Paranormal Investigations Index

Reincarnation:Past Lives Explored

reincarnation

reincarnation-pt2

reincarnation-pt3

past-lives

dead-again

top-ten-past-lives-movie-list

top-ten-pt2

a-couple-of-my-favorites

somewhere-in-time

Psychic Abilities

third-eye-tales-of-the-other-side

third-eye-part-2-the-gift-goes-dark

the-gifts-finer-points

empaths

empathic-experiences

empath-suffering

empaths-n-animals

-empaths-n-animals-cats

Empathically Speaking

Empathically-speaking-two-worlds

hypersensitive

clairsentient

ask-the-spirit-sleuth

dear-nothing-to-fear

dear-lost-and-confused

clairvoyance

Extra Terrestrial

The Unexplained

Ghosts Angels Monsters & Demons

-what-do-you-see

A Brief History of the Elgin Regiment

________________________________________________________________

The 91st Battalion

 Like most areas in Canada Elgin County raised its own overseas battalion. The 91st Battalion, Canadian Expeditionary Force, was formed in October, 1915, under command of Lt. Col. W. J. Green, a veteran of the South African War. Men from Elgin were quick to volunteer for active duty as soon as World War I began on August 8, 1914, with 48 signing up in the first hour and a half.

In June 1916, the 91st Battalion left St. Thomas bound for England. On arrival in England, the men of the 91st were split up to provide reinforcements for more than 23 other battalions already in France. This action was a common practice in 1916, and was not an unfavourable reflection on the value of the battalion. Entire Counties had been depleted of manpower when their battalions were decimated in battle, and so it became standard policy for county regiments to be divided among several units to minimize disasters of this kind. Two hundred men were sent to the 18th Battalion and 256 men to the 33rd Battalion. During the course of the war, more than 2,400 men from Elgin would volunteer for active service.

Members of the 91st Battalion saw action in all of the great and bloody conflicts in which Canadian troops were involved - the Somme, Arras, Passchendaele, Ypres, St. Elois, Vimy Ridge, and Amiens. Five officers and 167 other ranks were killed in action or died in service. Fifty-eight decorations for valour were awarded to members of the 91st Battalion. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In the first days of the Talbot Settlement, military forces consisted of British soldiers augmented by local settlers and natives. The first locally organized unit was the 1st Volunteer Rifle Company, formed in St. Thomas in 1856. This was followed in 1862 by units in Port Stanley and Vienna, and in 1866 they were consolidated into 25th Battalion of Infantry - the Elgin County Regiment.

While the regiment did not see service in the Boer War, several of its members did join the forces sent to South Africa, and served with distinction.

In 1903, the 25th Elgin Regiment, as it had become in 1900, moved into the just completed armouries on Wilson Avenue in St. Thomas, only to disband the unit in August of that year. However, by May of 1904, it was reformed.

In 1915, members of the Regiment answered the call of King and Empire, and the 91st Battalion of the Canadian Expeditionary Force consisted primarily of the members of the Elgin Regiment, with over 75% of the Regiments members volunteering for service.

As is customary in the Canadian military, the Elgin Regiment developed an affiliation with a British unit, and in 1929, approval was 

The "Elgins" as they were known, became active with the outbreak of World War II, and in 1940, was brought up to strength as a member of the Canadian Active Service Force with the addition of companies from the Middlesex and Huron Regiment and the Oxford Rifles. In July, 1941, the Second Battalion of the Elgin Regiment was formed in St. Thomas to act as a training unit preparing men for overseas service.

During 1942, the 1st Battalion (CASF) was changed from an infantry unit to a member of the Royal Canadian Armoured Corps, and went overseas as the 25th Armoured Regiment. In 1943, they were retasked again as the 25th Canadian Tank Delivery Regiment, and then the 27th Armoured Delivery Regiment. This was a role they would continue until the end of the war, although always known by their contemporaries as the "Elgins".

The 1st Battalion returned to Canada in 1946, and was disbanded, and the 2nd Battalion was reorganized as an Infantry Regiment.

In September, 1954, the regiment was again reorganized as the 27th Armoured Reconnaissance Regiment, a role it continued for many years.

In 1997, the Regiment became a unit of the Royal Canadian Engineers, designated as "31 Combat Engineer Regiment". However, in recognition of the long and distinguished service of the regiment, special allowances were made, and the Regiment continues to be known throughout the Canadian military as "The Elgins".

Clairsentient

I have to admit that until I read Sally G's article Ask The Spirit Sleuth   [if you have not read it wander over, she is also offering her services, word is she is very good]

I had not heard or seen the term clairsentient [one article I found said it was a newly coined term]  I must admit also that I never had a reason before to go looking for any paranormal psychic info until I started doing this blog, so its amazing whats out there that I had never seen.

I provide this clarification as a lot of it seems to be reminiscent of one ability or the other so much so that I am inclined to believe that it all boils down to the same thing, some may apply to your gifts some may not. 

Judging by what I have read Clairsentience appears to be a variation or derivative of abilities two of which are empath and  psychometry and as I read on I saw many parallels to my own. 

I have to admit that even when searching for articles on empaths I waded through some dillies this was no different. Finding one that actually does the subject justice and makes sense while informing us aint easy so I hope this one does. I will also post the wikipedias say on the topic as it takes a more scholastic approach and goes into details on variations of clairvoyance. 

**************************

Introduction 

Clairsentience (also know as psychometry) is the ability to hold an object or touch someone and sense the energy surrounding that person, place or thing. A clairsentient is an individual who is empathetic and senses energies. Energies can be light or heavy, smooth or abrasive, prickly or gentle, peaceful and airy or good or bad.

 For example, when sensing a negative situation a clairsentient may feel sick, while a positive experience may feel like butterflies in the stomach, or a sense of feeling safe, peaceful and light. Learning to discern positive and negative energies can make all the difference when making decisions in life.

Spiritual advisors and counselors use clairsentience to feel and sense the information and thought-forms in energy fiel

ds. The information about the nature of energies is revealed in colors, lightness, darkness, or emotions such as joy or sadness. Sometimes clairsentients experience a sense of movement or stillness, relaying past, present and future life events. This ability is known to be essential for healers, counselors

 and therapists, or anyone who works with people - especially a psychic or spiritual advisor.

We are all born with this particular psychic ability. It's learning to regulate and protect the gift of sensing moods and emotions thats the tricky part! Aside from being hon

est and nave, as children we are very open and tuned into the psychic world. As we grow older and experience life, to avoid trauma or negative experiences, we develop a thick skin, sheltering ourselves as we begin to interact with people other than the familiar circle of family and friends. These psychic gifts are often uncon

sciously left on the shelf, but fortunately they can be restored later in life through spiritual development or during life-altering experiences.

To use clairsentience for yourself, or improve your connection with Psychic Source advisors who can use this gift 

on your behalf, it is important to listen to your internal feelings, impressions and sensations. Be aware of and communicate the physical and emotional responses from your gut instincts. By using clairsentience you can make sound decisions in all facets of life from love and relationships to career and spiritual development.

Clairsentience

Introduction 
Clairsentience is the discipline of extending or projecting ones senses

 beyond the physical body.There are essentially only two varieties of Clairsentience: Sense Extension and Sense Projection. In its Latent form, clairsentience manifests as brief smells, sounds, or sights. These sensations are either just out of normal sensory range (such as just around a corner or on the other side of a door, or just over a hilltop), or are connected in som

e very familiar way to the psychic. A psychic child, for example, might "overhear" his mother talking about him while she is visiting a neighbor, for example, or might "just know" that his older brother was hiding up in the hayloft, without ever seeing or hearing him. This kind of "sixth sense" is often confused with latent manifestations of E

SP, since the two are often indistinguishable to inexperienced latent psychics. The two are very different in actuality. ESP is an added "sense" which manifests, especially among latent psychics, as an intrusion onto the normal physical senses. Clairsentience will not detect anything that the psychics normal senses would not detect if the psychic were present at another location.  For example, a blind man cannot see using Clairsentience, because he lacks 

the sense of sight.  He could hear using Clairsentience, however, so long as he wasn't deaf as well.

Sense Extension

Sense Extension is the ability to extend ones senses a short distance from ones body in order to overcome 

some barrier to normal sensing. In order to use Sense Extension, only barriers to sensing other than distance may limit the psychic. For example, a psychic is hiding behind a door. By using Sense Extension, the psychic can see what is on the other side of the door, or even what is in the next room or on the next floor, because if the intervening door, walls, or ceiling/floor were not in the way, the psychic would be able to see that far. The 

senses of hearing, smell, and even touch can be similarly extended (although extending the sense of touch has a much more limited application - feeling the texture and shape of something without removing the covering or wrapping, for example).

Diva note: I am not sure what this last parts purpose is for but I left it in anyway

Sense Extension: 
Default Difficulty Routine (4) 
Marginal Success : The psychic may extend one sense anywhere within the Primary Zone. 
Complete Success : The psychic may extend one sense anywhere within the Secondary Zone. 
Superior Success : The psychic may extend one sense anywhere within normal sensory distance. 
Extraordinary Success : The psychic may extend up to two senses anywhere within normal sensory distance. 
Mythic Success : The psychic may extend up to three senses (typically sight, hearing, and smell) anywhere within normal sensory distance.

Clairsentience

Experiencing other realities or entites through one or more of the five senses.

Examples

•  A tickling sensation on the hand or face during meditation.
•  A pressure on the top of the head when talking or connecting with a Spirit.
•  Hairs on the back of the neck standing on end when a spirit is near.
•  A sensation in the left side of the face when talking with spirit.
•  A floral smell...like gardenias.
•  Funny how smokers - especially cigar smokers - can be experienced as spirits by the smell of a "good cigar"!
• A movement as a flick of white, purple, or blue light.
• Seeing shadows in the periphery of your field of vision.

Sense Projection

Sense Projection is the ability to project ones senses far away from ones body. In order to do so, the psychic must meet one of two criteria. The psychic must be very familiar with a specific location, or must be very familiar with a specific person or object. If the psychic can locate a person using ESP, the difficulty for using Sense Projection is reduced by one for each level of success above Marginal on the ESP trial.

