By now everyone has heard the incredible story of the house in Cleveland, OH where a number of people are alleged to have been held for years inside a neighborhood home.  Friend and Journey into Twilight guest Sally Richards pointed out some interesting things in the Google Maps street view of the home.  In the window there appear to be ghostly figures in the window.

Here is the view you would see on the web:

Google maps photo of the alleged kidnapping home. (click to enlarge)

I had this photo enlarged from the downloaded image.

Enlarged, cropped view of the house

Enlarged, cropped view of the house (click to enlarge)

In the windows are a couple of shapes which are likely reflections of the street, but when we enhance them further they get more interesting.

Enhanced version of the window items (click to enlarge)

There is indeed what appears to be a sort of outline of a person looking out the door and the figure in the window seems to have a face.  Are these paranormal pictures?  Residual energy from others who may have been trapped in that house?  I don’t know.

What I do know is that events and passions seem to leave their mark on places and objects.  Whether these are real ghostly images or simply our minds eager to find stories, our knowledge of what may have taken place in this house will change it forever.  If it went on the market tomorrow would you buy it?

Today many pagan people celebrate Beltane, a day celebrating the passage of Spring into Summer. It is associated with fertility and all those things that fertility implies: growth, children, creation, life. It is a time for dancing and for shedding old skins. It’s a time to celebrate all that breathes and vibrates with energy. Whether it’s something that you share with a group around a bondfire with song and celebration, or something that you contemplate more quietly on your own it is a day for a little guiltless indulgence.

If you follow an organized religion (and there are even organized pagans) there is a structure to the year.  The festivals are laid out and the formal gatherings lead nicely to each celebration.  If you go to a Christian church it’s pretty hard to miss when Easter is coming. People who are solitary practitioners or simply spiritual don’t always keep up with the Wheel of the Year, and it may be a part of why they sometimes struggle. (…and I include myself in that “they”… because I struggle with my spiritual path too)

The cycle of celebrations that appear in most spiritual practices give opportunities to contemplate different aspects of one’s beliefs.  Some of them are grand celebrations.  Some of them are sorrowful contemplations.  All of them together create a rounded spiritual view.  Going through the cycle again and again and again helps you pick up things you missed so that your understanding grows.  Of course, if you pick and choose the things you observe and leave some of them off then you miss out on part of the picture and become unbalanced.  This is how you have people who claim to be spiritual but act vengeful and angry.

It’s also interesting–and not coincidental–that the seasons for practically every spiritual practice generally line up with each other.  This is the principle of vibration in action, something that I’ll discuss on Journey into Twilight tomorrow.  People of all spiritual walks roughly think about the same concepts at about the same time which, if they are not focused on why their celebration is superior to everyone else’s, causes them to spiritually vibrate in tune with others around them, regardless of individual beliefs.  That way people celebrating the newness and resurrection ideas of Easter are in harmony with people celebrating the growth and emergence of Beltane.  They are both vibrating with the ideas of life in all its glory and as a result there is more creation, more vitality even though they may think they disagree.

Take a look at the Wheel of the Year.  If you are not a pagan, look at the areas where it lines up with the religious cycle that you currently follow.  Also look for gaps in your own calendar that you see in the Wheel.  It probably means that there is an overlooked observance in your own calendar that could add richness and balance to your spiritual path.  If you are a solitary pagan, or a Y & S pagan (Yule and Samhain), who doesn’t really follow the wheel, take some time to look it over.  Beginning to observe the different celebrations will change your vibration through the year and make a difference to your practice.  Also, it’s called practice for a reason.  The more you do it the more you’ll get from it.  You may find some of your struggles settle.

So, indulge yourself a little today and celebrate life.  It is good to be alive.

