Sightseeing in the Undiscovered Country: Tales Retold by a Psychic Bystander™

By Louisa Oakley Green

Get ready to slip on your psychic walking shoes and follow Louisa into the unseen world around us. Ramble through tales of dead relatives who insist on having the last annoying word, ghosts behaving badly, inspiring near-death experiences, and dreams foretelling the future. Along the way, youll find comfort, laughter, and some spine-tingling moments that may have you looking over your shoulder! A great guilty pleasure for those who love reading true paranormal tales.

Concetta Bertoldi, renowned psychic medium and New York Times bestselling author of Do Dead People Watch You Shower?

When Ronnie attempted suicide, his departed father rushed back to prevent it. Christine peered into her daughters room one day to discover her childs invisible friend was real. Linda dreamed about a shoot-out at a local barand that may have been what saved her life the next day. This sequel to Loitering at the Gate to Eternity chronicles more than one hundred psychic tales from everyday people working in the fields of science, education, finance, entertainment, pastoral services, and more. It also highlights scientific studies into consciousness, near-death experiences, and reincarnation. When you finish reading this astonishing anthology, you may never view reality the same way again.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Sep 23, 2015
• ISBN: 9781491774168

Louisa Oakley Green

Louisa Oakley Green has worked as a newspaper reporter, public relations manager, and creative director. A University of South Carolina journalism graduate, Green also studied science for medical writing in New Jersey and traditional astrology in London. She previously published one other book, Loitering at the Gate to Eternity: Memoirs of a Psychic Bystander. Her work and interests maintain a curiosity-inspired balance between science and mysticism.

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Copyright © 2015 Louisa Oakley Green.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Psychic Bystander is a trademark of Louisa Oakley Green.

iUniverse

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

ISBN: 978-1-4917-7417-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-7416-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015913694

iUniverse rev. date: 7/25/2016

Portrait photography by Shelley Kusnetz • www.shelleykusnetzphotography.com

Cover illustration by Nam Ko, Hong Kong • www.realnam.deviantart.com ([e-mail])

