Ghostly Manifestations

The ocean glimmers in a myriad of soft reflective pastels as the tiny sounds it intimately holds are engulfed completely by the more robust waves reminding the shoreline that nothing is truly solid forever. The nautical conglomerate, so easily swayed by the pull of the moon and the warmth of prevailing winds, redefines itself, and all it's contents, with every passing second. In unending variation, the source of all life emanating from the murky depths struggles toward the jagged mountaintop, eternally searching for what it already intrinsically knows. The spirit refines itself with each individual impetus. Along with history's hundreds of tales liken to horrific sea serpents crushing long boats and the glorious romantic swashbucklers of old plundering, there roams the proprietor of a small voice seldom heard roving up from the sea, through villages, then city states and on through the wilderness. That small voice without physical apex has bourn the weight of the world on it's shoulders throughout centuries and civilizations, never able to tighten a hold upon the burden, for the source of the voice is perfect spirit. One infinitesimal fragment of manifestation past hand to mouth rock bed reality, sends shivers of delight down one person's spine and calls frightening dark demons into another's conscious quickly so the voice moves in silence more often than not.

We cast images of perceptions beyond the surface of "things" to impart an understanding of "spirit" and with each description the allegory to suffice becomes something unique. The reason for this is because the ghost or spirit is no longer marking a place in time and singular imagery is inadequate. That larger essence is not bound by focal blinders so it occupies a greater breath than our senses can comprehend. Once in the nebulous spirit mold, these ghosts can, and do, live in more than one singular moment at a time. When contact with the living is established the comprehension of experiential multiplicity is disconcerting to human beings. Our individual brains are disrupted (at the stem) from the incongruity caused by multiple simultaneous experience. This is due to our own singular experiential conditioning from birth. That actually is a blessing in disguise for it illuminates the path living humans can take to help the troubled spirits find peace at last.

With those things in mind we can examine three different encounters and see the way ghosts or disembodied spirits interact with the living. The first will be a group interaction. The second a forlorn encounter and the third an encasement that unfolds in mystery. All three hold one of the strongest elements in connecting the spirit realm to the living, and that is heartbreak.

The first tale begins with a pioneer going out west to the gold fields with his young bride hoping to strike it rich and build a homestead. After finding a pretty little meadow on a hillside in the mountains just north of Groveland California, they dug a well and built a small house. Just for the sweet girl they put up a little picket fence to keep the varmints out of the garden. The love they both felt for each other was tremendous. On the other side of the barbed wire fence on the far hill lived the town's Preacher so they both felt safe there. Of course the Preacher was a wealthy man and even had a carriage house on the property that long since became a lodge and went through other changes over the years.

These are impressions I got from walking among the ruins of The Pioneer and his wife's abode. There is one particular account that is amusing though I doubt it's validity. When I first saw it the only thing left standing of what my Uncle called the "prospector's place," was the fence gate and a few of the pickets. I opened the gate and walked through it. A magnificent vapor of intense love settled upon me and I was deeply affected by the power it had. As I slowly pieced the mystery together, drawn to that very feeling, I realized it was the love between the Pioneer and his wife that I felt back then. I was actually very young at the time. According to the story, no one had been able to open the gate as it had been stuck shut for nearly a hundred years. After I open it, I walked through as the feeling grew steadily stronger. I was almost thrown to the ground as I experienced such deep feelings. That's when several fragments of impression popped into my head. All of them were good feelings of these two celebrating their lives together but I couldn't process the impressions as they all came to me at the very same instant. It was then a slow process of recollection that allowed my brain to analyze them.

Tragedy befell them in the long cold winter and the wife came up sick and passed away. Eventually, the Pioneer died as well in a fire that burned the house to the ground. All that was left of it, when I was there those long years ago, were some charred remains of the corners where the walls joined and part of the chimney they had made out of field stone and crude clay mortar. One old ceramic metal coffee cup lay rotting in the middle of where the building once stood. My Uncle owned the property and didn't want a single thing touched there. He just let it all go back to nature and never talked about it or any impressions he got from it. I asked more than once and he got a far away look in his eyes and as they clouded over, all he'd say is "that's where the old Prospector lived." He covered what was left of the well up, which amounted to nothing more than a deep hole in the ground, but never even tried to use it, that I know of..

