Ghosts 'n' Stuff

I see dead people. I know, it’s unbelievable. A skeptic by nature, it took me a long time before I was certain what I was experiencing was real. When it began, I thought I was headed straight for a rubber room. Thankfully it wasn’t a break from reality, but rather an ability to see beyond it. I’m not here to convince you that I talk to the dead. What I’m here to do is tell you what I’ve learned from these conversations. Take from it what you will. I hope it may give you comfort.

As a kid, I wanted to see ghosts. While I may have believed things most others didn’t, such as that I had lived and died before, no ghosts magically appeared before my eyes. I figured when it came to seeing ghosts, you either had it or you didn’t. I accepted I just didn’t have it. Then, when I was twenty-eight years old and pregnant with my first child, my husband at the time’s friend passed away in a terrible work accident. He was electrocuted by over 100,000 volts and killed instantly, leaving behind his girlfriend and their twenty-month-old son.

We’ll call him Justin. I never knew Justin well. To me, he was an acquaintance who ran in our circle of friends. He and my husband’s brother were close, as they had all grown up together in rural Saskatchewan, before relocating to Alberta. When we found out about his death, my heart ached for his girlfriend, his brother, whom I knew somewhat better, and his son left without a father. We jumped in our truck and headed towards Alberta, a nearly eight-hour drive from B.C., where we now called home. My husband needed to be close to our friends and Justin’s brother.

As we drove in the black of night, I experienced something I couldn’t explain. It was Justin. I could see him in my mind, sort of overlayed atop my vision. Like those clear plastic sheets teachers would put on a scratched-up overhead projector. The ones teachers write their notes on in black or red felt marker. But instead, it was Justin’s face and everything he was feeling superimposed in front of the physical world before me. I thought I must be going insane. I attempted to tell myself my imagination had taken hold of me, from sadness and the pain at seeing my husband grieve. Maybe I was just having a panic attack or some other episode, I considered. I attempted deep breathing, which often helped. I closed my eyes. Squeezing them tight until they hurt. But Justin wouldn’t go away.

And he was pissed. What I had known of him was a dude with a fiery temper. I had seen his reaction to the Roughriders losing a game, and this was far beyond that scary level of fury. He was screaming in my face, asking me why I was the only one who could see him. Then it dawned on me with a tightening of my stomach, he doesn’t know what happened to him. So, crazy or not, frightened of both him and my seemingly fractured psyche, I decided to answer him. In the disquiet of my mind, I began answering his questions the best I could. It broke my heart to explain to him that he was gone. He began raging anew. Frantic and angry, he kept repeating that he couldn’t leave his son. Everything he was feeling emotionally ripped through me. I gripped my pregnant belly and tried my best to comfort him, but I was terrified. It was a long drive.

Then a small miracle happened. My husband put gas in his diesel truck when we filled up in Golden. This wasn’t the miracle, far from it. He was inconsolable, weeping as he stood next to the pump at the station. Not realizing his mistake until the truck went into limp mode, about fifteen minutes East of the city. We pulled over on the curvy mountain highway, and he caught a ride with a semi-truck driver into the city to get a tow. I sat there in the truck on the side of that steep and narrow shoulder, overlooking the great Kicking Horse Canyon. Alone except for Justin. If it wasn’t scary enough to have a dead person flipping their shit on you, being alone in the dark on that highway was. I hadn’t been much for prayer when I was younger, but I was beginning to think maybe there was something to it. I’d been told I may never have children, and I spent three years praying for a child, and now here I was growing a person inside me. So, I prayed. I prayed the trucks turning the bend behind me would see the hazard lights in time and not send me through the guardrail and into the canyon.

My husband came back, and it was a tiny miracle I wasn’t at the bottom of the gorge. We had the truck towed into town, booking ourselves into a motel for the night. Chances were high, his truck was royally fucked. The most likely outcome would be a seized engine. It had been towed to the mechanic’s and we would have to wait until morning for someone to look at it. Without sleep, I prayed that entire night. Please, just let us make it there to comfort Justin’s friends and family. My husband might’ve cracked if he wasn’t able to huddle together with his pack. It was the first time I had ever seen him cry.