First, a bit of business. Circumstances regrettably force me to cancel Journey into Twilight tonight. Still no word about the return of David Marsh, which is a pity because he always added something interesting and unexpected to the conversation, and provided a way to fill nights without a guest. He is spending time with people who care about him and I think that it is very good for him. The death of someone dear to us is not something that we just “snap out of”. Victorian etiquette recommended a mourning period of six months for close family and two years for a widow! People demonstrated this through the wearing of black, later the black arm band, and everyone was conscious of the loss. Today, when someone passes, we seem to give it barely a thought and expect everything to turn to normal after the funeral. We do not really show death the proper respect. It’s a shame.

So, we continue to send David our prayers and good wishes as he continues down this path in his life.  I hope that he returns, but such things can transform people unalterably.  That must also be respected.  In the mean time, if someone has interest in spending some time as a sort of informal co-host, let me know.  I like having someone to talk to rather than doing a monologue for the hour.

Did you ground?

This weekend I was doing readings at the North Austin Feed Your Spirit Fair, in Austin, Texas.  I combine several things at these events.  Traditional readings of palms and Tarot cards are always available, but everyone seems to do that sort of thing.  I try to add some unusual perspectives such as my Karmic Window, a numerological tool that gives a reading now and used again for other things by the person later.  I also do psychometric readings, where I pick up on vibrations from objects.  It makes me a little different, and in a room full of psychics different is good.

In most cases, people hand me some glasses or some other personal trinket that they’ve carried.  This time a women had a shard of crystal.  It had the earmarks of a “test”.  Sceptical people will sometimes bring something, looking for specific information to have me “prove” my “powers”.  It used to bother me a lot more than it does now and I’ve learned to just always do what I do and let the person take away what they need.  Sometimes what people need is enlightenment.  Sometimes they just need to feel like the smartest person in the room..

This person was not testing me, though… at least not like that.  She genuinely wanted to see if I could pick up on what she had experienced with this shard.  Boy, howdy, did I!  Readings are private and sacred, so I won’t go into what I found and what we discussed, just as I won’t share your details with the world.  That’s irrelevant to this.  The point is that I allowed myself to become complacent.  I had gotten a little lazy about my grounding and shielding, something that can happen when you’re having a good time, and I opened myself up to a bit more of what was in that crystal than I should have.  My defences kicked in soon enough, but not before I experienced some discomfort.  My left hand felt funky for a good while after we finished.

Staying centered is so important when connecting with other energies.  Grounding yourself, having a way to discharge your energy when you get overloaded is very important.  It’s like a lightning rod, to stave off that power, or you take the hit directly.  Shielding, having barriers that only allow what you wish to get to you is also important.  Obviously, my shields are somewhat low when I’m reading for people because I need to connect, but I still want them to act like security guards, looking for something suspicious.  But my guards were off in the corner stuffing their faces with doughnuts.  It was entirely my fault because I was being lazy.  I wasn’t really harmed by it, but it was a little uncomfortable.  It could have been a lot worse.

Working with your energy, especially when connecting with others, is like handling a firearm.  You should always treat it as though it could go off until you’ve checked it out.  It’s like looking both ways before you cross the street. Check to make sure that you still have a connection to earth your energy and take a quick peek at your shields.  If it feels disconnected or weak then take a moment to build everything back the way that it should.  If that’s a problem, then maybe it’s just not the right time.

In my case it was all OK.  I got a little more connection than I’d bargained for and it was exciting but not destructive.  It was a good reminder, though, to be more cautious in the future.

That’s all the time I have today, but stay tuned.  I want to tell you more about my adventures at the Museum of the Weird.

Last night I had the most extraordinary interview about a subject that very few people will discuss openly.  We talked about death and dying.  Normally when I talk to people about death it is the context of ghosts and hauntings.  We talk cavalierly about souls who suffered and doomed to linger.  We thrill to the ideas life cut short by murder, or illness, jumping as quickly as possible to the chills, the sounds, the bumps in the night.  The passing of the individual is simply a detail, a piece of necessary exposition.  We mean no disrespect by this.  We are simply caught up in the strangeness of it all.

