The Accidental Medium

Anthony’s Message was written for the family of Anthony McColl about three months after the accident that took the life of a vibrant 19 year old young man.  Anthony was – and still is – the son of dear family friends.

This story was my attempt to recount our own experience in the wake of the possibly avoidable death of Anthony – to offer some peace, reassurance and a life altering perspective on this tragic incident.

A year later, this story was published in the book A Father’s Tears by David McColl, Anthony’s father.   If you have lost a child, or are supporting someone who has lost a child, I highly recommend reading A Father’s Tears.

The recent tragedy in Newtown CT compelled me to publish Anthony’s Message here.  The loss of a child is unthinkable. But when we are forced to think about it, let alone experience it, we may leave ourselves open to a spiritual awakening.

I hope that Anthony’s message will give people hope that life is not what it seems, that there is a higher perspective – an expansive view of life being lived on a continuum. We never lose those we love. They are with us, and here to support us on our earthly journey.  This is the first of three installments. Please read on…

“Mommy!!! Wake up! Wake Up!”
Matilda is sitting straight up in bed in the darkened room. She’s got both hands on my bare left arm, yanking me from a deep sleep.  Kate, Matilda and I are supposed to be in the middle of a Friday night sleepover at Mom’s condo. Matilda and I are bunking in Mom’s room.  We all went to bed late.  It’s now well past midnight, the exact time unsure.  This is too soon to wake up.

I’m barely conscious. “what’s the matter, Mattie?” I murmur.

Matilda is talking in a stage whisper. “Mommy. I’m scared… There’s somebody here. They’re here on my side. I don’t know who it is. Can we change sides? Please? I’m scared…”

“o.k.” I sigh as I slide towards her, pull her up and over me and settle her on the other side of the bed.  I scoot over to Matilda’s well-warmed spot.  I find her soft white blankie and her dog-eared bunny toy nestled there.  I snuggle them down beside Matilda who is now almost back to sleep, then roll over on my side to get more shuteye.

But I can’t.

There’s definitely somebody here.
I stop trying to sleep and try to discern the subtle but pressing energy.  It feels like a male presence.  It’s moving around this corner of the room.  A paper rustles, something softly scuffs a surface.  He’s by the bed again – it’s a calm gentle energy.  It could be my Dad, or my grandfather or …?  The usual suspects would normally let me know exactly who they are. And there are a few others who tend to wake us up at night.  Who is it?

But it’s weird.  Nighttime visitations have never happened at Mom’s condo. Whoever it is,  is not making himself known.  I know I’ll find out soon enough if it’s important.  I try again to settle down to sleep. I can’t.  I wonder what he needs?

Sunlight is leaking around the edges of the drapes when Kate and Mom tiptoe into the room. Matilda is snoring softly on her side of the bed as I whisper to Mom that Matilda didn’t sleep well. We need to let her sleep in. Someone woke her up. Someone has definitely been in the room.  It felt like it was a male.  Mom whispers she’s not slept well either. Kate was very restless, flopping around like a fish out of water. We both agree. Something’s “up”.

Bleary-eyed with coffee in hand.
Mom and I try to revive ourselves in the living room.  As I gradually perk up I think more about last night. Very strange. Matilda would normally tell me to get rid of the unknown visitor  – tell them to go away.  People she doesn’t know she calls “monsters” – I guess because she’s scared, they don’t come in clearly enough to be seen.   I’d say the usual: ‘Thanks but no thanks. We can’t help you now.  Please go.’ They usually do.

During these situations, Matilda always asks me to call in Grampa Grant to watch over us to make sure nobody will bug us.  But last night I didn’t do any of this. Did Matilda feel this person was meant to be with us?  I guess I may have felt that too. At least it never occurred to me to ask them to leave.  The energy was somehow familiar.

With Matilda now up and both girls busy munching on breakfast, I slip into Mom’s bathroom for a quick shower. I’m not fully positioned under the showerhead when I hear the matter-of-fact statement in my head, “ “Someone close to you has died.”

