Ghosts VI: Poltergeist, Ghost or Elemental?

A Powerful Speck of Light

Ordinarily I would ascribe to the theory that in order for a discarnate personality to affect the world of matter, it must be able to draw on the energy of someone already equipped to function in a physical universe.  As I said, I would ordinarily believe this. But there is one significant event that happened in the early years of my psychic work that makes me wonder. I had been invited to participate in research on telepathy at Columbia University. A short while after the experiments were concluded, the researcher called me on behalf of the Mensa Society to ghost bust an apartment in the Bronx. I had never done any ghost busting at that point, a little fact I kept to myself, and agreed. We arrived in the Bronx in a group, the researcher with her equipment and ten members of the Mensa Society. Along the way she explained to me that the “ghost” was opening and closing doors, moving objects and causing general distress among the apartment residents. Truthfully, I was terrified.  What if I failed in front of all these geniuses? What if the ghost were something I could not control?

When we arrived at this charming apartment, I organized the group to sit in a circle on the floor of the upstairs landing where I had sensed the strongest presence.  I ordered them to stay still and maintain a meditative state. So authoritative! And I hadn’t a clue what I was doing.  I walked over to a nearby closet where whatever it was seemed to be residing at the moment. My hand shook terribly as I took hold of the door knob. I could barely open it from fear.  After several deep breaths, I pulled the knob. The “thing” flitted out. There was virtually nothing to see, just a little spark of light, somewhat like a tiny candle flame without the candle.  I went over to the duteously meditating circle and took my place on the floor. The light shot around the corridor, blinking out now and again. Sometimes it slowed down to a gentle floating, like a butterfly on a soft breeze.  I had the impression that it had gotten caught somehow in our system where it didn’t belong. Outside of a certain strain to find its way out, it seemed to lack any recognizable emotion. This little sparkle appeared to be no more dangerous than Tinker Bell.

Finally, curiosity and compassion got the better of my fear. My instincts took over and I spontaneously invited the poor little thing to come into me.  This was the first time I had ever employed that technique, which since then has become my standard practice for ghost liberating. The light hovered in the middle of the circle above our heads in what seemed to be a pause of pitiable indecision.  I sent out one more burst of compassion. And then…Baaam! I was paralyzed! My whole body had gone rigid.  My eyelids were fluttering madly, every muscle in my face quivered, my Adam’s apple was wobbling up and down like a turkey’s throat. Everything on the inside was vibrating. Lights shot off in all directions in my head and chest. My insides were in chaos as if on the verge of imploding. Yet my mind remained calm and observant. I remember wondering rather coldly if a heart attack was coming on. It was clear that going forward was the only choice. Either I was going to die or “it” was going to be released. Still maintaining an eerie distance from what was happening, I began trying to collect the shooting trajectories “it” was producing in my body and bring them together. It was as though “it” were now trapped inside me, banging against the walls of my organs like a winged insect caught in a jar. The pressure on my heart continued to increase. My neck grew horribly stiff and arched backward.  It occurred to me that if I could touch the person next to me it might save my life. But I couldn’t. My fingers wouldn’t move.

I don’t know how long “it” and I stayed in this state, but both of us wanted out.  Despite the fact that this power-packed speck had paralyzed me and was now shaking me to pieces, concentration succeeded and the frantic energies battering at my insides began to coalesce enough to work with them.  Mustering as much inner strength as possible, I was getting ready for the final push—a continuing process of gathering its energies together and telepathically letting it know my intentions of sending it out of our world. It went. And with incredible speed, like a shooting star, up through my chest, through my throat and out the top of my head, leaving little puffs of light in its trail.  Movement returned along with awareness of my immediate environment.  A succession of camera flashes went off next to me.

Everybody in the circle seemed to come to at the same time and we excitedly compared notes. Apparently, the researcher had been watching my bizarre quaking and quivering with some alarm. She tried to reach out and touch me. But “something” took hold of her hand, bent it forward at the wrist and pushed it back. In fact, she was unable to move until it had exited from my head. How was it capable of taking me over and controlling the person next to me at the same time? The Mensa members had little to report other than a feeling of peaceful numbness. Was it orchestrating them too? What motivated it to prevent someone from touching me? Did it somehow sense that human contact would abort its escape? How could it telepathically understand me whereas I could not pick up a single one of its thoughts or emotions, other than the need to get out of our reality. And since it obviously had enough power to bang doors and immobilize people, why couldn’t it get out on its own? How did it get stuck here in the first place? I wondered at the breadth of this itsy-bitsy dynamo as well as its limitations.

Still today, I have no idea what kind of entity it was. For convenience, we decided to call it an “elemental,” and old-fashioned term designating an undeveloped non-human force akin to nature spirits.  Yet it was hardly mindless, but purposeful, possessing skills beyond human capability. What I was able to perceive must have been only a pinpoint of its greater self, a tiny portion that was able to emerge into our field of perception. This energy personality most likely had no native form at all. I remember wondering as it and I pulled our resources to catapult it out of this world, whether we were doing enough to send it to the right “place,” at least one more suitable to its nature. Did it only need that extra added push to get to where it wanted to go or was it going out blindly to land in yet another imprisonment in the interstices of universes? I had the hope people have when they let a bird out of a cage, that it will find its own kind and take its rightful place among them. The photographs the researcher shot at the moment of its release showed a thin column of whitish gold light ending in three tiers of sparkling mushroom-shaped clouds, the middle being the largest, all rising from the crown of my head.  Whatever it was, it had left its footprints on film.