“I shall not commit the fashionable stupidity of regarding everything I cannot explain as a fraud.”

— C.G. Jung addressing the Society for Psychical Research in England

I woke with a start. My heart pounded in my ears. My chest was tight, my mouth drier than hundred-year-old bones.

The alarm wouldn’t go off for some time. I lay in the dark, deeply disturbed and unable to shake off the dream.

I had just turned 16. After an hour or so, I gave up trying to sleep again and rolled out of bed. It was earlier than I would usually get up for school. Perhaps the distraction will get rid of the damned dream.

But it wouldn’t stop spinning in my head. And I was left with an unsettling feeling that just wouldn’t go away.

I’d had plenty of nightmares since I was a tiny girl, due to child abuse and trauma.

This was different.

This wasn’t a “someone’s-going-to-kill-me-and-I-can’t-get-away” sort of dream. It wasn’t about terrifying monsters or any of the standard issue, violent, nightmares I usually had, the kind that would make you think Stephen King had scripted them.

No, this was far too realistic.

And unbeknownst to me, it would change my life forever.

A Frightening Door Opens

It was a frosty March morning. Nestled into the foothills of the Western Canadian Rockies, Calgary lay covered with a blanket of snow. Slowly, the sun poured its rosy glow across the clear sky like spilled paint in the most glorious, warm shades of pink.

As I dressed for school, the dream played over and over in my head, as if demanding my attention. Nothing I did would stop it, or make that awful feeling go away.

In the dream, my two closest childhood friends — sisters, Kathy and Laurie — were dead. Once I was dressed, I went to the kitchen. My mother was at the table having her breakfast as she always was at that time.

Unusually, my dad was there, too. Normally, he would be in the living room reading the morning paper. He would only join my mother, brother and me on the rarest of occasions.

As I walked into the kitchen and saw the two of them sitting at the table, I said, “I just had the most awful dream.” And proceeded to tell them about it.

When I was finished, neither of them said a word. They looked at each other like I had six heads. My mother continued eating her toast. She wouldn’t look at me. My dad got up and went to the living room.

Their behaviour was odd but I shrugged it off.

I didn’t have much of an appetite but dropped two slices of bread into the toaster. My dad appeared a moment or two later, folding the morning paper. Placing it in front of me, he pointed to an article.

The girls were dead.

Their entire family had been involved in a collision with a train during a blizzard. The others were injured but Kathy and Laurie were dead.

I stared at the words until I thought I’d wear the ink off the page. I couldn’t absorb what they said. I read and re-read several times, praying that there was a mistake. It was another family with all the same names. It couldn’t be the people we had known for many years.

But of course, it was.

I didn’t know what to do with this information. First, my friends were dead. These two beautiful girls, Kathy, a year old than I, and Laurie, a year younger, were gone.

Second, what the hell? Kids die? Okay, I knew that in my brain, but it was one thing to have a general understanding of the idea. It was another to have it crammed down your throat like this.

Third, I knew. I had known it without being told. And that was utterly terrifying.

Especially given that this happened at a time when no one was talking about such things. There were no psychic fairs. There were no psychics or mediums, or paranormal investigations on television. Of course, I had heard of this sort of thing but they were far from mainstream topics.

There was nowhere for me to go with this. I was just left holding this massive bag of frightening information and I had no idea what to do with it.

After I told them of my dream, my parents never mentioned it. I didn’t dare bring it up. Based on the way they had behaved on that terrible morning, I think it freaked them out. Perhaps scared the hell out of them.

They weren’t alone there.

The Plot Thickens

I left home a few months later. Almost as soon as I moved out, the door to this strange new world was blown wide open. No doubt there had been other messages throughout my life to that point but with so much toxicity and a focus on survival, I wouldn’t have picked up those subtle energies.

Once I was renting a room in a lady’s basement and was out of that toxic environment, I began having dreams or “feelings” that something was wrong. Sometimes I knew who it was; other times I just had a sense of their direction in relation to me.