 Once the psychic has projected her senses to a location, she can sense things as if she were actually present at that location, subject to the limits imposed by the Degree of Success she attains. With higher degrees of success come increasing clarity of sensation and control over perception.

 Use of Sense Projection requires the psychic to make a Fatigue Trial with a difficulty equal to the difficulty of the Sense Projection Trial.

Sense Projection 
 Default Difficulty Moderate (9) 
Marginal Success : The psychic may project her senses to any familiar location, object, or person, but the resulting sensory impressions are very vague and blurry. 
Complete Success : The psychic may project her senses to any familiar location, object, or person, but the resulting sensory impressions are generally vague and blurry. Up to one sense will be slightly clearer. 
Superior Success

Clairvoyance

Clairvoyance (from 17th century French with clair meaning "clear" and voyance meaning "visibility") is the apparent ability to gain information about an object, person, location or physical event through means other than the known human senses,[1][2] a form of extra-sensory perception. A person said to have the ability of clairvoyance is referred to as a clairvoyant ("one who sees clear").

Claims for the existence of paranormal psychic abilities such as clairvoyance are highly controversial.Parapsychology explores this possibility, but the existence of the paranormal is not accepted by the scientific community. [edit]Usage

Within parapsychology, clairvoyance is used exclusively to refer to the transfer of information that is both contemporary to, and hidden from, the clairvoyant. It is differentiated from telepathy in that the information is said to be gained directly from an external physical source, rather than being transferred from the mind of one individual to another.[3]

Outside of parapsychology, clairvoyance is often used to refer to other forms of anomalous cognition, most commonly the perception of events that have occurred in the past, or which will occur in the future (known as retrocognition and precognition respectively),[4][3] or to refer to communications with the dead (see Mediumship).

Clairvoyance is related to remote viewing, although the term "remote viewing" itself is not as widely applicable to clairvoyance because it refers to a specific controlled process.

[edit]Status of clairvoyance

Within the field of parapsychology, there is a consensus that some instances of clairvoyance are verifiable.[5][6] There is also a measured level of belief from amongst the general public, with the portion of the US population who believe in clairvoyance varying between 1/4 and 1/3 over the 15 year period from 1990 to 2005.

The concept of clairvoyance gained some support from the US and Russian governments both during and after the Cold War, and both governments made several attempts to harness it as an intelligence gathering tool.[7]

According to skeptics, clairvoyance is the result of fraud, self-delusion,[4] Barnum effects, confirmatory biases, or failures to appreciate the base rate of chance occurrences. For example, in a scientific experiment of clairvoyance, a purported clairvoyant participant will inevitably make correct guesses some of the time (i.e., during some of the trials within the same experiment), simply because of chance. Furthermore, because of the nature of the statistical tests used by experimenters, a very small proportion of all experiments conducted will yield an overall statistically significant result (suggesting that clairvoyance took place at above-chance levels), again simply because of chance. A proper summary of the experimental evidence on clairvoyance should include a summary of all experiments that were conducted, taking into account their probabilities of turning out false positive and false negative results, and making sure that studies are not included in the review selectively. Some researchers on clairvoyance have tended to purposefully exclude negative findings from their reviews [8], thus biasing their own conclusions.

[edit]Clairvoyance and related phenomena throughout history

There have been anecdotal reports of clairvoyance and 'clear' abilities throughout history in most cultures. Often clairvoyance has been associated with religious or shamanic figures, offices and practices. For example, ancient Hindu religious texts list clairvoyance amongst other forms of 'clear' experiencing, as siddhis, or 'perfections', skills that are yielded through appropriate meditation and personal discipline. But a large number of anecdotal accounts of clairvoyance are of the spontaneous variety among the general populace. For example, many people report seeing a loved one who has recently died before they have learned by other means that their loved one is deceased. While anecdotal accounts do not provide scientific proof of clairvoyance, such common experiences continue to motivate research into such phenomena.

The earliest record of somnambulistic clairvoyance is credited to the Marquis de Puysgur, a follower of Mesmer, who in 1784 was treating a local dull-witted peasant named Victor Race. During treatment, Race reportedly would go into trance and undergo a personality change, becoming fluent and articulate, and giving diagnosis and prescription for his own disease as well as those of others. When he came out of the trance state he would be unaware of anything he had said or done. This behavior is somewhat reminiscent of the reported behaviors of the 20th century medical clairvoyant and psychic Edgar Cayce. It is reported that although Puysgur used the term 'clairvoyance', he did not think of these phenomena as "paranormal", since he accepted mesmerism as one of the natural sciences.

Clairvoyance was a reported ability of some mediums during the spiritualist period of the late 19th and early 20th centuries and was one of the phenomena studied by members of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR). Psychics of many descriptions have claimed clairvoyant ability up to the present day.

While experimental research into clairvoyance began with SPR researchers, experimental studies became more systematic with the efforts of J. B. Rhine and his associates at Duke University, and such research efforts continue to the present day. Perhaps the best-known study of clairvoyance in recent times was the US government-funded remote viewing project at SRI/SAIC during the 1970s through the mid-1990s.

Some parapsychologists have proposed that our different functional labels (clairvoyance, telepathy, precognition, etc.) all refer to one basic underlying mechanism, although there is not yet any satisfactory theory for what that mechanism may be.

[edit]Parapsychological research

Parapsychological research studies of remote viewing and clairvoyance have produced favorable results significantly above chance, and meta-analysis of these studies increases the significance. For instance, at the Stanford Research Institute, in 1972, Harold Puthoff and Russell Targ initiated a series of human subject studies to determine whether participants (the viewers or percipients) could reliably identify and accurately describe salient features of remote locations or targets. In the early studies, a human sender was typically present at the remote location, as part of the experiment protocol. A three-step process was used, the first step being to randomly select the target conditions to be experienced by the senders. Secondly, in the viewing step, participants were asked to verbally express or sketch their impressions of the remote scene. Thirdly, in the judging step, these descriptions were matched by separate judges, as closely as possible, with the intended targets. The term remote viewing was coined to describe this overall process.

In order to explore the nature of remote viewing channel, the viewer in some experiments was secured in a double-walled copper-screened Faraday cage. Although this provided attenuation of radio signals over a broad range of frequencies, the researchers found that it did not alter the subject's remote viewing capability. They postulated that extremely low frequency (ELF) propagation might be involved, since Faraday cage screening is less effective in the ELF range. Such a hypothesis had previously been put forward by telepathy researchers in the Soviet Union.[9]

The first paper by Puthoff and Targ on psychic research to appear in a mainstream peer-reviewed scientific journal was published in Nature in March 1974; in it, the team reported some degree of remote viewing success.[10] One of the individuals involved in these initial studies at SRI was Uri Geller, a well-known celebrity psychic at the time. The research team reported witnessing some of Geller's trademark metal spoon-bending performances, but admitted that they were unable to conduct adequately controlled experiments to confirm any paranormal hypothesis about them.

Electroencephalography (EEG) techniques were also used by team to examine ESP phenomena. In these investigations, a sender, who was isolated in a visually opaque, electrically and acoustically shielded chamber, was stimulated at random by bursts of strobe-light flickers The experimenters reported that, for one receiver, differential alpha block on control and stimulus trials were observed, which showed that some information transfer had occurred. In contrast, this person's expressed statements of when the stimulus occurred were no different than that which would be expected by chance. The researches were unable to identify the physical parameters by which the EEG effect was mediated.[11]

After the publication of these findings, various attempts to replicate the remote viewing findings were quickly carried out. Several of these follow-up studies, which involved viewing in group settings, reported some limited success. They included the use of face-to-face groups,[12][13] and remotely-linked groups using computer conferencing.[14]

The various debates in the mainstream scientific literature prompted the editors of 'Proceedings of the IEEE' to invite Robert Jahn, then Dean of the School of Engineering at Princeton University, to write a comprehensive review of psychic phenomena from an engineering perspective. His paper[15], published in February 1982, includes numerous references to remote viewing replication studies at the time.

Clairvoyance experiments involving Zener cards currently exist on the internet. One such online system, the Anima Project

A couple of my Favorites

So I pulled a couple out of that list that I personally dug and have gathered more of the plotlines to share with you. 

Two Worlds of Jenny Logan [I love this movie] it helps that I am a Lindsey Wagner fan but really this was a good movie.

Jennie Logan (Lindsay Wagner) and her husband Michael (Alan Feinstein) are trying to resurrect their marriage after Jennie finds out about Michael's infidelity. They move into an old house, where Jennie finds an antique dress in the attic. When she wears it, she is transported to the year 1899, where she meets an artist David Reynolds (Marc Singer), grieving for his dead bride Pamela. Jennie keeps going back and forth between the two worlds by wearing the antique dress. Her husband Michael doesn't believe her when she reveals to him about her time travels and thinks that she is going crazy. He urges her to go a psychiatrist. She and David fall in love in 1899, but David's sister-in-law Elizabeth (Linda Gray) is also in love with him. However, her father disapproves of David and blames him for Pamela's accidental death. They enter a duel, and Jennie escapes from the present world to the past world to stop the duel and try to save David's life.

_______________________________________________________

Heart & Souls

Okay it helps that i am  fan of most of the actors in the film and most especially Robert Downey Jr [don't tell Johnny]

In 1959, Eva and Frank Reilly are on their way to the hospital, as Eva is about to have their first child. Their car collides with a bus, and the bus is run off a bridge. Harrison (Charles Grodin), Julia (Kyra Sedgwick), Milo (Tom Sizemore), and Penny (Alfre Woodard) were passengers on the bus and they are all killed. Each one had unfinished business in their lives, and instead of going to heaven, they find themselves as ghosts, tied to the newborn Thomas Reilly.

Only Thomas is able to see them, and they act as his guides and guardian angels. However, when people show concern over Thomas' "imaginary" friends, they decide to hide themselves from him to avoid trouble. Thomas is devastated. Thirty years later, after finally learning that they were supposed to use their internment on Earth to resolve their remaining issues, they make themselves visible to Thomas (Robert Downey, Jr.) once more. By now, he is a cold, distant businessman having problems with his girlfriend Anne (Elisabeth Shue). Though reluctant at first, he eventually agrees to help each of them fulfill their final task. As they succeed (despite varying levels of difficulty) in tying up their decades-old loose ends, they are individually brought to heaven by the bus driver (his punishment for crashing the bus) in an emotional moment.

