As I help plan the wedding of my beloved daughter, I can't help but think about the fact that this future date almost never would have arrived. Without the intervention of a very sad furnace dweller, who stepped out of his self imposed purgatory to save a life.
In early 1996 we moved into a strange little place on the north end of Tacoma, WA, 26th and Verde. Now I've always been a "north ender" as we had commonly referred to ourselves. For the most part I tried to raise my daughter on the north end. Hoping to give my child just a bit of an edge as opposed to our living in the less expensive Hilltop, East end, or even Lakewood for that matter. Maybe that sounds sort of elitist, but I was always willing to spend a little more to keep my family a little more removed from, those areas where the crime rate is that much higher. Environment is a very strange beast.
Now anybody who knows me well, knows how close I am with my daughter. She's now 25 and half my age but.... we still consider each other best friends. I do not know where I would be with out her. Even 10 years ago during those difficult teen years, I had this major obsession with her.
When I found the house on 26th Street, I had been looking frantically for a few weeks. Time was getting short and the thought of being homeless was looming rather largely around us. Then I found it...... this little white box of a house, sitting smack on a large corner lot. Along with a gorgeous Magnolia in the back yard, there was also a half dead Cherry tree. There was this strange little sun room off the back of the house where I had some of my most creative times. The interior was a little bit of "30's" art deco, that you would've never expected from looking at the outside of it.
Inside though, you could feel the anquish. Even after the house blessing and the invocation of the protective ones, a sense of foreboding hung overhead like a very heavy cloud. After the blessing just before the "move" I was speaking with an old friend, another psychic as a matter of fact. We were under the blooming Magnolia tree and he said to me...."you know there was a suicide here". Yes I knew it, you could feel it, there was no mistaking it. His shroud of death hung so heavily in the air. I had no other place to go so it was tune him out and make the best of it. So I made the best of it for 7 years. He was basically harmless, just spooky.
For the most part, it worked well to tune him out, but every time I walked past the furnace room in the basement, I knew he was there. I could feel him lurking but I refused to see him in the corner of my eye. I hated having to go into that little room for any reason. The perverbial "room under the stairs" and under the stairs it actually was, LOL. That darn furnace was over 60 years old and I always had to make some kind of adjustment to it inside THAT room.
Right behind the furnace were some shelves with doors on the outside that lead to my daughter's room. She used to stuff that cubby hole with anything she didn't use daily. That used to frustrate me to no end but I totally understand now why she did it. I used to take a long stick to hook the boxes of canning jars and pull them out rather then going in there to get them for canning. He was that spooky.
Because of this lost soul, a vortex was created in the upstairs hallway and it always felt like a door was open to the other side there. It does not surprise me that I had my very first medium reading in that home. The man who came through was also a suicide victim. I had a lot of suicide victims come to me there as a matter of fact.
When we moved in, my daughter had chosen to take the room down in the basement. I assume it was originally a family room. It had a huge closet, a bathroom that you froze your butt off in everytime you had to use it. The worst paneling on the walls you have ever seen, but the charming fireplace made that room a very desirable place. Of course I had to nail the windows shut, because Princess and her friends had the nasty habit of sneaking out at night. Not to mention.... those she snuck in. I remember the day, LOLOL. Teenagers, you just got to love them.
The earthquake hit the morning of Feb, 28, 2001, somewhere around 10:20 a.m. I was in the middle of a shower and all of the sudden, I was slow dancing in hell, naked in my shower. 6.8 and the 45 seconds it lasted seemed to go on and on for at least a week.
I managed to get the water off and grabbed a towel. I was headed for the basement to check on my daughter, but she was at the top of the stairs when I came out of the bathroom. She looked as if she had seen a ghost and quite literally she had. As she explained to me what happened from her end that morning, the chills ran up and down and back up my spine and still does every time I think about what could have happened.
She was sleeping very soundly and he appeared to her in her dream. His face about an inch from her's. Geez, I'm getting chills now just writing about this. Anyway he had to scream at her to wake her up as she sleeps like the dead. "WAKE UP...... THERE'S AN EARTHQUAKE!!!" Her eyes snapped open and she immediately sat up as he disappeared. At that same moment a hanging glass lamp with hundreds of glass disks came crashing down. just missing her face and head by meer inches. Had she not been woken up by our very sad furnace dweller, she surely would have died that morning. I owe him so much for saving her, especially since he could not save himself. I was also not surprised that about a year later, she gave that lamp to a friend. It never hung in that room again after the earthquake.
When my daughter described him to me, I got chills again as this was the same man, with the dark hair and the goatee, I had seen in the corner of my eye behind the furnace. Such a sad person, I believe he hung himself in the basement with his own belt sometime in the 60's.
I did not see him again until the evening I was finished moving out and the final cleaning was almost finished. The house was pretty emptied out and it was getting late, I still had the basement carpets to shampoo right next to that room.
Now I had lived there for 7 years and never had a problem staying in that house alone at any time, nights, weekends, whenever. It just never bothered me. Oh I knew he was there, anybody sensitive who came down those stairs knew he was there. But when I had emptied it of all my things it was way too eery to handle. I still had that one last bathroom to clean and carpet to shampoo. The wind was up that late August evening and the doors upstairs kept slamming shut. Everytime it happened, I about jumped out of my skin. That fact that I was alone didn't help much either. My daughter was settled in her own apartment and my ex had moved out almost a year prior to that. It was right around dusk and I had to grab something from the other part of the basement. So I rounded the corner and looked up to see my daughter's savior hanging from his own belt dead for 3 days.
Honestly, I could not leave that house any quicker than I did that evening. I mean..... I HAULED butt up those stairs, grabbed all my things, left the key on the mantle, locked the door behind me and never entered that house again. Shock factor will get me every time. I'd spent 7 years pretending he wasn't there, but he was. He never harmed or caused trouble, this gentle, but so sad entity. He may also have been somewhat of a practical joker in life, because he left us completely alone for the most part unless he felt it was his duty to help. He DID make sure I saw him though before I left some 7 years later. It scared the crap out of me.
The one thing I wondered many times was why I never had the urge to lead him over to the light of the other side. As a student of life's metaphysical and humanitarian arts, that was something I always would have helped with. It's what I am highly trained and skilled to do, but with him, I never even thought about it, not once until after I moved out and I've always felt really bad about it. My best friend Lady Raven and I discussed it and then I was able to see it from a completely different perspective. Strict orders from the other side, I was not supposed to. Other psychics have also assured me that number one he won't leave and number two it was never my place to do that for reasons, I do not, nor will I ever understand. However, he saved my daughter's life and I honor him with this tribute. I hope the new tenants are treating you well and kindly, as I see when I drive past, they still live there.
Peace out friends,
Margaret