7. BRACE YOURSELF FOR A SHOCK

BRACE YOURSELF FOR A SHOCK

Grandma Was A Witch

Grandma was doing her best to sell a puppy to a young couple who, she was certain, would be the perfect home for that puppy.  She placed the puppy in the husband's hands and watched as the wife petted him.  But, the pair handed the puppy back and said they really couldn't afford it.  They left the house and, as they got in their car to drive away, Grandma said, "Watch this."  After being gone a few minutes, they returned and bought the puppy.    She told me that she had 'made contact' with the husband's consciousness when she touched his hand, and that, after they left, she 'reached out' and kept the image of the puppy in his mind and made it irresistible.

Palmistry

She taught me palmistry.  She had a large book by Cheiro which she took me through.  But then she taught me that the real secret is that human brain waves are like radio waves, and you can tune them in just like a radio.  Her way of 'picking up their wavelength' was to touch them physically; hence, putting the puppy in the man's hands.  She told me that people do not think in complete sentences (for the most part) and that many thoughts are images.  Say 'ice cream' and an image of a pleasant ice cream experience flashes across their consciousness.

She said the secret to palmistry was that a skilled palmist knows this about mental images and will point to a place on a person's lifeline and say, "Very interesting.  When you were about 12 years old….. hmmm…." And the person would flash through their own memory and a scene of something important that happened when they were 12 would appear in the front of their mind.  Seeing it, she would then finish the sentence, "…the barn burned down and you felt guilty because of the deaths"  at which point her 'client' would usually be crying and telling how two of the cows died in the fire and she felt guilty because she had forgotten to take the lantern with her after milking the cows.

After that, the client was usually convinced that Grandma could see everything in the client's past and present, and would ask Grandma to tell her what her future would bring.  At this point, she would tell them what they wanted to hear.  She warned me that, even if I saw a death about to happen, not to warn my client because it could become a self-fulfilling prophecy.   Of course, I had to learn the hard way that she was right.  I read my friend Bob Harrison's hand and saw a violent death in his near future.  A few months later he was dead in a car crash.

No One Will Play Cards With Us!

To really drive home her point, she invited me to play cards with her.  After the cards were dealt, she told me what cards I was holding.  She had already documented this ability in her correspondence with Dr. Rhine at Duke University who was doing paranormal research and who responded to her letters by sending her a set of his 'cards' to use for testing psychic ability.  The cards were symbols:  star, circle, waves, square, etc.

She handed me the cards and said, "Let's see if you inherited this gene, also.  I suspect you did."  Sure enough, she could sit in another room where I could not see her.  She would take one of the cards and form an image of it in her mind.  I would then call out which card she was holding.  At first the results were above the average human control group at Duke U., but as I learned to 'tune in' accurately, my skills climbed.

This skill came in very handy later in life in the business world.  Just shaking hands with someone, I would touch their immediate thoughts and determine if I would be able to make a deal with them.  The funny part is, even today when I am very close to someone for a length of time, I sometimes have to tell them to 'stop thinking so loud!  I can't concentrate on my own work with all that noise bombarding me.'

Clarence

At this point, I need to interject something I received from someone who was very close to me most of my life - and he has quite a different take on all of this.  I have put his statement in italics so you know it is not my opinions nor my memories:

"My name is Clarence.  Originally, when I was born in Austria, it was Klaus.  But I became used to the Anglicized version after we moved to America.

I state now, in my own defense, it was never my intention to hurt that little girl.  I just wanted to help her.  It was one of those hot August days in San Antonio when even the air is reluctant to move, the leaves hang forlornly on the trees, and the asphalt in the street feels soft under your feet.  I was hidden from the walkway by a cluster of huisache trees but I saw her, clutching the hand of a middle-aged woman, trudging along the pavement in my direction.  She was a pudgy little thing, probably about 5 years old, dressed in her Sunday best, wearing an Easter hat with a pathetic clump of imitation cherries on the brim, long dark sausage curls down her back, and with her legs stuffed incongruously into white marching boots.  The woman I assumed was her grandmother had her face set in grim concentration, dressed all in black with an old black beaver wide-brimmed hat jammed low on her forehead, thick stockings, and old lady shoes with large clunky heels and laces up the front.  She plunged along the pavement, intent on a house further along that block and intent on reaching there quickly. 

