Living With Dead Folks, Volume One

Chapter 1

2010 Blog

My Blog Rationale

8/15/10

I guess there's no sense having a blog if I don't use it. Angela was so great to set it up for me, and I've put off posting. There are two reasons, actually, for my blog. One is, of course, my ghost hunting. The second reason is to help folks find out what I'm writing and where it's available.

The most important thing about what I believe is: I believe ghosts are tied to this world for some reason and have never crossed through The Light. We'll talk about the reasons as we go along. Spirits, on the other hand, have crossed through The Light and can come back and visit for brief periods. I personally have helped quite a few ghosts cross into The Light, and I firmly believe these former ghosts are lots happier. Why? They come back and tell me, of course.

I'll have more things to report as we go along, since I live in a haunted house. There are various ghosts here, some spirits. I don't allow anything else, and I have a firm handle on how to banish anything like that. Today, I was making up some protection packets for house cleansings and to protect us when we happen on somewhere evil lurks. I had one of those horrible feelings I hate, like something was terribly wrong. The last time this happened, a man up the street was dying. So far this time, I haven't found out what is going on, but I have called lots of loved ones to make sure they are all right. I hope no one else in my neighborhood is in for some grief, but I'm afraid they are.

We'll chat more later. I'll try to post each time one of my resident paranormal boarders does something interesting...or even scary.

Chapter 2

March – June

2011 Blogs

I'm So Slow

3/17/11

By the time I get back in here, I've forgotten how to use the blog. Sheesh.

We've had a few incidents here at the house involving my sister, who is living with me for a while. The latest one was someone turning on her ceiling fan in the middle of the night. And it was cold, so it sure woke her up! 

A while back, Aunt Belle was coming to visit. The ghosts woke Sis up early, early and said, Get out of bed and get busy. Company is coming. Sis was a bit ticked at them, so they better watch out. She won't forget to read her Bible every night now.

A couple days ago, I went over to a friend's house and sent one of the ghosts there that was bothering her into The Light. He wasn't necessarily an evil ghost, but he wasn't real nice, either. And he was on the verge of turning into a troublemaker. Funny. Her other ghost was the one who insisted that I handle this new intruder!

I also had a rather bad experience with a black witch ghost who was bent on evil. She actually was trying to burn down the garage apartment where my cousin lived. Took a while, a lot of concentrated effort, and even scared me a bit, but I sent her packing. This will be one of the stories I publish when I start selling my e-books.

Working on my web site and the e-books. More soon, I hope.

Updated Web Site & Ghosts

4/17/11

Angela and I went out to Dry Creek Cemetery in Poetry, Texas, on April 1. Angela's mother, Gloria, and our friend, Timmy, went with us. What a hunt! Another friend of ours (who can't hunt right now due to numerous surgeries) said what I showed him on DVD was better than anything he'd seen on TAPS or Ghost Adventures.

A short clip (15 minutes out of an awesome hour and a half) is up on YouTube. If you search for Dry Creek Cemetery, it should show up for you. Or here is the url: http://tiny.cc/ba9ls.

It still always amazes me when things like this happen, confirming the existence of that dimension across The Veil. I hope I never lose that awe.

Happy Hunting and Reading. See you next time.

T.M.

News on My End

6/8/11

Where to start? Well, since it's about ghosts in here, I should tell a ghost story, huh? But the only thing that has happened recently is that Howard, one of my resident ghosts, walked past my office window yesterday. I've seen him before, so I was pretty sure that's who it was. I hurried to the porch, but no one was there or anywhere around. He likes to do that, pull me off the computer and make me take a break.

Next, I've actually got one of my books of ghost hunting diaries up on both Smashwords and Amazon: Ghost Hunting Diary Volume I by T. M. Simmons. Midnight Ferry is the story about the dangerous encounter I had with the ghost of a black witch, which I mentioned last blog.

Last for this entry, a good friend and fellow ghost hunter of mine, Tim Smith, has been invited to join an East Texas group to investigate a haunting down in a place no investigative group has ever gone into before. I'll report back later on the results of that, sometime after the end of June. The group is lucky to have Tim. That's him in the Dry Creek Cemetery video.

Catch y'all later. In the meantime,

Boo!

T.M.

Hub's Experience

6/8/11

Hub came home from hospital Monday, 6/6/11. He is getting over pneumonia, so isn't supposed to spend too much time lying down in bed. Therefore, he sits in a lounger in the living room, in a corner by the fireplace. Yesterday, he said he was watching TV and all of a sudden, something ran across his legs. He looked around to see what it was, but there was nothing there! He said it felt like one of my cats, that type of weight, etc. But there was no cat in the living room.

We are missing one of our cats. It went outside and hasn't been seen for several days. I can't help but think something did happen to it and it's coming back now in spirit, to the home where it lived its entire life. Hope it still shows up, but I am starting to grieve. But I'll see her and all my other pets at the Rainbow Bridge some day.

