I am Haunted: Living Life Through the Dead (31 page)

I never planned to get the tattoo on my left arm. I just woke up one day and decided I needed it. It says, “The dead travel fast.” My other tat is of Vlad Tepes (better known as Dracula), whom I feel is a real vampire living past his first death. I experienced his spirit in Romania. During my White Rite ceremony in Paris, Father Sebastiaan told me that being a vampire is about living beyond your first death.

One thing scares the shit out of me when I think about crossing over and passing through those doorways: Are the spirits I’ve pissed off going to be there waiting for me? They could be, so I also train to build my spiritual armor. There are no textbooks or manuals that will prepare you for death (except the Bible), so I’m blazing my own trail. If you believe in it, you will spend an eternity with God in heaven. If not, who knows, but I’ll be ready either way.

I feel like my body and soul are day and night. I’m constantly being driven one way and then pulled back the other. The cover of this book is a good illustration of that struggle. I’ve got demons, angels, and spirits fighting to pull me in different directions all the time. I wish I could give everyone a secret password to summon me when I pass over, like saying “Beetlejuice” three times. But if we could do that, then there would be phone booths set up to talk to the other side, or someone would make an app for your phone so you could call up your great-great-grandfather and ask how things went down at Gettysburg. There would be no mysteries in life. What fun would that be?

Living forms are more in tune with the world around us and the afterlife than we think. I’ve said before that I think the human body is a perfectly reliable detector of paranormal energy. Our minds are powerful, and our consciousness is amazing. The problem is that we’re stuck in these bodies that decay and degrade over time, and we even help the process along by indulging in vices like drugs and alcohol and letting our minds get worn down by the stresses of relationships, work, bills, terrorism, religion, you name it. We don’t channel our energy well. We’re distracted by everything. We don’t take the time to learn how to use our minds more fully.

At death, when life ends and all the trivial things of this world disappear, I believe that our minds are finally freed from all distractions, and we’re allowed to focus singularly and freely on one thing. Some souls cross over into a realm we don’t know about yet. Others turn their focus to something they hold dear, like a family member or a house to roam carefree. Our bodies have to stay in one physical place and time, but our spirits are free after death, and our consciousness takes on a new ability to do things. But we’ll never know until we cross over.

I think death is a mystery that needs to remain somewhat secret. I like to poke and prod around it and try to get a glimpse of what happens when we cross over, but we won’t (and shouldn’t want to) know for sure until we step through that door one last time and learn what God has in store for us. That’s how He made it, and I do believe in Him. I wasn’t meant to die in a car crash in Arizona. I’m meant for something else.

IT’S ALL A DESIGN, AND
IT ALL HAS MEANING.

*
health.howstuffworks.com/human-body/systems/circulatory/heart4.htm

*
Zak Bagans,
Dark World
, Section VI

*
http://barrytaff.net/2013/07/cielo-drive-convergence-the-ultimate-field-laboratory/