Milo, a petty thief, regrets a decision he made to steal valuable stamps, a family heirloom, from a child before he died. He possesses Thomas and steals the stamps back from his former boss, who still has them. He returns the stamps anonymously to their overjoyed owner.

Harrison was a would-be singer who was very talented, but had severe stage fright. He died shortly after giving up at an audition, unable to perform. After encouragement from Thomas and the others, he finally works up the nerve to sing the National Anthem at aB. B. King concert when Thomas sneaks on stage, and he is a big hit. Thomas is detained by the police, but he is satisfied that Harrison's final act was a success.

Penny had been spending her time with Thomas trying to discover the fate of her children. She hears that her daughters were adopted and are living happy lives, but can find nothing about her son Billy. In a chance encounter, the policeman who Thomas has had constant run-ins with sings a song to his baby daughter, the same song that Penny invented to sing to her son. She realizes that this cop is Billy, and possesses Thomas to tell Billy that she loves him. Billy is disoriented and not fully convinced by Thomas's weak cover story, but the message seems to get across. Penny's work is done.

Finally, Julia had been on the way to tell her ex-boyfriend she loved him, and that she had decided to marry him, when the bus crashed. Thomas takes her to the last-known location of the man, trying to outrun the ghost bus which has come for her. She takes control of him when they arrive and writes a letter to give to her fiance under the cover that he found it. However, when he knocks on the door, the man who lives there reveals that her boyfriend died seven years ago. Thomas and Julia are stunned at the unfairness of it, until she realizes that coming here was meant to show Thomas that he shouldn't squander his relationship with Anne. The bus driver is pleased with this explanation and takes Julia away, leaving Thomas to patch things up with Anne.

Empaths n Animals

First let me say I cannot train your dog in ten minutes or stop your cat from clawing up the curtains and your favorite suede couch. but I do have a way with animals and oddly enough some insects and other creepy crawlies, though I really hate spiders when they run across my face at night while I am sleeping so not cool!

For as far back as I can remember weird things [not so weird to me now but  back then] seemed to happen around me when it comes to animals and things of nature. today I am focusing in a couple ofexperiences with horses and cows.

When I was in public school every year we would go to the royal winter fair at the exhibition fair grounds in Toronto. there were always several pens full of farm animals that we would wander through oohing and ahhing at. I would find myself drawn to the horses where my attentions to one tended to draw the others and so I would have to make sure I paid them all the same amount of attention. kisses and head butts and rubbing manes would go on forever and then as soon as I tried to walk away the horse would start acting up until I came back and spent more time, then I would have to tell them I had to go so they would stay calm.

One year I went horseback riding for the first time at this lovely little rancho and it was a real blast. the horse I was on was really gentle and I soon lost my fear of riding.

Well come time to leave and I get off the horse thanking him for the ride and start to walk away only to turn and see he was trying to follow me out of the yard, so I walk him back and pet him and everything and said gotta go, turned to walk away and he started following me again.

So then I thought, well maybe he just wants to come into the paddock area. so we walked together inside, but as I tried exit out the other side to the waiting schoolbus, he kept on coming determined to come with me. Finally a handler came over and took his reins, but he was just not budging, not until I went back and promised to come back would he let them lead him away. [Man did I cry].

This has continued to be a problem around horses, they want to come with me and I have to spend the extra time to calm them but really I don't mind at all ;-)

The hubby and I lived near a hobby farm in our first apartment in Burnaby [we discovered it on a bike ride] suffice it to say I visited often and when I would show up at the fence even if there were people already there, they would come a running [there were five].

It would be a real love fest for the entire visit, of course I thought it was just the apples and things I brought but others had the same things and well I tell you I felt special. 

***

Now to the cow tails. it seems I sound like a baby calf okay let me explain. the hubby used to go paragliding and the best places to land are nice big fields one of which was up near mission BC. this particular landing spot was smack dab in the middle of a cow field patties and all.

Now most folk know that cows while they wont run away tend to wander from people slowly, when free so petting them is a tad difficult. 

This one day while waiting for the paragliders to land several of us watchers were admiring the cows as they munched away. several kids tried unsuccessfully to pet them and well no luck. 

for some reason don't ask me why I thought of trying to sound like a cow so I picked a spot and started mooing making my voice sound small [I am a bit of a mimic can do animal sounds and accents etc] but had never tried the cow thing until then.

after trial and error, I hit upon the right note aparently since all of a sudden the cows began coming towards me. I kept moing and they kept coming, until i was surrounded by them, [which tickled the kids watching as they came running to pet them].

In the meantime the cows were busy checking me out to see I think if I was okay. I guess the sound i\I was making came across as a distress signal to them.

They nuzzled me looked me up and down and when assured that I was unharmed they just turned and wandered away again [hubby said it looked awesome from the air as he was coming down]. Not as awesome as being in the middle!

Dead Again

Dead Again is a 1991 psychological thriller/neo-noir directed by Kenneth Branagh, starring Branagh and his then-wife Emma Thompson. Andy Garcia, Derek Jacobi and Robin Williams are also featured. 

Tagline: How many times can you die for love?

The film explores the themes of reincarnation, destiny, truth, love, and justice through parallel narratives of a society murder in the Hollywood of the 1940s, and a modern-day search for the identity of a woman with amnesia. Thompson and Branagh play the key roles in both stories.

The film begins with opening credits intercut with pans across newspaper clippings about a society murder committed by composer Roman Strauss. Most of the articles were written by Gray Baker (Andy Garcia), who visited Roman Strauss on the day of his execution. The gates of a mansion in the past fade into the same gates in the present day.

As the main narrative begins, we meet Mike Church (Branagh), a smart-alecky Los Angeles private investigator whose jobs usually involve running down deadbeats and finding missing persons. One day he's called in by the priest in charge of the orphanage where Mike was raised, to help identify a woman (Thompson) who showed up at their gates (the same gates as in the black and white scenes in the past) in a state of shock. The woman is unable to speak and seems to have no recollection of who she is or what happened to her.

After making a few inquiries, Mike takes the woman, whom he calls Grace, to stay at his apartment, where he discovers she has a terror of scissors. Over the course of a few days, the two of them uncover clues to her identity, but find nothing concrete; Mike finds himself attracted to Grace and is somewhat protective of her.

Grace regains her voice during a hypnotic session with Franklyn (Jacobi), an antique dealer who claims she is having a "past-life" experience. She is made to recall a couple who lived during the 1940s, a famous composer and his pianist wife, as if she were part of their history. Franklyn, the antique dealer finds a LIFE magazine identifying the couple as actual people, Roman and Margaret. Margaret was brutally murdered, and Roman was tried and executed for her murder.

As Mike and Grace fall in love, Grace is upset by the similarities of their courtship to that of Roman and Margaret. Grace becomes afraid of Mike and is unconvinced by his assertions that he's "not Roman." Franklyn, the antiques dealer hypnotizes Mike, leading to the revelation that Mike is not the reincarnation of Roman, but of Margaret. Now, Mike becomes afraid of Grace.

Mike consults with Cozy Carlisle (Robin Williams), a disgraced psychiatrist who lost his license due to having sex with female patients. Grace consults with Franklyn the antiques dealer; each is advised to kill the other.

Meanwhile, Mike's friend at the police department, Pete (Wayne Knight), uncovers the true identity of "Grace." She is Amanda Sharpe, an artist. He takes Grace and Franklyn the antiques dealer to her apartment, where she is stunned to discover that she is an artist who is obsessed with scissors, using them in every conceivable way in her art. To make her feel safer, Franklyn the antiques dealer gives Amanda an antique gun from his shop.

Mike finds Gray Baker, old and decrepit, at a nursing home. Baker says he no longer thinks Roman killed Margaret, and says that the housekeeper, Inga, would know. After the murder, the housekeeper moved out and opened an antiques shop that is now run by her son, Frankie, a disturbed boy who was a stutterer and kleptomaniac.

Thus, Mike comes to believe that Inga killed Margaret. Mike visits Inga, who explains that it was her son, Frankie, who killed Margaret. Inga had always been in love with Roman, after she saved his life while they fled war-torn Europe. After Margaret married Roman, Inga was treated coldly. Gray Baker, who was attracted to Margaret, instilled suspicions in Margaret that Roman had indeed killed his first wife, and that he was having a sexual affair with Inga. But Roman refuses to fire Inga, despite Margaret's pleading, which makes her more suspicious. Inga is unhappy about her treatment, and tells her son Frankie one night. Frankie, then still a young boy, kills Margaret with scissors (to her throat), believing that this will solve his mother's problems. After having heard Inga's story, Mike (realizing that Franklyn is in fact Frankie Madison) leaves and races to Amanda's apartment; Frankie in the meantime arrives and kills his mother (Inga by smothering).

A distressed Mike, desperate to save his love from murder at the hands of Frankie once again, breaks into Amanda's apartment. She, carefully prepared by Frankie to believe Mike to be a crazed killer, shoots him as he is trying to explain to her the truth about Roman and Margaret. Then Frankie shows up. Amanda (knowing who he now really is) tries to shoot him but the gun misfires. Frankie (gloating over said jammed gun) slaps Amanda unconscious and prepares to shoot her (in the mouth, so it looks like suicide), but Mike rouses himself from his state of shock following his shooting, and stabs Frankie with the scissors (placed in his hand by Frankie to incriminate him). Pete shows up with a pizza and tries to prevent Mike from what he thinks he's doing -- killing Amanda -- but he quickly realizes that it is Frankie who intends to do the killing (who now has got hold of Mike's gun). After a brief Mexican standoff, Frankie is stabbed in the back with the scissors (making him discharge all the bullets into the air), by Amanda. Enraged by this, a now totally unhinged Frankie (whose stutter has now returned) removes said scissors, to then lunge at her and Mike with it, but Mike moves a giant sculpture made of scissors directly into his path, Frankie, who cannot stop from colliding into it, is fatally impaled on them.

Roman and Margaret kiss, and the scene fills with color as the shot fades to Mike and Grace kissing.

Now Showing

The Two Worlds of Jennie Logan

This was a made for tv movie, shown in two parts hence double credits were accidentally left in at the end of pt9 but enjoy 

Trick or Treat yourself to a good spooky movie

May I suggest......

