Ghosts.

[smirkymonkey]

I rarely post in this forum, even though I find it very interesting (I am just not on DU that much anymore) but I had an experience on vacation last week and I am very curious to see what others' experiences might have been.

I was in Cape May, NJ, an historic landmark seaside resort with beautiful old Victorian homes and tranquil tree lined streets. Anyway, as soon as we arrvied I suddenly got this feeling that I was actually transported to another time.

It's hard to explain, but I felt that I had actually been there before in another time period and it was almost as if I could see people walking around in period clothing (late 19th Century, it seems to me) and I had an overwhelming feeling of being a part of that time period. It was actually a very happy feeling, almost a high in a way. I felt relieved of the heaviness of modern life.

As we strolled through the town, and poked into some bookstores, we learned that the entire town is filled with "ghostly" activity and is a hotbed of sightings and paranormal activity. I was not aware of this until after my sense that there was this very thin veil between our current time period and another, simpler time.

Anyway, I didn't actually "see" a ghost with my eyes, but I certainly felt them all around me. It's a very odd feeling, almost like being in a trance or something, where I kind of disconnected from the present for a while. I have had this feeling a few times in different places, but this was the strongest I have ever felt.

What I would like to know is if this kind of thing has happened to anyone else and if you can explain it a bit better to me. Thanks!

[Cleita]

1. There are several types of ghosts.

What you experienced was an imprint. It's activity that happened long ago but it made a strong imprint on the place that living people can feel or see in the present. Usually, the activities are repetitious. Like many ghosts in houses are really imprints of people who once lived there. Their spirits aren't actually there but their activity and presence left an imprint that shows up when the conditions are right.

[rumpel]

2. and perhaps

it is certainly possible you were there before - since you mention familiarity and a sense of relief - a better easier life experience maybe?

interesting you talk of a "veil", maybe the higher vibrations, we often discuss here, are in fact lifting the veil, making it easier for all of us to access information.

How exiting. Your gut feeling was positive - so it may have been a reminder message - a better easier life experience that you can actively make for yourself again?

:)

[smirkymonkey]

11. Yes, I felt a child-like energy - that I had been there, but as a

child who was light and carefree. It was like all the heaviness I feel as an adult in the modern world just slipped away for a little while. Who knows, maybe I never made it to adulthood that time around. :shrug:

[smirkymonkey]

10. That's exactly what it felt like - almost like one transparency

on top of another one, where both were occurring simultaneously.

Another very strange episode I had was when I was in Baden-Baden, Germany was very similar although very negative. We went into one of the Spa buildings and there was a group shower that was below the ground, although you could peer into it from the main floor. I leaned over to see it and I felt like I was hit by a truckload of painful, negative emotions - a powerful feeling came over me that I was being gassed in a shower. Again, it's like I lost contact with "reality" for a while and it took me a long time to get my bearings back. For about 2 weeks I was filled with despair and anxiously depressed - it was really an awful experience.

I am very sensitive to the energy of places, but these two experiences really stood out.

[NJCher]

3. Ellis Island, other experiences

I think I know the feeling you mean. I experienced it at Ellis Island.

I had an assignment from a teacher I had in grad school: to visit Ellis Island. If I recall correctly, this was a few years after it had been restored. Anyway, she commented on the eerie feeling one gets while there in that huge hall, where so many were processed for admission into the States.

It would not be surprising that such a place would have imprinting, as Cleita talks about. Here were people who had left their homeland, something that has to be fraught with emotion. There may have been excitement and high expectations felt in that hall. There may also have been dread or fear of what was to come. I'm sure the emotions that filled that room were as varied as the people who came here.

Recently George Noory did a show on this on his radio program Coast to Coast. Here's the recap from the C2C Web site:

Recap
Slipping Into Other Dimensions
... Art hosted an evening of Open Lines with a special topic line for callers who have ever consciously "slipped" into another time or universe.

Steve from Los Angeles recounted the time he "slipped into another dimension" while on a road trip. According to Steve, one moment he was sitting on a bench at a gas station, the next he claims to have been surrounded by a blue-gray, pastel-colored world populated by groups of people (in sets of two and three) as far as his eyes could see. Jason, a former witch from Fayetteville, told Art he had visited other dimensions. Jason described his experience in religious terms, noting that another person's experience in the same dimensions would vary. Several callers also phoned in to share their drug-induced experiences.