Little Lenora, Fledgling Witch

She was pulling the little girl along, holding her hand firmly and giving it an occasional jerk.  The child didn't seem to mind.  Her eyes were everywhere:  looking at the patterns of sunlight through the leaves, evaluating whether the bark on a huisache tree would make it unclimbable, struggling to reach a fluffy dandelion head that was just aching to be blown free to be carried by the wind.  She hummed to herself as she carefully avoided stepping on the sidewalk cracks.  Although breaking her mother's back did not seem like a repugnant idea.  Especially after suffering for over an hour this morning while her mother heated curling irons on the stove and used them to make those finger curls.  The smell of singed hair still clung to her dress.

I watched this child with quickening interest.  She was alert, alive to everything around her, all senses open and seeking, and with a lively intelligence in those quick eyes. The petulant mouth, slightly crooked nose and overly large dark eyes hinted at an 'interesting' face in the future.  What was called a "handsome woman", formidable in bearing, and unapproachable except by the most foolhardy of men.

I longed to touch her skin, feel the warmth and firmness of a smooth young body.  I knew I could be very careful and slide into her without her feeling any pain or alarm.  I just needed to get her alone, isolated in her mind, and indifferent to the others around her.  If only she would voluntarily welcome me and take me in…. my mind reeled at the prospect of such bliss.

I followed them to the little clapboard house and up the wooden stairs, past the porch swing, and into the screen door to a dark hallway that reeked of candle wax and church incense.  The old woman was greeted enthusiastically by the others present, "Mrs. Hannon!  You brought little Lenora with you today!  That's wonderful.   Her innocence will help draw the spirits to our table."   Lenora sat on top of a large dictionary and a throw pillow to reach the tabletop where her grandmother and four other women of varying ages were holding hands in a circle.

The Seance:

"Now we are six, we can begin the séance.  Everyone hold the hands of the person next to you and do not break the circle no matter what happens.  Madame Siletski is here to act as the medium for us today.  Clear your mind of all thoughts.  Concentrate on the candle in the center of the table and the sound of Madame Siletski's voice until we make contact with a spirit."  I snorted to myself.  Madame Siletski held no appeal to a disembodied spirit for anything other than casual amusement and a few parlor tricks.  I had been dead (physically) for more than a year, looking for the right body to inhabit, and being stuck in that old bag of boney limbs, sagging breasts, and hairy chin was not it.

"Cautiously, I reached out to the child's mind.  A few stray thoughts about a stray kitten she had seen and the thrill of dancing in the water from the lawn sprinkler still came and went, but she was trying very hard to concentrate completely on the séance.  I suspect her susceptibility to the flickering candlelight and the droning of Madame Siletski's nasal voice lulled her into a trance state.  Her mind was open!  It was completely open and I encountered no resistance as my spirit flowed into her brain and became a passenger.  The shell of flesh was something of a shock, however.  Colors seen through eyes were much duller and fewer in number than when seen outside the body.  Odors assailed a sense of smell that had not been used in over a year.  The damp, fleshy hands holding my new hands were unpleasant.  And I realized this little girl urgently needed to go pee. 

With A Little Help From Some Disgusted Ghosts:  

"The only way to break this up was to provide them with some pyrotechnics.  There were two other disembodied spirits in the room, both had been killed in battle in the war recently, and both resented being pulled by to this nonsense by a grieving mother or grandmother who refused to let go.  I signaled to the two of them to act up and give the ladies a jolt.  Nino began to speak in a loud guttural voice with a Mexican accent from Madame Siletski's mouth, telling them that 'their grief is holding us back from going into the light where Jaysus is waiting for us".  And Garcia blew out the candle while rattling the dishes on the sideboard and making the table rock.

"It was the perfect opportunity to feign fear and revulsion on the part of the little girl, who yanked her hands away and frantically ran down the hall to the nearest toilet.   Interesting - I had access to her thoughts and emotions as well as my own.  She was glad to make it to the toilet in time but she wondered where the impulse to scream and run had suddenly come from.  'I must be more careful and make sure she is not aware of me', I mused.  I need to be a passenger, just observing and experiencing for awhile.  Later, perhaps, I will learn how to take over occasionally without her knowledge of what is happening."