My love of the paranormal began at an early age, long before there were shows and podcasts and travel experiences available at your fingertips. I am not really sure it even had a name, at least not one that was part of everyday language, and especially not for a kid who grew up Catholic in a tiny cow town in North Central Connecticut. I went to 8 years of parochial school, and while I am no longer a practicing Catholic, my time as one has framed alot of my everyday faith and my personal belief that there truly is life after death.
But none of that would matter had I not had some strange experiences from a young age, some that I wrote off as a dream for a long time. But when I was a senior in high school, I had an experience that reaffirmed my belief that there are some things that we just may never understand.
I was always very close with my maternal grandparents. They lived 2 hours away but we saw them frequently, and they never missed an important event in my life. Dance recitals, graduations, at least one basketball game, track meet and choir concert a year. So seeing as it was my final year of a lot of these activities it was no surprise that they were driving from Upstate NY to that little cow town in CT to see me dance and sing in our school’s annual Christmas Madrigal Feast one last time.
It was a Saturday and we were performing two shows that day. As the matinee moved along, the massive, almost fake looking snowflakes floated heavily and quickly down from the sky. These were some of the biggest snowflakes I had ever seen, and they were accumulating fast. I was struck suddenly with a sense of dread and just knew something wasn’t right. I remember stopping mid-performance and a classmate asking me to snap out of it. I couldn’t tell her what was wrong, I just knew something was.
As the performance wrapped, and we waited for our parents to pick us up I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off. As my father pulled up to the school with my younger brother in tow, it hit me instantly. As I opened the door to climb in the back seat, I asked “What happened to Grandma and Papa?” My dad looked at me a bit bewildered, and responded by recounting their harrowing experience that afternoon as they drove through the storm from their home to ours. As they traveled down the Mass Pike in the storm, the visibility caused them to become invisible to a passing semi truck. They were forced off the highway to avoid what I am sure would have been a devastating collision, and miraculously escaped unscathed.
No, this is not a ghost story. But it is the moment that I realized that there are things about the world, and even about ourselves that we may never be able to explain or understand. It was also a moment that got me rethinking all those experiences that I chalked up to dreams from my younger years, two of which happened in the home of those same grandparents. This special connection with them would lead to one of the other most profoundly otherworldly experiences of my life. But that is a story for another day.
Some of my stories
As I stated earlier, I believe there are things about this world and ourselves that we may never fully comprehend. One of those things is all the different ways in which people can experience the paranormal. For some it could be a visceral, physical reaction like chills, lightheadedness, or a sense of dread or fear. Others could be prone to audible awareness; hearing disembodied voices, footsteps, doors opening or closing. Others could be more visual in what they perceive; seeing apparitions, shadow figures, light anomalies, mists or masses. And yet others could be more on an intuition based experience, like having a message come through that is unmistakably meant for you though the manner of delivery might not make sense. I have been blessed to have experienced all of the above in one way or another.
This story is one of my more recent experiences. It happened in October of 2021. My best friend (and partner in ghostly crime), Leanne, and I had booked a haunted tour of the Mark Twain House in Hartford, CT. Now, I grew up just 40 minutes from Downtown Hartford, yet had somehow never been. (How is this not a field trip for every kid in CT as they read a little bit of Huck Finn?!) This house just seemed like the perfect place for me to visit. It combines my love of old houses, literature, and haunted happenings. And I was in desperate need of some cheering up.
Just a couple months prior, my parents had finalized the sale of my childhood home. They had built the home, raised their 5 children in it, and it had been a haven for all of us until the moment we handed over the keys. In an effort to make this experience as easy on my parents as possible, I made it as difficult as possible on myself. I acted as their realtor, stood in the empty living room (a total wreck of a human) and watched them drive away from our home for the very last time, as I waited and handed over the keys to the new owners. I still get very emotional speaking or writing about it today. You can imagine the state of me as I recounted the experience to my best friend who I was seeing for the first time in person since that day on our drive to our tour. Let’s just say it was not one of my cuter moments.
When we arrived on site, we lingered in the museum as we awaited our guide. It was a very casual walk from the museum to the house, with little discussion amongst the group. As we approached the main entrance, we paused on the front steps for the guide to do his opening monologue. During his monologue he recanted the story of the Clemen’s departure from Hartford, and Samuel’s return many years later to set their affairs. In that story was a quote from a letter that Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) had written to his friend Joseph Twichell on March 4, 1900.
