Contact

By day, I am a mental health therapist, a counselor, who sees people in my practice who are suffering from a variety of mental and emotional health conditions. I have spent my career trying to help people with psychological challenges and I depend on evidence-based techniques to do that, techniques that have been tested and statistically proven to be of benefit. The therapy I provide comes from a long history and tradition of compassionate helpers: psychiatrists, psychologists, therapists, counselors, and researchers who have studied the human mind and human behavior and who have devised methods that are designed to help. There is still an art to good therapy of course, where the interplay of professional intuition and science connects to help people who are suffering. It is undeniable that good communication between the helper and the helped is key.

     While my feet are firmly planted in the physical world during the day, in my off hours I am a paranormal researcher, a ghost hunter if you will.  I try, on a regular basis, to get evidence-based proof to explain what or who those invisible entities are that appear to be at the core of hauntings and who sometimes just seem to quietly coexist with people in their homes and businesses. I don’t have a research lab or numbers that I can plug into statistical software that would allow me to offer definitive evidence about what I am studying because what I am trying to make contact with at every opportunity is hard to see and communicate with.  The rules of engagement aren’t clear and once in a while, when I am lucky enough to catch a disembodied voice or a picture of an orb, a mist or a figure, I cannot verify with certainty what it is that I am seeing or hearing. Curiosity about the unseen drives me and the big questions for me are always these: What or who are these unseen beings that appear to be among us and, the big one, is there really life after death? 

     I have proven to myself over many years that these beings definitely exist. And, as a therapist I have worked to make sure that what I experience is valid and not just something created by my mind. We could debate whether or not our minds are powerful enough to create that audio and video evidence, but I will leave that argument for another time. As of now, in my experience, what I seek is real. And thousands, maybe millions of paranormal investigators all over the world are trying to achieve the same objective: to prove that these entities exist, to try to figure out exactly who or what they are and to learn how to communicate directly with them. I do believe that I can assume a fair amount of them are also seeking the answer to the question of whether or not there is life after death, and how to communicate with loved ones if that proves to be true.

     Whatever communication that we are able to achieve right now though, is tenuous, difficult, and frustrating because it often leaves more questions than answers for the investigator and maybe for the entities themselves. We use equipment that at best allows for single words or short phrases to appear on a screen, we have alarms and blinking lights that can go off when you ask questions (on for yes, off for no) and we can sometimes get short audio clips in response to our queries. Once in a while, we can get a phrase or a full sentence on specialized audio devices.  It seems to take a lot of energy for them to answer, or maybe they just get bored, because often you will get one, two or three responses and then nothing else. Many times, you will get nothing at all.  Our ability to communicate is so brief and inconsistent that I can’t give them the opportunity to ask me any questions even if they wanted to. At this point in time, our communication is a one-way street. With lots of speed bumps.

     The thing I want to make clear here is that looking for these spirits and trying to figure out exactly what they are and what it means for the humans on this side of the veil has been a big part of my life.  Huge.  It is work that I love.  It is work that I am not afraid to do.  I run towards the sights and the sounds in haunted buildings, not away from them.  I have never been afraid to set up equipment at a moment’s notice to see if I can capture who and what is trying to get my attention. I take every opportunity possible to try to communicate with them.  I have never hesitated.  Never.  Not once.

     Until I lost my brother. 

***

     About five years ago my brother, Rick, was diagnosed with colon cancer during a routine colonoscopy.  He went through several surgeries and multiple rounds of chemotherapy, always with a good attitude (that we could see anyway), always with his wife fighting right along with him and supporting him unconditionally with a strength I can’t even begin to imagine, and always hoping that the treatments would help.  Even when the cancer metastasized multiple times, he had faith in his doctors, and he never wavered in trying his hardest to live.  He told me that it was a game-changer when the cancer went to his brain though. Even though he kept fighting to the end, he knew that the call had been made and he wasn’t going to win.  No matter how much he wanted to stay with the people he loved, he was going to have to leave. He wasn’t afraid to talk about his uncertainties about what lay ahead, but I was uncertain about how much to ask. It was only after he was gone that I wished I had had the courage to ask him more.

     There are a lot of good things I could say about my brother, but I will just say this.  He was a kind man who loved his family, his wife, his daughters, and his granddaughters with deep devotion.  He had a twinkle in his eyes when he smiled, the kind of twinkle that I imagine Santa Claus would have if you caught him putting presents under the tree.  Losing his first daughter to complications from cancer when she was four defined much of his life.  We spoke with him often at the end about his daughter meeting him when he ended up wherever he would go after death. We never talked about any of our opinions about the afterlife, we just talked as if it was a certainty because the thought that he wouldn’t have any place to go was just too much to bear.  And without any prompting on our part at all, my brother told me and our other brother and sister (ghosthunters, too) that he would come back to contact us after he passed. 

