Haunted Objects: Stories of Ghosts on Your Shelf (20 page)

What could be the nature of the ghosts that haunt these chairs? Why do they remain, for lack of a better term, glued to their seats? Perhaps these chairs hold special significance to the spirits, and they have no desire to share them with tour-goers and visitors to Belcourt Castle. Or maybe there are so many ghosts roaming the hallowed halls that these spirits had to claim at least one spot for themselves.

The Healing Medal

E
verett and his wife were worried when their seven-year-old son, Logun, began acting strange for brief periods of time. When they took him to a doctor, he was diagnosed with localized focal seizures. Logun was scheduled to have an MRI in order to rule out lesions, tumors, or cancer as the culprit of these seizures.

As the test loomed closer, Everett found himself in a panic over what the doctors might find. On one hand, he wanted to know what was wrong with his young son, but on the other, he was afraid of what they would find. Why was this happening? What kind of bad news were they going to get next?

Two days before Logun’s test, Everett was fumbling with the change in his pocket. He reached down deep and felt something strange mixed in among the coins. He pulled it out, realizing it was a pendant of some kind. When he looked closer, he saw it was a St. Christopher’s medal.

Everett had never owned such a medal, nor had he ever seen one before.

St. Christopher is believed to offer safety from sudden death, and travelers often wear his medal. Some medals are accompanied by variations of the phrases, “Look upon St. Christopher and go on reassured” or “If you trust in St. Christopher, no harm will befall you.” It is also thought that St. Christopher will protect believers from pestilence, which we now recognize as infectious disease.

The day of Logun’s test was difficult to endure. The MRI took twice as long as it should have because the doctors needed extra imaging to try to locate the root of the boy’s affliction. Everett kept reaching into his pocket and holding the medal between his fingers, figuring its mysterious appearance was some sort of sign.

The St. Christopher medal.

The next day, Logun’s test results brought wonderful news. He was in the rare but lucky three percent of people who have focal seizures but no abnormal growths or cancer as the cause. Anti-seizure medication would correct everything.

Everett began to think that the St. Christopher medal was lucky or perhaps even blessed, and decided he would put it on a necklace for his son. But when he reached into his pocket, the medal was gone. He searched for three days but couldn’t locate it. He started to think that perhaps it had gone on to help another family that needed it, appearing out of nowhere just as it had for him.

About a month and a half later, Everett was scheduled to have knee surgery. The day before his surgery, he found the St. Christopher medal lying in the driveway of his home, right by the driver’s side door of his car. Even if he had dropped it following Logun’s test, he surely would have spotted it in the six weeks since that time.

Everett felt the medal reappeared to help him through his surgery and it did just that, until the day he got his stitches removed—when it vanished again.

An Assurance From the Unknown

Sometimes the paranormal aspects of a haunted item stem from how the item is obtained, rather than from how it behaves after it is acquired. Objects can appear out of nowhere, finding their way into the hands of a person who needs them.

For centuries, people have reported odd items appearing out of thin air. When the item is something you need at that time, it’s hard to deny that there is a special kind of force at work, and when the delivery man can’t be used to explain as to why an item suddenly appears, it becomes an even deeper mystery.

Jenna isn’t sure whether the people she saw that night in 1991—and the man who seemed to lead them—were ghosts or angels. She and a friend, who also saw them, tend to base their ghostly appearance on religious beliefs or what they think about the paranormal.

“I have no idea who those people were,” Jenna said, thinking back on it 20 years later. “And honestly, I sometimes question if they were even people and not guardian angels, not that I even really believe in that. But it was so odd.”

Both Jenna and her friend have had other paranormal experiences, and one thing they agree on is that at no time did the leader seem entirely human, even if what he gave them was real—a simple marble.

It all started when their small group of friends went through an AIDS scare.

“I was 16, and the AIDS crisis was in full swing. PSAs (public service announcements) were everywhere, telling us all to get tested right away,” Jenna said. “I had just started having sex a few months before this, and being a good girl, I decided to do as I was told. I was terrified to get the test. Even though I had only had one partner and we used protection, I was convinced that I was probably going to be punished by some higher power for having sex before marriage.”

While no one in Jenna’s crowd was promiscuous, they were scared. Several people in their community had been exposed to the disease. Jenna, already a bit of a hypochondriac, was the first to be tested. Something in her heart told her she would not like the results.

“I went and did it anyway. My friend, Amy, came with me, and after it was over we decided to go out to eat at Applebee’s. It was not a place I really ever went, and I have no idea why we decided to go that evening. But I needed to vent my fears and it was a place for us to go, away from our parents, and talk about it all.”

