A Ghost Tale For Tuesday

The main character of my novel, Unfolding the Shadows, is a psychic. Jillian Rogers Greene can see, hear, and feel the presence of the spirit world around her, as well as interact with the ghosts who whisper to her. Each of these abilities has a name, and many people who claim to be psychics have one or two of these abilities.

Clairvoyance is the ability to see what normally can't be seen... ghosts and the spirit world as it manifests around us.
Clairaudience is the ability to hear words, sounds and messages from the spirit world, to hear things that are beyond the normal range of hearing. A famous example of such a psychic would be Whoopie Goldberg's character in the movie "Ghost."

Clairaliance or Clairscentient is the ability to smell something beyond the normal levels of smell - in paranormal books and movies, a bad spirit manifestation is often preceded by the smell of sulfur or some other unpleasant odor.

Clairsentience is the ability to feel the presence of spirits...to pick up sensations and relate messages from these sensations.

Clairtangency is a term to describe a psychic’s ability to "touch beyond the physical."

Clairempathy is to be able to feel emotions from the spirit world.

Clairgustance refers to taste. Some psychics pick up certain tastes while conducting a reading.

There are myriad other abilities that are "psychic" or paranormal. For a complete list, check out psychic-junkie.com - there's an alphabetical listing of psychic powers, A-Z. It includes definitions of hundreds of terms dealing with the spirit world. Many people have a touch of one or more psychic abilities, but usually we shrug off those contacts as "funny feelings." Sometimes we just can't ignore those feelings.

My sister-in-law would never in a million years call herself psychic. And yet, after they bought their first home in Marlboro, MA she started getting a creepy feeling when she was in the home alone. Especially upstairs, where the bedrooms were. And most especially in the smaller bedroom to the right of the double staircase. There was something definitely wrong in there.

Her cat and dog knew it too. The cat wouldn't go in that room. When they sat on the couch at night, the cat would stare at the right hand staircase, as if waiting for someone to come down the steps. Sometimes the stairs would creak as if someone was coming down... except there was no one there. Just an angry presence that would creak back up the other staircase soon after descending.

After getting to know a few of the neighbors, she finally asked if there was something strange about her house. The woman hesitated before telling her that the teenaged son of the couple whom she'd bought the house from had committed suicide in the house. In his bedroom. The room to the right of the staircase.

Soon after she found that out, some of my father-in-law's brothers were visiting from Ireland. My husband's dad grew up in Dublin, one of ten children. While he became a doctor, two of his brothers are priests and one sister is a nun. My sister-in-law wanted to ask her husband's uncle to perform an exorcism, but he wouldn't. They did ask the uncle to officially bless their house, which seemed to clear up the presence of anger. And now they've since remodeled, almost completely gutting it to change the house into their dream home. The double staircase is still there, though.

But sometimes when she's alone in the living room, the stairs still creak as some unseen presence descends them...