Intervention

To all readers, this is about 2 of my 3 resident spirits, Gran and Charlie.

It's funny how the human mind works. Some people are naturally predisposed to be hard and unbending when interacting with others while others, such as myself, are the kind who tend to be too nice. In saying that, I have learnt the hard way how easy it is for the harder types to take advantage of "softies" like me. Of course, every person has a limit to what they can take. You stand back and let your mind take the beating (if it's not your body that gets it) until you reach the point of fight or flight. I never run. But when I enter fight mode, I can become just as hard as any of the others. When that happens, I barely have control over what I think, though I am not prone to violent outbursts.

The girl living in the granny flat in my yard is one of those hard people. She does not care who she uses, she does it without thinking twice. She has no respect for boundaries, personal or otherwise, and rarely considers the implications of her actions. Due to this fact, she has a tendency to alienate people, especially other women. In addition, her boyfriend is in trouble with her more than he is out of it. She did not work for a year and a half after moving in with her boyfriend, so they expected she clean the flat while they were at work. Reasonable. When she did not have something in the flat, like cleaning products, she would go and ask the lady who helps me clean my house. It got to be such a bad habit that my housekeeper eventually started putting empty bottles in sight so the girl could see there was nothing to borrow. She still has a nasty habit of wanting foodstuffs, everything from vinegar to cheese, milk to coffee. The reason I gave you this background is to understand what happened next. So, onward to the actual story.

10 August 2013 was a Saturday. I put my blackberry on silent at night before I go to bed. But, as all blackberry users will tell you, not even silent mode can disguise a "ping". Around 7:30AM this morning, I woke up to serious vibrations as my phone received ping after ping after ping. It took me a second or two to get my wits about me. I took my phone and looked at the messages, there were about 20 pings (I'm not exaggerating, this lady refuses to be ignored) and when I scrolled up to see the actual first message it read, "Hey girl, do you have some coffee for me?"

My blood started boiling in my veins. For a moment I bit my tongue and told myself to just ignore this. Then she went and opened the back door to my house. The housekeeper has a tendency to forget to lock the door, but I have a safety gate and this is the crucial part, an alarm system. The moment she opened the door, the alarm started screaming. I bolted out of bed like a bat out of hell to get to the panel before it started howling, waking the neighbourhood. When the alarm was silent, both my kids were standing next to me, one of them, T, had his hands over his ears. Loud noises really freak him out. I unlocked the passageway gate and headed to the kitchen, absolutely FURIOUS. I was so mad I pictured myself punching her. I have never hit anyone in my life. I entered the kitchen, and blasted through to the scullery, my kids in tow, and just as I entered and I could see the door and the woman standing there, smiling at me like this was the biggest joke ever, I stopped. I just pushed my fingers into my hair and stood there. Every thought I had, or attempted to have, sort of evaporated. She kept asking me if I was ok, I was so mad I was shaking. Who wakes someone up at that time of a Saturday morning, to borrow something that you can get in your car and go buy yourself?!?! She kept asking me if I was ok. I could get out that she just caused me really unneeded stress because I thought something had happened on the property, what with being so insistent on waking me up and all. But no other words would come out. I tried to focus on the anger, tried to get coherent thoughts in my head, but it just would not happen. I opened my mouth to speak, no words would form. I just thought I was dumb struck with anger.

After I had sufficiently cooled down, and all anger had basically dissipated, I was able to not only think and talk, but move. I had not realized it, but I had been stationary in the same spot since entering the scullery.

Now, considering that I have had quite a few ghostly encounters, but never really gave it any merit until September last year, when all was revealed in my home. I have often wondered what it would be like if a spirit took over your body or your mind. Bearing in mind, I never wished it to happen, I just wondered what it is like.

Fast forward to 16 August 2013. I had decided to tell Tim about the incident on Saturday. I asked him if Charlie had shown him what had happened. He said he had, and he could feel that I was not just angry, a much harsher expletive had to be used to explain my level of anger. He said that is why Charlie stopped me in the scullery. Tim said he could see a hand reaching out and grabbing hold of my shoulder. Pulling me back. I later realized that I had come to a stop exactly where Charlie had been the day of my mom's party when I kept dropping the glasses and where he had played a joke on Elaine and sat down on her feet (see "Guess who's back"). Now that I knew Charlie had been keeping me from getting too close to the girl, I asked Tim if Charlie had somehow kept me from saying anything. Tim said, no, that was Gran. He told me that he could see one of the boys standing with his hands over his ears, and wanted to know who and why. I told him it was T, he doesn't do well with loud noises, he did that when the alarm started screaming. Tim told me that is what spurred Gran on to intervene as well. In his words, "You mess with her boys, you mess with her. And that's never a good idea." Between the two of them they kept me from acting irrationally and doing or saying something that I would most definitely later regret and beat myself up about. Both of them were angry at her as well, but obviously totally in control of themselves.

Now I had been the one "controlled" by spirits, and, though I am very grateful for their help, it wasn't what I had expected. I still had a lot of control, didn't feel like I had been "taken over". Still scary, considering one always thinks "it will never happen to me".