When Spirits Come Calling

It was in 1847 that the Fox family moved to Hydeville, New York. Today Hydesville no longer exists. John Fox was a farmer who moved into a somewhat small wooden house with his wife and two of three daughters Margaret and Kate. At that time Margaret was 15 and Kate was 12. Leah the eldest daughter didn’t live with them. They also had an older brother named David. The house had one drawback and that was that some sort of knocking could be heard coming from inside the walls. Because of this the Fox sisters decided on Friday March 31 to make contact with whoever was knocking at their walls. Kate who was the youngest of the two rapt on a wall in a certain pattern and requested that this rapping be repeated and it was in the same pattern. Then Margaret asked the being to rap four times and it did. However this so frightened the girls that they ran from the room. The girls came back with their sister Leah and together they made up a question and answer series through which they could communicate with the spirit. Soon they had discovered that their rapper was a peddler whose name had been Charles B. Rosma. He was supposedly murdered five years ago and buried in the basement of the house. Even though neighbors came to help dig up the basement they only found a few bones and it wasn’t until 1904 that a skeleton was actually found buried within the cellar wall but was never properly identified.

However the Fox sisters’ experimentation started a movement called Spiritualism which spread like wildfire throughout America and Europe. The basis being in the fact that spirits of the dead were able to communicate with the living and séances could be held with the help of mediums who could provide information about the afterlife.

Among the most famous of mediums is Daniel Douglas also written as Dunglas Home who was Scottish. He was able to levitate to different heights sometimes even touching ceilings with his head. Home also communicated with the spirit world and was able to produce rapings and knocks in houses at will. It was said that when Homes entered a room it shuddered as if during an earthquake. There were moments when ghostly hands would reach out and cover his eyes and the information that he gathered from the world beyond was always precise. Many famous people such as poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning and French Emperor Napoleon III met with Home.

At the time of Prince Albert’s death in 1861 Queen Victoria saw something in a London newspaper that especially drew her attention. There had been a gathering of spiritualists in which a thirteen year old boy named Robert John Lis participated. During the gathering he went into a trance and informed everyone that he was Prince Albert and that he wished to speak to Queen Victoria. Watching the event was a London newspaper reporter and he published this happening. Queen Victoria sent two representatives from her court to Lis’ house. There they participated in a séance under assumed names. When the boy went into a trance again and identified himself as Prince Albert he was able to recognize both men from the court and called them by their real names. He then proceeded to dictate a letter to Queen Victoria in which he put a secret name that had been known only between her and her husband. The queen was so impressed that she invited Lis to come and see her. Queen Victoria decided to use him as a way of being able to stay in contact with her husband Prince Albert and Lis lived at the palace for awhile. Then just as suddenly the spirit of Prince Albert left him and began using the body of the horse keeper at Balmoral Castle in Scotland. He was a very talented medium and served the queen as a servant for many years so that she would be able to stay in close touch with her beloved husband.

Around this time in America President Abraham Lincoln also came under the influence of spiritualism. He attended many spiritualist gatherings. At one such gathering a medium went into a trance, approached Lincoln and began speaking to him about the importance of freeing all slaves. At first Lincoln had no intention of doing so but eight months after being spiritually spoken to on January 1, 1863 Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation which freed millions of slaves.

Eventually anyone who was interested could watch a spiritualist gathering by paying a fee to get in. Around the year 1850 Hypolyte Leon Denizard Rivail (who was the father of Spiritism (which is the French variation of Spiritualism) began studying spiritualism theories and practices. With the help of ten other mediums he was able to come in contact with many different spirits. He asked questions about the afterlife and eternity and the answers he got were printed in a book called “The Spirit’s Book”. He took the name of Allan Kardec (these two names supposedly being his names in previous incarnations) and wrote that spirits not only incarnate but that they also progress and develop and are able to move to higher spheres.

