10:15pm

“You look shell shocked.”

That’s what my husband said when I shuffled in, half-fell on the couch, and stared at the wall.

“Dahling?” he cocked his head.

Just give me a minute, my hand said.

A local mom reached out to me last week. Something was troubling their family and could I please come vibe it out. Like, quick.

Of course I could.

If you’re new to this blog, my name is Jennifer.

I’m a:

1. Mom
2. Wife
3. Author
4. Librarian

I also detect ghosts in people’s homes.

This subject can be taboo here in the Bible Belt, and to that I say please. Do you really think God, ghosts, or Aunt Betty who died in 1962 defer to geography or religion?
( . . . please. )

I’m a normal person –okay relatively normal person– who sees, hears, and feels ghosts/spirit/angels almost daily. I use this blog to chronicle these run-ins with the Other Side, plus help people which I think is the point.

Anyway, if a house is “haunted” (loaded word –don’t like it), I’ll know immediately.

For me, ghosts/spirit present in the following ways:

1. Flashes or moving orbs of light
2. Apparitions
3. Shadow People

-and what I call-

4. “Invisible Man”

By the time I left their house, I’d encounter three of the four.

Earlier that day — all day really, I felt uneasy. Like deep-down belly quivers. And here’s the thing: I don’t get nervous or scared. Not really. Not easily, anyway. I drove to their house with a squiggly belly but game face on, saying my usual prayers — always out loud: God, please be with me. Keep me clear headed, energetically safe, and please let me actually help these people (Amen).

6:45pm

No one was home when I arrived. I knocked on the door, waited a few minutes, then knocked again. The yard outside felt *crackly*. Charged. Like taking hot clothes from the dryer in November.

Mom was running late. But rather than walking around the yard or poking my nose in the garage (where things supposedly felt worst), I sat in my car, charged my phone, and listened to Barbra Streisand. (Avoiding, basically.)

Why was I so uneasy?

Mom and daughters eventually arrived. They were super sweet, welcoming me with genuine smiles — so that was nice. Mom unlocked the door.

Here’s what I knew going in:

1. Mom and one daughter reported direct contact with (what they could only assume were) ghosts on multiple occasions.
2. I was possibly dealing with a psychic child.
3. Mom and daughter said the garage felt “the worst.”
4. The house had relative proximity to the Body Farm, Texas State’s 26-acre research facility where forensic anthropologists study cadavers in various stages of decomposition.

. . . need a visual?

(welcome.)

Anyway, Mom and daughters buzzed about, readying to leave again (gymnastics), so I walked around the living room for initial vibage.

The house was clean, modest, and to me had a sense of ‘we-haven’t-quite-finished-decorating’. It was also very open. There were no hallways. A spacious living room gave way to three bedrooms, bathroom, and newly remodeled kitchen.

My eyes were immediately drawn to a bedroom near the front door. Actually, my eyes were drawn to that entire corner of the room, where there was –conspicuously– no furniture.

I entered the bedroom.

Yep.

Heavy, stagnant atmosphere. Like an airful of leftover nightmares.

“Isabel!” I called. (She was the sensitive child). “Do you mind coming in here?”

She walked in, wringing her hands. She is a bright-faced, articulate 12 year old.

“This is your room?” I asked.

She nodded.

“What do you feel in here?”

“I don’t like it.” She shook her head.

“Why?” I asked, really wanting to open her windows. Covered windows make a room with bad energy worse.

“I don’t know,” she shrugged. “And I really don’t like my closet.”

I slid open the wide, concertina doors.

Ew. She was right. I didn’t like it either. But I wasn’t sure why. I stuck my hand in there. DEFINITELY a concentration of energy. Like the funk originated in there and seeped into the room. But what. Why. I didn’t detect an entity –not yet. I stuck my hand on the closet’s back wall. Slow chills travelled up my arm. Definitely uncomfortable. I later asked Mom to do the same.

She agreed it felt funky. “Like it’s humming?” she said. But funky doesn’t mean GHOST — and humming suggested electromagnetic energy. But there were no electronics. Nothing plugged in anywhere near, and certainly not in the closet.

Maybe on the other side of the wall?

I walked out. — Nope. The back of her closet shared a wall with that conspicuously naked part of the living room.

“I had a couch there,” Mom sighed. “But no one would sit there.”

Dang, I could feel why. Just standing there, my head started throbbing. Bad. And I don’t get headaches. I kept this quiet.

Isabel joined me in the space.

“Do you feel anything here?” I asked, trying not to grimace. The pain was RIGHT between my eyebrows. Sharp and stabbing.

“Makes me feel sick.” She folded arms over her tummy.

I believed her.

I took deep breaths to ease my headache and walked to the other bedrooms. Mom’s room felt great. Light and sunny, clean and clear. Like the bleedin’ sunshiny outdoors compared to THAT corner of the living room. Then I entered Zoey’s room.

