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Stuart is Stuck
They say the only two certainties in life are death and taxes, but we are fascinated by the afterlife, what awaits us after we draw that last breath and is it truly the end of life or simply a continuation. It is an end, a beginning and a continuation and the connections that existed in life continue to reverberate like the strings of haunting melody long after the music has ended.
We were looking forward to a new beginning as we hunted for a new home in 1995 for our family. We had narrowed our choices down to two houses in a suburban community in Colorado. The first home was a picture perfect cookie cutter house that looked very much like all of the other houses on the block. The second was a custom home that was in need of a great deal of updating from the orange and brown shag carpet of the 1970’s. There was something about the second house that pulled us so we asked our real estate agent to arrange a second viewing. The truth was we wanted to make sure we would be the only inhabitants of the house as there was a “strange energy” the first time we visited. We arranged for my father to come with us as he had bought and sold more than forty houses in his life and most of them were haunted so he had a sense about these things.
We arrived at 10:00 AM on a Sunday morning and the home owner; a recently widowed elderly lady greeted us at the door. She was going to leave for a walk, she cautioned us to stay away from the dog that was confined to her late husband’s workshop off the garage as the dog had become unpredictable in his behavior. Chatting briefly with this petite lady it become apparent that she was quite inebriated. We wondered how safe it would be to have her wandering the streets in her condition. People grieve in many ways and drinking is a common way to deal with the loss and loneliness of being on your own after 40 plus years of marriage. Her lack of sobriety this early in the day was a bit shocking. With a promise to secure the house when we left we watched as she toddled off down the street.
Our realtor got out her pen and paper, started a list of all of the updates that would be required as my mind was focused on checking all of the nooks and crannies for any sign that someone might still be in the house.
The problem with being an intuitive is sometimes it is difficult to separate imprints from spirits. Imprints are residual energies of situations and events and this house was full of imprints from family dinners, holiday gatherings and parties. There did not appear to be any spirits. We concluded our tour with the garage and of course John wanting to see the workshop that would be home to his vast collection of tools. There was a baby gate across the door to keep the black and white cocker spaniel corralled. The dog became positively hysterical as we approached and despite a sign tacked up next to the door that warned not to touch the dog my father reached over to calm the dog and the animal snapped at him.
You may think that is normal; however, my father was an animal communicator and in eighty years a dog had never failed to respond to him. He actually had the squirrels and ducks trained to come and knock at the back door to be fed, a feat that would really annoy my mother.
The day came for the closing and the little lady arrived sober actually and thankfully driven by her daughter and son-in-law. She was moving to another state to be closer to her children. It was if she was a whole different person than the woman we had observed the day we met. We asked if she would like to give us a forwarding address for any mail that might come for her and her eyes turned instantly dark and suspicious as she vehemently declined, stating that she had a forwarding order with the post office. In retrospect all the signs were there, we simply chose to ignore them.
We moved in amid the chaos of carpet layers during a spring snow storm with four teenagers running about laying claim to their new living space. I could not live for long with the orange wallpaper in the kitchen so one evening about two weeks after moving day I got a ladder, paint scrapper and buckets from the garage and embarked on the task of transformation. One of my primary spirit animals is an owl, so late evening and early morning are my favorite times for working.
Fear of heights is something I have worked to heal most of my life and even three feet off the ground on a ladder makes me nervous My rule has always been that no one can touch me while I am off the ground. There is a heightened sense of awareness that comes when you are outside of your comfort zone, so I was extra sensitive to anything that would encroach on my space while perched precariously between heaven and earth.
It started with someone tickling the back of my neck. I turned quickly to scold John because I was standing on a ladder and he knew better than to touch me. No one was there. It was after midnight and I was sure John had gone to bed and sometimes he gets up to check on me when I am working late. I chocked it up to my imagination even though something in the pit of my stomach told me otherwise and went back to work. Soon I could feel the hand stroking my hair and gently tugging on my ponytail.
“Damn it!” I exclaimed, as I jumped down from the ladder.
I went to the sink to wash my hands and there it was again, the hand brushing against my cheek. The pieces rapidly began to fall in place. This spirit must have been hiding out in the workroom the day we visited that explained why the dog was so agitated. The drunken widow’s, late husband must have been disturbing the peace around the house since his crossing. The refusal to provide a forwarding address! Did she honestly think we were going to ship her husband to her?
I climbed the stairs to our bedroom.
“Damn it!” I said with each step as I climbed.
“Damn it, Damn it, Damn it!” as my feet pounded down the hall.
“John!” I called out as my hand turned the door knob and startled him awake.
“I can’t believe it, we were so careful this time!” Confusion was written all over my husband’s face as he struggled to free himself from the covers and the comfort of sleep.