Death has become a sort of entertainment for us.  Our films and television programs are piled with bodies.  At the same time we remove ourselves from death.  People go to hospitals to die, rather than their own beds.  Their bodies are cared for by professionals in places of privacy and we are only shown the results of their craftsmanship.  It was not always so.  Once upon a time people died in their own space, escorted there by family who did their best to care, but were not so isolated from the realities.  After a person died the family would wash the body and visit with it.  They were present and involved.

Death is a mysterious part of life.  It confounds us and disturbs us.  It is a loss that feels eternal, though there are many indications that we continue and that we may even have connections with those who have moved into the next stage of existence.  My guest last night on Journey into Twilight was Becki Hawkins, a hospice nurse who has spent thirty years personally experiencing the death of  countless numbers of people.  That is a daunting prospect, to enter into the life of a person when all hope has been abandoned, to come for the sole purpose of leading them out of this life and into whatever lies beyond.

You would think that someone with that experience would have a clinical look at death and the dying.  You would think that she would see it as a sort of process, a simple inevitability with no mystery and certainly nothing beautiful about it.  You would be wrong.  Becki has a peaceful and loving look at the people for whom she has cared.  She sees death as something that is not to be feared, but something that connects us.  She sees it as a time to reflect not on your sins, but the lives that you have touched.  It was an incredible conversation and one that you should hear, especially if someone in your life is close to the end of their own.

The one thing that resonates the most for me in this discussion was that people who are dying need someone near them.  They need people who can be with them in the moment, who can help them to appreciate who they are and what their lives have accomplished… for everyone has brought some value with their life.  Death is there for all of us.  Why wait to face it alone when we can all face it together?

Many years ago, I saw a silly movie with Billy Crystal and Jack Palance called City Slickers.  The film was about the ways that men’s lives can run astray and how to discover what is important.  Curly, a rough and tumble cowboy played by Palance, has a philosophy of life.  Life is about one thing… and you have to figure out what that one thing is.  At the time that was a delightfully simple philosophy.  Find a single thing to focus your life on and the rest works itself out.  Now I can simply devote my life to finding the one thing that defines me… just one thing…

I suppose there is a reason why movies are served with popcorn.

There is a lot of value in letting things go, but it is a great disservice to deny our human capacity to be many things at once.  Think about that single-mindedness.  Think of animals who seem to have a high degree of specialization, who can only eat very specific things and spend their entire life in pursuit of that one thing.  I love animals, but I wouldn’t want to trade my life of variety for that level of simplicity.

Right now, there is a desire to label and categorize people.  You have to pick the one thing that you are.  Are you Liberal or Conservative?  Are you a Minority or Majority?  What is your Title?  What is your Belief?  When one dares to say “I’m not really any of those;  I’m independent,” you might be called indecisive or weak.  “Make up your mind!”  “Pick a side!”

One of my favorite things on the Internet is tagging.  Why?  Because it’s chaotic and organic and makes no sense… but yet seems to give you the right answers.  Movies, music and more are tagged by everyone in the ways that make sense to each individual.  There is usually very little control over the tags or how they are handled… which is the chaos.  But then you find that people who think about things the same way that you do tend to label things in the same way that you would.  Labels which might seem contradictory if you were picking a section in a store blend together beautifully and show off the uniqueness in ways that could never achieve if you had to pick just one thing.

So, I proudly proclaim that I choose everything.  I want to be a Renaissance Man, squeezing every drop of experience out of this existence that I possibly can, not because I think that death is the end, but because I believe that life is wasted if it is lived solely in anticipation of death.  So, here are a few tags I place upon myself:

