Personal - My Ghostly Experience History! (let's talk?)

Witchy Wednesday - Today I had planned to do a video witchy haul of all the bits I have got over the past few weeks. - But medically I'm just not well enough so putting a pin in that 📍 and apologies!! That said I thought I'd bring you this blog post! 

Divination: Spirit Dice. Session 4. 

The first three felt like they would turn even the most stubborn non believer into the poster child for believers. As an empath at a lot of points there were a lot of strange emotions which did not feel like my own but deeply affected me, the first session even gave me the most terrible headache which disappeared upon the second session.   A few nights ago I decided to embark, the same way as before, into session 4 only I got nothing. I didn't feel anything, all the answers were absolutely nonsense and I felt a very different feeling to the times before when the answers you would have swore I had 'fixed' they were so uncanny..!

This has lead me on a path to explore 'how would one know if they had, or hadn't, made a spiritual connection?'  - During all my years I've never been good with spirit communications, by this I mean I have never been 'ok' with the idea of them. And mostly avoided any tools or 'things' that would connect me to them - for fear. Otherwise known as ignorance! 

My Ghostly Experience History. 

Today in my opinion as a child I had a best friend; who was a ghost.. However in my mums opinion I had an imaginary friend called Susanne. I was age 3 - 5 when we lived in our semi detached house in Leigh, Greater Manchester (England). I don't remember how it started... I just remember points of that time.. Her name was Susanne (a name of which was very unlikely I had come across at that time and even if I had it would most likely have been shortened to Sue). Looking back now I remember her as what I would now say was a victorian child aged around 6 years old with golden curls falling down from her bonnet and a sad expression. She would do things.. Things which would get me in trouble like paint my carpet with dad's expensive model paints or things I can't explain like fly me over the two (impossible to open or climb over) baby gates and down the stairs to the sofa to attempt to watch TV around 5/6am frequently. Furthermore never would she be around when we left the house - like she would be in the car until the car got off the driveway then she would be gone!  She was never at Nanna's, Grandma's, School, Friend's houses or anywhere other than that house.. Though she would disappear at night (and night time I didn't feel safe). The day we moved house I never saw her again. I have often thought of going back to that house.. Only.. It isn't there any more.. Just this weird space.. 

As a child, same house, I had such a fear of ghosts (especially at night) - one night, I must have been 4 or 5, I awoke in the middle of the night to find myself in complete darkness and silence (because ghosts can't get you if the light is on, tv or music playing - bless my younger self!!) I ran down stairs, Dad was up watching Formula1 / Grand Prix racing. I explained why I was scared to which he muted the TV, stood up and walked over to our record player he put on a vinyl record and proceeded to say "this man is dead, so how is it we can hear his voice?" To which I confidentiality replied "Easy! He recorded it when he was alive!" To which my Dad said "EXACTLY! And that's all ghost are they're just recording of people who were once alive!" - This for me was acceptable and somewhat cured my ghostly phobias and fears for a good number of years or at least until my teens. 

During my teens my ghostly history took a different turn. Before, to my knowledge, I had only dealt with benevolent beings though at age 13 a freak ouija board incident which made more rational me such a believer..  It made me scared of my fireplace and almost cost me my best friend at that time. I was so taken back by it that it scared me into research and ultimately is how I found out about witchcraft, wicca and paganism etc and thus this path!! During that time I tried to block out the things in the corner of my eye, those unexplained eerie feelings, those obvious fears based on too much TV, film.. ghost documentaries.. It had an effect on my anxiety and depression which at the age of 14 I was medicated as having manic depression (what they now call bipolar).  Over time it was almost like I had forgotten about my deep fears and I was left with those usual irrational fears people have of noises in the middle of the night, and dark alleyways or back streets in the dark, that unpleasant gut feeling or knowing.. 

A 'friend' I met when I was 16 enabled me to see horrible traumatic things, things no one else could see. I didn't deal with these things too well although I would blog about these things in poem form, poems titled things like "the girl at the bottom of my bed", "the boy hanging from the tree" even one titled "the night at the slaughterhouse". My family who saw my blog seeked professional help for me fearing further / worse mental health issues,  I ended up in counselling therapy as well as moving to be with different family members due to other issues at that time but was already being medicated for depression. Later when I was 16.. 16th September 2005 to be exact my boyfriend killed himself. From that I just didn't deal well with much of anything, I blocked off everything for fear of what I might see and to this day (I'm now 28) I haven't seen anything.. while signs and feelings have been made present I'm thinking perhaps now is the time to open the door and become educated and learn..?!

BB Imogen x 

 Any thoughts? Experiences? Book recommendations? - I would love people to talk too about this!

- Toadstools can make you wish you had never been bo-ooo-rn...

...Never been born!  - Ivor Cutler.  

(A blog entry about people and relationships.)

Photo of fungi at Stanley Park Blackpool photographed by me on 1st October 2016 
© Imogen Cane - missimoinsane 2016

By now it should be obvious to most that we do not willy nilly walk along eating any fungus we see regardless of where they may come from, what they may look like, if everyone else is doing it or indeed if they're 'good for us' at all. 

Yet we blindly walk through life befriending strangers and in some cases stuffing our faces and engorging on them like an obsessive compulsion to absorb everything about them; almost like we wish to become one with them!  Some of these we never know until it's too late just how poisonous or even deadly they may be.. despite their deliciousness, sensational aroma, or even plain and simple misleading and/or enchanting appearances. 

Perhaps we should be taught much earlier on about how to tell the good from the bad and not just follow blindly or with pure ignorance to the dangers laid before us.  If only we humans had some form of mycologist, but for people..   Someone who would not only tell us about what we may or may not encounter and where, but the effects and probable outcomes of indulging in such.   Elaborating on where this fungus grows, how it evolved and adapted, how it can be misleading and easily mistaken for something good for us when really it's increasing toxicity becomes what kills us in the end.  Or of course those that flat out poison us from the start.  

I take a step back. 

I look at my surroundings; this concrete jungle that man has created.  As we grow and spread like spores of a black mould destroying or at least corrupting everything in its path, manipulating to survive no longer simply living off the land but destroying it.  I look at what it's grown, what came to be, what grew and evolved, what adapted to the surroundings, what only came to be because of what we did.  I see what was chemically grown, what struggled to survive and what died off.  I see what's endangered, what festered from what we left behind, what is growing like an untreated yeast infection.   I see what is cleverly surviving despite everything, what managed to cling to its ancestors and still be beautiful despite all the change. 

I look at the people, they have no faces, just like mushrooms.. A relatively gathered bunch of the same or similar organisms banded together under a collective name yet still differ in texture, appearance, colour, size, shape, abilities, toxicities... Some addicting making us feel the most magical things.  While others literally rotting us to the chore.  Then as mentioned those that just flat out kill.  

I'm feeling so primitive; blindly trying out all the fungi..  narrowly escaping the inevitable with each new course.  Watching those around us make the wrong choices and die leaving behind a hollow shell.  Watching those around us who make bad choices but find a cure.  Watching those around us make the right choices and living on such a high.  Watching those around us make choices which simply sustain, nourish or at least allow to be well fed even if only temporarily.  Watching those around us as some discover or even create new threads of subspecies..  watching as they grow.. develop..  Some like a cancer.. others blooming as though they're wrapping around us like a cool breeze on a humid summers eve. 

I take a step back. 

I wish there was someone who could identify what would do us good from what would do us harm.  I grow tired of this fungi roulette; it's not fun!!

"Toadstools can make you wish you had never been bo-ooo-rn, never been born" - Ivor Cutler.

Imogen x

 - Exploring what's in my head.
www.missimoinsane.webs.com