What I Learned from A Botched, Haunted Field Trip, Long Ago

Today, in the interest of encouraging my readers to build their trust in Spirit as well as the power of intention, and to align themselves with the purest spiritual motivations even in times of uncertainty, I’d like to share a memory of something that happened to me when I was was in college, quite some time ago, when I was much less experienced. It’s a story that illustrates the importance of following your gut, not compromising your psychic integrity, of choosing your spiritual company wisely, and how the power of love is greater than that of fear. It’s also a great story about learning from your psychic blunders!

My late teens and early twenties were a time of strong, but mostly spontaneous psychic activation for me. At the time, I was most actively involved in the practice of energy healing, working together weekly with a healing circle that was led by a woman who became my de facto mentor - a Huna-trained shaman named Evelyn Wakeman, who was one of the most psychically gifted, powerful healers I had ever met - as well as with one of my closest friends, a young woman named Anneli. My psychic abilities were not yet mediumistic in the sense of communicating with the departed, and I wasn’t even sure that such communication was possible. However, for a period of a few years, I found it easy to observe people’s energy clairvoyantly, and also would experience very strong clairsentience in the form of feeling people’s physical and emotional sensations in my body while performing healing work on them. Once in a while, I would have a precognitive dream (usually, in lucid form), in which I would meet and speak to spirit guides, or experience other kinds of precognition, but all in all, I had no control over when, how or why these kinds of communications would take place. I was still feeling my way around the world of Spirit, looking for my place. 

Anneli and I were soulmates. (We still are!) For a while, we were roommates. The amount of things we had in common was uncanny, and we were jokingly referred to as the the “Finn twins.” We were both Finnish on our mother’s side, and American on our father’s. We were both deeply connected to nature and pagan spirituality. We both had psychic proclivities, and had each spent a year  living in France, speaking the language fluently. We both loved music. At the time, we were inseparable. 

During our senior year, Anneli became involved with the local punk scene in our college town. The ragtag bunch of rebels tended to have an energy that was quite different from what Anneli and I had in each other’s company: Where we were sensitive and introverted, they were exuberant and, at times, volatile. A lot of the kids came from much more challenging circumstances than either of us did, and some had already experienced much hardship in their young lives, from combat in Afghanistan, to alcoholism and drug addiction. However, their company provided a much-needed sense of freedom from what sometimes felt like an ivory tower, and I was happy to venture out once in a while with Anneli and her new friends.

One day, Anneli told me that she had met two new guys in the scene. We’ll call them John and Jim. John and Jim were into ghost-hunting, and would trek out together to allegedly haunted historical sites with a camera, hoping to capture evidence of ghostly activity, such as orb anomalies. They were soon planning on going to a cemetery dating back to the Revolutionary War, and Anneli was thinking of joining them together with her boyfriend. 

I was intrigued. I had harbored a somewhat uneasy fascination with paranormal investigation for a while, but had never had any direct experience with it myself. If there was an authentic haunting going on at this site, what could have been more interesting as a psychic healer than to go and see how we might be able to balance out the energy there? Though I had never met them in person, yet, I never even considered the possibility that John and Jim’s intentions might have been anything less than reverent. I volunteered to join in on the excursion.

On the evening of the field trip, John and Jim showed up in John’s car, with Anneli and her boyfriend in tow, to pick me up from my apartment. As soon as my two new acquaintances sauntered into my house, their energy shocked me to attention. Jim immediately seized an accordion I had in my room and started to play it loudly and discordantly. Like two mohawk-headed peas in a pod, the boys were rambunctious, boisterous and unpredictable, but seemed friendly enough. I chalked up the instant unease I felt to a harmless difference in temperaments, asked Jim to put down my instrument, and followed the gang out into the car. 

It was in the car that my unease began to descend into near-panic. The drive was long. I sat in the front with John, while Anneli, her boyfriend, and Jim, sat in the back. During a quiet moment, John and I started to converse about our interest in the paranormal. I remember him turning to me, his eyes squinting as he lowered his voice to a vaguely menacing snarl, and began to explain to me why he wanted to explore this particular cemetery. It was old, he said. Several people had committed suicide nearby, hanging themselves in the woods. And, he added, he believed it was haunted by demons. Demons, he explained, were once angels, who were thrown out of Heaven when the devil rebelled against the Creator. All of this was related with a kind of smug relish, without a hint of compassion or respect for any of the souls  associated with the site. It was all a horror story to him. 

I felt sick to my stomach. It was clear these two young men were only interested in projecting their darkest fears onto this experience, and my spiritual motivations for paranormal investigation had nothing to do with theirs. I also felt sad and terrified at what they were about to do, on a spiritual level - bringing that fear and darkness into a place of supposed rest. By the time we reached our destination, I decided I would not set foot out of the car. I wanted no part of any of it.

When we got to the cemetery, I had to explain to Anneli my reasons for not participating, as discreetly as I could. She sympathized with me, but decided that having come this far, she still wanted to go. As the rest of the gang walked into the pitch black night, I sat in the car, still terrified, and did the only thing that made sense to me. I prayed with all of my might. I asked to be protected by white light, and that none of the negative energy being brought to the place harm any of the spirits that were attached to it. I sat there for what must have been an hour, praying, and my fear never abated. 

When they finally came back to the car, Anneli told me that John had said that he had “seen a demon with red eyes” in the cemetery. She herself had only felt an energy of forlorn regret permeating the site. I couldn’t wait to get home. 

The following day, Anneli and I met up with Evelyn’s psychic healing group in the non-denominational chapel reserved for the meeting on our campus. I was unspeakably ashamed of myself. How could my spiritual judgment have been so poor that I had allowed myself to be put in a situation in which I was going to a haunted cemetery with people I had never met before? I felt like I had made a terrible mistake, and severely compromised myself. In fact, I was so mortified, I didn’t dare breathe a word of what had happened, or where we had been, to Evelyn, to whom I normally would have confided anything and everything. I felt like I had let her down.

A short while into the healing circle, it came to be my turn to receive energy healing from the group. Evelyn, leading the session, fell into her customary light trance. Then, after a few moments, she unexpectedly opened her eyes. She turned to me with a gentle smile, and said: “This is so strange. I’ve never seen this with you, before. Usually, I see spirit guides around you, but today, you have hundreds of dead souls attached to you. They are appearing to me upside down, which lets me know they were once human. They want you to help them cross over into the light. They know you have their best interest at heart.” 

I burst out crying, and admitted everything that had happened, feeling an immense sense of gratitude, excitement and relief.  Here, despite the terror I had felt, despite the embarrassment at my lapse in judgment, the love and respect I had shown the souls in that supposedly dark place, through my prayers, had won out. The fact that Evelyn had picked up on what had happened, despite my silence, was proof enough for me that it was all true. We meditated together to cross over the souls that had followed me home from the cemetery. 

Since then, I have always had faith that love will spiritually and energetically triumph over fear. Yes, I have had unsettling paranormal experiences since then, as well. However, also during those times, I have been sent specific, explicit messages from Spirit that my prayers have been answered, and that I will be safe. So, I invite everyone to remember this story when you find yourself in a situation that spooks you. Yes, it is always in our best interest to raise our vibration to an emotional frequency that is closer to love and further from fear, nor should we intentionally “dabble in darkness” if it can be avoided, but in a pinch, help is always to be found in the Spirit world and from Source if we just have the courage to ask for it - even if we ourselves are terrified. Trust in that!

P.S. This story is a great reminder, too, of how our expectations and emotional vibration affect what realm of the spirit world we resonate with! If you need a refresher on this topic, I encourage you revisit my piece on different frequencies in the spirit world.