by Jacquie Schmall

Created on: January 07, 2009

In a very old two story apartment building in downtown Brooklyn, New York, while waiting for a friend of mine to finish with a client in the small cafe on the main floor, I wandered upstairs to see what it was like. The upstairs apartment had not been lived in for some time, and was empty of furniture. I wandered through the several rooms, and stopped for a minute to just breathe, and get a sense of what it might have been like to live there.

In that moment, a woman appeared. One minute it was just an empty room and I, and the next I was not alone. She just manifested. She was dressed in clothing from a previous century. Although we never spoke a word, in some way, I knew her name to be Violet.

Her presence was very strong, but she didn't stay long. When she disappeared, I remained transfixed, wondering what had just happened. Until that time, I had never considered ghosts in a personal way. However, in a firm, very calm manner, Violet changed my mind.

I was never fearful. To be sure Violet was not a scary ghost, just an old tenant checking on her old apartment in Brooklyn.

Forward the clock twenty five years, and find me living in St. Helena, CA. It was a lovely apartment on property adjacent to a ten acre vineyard. From day one, my sleep was interrupted. There was no one else on the property at the time, and it was the ultimate, quiet neighborhood. There didn't seem to be a reason for the disturbances.

As time went on, I felt odd movements of my bed shortly after I slid happily under the covers to go to sleep. They were unpredictable, and deeply unsettling. The bedcovers might shift as well. Even though I was snuggled under warm blankets, there was a presence in the place that gave me a cold chill.

I mentioned my experience to the vineyard manager. When he lived on the property, he had experienced some odd things as well.

He had a habit of drinking orange juice in the morning, and leaving the glass in a particular place. On several mornings, when he skipped the juice, he found the glass in the old familiar location.

Then a friend of mine arrived from New Mexico. In her healing work, she had become familiar with spiritual matters. Before she left, we went into the courtyard together, armed with Sage and Quartz crystals. With guided imagery, in the midst of a cloud of Sage smoke, she created an imaginary stairway, and gave permission to whatever was disturbing my peace, to leave the property.

She encountered a powerful sense of relief. Apparently, there were many spirits trapped in that place, and they had been trying to leave for some time. She gave them seven days. And, strange as it may seem, in seven days the disturbances stopped, and I had to assume she had been successful. I was never bothered again.

Later, I discovered there had been a massacre of Native Americans in the nineteenth century, less than thirty miles from the property. Were the two connected? I have no clue. However, I have spoken to several people who could make a case for that connection.

I've had two other encounters with that same kind of chilling, errant, energy. One in a building where someone had been murdered, and another on property with a history of Native Americans.

So then, as much as my background in science would give me reason to challenge the existence of ghosts, experience has given me more reason to believe in them.

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