It was late, and most of the people in the restaurant were teens. The ghosts appeared out of nowhere under one of the streetlights that glowed in the parking lot. One second the lot was empty, and the next there were four teens making their way across the pavement, too far away from anything to have walked up unseen.

“I definitely remember there was a guy walking out in front, with longish brown hair, probably in his 20s. I had never seen any of them before,” Jenna said.

The leader was handsome and well dressed in jeans, a button-down shirt, and sports jacket too thick for the hot Dallas weather. His whole appearance was clean and attractive. Jenna remembers being as arrested by his natty looks as by his sudden materialization.

There was also a light around him Jenna can’t, even to this day, fully describe. He was illuminated by the streetlight above him, but there was also light that seemed to come from behind him. Jenna, who had studied auras, is reluctant to say he was glowing.

“It’s more he was bathed in light,” she said.

The vision looked at her as if nothing else existed in the world, his face serene. He wasn’t smiling so much as simply looking peaceful.

Although Jenna’s friend, Amy, was facing the window, she hadn’t spotted the mysterious people yet. Jenna stopped their conversation so that Amy might notice them out the window, but by that time they had entered the restaurant. They seemed to disappear from the parking lot and reappear by the door in the blink of an eye. It was obvious they hadn’t run the distance because they remained calm and graceful. The leader of the group was unrumpled, his hair and clothes still in perfect order. More importantly, as he opened the door and walked in, no one noticed he was there.

“They came right into the restaurant. They walked directly up to Amy and me,” Jenna said. They didn’t stop to talk to anyone, and Jenna doesn’t remember anyone looking at them. “The guy in the front looked right at me and said, ‘Hold out your hand.’ I looked at him, but did not speak, and I put my hand out. He placed his hand over mine and put something in it, but did not take his hand away, right away. He looked at me and said, ‘Everything is going to be all right.’ Then he closed my hand up so that I could not see what he put inside, and he and the others turned around and left. They did not eat, they did not get drinks, nothing.”

For a moment, Jenna and Amy were too stunned to move. “I opened my hand and inside was a beautiful cat’s eye marble,” Jenna said. “I knew, looking at it, that this was a sign that I was going to be all right, that I did not have AIDS.”

The marble was unremarkable, but holding it, Jenna was overcome with a sense of peace and the feeling that, as the mysterious stranger had predicted, everything was going to be okay.

Jenna and Amy got up to follow the ghostly people, but they had vanished again. They questioned the hostess, but she had never even seen them come in.

Jenna’s test was negative, and she passed the marble to the next person who went in for the test.

“Amy and I made a pact to pass the marble on to anyone we knew who was getting the test. So I gave it to her when it was her turn, and I suppose she passed it on.”

The marble made its way through their group, one by one, bringing tranquility to whoever possessed it at the moment. It was like a security blanket, giving peace of mind. But before long it disappeared, and no one could quite remember who had it last. No ghostly young man appeared to take the marble away, and no exploding spectral entity destroyed it. It was just not needed anymore and vanished.

What happened that night is not easy to explain. The marble itself didn’t cause Jenna and Amy to see visions. Many parts of the story, from the mysterious group of people to the calm each person felt, make a sort of sense when looked at individually. What happens, though, when all these elements combine into one paranormal experience?

“It was probably one of the strangest, most wonderful things that has ever happened to me. I will never forget it,” Jenna said.

But don’t tell them that what they witnessed was not a ghost. They know there are times when you just have to believe your eyes.

I Dream of Djinn

The ring’s significance in societies around the world is undeniable, and its symbolism reflects the culture of the person wearing it. In most Western countries, the ring is a token of one’s commitment to another person. Wedding rings are thought to connect directly to the heart, claddagh rings show if you are single or involved with someone special, and mood rings tell others how you’re feeling.

The ring’s special meanings can range from eternity, due to its physical design of the endless circle, to magic, as in J. R. R. Tolkien’s
Lord of the Rings
. It may also send a cultural message or show prosperity or status.

There are countless stories of haunted rings. Because of their close personal relationships with the wearers, they are often the focus of spirits that are looking to communicate with the people left behind. That means the young woman who finds the ring her deceased grandmother was buried wearing can find peace with the dead.

The Edwards brothers didn’t have such good luck. Some might say they were doomed from the beginning. Haunted rings are supposed to be inherited, not bought through an online auction.

Brian and Ray Jay had been investigating the paranormal for a bit when they decided to get more personally involved in a haunting. They’d been interested in looking for ghosts for years, and those first few investigations fueled their desire.