“Whaaat?” I say back, incredulous. This is awful.  My mind whips into worst-case-scenario. Oh God, I hope it’s not my husband. He’s in the air right now on his way here, to be with his family. It’s a stormy morning, with high winds.

I’m given no more details.
But when I get out of the shower, I hear the phone ring.  The voice in my head says softly, calmly, unemotionally, “Here we go…”  I peek out the bathroom door and Mom is in the bedroom, portable phone to her ear, tears streaming down her face. “You better talk to your sister…” she says into the phone.

It’s my brother Andy.  Andy is in charge of calling people. We’re his first call. He can hardly talk. Brief details. Anthony was in a fatal car accident early this morning.  I get hit by a wave of grief.  Anthony is such a great kid.  Everybody loves Anthony. This is devastating. Oh God. Poor Monica and Rufus.  As parents, it’s their worst fear realized. This shouldn’t be happening. It’s not right.

Then a thought bubbles up.  Could it be Anthony who visited last night?  What time was the crash?  What time did Matilda wake me up?  Around 3 a.m. I’d guess. Matilda doesn’t really know Anthony. She was a baby the last time his family visited us at the lake. Whoever it was seemed to be attracted to her.

I’m packing up our sleepover bags.  The girls are readying their gear to load the car, then pick up their Dad at the airport.

A voice in my head says. “He’s with his grandmother. He’s crossed over. It was instant.”

I don’t know if this is wishful thinking or if it’s a clear message. I let it rest.

Hubbie is home safe. 
We’re now in our kitchen at the lake, making platters for the appetizer table at the annual fundraising event for Matilda’s co-op preschool – it’s happening tomorrow.  Kate has helped us finish filling spring rolls and now we’re busily rolling sushi.  For no apparent reason I look up and stare at the stacked ovens.  Why am I looking there?  We’re not using the ovens.

A male is standing there facing me.  He’s a big guy, he’s young. Dark wavy hair falls in front of his face.  It’s not the first time I’ve had Spirit visitors beside my ovens.  All the electricity – it’s a magnet. Spirits often use the energy that charges big appliances to come through to this side.  My fridge has the same power, and the same effect.

Is that Anthony?? I’m not sure. He’s faint. He comes in and out – at least it seems that way.   I sigh. I don’t enjoy this space – not knowing whether it’s wishful thinking, my imagination or a real visit. But I’ve learned what to do. I push away the vision.  If it goes away, it’s wishful thinking. If the vision comes back again, gets stronger with more details, if we interact, it’s the real deal.

We continue our veggie sushi marathon. I look up from my sushi mat, frustrated with an inside-out roll that’s not working for me, to find the young man standing by the ovens but this time with an older woman beside him.  I think it’s his grandmother.  They aren’t talking, just calmly surveying the scene. I acknowledge their presence.  They disappear.  I’m feeling it’s Anthony but my ego needs more proof. I don’t say anything to my husband.

It’s late.
The girls are now in bed and I’m in my upstairs bathroom – my channeling room – brushing my teeth, washing my face.  A subtle presence comes in.  I say, “Anthony, if this is you, I will help you get any messages to your family. I promise.”  There’s no answer.

I don’t sleep well. None of us do. Kate wakes up. “Daddy!”  She’s had a bad dream and can’t get back to sleep.  Her Dad goes down to Kate’s room to settle her down.  I hear her cry out every time he tries to leave. He stays with her.

It’s Matilda’s turn. “Mommy!” Matilda often wakes up in the middle of the night. She gets up by herself to pee, read her picture books, chat with unseen friends, sing pre-school songs, recite newly learned rhymes.  She only calls out if she’s sick, she’s wet the bed, she’s hungry.  Or, if there’s a visitor.

I stumble down the stairs. “Mommy!” Matilda is crying now as I walk into her room. “There’s somebody here!”  Matilda pleads.