     We laughed a little about that, but he said he was serious, and our other brother told him that we had equipment that could help him do that.  It sounded like a good plan to me.  We didn’t discuss any details as there were much bigger issues at hand as he left this world, but I made a note to myself that I would watch for him and listen and make contact when he was able.  There was only one problem.  Me, the experienced and fearless ghost hunter, who talks to spirits on a regular basis seeking the truth about things unseen, and who had someone who loved her who said he would contact her after he passed, couldn’t do it. 

     Couldn’t do it at all.

***

     For the first few weeks after my brother died, my grief was so strong that I felt like I was in a fog of sadness, unable to do more than work each day and try to sleep each night.  I was still aware of things paranormal.  In the days right after he died, for instance, I twice saw two tiny little orbs flying by me in tandem. They were small and bright, and they moved together like two tiny, synchronized dancers in flight.  They were smaller and brighter than any orbs I had ever seen before, and I wondered at the time if it was my brother and his daughter, doing a fly by to let me know they were together.

     Somewhere in my mind, I was aware that he might be trying to visit like he said he was going to, and I was worried that I might be missing his window of opportunity to make contact, if there was one.  I didn’t know if he wanted to wait until we were all together or if he was going to visit us separately, but one thing I did know was that if there wasn’t any equipment available for him to use, he might not be able to contact any of us, so I set up an Electromagnetic Field Meter (EMF), with those potential blinking lights and sounds, an audio recorder and a video camera in my living room.  My plan was to do the same thing that I do on investigations, which is to turn on the equipment, start asking questions and see if I could make contact.  If I didn’t get any answers, I would leave the equipment running so that if he came by at another time, I would hear the alarm go off and return to start the conversation.  It was a solid protocol that I had used many times before.  I had confidence in the plan.  But there was another problem.  It turned out that the paranormal investigator and the grieving sister were not on the same page.  When I asked the first question, “Rick, are you here?” I felt like I was going to be sick.  It was an unexpected and surprising response to feel such dread and anxiety, even fear.  I turned the equipment off as fast as I had turned it on and sat down, trembling, trying to figure out what had just happened.  I was so shaken that I didn’t try again.  I left the equipment set up, but turned off, and for days I looked at it, thinking that I should make another attempt, but I just couldn’t.  Eventually, I took it down.  Over the next few weeks, I attempted several times to try again, setting up my equipment, looking at it for a few days and then taking it down again without even turning it on. 

     One night I had an experience where I felt my brother might have been with me when I was just on the edge of sleep, and it gave me the courage to try again. I set up the paranormal music box, which plays a tune when something moves in front of it, an audio recorder, an EMF meter and a camera to record if anything happened.  I managed to ask a couple of questions that time, and when I asked if my brother had been by to check on me the music box played a few bars.  Just once and then it fell silent.  I should have been excited, and normally would have been, but that feeling of anxiety and dread was still strong in me.  It was like there was a war going on inside of me, with me wanting so desperately to try to make contact and being even more terrified to do so.  I knew in the back of my mind that my grief was playing a part in all of this, but there seemed to be more to it than that, something I couldn’t put my finger on.  Chasing ghosts and working with the unseen and the unknown is one thing but trying to contact my brother was quite another.  I wanted to know that he did live on and that he was okay, but I was scared to try to talk with him about it.  It was completely irrational, but I was afraid he might answer, and I didn’t know why.  I was beginning to think that the therapist needed to see a therapist, and I made a deal with myself that if I didn’t figure out what was going on pretty soon, I was going to do just that. 

***

     As more time passed, I began to feel guilty for not giving my brother a venue to express himself if he was really trying to make contact, so I decided to order a piece of equipment that I didn’t have that had been designed by a grieving father to speak to his deceased daughter.  I thought that maybe that would make it easier for me to follow through. I had seen other paranormal investigators use this equipment and it looked like the perfect thing. It was easy to use with a clean and clear alarm for yes and no answers, and it was usually very consistent and reliable when communication was flowing.  I told my brother out loud that when I got this equipment, I was going try to talk with him again, and I asked him to hang on and not give up on me if he was trying to make contact.  The day I got the new equipment, I set it up on my dining room table, turned it on for about thirty seconds and turned it right back off.  Same problem. Anxiety, dread, nausea, fear.  I just couldn’t do it.

