Hi, my name is Patti, and I’d like to tell you a little bit about My Supernatural Life.
I have always been a rather eccentric person. I learned to read at age 3, and was “that kid” who was very much a precocious problem child. I was definitely a daddy’s girl, and my father treated my sister and me like little princesses. When I was very young, my dad got me a children’s encyclopedia. I wore out the sections on religions such as Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Shintoism, and Animism. I poured over all the pantheons that were included in its pages: Egyptian, Roman, Greek, Japanese, and several others. I was fascinated with anything that had to do with religion, but more specifically, anything supernatural or paranormal in nature. I loved the TV show “Project Blue Book” and the study of UFOs (now UAPs), as well as all about Atlantis, Cryptozoology, Urban Legends, and everything in between. I’ve always loved the study of extrasensory perception, divination, ghosts, and more. My little children’s encyclopedia looked much like a chef’s cherished cookbook, where the favorite pages were grimy and worn due to regular use.
Even though I considered myself to be an adherent of Christianity and a Good Girl™, I was still enthralled with so many of the things that I had been told the Bible didn’t want me to have an interest in. I did study the Bible in a lot of detail as well, and at our church, it was a regular event where everyone was encouraged to read the whole Bible over the course of a single year. Our pastor put up a board where we kept track of where we were along the path to completion, and I was pleased to have been able
to add more and more beside my name every week.
But as I read and found things that I couldn’t stop thinking about, I began to have questions. I know our pastor must have hated to see me coming. I had SO many questions. He never really seemed to pay much attention to my requests for understanding, and he would often simply give me books by a preacher he liked to read himself as source material. But he couldn’t answer my deepest questions…the ones about myself that I couldn’t really ask anyone about.
I was someone who “knew things” at a very young age. And when I was a child, I would regularly tell people things that were going to happen, scaring them in the process. My dad had his sister, who also “knew things,” tell me how to be more careful about how I informed someone when I knew something. She would often use euphemisms and say, “I feel like maybe you shouldn’t go there” or “I feel like you shouldn’t do that” when she knew something bad might come of a choice or plan. As a child, I didn’t know what I wasn’t supposed to know and thought nothing was odd about knowing these things. It was normal. My dad’s family line had several people like me, so I certainly wasn’t any different from other members of the family. I was never discouraged or told it wasn’t real or to stop doing it, and everyone acted like it was perfectly acceptable, except for my mother.
Interestingly enough, my mom’s father would play “psychic games” with my middle sister and me. Every Sunday after church, we would go to my grandparent's home for lunch. While my mother and her mother were in the kitchen making lunch, my grandfather would sit my little sister and me down in front of the TV and turn on Horse Racing on WGN. Now, these races were just reruns of races that were held earlier in the week, but my sister and I didn’t have any way to watch them. We only got two channels, three if we were lucky, where we lived out in the country, so for us, these were brand new. My grandfather would ask my sister and me to tell him who was going to “place, win and show,” and when we were successful, which was far more often than not, he would smile and tell us what smart little girls we were. This continued weekly until my mother came in while we were playing this game, and she yelled at her father for “encouraging us” and forbade him from continuing.
Looking back, I never thought it wasn’t a perfectly normal thing to do. Now I think about it and wonder why my mom’s parents had no problems with their psychic grandchildren, why they thought of it as normal, as it was my dad’s family who were known to be like us, not theirs. But back then, I never thought to ask, and now it’s too late to find out.
I do know my mother seemed to be terrified of us and this “knowing things.” She feared me more than my younger sister, though I’m not sure why that was even now. My mother and I had fought over where our gifts came from as well. I had read the Bible and seen that many of those who were considered God’s Chosen and were strong in the Holy Spirit had gifts and abilities, much like the magic practiced now. Yet my mother said those things weren’t acceptable anymore and that anyone who claimed such abilities or gifts now could only have gotten them from Satan-and she called me Demon Child from time to time to emphasize her personal beliefs on the matter. As someone who had always been a strong student of Christianity, it disturbed me to no end to see my mother take this stance on my gifts, knowing as I did through my studies that many of the great men of God were gifted in such ways.
I think the straw that broke the camel’s back for my mother was when my sister and I told her about the little baby she was carrying that she had only found out about the day before. As we slept, my sister and I talked about the baby and how she wouldn’t come until October, though she was due on mom’s Birthday, that she would have red hair and freckles, and that she would be born dead, but we would play with her anyway. I’m sure this must have horrified our mother to no end, and the following morning, my mother took me aside after breakfast to tell me these things and also told me that she never wanted me to tell her anything I knew ever again. It seems my sister and I did this regularly, talking in our sleep and talking about the future. Mom said it started out that she heard us talking and thought we were staying up late and talking to each other in general, but then she came in to find us both fully asleep and talking about things that would come to be. She said she sat and listened each time, but this time, she heard something she couldn’t bear, and I was punished for frightening her so badly. Later on, our little sister arrived. She was indeed born in October, had strawberry blonde hair and freckles, and was born with the cord wrapped around her neck but was resuscitated and is still very much alive today.
So now, all these years later, I am a “reader” working out of a local holistic shop near my home, and I give readings to those who come seeking answers or just to have a good time. I used to read tarot or oracle cards, but now I just read people’s energy and auras. Sometimes, I can pick things out of their heads and tell them what they’re thinking, and even though sometimes my readings might sound “really out there,” I am pretty accurate and am known for that accuracy.
When I told my mother what it was I was doing here, she said it was probably the best job I could ever have and was probably the only job I could do well. She no longer remembers where it is that I work, and she forgets what it is that I do.
I went to visit her about a month ago, and though she remains frightened of my knowing things when I told her that I had a message from my dad, her husband, who had passed away in 2012, she listened and followed through with what he had asked her to do. Soon, we shall see what will come of it…
So that’s a little about me, and as I continue to write here on Medium, I’ll tell you more stories about my life, things I’ve done, and what it is I do now, working out of the little holistic shop here in Salem, VA.
Come on by and see me; you never know what I might be able to tell you…
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