“It’s okay, Honey. It’s okay. It’s just Anthony. He’s our friend. He’s visiting.  He’s a good guy.  We love Anthony. Time to go back to sleep. We’ve got a big day tomorrow.”

Matilda seems reassured.  “o.k…  Can you stay with me ‘til when the sun comes?” Matilda mumbles from under the covers.

I agree, crawling into the spare bed.

I dream that Dad is standing by my bed.
He tells me in my sleep, “Anthony and Matilda have the same kind of energy.”

In the morning we are scrambling to get ready for church. I’m back in my bathroom, finished my hair and now doing my face. My Dad, now in Spirit for more than 15 years, is in his usual spot, leaning against the counter, arms crossed.

“Dad? Why Anthony?”

Dad answers back immediately, “Soon you’ll understand.”

I reach into my walk-in closet and dig out some pant stockings from a drawer.

Dad adds, “You’ll say his name in church today.”

ugghh.  I know what this is. It’s a test from Spirit.

Dad knows I like to lie low in the pew. 
I go to church, but as an outlier in the protestant religion, I feel it’s not my place to speak up in church:  I feel I’m in no position since I don’t subscribe to some of its fundamental tenets.  Case in point:  I have not accepted Jesus Christ as my personal savior, yet this is a cornerstone of our religion.

Don’t get me wrong.  I’m a firm believer in what Jesus stood for, his lessons, his compassionate role model, and I am in awe of Christ consciousness that manifests every day, in warm gestures, in respectful responses, in thoughtful deeds, showing how we are all connected.  The Dalai Lama sums up Christ consciousness by saying, “My religion is kindness”.  I subscribe to that. So I go to church.

Dad’s request refers to a quiet portion during the service where churchgoers are encouraged to speak the names of people who are in their thoughts this week.  Gisele, our Minister, then leads the congregation through a spontaneous community prayer that includes the names of these people. It’s an unrehearsed moment where everyone seems to connect.

I make a feeble attempt to lessen my potential involvement at church this morning. “Dad, You know I don’t DO that…”

Dad looks at me and waits.

“But…,”I’m thinking out loud. “I guess if there was a time to speak up, it would be today, after what happened.”

“Don’t worry about it, Putty,” encourages Dad in my left ear.  “It will all work out.”

(Putty is my nickname – because I tend to be on the go, doing something, thinking about something, working on something. Dad used to say I was always putt-putting around. )

I don’t know how this is going to play out. Maybe I will say something. Maybe I won’t need to. I have to wait and see. And trust that soon I’ll understand…

- With thanks to Spirit for infinite return.

(Story to be continued in Anthony’s Message – Part 2.)

 

(c) 2010, 2011, 2012 The Accidental Medium. UltraMarine Media Inc. All Rights Reserved.

It’s Trick or Treat Time Again.
The leaves are falling and the pumpkins are being carved. My kids have already sorted out their costumes:  Halloween is a big deal around in the Village so the girls are with the program.  Kate is going for the unicorn look. Matilda has eschewed the ubiquitous fairy costume, and chosen her favorite avian, the penguin.  In the midst of our Halloween planning my friend McFly has emailed me for some timely advice.

Mcfly and I go back 20 years, to our salad days in the Caribbean.
We’ve known each other long enough that we never use our real names – He’s McFly because he’s always disliked the stupidity of Biff the bully in “Back to the Future.”  It was Biff’s goal to make Michael J. Fox’s character “McFly” look stupid and inferior at every turn with the now classic put down: “Helloo?? McFly??” In fact it was Biff who didn’t get it and had to learn that there are consequences to one’s selfishness, narrowness and lack of sensitivity.  My friend McFly relishes the fairness in the world when the McFly’s triumph over the Biff’s.

McFly calls me “Tida” after our mutual friend’s so-named cockatiel since, left untamed, my hair has it’s own perverse tendency to stick up like the crest of the aforementioned bird.