Cover design by JWeber Creative, LLC • www.jwebercreative.com

Contents

Foreword Signs Along The Way

Preface Psychic Bystander

Acknowledgments Cicero’s Warning

Introduction Sacred Fires

Part 1 The Last Word

Chapter 1 The Bossy Departed

Otherworldly Attachments

Aunt Infestation

Strong Spirits

Twin Peeks

Bloody Advice

Special Delivery

Soul Intervention

Chapter 2 Dead Comfort

Early-Morning Alton

Death Watch

Ancestral Dreams

The Wedding Ghost

Surviving the Unspeakable

Waiting for Forgiveness

Devotion

Last Dance

Gray Thoughts

Shivering Farewell

Christmas Epiphany

The Telltale Heart

Chapter 3 Lingering Spirits

Funereal Truant

Changing of the Guard

Pressure Point

The Watchful Gardener

The Flashing Departed

Snake in the Garden

Dark Humor

Part 2 Pure Energy

Chapter 4 Not-So-Imaginary Friends

Spirited Companion

The Playful Ghost

Ethereal Pranks

Friends Hereafter

Mother Elsie

Toying with the Dead

Hide-and-Seek

Chapter 5 Psychic Claws

Wolfie Returns

Creature Comforts

Danger Cat

Avenue of Dreams

Tenth Life

Beware the Black and White

Flight of Hope

Past Tense

Chapter 6 Angelic Flybys

Pathfinder

Eyes on the Wall

Divine Catalyst

The Three-Second Difference

Part 3 Homebodies

Chapter 7 Haunting Messages

Crossing the Threshold

A Little Night Music

Sweeping Abandonment

Floor Show

Psychic Houseguests

Hiding in the Dark

Hard to Ignore

Chapter 8 Ghosts Behaving Badly

Bad Vibes

Unwelcome Energy

Hidden Death

Unmarked Grave

Three’s the Charm

Spirits with Issues

Night Stalker

Kilmainham Gaol

Fatal Rejection

Shadow Man

Evil in the Attic

The Pull of History

Exorcism, Italian Style

Part 4 The Unexplained

Chapter 9 Death’s Doorstep

Strange Baptism

Dead Weight

Sight in the Darkness

Visit from the Undertaker

Nightmare of the Soul

Visions of Wheels and Words

Chapter 10 Messages From Morpheus

Dodging Bullets

Spiritually Designated Driver

Night Omens

Stage of Life

Astral Recruiting

The Path

Hit-and-Run

Psychic Tsunamis

Chapter 11 Future Shadows

Behind the Curtain

The Premonition

The Invisible Link

Death’s Calling

Accidental Visions

Moving into History

Last Call

The Three Predictions

Chapter 12 Curiosities

Astral Play

Folk Remedy

Delilah’s Knowing

Russian Enigma

The Magnifier

Mind Zapping

Altered Consciousness

Psychic Bloodline

The Eyeless Woman

Freak Show

Starting Over

Conquering the Dark

Children of the Mist

Day-Tripping

Chapter 13 Sightseeing In The Undiscovered Country

Wandering without Borders

An Author By Any Other Name

References And Suggested Reading

My destination is no longer a place, rather a new way of seeing.

—Marcel Proust, French novelist (1871–1922)

FOREWORD

SIGNS ALONG THE WAY

T he author and I share something in common—an attraction to things that cannot be explained. Hers was initiated when she married into a family of psychics more than twenty years ago. Mine began with a book about haunted houses that I took out of the school library in first grade. On the cover was the photo of the Brown Lady of Raynham Hall—an apparition on a stairway—purported to be the ghost of a woman who died in 1726 after being imprisoned for years in her Norfolk, England, home by a jealous husband. I couldn’t have been more than seven or eight at the time. While I had an interest in the paranormal, like Louisa, I didn’t necessarily believe that it was true. It was just entertainment. After all, unless you experience something yourself, there’s no reason to believe in it.

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Bill Wilkens Jr.

For more than forty years, Louisa has worked as a journalist and science writer. This, her second book, comes from the unusual perspective of someone who is exploring the psychic world through a strong sense of scientific curiosity. A seasoned scribe, she retells the intriguing stories of everyday people without trying to push a viewpoint on the reader. Nor—like most other authors in this genre—is she or anyone in her family a professional psychic; they all hold normal jobs. This provides a deeper dimension to her material, along with the thought-provoking insights culled from the academic studies she shares on consciousness and psychic phenomena.

In her first book, Louisa described the tipping point for her skepticism as being when her psychic husband and brother-in-law both independently saw her departed father at his funeral. For me, the event that made paranormal phenomena real happened back in 2001, when I was in my early twenties and settling into my first small apartment. A loose photo of a close friend and me sat on my coffee table. An empty picture frame was nestled in a desk drawer about six feet away. I left my apartment for a few hours, and when I returned, I found the photo inside the picture frame, displayed prominently on my entertainment center. It was certainly not a malevolent act, but it was a bit unsettling.

Soon after that I began having nightmares every night. I don’t remember what they were, but I would wake up breathing heavily and feel out of sorts. The nightmares were so intense that they kept me from going to sleep, and most nights I found myself napping only an hour or two. Sometimes I also would awake and hear movement coming from elsewhere in the apartment, when of course no one else was there. At that point, I knew I had to move. Once I did, the nightmares and other strange events abruptly stopped. That solved my problem, but what of the people who moved in after me?

A few years later, I discovered the existence of paranormal groups and was inspired to found ParanormalSocieties.com to help connect people in need of assistance with those who could provide it. It quickly became the largest directory of paranormal groups in the world and today receives approximately fifteen hundred requests for assistance annually.

The recent popularity of paranormal television shows has gone a long way to ease the stigma associated with those reporting potential paranormal activity. Love them or hate them, these shows have helped people realize that hauntings are not as rare as some would think and that those reporting them are by and large normal people. There is still the element of entertainment involved with anything produced for television, so some of the stories may be overdramatized or lack credibility altogether.

