Halls of the Dark Muse

Yes I know today is actually Halloween but I had my official Halloween plans in the week leading up to Halloween. I just got back today from LA visiting with my sister. Now genreally I cannot stand LA. I usually dislike and though I enjoy visiting with my sister by the end of it I cannot wait to get back home just becasue I want to be back in North Cal again but one thing I have to say is that LA knows how to do Halloween.

I do not know if you recall my post about last years Halloween when I was down with my sister and we attended the three different plays which were being held in a cemetery, but they were doing it again this year, but with three new plays.

The Body Snatchers by Robert Louis Stevenson- Which I was really looking forward to, becasue that is the only one being performed that I was previously familiar with and I loved the story. It also turned out to be the best of the plays. It was the darkest and creepiest of them.

The Casting of the Runes - I cannot recall off the top of my head the author of the story, it was someone whom I had not heard of before, but I thought the play was enjoyable. It combined both elements of humur with some spook affects.

And last Ghost Story by Mark Twain which for some reason that was not explained they decided to give this a modern twist, and since I have not read the original story I cannot really compare how much it was like the acutal story but the play was purely comical.

Though the one thing I thought was pretty cool is that each of the plays has a guide who leads you through the grounds of the cemetery to take you to where the plays were performed, many of the plays take place in several different locations, and you follow along after them as they move along. It is not a traditional just sit down and watch venue. So anyway the people are broken up into different groups and the different groups see the different plays in a different order. So while we were watching The Body Snatcher there were other groups watching the other plays and we rotate around. The Ghost story was the last play for our group and it was the shorted play being performed, and at the very end when all the plays are done there is a final curtain call so our Guide to entertain us while we waited for the other plays to finish up, did a recital of Poe's "The Raven" which I quite enjoyed.

The one disappointing thing was that we had originally planed to go to a Tim Burton art exhibit which of course I love Tim Burton and think he is a genius and artistic mastermind, but there was some problem with ordering the tickets. The tickets had to be ordered in advance, and so before I even came down there my sister had (or thought she had) ordered our tickets. She went through the ordering process online, but they were supposed to send her an e-mail with tickets or some sort of confirmation that we purchased tickets, but she could not find any e-mail from them and when she checked her credit card the tickets did not show up as having been charged, so apparently there was some glitch and the tickets never acutally got ordered and it was sold out so we could not go. But we did go to a Halloween art exhibit which was being held within the mausoleum of the cemetery which was cool becasue for one I love being in the mausoleum. Being inside the mausoleum for me just has such a nice comfortable feeling and it is very cave like becasue the wall and the floor is all made out of stone, and it has stained glass windows so it does not let in too much light. I was joking with my sister like, do you think it would be a problem if I rented a space here and than told them I wanted to occupy it while I was still alive? And the art show itself was pretty cool.

We also went to a few home grown haunted houses, which were just individual citizens who put together very elaborate Halloween decorations and displays, and one of them had this whole show that was performed in his front yard. And one of them I thought was really cool becasue they had a Hearse parked out in front of thier house.

But to top it all off we went to a channelling session. Which if you do not know what that is, it is basically kind of like a seance (though nothing like what you see in the movies) And the way that came about was when me and my sister were discussing what we were going to do while I was there she mentioned this party that she was invited to, and it was mostly going to be a group of people from the mom's club she belongs to so she was like you probably won't want to go (becasue she knows my two favorite things in the world is socializing with people I do not know and hanging out with moms) but the reason why she mentioned it is becaue there was going to be this woman there who believes she has the ability to channel and she is also this really crazy out there kind of personality. And I told my sister, half joking, if you can get them to have a seance than I will go, for it has been a long time desire of mine to attend a seance for Halloween, but that is not an easy thing to arrange.

Needless to say as it turned out on Sunday this woman was going to be holding a group channelling session and so I told my sister I totally had to go becasue it was like a once in the life time experince.

And though I am open to the belief in spirits, ghosts, the supernatural, I did not know if I truly believed this woman acutally could invoke the spirit of some dead guy, though I did not think she was an acutal fraud, intentionally deceiving people I do beleive she genuinely believes that she has this ability, I just was not sure if I believed she did or if she was just tapping into some part of her subconscious mind.