     I couldn’t figure it out.  Why couldn’t I do something with my own brother that I had done thousands of times with spirits that I didn’t have any connection with?  Was it because we did have a personal connection?  Was I afraid that if he did answer it would be too much for me because my sadness was still so deep?  Was it my uncertainty about whether or not he really was out there and that if he didn’t answer it would force me to examine the possibility that there is no life after death and even worse, no life after death for him? 

     I thought about my sister-in-law. She would be the first person I would tell if I made contact, of course, but I realized at that moment that I honestly didn’t know how she would feel about it.  She had heard us talk about ghost hunting but had never said anything one way or the other about how she felt about it. What if she didn’t approve?  Was I afraid that if he did respond and I told her about it, that she would be upset with me for trying?  And just like that the metaphorical lightbulb went off and the answer hit me like a ton of bricks.  I didn’t know if his wife, my wonderful sister-in-law, who loved my brother with every part of her being, and who I love with all of my heart, would approve of my trying to do this.  Even though he was my brother, he was her husband and I wanted, no I needed, her blessing and her permission.  I felt that I needed her to say it was okay before I tried again.  Was this another form of avoidance, a quick and easy way to address my irrational fears?  I didn’t think so.  It felt right.

     That night I told my brother that I needed to talk with his wife before I tried to contact him again.  They had been married a long time and were very close.  I knew that he would totally understand.  I decided that if she said no, I wouldn’t try again, but if she said yes, then I would ask her if she wanted to be with me when I tried or if she would prefer not to know what happened when I did.  For the first time since I had initially tried to contact my brother, I felt at peace. 

***

     Before I had the chance to speak with her, the very next evening, I was in my home office working when I felt a breeze blow across my hand while it was resting on my desk.  It was gentle, but strong enough that I noticed it even while my mind was occupied with something else.  I have trained myself to be aware of things that are out of the ordinary and, as is good ghost hunting protocol, to try to disprove that it is anything paranormal (we call that “debunking”) before getting too excited that it might be.  I tried to recreate the breeze, moving my hand forward and back, to the left and the right to see if I could make it happen again but the air was still. The windows were closed and there were no fans on.  There was nothing I could see that could have made a breeze like that move over my hand.  When my hand got very chilly, which happens sometimes when you are around ghost energy, I knew that someone or something was trying to get my attention, so I went to my equipment shelf and got an EMF meter to set on the table by my desk.  I grabbed my phone and turned on the camera to document any communication that might happen, and with the video on and the light/alarm of the EMF ready to go, I asked who it was that made the breeze on my hand.  The EMF meter didn’t light up, but I immediately saw an orb come towards me over the table as I was looking through the camera.  It was pretty big as orbs go with a translucent interior that was kind of a wispy white.  You could almost see through it.  I commented that I could see it, and before I could say anything else, I saw another orb by the EMF meter.  This one was small and bright as if it was self-illuminated from the inside, which is a defining characteristic of true orbs.  They generally look like they are lit from within, and that light varies in intensity with it being stronger in some than others.   

     One thing I have observed over the years is that orbs come in many different sizes, shapes and colors, just like humans.  They are most commonly spherical balls of light that move through the air rapidly.  You really have to train yourself to see them with the naked eye. They are fast and in constant motion, and they usually simply appear at a point in space and disappear into thin air not long after.  Many seem to have an individual latticework type design on the interior of the sphere and each one appears to be completely unique and not exactly like any other.

     There is a lot of debate in the paranormal field about whether orbs are just dust or bugs, and some investigators ignore them altogether.  After working with them for so long, I think it is pretty easy to tell which are dust (those usually drop straight down or move in a non-directed, float-on-the-wind type of travel path) and bugs (you can usually see the wings, sometimes with the naked eye and sometimes on video review).  Real orbs have a directed flight path, and you can tell their movements are under control.  If they are able to make flight maneuvers that you know couldn’t be something that is just caught on the wind or under winged-propulsion, then it is pretty certain that you are seeing something that isn’t a bug or dust. 

     It is common to see one or two orbs at a time if you are lucky and not so common to see more than that, but what I was seeing now was multiple orbs in my office through the lens of my camera and it seemed that more were arriving every minute. They were coming from behind me, from in front of me, from the left and from the right of me and those going across the room in one direction would meet others coming from the other way.  In all of the years that I have been a paranormal investigator, I have never seen anything like it, and I was completely focused on getting them to “talk” with me through my equipment.  I kept asking them to try to go into the meter and make it light up (oddly like asking them to go into the light now that I think about it) and once in a while one would fly directly at it and then veer away right before it made contact.  I saw one come straight up out of it but without setting off the lights or the alarm.  I was in full investigator mode now, focused on communication and I asked them to stay with me while I got another piece of equipment and then another and then another to help them converse with me, but it all stayed silent while the orbs flew around my office like an indoor light show.