A chiller of a tale!

worth a second look

One of my

all time favorites 

For Laurie

Free Your Self!

Spookiest Hotels In Canada?

The Reader

There is a woman named Caroyln who sees me about once a year and has for a good eight years gone past now.

The moment she sat down at my table on the day we first met her grief was so palpable, I burst into tears. It was at a craft fair and I had hung my shingle up in case some folks wanted readings as well as my fine crafted wares.

I took her hands in mine and began telling her what I was feeling, I said this grief, though very strong was not from a recent passing it's been several years of carrying it like a heavy stone. I knew she was grieving for her father because on seeing my tears she also began to cry and when she did I could see him standing next to her. 

I asked her permission to continue. Still crying she held my hand like a lifeline and nodded her consent......

Her backstory: When she was a child her father had gone to the korean war, he died there. She being daddy's little girl took it the hardest. Her life as a result had not been easy as relationships and every thing else suffered under the weight of her grief and anger so added to those feelings was shame as well.

He didn't abandon you I said quietly and had he been able to do anything to save you the pain of the things that you have gone through since, he would have.Then I told her could see him, she wanted some proof of that, so I asked him to give me something that I could not possibly know. 

This is what he gave me

He would sit in his favorite chair and cross his leg, then she would sit on the crook of his foot and he would give her a horsey ride as he sang, My bonnie lies over the ocean, my bonny lies over the sea. With each verse he would move his foot to the rythm and at certain points would raise his foot high up then low down. while holding her hands to keep her steady.  [I showed her this as I sang]

When I finished I simply sat with her for a good fifteen minutes as she cried, tears streaming down my face as well.

To people passing by we must have looked out of our minds, sitting there holding hands and crying, soggy tissues everywhere, but I didn't care and I doubt she did either.

Finally I asked if she was ready to let him go and she said yes but I could see the struggle she was having with it, still she took a deep breath and managed to say, I love you daddy and I'm going to be just fine now.

One year later,  she came up to my table and said I bet you don't remember me, but as I looked up and saw her I smiled. The difference in her was like night and day, the heavy stone was gone. She smiled back at me and then I stood up and we hugged like long lost cousin. Needless to say there was no crying,

The boy in the basement

In the summer of 1985 on a warm Saturday night. I took a walk with a friend to her cousins house. The goal was to drop in for a few minutes grab some weed [yea might as well be honest] and head to the local bar for some music and a couple games of pool. Introductions were made hey Shar this is C J,  CJ Shar etc.

[not the actual basement]

The place was a rental the house was very old however that wasnt the first thing I noticed. From the moment I had entered the house I felt that weird hair on the back of the neck feeling but had kept it to myelf until we walked into the livingroom and I said without thinking, as I sat down how long ago was the fire.

Both my friend and her cousin looked at me strangely. Fire the cousin asked. Yes I can tell this room has been changed. I began to describe how the fire had spread and the damage it must have caused. The cousin looked at me and asked point blank if I was fucking with her and I said no why.

She asked me if I had ever been in that house before, maybe known the previous tenant or the owner. Again I said no to both. She then went on to tell me there had been a fire but it had been a good twenty years before and had all  been repaired befor the owner started renting it out.

The only reason she knew about it was some electrical issue had come up and as the landlord was fixing it he told them about it, he also showed them where it had been and what damage it had caused, all of which I had just recounted to her. She said your fucking freaking me out. How the hell could you have known that. Got anything else to tell me.

I suppose I should have thought twice about answering but well I was young and foolish and now had a bit of a buzz on, so I said well yea actually, you do know the place is haunted too right? Holy shit she said Kelly where the hell did you find this chick you are really freaking me the fuck on out.

It's a boy I said, he died here and if I am not mistaken he is still here. I turned to look towards a door and saw a tiny shape dart out of my eyesight. yes its a boy and he seems to be drawing me to the basement.

Shar did this funny little wiggle dance in the chair and said oooh I got chills, I try never to go down there, it creeps me out It's not even finished there's just sand in most of it. With out taking a breath she asked, Do you think he died in the fire.  

Why don't we ask him I said still looking at the door waiting. I felt as if he was testing me, letting me see him just a bit [I was buzzed to so I didn't trust all my feelings at first], then slowly he decided I must be ok and he let me see him.

No he didn't die in the fire he has been here longer than that. I told her as I watched him. He went into the basement and he wants us to go down there. Fuck that Kelly  said sitting back on the couch

By this time she wasn't sure why she made me come with her and her cousin was torn between being freaked out and yet intrigued by what we might find. I just kept getting the urge to go into the basement.

Needing extra courage she called out for her boyfriend to come down with us. he came out from the bedroom and down we went, they let me go first. kelly decided to join us rather than be upstairs alone.

The boy was standing beside the furnace  just looking at me.  I told them. He is just standing there, I pointed and I think you should dig.  The last part sent the girls running back upstairs but he suddenly looked interested for the first time since he came out of the bedroom.

Be right back he said and in record time he had gone up grabbed a shovel and was back,  Taking the cue from where the boy had stood I showed him where to start. be careful of pipes n things I cautioned. Twenty minutes later we found bones, his name was Mathew Lapointe born 1909 died 1915. He had waited over 70 years to be found.

Diva note: All we ever found out besides his name was that he had died of some illness and the family had been either to poor or for some reason either chose to or were not allowed to bury him in a grave. 

Empathically Speaking:two worlds haunting grounds

Back in the early 80s I recall a friend of mine who was very into Prince, she also had a crush on one of my cousins in the band and so via that connection we became pals and hung out.

She asked me one such day, if I wanted to come to her house for dinner and meet her mom and if I wanted to I could stay over since it was in the next town we were in London Ontario and she lived in St Thomas/ Port Stanley area 

So after hanging out most of the day doing just plain old stuff and going to a theatre sports group for some improv fun, I said sure why not. My son was staying at a friends and I had the whole weekend. So I packed an overnight bag and off we went.

Now she knew that I had this weird thing [her words] going on and though she said nothing as we drove along, I later learned she had been testing me. 

On the drive there as we started down this one road I began seeing soldiers marching loosely in the direction we were driving and she asked what was I looking at. After making her promise not to freak out, I told her there were soldiers WW1 it seemed by the uniforms I was seeing marching along like they were coming back from something. 

She asked me did I know where they were going and I said well not yet but hey, lets see. So as we drove along I gave her directions to follow, up this way, turn here, turn there etc, until I had led her to this house where I said they are stationed here and pointed.  I watched as some entered the house and others just set their gear down outside and sat down to relax. 

My friend when I turned to look at her had this strange look on her face and I asked her what was wrong.  That's when she told me it was her house and that it was once used as a field  manouevers base during the war. She wanted to know if I could really see or pick up things like I had been saying though she had seen some stuff she was still sceptical of the ghost thing.

Upon entering her place she showed me where there were walls in the house where you could see that a big window had been but had been filled in. to gain privacy, and needless to say she told her mother all about it too. her mother said she felt a presence around her all the time but didn't see anything. 

It was fun for the evening but I had committed to the weekend sighh, which was quite something especially at night trying to sleep with all the racket going on, that only I could hear. Damn those soldiers were loud singers!

Added Diva note

Until today I had never really looked up or into any info on them but when I decided to write this I got curious. So i will post what I found.

Empathically speaking

Making friends & keeping them is a tough one. 

The thing about empaths is we are always picking up things. Walking into a room can be like walking into the surf on a beach or when it's really crowded like being hit by a big wave.

When it comes to making friends it is easy to connect, but hard to maintain. Why? Well because we are too aware of what people are feeling and it becomes clear pretty quick, who really likes you and who doesn't and to what degree. We may not say anything but the feeling is there and we for the most part end up playing a waiting game. Sooner or later feelings show themselves in subtle, than not so subtle ways.

This makes you do one of two things, play the ignore the gut feeling game or if it becomes way to obvious even to others you give it up and let it be whatever it is gonna be. Thats hard when you actually like the other person but they for whatever reason don't like you.

This has played a big part of my no friends in real life thing, since the only ones I could find way back when, were the ones that loved to live in dysfunction and dysfunction rubs off, talk about depressed, angry, full of jealousy and envy, feeding on yet more negative energy uckkk not pleasant or pretty.

This last month or so here at PNN has been a constant checks and balances thing. I am a lot to take for some people, because I tend to be all over the place with my thoughts and it is reflected in my pages and what I write. I also am very emotional and attach to people for various reasons based on how they make me feel which can make it hard to back away when things go sour even though I can feel it happening. 

I am often influenced and inspired by the words of others which will lead me to write about some of the same things. I like the feeling of networking and so maybe come on too strong and I often say what I feel before thinking, [hard habit to break].

My mood plays a big part in what I do as well. Hence the many changes to my pages. While some topics have remained the same, the titles have changed and as new ideas come to me I sort of run with it a lot. That also means some topics that had my interest stopped and so I let them go [idol] [smokey's spot] though I love him dearly.

I find I am hypervigilant here, on what is said, but even more so on what is not. The unsaid runs rampant here, for many reasons, mostly to avoid conflict or hurt feelings, which is par for the course. I am having major trust issues because of that, but am working on them trying to take people at their words which brings us full circle back to......

When you are just some pictures and words on a page it is easy to be miscontrued, people deciding who and what you are about, based on what you write or your comments. Assumptions are made in regards to your actions and your feelings. All of that miasma of emotion has to be waded through daily. To remain sane the empath needs to shut it down close off the feed so to speak.

just imagine how many friends, you would have if you could read their minds and know what they were thinking about, probably less than you have since no one truly thinks positively about others all the time. So imagine that one moment that they thought something bad you happened to hear n bam end of a friendship........unless you talk it out, but then having to explain how you knew would be interesting to say the least.  

I keep hoping people will get the real me and see beyond face value perceptions.  Some do, some don't, but that's how it goes. I have learned not to say anything, although I have approached some whose friendships I value and asked if things were okay, when I felt some feeling that something I did, or said may have rubbed them the wrong way. 

Making friends is difficult under normal circumstances so is keeping them, but I gotta say trying to do so while having this ability can and does suck sometimes!

