GHOSTS AND OTHER THINGS

When I was young, in my 20s, I was so sure of myself, so certain in my thinking. I think it came from all the support I got from this theosophical group, Arcana Workshops, to which I belonged for ten to fifteen years and with whom I meditated daily and then studied the writings of AAB and wrote a lot for my mentor there. I actually came to believe that I was the World Avatar! Now that’s confidence. It’s also delusional but then I never shouted it from any rooftops or even whispered it to anyone, including my wife. It was my secret and I was just biding my time until the right moment to reveal myself to the world—which never came.

          My participation began in 1971 after I was assigned to two years’ civilian alternative service as a conscientious objector at Greer, A Children’s Community, near Millbrook, New York. I had never meditated in a disciplined way before, though I had been exposed to some Rosicrucian (AMORC) meditation techniques, and also teachings pertaining to the various “levels of being.” I had learned, for instance, that it was the astral level, or emotional level, on which ghosts or earth-bound spirits existed, and that to free oneself from haunting by ghosts, one had to raise one’s level of consciousness, of being, above the astral, to the mental.

          At Greer I began to experience a whole horde of grabbing, mischievous, dark, frightening “ghosts” who would literally grab at my clothes, face, hands, and try to force me to slow down my pace and stop when I would walk out of my cottage at night. But worse, they appeared to the children to whom I was houseparent, at night when they were in bed, and literally pinch their toes. The children would wake up screaming and terrified several times a week. My first response to this situation was to instruct the kids to say to the ghosts, if they could gather their wits to do so, “In the name of Jesus Christ, I order you to leave this place and to move on.” I even splashed “holy water” from a Catholic Church in the rooms, and burned sage, though more for the kids’ sense of safety than my belief it would work. The hauntings actually increased, probably since they now had our full attention. At that point, I noticed a small ad, I think in the back of Atlantic magazine, that said: “Meditation with a meditating group. Raise yourself above the astral level.” I was amazed that it actually noted “raising consciousness above the astral.” I became involved very quickly, was practicing the mental-spiritual meditation, and was noticing that when I did go out and walk at night, the ghosts no longer bothered me, even though I could still sense their presence. I was “raising my vibrations” through this meditation. Then I got my boys together, ten of them, ages four through ten, and I taught them how to do this meditation, which, in turn, gave them the confidence to confront the ghosts and tell them to go away “in Jesus’ name.” Each night we meditated together for a few minutes before bedtime. The children were “on board” with the whole process, since they, having firsthand experience with the ghosts, definitely did not like them.

          Not long afterward, I had one more intense experience with the ghosts. My wife, Nikki, was very susceptible to the ghosts. She could literally see them; they would fully materialize in front of her. I didn’t see them, but would feel them, emotionally and physically. However, on this one night we were in our apartment in our cottage and suddenly Nikki froze, her eyes staring at something, her mouth open. I looked where she was staring and saw a woman standing there in an ankle-length black dress and high-buttoned black shoes, but only as far up at her knees. Nikki could see the whole person. Then, in that same moment, the whole room, which had lights on in it, suddenly became darkened, as if filled with odorless smoke. And the temperature in the room fell below freezing so that I could “see my breath” condensing in the cold air. There was then another dark figure in the room and a frightening sound of the wings of a large bird, like a crow. We were so terrified in this darkness, these figures, and this sound of wings—so overcome by a feeling of overwhelming evil. The room was pitch black and freezing. As strange as it may be, we both jumped into bed and piled covers upon ourselves, holding each other tightly, waiting for the very worst to happen. Then they were gone just as quickly as they came; the room was lit and it was warm. The ghosts never appeared again in such a personal way, though a couple of times after that, in broad daylight, I saw perhaps twenty ghosts standing at the edge of the meadow at a distance in front of the great trees of the bordering forest. They seemed to just stand there unthreatening and still, gazing at me. I felt a sorrow and silently told them to move on.

          There is a historical explanation for the presence of the ghosts. In my research, which consisted of talking with a few “old-timers” around the town of Millbrook and a farmer near Greer, plus my own study of the history of the place itself, I discovered that it had been an Episcopalian orphanage, built in the mid-1800s, consisting of two large Georgian structures, which now housed the administration and the school. What had happened was that, in the 1890s, the place was swept by some kind of plague, probably either smallpox or cholera, that killed almost every adult and child who was there. And the adults, in their black Episcopalian, Victorian garb, for whatever reason, remained. But it wasn’t just that, in my estimation. It seemed to me that there was also a particular presence of evil that permeated the atmosphere even on the sunniest, most beautiful days, like the day I saw the figures lined up along the edge of the meadow. I had thought that perhaps they were just shadows of the trees behind them in the late afternoon, but they were not; the sunlight was directed towards the forest—there could not have been shadows where the figures were.

          Some of the houseparents there, who had been there for many years, should not have been there, in my estimation. I knew one or two that physically abused the children or were able to bribe the other children under their care to beat certain “disobedient” children. And there may have been a pedophile, though I couldn’t be sure about it. On the other hand, there were other conscientious objectors like myself, who were young and caring and tuned-in to the children, and were excellent houseparents. One old woman had survived the fire-bombing of Dresden in WWII and told me horrendous stories about that. Another, Galen, a conscientious objector, was a cowboy from Montana, who played a guitar and sang cowboy songs to the teenage “tough” boys from Harlem, who loved his music and respected him greatly. My little kids liked me too because, though white, I was a bearded, long-haired hippie, and rather disliked by the administrators and campus policeman, who once called me a “recalcitrant, Marxist hippie” in front of the kids. Though I doubt whether they knew what “recalcitrant” and “Marxist” meant, they certainly didn’t like and were afraid of the campus cop, and must’ve felt I was somehow “on their side” after that.

          My dismay at the behavior of some of the houseparents towards their wards caused me to contact the AFL-CIO in the naïve hope that to unionize the houseparents might provided some good “child-training” courses to show the houseparents how to actually help children with love and concern rather than to promote fear and racism. When I met the local union rep, it was like meeting a Mafioso chieftain, literally buffered by bodyguards with guns. I started secretly organizing, meeting with houseparents on campus to persuade them to join the union. The campus policeman and his crew, who cruised the Greer campus with guns in the pick-ups, may have been informed by a houseparent. I had discovered, though another houseparent whose girlfriend worked as the personal secretary of the man who ran the whole operation at Greer, that this administrator had embezzled funds to send his family to Europe and actually pay his children’s tuitions at Ivy League colleges. What finally happened was that my co-organizer, a conscientious objector, Lee, was killed in an accident; the brake lines of his truck had been cut. I was closely watched by men in pick-ups on the campus after that—and was followed by them at a distance when I left the campus on errands. The union didn’t come about.