MY PARANORMAL EXPERIENCES
This article will be written in sequential parts, each added as I have time to write them. I was raised in a medium sized mid-western city and lived in three houses during my growing up years, two in the eastern and one in the western part of the city. Each half of the city was almost a city onto itself.

During my youth, up to eight years old, my family lived in a small garage type of home, so named because it was a little larger than today’s two car garage – with an attic. My older sister and younger brother, father, mother and dog Queenie occupied this house, formerly occupied by my father’s parents, brothers and sisters. Once grown his brothers and sisters moved elsewhere and my grandparents moved into a larger house two doors from our own.

During my years in this small house, I can’t recall receiving any religious training except for a couple attendances in a Sunday school in a nearby public gradeschool and once in a church. My mother was baptized Catholic but when she was a child her father, a European immigrant, turned against the church and they discontinued their membership. I didn’t become aware of this until several years ago.

My parents embraced the services of spiritual faith healers which was not uncommon for that time period. My mother told me she employed the use of one when I was only weeks old and had double pneumonia. She said he treated me and when he did so, a cloud of foamy ectoplasm came out of my mouth and dissolved. Following that treatment I got better. All of what I have described transpired between 1932 and 1940.

The earliest memory I have in this house was a day when I was between 2 and 3, was waking up from a nap on a “day-bed” in our small living room being attacked by a large rat. I don’t know if this was real or just a dream. A strange first memory of life but it had no paranormal content.

We were a happy family of five, and a dog, in those days. We had relatives from both sides of the family nearby who stopped in to visit on a regular basis. My father had an entry level job which paid little but he was lucky to have that during the depression years. We were poor, like many throughout the country, but happy.

Months before WWII began, we moved about eight miles away to the west side of the city in a brand new brick, two bedroom home with an attic and a basement measuring about 800-900 square feet which was about a normal size home for that period.

During the four years we lived there, my parents were under a lot of stress because two more children were born (in that house) to our growing family, my father’s job was frozen as many were during the war years and he was stuck in a low paying city job while other neighbors had high paying jobs in nearby war related manufacturing firms. To add to his stress, he had an unreliable 1935 Chevorlet that was his transportation to his job on the east side of the city. He never knew if the car would start in the morning, especially during the cold mid-western winters.

Perhaps because of their stress they got involved in Spiritualism, maybe with the hope that the spirits could guide them through tough time. I don’t know that as a fact but here I’m surmising. Looking back, I’m amazed they did as well as they did under the circumstances.

My parents teamed with other like-minded people interested in spiritualism. None of these people that I’m aware of were “professional spiritual mediums.” They held their séances at each other houses. When it was their turn, my parents held their séances down our basement. The members came with the tools of séances which included a collapsible conical horn with strips of florescent tape circling its circumference. The horn acted as an amplifier for the weak spirit voices. The tape glowed in the darkened room so the members could see where it floated to as the spirits spoke through it.

My sister and I, the oldest of the five children were not allowed to participate in these séances that were held at night. The three younger siblings were usually in bed at that time. My sister and I were however, able to monitor the events by lying on the floor and listening through the cold air return register. We would hear religious songs being sung by the members to start the séance followed guitar music from a ghostly instrument because no one arrived with one and my parents didn’t own one either. Following that we heard deep male voices being spoken that gave messages to the members about future events or things they should be doing.

TO BE CONTINUED