Empathically speaking: two worlds

There is never a moment that I am not concious of the others around me not the flesh and blood people that populate the space but those that for the most part go unseen. Sometimes they are insistant upon making their presence known and when that happens I begin the delicate act of walking in two worlds. 

As an empath the things I see and feel are not always pleasant and can be hard to take. it is not for the tender hearted [which is a contradiction in a way since I am that] the things I see and feel can be difficult to accept and once finished clear from my memory. 

There are variations of this walking in worlds

How it works in recovery....

There is a phrase called remote viewing, being able to see someplace often thousands of miles away within the  minds eye and by honing in on it you can point out landmarks, street names, numbers, and even people there and what is happening at that time.

When you add to that, traveling through time [in a sense] you get the experience of walking in two worlds. This is acheived by allowing into you, the energy of someone who has passed from body and allowing them to show you how that occured. In those moments you are experiencing the last moments or hours of someones life and seeing it through their eyes. 

This happens to me when I am recovering bodies, I then sense, feel and relive their passing.

The most visceral experience  went something like this, [ I cannot reveal names or place as this case is still ongoing] 

I am sleeping and suddenly I open my eyes but instead of my room I am in the woods. my hands are tied behind my back and I am facing a tree. I feel very groggy and I don't understand why.

I am on the ground on my knees bent forward trying to crane my neck around to see what is going on. That is when I see the man and I am scared by his face and I say "I want to go home" and start crying. He ignores me. I ache my body hurts in places that makes no sense, [ I realize I am very young  a child]. He lifts something in his hands and I see it is an axe and it is coming towards me. 

As it strikes, I close my eyes and then open them again and I am back in my bed screaming,

My body is in the position of the childs. I am on my bed my hands are behind my back and I am on my knees screaming.

The fear and the pain last for less then 2 minutes but feels like forever. I am terrified and filled with grief at the same time

My heart is tearing apart over what this child had endured.

But I have to get it under control get up and write everything I experienced down, after calming my neighbours who are pounding at my door. 

Ten minutes later I am relating the information over the phone to one of the missing persons agencies, once finished I go outside to sit in the sun and try to let the warmth heal, sage stick burning nearby.

Empathically Speaking:two worlds spirit walking

It happens mainly in the spring and summer perhaps because that is when I venture out into nature more and travel to places where the old ones seem to thrive. Not that spirits aren't everywhere because they really are. They walk amongst us daily, [actually I feel its more like we walk among them since they were here first] and often they are attached to the living. 

So I am walking down the street and I see two women walking but they aren't talking to each other it takes a minute to realize one is spirit the other flesh, but then as I watch them walk along the spirit may fade in or out becoming transparent. I don't pry to find out what the connection is I just walk on. 

I can't say I have seen them on buses often but on trains and things occassionally. One place where the two worlds seem to cohabitate together peace fully is Victoria BC, upon arrival there I am swamped with imagery. 

Imagine walking down the street and feeling as if you are walking in two or three or four different eras at once and that's how it feels there. It is literally, littered, with spirits out for strolls, or a drive, a day in the park or at the beach.

The giveaway is the clothing the look feel and manner in which they behave. Some are unaware of the others some see all that is around them. On days like this when I am there I tend to hesitate before letting someone strike up a conversation, because unlike the ghost whisperer, I feel stupid when people see me talking to myelf. 

We [the hubby and I] have been driving along country roads and I will see animals or people walking along and start to say hey look, then realize I am seeing what I call imprints or echos [i didnt coin the phrases but they do fit].

Those are spirits whose lives were very regimented soldiers, and farmers mainly, who continue to do their chores as if still here, it is an interesting site to see animals in spirit really something.

Overall there is a surrealist feel to it, as if looking at paintings that move. The closer I am to my cycle the clearer or sharper they appear to be. I tend to do more readings during pms and moontime than any other as well. 

I do not see spirits all the time or on a daily basis, sometimes I don't see them at all for long periods of time, but when I do, I don't feel scared they comfort me somehow, just knowing they are there. 

Third Eye & Tales Of The Other Side

The gift in all it's many manifestations runs very high in my family, passed down from mother to child most often the daughter. i grew up listening to tales of my grandmother and great, great, grandmothers and the supernatural occurances that happened around them some even purportedly generated by them. both great grandmothers were called witches [I will let the stories of them be the deciding factor on the validity of that claim].

my grandmother who passed before I was born was considered the town healer [and many a wife came to see her for other reasons] I am told in my childhood especially in my infant and toddler years many unusual things happened, some i remember vaguely now from the eyes of a child to me it was all wonderous I never questioned why statues seemed to become animated or shadow like entitities would pop out from under my bed. I was never afraid.

We lived in no less than four houses that were considered haunted and my aunt Carmie's house on degrassi and queen [above a fish and chip place i loved] was also at one time a spooky place to be [the occurances here were atributed later to poltergeists and tended to happen only when I was around] it was these stories that prompted the writing of black orchids on the vine. those and the hundreds of stories trotted out at family gatherings about my mothers and my aunts uncles and what yous childhoods. such a rich tapestry of tales but i digress. 

Here is a sample of some of those tales

I mentioned my grandmother who passed before I was born. however on several occassions my mother would hear me laughing in my crib at night an thinking my brother had gotten out of bed and was playing with me she tried to catch him. So sneaking down the hall she was perched on the verge of entering our room when I suddenly stopped giggling and said mom mom wom wom gone mom wom wom gone I then began to cry, [there was no way I could have seen her coming] Years later I saw a picture on my moms wall and one of the woman in it looked so familiar one was my grandmother the other was an aunt. I remember saying to my mother that one used to play with me when I was small.

I believe she watched over me and for good reason. 

At 2 years old I was slapped in the face by an angry entity

Two women were fighting in my room it was around 3 am my aunt who was watching me while my mom was away said she woke up to them fighting she freaked then one of them hit me. She told this to my mom who thought she had hit me, she was ticked especially when she saw the big huge handprint on my face but as it turns out my aunts hand was to small to have made the print which lasted for almost two weeks then faded away [you tell me what it was from]  

We lived at one time above a barber shop on queen st  when you walked in there was a small landing then the stairs.  My mother came home one day her hands full with two shopping bags, I was at the top of the stairs with a towel on and said watch me fly momma,

I jumped my mother screamed dropping the groceries to try and catch me, but instead of tumbling ass over tea kettle down them, I floated [you read it right] I floated down 36 steps and landed at the bottom on my feet unhurt. This event I still remember to this day especially the vise like grip around my waist as I jumped holding me and my mothers stunned expression when I landed. 

In that same home something crawled under my parents bed and kept raising it up and down at first she thought it was the cat but that would have been some mighty strong backed cat to do that. she tried to catch it but whipping over with a flash light to look one night yielded nothing no cat nothing at all. then one night she awoke to my stepfather sitting on the edge of the bed praying, she asked whats wrong he said wanted to go the bathroom but there was a man at the foot of the bed who would not let him pass. [my stepfather was a minister so he was not one to buy into ghosts] 

My mother used to such things got out of bed walked around took his hand and led him to the bathroom back in bed she waited only to hear him calling her as the man would not let him out of the bathroom. s she went and got him, needless to say he could not sleep. she told him to take his bible and go on into the front room and read he tried she ended up taking him partway there and as she was walking back to the bedroom something made her tun around just in time to see the light go on and him jump ten feet in the air in fright he then sat in the big arm chair trembling. as she got tho him he said just as he turned on the light the man touched him on the edge of his nose and his hand was like ice. She sat with him the rest of the night.

As if that weren't enough for him as young child my stepfather put up with me on several occassions suddenly taking an aversion to either getting in the car or going somewhere.

One occassion on leaving my aunts i did not want to get in the car when asked why I sad cuz daddy don't have no breaks after arguing with my mother about it he went out started the car to pull out of the drive way and onto the street in the hopes that this would pacify me. however as he backed out onto the street and kept going backwards towards the train tracks wall, he discovered the breaks had indeed failed. he was not happy.

Another time I balked saying daddy didnt have any gas and i didn't want to walk. we were driving to some outdoor church social in another town an so were on the highway when you guessed it he ran out of gas. 

Another time it was the car catching on fire, another it was me telling him to put the top up on a convertible he was renting because it was going to rain [the sun was shining he didnt believe it, we had a sudden sun shower the seats got soaked] he wasn't happy.  

As I got older the gift became more useful like knowing when the teacher was going to give a surprise test. or knowing when the phone was going to ring and often who it was on the other end. By 7years old this was a frequent thing and it was nothing to be at family gatherings and be put at the kitchen table with a candy dish that relatives would put change in as they asked me to tell them what I saw.

Usually they were going on a trip or wanted to know about winning or finding money]

As I got older the gift shifted and changed yet some more in part 2 the gift goes dark I shall expound on that.......

Third Eye Part 2 The Gift Goes Dark

y eight and nine years old as the madness of the abuse began [ I often wondered why I had no warnings of this to come as with many things that followed it took into my thirties to understand why nore on that later in the story. My gift as it were began to change including how I saw and felt spirits I shared these thoughts with the other kids [they loved to be spooked] my friends were a little afraid of me too  and some of the things I would say.

[As I started to write this part I went looking for pictures of it and discovered it is much older than I thought]. Which explains a lot of the people I used to see in it. I can't explain why but I always felt so safe there as well looking at it brought back happy memories shudder ;-)

into my teens the darker side emerged. while living in an apartment building i ahd made friends with some of the women on my floor often visiting for coffee though i hate coffee sorry but yuck. Anyway a few months after living there summer was right around the corner etc {marg not her eal name} called and said come on over and chat while I fold laundry. As i walked into her apartment I ahd this split screen moment all at once i was two places at once i stopped in my tracks and she asked me what was wrong so i described what i was seeing. 

there was a woman standing on a front porch sweeping off dead leaves dust what have you, there was a man watching her from inside behind an old fashioned green screen door. As he watched her sweep she suddenly looked up made a slight noise and collapsed. 
He began to panic he didn't know whether to go out to her or call someone, he chose to call someone. He went to the phone and began to dial as he did, I looked at her phone and said right now and her phone rang. She answered it and it was her uncle, saying her aunt had just fallen on the front porch. [marg looked at me and the look on her face I will never forget, rage fear intermingled, she screamed at me to get out. I ran out and back to my place. She never spoke to me again. 