“What are you talking about?” he asked as rubbed his eyes.
“What’s wrong?” he said as he reached out for my hand.
“That woman left her husband here!” I nearly screamed at him.
“Stuart*, that woman’s husband, he is downstairs and he was touching my hair while I was on the ladder.” I offered, as if this was a normal conversation.
“Is he crazy?” a touch of humor in his voice, “No one in their right mind would touch you while you are on a ladder.”
“Apparently he didn’t get the memo!” sarcasm tinged my voice as I crossed my arms over my chest like a petulant child.
John pulled me into his arms to comfort me, “It’s not so bad, he sounds harmless.” He chided.
“But, just once I wanted a house in a ghost free zone.” I said, as if I actually believed such a place exists.
“My whole life I have had to live with spirits wandering the halls at night, cold spots, and waking up in the middle of the night with someone standing over my bed.” I pouted. “I just wanted this time to be different.”
“Well, maybe the kids will scare him off.” He laughed
I went back downstairs and finished the removal of the offensive wallpaper without incident and life settled into the normal day to day existence.
Stuart was a fairly benign spirit and he liked to entertain us on occasion, much to our oldest daughter’s chagrin. From time to time he would open one of the glass doors on the entertainment center while we were watching television and John would simply say, “Stuart, come back here and close that door.” And the door would glide back in place, closed by an unseen hand, as our daughter would flounce out of the room. Lights would turn themselves off or on and someone would yell, “Knock that off Stuart” and they would go back to whatever they had been before he started playing with them.
I think Stuart liked being part of our family, he would wake me if one of the kids were ill during the night or alert me if, as teenagers sometimes do, sneak out in the wee hours. Just for fun he would move things around in John’s workshop as that seemed to be his favorite room in the house. He didn’t appear to be in any hurry to move on.
We discovered Reiki and healing arts shortly after my father crossed in 1998 and were eager to share our new found gifts with friends and family. By 1999 we were Masters in three disciplines and had converted the family room in the basement into a healing center where we often taught classes. It was around that time Stuart ceased to be Casper the friendly ghost and became more violent. I couldn’t understand the change, the house was filled with love and healing, why was he so unhappy?
Since the first day Stuart and I met we had an understanding, I didn’t like being touched by spirits and he had honored my wishes. I was a smoker and I didn’t smoke in the house I would spend a lot of time in the garage with Stuart hanging out close by in the workshop. One day I had to go into the workshop for something and Stuart pinched me so hard on the arm that it left a big ugly bruise and from that day on the violence escalated. He would push, shove and pinch family members on almost a daily basis. While sitting in the garage one day he pulled my hair and in frustration I yelled, “Stuart, what is your problem?”
My daughter had a saddle stand stored in the garage and it lifted into the air as if in response to my question and smashed to the ground in pieces. John came rushing through the door expecting to see someone on the ground injured given the sound of the crashing.
“What happened?” he asked as the pieces of wood lying on the ground caught his eye.
“Stuart is having a temper tantrum.” My voice strangely calm given the extraordinary event that had just happened.
“It is time to send him home.” I said, “We need to do a healing attunement for him.”
There is a process we had learned from our Reiki training that can be adapted for use on spirits to help them release whatever it is that is holding them earthbound and allow them to cross over into the Light. The time had come to release Stuart because something was obviously making him react in fear and anger. Stuart was in a rare category of spirits who could affect the physical world consistently over time.
Probably only 5 percent of earthbound spirits can move objects in the physical world over an extended period of time after they have crossed. It is not unusual for a spirit new to the other side to move physical objects shortly they have crossed because they haven’t lost the memory of being in the world yet. The longer they are on the other side and especially if they have attended their life review process they lose the memory and connection of what it is to be physical. They have less desire to impact the world in a physical way and seek instead to influence in a spirit filled manner. Stuart seemed to want to cling to the physical world more than ever and something seemed to be threatening that.
John and I set up for a healing attunement on Stuart. I would work with Stuart while John would do a healing attunement for someone else on the other side. It was our hope he would see what was occurring for the other spirit and be inspired to accept the energy we were offering. We always call upon all of the angels, archangels, guides, masters, ascended masters and the Mother Father expression of God to come and work with us for any session but especially for this one. I was not apprehensive at all, I love working in the energy and the connection that you feel to Spirit, little did I know that I was about to have one of the greatest learning experiences of my life.