We both worked at a dive resort. McFly was honing his craft as a horror fiction writer at the time, paying the bills as a Scuba instructor and boat captain. I worked in resort sales & marketing. McFly often dropped off his stories to the “gals” in the office for us to read between answering calls on the resort’s 800#. Well-written, McFly’s work was not easy-going fare. It really was horror.

Did I mention I am not a huge fan of horror?
I always try to avoid anything having to do with evil, violence, gore, chainsaws, wigged out mental patients, and demented beings along with witches, vampires and ghosts that are gonna get you… McFly and I are close friends so I would faithfully read his material, even though the bloodied-psychopath-to-page ratio was very high.

So this email from McFly is about ghost tours in New Orleans.
Now McFly is a professional photographer who’s made Nawlins his stomping grounds since Katrina.  He manages to make a descent living and supplement it as an official New Orleans Tour Guide.  With Halloween almost upon us, I read that McFly is going to be conducting ghost tours of the most haunted places in N.O.

My response: “Waycool! I want to go!” I’d been to New Orleans many times before Katrina – and pretty much the whole French Quarter felt haunted. Not a clear building in the place in my view.  It would be interesting to see what it’s like now.

The email, however, is not an invite to visit haunted New Orleans.
It is a request for information to make McFly’s own upcoming ghost tours more juicy, more personalized, more informative, and add value. What better way then to ask his buddy ole ghost busting pal for advice? Having Certified Management Consultant AND Ghostbuster on my curriculum vitae may be a bit over the top to some, but to my buddy McFly, it’s coming in handy right about now.

Did I mention that in my earlier years, I was not a fan of ghosts?
Before I embraced my intuitive abilities, I was unsettled by the general concept of ghosts. And then there was my fear of actually seeing ghosts. And then I was afraid of telling people I saw ghosts.  It wasn’t until I had some very up close and personal one-on-one experiences with ghosts that I realized that ghosts are people too. It was the ghosts that helped me to drop the fear.  They are a gift.

I’m sure I’ve met more than my share of ghosts.
I’ve helped a few go to the light. I’ve done some “ghost busting” for clients – yet no vacuums are involved, nobody gets slimed and, contrary to popular belief, nobody gets busted. I promise.  I have never heard a ghost say” BOO.” Not ever.

McFly had some very specific questions in his email that are probably of interest to you, dear AM Reader.  So read on as I share with you my responses to McFly’s questions about the ghostly realms. I will be posting new ghost-related entries every day this week up until Halloween. Here is McFly’s first question:

#1. What are ‘Ghosts’?
Oh, the much maligned Ghost. Here’s my take. “Ghosts are people too”.  But first, we are all Spirit and we are all vibrating energy.  We who are here on this earthly plane happen to be in physical bodies. When we die, it’s our body that dies. Our Spirit goes to another plane of consciousness – a non-physical realm.

If we don’t “go to the light” as they say on the “Ghost Whisperer”, we actually go to the planes of consciousness closest to the physical plane (a.k.a. earth) called the astral planes.  Those who reside in the astral planes are in a higher energy vibration than earth, but not as high in vibration as those true Spirits who reside in the higher realms.

What’s ego got to do with it?
While residing in the astral planes we are, for lack of a better term, a “Ghost”. Our ego is still pretty much intact.  We retain much of the predominant personality traits and foibles we had on earth. If we die and “go to the light” we go to higher realms of consciousness (and there are many higher realms) where our egos start to dissipate and eventually fall away.  We become our true “Spirit”.

Which realm we go to when we die depends on how far we are on our path – how enlightened we are so to speak. Our personal energy vibration determines where we go. Jesus is in a very high realm. He’s got a high vibration. He’s no ghost. When we go to the higher realms we are still us, along with any outstanding lessons to be learned but we are not weighed down by the baggage created by our earth-bound ego. Note that our ego doesn’t come back into being until after we incarnate back on earth.  Childhood educators estimate our ego begins forming around ages two to three and is fully formed by about age seven – ready to be shaped and twisted more by life’s experiences.