     I had the thought that my new piece of equipment, the one I had bought to communicate with my brother, might be just the ticket because of its sensitivity and maybe easier for them to connect with, but I knew it wouldn’t well work in my office because my Wi-Fi router was putting out too much of an EMF field by that table and it could set it off automatically once I turned it on. The other EMF meter I started with doesn’t have that kind of sensitivity. This gave me an idea.  It was obvious to me, whatever was happening, that the orbs seemed very interested in making sure that I was observing and interacting with them.  I had never seen so many orbs in one place and never before seen any for more than a millisecond and I wondered – could they understand me, and if they could, would they do what I asked them to do? 

     I was still in communication mode, and I was still talking with them trying to establish a sense of whether or not there was some intelligent interaction going on.  I can remember being astonished at how calm I was although you can hear a bit of nervousness in my voice on the video as time went on.  This was not a normal ghost-hunting experience that I was having in my own home.  My mind was working rapidly trying to figure out what would be the best way to gather evidence while the experience lasted.  I also wanted to see if their movements were something more akin to instinct or more conscious, so I grabbed the new piece of equipment and asked them to follow me down the hallway and into my dining room so that we could try to “talk” away from my office.  I walked down the hallway backwards, the pied piper of orbs if you will, filming the whole time.  I didn’t see them come with me in a rush, but I did see one or two come out of my office and follow me and when I reached the dining room, I was astonished to find the others were waiting for me when I got there, having gone through their tiny wormholes or dimensional walls or however they travel from one place to another.  I set up the equipment to see if they could give me a beep, a light, anything, that would allow me to try to find out who they were and why they were here. I could see even more orbs flying around me than there had been in my office, and I encouraged them to communicate with me in any way they could.

     At one point, I remembered that I didn’t have an audio recorder with me, and I thought it was a great opportunity to see if could verify that there was some sort of conscious understanding on their part, so I told them I was going back to my office to get a recorder and I asked them to stay in the dining room and wait for me to come back.  When I went back to my office there was only one orb there, a straggler perhaps, or maybe an escort, but every other one of those orbs stayed in the dining room until I returned with the recorder.  I was still trying to communicate, ever fixated on getting that evidence and the orbs were still actively moving through the air in multiple directions in front of me and around me.  I couldn’t begin to count how many there were at this point. They seemed to be energy that was always in motion, never stopping.  It was hard to track them. They appeared to come out of nowhere in space and to go back into nowhere when they disappeared. There are only so many that show through the camera lens, there were many more that I didn’t get any pictures of.  They were so mesmerizing that I stopped being the evidence-gatherer for a moment and just watched the activity going on around me. 

     And then it hit me.

     “Is that you, Rick?”  At that moment a very large orb whipped up in front of me, did a curly-q motion right in front of my camera lens and veered away.  I didn’t notice until later, when I reviewed the film that that same thing happened twice when I mentioned his name.  The third time I mentioned his name, it did not.

     I don’t think I was conscious of not following through at the time, but I didn’t really try to communicate with him much more than that.  I just kept trying to get someone to light something up.  I brought out the paranormal music box, but it stayed silent.  I also brought out an Ovilus (a device with an internal dictionary of words that spirits are supposed to be able to manipulate in order to communicate) and it said a few words that didn’t seem like intelligent responses, except for possibly the last one when it said “deplete” a word that means “to reduce something in size or amount, especially supplies of energy” (online Cambridge Dictionary).  That made sense to me considering the amount of energy they must have been using over the last 25 minutes.

     And then, just as suddenly as it began, it was over.  Just like that.  One minute they were there and the next they were gone.  I checked every room in my house, but there wasn’t one orb to be seen anywhere.  If you watch the video, you will hear me say, “It appears that Elvis has left the building” as I was looking around to see if anyone was still there, but there was not one orb in sight.  When they went, they all went at once, and they didn’t come back.  It was a little bit shocking actually to go from such high activity to no activity in the course of a millisecond.  For the next few days, I checked at different times to see if I saw any orbs in my office or dining room through the same phone camera that I used that night, but there were none to be seen and there haven’t been any since. 