Another impression was what led me to believe the story I am telling you took place. This time on a warm summer night I was laying in the house we were building, roughly thirty yards away from that spot. The house barely had the walls framed and the roof overhead but there was a sofa bed for me to sleep on. I was about eleven years old at the time and there was absolutely no reason for me to get the feeling that came over me. Amid the massive feeling people report having during meditation etc. where you are immensely large and at the same time immensely small, a profound and foreign sense of sadness washed through me. There was definitely a masculine essence to the perception. It was grief but I didn't know it at the time as I had never lost anybody near me until much later in life. The Pioneer had grieved for his wife for quite some time before the fire actually rejoined them. All of this was just the foundation of what was to follow.

Not many days after that, I went down to Jamestown with my Uncle Bill. He parked the truck outside the place that used to be a bar. I waited in the pickup for him to go get something we needed and some food to make sandwiches out of. As I waited there, the three drunks who have been reported as haunting that spot approached me. These three have actually been on television with a well known psychic investigating it. Now the three of them seemed to still be inside the place and were calling to me from inside. That actually scared me out of my wits. I could feel all three of them impinging upon my very being. They were drunk and rowdy and once again the circumstances of their own lives were laid out before me all at once. They actually had died in a gun battle between them and something nefarious was at the core of their untimely deaths. They had been bilking all the prospectors who came to town and somehow they argued over it, which started the fight that killed them. Sensing all of this, in fact being thrust into the middle of it, and being there alone, made me feel like they were actually trying to get me. But after a short time the experience changed to a more relaxed and codifying one. They were trying to tell me something and I didn't understand what. As soon as my Uncle opened the door to the pickup the intensity of feeling vaporized but the memory seemed to linger on for the rest of the afternoon with me still not comprehending what they were trying to impart.

A day or two later we were at a building supply store and another occurrence took place. Now bear in mind that there was no radio playing, no television, nothing in the way of possible input that could have put suggestion into my head, so that possibility is out of the question. As my Uncle was driving out of the parking lot a feeling, and vision, came to me. Once again, there was the experiential multiplicity very strong and quite unsettling. This time I not only heard the voice as if someone were actually speaking to me, I also saw a fellow who's face was right up in mine. At the very same time I perceived him walking up from the southern end of Groveland toward downtown. At that time the town hadn't really changed much over the last hundred years except the advent of electricity and use of automobiles so it looked the same whether I was seeing him walking in the present or perceiving one of his memories. I called the fellow Pistol Packing Pete because that's who he reminded me of. The gist of the conversation was that he was mad at The Preacher who he thought had killed The Pioneer, so he was going gunning for him. I mentally told Pistol Packing Pete that The Preacher was innocent and didn't kill The Pioneer. This seemed to satisfy old Pete and he vanished after a few more choice words and a great deal of grumbling. Now this apparition was spotted in those years by many people, but after that I don't recall anyone reporting having seen Pistol Packing Pete again. Apparently what I had to say to him had actually helped to put his soul to rest.

The basic story I came to understand was that Pete didn't much like The Preacher who was the town's VIP. What The Preacher had allegedly been doing is dragging in converts by hook or by crook and that upset Pete who was less than pliable. When The Pioneer (or Prospector if you will) came up dead in the burned out house Pete thought The Preacher had killed him. It appears the whole problem had centered around The Preacher's Carriage House and the possibility that The Pioneer was caught snooping around in it.