Books such as this one, on the contrary, are able to honestly relate people’s experiences without any concern for ratings. The author has the added credentials of being intimately acquainted with the subject matter through her marriage to her psychic husband, Stephen. What makes this situation even more interesting is that, being a strong skeptic, she didn’t fully come around to accepting the paranormal in her life until she had been married for several years. Like me, Louisa still prefers to approach any new situation with a baseline of mild disbelief.

You will find this book engrossing if you are someone who has endured—or is simply fascinated by—a haunting or other psychic event. There is great value in being able to read about someone else’s journey. Sometimes it’s reassuring just to know that you’re not alone.

The field of paranormal investigation is still in its infancy. We are slowly working our way toward a greater understanding of the invisible world around us, thanks to a combination of scientifically based research and people willing to openly share their experiences such as the ones you will read in the pages that follow.

Godspeed,

Bill Wilkens Jr.

Founder

ParanormalSocieties.com

Summer 2015

PREFACE

PSYCHIC BYSTANDER

I may not have gone where I needed to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.

—Douglas Adams, English writer/humorist (1952–2001)

I introduced myself in my first book, Loitering at the Gate to Eternity , as a psychic bystander. That’s because I’ve spent much of my adult life surrounded by astounding clairvoyants and mediums—including my husband—but I do not appear to have much psychic ability myself. And that’s okay. One psychic in the house is enough.

A frequent question I was asked when promoting Loitering was What’s it like being married to a psychic?

Well, it’s different.

When I first married Stephen, his psychic abilities didn’t really catch my attention. I was a skeptic. What I loved about my husband was what great company he was. And he most certainly was never boring. The psychic thing was something I affectionately shrugged off as part of his quirky and lovable personality. Most of the time I ignored it. Sometimes it could be annoying.

Psychics have extremely sensitive nervous systems, as observed by neuropsychiatrist Diane Hennacy Powell, MD, who taught at Harvard Medical School and wrote the book The ESP Enigma: The Scientific Case for Psychic Phenomena. Those highly receptive synapses not only allow people with psychic ability to pick up on energy that many of us don’t sense, but they also can make psychics hypersensitive in general.

For instance, many a time we entered the local mall for a shopping trip, and Stephen would turn to me and say that the energy there was so negative that he had to leave. At first, this sounded a tad suspicious to me. One town we visited had the same effect on him. Stephen says that negative energy feels like a sense of foreboding encircling him that eventually agitates him to the point of panic. Experience taught me that if I didn’t take him seriously, he could become physically ill from that type of exposure.

Psychics are also prone to certain types of illnesses, as observed by physicist and paranormal author David M. Rountree.¹ According to his research, many psychics develop fibromyalgia because of energy overload.* That insight would have been valuable for us to know back in 1999, when we traveled to England and toured Stonehenge.

Interior2Stonehenge20150320081217.jpg

Stephen standing near a towering trilithon stone formation at Stonehenge near dusk.

Stonehenge is a prehistoric monument in Wiltshire, England, where in 2013 more than fifty thousand cremated human bones were excavated. Those remains were carbon-dated to as far back as five thousand years ago. As most people know, this monument is a ring of standing stones thought to have been constructed around 2500 to 2000 BC.² Our private tour, led by local crop circle expert Busty Taylor, took us into the Stonehenge circle and allowed us to meditate there.

Months before we embarked on this trip, Stephen had recurring visions of a handprint on one of the stones. After our meditation, we had a few minutes to walk around and touch those huge rock slabs surrounding us. Stephen found one with the familiar handprint from his dream and pressed his palm up against it.

I’m not sure exactly what happened, but when we had to leave a few minutes later, he had to be pulled off it because his hand was stuck. Unfortunately, soon after we returned from that trip, Stephen fell ill and was bedridden for two years. From that point on, he had debilitating fibromyalgia. It took him seven years before he was able to work full-time again, but he eventually beat the condition and is fine today.

So if those are some of the challenging elements of living with a psychic, what are the more rewarding aspects? Well, Stephen is extremely sensitive to the feelings of others. If something is wrong, I can’t hide it from him. He’ll look me straight in the eyes and demand, Okay, what’s wrong? Tell me. His sensitivity makes him emotionally supportive and understanding.