Working in the world of spiritism we can come into direct contact with those who have left this world. We can see them, hear them, feel them and also receive written and spoken messages from them. This means that one’s life continues in a certain form after death. The thought is that when a person dies his or her astral spirit takes along with it all the knowledge it gathered during the person’s life on earth. The best way to contact those who are now in the spirit world is through a medium or through someone who knows how to get in touch with them. It is not something to play around with but a truly serious matter. A healer in Latvia Gunta Ikere recounts the following: Two women who lived in Latvia Inita and Velta loved to get together and make séances because they were both lonely and bored and wanted to find out when they would meet their soul mates. Inita was divorced and had children but Velta had no one. So they would make all sorts of supposed contacts to get answers to their questions. One time they were informed that they should go to the beach or here in Latvia the resort Yurmala where they would each meet someone. Afterwards they also saw two burning candle flames moving toward them and decided this was some kind of sign. So off to Yurmala it was. Velta decided to go there the very next morning but Inita would leave her children with her mother-in-law and join Velta in the evening. The next day after leaving the children at her mother-in-law’s Inita was busy packing when her doorbell rang but no one was there. She decided it was just the neighbors’ children playing tricks and shut the door. Then she thought she heard her small son crying in the next room and was about to go see what was the matter when she stopped dead in her tracks – the children weren’t home. By now she had an especially bad feeling. Then came something even worse there was the sound of a trumpet playing a march, the door opening and closing and footsteps in her hallway. Well Inita thought that was it both she and Velta had made contact with an evil spirit and it was coming to get her. She rushed out of the apartment and drove to an old woman who was a sort of medium to help her get out of the situation. The old woman helped her but gave her a strong talking to about not to fool around with the spirit world. And what of Velta? Waiting for Inita at Yurmala she went swimming and drowned that very day.

Why does this all fascinate me? Why do I like to write about the paranormal? My family has always had a sort of sixth sense when it comes to the spirit world. We’ve had contacts, premonitions, and I myself have seen things good and bad. My gift of premonition came when I experienced the shock of losing my father at the age of ten. Afterwards I felt him and I saw his coffin in the sky on a starry summer’s night. He died in November of 1967. Why the coffin and not him I don’t know but I do know what I saw. Many years later when I was already grown one Christmas Day while I was making Christmas dinner at my mother-in-law’s I was thinking of my father and I felt a warm hand brush across my cheek. Now of course I did turn around to see that my husband was standing in front of a cupboard with both hands full of glasses but I just knew then and there it was my father. I believe this comes from my mother’s mother who was able to predict quite a few things and could tell people their fortunes on cards. My grandfather was in the Russian army and had to take his wife and children over the Urals where he would be serving. My grandmother lost one child there, her husband was shot by the Russians specifically for having an uncanny resemblance to Czar Nicholas and left alone away from her country with my mother who was then three years old. Her hair became white overnight and then her premonitions began. When my grandmother died a very close friend of the family told me she would be a grandma to me now. I believe she was specifically sent to me because she too had the ability to contact with the spirit world. After my father’s death I was at her house and she told me as she was holding me in her lap she looked up to see my father looking in on us from the kitchen doorway. She said he wanted to be sure everything would be alright with me. Before he died my mother read the signs wrong. Her mother came to her in a flowered dress, sat at her side on the bed and showed her some signs. Years later when my mother could discuss this with me I asked her to precisely show me what it was that my grandmother had shown her. My mother had thought at the time that she was the one that would die and I pointed out to her that my grandmother had made motions like a person smoking. The smoker in our family was my father. When my mother died many years later here in Riga, Latvia and my husband wound up in the hospital that same year she came to me in physical form so that I would recognize her. She was dressed in her pajamas, with her glasses on her nose and carrying a piece of paper. She stood at my bedroom doorway and said, “I called and called but you didn’t answer so I had to come up to see you.” I knew right away that it meant that everything would be alright with my husband and that my mom would be there for me.

However even though my family has had this special type of gift I don’t abuse it because I know that I still am no expert and I’m certainly not a medium but it comforts me to know that they’re out there and they will be there for me.