article that included an interview with a medium who claimed to have seen the ghost bodies of individuals killed in a natural disaster in a mangled state. What a bunch of BS! I wondered what on earth would possess someone who had the opportunity to bring peace and comfort to those who had lost loved ones to say such an outlandish lie. I wondered if it made her feel powerful. To me, she was little more than a psychic bully.
The ghost I met in Vegas asked and received permission to accompany my family home. To this day I interact with him and while he still appears to me as he did when we first met, he has changed. He’s settled down. You might say, he’s matured.
Definitely a two-way relationship. A creative spirit, he and I often interact more like siblings than anything. We bicker and he has played pranks on me (see Angels and Engineers). I’ve flipped him off and he’s stuck his tongue out at me. However, at the end of the day, we do respect each other.
My husband theorizes I’m the first person he’s been able to connect to since his death. It certainly makes for a most unusual relationship, as it were.
We’ve helped each other over the years and while I know I have gone through the human process of growing, I’ve also noticed that he has experienced a similar emotional evolution. Oh, he still exhibits dark moods occasionally, and I know it’s best to let him go through whatever soul-searching he needs to do. I have offered my perspective, limited as it may be.
He hasn’t always enjoyed watching those dear to him go through various life challenges.
I don’t know if it was our creative careers that enabled us to tune in to each other but his understanding of creative professions has made it so he has been able to help me through some of the most difficult aspects of my writing career. At the same time, my grounded personality, gained through my own life experiences, has enabled me to offer him an alternate perspective when his lack of continuity prevented him from gaining such first-hand.
In spite of this maturity, he is who he has been since the day we first met. I don’t often see the intense, almost disbelieving stare he leveled at me at two in the morning as he tried to figure out whether or not I was for real. However, he still acts the part of the jester ready to laugh at my expense. He has also [I think] grown in his understanding that life continued on even after he no longer did.
From my own experience…ghosts don’t age, but they do mature.
**What I don’t tell you in the book is that it was the Hard Rock Hotel.