I’ve also learned to take what he says seriously on the rare occasions he offers a subtle warning. Twice during our marriage, he made a point of telling me to drive carefully when we parted for our jobs in the morning. I abruptly forgot about his caution only to be reminded later in the day with an automobile accident—both times not my fault.

Here’s something the male readers will like: I’ve learned not to argue with him. He is almost always right.

Perhaps the most valuable gift he has given me during our more than twenty years of marriage is a new outlook on life. I evolved from believing in only the physical world to viewing the universe as an indivisible field of eternal energy. As a life sciences and environmental writer, I have endeavored to understand this concept on both scientific and spiritual levels. I can’t say that I entirely do, but the invisible world around us continues to fill me with a sense of curiosity and wonder. This second book of everyday people’s psychic tales is my way of sharing my fascination with the inexplicable.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

CICERO’S WARNING

Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents and everyone is writing a book.

—Marcus Tullius Cicero, Roman philosopher/politician (106–43 BC)

T his is my second book, so Cicero’s warning goes double here. As with my first book, this one was greatly influenced by the thoughts and ideas of the many people I’ve met along my life’s journey. Special thanks to Jo Panzino and Kathleen Brunet Eagan for bravely volunteering to review my first-draft manuscript. I am also indebted to professional copy editor Betsy Robinson for her Chicago Manual of Style expertise. Up-and-coming Hong Kong artist Nam Ko rendered the mystical cover illustration, and the very talented John Weber composed the cover design.

In addition to relatives, friends, teachers, and mentors, I have benefited from what playwright Tennessee Williams once described as the kindness of strangers. That includes the publisher’s project/production coordinator, content editor, art director, printer, and marketing adviser as well as radio talk-show hosts, Twitter and Facebook followers, and the intriguing people who show up at book-signing events.

Thank you all for helping me to fulfill Cicero’s greatest fear—another book.

INTRODUCTION

SACRED FIRES

Their story, yours and mine—it’s what we all carry with us on this trip we take, and we owe it to each other to respect our stories and learn from them.

—William Carlos Williams, American physician and poet (1883–1963)

C ontrary to popular belief, the undiscovered country did not originate with Star Trek . The term was coined by English playwright William Shakespeare in his play Hamlet and referred to that unknown land that lies beyond death. Sightseeing in the Undiscovered Country is an acknowledgment that when people experience contact with the dead, visions of the future, glimpses of past lives, or other indefinable lapses in reality, they are in fact tourists on a brief visit to that mysterious realm.

In that respect, this book represents a travelogue. And the people included in these pages are sharing their voyages into the inexplicable. They do this through their stories—a sacred mode of dialogue that dates back to prehistoric campfires.

Since the beginning of time, human beings have attempted to understand the universe around them. This began with the mystical experience, which would often be interpreted by spiritual leaders. Eventually, the attempt to make sense of everything around us evolved into the many fields of science we have today.

Throughout my life and career, those two modes of understanding—the human experience and science—have intrigued me. Over the past several decades, I have pursued them both with a passion—initially as a journalist and then as a science writer. It is only natural, then, that my two books would reside at the crossroads of science and mysticism.

My first book began with the psychic experiences of my husband’s family and then expanded to include the stories of friends and people they referred to me. When I was on my book tour, many people approached me and asked if their stories could be included in my next book. The assumption of a sequel surprised me. People I knew also called to ask why I hadn’t included them in my first book. It occurred to me that there were still many more stories to be told. So this second book is a continuation of my first, showcasing the psychic tales of people from all walks of life, from across the United States and Europe and as far away as New Zealand. To satisfy the analytical side of my brain, I also include scientific studies and historical information related to various types of psychic phenomena.

The following chapters are organized into specific topics. As a result, some people who have contributed multiple stories may sometimes pop up in several sections of the book.

Part 1, The Last Word, is a tribute to opinionated, bossy dead relatives; departed loved ones offering comfort; and benign spirits who linger just to let others know they’re still around. Part 2, Pure Energy, covers the pure of heart, including visits from departed children, beloved pets, and angels. Part 3, Homebodies, acknowledges the penchant some spirits have for remaining in a particular home, either to communicate