Zoey is the little sister. Isabel recently started sleeping with her because:

“Ghosts visit my room at bedtime,” she’d told her Mom.

When Mom pressed, Isabel explained they wanted her to give messages to loved ones. This (understandably) freaked her out, but the issue persisted in sister’s room. In fact, Zoey confided that Isabel’s voice woke her up one night, “talking loud” in what Mom later described as “full dialogue” to something unseen:

“What’s your name?” Isabel asked in the dark. “Oh!” she exclaimed, “Your stitches are gone!”

Mind you, she could’ve been dreaming. I can’t rule that out, but vibing a house is like solving a jigsaw. There are many pieces to assemble. And one piece was Isabel’s psychic ability which I was still trying to ascertain.

I entered Zoey’s room and immediately saw quick movement by the window.

Invisible Man.

I call this type of Spirit “Invisible Man” because it appears like clear gel moving through the air.

And I saw it in the corner by the window. The presence felt neither positive or negative, just there.

“Isabel?” I called again.

They were readying to leave, but she bounced in the room.

“Do you feel anything in here?” I sat on the edge of Zoey’s bed. This room felt tons better than Isabel’s, but that entity was still to my left. Isabel stood still and looked around. Then pointed to the window. To my left.

“Alright,” I smiled. “Have fun at gymnastics.”

Mom announced their departure and told me to make myself at home.

“Are you gonna be here when I get back?” Isabel called from the doorway.

“Probably,” I nodded. Didn’t know I’d be trembling, needing a drink . . . (but I digress.)

They left, and the house was completely quiet. It was getting dark, too.

Time to work.

I immediately returned to Isabel’s room and lay on her bed, quieting my mind. I lay there about 15 minutes, staring at the open closet. Interestingly, the room felt lighter.

The house was still. Silent.

I waited.

Then something caught my attention — a white, zig zagging light. Just outside Isabel’s open door, in the living room. A ha.

It was moving around the house.

I bolted from her bed. And I gotta tell you, the SECOND I hit the living room, it’s like someone jacked my personal WTF meter up to TEN. Maybe even ELEVEN. I paused, trying to absorb the space without letting it absorb me. Not only was I not alone, but something was watching me from the corner.

Let’s revisit my earlier trepidation. I don’t generally feel fear. I just don’t. And I’m not sure “scared” is even the right word. But whatever was in the room with me was NOT nice. If I may paint an energetic picture, it was sizing me up, arms crossed, trying to figure out:

a) why the hell I was there
b) what to do with me.

I walked around slowly, trying to pinpoint the entity. Trying to get a sense of who, what, when, and why. I immediately got FEMALE.

I reentered Mom’s room: CLEAR.

Then Zoey’s room: CLEAR.

That female watched me do this. I started getting a sense of her. 60ish. Short, frizzy/permy grey hair. Smoker, maybe. Brash. T-shirt no bra. T-shirt had some sort of emblem on it. Concert tee or sports team, perhaps? Nag. Nag. Nag. Yes, cigarette wagging out the corner of her mouth. Late 1970s, maybe early 80s.

Yuck.

I looked over my shoulder. To say I felt ‘watched’ is a gross understatement. She was LOOMING. Mocking. I sat on a small couch near the kitchen.

Just then I heard humming (singing?) coming from the general direction of Mom’s room. My heart thunked. Are you kidding me?!? That was INSIDE the house. Definitely. But hell to the no I wasn’t moving! I was sitting with my back firmly against the wall like the unapologetic weenie I suddenly was! And I wasn’t about to ask “Is there anybody here?” because, frankly:

1. She was creepy and antagonizing.
2. Some spirits, when provoked, can get physical. And um . . .
3. (no thanks)

So my personal rule for dealing with toxic (living) people would apply here, too. And that is: DON’T ENGAGE.

Here’s what I knew so far:

1. The primary entity IN the house was female.
2. She was NOT nice.
3. She hung out on the periphery of whatever room I was in.

From this I determined:

4. She did NOT like sharing her space.

(Maybe a previous owner?)

Then I saw those zipping lights again, this time INSIDE Isabel’s doorway. I bit my cheeks, trying REALLY hard to keep calm. To be objective. But ya’ll. It felt BAD. Like tension scene in scary movie bad. Like there’d be a jump scare any moment and the audience would scream bad. You still have to vibe out the garage, I warned myself, so get a freaking grip!

At that moment, more than anything, I didn’t want to be alone. My senses spun on a hamster wheel. I needed a distraction. I decided to take video notes.

Mom came back shortly this video (thank goodness). She’d planned to be gone longer but ‘something’ told her she needed to come back. Score one for women’s intuition. She offered me a drink, which would have been fifty shades of awesome. Trust me. I could’ve made sweet love to a glass of wine just then, but I still had work to do.

Unfortunately, she had to go pick up the girls. But her brief, supportive company bolstered my resolve.

I stepped outside.