The session began just as any other as I invited Stuart to come and receive this healing attunement. If he would not accept the healing then I asked that his guides accept it on his behalf. The energy began to flow as I went through the process just as I had so many times before. I moved into the second phase of the ceremony in which you stand in front of the “person” and there in the chair instead of Stuart I saw a demon. This demon looked just like the ones with red eyes that are in the movie “Ghost” that come and carry off the damned to hell. Needless to say I was completely paralyzed with fear. I had lost the ability to speak as my throat had closed down and the flight response had completely taken over. I started to back up and could only send the thought to John, “save yourself!” I backed away unable to take my eyes off the snarling expression of evil before me and very much afraid if I turned my back on the thing it would jump me. Heaven knows what would happen from there.
I backed up and ran into something, more accurately, someone standing behind me. I jumped and there standing before me were at least 50 guides and angels urging me to “get back in there and finish the attunement”. My hands were shaking and I have no idea how or even if I was doing anything. I watched in amazement as one of the guides sat down where the demon had been. One by one each guide sat down and received the healing attunement in Stuart’s place. Faces of such beauty and love urged me on; the last one was the ascended master known as Jesus. Suddenly a brilliant tunnel of light opened and Jesus, with Stuart in tow, exited to the Light. The lump of fear in my throat had been replaced by something different and it rendered me just as speechless. I had just been a part of something so incredible that it would forever be imprinted on my spirit.
I have witnessed some pretty spectacular crossings in the course of my work but nothing will ever compare to the spirit of cooperation that occurred on that day. What a wonderful object lesson in the interconnectedness of all things! The fact that Stuart was stuck in between worlds sent a vibration out into the Universe and a call for his healing was heard and answered by so many Lightbeings.
Each of us is affected to a certain extent by the vibrational field of each person or event in the Universe. The guides and angels were able to accept the healing on Stuart’s behalf because they were affected by his fear and woundedness. We can see this impact in our lives on a grand scale by looking at the events of Columbine or 9/11. Even though we may not have known the people who died we were all impacted by the reverberation of pain and sadness. It was a tangible horror that permeated the consciousness of all beings in the Universe.
It was a few weeks before I heard the “rest of the story”. During a Reiki class I was standing on the sidelines as students practiced healing techniques on one another. I like to close my eyes and use my third eye to watch the energies and attending Lightbeings at work. I was quietly observing when I became aware of a light behind me. I turned and followed the shaft of light to its source. There was a picture of clouds with an opening in the center and looking down from the portal was Stuart with a friend I didn’t recognize, waving like crazy with a huge smile on his face. Without ever moving his lips he told a story of why he had imprisoned himself in the home that was once his.
Stuart had died in the house and he firmly believed the life he had lead on Earth had condemned him to hell when he died. He found a loophole in the system that allowed him to remain “safe” by never straying beyond the confines of the house. The “demons” could not enter the house and carry him off to hell as long as he remained within its borders. Obviously he had seen the movie “Ghost” while he was alive because that was his perception of what the tormenter demons would look like when they came to claim his soul. He was projecting that fear into me so that I could “see” the manifestation of his terror. When we began doing healing work in the house we purposely opened portals of light so Lightbeings could come and assist with our work. Stuart was convinced that by opening these gateways we were creating a breach in his defense system and eventually some of those demons were going to gain entry. His violence was his way of communicating his fear and would hopefully lead to putting an end to our work. He was most grateful we didn’t heed his intent.
Stuart had finally learned hell and heaven are states of mind. True “heaven” is a return to the mass consciousness that is God, but it is rare when anyone who has been in the physical world can make such a huge transition right away. So, as a continuation of our physical experience we can create a state of being which allows us to hang on to our individuality a while longer. What is interesting but not unique about Stuart is the Universe gave him 50 ways to gain entry to “heaven” but there was only one way he could perceive. There were 50 angels and guides and ascended masters that day who reached out to Stuart through the healing attunement and it was only Jesus that he could see and allow to help him.
The Light has never once denied entry to anyone, not one single time. And while you may hold the belief there are those whose acts on the physical plain are so heinous they should be excluded from the Light, this simply is not true. It is the individual who chooses to be excluded, or by their belief they should be excluded; they lose the ability to perceive the Light.
Much like a person who is blind from birth, how do you describe the color blue? Because they have no expectation or remembrance of the Light they have lost the ability to recognize or perceive the Light. We all emanate from Source and we all lose sight of that while on the physical plain, some more than others. Since we are all impacted by the absence or distance of these beings from the Light I would think it would benefit us all if they were granted the wisdom to return to Source energy. It is our beliefs that hold us hostage and create our afterlife experience. I am not saying that you should abandon your belief system if it gives you comfort, I am simply saying maybe you could allow for expanded possibilities. There is so much we don’t know, or more accurately, remember, about the Universe and I think our curiosity and desire to gain knowledge can only add to our current life experience.
The connection to Stuart in his cloud heaven ended all to quickly. I am grateful to him for the wisdom of his being and the richness my experience with him added to my life.