The Paranormal Chooses You...

"The paranormal chooses you, never the other way around."

Welcome to Painted in Moonlight. It's appropriate I'm featured on Fridays since it's fright night on TV (before I discovered the scifi channel). So in that tradition, I want to share some unique and unusual paranormal stories and news with you.

For those of you who listened to my former paranormal talk radio shows, participated in my paranormal workshops or discussion lists, you know it's no longer a secret that my life is one big paranormal encounter after another. I forced myself to discuss my experiences as a self-imposed therapy and soon I was incorporating many of my experiences in my books.

To start off, I thought I'd tell you about the first real encounter I vividly recall as though it happened yesterday. When I was 6 years old, I'd just learned to ride my bike. I was pedaling around my grandparents’ large circular driveway, well, it was more of an oval shape paved in asphalt.

My grandparents had a really nice farm complete with a five-acre pond, a couple of barns and a huge machine shop formerly used for military machine fabrications. The house was built in 1909 and at the time was considered a very modern California bungalow style home with a 3/4 wrap around porch with one end topped by a large round turret.

We were in the South and back then farms used their own incinerators to burn trash. Oftentimes when my brothers, cousins and I would be playing outside on trash day, a few charred pieces of paper would escape and we'd grab our imaginary swords (sticks from fallen limbs in the woods) and slash at the black rumpled wisps of ash.

So one afternoon I was riding my bike around the driveway, when a very large piece of charred paper drifted overhead. It still had some yellow streaks on it that hadn't completely burned. It drifted to the ground a few feet from me, still intact. My little heart was pounding at finding such a glorious prize and I couldn't wait to find a stick and slash it with a big Z.

I got off my bike and unable to find a stick, reached over with the intention to just poke it with my finger when this man's voice boomed out of nowhere. "Don't touch that!" I paused and looked around, saw my grandfather sitting on the porch, reading the newspaper and oblivious to what had just happened.

So accustomed to discounting things I heard and saw because after all, they were purely my imagination, I shrugged and leaned over again, stretching out my hand towards the paper when the voice very sternly boomed, "I said, don't touch that. Go get your grandfather. Now!"

This time I jumped and ran up the drive across the lawn to the front porch. As soon as I caught my breath, I asked my grandfather to accompany me. I needed him to see something. Of course, he wanted to know what I'd found, but since I had no idea I pulled him by the hand back to the place where the ash-like paper was still resting undisturbed on the ground.

Well, his face turned as white as a sheet as we say in the South and he quickly picked up a big rock from the flower bed and dropped it in a big whooshing sound as it crushed the paper.

He bent down to me and asked, "Do you know what that was?"

I shook my head.

"Then how did you know to come and get me?"

Of course, I did the typical child thing, "I dunno." I'd already learned not to talk about the things I saw because everyone said it was just my imagination.

"Well, that was a rabid bat and had you tried to touch it, instead of coming to get me, it would have bitten you."

Oh yeah, after that incident, I listened anytime a voice boomed out of nowhere. Years later when I was invited to participate in a 3-year paranormal research project, I met the owner of that voice. (g)

Join me next week when I will introduce you to, without a doubt, the most unusual psychic/clairvoyant ever!