***

     Whatever happened that night appeared to be a one-time event and it has left me wondering exactly what it all meant. In all of my years as a paranormal investigator, I have never had such an extraordinary experience.  I have spent a lot of time since it happened trying to analyze this interaction with my rational mind without losing what it seems to have meant to my heart. 

     I have come to believe that there was no communication by the usual means that night because that wasn’t the purpose of their visit.  I think their purpose was just to show me that they were there and to let me witness their existence, to be both documentarian and to be a part of the story.

     Was it initiated by my brother?  I can’t say for sure. I didn’t get any real evidence to prove that and for some unknown reason I didn’t go any further than asking if he was there.  But it would be like him to bring a group of his new friends (and maybe some family) with him to answer one of life’s biggest questions for me and to help ease my tortured soul by taking first contact with him out of my hands. I know that as humans, we have a great ability to make our stories fit our circumstances, but I have thought about it a lot. Who else would go to such great lengths to make sure that I knew they were there?  I can’t imagine who else it could have been that blew that breeze over my hand in such a way that I would notice what was going on around me.  He would know that his sister, the ghost hunter, would appreciate a spectacular show like that and would pay attention. And he would know that it would mean everything to me to know that he is okay.

     Whoever or whatever it was, the experience seems to have brought me some peace.  That could be my emotional mind, of course, wanting to believe that my brother made contact with me in a very special way.  It could also be my investigator mind realizing all of a sudden that I really am a part of something way bigger than what we can always see.

     I haven’t talked to my sister-in-law about any of this yet.  I didn’t get any responses on the equipment or any voices on the audio that would be proof that her husband might have been here.  I just have a wonderful story to tell her and an interesting film to show her, and I will let her make of it what she will when she is able to see it and hear what happened.  She is still in the midst of great grief, and I don’t want to put anything else on her shoulders. She has enough to carry right now just trying to get through each day.  I will talk to her when the time is right about what she would like me to do, and hopefully when I try to make contact from my end next time, I will be able to leave the mike open until I can see if he answers back. 

     Before this happened, I desperately needed to know that my brother lives on, somewhere, and that he is safe and happy, but I have realized recently that trying to make paranormal contact up close and personal is very different than being one-step removed from anonymous entities who won’t activate your feelings of love and grief if they respond to you. If I had been able to make contact when I first tried, I think that the frustration of brief answers on a machine without any certainty of follow up might have been unbearable for me. I think that that was another reason that I was afraid to try.

     My one regret with the orb event is that I spent so much time trying to document it and not enough time just experiencing it. The next time that my brother, or anyone else, decides to have an orb party at my house, I plan to set the camera on the tripod and use my eyes, ears, mind and heart to be a part of it.  Who knows?  I might learn a lot more that way.

     My investigator mind can’t let go of one thing, though.  I keep thinking about the way those orbs appeared and disappeared that night as they moved so quickly through space.  If you have ever seen that picture of the sonic boom when a jet breaks the sound barrier and it appears to be hurtling out of a wall in space, that is a little bit what it looks like when they appear.  One minute they are not there, the next they are.  Could they be travelling between dimensions somehow, into ours one moment and back to theirs the next?  And, if orbs are what remains of people that have passed, if they are the energetic packages of our souls, does that mean that when we move on to the next part of our life cycle that we will live in that other dimension and fly back out of it when we want to visit loved ones here?  Is that what the veil really is, a barrier between dimensions that can be pierced sometimes?  Did my brother and the others make a special trip through that barrier to come and visit me that night? 

     I can’t be sure. What I do know is that my brother knew how important finding answers is to me and if it was him, he might have helped to provide me with a direction to go in as a paranormal investigator that I hadn’t thought of before. If he was aware of the emotional struggle I was having in trying to communicate with him and if he was able to bring so many orbs with him to help ease my pain, he also showed me that we may be closer to genuine communication and interaction than I had ever imagined. 

     But there I go again.  Always the investigator.  For a while, I need to slow down and just be the sister.

     I know that I have a lot more thinking to do about this, but I have come to believe a few things.  I believe that this experience was designed to show me something, and the something I choose to believe is that my brother is out there, that he came to my house and put on a spectacular show to let me know that he still exists, that he is able to travel with the speed of light now and that, just like he did in this life, he has made many friends in his new one who travelled a great distance with him to help him show his sister that he is okay and that what she seeks is real. 

     I also believe that it has shown me that sometimes audio and visual proof isn’t the most important thing in magnificent and unexpected encounters.  Sometimes the experience of the contact is all that you really need.

At the Beginning of the Orb Storm, One of the First Orbs to Make Contact

Quick Contact "I Wonder if You Have Been Checking on Me?"