I listened to this show and some of the callers had very interesting stories to relate. If I listen to it again, I'll be back to this thread to post some of what they had to say. Note: in reference to the callers who had drug-induced experiences, an earlier part of the program dealt with alternate realities that are experienced when one takes drugs like LSD or DMT.

On to stories of a more personal nature. I have never forgotten an experience told to me by a history professor friend of mine. Now, history professors are generally not into psychic type stuff and far be it from them to even acknowledge there might be another dimension. I don't want to generalize too much but I've known a few of them in my time in academia and they are largely sensor types, in my experience. Anyway, my friend Jackie never even wanted to entertain ideas about psychic phenomena, let alone other dimensions.

So it came as a big surprise to me one day when she told me that she had had a very odd experience. She had stepped off the curb with the intent of walking across the street. When she did so, she stepped into another dimension. She told me the clothing, vehicles, and setup of the town were very different from what we know. She described the vehicles and one of them sounded like it was a version of our steam train. Then, just as she stepped into it, she stepped out of it.

I've never forgotten the story and I've asked her about it several times in the decades since she told it to me. To this day, she still acknowledges that it happened and is still as mystified by it as she was when it first took place.

I had an incident myself, when I was a young woman. I was riding in a car as a passenger and I was in a slightly dreamy state as I was looking out the window. The area we were in was relatively unpopulated and was farmland and rolling meadows. As I gazed out of the car window, I recall things becoming "wavy." I literally could feel myself leaving one dimension and going into another one. During the time I was in the other dimension, my perception of the landscape changed. The spatial perception was different and so were the colors. Then I slipped back into our dimension and that was he end of that experience.




Cher

[smirkymonkey]

12. Those are some really intense experiences - sometimes I wish

I had more concrete experiences that I could really grab on to. The vagueness disturbs me a bit, and when I feel that way, it's like either a deep longing for that life or a deep fear of it.

You described the feelings surrounding the experiences very well - present reality becoming wavy and almost very distant and the other world seeming more concrete and real. I wish there was a book about people who have had these experiences. Sometimes I don't think they are as deep as they could be with me because on some level, I am very afraid of that part of myself.

[MorningGlow]

4. New Orleans, London, York, and Glastonbury do it for me

I'm sure I've lived in most of those places before (I haven't had York confirmed by a psychic reading or past life regression, but I'm pretty sure I have, just by the feeling I get, which is similar to the places I know I lived in before. And of course I only feel strongly about the older parts of the cities).

Oh--and I suspect I'd feel right at home in Scarborough, but my friend and I were just passing through, switching trains on a day trip from York to Whitby, so I didn't get a chance to investigate.

Anyway, yes, Smirky, I also feel very strongly (very affectionately, nostalgic) about those places I've visited. It's like coming home. I only regret not being able to stay, but I know that I have "work" to do in my present location for this lifetime, so I satisfy myself with a promise of "another lifetime"--or, if I'm feeling particularly bereft, I promise myself I'll retire there!

[I Have A Dream]

5. I felt a very weird energy at Glastonbury.

I am not very sensitive to energy, but when I visited Glastonbury, it was palpable. I don't recall any other place, except for the energy at Muir Woods, where I've really felt something. It was definitely magical for me.

I didn't feel as though I'd been there before though.

[MorningGlow]

6. I was in tears at the Chalice Well

Don't ask me why! I have no idea. My friend and I climbed up the hill and looked at the well cover (I bought a pendant of the wrought iron design--loved it so much), and a gardener was nearby. He said, "You can go ahead and lift up the cover" so we did, and then I started blubbering.

I KNOW I had been there before--I "knew" every inch of the town and surrounding magical locations. My friend and I had lunch on the high street and I was itching to get to the hill and the tor and was getting pretty impatient with how slowly she was eating. When I finally dragged her out into the street, she opened up her map and started turning it over and over--"Let's see...which way do we go..." when I was already walking in the right direction. I just "knew". I said over my shoulder, "Don't argue with me!" and sure enough, even though the road to Chalice Hill looks residential, it was the right way. it sure shut her up, lemme tell you! :rofl:

On edit: Oops--wrong code--brackets here, but not in my other screen where I'm actually doing work...

[Quakerfriend]

7. As I was reading your post, I thought "Muir Woods"!

Yes, I have felt an extraordinary energy there, as well!

[smirkymonkey]

14. Doesn't if have something to do with Ley lines? Supposedly

Cape May (as well as Glastonbury) are on intersecting Ley Lines. I read a little bit about them, but they are supposed to be like intense energy votices and are in spots around the world. There are numerous intersecting ley lines in Britain as well as other places in the world.