If we back track just a little when I first started going up to Groveland with Uncle Bill and Aunt Lil ... by the way, thousands of people called them Uncle Bill and Aunt Lil but they were truly my relatives. Uncle Bill was my mother's brother. Anyway, when I first started going up there, as any kid would do, I went exploring. I can remember walking for miles down the firebreaks in late summer and early autumn. It was breathtaking. The sweet fresh Mountain air and the stupendous colors of nature abound in a cornucopia of God's creation. I was never once concerned about Mister Bear coming to eat me for diner or even Dogs from neighboring properties attacking me on those firebreaks. One particular time my Cousin Hugh and I must have walked from mid-day until nearly nightfall down the firebreak that ran across my Uncle's place and far back into the deep woods. We knew we had walked well past the confines of Uncle Bill's as he only had 80 acres and had arranged to sell 40 of those to a friend of his. This was Stanislaus National forest and the firebreak was basically impassable for vehicles but a very comfortable stroll. The deer were plentiful and not a day went by without seeing or hearing at least one coming down for a drink of water from the spring. Gray squirrels played in the Sugar Pines and Oaks and I wished I had the ability to identify all the species of birds that sang in the trees. Our goal on that long hike was to see how far it was to somebody else's place and it was a tremendous distance. We did finally see another cabin nestled down about a quarter of a mile to the south of the trail and I for one was glad to head back for diner.

Up in those mountains there was ample evidence of the Gold Rush days. Everywhere you looked you would see wooden "rockers" for sifting out gold from the dirt with long water troughs on stilts leading to them from tiny spring that had dried up long ago. Every few miles there would be a brick storehouse with Iron Doors protecting the contents. There were many artifacts laying on the ground, virtually everywhere from those days, and musing over what happened to those people was a popular pastime. That should give you a sense of the area and you should acknowledge that I felt perfectly safe there. Mister Bear seldom came visiting and when he approached, you would know in an instant, well in advance of his arrival, for all the deer scrambled hastily and the woods got deathly quiet, where ever his heavy foot fell. A deep sense of dread was abound throughout nature and if you were directly upwind you might not have smelled his scent but anywhere else the distinct odor of wild bear was easily discernable.

One of the first things I found near Uncle Bill's place was the Carriage House across the spring and just a little ways up the next hill. The barbed wire fence that once stood between the properties had long since fallen to the ground and I didn't see it that day. The Carriage House was truly nothing more than a old ramshackle barn type structure only large enough to fit two carriages in it with a work bench at one end and one to the side. It was about to fall down back in the early sixties and is probably returned to the dust by now. One of the two doors was ajar but neither would move as I recall. The door ajar was jammed and tearing anything up was out of the question so I never actually went in there. When I discovered The Carriage House I thought it was on my Uncle's property but I later found out that it wasn't. It was obvious that no one had been inside the structure in a very long time. The cobwebs were so extensive it seemed as if there were curtains or thin transparent veils hung from all the rafters. I saw rattler nests also present inside, but thankfully, none of the ratters announced it to be their domain. There was almost enough of a carriage to actually be considered a complete one sitting in there under layer upon layer of silt, and pieces enough laying around to make yet another one. Actually the stuff was too old to be of any practical use and would have fallen apart had someone tried to recondition it. A few old hand tools were scattered around under at least three quarters of an inch of dust. I got up on tip toes and rubbed a spot clean in the little window to peer inside so I could see what was in there. Right then an extremely strange feeling came over me as if someone very large and powerful was standing directly behind me and shouting menacingly. It was a very overwhelming feeling. I surely must have looked like I had seen a Ghost, as I had! I later found out that was The Preacher. The words were indiscernible, devoid of sound, but the meaning was unmistakable. It was like a deep gray cloud had descended upon the area around this old ruins and around me specifically. This was totally out of sorts for my own true experiences up in those mountains. The message was "stay out! Get away from here!" There was a strong sense of ownership in the Ghost's intent. I didn't really need to be told twice so I took off scurrying down the hill and I didn't stop until I was standing in the spring water. For some reason that felt good despite the fact my shoes would be sopping wet all night. When I talked to my Uncle he told me that wasn't part of his property and I shouldn't be messing around that building. I didn't say anything about the Ghost as I was afraid he'd think I was crazy and didn't tell him about all the ratter nests because I didn't want his concern for my safety to limit my explorations. They didn't bother me and I didn't bother them.

