Taps and Yanks: my ghostly encounters

I won’t (or don’t) call myself a ghost whisperer but I have had things happen with spirits; ones that left me questioning, why me? I can’t answer why – only explain the conditions surrounding my encounters.

My ghost experiences haven’t happened in places one would expect – as in a haunted attraction or some creepy house late at night – but in rather ordinary places. And the two encounters, well, more accurately, physical encounters happened in the day.

The last time a spirit touched me, it was two days before Halloween. I’d gone to my favorite coffee shop. Late in the afternoon, the front room wasn’t packed and the wicker couch that sat in the corner of the shop stood empty. I quickly honed in on the spot. It was an ideal place to hole up and write. Since the couch lined the wall, and tucked into the corner, no one could walk behind me or on my right side. A coffee table stood between me and the opposing couch so that barricaded me further. And that day, no one sat on the left me. Being sensitive, I can easily be disturbed by too much jostling noise around me, so I always looked for a spot where I could have the least interruption from another customer passing by. The remaining afternoon light fell through the window as I sat engrossed in my work. As I said, nestled in the corner, no one could possibly be in contact with me, so when I felt 3 taps on my right shoulder I knew I wasn’t being touched by a physical being (i.e., a live person). Being a sensitive person, especially to energy, I just knew something or someone was there. And based on a previous experience, I felt that I was again encountering a ghost.

The first time, I was living on a farm in Israel. It was in the fall, and I was in the green house, working alone. I don’t recall exactly what I was doing. I probably was repotting some plants, but I can still feel my arm being yanked suddenly – the kind of yank done by someone trying to get your attention. I most likely yelped and turned around to see who was doing it. No one was there. I yelled out my boyfriend’s brother’s name thinking he was trying to prank me. No response. I checked around under the table and all around it. I saw no one. I didn’t hear a crunch on the floor gravel which I would have heard if my boyfriend’s brother was trying to run out the door. And I thought, “if it really was him trying to prank me, I knew he couldn’t contain his giggle.” It popped into my head then that it must have been a ghost.

Before this experience in the greenhouse, I had another inexplicable experience, again, while working alone. One late afternoon working in the field, pruning some trees, I looked up and saw 2 figures, a woman and a young boy, standing a few feet away.  Standing isn’t the correct term. It felt like an image to me. A reflection. The clothes they wore solidified that feeling. The woman wore a long black dress and a young boy wore an equally dark suit. It looked like 19^th century clothing to me, the kind the Jewish settlers from Europe that farmed that area must have worn. I knew from a museum visit at the Hula Valley visitor center where the farm was located that life hadn't been easy for the settlers. They bought land in Palestine and turned a malaria infested swap into a productive farm area. But malaria must have struck many of the immigrants and I wondered if the ghosts I saw were victims of the disease. 

I admit seeing their image startled me. I turned my eyes and when I looked back, I saw nothing. I shrugged it off at the time. It was possible my eyes were playing tricks on me. However, there’s no mistaking a yank on your arm. The ghost or ghosts were trying to make their presence known. Prior to this, I had a lot of harrowing experiences while living there (that’s another story for another time) so by the time the ghosts yanked on me, I wasn’t exactly in the mood to figure out why. But, and I’m going to be cliché, the mystery of why me on that day still “haunts me”. Ok, I said it. Pun time over. But truly, I never stopped wondering, why me. Over the years, I’ve turned over several possibilities. Lately I've wondered if my pale, European like face might have been part of the draw. My Israeli boyfriend and many of his neighbors were either of Persian or Indian descent. But the figures I saw were definitely of European heritage and perhaps I was someone they related to. Or perhaps they felt from me that I was a stranger in a strange land like they had been. I can’t say, and I may never know why me. I never mentioned the experience to my boyfriend. I didn’t think he would have believed me. So if it were a common experience there, to be tugged on by a ghost, it was unbeknownst and still unknown to me.

As an empathic person, I am open to energy, and because of my previous experience in Israel, I probably put up a wall - a fortress would be more accurate - until a friend told me about the “free will” law. According to her, spirits had no right to mess with you. You could simply could tell them to leave you in peace and they had to obey. She told me this prior to me moving to Sonoma. So when I felt that tap on my shoulder, I simply told the ghost to go away. Did it? Sort of. The tab on the right side of my word document starting scrolling up and down. At least, that’s what I remember at the time. In retrospect I do wonder, "Wait, did that really happen? And why did it happen?" At the time, I honestly thought that this ghost was trying to startle me. In startling me, I would have released energy and this energy would have fed the ghost. "Isn’t that what it wanted?" That’s what I thought. 

Let’s just say for fun that it got into my word document to tell a story. And had I opened myself up and let this ghost speak, I would have learned his story. In hindsight, it’s possibly that this ghost, who I felt was a male was probably a farm worker.  He could have been someone of Italian descent who came to Sonoma after losing his chance in the Gold Rush, to find a more fortunate circumstance in the fertile vineyards. He didn’t fulfill his promise. Having an unfinished life, perhaps he needed to share his story and finding a writer might have been his goal. Like my Israeli immigrants, his story has yet to be told, at least by me.... Poor ghost! I won’t know his story either or again, the mystery of why me. Perhaps you’ll be braver should you get tapped and turn and ask why? It’s that time of year when the window between our worlds are thinner and more answers can be heard, if you are a brave soul. 

Happy Halloween!!