8:15pm

Really, it should’ve felt awesome out there, away from the house. But it didn’t. The air was warm and crackly. Very still. And it was dark now. I REALLY wasn’t looking forward the garage, but I was determined. These nice people deserved to be comfortable in their own dang house!

I walked the long breezeway to their unattached garage, breathing down my anxiety.

Isabel hated the garage the worst. She emphatically told Mom that a boy ghost hangs out in there “listening to loud music, working on cars,” and that he “isn’t really that nice.” As of last week, Isabel refused to enter the garage alone, and Mom also admitted feeling a “weird uneasiness” out there “many times.”

I entered the garage with white knuckles. If the weird uneasiness in there was as weird and uneasy as the living room, I’d require a Big Gulp of Pinot Grigio upon their return.

I walked around boxes, furniture, tools, and shelves, grateful my Creep-o-Meter wasn’t blaring. If Ghost-boy existed, he wasn’t all up in my Kool-Aid like creepy lady inside. The small, enclosed workroom in the garage felt stifling, but I attributed that to clutter and low ceilings. Mom did say the lights often turned on in there when it’s certain she turned them off. –that I couldn’t explain.

I video’d my thoughts again.

Two things happened whilst filming:

1: I got a sudden, pungent whiff of Sandalwood. That scent (like Patchouli) typically lingers. Not this. I smelled it, then it was gone.

then

2: I heard a female talking.

I thought it was a neighbor lady walking in the street or something. But looking to the street . . . I couldn’t even SEE the street. It was pitch black. The nearest porch light was acres away. Even if someone talked on her front porch, I wouldn’t have heard her as ‘close’ as I did. As for passing footsteps of potential night joggers/power walkers? I cranned an ear to the yard. No. Just darkness and bug noise.

Alrighty, then.

I decided to NOT re-enter the house. Not until Mom and daughters returned. Creepy lady coveted her space, and she could bloody have it while I gathered my wits. I literally paced on the breezeway. Waiting. I didn’t want to sit down, and I didn’t want to stand. Because even outside, I felt someone watching me. I busted out my iPhone to keep myself company and document my final thoughts.

And then it happened.

Mid sentence, I looked over to see a young man darting towards me. I averted my eyes.

“Oh, hell, shit, I just saw something.”

Please forgive my language. Unbecoming, I know. But when one sees an apparition running towards them . . . one utters things. He disappeared right before passing me and I think my phone caught audio of him behind me. Simultaneously, Mom pulled in the garage.

I realized that very moment it was Ghost-boy, darting from the garage as they pulled in. Of course.

These spirits.

They. don’t. like. sharing. space.

Mom saw my face. Her expression was more like “What’d I tell you ?” rather than “Aw, are you ok?”

That male spirit was still outside. I felt him on the far left patio.

“Isabel?”

(poor Isabel)

“Do you sense someone out here?”

She immediately extended an arm.

“There,” she pointed to the far left.

Yup.

We closed the door and left him out there.

All four of us collapsed around the kitchen table, exhausted for different reasons. But I never leave anyone’s house without sitting down and talking, listening, sharing, and answering questions about The Other Side. I’m no expert, but I know what I know (if you know what I mean.)

But before I spilled my beans, I asked Mom the worst thing she’d experienced. I mean, maybe creepy lady just didn’t like me.

She sighed, confiding that recently, she’d had an overwhelming, “lucid-type dream.”

“I dreamt a very old woman: thin, long grey hair, in white night gown came into my bedroom while I was sleeping. She opened my bedroom door, then turned and LOCKED the door, looked at me (while I was still laying in the bed) and thanked me for helping her. She then attempted to DIVE INTO my body! (All the while repeating how thankful she was for this!)”

She ALSO said:

“You know, I’m constantly thinking someone is watching me from behind, I’ll look – see something out of the corner of my eye, then they are gone. I seem to notice shapes/people hanging in the shadows, behind a corner, on the other side of a window. I usually blink twice and they are gone. But I’m really tired of looking over my shoulder.”

With this, I felt comfortable spilling my beans. ALL my beans.

Conclusions?

1. There are two spirits in that house (at minimum), VERY possessive of the space. This explains the family’s inability to settle in.

2. Isabel is clearly psychic.

3. I didn’t pick up anything specific to the “The Body Farm.” But sleep-talking Isabel remarking “Your stitches are gone!” certainly conjures the image of a cadaver.

Verdict: Haunted. WAY Haunted.

****

Notes about the videos: I don’t own fancy ghost detection equipment because capturing ‘evidence’ isn’t really what I do. I intended these recordings to help me remember details when I sat down to work. It occurred to me half-way through writing– that even though unedited and relatively uninteresting– they would, at minimum, provide decent visuals. I post them with the family’s permission.

If you have questions, or would like to share thoughts or experiences, please send an email to jennifer@jkabay.com. I’m working on another book (this time non-fiction), and your input is invaluable.

Thank you.

Love,
Jennifer