During my many stays at the nut ward they did a pre admittance assessment, two of the questions they ask are do you hear voices talking to you from the radio or the tv and do you see people that others cant see. i never learned to say no to that. When they would send me to speak with a psychiatrist while he would treat me as if I was insane eventually he or she would as those very same questions it was around then that I began to see the people hanging around relatives. or friends or loved ones. often this meant that as they asked me that i would look and usually there was someone near them who i wold then describe to them becuase they would ask okay if you see someone what do they look like. Sometimes they gave me names sometimes they would tell me a phrase to say.

right here i have to say it is not like those tv psychics who practically get you to tell them what they need before committing to saying they see or are talking with your dearly departed. 

I get really annoyed at the is there an M or an N is this a sister or a brother that passed ok thats who i am getting BULLSHIT pardon my french. 

When people appear they give me information to share and i ask no questions i just start talking and what comes out comes out. I see what I see and will tell you what it is, sometimes it is not what you want to know, but what you need to know at that time.  

By my mid twenties my empathic side grew stronger and it was harder to go to parties and gatherings, it felt as if I was getting full in my brain and it would overwhelm me. Often the only way to realease the pressure was to do readings, which then resulted in me sitting in a corner with thirty or forty of the guests waiting for their turn.

This also meant walking into a room I could feel the mood and knew who was causing what, this was both good and bad, as it also let me know who liked me and who didn't and who was angry at who etc, etc, etc. On three occassions I was in the room with someone who was capable of murder and said so in warning but no one heeded it. 

One killed a cab driver with his friends [london Ont] one killed his girlfriend and hid her body I found out years later on that one the other tried to kill his girlfriend then shot himself. 

In my thirties during the beginning of my healing journey with the abuse. I got called in to work on the Michael Dunnahee case. after having an out of body type vision. by this time I am living here in BC. the vision woke me from a sound sleep screaming [ I cannot share what I saw] my neighbour down the hall heard me and came running I told her what I had seen and she said I should call it in you never know. 

I did and two weeks later I was sitting in Crystal dunahees livingroom I wish I could say we found him, but I am sure many know he is still not accounted for. We did uncover some things near their home but again I cannot give details.

I also helped on the mindy tran case and a girl missing from a tanning salon both times they were recovered in areas I had described.

How this works is I get what can only be described as a recording via the victims eyes of the last moments of their lives. From that viewpoint I see landmarks and sometimes the perpetrator, who I then describe to the sketch artist.

There is one thing that seems to be a constant with the bodies I find they are near or in water and rail road tracks. I don't know why. I do fully as a volunteer and never take any money other than expenses to be there if it is out of town. I have been consulted over the phone from as far away as New orleans and continue to work with agencies when they call. 

I mentioned earlier how I wondered why having this gift did not warn me of bad decisions and ass wipe men in my life and for the most part I believe it is because I was to close to it emotionally and I have talked with others who say the same, although I did have an uncanny ability to catch them in the act showing up where they were at.

There has been only one time when I received a very clear warning of something I could not change. That was two weeks before my son passed. I had a dream that so upset me it woke me up crying and I turned to my then fiance and said something really bad is going to happen. The day before he passed I had a visitation from two crows.

as I was walking down a street, everything began to slow down in motion and in front of me there was a tree, the two crows were on a low branch, I walked up close enough to touch them but they did not move or flinch. I said I don't believe in you and forced myself to walk away. The next morning my mother called to tell me he had passed.  

When I first met Len [ my hubby] he was a sceptic, over the years after seeing me do my thing at parties and on visits to peoples homes whom I have never met. even at his companies barbecue [that was something] He now comes with me when I am hired as a reader at a function and you should hear him talk about me [heck talk about a PR man] 

next up The Gifts Finer Points and what others have told me

The Gifts Finer Points

There is this wonderful woman named Marie, she is the grandmother to a darling little fella named Alex, in one of my craft sing along workshops. When I first met her it was at a chinese new year celebration and I was doing the reading thing.

 During her reading I kept getting the overwhelming urge to discuss her health and so after asking permission [ never go into the darker things unless they want and allow me too], I began reading her body. I told her to do me a favor even if only to humor me and go as soon as she could make an appointment and have a mammogram.

I said it was most likely nothing [this was so she would not be frightened unecessarily] but even if it was, I felt that if she went now we were going in time to catch it early and all would be well. I would not let her leave until she promised me she would do it.

She did and true to her word she went. only I would not hear about it until almost two years later, when I ran into her again at my craft sing along with her grandson.

She sat in the back watching the kids have fun and even sang along to some of the tunes. When the workshop was over she came up to me smiling and said you may not remember me but you did a reading for me a while back. I said I remembered her face but not the when.

She went on to say where and to tell me what I had said to her at the reading, then she said because of you making me promise to go, I went to get the mammogram and they found a lump, but because I had gone early enough I am standing here in front of you cancer free and I just want to thank you.  I hugged her and we both began to cry. To me that moment was more priceless than any thing she could have given me. 

Since then she has become one of my regulars, who stops by and sees me at the farmers market where I hawk my craft wares and on occassions do readings. She is still cancer free and man can she bake!

I thought before I sat down to write this that I would be able to do it without crying nope but then they are good tears so it's all good!

St. John's Cemetery Norway A Closer Look

St. John's Cemetery Norway is an historic cemetery in Toronto, Ontario. It is located at the intersection of Kingston Road and Woodbine Avenue in the east end of the city just northwest of The Beaches neighbourhood.

The cemetery was founded alongside St. John the Baptist Norway Anglican Church in 1853. Despite the use of the name "Norway", neither the church nor the cemetery have any connection to the country of Norway or to Norweigan immigrants to Canada; both were established to serve the small community ofNorway, Ontario, then a considerable distance from the city of Toronto. The town itself was named after the Norway pine trees native to the area, and was amalgamated into Toronto in 1908.

The land for the cemetery was donated by landowner Charles Coxwell Small. Originally three acres, the cemetery now covers about 35. Over the decades there have been almost 80,000 internments, and over 50,000 grave stones now stand in the cemetery. While attached to an Anglican church, the cemetery is non denominational.

The cemetery is perched on a large sandy hill, that was once one of the large dunes formed by Lake Iroquois. The sand from this hill was also used extensively by the Toronto brickworks, and is thus found in many of the city's older buildings.

The cemetery was never a site for the burial of the city's elite, with Mount Pleasant Cemetery being the standard resting place for those of prominence. The vast majority of those buried there are representatives of the middle and working class of east end Toronto. There are some prominent figures buried at St. John's. R. C. Harris, Toronto director of public works who built the nearby R. C. Harris Water Treatment Plant, was interred there in 1945. At the rear of the cemetery there is also a cenotaph honouring veterans of D-Day.

The picturesque cemetery close to the studio district has also become a popular one for filming. The church has also turned to this to get much needed revenue to help maintain the site. Among the movies where the cemetery makes an appearance are To Die For, Angel Eyes,Four Brothers, and Get Rich or Die Trying.

{Who knew?  When I watched Angel Eyes I said to my hubby that looks like the Cemetety I used to play in, guess I was right woohoo]

I lived on Eastwood rd and Woodbine

There used to be a macs milk store on kingston rd, now u could walk all the way up to woodbine then down and turn onto kingston rd or u could cut right through the cemetery and the gate let you out right in front of the store. So often the shortcut is what we took. One night while coming back from the store my brother and I

I decided to run ahead he was carrying a jug of milk and walking teddy our dog as well. I saw an open grave and jumped in waiting as my brother approached on the path

I jumped up out of the hole and scared the crap out of him. you never saw someone run so fast in all your life he was home way before I got there. When I arrived he said I wasn't scared the milk jug was heavy an I wanted to get home, Uh huh, okay then.

Empaths

Empathy is the ability to read and understand people and be in-tune with or resonate with others, voluntarily or involuntarily of one's empath capacity.

Empaths have the ability to scan another's psyche for thoughts and feelings or for past, present, and future life occurrences. Many empaths are unaware of how this actually works, and have long accepted that they were sensitive to others.

Empaths Sense Deep Emotions

Empathy is a feeling of another's true emotions to a point where an empath can relate to that person by sensing true feelings that run deeper than those portrayed on the surface. 

People commonly put on a show of expression. This is a learned trait of hiding authentic expression in an increasingly demanding society.

An empath can sense the truth behind the cover and will act compassionately to help that person express him/herself, thus making them feel at ease and not so desperately alone.

Empaths experience empathy towards family, children, friends, close associates, complete strangers, pets, plants and inanimate objects. Empathy is not held by time or space. Thus, an empath can feel the emotions of people and things at a distance. Some are empathic towards animals (ie: The Horse Whisperer), to nature, to the planetary system, to mechanical devices or to buildings etc. Others will have a combination of the above.

Empaths Have Deep Sense of Knowing

Empaths are highly sensitive. This is the term commonly used in describing one's abilities (sensitivity) to another's emotions and feelings. Empaths have a deep sense of knowing that accompanies empathy and are often compassionate, considerate, and understanding of others.

There are also varying levels of strength in empaths which may be related to the individuals awareness of self, understanding of the powers of empathy, and/or the acceptance or non-acceptance of empathy by those associated with them, including family and peers. Generally, those who are empathic grow up with these tendencies and do not learn about them until later in life.

Empathy is Inherited

Empathy is genetic, inherent in our DNA, and passed from generation to generation. It is studied both by traditional science and alternative healing practitioners.

Empathy has both biological/genetic and spiritual aspects.

Empaths often possess the ability to sense others on many different levels. From their position in observing what another is saying, feeling and thinking, they come to understand another. They can become very proficient at reading another person's body language and/or study intently the eye movements. While this in itself is not empathy, it is a side-shoot that comes from being observant of others. In a sense, empaths have a complete communication package.

How Empathy Works

While there is much we don't yet understand about how empathy works, we do have some information. Everything has an energetic vibration or frequency and an empath is able to sense these vibrations and recognize even the subtlest changes undetectable to the naked eye or the five senses.

Words of expression hold an energetic pattern that originates from the speaker. They have a specific meaning particular to the speaker. Behind that expression is a power or force-field, better known as energy. For example, hate often brings about an intense feeling that immediately accompanies the word. The word hate becomes strengthened with the speaker's feeling. It is that person's feelings (energy) that are picked up by empaths, whether the words are spoken, thought or just felt without verbal or bodily expression.