actor, adventuresome, artistic, believer, bully, child, Christian, citizen, comedian, communicator, confessor, cook, conservative, consumer, crazy, creator, curious, destroyer, detail-oriented, disorganized, dreamer, editor, enemy, escapist, explorer, fanatic, fantasy, father, fighter, follower, friend, frightened, geek, gourmand, happy, healer, heterosexual, hopeful, horror, human, hungry, husband, ignorant, intellectual, lazy, leader, lost, lover, magickal, malcontent, man, messy, misunderstood, observer, open, optimistic, pagan, penitent, pessimistic, philosopher, physical, precise, protector, psychic, publisher, quiet, reader, relaxed, relentless, risk-averse, scary, sci-fi, secret, seeker, sensitive, sensual, sexual, silly, sinner, skeptic, spiritual, stressed, student, swashbuckler, talkative, teacher, technical, Texan, thief, traveler, trivial, troublemaker, unpredictable, victim, weirdo, writer, well-read, whimsical, wizard

With all that is given to us, how can we possible be just one thing?

Gather ’round my children, ’cause Doc Ravencraft is gonna tell you how it is.  Everyone gonna look at you through their own shoes.  You don’t understand?  Then let me tell you about the blind men and the elephant.   (If you think you already know all about that then you can skip on by, ’cause you ain’t gonna learn from it nohow.)

Once upon a time there was a new wonder to behold.  An elephant had been brought from a far away land, a gigantic beast unlike any had beheld before.  People were going to come from miles around to see it, but before they could it was important that it be studied so that people could be told what they were going to experience.

By great fortune, there were five wise philosophers who had made a great study of all things.  They had the singular peculiarity in that all of them were completely blind, but everyone said that this gave them advantages in their other senses and that as a group they always managed to find the truths that others could not discover .  Once people knew what the truth was supposed to be it was easier for them to see it for themselves.

The great day came.  The philosophers arrived and set about their work as the scribes stood by to record their findings.  Each of them remarked immediately upon the odor of the beast and noted that it was clearly a creature born to the grasses.  They heard the trumpeting sound of its call and perceived that it must be a majestic thing indeed.  Then they all stepped closer, eager to lay their hands upon it.

The first of them ended up toward the front of the elephant and was nearly knocked down by the swinging trunk.  Immediately he could perceive the snake-like quality, and what an enormous snake it must be!  He could feel the tiny mouth of the creature, with two throats and no teeth, indicating that it must feed on the tiniest of leaves.  Most curious!

The second one found himself next to one of the mighty legs, so large he could barely wrap his arms around it.  It was sturdy and muscular like gigantic, warm-blooded tree, with a leathery skin.  What a wonder!  Surely this was not an herbivore after all, but a strange bird-catching creature.  It must move very slowly and spend great lengths of time standing still and quiet, waiting for it’s prey to perch upon it, at which time it would gobble it up, much like a Venus Fly Trap.

The third found himself at the tail and was immediately struck by its tininess.  Why, it was no bigger around than a piece of rope!  What a sound it had made.  This must be a creature easily preyed upon by others which has developed this amazing voice to scare away its predators by appearing much more powerful than it really was.  What a delightful artifice!

The fourth found himself at the tusk and was amazed at the skinless exterior and spikiness of the creature.  How amazingly armored and well protected this creature must be.  Clearly, this creature was the matured relative to the armadillo and other similar animals. What an amazing sound these things must make as the clatter across the landscape like an army of tanks.

The last philosopher found himself draped by the beast’s ears which flopped about him as he felt his way.  He had never encountered anything like this!  It felt like some sort of wing, but so large!  How magnificent this creature must look as it sailed above the earth, likely gliding down from mountain tops, bellowing its frightful call.  It must be terrifying to man and beast.

Each of the scribes took down these observations and attempted to combine them into an explanation that could be shared with the masses, but as they tried to fit them all together there was so much argument amongst the philosophers that there could be no solution.  It was finally decided that it was best if elephant was simply sent back from whence it came.  Clearly if such learned minds could not explain the elephant then it would be too much for anyone else to comprehend.

So, here is the honest truth, my brothers and sisters.  No matter who you are, no matter what you do, everyone will see you through their own ways.  They will translate everything you say through their own way of speaking.  They will compare everything you do to their own actions. They will never and can never see you for who you really are.  They will try!  Oh, how they will try!  But they will always be limited to what they know to be true.

