Another Ghost Story
What Happens When a Ghost Shows Up Unexpectedly?
I have seen the impact that contacts from the beyond can have on people. When I was part of the Pilgrim Fellowship (PF) youth group in Connecticut — (that, in itself, such an unlikely place for me to have wound up, at the time) — I once had an experience with a fellow PF-er that gave me my first glimpse into direct contact with “the beyond”. This incident was my first up close and personal inkling that there really was a life of the spirit that transcended this bag o’ bones and flesh we inhabit during our time here on planet Earth.
I had joined that youth group because I really liked this girl I’d met on our first day in that town (Windsor). She had introduced me to it. I figured, if Mary was into it, I’d get into it. I wanted to be a part of that girl’s world, and she most generously shared her world with me.
Mary was my one-girl welcome wagon to Windsor when my family had moved there in the middle of my senior year of high school. She was a senior as well, and really felt for me being a new kid in town in the middle of my senior year. She took it upon herself to make me feel welcomed there.
I’d thought she had a deeper interest in me than that, but I turned out to be mistaken. I still did appreciate her generosity — she was a big part of my being able to “stay clean” my first two months there. I’d been a pretty hard partier from the time I first started drinking, two years before at age 15, then doing lots of other drugs I’d discovered, through my friends back in Pittsburgh. I took to drinking and drugs like a duck takes to water. They’d made me feel free, those first couple years.
Yes, I felt free, but I was also quite reckless in my newfound freedom. That led me to throwing a big party in the family home, unauthorized — about 135 kids showed up to my beer blast — which led to me going with the family to Connecticut instead of finishing out my senior year in Pittsburgh, then joining the Navy upon graduation, as planned.
All of which led me to meeting Mary on our first day in our new town. She drove Martha, whose family had just moved out of our new home, over to meet us with the keys to the place. Meeting those two beauties on Day One in front of our new home was a great start to my new Connecticut “adventure”. Both would have a significant impact on my life, both in Connecticut and well beyond.
But I digress. So, the Pilgrim Fellowship, or PF, became the center of my new social world in Windsor. I’ve always been so grateful to have met that group of kids. We met every Sunday evening, during the school year, at the Congregational Church up the road, and did all kinds of cool things. It was just us kids — no adult facilitator — and it was non-denominational. All were welcome. It turned out to be a real blast — good, clean fun. It was just what I needed, in my adventure to clean up my act, which Mom had challenged me to do.
The incident that opened my eyes to the “beyond” happened that fall, right after one of our PF meetings. I was just emerging from a suicidal depression I’d suffered that previous summer. Everything that had gone right those first couple of months in the new town had suddenly gone wrong, and had left me in a very bad place, spiritually and mentally.
It had begun with Mary, on one of our many long drives; through Massachusetts forests, to school and back every day, and just to different favorite spots of hers around the area — talking me into going to the prom. I really thought she wanted me to take her, the way she kept bringing it up, and working on my resistance to the idea. When I finally conceded and said, “You know, maybe going to the prom wouldn’t be such a weird thing to do, after all”, she’d excitedly responded, “Oh, good! I know just the girl for you to take.”
What?!?!? Oh, man, it had all been a set-up! Here, I’d grown to really like Mary, and felt that she obviously liked me, so when I’d finally worked up the courage to ask this girl who’d won my heart to be my prom date, she had “the perfect girl for me to take”? Disaster! I, of course, went along with it and said, “Oh, cool, I can’t wait to meet her”, while inside I was dying!
As soon as I got home, I dug into my sock drawer and fished out one of the joints my old Pittsburgh friend Darryl had sent me in the mail. Even though I had been “clean” for nearly 3 months, I’d stashed them there, just in case of emergency. THIS was an emergency. Not understanding addiction, nor the fact that I was already, likely, an addict, all it took was that one. They say that one is too many, and a thousand never enough. While that joint helped me to laugh at my predicament, and to see it in a better perspective, I wound up blowing through the other 5 or 6 joints in that drawer over the next few days. I was off to the races.
The problem was, I had tasted the freedom of not needing the drugs. I’d been clean for two-plus months. Lots of good things had happened. I got along better with my family than I ever had. I had managed to turn my scholastic career around, in such a short time, that I was going to be able to graduate with my class. That had been a shaky proposition when we’d first arrived. Two years of hard partying had taken it’s toll on my grades and I’d had to bust my ass, and take an extra English class that last semester in order to have enough credits to graduate.
I’d quickly plunged into a depression that led me to wanting to end it all, that whole summer following graduation. I had no idea what was going on, just that everything I thought I had in my life had left me, just like that, and I was having trouble finding a reason to live.
A good shrink, some effective anti-depressants, and the love of a mother who understood, having once been there herself, had brought me around, just in time for the fall school year. I’d decided to give college a shot before joining the navy, and was enrolled in a local community college.
The PF had started back up, and I’d had a chance encounter with the aforementioned Martha, who had apparently grown from a girl to a woman over that summer. I fell immediately head over heels for her, like a thunderbolt struck my heart. She’d liked me, too, but I came on far too strong, spilling my love for her out like a complete fool, and she’d quickly backed off. She was in no way ready for anything that serious.
Heartbroken and crestfallen, I at least had the PF to fall back on, and I threw myself into that group, just as I threw myself into my college studies, and lots of activities that fall, campaigning for McGovern against Nixon, and starting up a coffee house at a church in town. I was also getting high on a regular basis, to help fuel my newfound energy and lust for life.
There’s something about the vulnerability of a broken heart that seems to draw women to you to help you heal that shit. At least, that’s what I experienced that fall. I’d become friends with a lot of young women, and just seemed to have this magnet. I appreciated all the attention, but there was only one I really wanted, and I couldn’t have her.
Lynn was one of the girls that I became good friends with. Politically, she was way conservative to my way liberalness, but we were just drawn to each other on a common ground of fellow sufferers, me of a broken heart, her of a broken family. Her dad had died about a year before, and left her family shattered, and she had been struggling to carry on, still sorely missing her dad.
One night, after a PF meeting, we had gone for a walk in the old cemetery out behind the church. There were markers all the way back to the 1600’s in that graveyard. We had goofed around in there many a night after PF, but on this night, Lynn had asked me to take a walk with her, as she had a lot on her mind. We were having a nice talk, as we strolled through the cemetery, when all of a sudden, she started shaking uncontrollably, and having a conversation with someone else besides me, and I was the only other person there.
I didn’t know what to do — she was inconsolable, and no longer able to even acknowledge me, she was in such a state of “other-worldness” is the only way I can describe it. I managed to get her back to the church, where I went looking for Jon Day, the minister of the church who “sponsored” the PF.
Jon knew just what to do, and was able to handle her, and get her to calm down. He told me she had been in a state of shock. I would later learn, from Lynn, that she had encountered her father’s spirit while we were walking — I hadn’t realized he was buried in that cemetery — and hadn’t known how to handle that. The conversation she’d been having, while in that “state”, was with her father.
I stayed close to her for the next few weeks, and feel like I was able to help her, some, maybe by just acknowledging that she really had seen her Dad, and that spirits do come back, sometimes. After all, I’d lived in a house with a ghost for 9 years!