"...our house, where such warm blood & such dear blood flowed so freely, is become a cemetery. But not in any repellant sense. Our dead are welcome there; their life made it beautiful, their death has hallowed it, we shall have them with us always, & there will be no more parting."
I was instantly struck by the poignancy of the quote, of how it very much felt like the house, or Sam himself, knew I needed a new way in which to frame my sadness. Yes, the tears flowed once again, but this time they were not only tears of sadness, but also of awe and gratitude.
Things like this happen to me often. The message I need most, finds me just in the nick of time. Of course, it isn’t always so emotional, but I will often know what someone is going to say, just before they say it. Or people will deliver messages to me without really understanding why. To me, these are all very intuition based experiences.
Now, let’s tell a tale of a more traditional paranormal experience. This is one of my earliest ghostly memories. Like I mentioned earlier, this took place in my grandparents’ home in NY. The home had been in our family for a very, very long time. My grandfather (the youngest of 11) was born, in what is now the bathroom, in 1920. The second floor of the house had three rooms, but all connected with a central hallway that went down the center of the house. If you stood at one gable end, you had an unobstructed view out the window at the other end.
When I was quite small, I would sleep on a couch that converted into a bed (a super early, much more comfortable version of a futon…one who’s material texture I can still “feel” today). It ran parallel to the “hallway”, so if I opened my eyes and looked towards my feet, I would be able to look out the back window of the house. I very clearly remember waking in the middle of the night one night to witness what I believed was a massive fire behind my grandparents house. The room glowed red, and I could see that the illumination was coming from that window. What I was struck by most was the lack of any sound. In my childhood fear, I remember quickly closing my eyes tightly and pulling the covers over my head. When I got the courage to open them once more, just moments later, it was gone! I later came to find out that while there was currently a house behind theirs, it was not the first one. Before I was born, the house that originally stood on that property had burnt to the ground.
Another incident in the same location left me more perplexed and more than a little startled. Again, I woke up in my luxury futon and looked towards my feet. Just beyond the frame of the double door way I could see the foot of the bed one of my brothers was currently sleeping in. Only thing was, it wasn’t their feet I was seeing. There, nearly motionless, sitting on the foot of the bed was a man who closely resembled my (still very much alive) Papa. He had a similar build and profile, with more hair and a bit less of a beer belly…oh, and did I mention, I could see through him?! Again, instinct kicked and under the covers I went. When I slowed my heart rate enough to again be able to hear my own thoughts over the thumping, I took a peak, and he was gone.
The incidents connected to my grandparents, especially my Papa do not stop there. The one that is most difficult to recant happened at 3:05am on October 18, 2003. We had been out to visit him in the hospital as a family just days before, we knew the end was near. I can still feel the tackiness of his skin and see the jaundice as his hand held mine for the last time. The silly, naive, younger version of me listened to the Yankees game on the drive back to CT with my brother and just KNEW the Aaron Boone walk-off HR was a sign he was gonna get better (he is the reason I love the Bronx Bombers afterall). But just two days later, as I sat bolt upright in my dorm room at exactly 3:05am, I knew he was gone. I gasped and woke my roommate who was instantly concerned. I simply said “he is gone”, and proceeded to cry myself to sleep. The phone call that came just 5 hours later was no surprise, I knew before my dad could say the words. He had long since stopped wondering how I knew some things.
We just marked the 20 year anniversary of his passing. It both feels like it couldn’t possibly be that long ago, and also that he has missed so much at the same time. But the strange connections remain. This time it was for my brother. My mom and I talked at length on the anniversary, we cried a bit, laughed a bit, and just counted our lucky stars he had been ours. The next day, she mentioned it to my younger brother. He had been at my parent’s place visiting and was walking out he door when my mom said “you know, yesterday was 20 years for Papa?”. He went silent, and slowly turned around to face her. His eyes brimming with tears, face white and in a state of disbelief. No, it wasn’t because he had forgotten the date or that it had been so long. The words caught in his throat as the shared the detailed dream he had had of my Papa just the night before. Sure, the timing could have been a coincidence, but what makes this remarkable is that neither me or my younger brother can remember our dreams. I remember maybe 3 a year, and they are often very clear messages. It is the same for my brother, so this one will be a dream he will likely never forget.
I have more stories, but these are the ones that shaped me, the ones that made me understand that there are some things I will never understand. The experiences made me confident that our own stories don’t end when our physical life does, and have left me curious and hungry for more.