JUST MY THOUGHTS

Christina M. Schumacher

Since the inception of The Night Watchman Chronicles website three years ago, I have gotten numerous emails from people claiming that they've never had a paranormal experience but they really enjoy reading about the experiences of others.

This always piques my curiosity. I wonder if it's possible for a person to go through their whole life without a single paranormal experience. I've even thought of working up a questionnaire of some sort for these individuals covering a multitude of subjects that they may have experienced and not even realized. I haven't had the opportunity to do this yet, but would like to as many of these people are actually disturbed over the fact that others seem to have so many experiences to share, yet they seem to have nothing.

Personally, my belief is that we've all had small indications of paranormal experiences. Something as simple as deja vu - that feeling, if only for a brief moment, that makes us feel like we are repeating a specific moment in time. It's unusual enough for us to notice it when it happens, but so brief that it's just as easily forgotten. Regardless, it's not something that has been fully explained or proven, so in my mind, it fits into the paranormal experience category.

After death communication can be just as brief, causing people to think they've never experienced a visit from a passed loved one. When we lose someone, our grief is a huge blockage to Spirit and can make it impossible for our loved one to come through as they'd like. However, they do find ways to let us know they are still around, but we may not always be receptive to what happens.

For instance, let's say we are walking through our kitchen, half thinking that we're hungry but, due to our grief, not having much enthusiasm to make anything. At that moment, a fleeting thought goes through our minds about the loved one that passed and a pencil that has been sitting on the table all night suddenly rolls off the table onto the floor.

Most people would just sigh, bend over to pick up the pencil, place it back on the table and forget about it. The sign was so subtle that we don't give it a second thought... but we should.

It's very easy to miss the small things. Our lives are so encompassed by surviving, working our 8 to 5 jobs, raising children, paying bills, etc., and, because of this, most of us don't take the time to notice the little things anymore. If we do notice something a bit out of the norm, we pass it off as coincidence. I don't believe in coincidence.

How frustrated our loved ones must be when they try so hard to reach us through our grief and we don't notice. Our minds seemed to be geared for accepting only those things that are huge. We expect our loved ones to appear at our bedsides so that there is no mistaking "the sign" or to put up a neon sign on the route to work.

Most times, it does not happen that way no matter how hard we wish for it.

In putting together the second book, "There's No Place Like Home - Nine Forms of After Death Communication", I was amazed when the stories started coming in from people around the world. Despite the number of years I have studied different aspects of the paranormal, I realized then that there is more to after death contact than I imagined.

It was necessary for me to separate the stories into specific categories - nine of them, in fact - to make any semblance of order to the book. These nine areas encompassed neatly the stories that people shared on the different ways that their passed loved ones had communicated with them.

I didn't come up with these categories randomly, however. The categories came through the stories - things certain stories had in common. I spent hours sitting on my living room floor with the stories around me, reading each story and determining the type of communication received. I ended up with the following nine ways that our passed loved ones communicate with us.

Dreams, Dreams with Physical Objects, Physical Objects, Physical Vision, Sound/Smell/Feeling/Presence, Mediums, Astral Projection, Ouija Boards and Hauntings.

I am certain that there are more ways, but these covered the stories that I received, offering varied levels of strength from our loved ones in Spirit. In each case, 150 in all within the book, each loved one came through uniquely to the person they were trying to reach in a way that the person left on earth would understand. It was truly amazing!

Of course, it wasn't always fully obvious to the people receiving the signs, but they were open enough to notice what was going on around them and, after a period of time, put two and two together.

There truly is no trick to this. It's going to depend on how open you are to receive as to how your loved one comes through. For instance, let's say that you and your passed loved one used to discuss dreams a great deal. Wouldn't it make sense that the loved one would use what he/she knew you were most interested in to communicate with you? In this case, dreams.

What if you had a collection of some sort displayed beautifully in your living room? Say, a collection of butterfly knickknacks. Knowing your love of butterflies, your loved one might rearrange your collection in a way that they know you would notice or you would suddenly be seeing butterflies, both real and manmade, everywhere you look - even in the winter!

What if you are one who loves talking on your cell phone? Wouldn't it be strange if suddenly your cell phone started doing some strange things while you were talking on it. Strange noises, sudden hang ups, etc. Chances are you would redial whoever you'd been speaking to and be irritated at your phone for acting up. What actually happened? Could your loved one have been trying to contact you using what they know you most like to do?

When a loved one has passed and the passing is recent, don't disregard anything that you may notice happening that is "out of the norm". Think about that loved one and consider the possibility of why they might use that particular method to contact you. Chances are it is because they know that you will notice because it is something that means something to you. Never put it off as "just coincidence" or you may miss out on what you've been hoping for all along.