Empaths are often poets in motion. They are the born writers, singers, and artists with a high degree of creativity and imagination. They are known for many talents as their interests are varied, broad and continual, loving, loyal and humorous. They often have interests in many cultures and view them with a broad-minded perspective. They are mother, father, child, friend, nurse, caregiver, teacher, doctor, sales people... to psychic, clairvoyant, healer, etc. (That is not to say that any of these categories are all empaths.) The list is extensive and really unimportant. It is more important to notice that empaths are everywhere--in every culture and throughout the world.

Empaths Are Good Listeners

Empaths are often very affectionate in personality and expression, great listeners and counselors (and not just in the professional area). They will find themselves helping others and often putting their own needs aside to do so. In the same breath, they can be much the opposite. They may be quiet, withdrawn from the outside world, loners, depressed, neurotic, life's daydreamers, or even narcissistic.

They are most often passionate towards nature and respect its bountiful beauty. One will often find empaths enjoying the outdoors, beaches, walking, etc. Empaths may find themselves continually drawn to nature as a form of release. It is the opportune place to recapture their senses and gain a sense of peace in the hectic lives they may live. The time to get away from it all and unwind with nature becomes essential to the empath. Animals are often dear to the heart of empaths, not as a power object, but as a natural love. It is not uncommon for empaths to have more than one pet in their homes. 

Traits of an Empath

Empaths are often quiet and can take a while to handle a compliment for they're more inclined to point out another's positive attributes. They are highly expressive in all areas of emotional connection, and talk openly, and, at times, quite frankly in respect to themselves. They may have few problems talking about their feelings.

However, they can be the exact opposite: reclusive and apparently unresponsive at the best of times. They may even appear ignorant. Some are very good at blocking out others and that's not always a bad thing, at least for the learning empath struggling with a barrage of emotions from others, as well as their own feelings.

Empaths have a tendency to openly feel what is outside of them more so than what is inside of them. This can cause empaths to ignore their own needs. In general an empath is non-violent, non-aggressive and leans more towards being the peacemaker. Any area filled with disharmony creates an uncomfortable feeling in an empath. If they find themselves in the middle of a confrontation, they will endeavor to settle the situation as quickly as possible, if not avoid it all together. If any harsh words are expressed in defending themselves, they will likely resent their lack of self-control, and have a preference to peacefully resolve the problem quickly.

Empaths are sensitive to TV, videos, movies, news and broadcasts. Violence or emotional dramas depicting shocking scenes of physical or emotional pain inflicted on adults, children or animals can bring an empath easily to tears. At times, they may feel physically ill or choke back the tears. Some empaths will struggle to comprehend any such cruelty, and will have grave difficulty in expressing themselves in the face of another's ignorance, closed-mindedness and obvious lack of compassion. They simply cannot justify the suffering they feel and see.

People of all walks of life and animals are attracted to the warmth and genuine compassion of empaths. Regardless of whether others are aware of one being empathic, people are drawn to them as a metal object is to a magnet! They are like beacons of light.

Even complete strangers find it easy to talk to empaths about the most personal things, and before they know it, they have poured out their hearts and souls without intending to do so consciously. It is as though on a sub-conscious level that person knows instinctively that empaths would listen with compassionate understanding.

Here are the listeners of life. Empaths are often problem solvers, thinkers, and studiers of many things. As far as empaths are concerned, where a problem is, so too is the answer. They often will search until they find one--if only for peace of mind.

Written by Christel Broederlow Copyright (c) 2002 Christel Broederlow Shortened Version from The Empath Report 101

About this contributor: Christel Broederlow is a natural born empath and author of numerous articles about empathy through personal experience and continual research. 

Diva note: After reading this article I felt compelled to post it. 

I was amazed by how insightful the piece was, but not surprised to find out at the end that the author herself was also an empath. It just seemed obvious from the first few sentences. I have tried to explain it many times over the years myself, but I think she does it far better justice here, especially the traits and how we relate to animals and strangers and the how and why of it. 

Empaths n Animals: Cats

Smokey will go for walks with me like a dog [next time I will take my camera and get some pics]

Walk to the mail box and back or to a neighbours and will wait for me outside the door until I come back out If he is outside and I come out he will sit with me if i sit outside on a bench . At one time it was him and his brother that would both follow me [someone scooped bandit] I could step outside and call them and they would come running then follow me where ever I went both walking right beside me I stop they stop, the neighbours used to get quite a kick out of it saying how strange it was to see. 

Bandit really liked kisses on the top of his head and when holding him if I said want kisses he would butt his head against my chin until I gave him kisses, he was very particular about how he was held he liked to get up and curl into my arms with his head nestled in the crook of my elbow

Most of my cat children loved to be held and many liked laying on their backs outstretched all comfy cozy [and expecting me to continue whatever it is I am doing while they sleep]and each one had some other unusual habit that people would comment on. 

One other thing Both Smokey and Bandit would do [smokey still does] is pilfer beads from my bead drawers like the one here in the picture with Smokey] they stick their paw into the finger hole and pull out a bead play with it then when they lose it under something they will get another one and they have an uncanny ability to dig out my elastic string. I would find it on the floor and hide it in something and they would find it the buggers.

Before Smokey n Bandit there was Leopold and Skittles [Skittles passed last year after 14 years] many came and went [read got scooped or something I would rather not think of] but that is part of life yes.

Skittles was a talker he would talk n talk and talk if you scolded him he would talk back and o.m.g, if we went away for a few days, when we came back he would be in a real mood and would give us royal shit or the silent treatment then the back talk. 

Before Leopold and Skittles there was Leo the Leaper and Rufus. 

Leo the Leaper was so named because he could catch flies, bees, n hornets, right out of the air, catching them in his teeth, I kept watching wondering when he would get stung doing this but nope he never did.

Rufus thought he was a dog for sure [and who knows maybe he was in a past life] Rufus would growl at the door when someone knocked or if he heard someone outside he would stand and stare at the door growling.

He also played fetch, I could throw a ball or piece of paper and he would go get it then bring it back.

Many dollars were made betting people he would fetch something if they threw it ;-). Someday I would like to create a picture book, I have a couple of children's books in mind we shall see.

Empathic Experiences

Empath Suffering

Empath Suffering

Intuitive ability is a wonderful gift that offers healers the opportunity to better understand pain their clients are suffering with. But for sensitive individuals who are unwittingly soaking up ills and hurts that don't belong to them from the people in their surroundings, it is best to learn how to avoid taking on others symptoms and illnesses.

What is Entity Contamination?
Common symptoms of entity contamination and methods to help control and elimitate them.

The Joys and Pitfalls of Being an Empath
Being an empath is a double edged sword. It can be both a curse and a blessing.

reincarnation

Diva note: I was wading through some articles on ghosts looking for one that I might post when I came across one page that touched on reincarnation. I lost interest in the ghostly tails and latched on. I must admit I have been fascinated with the subject for personal reasons for quite some time and again until this blog never really had a reason to go reading beyond a minimal amount. Most of what I knew was from fiction books and movies. Remember Audrey Rose? I read the book in my teens and then saw the movie it was quite the story.

Reincarnation

Have you lived before? The concept of reincarnation - that our souls may experience many lifetimes over centuries, maybe even thousands of years - has been present in virtually every culture since ancient times. The Egyptians, Greeks, Romans and Aztecs all believed in the "transmigration of souls" from one body to another after death. It's a fundamental precept of Hinduism.

Although reincarnation is not a part of official Christian doctrine, many Christiansbelieve in it or at least accept its possibility. That's not at all surprising; the idea that after death we can live again as another person - maybe as the opposite sex or in a completely different station in life - is intriguing and, for many people, highly appealing.

Is there any truth to it, however? Is reincarnation just an idea, a fantasy? Or is there real evidence to support it? Here's some of the best evidence available, gathered by researchers who, in some cases, have devoted their lives to the subject. Examine it, then decide for yourself.

Past Life Regression Hypnosis

The practice of reaching past lives through hypnosis is controversial, primarily because hypnosis is not a reliable tool. Hypnosis can certainly help reach the unconscious mind, but the information found there is not reliable as truth. It has been shown that the practice can create false memories. That doesn't mean, however, that regression hypnosis should be dismissed out of hand. If the past life information can be verified through research, the case for reincarnation can be considered more seriously.

• The most famous case of past life regression through hypnosis is that of Ruth Simmons. In 1952, her therapist, Morey Bernstein, took her back past the point of her birth. Suddenly, Ruth began to speak with an Irish accent and claimed that her name was Bridey Murphy, who lived in 19th century Belfast, Ireland. Ruth recalled many details of her life as Bridey, but, unfortunately, attempts to find out if Ms. Murphy really existed were unsuccessful. There was, however, some indirect evidence for the truth of her story: under hypnosis, Bridey mentioned the names of two grocers in Belfast from whom she bought food, Mr. Farr and John Carrigan. A Belfast librarian found a city directory for 1865-1866 that listed both men as grocers. Her story was told both in a book by Bernstein and in a 1956 movie, "The Search for Bridey Murphy."

Illnesses and Physical Ailments

Do you have a life-long illness or physical pain that you cannot account for? Their roots could be in some past life trauma, some researchers suspect.

• In "Have We Really Lived Before?,"Michael C. Pollack, Ph.D., CCHT describes his lower back pain, which grew steadily worse over the years and limiting his activities. He believes he found out a possible reason during a series of past life therapy sessions: "I discovered that I had lived at least three prior lifetimes in which I had been killed by being knifed or speared in the low back. After processing and healing the past life experiences my back began to heal."
• Research conducted by Nicola Dexter, a past life therapist, has discovered illness-past life correlations in her patients, including: a bulimia sufferer who swallowed salt water in a previous life; a fear of indoor heights caused by carving the ceiling of a church and being killed by falling to the floor; a persistent problem in the shoulder and the arm area having been caused by participating in a tug of war which injured the same arm; a fear of razors and shaving was found to have its root cause in another lifetime where the client had chopped off someone's fingers with a sword and then as retribution had their whole hand cut off.

reincarnation pt3

Handwriting

Can past lives be proved by comparing the handwritingof a living person and the deceased person he or she claims to have been? Indian researcher Vikram Raj Singh Chauhan believes so. Chauhan has undertaken a study of this possibility, and his findings have been received favorably at the National Conference of Forensic Scientists at Bundelkhand University, Jhansi.