I did have a dream where I was actually seeing what must have happened many years before that. Through the Pioneers eyes he (or I) had gone into The Carriage House and was admiring one of the tools that was laying on the bench. There were no cobwebs or snakes there in the dream. The Pioneer was not a thief and he wanted and needed that tool but he couldn't bring himself to even borrow it without permission. Right then The Preacher came in and caught him. He began yelling at me (or the Pioneer actually) and The Pioneer was trying to explain that he hadn't taken anything and wasn't going too. At that point something frightened The Preacher half out of his wits. I don't know where it actually came from but it felt like something protecting The Pioneer from The Preacher's undue wrath. The Preacher ran off and The Pioneer was leaving when I woke up. The dream ended there and I felt very startled and disoriented for some time after awakening. What I believe happened was The Preacher was furious at finding The Pioneer in his Carriage House and something in the back of his mind had actually kept him from doing anything to the poor guy. What The Preacher saw was most probably discerned by him to be some huge unknown force that was protecting The Pioneer. What he would have probably thought, is that The Pioneer was in league with the Devil himself! Of course at the moment The Preacher wasn't seeing The Pioneer's innocence, his love for his wife, or the need within him. The sense I had was that The Pioneer was actually a young man at the time but that might have been clouded by the fact that I was in reality very young then. The sense of grief I felt over the death of The Pioneer's wife, prior to this occurrence, gave me the impression that he was not that young at all when he passed away. So perhaps that was how it all took place but it was not presented to me in a direct timeline so it is very difficult to say with any certainty.

Down in town they have seen The Preacher many times over the years. He used to always walk along the sidewalk from the stores to hotel. Later, most times they saw him in the doorway of one particular store. You see, he was very afraid of Pistol Packing Pete who was coming to gun him down so when Pete relented The Preacher wasn't seen walking as often. Whatever happened in The Carriage House had given The Preacher a firm belief in Ghosts. So apparently he eventually became one himself and would preach the fear of the Lord, to warn people, then he would actually go into the Hotel to get away from Pistol Packing Pete. Pete's thinking that he had killed The Pioneer lead to the drunks down in Jamestown telling me to tell Pete that The Preacher didn't do it. And they chose me because I was the only person in the area that they were drawn too. At an impressionable eleven years of age I wasn't afraid of ghosts, I just didn't like how mean they seemed to be. It took many years for me to figure out that they weren't really trying to be mean. It was the multiple simultaneous experiences that confound and frighten living humans.

In the dream The Preacher caught The Pioneer in The Carriage House but he didn't harm him. Whatever scared The Preacher most probably had him acting very defensively whenever he saw The Pioneer. And on top of that it put a conscious knowledge into The Preacher that there were forces stronger than nature itself surrounding The Carriage House. I do know that the descendants of The Preacher had stayed away from The Carriage House themselves and didn't want anybody going anywhere near it. Of course, the spiders and the snakes were reason enough, but I believe there was far more to it than that.

Since I actually didn't go down into that little section of town very often that was said to be haunted by The Preacher I never encountered him after I figured out what was truly going on. From what I understand his visitations to the living were replete with moods. Sometimes it was fire and brimstone and other times he was very benevolent. I did see him in one of his more benevolent moments but I didn't think to tell him that the danger from Pete was over. He may still appear there but hopefully he got the message through the ether that all is safe and he has nothing to worry about. One day I will find out if he still appears, and if so, I'll tell him that he has been vindicated and what he saw was the essence of the love between The Pioneer and His Wife that was simply protecting The Pioneer and it was not The Devil on The Preacher's heels. I don't think it's necessary though. I believe he has heard my message and most probably rests in peace now. I'm not sure about the Lady who waits in the Hotel in Groveland though. I've never seen her and don't have a clue what's happening with her. It's quite possible she waits there to comfort The Preacher when he comes to hide from Pistol Packing Pete.