Of course, in reality , we never die. We are very much alive whether we are here in the physical, a ghost in the astral plane or have gone to the light in true spirit form.   We are just energy vibrating at different speeds.

Not all ghosts are ghosts.
Here’s the thing – Spirits who have gone to the light, crossed over, past on, whatever you want to call it, can come back and visit us. They are not ghosts. They are true Spirits. It takes a tremendous amount of energy for a Spirit to come down to our earthly, low vibrating plane of consciousness.  My Dad likens coming into our physical plane like swimming through mud. It’s not such a big dive to come in from the astral planes to here if you are in ghost form. There is less of a difference in energetic frequencies between our physical plane and the astral planes where ghosts hang out. But the veil between realms is getting very thin these days so there are more direct encounters with Spirits, not just ghosts.

Soul tripping on the astral planes.
When alive we regularly visit the astral planes. It’s called astral projection.  We go to this same lower plane (or planes) of consciousness to hang out with loved ones, and those from past lives, and learn more about ourselves.  We usually are not aware of such trips. But sometimes we are:  When you wake up with a dream in your head that is so vivid you remember every detail, you’ve probably been traveling the astral planes. BTW  During sleep, we all astrally-project – but probably not every night.  Our soul leaves our body during these trips,  but we are still tied to our bodies by a chord so we can’t get lost and miss finding our body lying back in bed.  It’s a good thing.

#2.  Why do some people not leave after the body dies?
Many people who die don’t go straight to the light. They hang around to make sure everything is okay with their loved ones. They may hang out a few hours, a day, a week, a month or a couple of months. They are essentially ghosts but they will go to the light. It is pulling them. When they get the big pull towards bliss, or another loved one encouraging them to go, they go to the light. When a person who dies hangs around with no intention of going to the light, or not knowing what the light is, they stay in the lower energetic “ghostly” form.

The “Unfinished Business” factor.
Ghosts don’t leave for a number of reasons, but usually it’s “Unfinished Business”.

• It could be guilt, or shame about something or concern about someone living that keeps them close to the physical plane.
• Sometimes people have died in a traumatic way, and don’t know they have died so they don’t know to go to the light. (But other times a traumatic death, a surprise death, an accident as it were, can actually take them away to the higher realms instantly).
• People who are high on drugs or alcohol have a greater tendency to stay in the ghostly (astral) realms because they are totally confused.
• Some people stay because they aren’t ready to go – they have a message for a loved one and need to see it through.
• Others stay because they were just plain nasty in life – the lower astral planes are full of low lifes – and they are comfortable in that vibration.  They want to keep wreaking a bit of emotional havoc on this side.

A bit more about ghost busting.
As I mentioned, some ghosts don’t leave because they have unfinished business   while others are merely lost and confused.  But the astral planes can be an unhappy place for people who are stuck.  Our higher self – our Spirit – is meant for the higher realms.  “Life” looks  very different at higher vibrations where we can finally experience our true pure nature. So those who “ghost bust” are really just encouraging ghosts to move on to these higher planes of consciousness.

There are ways to show wayward ghosts that they can come back and visit after they cross over, and that seems to clinch the deal for some. If a ghost is still unwilling to go to the light, ghost busters can do things to calm the environment, and if they are Mediums they can act as message bearers to the living and this often will calm the ghost, and possibly encourage them to move on.  And if that doesn’t work, and the ghost is still causing a ruckus in the physical environment, we can often make the environment incompatible with the ghost’s energy and they will often leave.  Not all ghosts will leave.  And not all are ghosts.  More on that later… (Part 2 – Manifestations 101).

Tida (aka The Accidental Medium)

— With thanks to Spirit for infinite return.
(c) 2010, 2011, 2012 The Accidental Medium. UltraMarine Media Inc. All Rights Reserved.