• A six-year-old boy named Taranjit Singh from the village of Alluna Miana, India, claimed since he was two that he had been a person named Satnam Singh. This other boy had lived in the village of Chakkchela, Taranjit insisted, and even knew Satnam's father's name. He had been killed while riding his bike home from school. An investigation verified the many details Taranjit knew of his previous life as Satnam. But the clincher was that their handwriting - a trait experts know is as distinct as fingerprints - was virtually identical.

Birthmarks and Birth Defects

Dr. Ian Stevenson, head of the Department of Psychiatric Medicine at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, Charlottesville, Virginia, is one of the foremost researchers and authors on the subject of reincarnation and past lives. In 1993, he wrote a paper entitled "Birthmarks and Birth Defects Corresponding to Wounds on Deceased Persons"as possible physical evidence for past lives. "Among 895 cases of children who claimed to remember a previous life (or were thought by adults to have had a previous life)," Stevenson writes, "birthmarks and/or birth defects attributed to the previous life were reported in 309 (35%) of the subjects. The birthmark or birth defect of the child was said to correspond to a wound (usually fatal) or other mark on the deceased person whose life the child said it remembered."

But could any of these cases be verified?

• In one fascinating case, an Indian boy claimed to remember the life of a man named Maha Ram, who was killed with a shotgun fired at close range. This boy had an array of birthmarks in the center of his chest that looked like they could possibly correspond to a shotgun blast. So the story was checked out. Indeed, there was a man named Maha Ram who was killed by a shotgun blast to the chest. An autopsy report recorded the man's chest wounds - which corresponded directly with the boy's birthmarks.
• A man from Thailand claimed that when he was a child he had distinct memories of a past life - as his own paternal uncle. This man had a large scar-like birthmark on the back of his head. His uncle, it turns out, died from a severe knife wound to that very part of his head.

Dr. Stevenson has documented many other such cases, many of which he could verify through medical records.

Poll: What do you think of such evidence for reincarnation?

Somewhere in time

Somewhere in time 

Loved this movie too was great cinematography on it.

The film begins in May 1972, when playwright Richard Collier is approached by an elderly woman who places a pocket watch in his hand while pleading with him to "come back" to her. Eight years later, Richard, stressed from writing his play, decides to take a break and stays at the Grand Hotel, where he becomes entranced by a strangely captivating photograph of a mysterious, beautiful young woman. With the assistance of Arthur Biehl, an old man who's been at the hotel since 1910, Richard discovers that she is Elise McKenna, a famous early 20th-century stage actress. Upon digging deeper, he learns that she was the aged woman who gave him the pocket watch eight years earlier, but who subsequently died later that same evening.

Richard learns about auto-suggestive time travel from an old college professor of his. To accomplish this feat of self-hypnosis, one must remove all things from sight that are related to the current time. He is also warned that such a process would leave one very weak, perhaps dangerously so. Back in his hotel room, Richard tries to will himself into the year 1912 using tape-recorded suggestions, only to fail for lack of real conviction. In the hotel's attic, Richard finds an old guest book from 1912 with his signature in it, and realizes that he will (or did) eventually succeed.

Richard again hypnotizes himself (without the benefit of a modern tape recorder) and allows his absolute faith in his eventual success to become the tipping point or trigger for the journey back through time. He drifts off to sleep and awakens to the sound of whinnying horses in the year 1912. Richard looks all over the hotel for Elise, even meeting Arthur as a little boy, but he has no luck finding her. Finally, he stumbles upon Elise walking by a tree near the lake. She seems to swoon slightly at the sight of him, but then suddenly asks him if he's the one. McKenna's manager, William Fawcett Robinson, abruptly intervenes and sends Richard away. Richard stubbornly continues to pursue Elise until she finally agrees to accompany him on a stroll throughout the surrounding idyllic landscape. Richard ultimately asks why Elise wondered aloud if he was "the one" and she replies that Robinson somehow knows that she will meet a man one day who will change her life forever. Richard then shows Elise the same pocket watch which she will give him 60 years in the future.

Upon returning to the hotel, Elise invites Richard to her play. He attends the comedic-farce and she, in an almost trance-like state, recites an impromptu monologue dedicated to him. During intermission he finds her posing formally for a photograph. Upon spotting Richard, Elise breaks into a radiant smile and veritably glows with soft affection. Just then the camera's flash goes off and forever captures that wondrous moment in time. We realize now that this picture is the same one that Richard will see 68 years later on a wall near the lobby at the Grand Hotel. He later receives a letter from Robinson asking to meet him immediately and saying that it is a matter of life and death. Robinson tricks Richard and has him tied up and thrown into the stables. Later, Robinson tells Elise that Richard has left her and isn't the one, but she replies that she doesn't believe him and he's wrong. Elise admits to Robinson that she loves Richard and that he will make her very happy. Dispirited, Robinson leaves her dressing room and reminds her that they leave within the hour.

Richard wakes up the next morning and escapes his constraints. He runs to Elise's room only to discover that her party has left. Richard then goes out to the hotel's capacious deck and begins giving in to despair, but presently perceives Elise calling his name and running towards him. They return to his room together and it is there that Elise becomes truly intimate with a man for the very first time in her life. Later that evening, she asks Richard to marry her and he readily accepts. She then tells him that the first thing she will do for him is buy him a new suit (the suit Richard has been wearing the entire time in 1912 is about ten to fifteen years out of style). Richard begins to show his true love what a wonderful suit it is because of its many pockets. He is alarmed when he reaches into one and finds a shiny new Lincoln penny that has the date of 1979 on it. This has the effect of wrenching him out of his hypnotically-induced time trip, and Richard feels himself rushing backwards from 1912 as though through a tunnel, with Elise screaming his name in horror as he is pulled inexorably back to 1980.

Richard then wakes up in the same room he just left, although now it is 68 years later. He is very weak, physically and emotionally exhausted from his trip through time and from the devastating unexpected return. He scrambles desperately back to his own suite and tries to hypnotize himself again, without success. After wandering around the hotel property and sitting interminably at the places where he shared his innermost thoughts with Elise, Richard eventually retires to his room and remains there until discovered by Arthur, who then calls for a doctor. Richard then sees himself drifting above his body, and he is drawn to a light shining through the nearby window. There he sees Elise, with whom he will presumably be reunited forever.

[edit]Differences from the novel

In the novel, Richard travels from 1971 to 1896 rather than 1980 to 1912, and the setting is the Hotel del Coronado rather than the Grand Hotel. Unlike in the movie, he is dying from a brain tumor, and the book hints at the possibility that the time-traveling experience occurs only in his mind. The scene where the old woman hands Richard a pocket watch (which an older version of himself had given to her) does not appear in the book. Thus, the ontological paradox generated by this event is absent; however, there are more subtle versions of the same kind of paradox. Richard thinks he remembers having once met an old Elise, and he does find an old hotel register with what he takes to be his signature, but we don't know how reliable his perspective is. In the book, it is two psychics, not William Fawcett Robinson, who anticipate Richard's appearance. And Richard's death at the end is brought about by his tumor, not heartbreak.

Movies that surprised me a little

There have only been a handful of movies that did actually surprise me a little and only one really that comes to mind that really had me thinking wow, wow, wow, at the end of it.  The not so surprising but very enjoyable ones were as follows [note I added my two cents to the reviewers notes on a scale of 1 to 5 [five being the best]

The Others

Starring: Nicole Kidman

I would think that people will be divided on this movie.  I know many reviews and viewers felt this was a wonderful creepy movie with a great twist. Personally, I found it long and drawn out, and agree with the review I read that described it as "glacially paced."  If mood and atmosphere is enough to carry a movie for you, then you'll like it. three thumbs up [saw it coming a mile away but enjoyed the ride]

Sixth Sense

Starring: Bruce Willis and Haley Joel Osment

Okay, has any ghost movie aficionado not seen this (at least twice?)?  The story of a boy who "sees dead people" and the psychologist determined to help him, this is an excellent movie.  Five thumbs up [okay this one took me about ten minutes in to solve but I still loved it

Haunted Starring: Aidan Quinn, Kate Beckinsale; Set in 1920's England, Aidan Quinn play a skeptical psychic researcher who accepts a desperate invitation to help with the ghosts at Edbrook Mansion. Once there, he encounters a housekeeper and three siblings: two brothers and a sister who are odd, immature and quite seductive toward each other. Quinn not only has to deal with the paranormal at the mansion and the strangeness of the siblings, but has his own personal ghost he carries with him -- that of his sister who drowned when they were children. Five thumbs up [kept me guessing until halfway through]

The Gift

Starring: Cate Blanchett, Keanu Reeves, Greg Kinnear

Cate Blanchett plays a small town psychic in Georgia who becomes embroiled in a murder mystery. A wonderful cast and great acting by Cate Blanchett really add to this supernatural thriller.  Five thumbs up [loved the ending loved it big time] and yes it surprised me

Past Lives

Often as a child I had recurring dreams the same place the same people. what was so remarkable about the dream was how unremarkable the events within it seemed to be. No moment of terror or being chased and falling off a cliff, just normal as if I was hanging out in the day of someone elses life. In this case I was following a man around as he worked around a farm. I would wake up while he was chopping wood I would someday like to figure out why it was at that point I always woke up.

What I wonder though is this, what if that person you meet, the one who somehow seems familiar and you find your self saying the words it feels like I have known you a long time even though we just met. What if thats the case and somehow you recongnize each other and don't know that's what happened. A lot of what I have read on it or seen seems to suggest that we enter into each others lives over and over again just in different relationships. guess I know what I will be looking for to post next.

What do you see?

Here's something that may peak your interest and your point of view.

What do you see here?

These pictures were taken at the Vatican in Rome

some believe it is an angel some think it is a spirit others think it is a ghost others think it is a puff of smoke. What do you think? It said the photo is untouched printed as it was from the camera so lets go with that belief and take it from there. for a better look check out the pics on my page here at. http://procomicdiva.pnn.com/13111-empathically-speaking