The Riotous Writer: The Hanging Ghost

The Hanging Ghost.

My first psychic experience.

I have absolutely had it with so called intelligent people who have the most incredibly closed minds. What annoys me most, is the 'look' - the one that says, I don't believe in that nonsense or are you sure you weren't just imagining it and of course the extremely irritating and downright insulting – I don't believe you, I think you are lying.

So I am going to put my personal record straight and tell you, my wonderfully open minded blog readers, about my first paranormal experience as a child.

I think after 50 plus years of seeing and experiencing paranormal phenomena, I qualify for non-delusional status. As a formally trained Spiritualist medium, I don't tell lies, I don't embellish, and I always consider each encounter with the world of spirit in an open-minded but rational manner and I don't believe everything that happens to me is from the supernatural. In other words, I'm not a nutter lying my head off to get some attention. I'm a sane, rational individual who just happens to have extra sensory perception.

The above, it is the reason I am going to relate my first experience of seeing a ghost.

People who are not able to accept the possibility of anything beyond our mundane day to day lives are I believe in the category of someone who -

A, Doesn't have an answer to paranormal occurrences and therefore poo poos everything connected with it or B, Simply can't bear the thought they don't know everything.

Hallucination Argument.

This is one of my most un-favorite closed mind arguments against psychic phenomena, the ill thought out comment of, “It was an hallucination.”

I will concede that not all psychic experiences are actual paranormal events but to blithely dismiss the paranormal as a mere hallucination, with the glib comment of, “You must have been seeing things.” is quite frankly, ignorant and insulting.

The hallucination theory breaks down when the person who says they have seen a ghost is not an adult seeking attention, as in the case of adult false testimony - but a child who has genuinely had a paranormal encounter.

You are lying.

There are a lot of 'fake' psychics who cause a great deal of damage to the credibility of genuine mediums, and to the Spiritualist movement by casting doubt on the validity of bona fide paranormal activity.

And I also accept that some witnesses, embellish the truth of what they saw to the point of lying.

However, young children and especially very young children do not have the sophistication to create elaborate lies. They tell it as they see it without preconceived ideas getting in the way.

I am not saying young children cannot lie – they can. What I am saying is, a lie that is overly intricate in nature, is simply not in their construct.

Children can be led in a complex lie by an adult but they rarely weave deceitful webs that involve a story of more than one dimension.

False Memory Syndrome.

Do children have False Memory Syndrome, I am sure they do. It is entirely possible for any of us to remember things differently from the way the events actually happened.

My memory of the day I saw the hanging ghost is clear and factual.

The idea that I only 'think' I saw this ghost can easily be dispelled, not only by the many paranormal experiences I have had over the years since that first contact with spirit but by the memories of the other witnesses who were there and saw my reaction to the actual sighting.

The Hanging Ghost

After the second world war, German bombing raids had flattened a great deal of London and at that time there was a shortage of housing.

Dad had not long left the army and my mother had a young child (my sister) to take care of, so money was short. Every apartment they looked at was either too expensive or too dilapidated to consider bringing a child into. My parents did what a lot of young married couples did, they moved in with my father's parents.

The house wasn't anything special. A typical London suburban double fronted, 4 bed-roomed terraced property. My grandparents had the bottom half of the house and my mother, father and older sister the top half, this is where I was born six years after the end of WW11.

If I noticed any paranormal activity before my first experience, I can't remember. The hanging ghost is the earliest memory I have of an actual sighting.

I was around 5 years old, my parents and grandparents were downstairs with other members of my family, I went upstairs to fetch a book I wanted to show to them. I was about half-way up the stairs when a bright white figure, dressed in an old fashioned nightgown, hanging off the ground, suddenly appeared on the landing in-front of me.

His nightgown came to just above his ankles, giving me a perfect view of his long naked straight toes. The hand of his right arm was also clearly visible. The fingers resembled his toes, long and quite thin. I couldn't see the left hand properly. His head, I couldn't see at all, it was simply a amorphous white light.

I stood for several moments, halfway up the stairs, looking at the ghost until it dawned on me I should be scared. Why I wasn't scared right away, is I believe, because the ghost meant me no harm. If it did, then I am sure it would have shown me it's head. What I have since learnt of how a face looks like after hanging, the sight would have terrified me. The ghost obviously had no wish to frighten me. As a trained medium, I now realize the spirit of the dead man was looking for help to cross over into the ether – but of course, at the time the incident happened, I was far too young to understand that.

I remember as soon as I did show the spirit I was frightened, by a sharp in-take of breath, he vanished. I then ran back down the stairs as fast as I could.

“I've just seen Jesus.” I said to my family from underneath a chair. At such a young age and not knowing what a ghost was, I had no idea of what I had just seen and took from my limited understanding the one thing I thought it could be.

As I have said, children that young are not sophisticated enough to lie. My parents explanation of, it was a trick of the light, nothing more, I knew not to be the truth. I was however, smart enough to say nothing more to them about it, as they clearly did not want to discuss with me what I had just seen.

Many years later my mother told me a man who had once lived in the house had committed suicide by hanging himself on the upstairs hall landing. At the time of my seeing the ghost, there was no way I could have known of this man, as my parents never talked about it. So bang goes the notion, as it has been said to me that I was – hallucinating something I had previously overheard.

I was five years old, I did not hallucinate or lie. And I remember the incident exactly as it happened.

Okay, it's not a long story – but the actual incident didn't take long to happen. That's not the point of relating the story though.

The point is – someone so young, who had such an extraordinary experience had no reason to make up what they had witnessed.

Children have no preconceived ideas when it comes to the extraordinary. Many of the things they see and hear are new to them, so they have no reason to think such things don't happen as a norm.

If you are a believer in the paranormal, hopefully the next time you meet someone who refuses to accept the possibility that there might be things we cannot explain, an tell them about my experience as a child, and it will at least, open a crack in their closed minds.