You cannot fault these people for trying to share what they believe they know.  They have been told in the past that they see things that others can’t and there is no reason for them to believe that it would be otherwise today.  They may even feel that they are helping you to see yourself more clearly and helping you to find yourself because you simply cannot see.

The fact of the matter is that no one can see or know all about you.  No one has all of the information.  No one truly knows what it is like to walk in your shoes… They are always thinking about their own shoes.

You cannot walk the path that someone else has laid out for you, unless you can see your own way.  You cannot be who you are in comparison to someone else because you are a unique combination of everything about you.  As long as you wait for someone to tell you who you are, you will be lost.  As long as you let others decide how you must be perceived, you will remain an enigma.  You are the elephant, majestic and strong.  You are free to roam the plains where even the lion must give way to you.  You are not defined by any one part of you and the sum of your parts goes beyond what anyone can imagine.

Defy your definitions, my brothers and sisters.  Now run off and play.  Ol’ Doc needs some rest.

After a great deal of discussion, thinking and rethinking I am proud to say that this week marks the opening of my Ghost Walks with the Museum of the Weird in downtown Austin.  I think this will be a great adventure and I can’t wait to help lead people.

We’re doing things a little differently than what you might have encountered on a “ghost tour”, as they are commonly presented in cities around the world.  I hope that you enjoy what we’re doing.

First, we are starting and ending in the private, air-conditioned space above the Museum of the Weird.  Austin is hot and Sixth Street is crowded and busy.  We want to help you get into this by preparing you in comfort.

Second, this is a “walk” not a “hike”.  Again, Austin is hot.  We are trying to keep the walking comfortable for people by limiting the scope to a few blocks from the starting point.

Third, we are seekers.  We know that many who take part in these things are seekers too, people who want to experience the paranormal.  So, we will not simply gather people like a herd of cats and lead them around.  I will show you what I do to prepare myself to go into haunted places and how I keep myself open to encounters.  That doesn’t mean that you will see or feel anything as we visit locations, but it will put you in the right frame of mind. After the walk, I’ll also give you a taste of some of the other ways in which I deal with the paranormal and opportunities to deepen your experience.

You will also have access to the marvelous Museum of the Weird, with the most fantastic collection of oddities in Austin, Texas.  If you’re interested I will personally share with you some of my favorites.

To get your tickets, call the Museum of the Weird at (512) 476-5493.  There will be a way to reserve on the Web soon.  I will report developments as they occur.

Today I came across a bit of a confirmation for something that I had long suspected, there is more to the heads on Easter Island than meets the eye. Buried below the earth, they have bodies!  This should surprise me, but somehow it doesn’t.  It seems the perfect metaphor for so many things that we encounter about our ancient ancestors, and we often stop digging too soon.  We are usually obsessed with the hows and very unconcerned about the whys.  “They were just primitive and did strange things for strange reasons.”

I am thrilled by these new findings and look forward to seeing more of these figures in their full glory.

Big foot hairs at the Museum of the Weird

Recently my friend, Steve Busti, owner of the Museum of the Weird has purchased some Bigfoot hairs.  It’s a fun thing and I would like the chance to see them myself.  I practice psychometry, getting information from the vibrations of an object.  I would like the chance to see what I pick up before they are sent off for DNA testing.  Perhaps we can arrange that before he has any official findings.

Journey into Twilight

My first night behind the microphone happened, and you can listen to it here.  Steve was there as my co-host and I hope I did not make too much of an ass of myself as I fumbled through controls as the hour flew by.  The next show will be this Thursday and will feature James Hazelrig, talking about hypnosis and his experience with past-lives in his subjects.  Mark your calendar and join us for the live broadcast on Thursday at 8:30 PM central time.  If you cannot join us, be sure to get the mp3 from the site or through iTunes.