So I went to the session with the intent to simply observer it, I did not have the mind of trying to prove or disprove but simply to experience it and see what it is all about.

The spirit that the woman channel's is Dr. Peebls, who was a medical doctor, spiritualist and medium of the 19th century, and I have to say I found him to be quite charming and enduring character and one of whom it would be quite interesting to have a conversation with. When then channelling first starts, the channeler takes on the characteristics of Dr. Peebles, her voice, facial expressions mannerisms all change. It starts out with him giving a little introductory speech and than its open to questions and you can ask anything you want.

Also I should say the channeling session was being hosted in this other woman's house who than invites the channeler to come out and than other people sing up to join the session and a lot of the people there were people who attend regularly. And we do not all sit in a circle around a table holding hands, no candles or incense has to be lit. We just gather around in the living room and we are seated in a somewhat circular formation to make communication easier. Also the session was performed at 11 in the morning.

So all the people who were use to coming began asking thier questions and a lot of them wanted personal advice about thier life or things to do with thier health and as I was watching it seemed to me that a lot of what Dr. Peebles was saying was very general information. It was very wise and enlightened advice that was helpful and useful but it did not seem like it was anything really personal.

I had this question I wanted to ask but was unsure if I should, in part becasue even though we were told we could ask anything you wanted, my question was much more metaphysical than the others, plus being a private person it felt strange for me to give a glimpse of my inside thoughts to these strangers. but I was there for the experince so I decided to go for it.

I asked a question about my past life experiences, becasue I am a reincarnationist and I frequently have these visions or daydreams, which I am never sure if they are past life memoeries or just fabrications of my own mind so I always wished I could have the opportunity to consult with someone who would be objective and well was outside of my own head.

First Dr. Peebles told me that there is no such thing as a fabrication of the mind an any thought or "memory" we have does come either from a real experince of ours, or something or soul has experiences, or we are drawing from something someone else has experienced. Which I really liked that perspective.

But than when he began to speak of some of my acutal past life experiences the things he said were so specific of my own personality. Even my sister was totally blown away by how much Dr. Peebles nailed my personality.

When he was talking about my past lives my sister was thinking, omg that is so my sister. And she told me that the woman doing the channeling dose not know anything about me. This was my first time meeting her, and my sister hung out with her a few times but did not know her very well and hadn't discussed me with her. And before the channeling session started I did not have any conversations with her about myself, she came over and said hi to my sister and I introduced myself, but other than my name she knew nothing else about me.

One of my favorite things was that apparently in the Renaissance I was a painter who would sneak into the studious of artists of whom I did not like and I would add ears and tails to thier work, sometimes in rather curious places. Which totally sounds like something I would do.

And one of the things Dr. Peebles was telling me about was something that even my sister did not really know about me, becaue he was talking about how in other past lives I have taken on a nursing sort of role which at first no one would ever associate with me, as my sister put it, "I thought you only wanted to kill people" but it is true that I do have a fascination with natural, or traditional healing art forms. I am fascinated with herbology, reiki healing, Shamanistic healing, and even though I do not like children I have always found the traditional practice of midwifery to be interesting so it makes since that if I was living in a time when those were the common practices I may have been drawn to them, and in addtion it seemed that I was most interested in helping those who have been exiled and outcasts from soceity, which is totally me.

As Dr. Peeble's put it, I was someone who always liked to get things moving and shaking and liked to change the way people perceive things such as "good" and "bad" and "right" and "wrong"

So by the end of it I have to say that I felt pretty convinced that I may have truly been speaking to a spirit of the dead, not just for what was said but for the physical effects it had on me as well. I am someone who is sensitive to the energy of others, and spiritual energy, and the moment the channeling session started I had this strange, almost dizzy, kind of feeling of pressure on my head. And when Dr. Peeble's was speaking to me directly at first I felt the air around me go cold and than it was like a hot flash, I felt this sudden intense heat, and the room itself had not been that warm, and was quite comfortable up until that point, but suddenly I could feel the skirt I was wearing growing damp from sweat and my face felt flushed, and as soon as Dr. Peebles turned his attention away from me and started speaking to someone else the feeling went away and everything felt like normal again.

So I beleive it was a genuine experince, and now I wish I could do it again becasue there are so many other things I would love to ask about.