[Cleita]

8. Funny, I get that at home feeling when I'm in wilderness forests.

Although where I was born is one of the driest deserts in the world and I have spent most of my life living in desert climates on the coast of an ocean, I feel most at home up in the forested mountains. I always felt like I belonged up in the Idaho panhandle forests and wilderness particularly. I never thought of it as being past lives, but maybe I was a native American in a past life or maybe the member of a Germanic or Celtic tribe in ancient Europe.

I have always unexplicably been drawn to the Irish. It's like I feel most comfortable around them and their culture. My husband was Irish from the old sod. So could I have been a Celt in a former life? Since my ethnic background encompasses Native American, Spanish, Celtic and Germanic blood, is it possible our genes carry an ancestral memory and that they aren't past lives at all but the lives of our ancestors that we revisit?

[MorningGlow]

9. Wow, I almost included

In my list of places where I feel familiar, I almost included a Renaissance faire that takes place in a forest a few hours away from here. But I thought "that's silly." Maybe not! My friends and I used to go two or three times a summer when we were in high school. We didn't bother with the shows or plays or the comedy troupes or games. We shopped a bit, but, being broke teenagers, not overly much. Instead, we hung out in the woods, ate fried dough and potatoes, and watched the world go by.

I'm pretty sure I was a Celt--maybe a cheesy Renfaire is the closest I can get to the woodsy marketplaces they used to have...?

[smirkymonkey]

15. That's an interesting theory about ancestral memory - I certainly

feel that it's true to some extent. One place where you really can feel an intense Native American energy is the Adirondack mountains in New York State. It's another place where I feel a deep kinship with the land or the energy surrounding it - It's a similar, very comforting, but eerie feeling - not necessarily negative or positive.

The yearning comes up again - this intense yearning to be one with whatever energy I am experiencing in these places. I almost feel like I could squeeze right out of my skin, the pull is so strong.

[smirkymonkey]

13. Of those places I have only been to London, but I certainly feel it

there as well - there is an INTENSE longing to be "back home" as you describe - most of the places I visited in England felt that way, but none so intense as London. However, I did not feel it in Dublin (or anyplace else in Ireland, even though it was intense and eerie in it's own way,) Paris, Rome, Munich, Amsterdam (I felt very negative energy in Amsterdam for some reason), Florence, Venice, Strausbourg, Salzburg, etc...

I felt it a bit in Vienna and even Budapest, so I don't think its just an "old city" kind of thing - every place had it's own energy, but only a few of them really called to me and felt like home. I burst out in tears when I left Vienna after being there for 3 months and was completely surprised by my reaction - I RARELY cry, and it's even rarer that I burst into tears. When I got back to New York, I felt an overwhelming sense of dread and started crying again.

[mntleo2]

16. In Another Life

I am glad others have mentioned other life memories.

As a young child of 6, while visiting the midwest and touring an old mansion, I had a memory of being an African-American slave. I dismissed it for years because there WAS no slavery in the midwest. But the place I had the otherworldly experience turned out to be an underground railroad stopover. It was like in a dream, I knew that house and that it did not smell the same and there were pieces of furniture were out of place and things were missing. I looked down at myself and I was dressed in a long dress and my hands were black. I also knew of a sleeping place in the attic that was not part of the tour (it got my mom into trouble because I kept pulling on her sleeve and asking if we could go up there to take a nap. So the tour guide chided my mom for not watching me and told her that was the servant's sleeping quarters). As young white girl living in this life amidst the remote mountains of Washington at that age, I had never been taught yet about our history of slavery.

Years later on a lark, I called into a radio station that had a person who reviewed past lives and immediately upon making connection, she told me about a life as a slave running away.

As a kid who had been raised in that "good old time religion" most of my childhood, this was disturbing for a long time until I began to study the early Christians and learned they too believed in reincarnation. I then read Edgar Cayce which helps me now to understand that often those memories are important because they are putting us in touch with karmic issues now.

Anyway I am not saying your esperiences are a pre-life memory, but maybe it was. Hoped my recounting of what I went through helped.

Cat in Seattle

[smirkymonkey]

17. Thanks for your story - I never tire of hearing about those kinds

of things because I feel like they validate things that I can't prove or really explain. I definitely felt my experience in Cape May was a past life thing, as well as my experience in Germany (even though I am not Jewish.) I really wish I was more in touch with it.