Paranormal Week

6/28/11

Long Post

What a week for paranormal activity! We actually hunted ghosts on June 21, the day of the solstice. Our reasoning was, with all the Wiccan and other ceremonies that day, the Universe should be filled with activity from believers. That entire investigation is for a separate diary all its own, since there were numerous day- and night-long happenings. The highlights were: two marvelous EVPs (electronic voice phenomenon); my sister accompanying us to a haunted location and chasing off the ghost in an instant; numerous EMF (electro-magnetic field) spikes at the cemetery we visited that evening, along with the flashlight again turning on by itself and a new phenomenon with a ball one of the investigators brought with her. But as to concrete, recorded evidence such as we got during the last investigation, the darn camera film was bad.

The activity continued through the weekend. Again, nothing on film, just personal incidents. They were pretty darned awesome occurrences, though, even for some veteran investigators.

I had never researched Summer Solstice previously, but (coincidentally?) a few days after the solstice, on Friday, June 24, Aunt Belle came to visit for a few days. She brought me a new ghost book to read. In the introduction, it actually said, similar to Halloween, The Veil is thin around the Summer and Winter Solstices. It truly is, from personal experience.

The ghosts and spirits here at my house always welcome Aunt Belle with confirmation of their presences. Friday afternoon, we were standing in my office, listening to an EVP from the solstice investigation on my Facebook site. All of a sudden, Belle glanced at the ceiling, then at the floor.

What? I asked.

She bent down and picked up something. This just fell from the ceiling, past my face and landed on the floor.

I took it from her to examine. It was a ring, a silver design along the edges of two colored, coated wires, one black, one turquoise, braided together in a circle. The silver was tarnished badly, and the ring appeared extremely old. I looked inside, but found no inscription or identifying information. We each took turns putting the ring on. Whatever came with it was very strong. The energy flowed over us in a distinctly paranormal manner. Neither of us kept that ring on more than a couple seconds.

You say it fell from the ceiling? I asked.

Yes. And I've never seen that ring before in my life.

Huh. We both just shook our heads.

I took the ring out to show my husband and sister, then laid it with some other artifacts of my paranormal life on the dresser in my office. Belle was still in there as I opened the word processing file of happenings here in the house and started to record the ring incident. I hadn't heard her leave and sensed her standing beside me, watching me type…so I thought.

Finished typing, I looked up and said, Is that about how it happened?

She wasn't there. The presence who stood beside me telepathically indicated he thought that was accurate.

I got up and went in search of Belle. She was sitting at the dining room table, talking to my sister.

I thought you were in there watching me type up what happened.

I left as soon as you started typing. I figured you could think better without me watching over your shoulder.

Well, someone watched. And told me what I recorded was accurate.

Probably the man who came with the ring, she said.

Later that evening, Belle's daughter and grandson came over. I took the ring out to show to them.

David, her grandson, said to Belle, That ring was in the bag you had your mail in. I saw it laying there on top of the envelopes. I figured you were taking it with you for some reason, so I left it there and loaded the bag in the car.

So much for our belief the ring teleported from another dimension, as we had seen happen at séances or circles. Still….

I never saw that ring before in my life, Belle repeated. I didn't put it in that bag.

And how did it get out of the bag, up to the ceiling, and fall to the floor? I wondered.

No one had an answer.

My feeling, I said at last, is that whoever is attached to the ring wanted to come up here with you. It's definitely a man. We both sense male energy attached to it.

We possibly found out who the man is, albeit only a hint as to his identity. The next morning, June 25, I rose early, around 6:30, so we could visit, then hit some garage sales before our Texas summer weather drove us indoors. Belle was already up by the time I came into the living room. She likes to read in the quiet mornings. This morning, she put her bookmark in her book, closed it, and laid it on her lap.

Something woke me up last night, she began.

What? Who? I asked, knowing already it was paranormal.

Someone said 'Wake up!'  I ignored it at first and tried to go back to sleep. The voice said again, 'Wake up!' So I looked over at the table at the foot of the daybed. A man was sitting in the chair there. I could tell it was a man, even though he was only a dark shape. And the voice had sounded like a man. I asked him what he wanted.

Did he answer you? I asked.

Ashton Wells was all he said, nothing else. I got up to go to the bathroom. He was still sitting there when I got back, so I took my book into the living room and read until 4:15. He was gone then, and I went back to bed. I got back up around 6:15, just before you came out.

I still believe he came with the ring, I said, and she agreed. But so far, we haven't seen him again.

For now, the ring resides on my dresser. I started to put it on and wear it to my writer's meeting Sunday evening to show them, but I was uncomfortable doing that. I just could not keep the ring on my finger. I decided I would carry it in my pocket, but until I got to the meeting and started to read this short diary to the group, I didn't even remember I had planned to bring it. One of the group said he would love to see the ring. Since the meeting is at my house next time, he should be able to look at it. However, we'll see if the ghost who accompanies the ring thwarts that. It seems as if he doesn't want the ring to leave my house, which appears