By about noon the next day, the truck’s fuel tank had been flushed and it was perfectly fine. It was a small miracle. The mechanic himself couldn’t believe it, and neither could we. He even told us he just flushed it because that was the procedure, but he never expected it to work with how long we’d driven the truck after putting the wrong fuel in. We made it to our destination safe and sound. There was never any kind of problem with the truck again. Then we did our best to wrap ourselves around the others who were grieving and let them know that they weren’t alone.

For those first few days, and even the following weeks, Justin was nearly always with me. Waking me up in the night. Putting himself directly in my face no matter what I was doing or who I was with. He wanted to make a deal, he told me; if I gave his loved ones his messages, then he would ease up and stop getting up in my grill with his hammering fury. The notion of telling people about what I was experiencing was more terrifying than anything that had happened. “You expect me to go to these people who are raw from loss, tell them I’m talking to your dead ghost, and expect them to listen?”, I argued with him. “And just hope they don’t have me committed to the psych ward.” I didn’t even like telling people I read Tarot cards, but this was simply too much.

We were at a standstill. Frozen with anxiety, he badgered me incessantly. He had big balls, I’ll give him that. Weeks, then months went by. Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore. I thought, fuck it. If they all think I’m crazy, so be it. His nagging was unbearable. Trying my hardest I listened to what he had to say, peered into the images so confusingly overlaid in my mind, and wrote it all down. None of it made much sense to me, but he assured me that his loved ones would understand the little clues. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to push past in my life, this fear of; what if I’m wrong? What if I’m goddamn batty? There was just no way around it. I only hoped that nothing I was doing would hurt anyone, because that would have been hardest for me to carry.

It turned out to be the best thing I’ve ever done. Once I passed along his messages, he respected my boundaries and would come to visit me in a much calmer mood. He became peaceful almost immediately. And whether or not I relayed the messages accurately, his family received confirmation that he was not gone, only unseen. They have thanked me since for the special little treasures they found in the things he wanted to tell them. This I am grateful for.

It changed everything for me. In the fifteen years since then, I’ve been visited by many spirits. A blessing that has helped me through the losses I, and those I’m close to, have suffered in that time. Who knew that I would lose loved one after loved one following this first? My mother, my beloved father-in-law, a child, grandparents, so many friends, friends of my children, pets, and many more. I’m so damn lucky I still get to chat with them all. They’ve taught me so much, and I want to share a couple of those things with you now.

1.    Spirits Are the Same as They Ever Were.

When people become spirits, they retain their personality. If they were hyper in life, they’re still hyper. If they had a temper, like Justin, they still have a temper. If they told dirty jokes, you can bet they’re still cracking those dirty jokes to me while I’m trying to sleep.

2.    Spirits Become Know-It-Alls.

Your loved ones see and feel everything that happens after they pass. They feel the love and the grief of the people they’ve left behind. There is nothing left unsaid, they know your deepest heart. One of the coolest things is they get to live vicariously through the ones they love. Enjoy life for them, they can share in it with you. They want you to eat the ice cream, go on that trip you’ve dreamt about, and take that chance on love.

3.    Spirits Get to Watch the Movie of Their Life

Once they cross from being here but without a body, to where they become one with everything, they get front-row seats to The Movie of Their Life. Except with this movie, they get to experience it from the perspective of the other actors. In other words, they re-live it all, but they feel what they made other people feel. If they made someone feel loved, they get to relive this emotion as though they were the other person. If they hurt someone, it’s the same deal. Everyone has some of both. Your loved one gains an understanding beyond what their human presence was able to. They know how they screwed up, and they know how much they were loved and gave love.

I understand how difficult it is to lose someone and not be able to see their face, hug them, or do everyday normal things with them any longer. Please find comfort in this; they are not gone. They aren’t erased or lost into the darkness. They are just unseeable to most. Don’t be afraid to talk to them, alone in your bedroom like a crazy person. I recommend doing it when no one else is around. But they hear you. Don’t be afraid to ask them to come visit you. Most people can experience communication with spirits inside their dreams. Be open. Watch for the little signs that they may be able to affect your physical world to let you know they’re watching and rooting for you. My loved ones leave me dimes. Where I am certain there was no dime previously. Once, I shook a dime out of my pant leg after wearing them all day. When I’m struggling, they often appear. This reminds me that the ones I’ve lost are still right here, and so are yours.

As Tiger_Army channels in their song Incorporeal - “I’m dead. I died long ago but my spirit still holds.”

Leah Marguerite