Stories of the Spirit Realm

Otherwordly, strange and obscure phenomena and activities fascinate me.
I've had my tea leaves read, I've gone "cemetery hunting," I have very strange dreams nearly every night and I seem to always meet people who have reoccurring experiences with ghosts.
Unfortunately, I do not possess any hidden talents of being able to tap into another realm, which would be super awesome. Instead, I am a single-dimensional human who craves to tell the stories of those who can see certain things the rest of us cannot.
This thought stirred in me again yesterday as my new neighbor told me some personal stories of hauntings and the like, which brought back fond memories of my best friend in high school.

Cemeteries hold a sense of history for me, and of peace --
but then I don't hear the voices. (Photo by Anna Jauhola)

Sue and I were always on the hunt for a good ghost story. We often walked through any cemetery we could find. She had always been sensitive to vibrations from another world, typically the spirit realm. And she was lucky enough to experience strange phenomena when visiting her dad during the summer.
She has given me permission to share a few of her stories.
When her dad lived in Peoria, Ill., he rented a house where Sue was not the only one to hear strange noises. One evening, after Sue put her younger sister to bed she went upstairs. Her dad and step-mom were out for the evening so it was just the two of them in the house.
Shortly after Sue's dad left, she heard the front door slam, keys thrown onto a table and footsteps walking around the living room.
She went downstairs to see why her dad had come home, but as she got halfway down the stairs the footsteps stopped. Sue called for her dad, but found neither him nor the keys she distinctly heard being thrown on a table.
A little spooked, Sue went back upstairs only to hear the same sequence of events -- door slammed, keys thrown and footsteps walking around the living room. The footsteps again stopped when she went downstairs. Afterward, she double checked on her sister and stayed downstairs, which seemed to keep the ghostly activity at bay.
When her dad and step-mom came home, she told them what happened. Her step-mom said she'd heard the same thing before.
That was one of the first most comprehensive ghostly experiences she shared with me.
It seemed every summer she had a different experience as her dad moved every few years for a better job opportunity. In the summer before our senior year of high school, I was fortunate enough to fly to Missouri and stay with Sue and her dad for a week. He lived in a Civil War era home about a block from a huge cemetery.
After a bit of searching, I found the house on several websites and then found the cemetery -- Lorimier Cemetery in Cape Girardeau.

Thanks to GOOGLE EARTH, I was able to find these images. Above: The house
Sue's dad rented while he lived in Cape Girardeau. Below: Lorimier Cemetery.

It is widely known this house was used as a seminary in the 1800s and was later a hospital during the Civil War. It is also widely accepted that the house is haunted.
That week I spent in Missouri yielded very little in the way of spiritual activity, which was disappointing.
However, our walk to the cemetery one day left Sue with a terrible feeling and me with chills.
I walked into the cemetery up the steps show in the picture above and began studying a nearby mausoleum, dating back to the Civil War. When I turned to say something to Sue, she still stood near the gate, frozen with an awful look on her face.
I asked her what was wrong and she said, "We need to leave. NOW."
The weather was so humid that day anyway. But her demeanor was creepy all the way back to the house -- she wouldn't say boo about what happened.
Then as we cooled off, she said, "I just heard whispers, all around. And the whispers weren't good."
If I remember right, something whispered right in her ear, "Get. Out."
A week later, I went home and Sue went through the summer without much activity, until her final week.
Her dad often checked his email in the middle of the night or early morning for emergencies at work. The computer was in the guest room where Sue slept. One night, she heard the door open and close, and figured it was her dad so she rolled over. When she didn't hear him sit down she opened her eyes and looked at the computer. He was not there.
She sat up and found an apparition at the end of the bed -- a man in a full Civil War era uniform -- staring back at her. They enjoyed each other's company for a few moments before the man walked off through the wall.
Our most recent adventure came during a break from college. We were both home, hanging out and decided to take Sue's dog Emma for a walk.
This is the route we took:

This west side entrance to the Greenwood Cemetery in Hallock
was Sue's usual route. (image courtesy of GOOGLE EARTH)

We chatted about nothing in particular, eyeing a vehicle parked ahead of us in the cemetery, until Emma started straining against her leash to go down the first of three lanes. Her usual route was the middle lane and Sue couldn't understand why Emma wanted to go another way. I had kept walking, probably telling a story, until I heard Sue say softly, "Holy shit."
I stopped and turned to look at Sue who had frozen in her tracks while Emma still strained to go down the other road. I asked what was wrong.
"There was a man over there wearing a pink plaid flannel shirt, jeans and boots. Just standing over a gravestone. When I looked away and looked back he was gone."
I suggested he had gotten in the vehicle that had been parked over there. But Sue insisted the vehicle had left before she saw the man.
Emma still refused to go any further.
Over the last 10 years or so, I've met people who have strange and partially prophetic dreams, regularly see ghosts and believe in reincarnation. I personally have deja'vu often and can't shake the feeling I've been on this earth more than once. But that's a story for another time.