Over the next few years, these experiences grew stronger and I was getting better at knowing who was in trouble. I didn’t always get those details but the feelings were growing in intensity.

I will never forget one particularly disturbing event.

I’d gone to bed late on a Saturday night in June. I was excited; the next day was Father’s Day and at 24, it was the first time in my life I was going to do something with my father — just the two of us. I had booked dinner theatre tickets for Stage West.

A little background: I was a divorced single parent at 19. At 22, I’d moved back home and was living in my parents’ basement. My mother agreed to mind my children so I could take my dad out for this event.

I hadn’t been asleep long when I was awakened with a start. It was around 1.00 in the morning and I couldn’t stop trembling. I felt sick and just knew something was wrong somewhere.

I felt compelled to get up and pace; I was buzzing with nervous energy. My head felt like it was filled with static, like when a radio isn’t quite tuned and you know someone is speaking but can’t make out the words or the voice.

I paced and paced, the sick feeling growing, distress mounting. I didn’t know what was wrong or who was in trouble but this was bad. This was really, really bad.

Eventually, I was so exhausted, I had to try to sleep. I would have only a couple of hours before I’d need to get up with the children. I was also a church organist (yeah, I know, “the witch who used to be a church organist.” Shocking…or funny. But that’s another story). I would have to pull myself together and be out the door on time.

I struggled to get through the service. It was all I could do to keep my mind on what I needed to play next and not lose track of how many verses and so on.

The fuzzy static in my head wouldn’t stop.

I got back home and had some work to do. I was a self-employed typist, doing Court transcripts to support my children. I had a case to finish by Monday, and as I was going out with my dad for several hours from the late afternoon onward, I needed to get a fair bit done.

It was impossible. The static was so bad. I had a terrible time concentrating. I was visibly trembling; I felt as though I’d been plugged into an electrical outlet. It was a horrible, vibrating sick feeling.

Later that day, my dad and I arrived at Stage West. He commented on how distracted I was. I was doing my best to put on a smile and enjoy this “big deal event” with him but I couldn’t.

I had hardly eaten anything that day and thought perhaps some food would help.

“How about hitting that buffet?” I said in my best attempt at being cheerful.

We got in the queue for the incredibly beautiful and delicious salads and starters. Despite this being one of my favourite places to eat on a night out, nothing appealed to me. My stomach was as hard as a rock.

Back at our table for our first course, my dad dove in, enjoying every mouthful. I picked and poked at my food but could not bring myself to eat it.

When it became obvious that this wasn’t going well, my dad and I had a conversation about what to do. After confirming with management that our plan was okay, I rang my mother and told her to get dressed; she was going out for dinner. I drove my dad’s car home and she drove it back, enjoying dinner and the play with him as I had so desperately wanted to do.

Monday was more of the same. The whole day, the vibrating, sick feeling, and static in my head were relentless. I finished the case I was working on — barely — and got it to the office just in time for the deadline.

I was making dinner at about 6 pm when suddenly, all the awfulness stopped. The vibrating, the sick feeling, the static…gone. All I felt was relief — and utter exhaustion.

Then October Happened

It was almost Hallowe’en. I was out one evening getting my groceries. I was surprised to see an old friend, Kevin, bagging the groceries.We had met through his older brother, Brian, with whom I’d had a relationship in my early 20s.

Brian was a lovely young man, but deeply wounded by a harsh father and his mother’s early death. He was sensitive and kind, quiet and funny. We lived together for a while but it just didn’t work out. I was too messed up to be with someone “nice” at that time and I broke his heart.

I hadn’t heard from him in a year or so. I missed him but knew he was better off without me. I let him be.

Kevin and I chatted briefly. It was awkward; he knew the history. I wasn’t sure if I should even ask about Brian; I wasn’t sure I had the right. But I had to know.

“How’s your brother?” I waited for…whatever might come next. But I could never have imagined what he was about to say.

“He’s…dead.”

All the blood drained out of my head.

I was dizzy. Everything was in slow motion. I was weirdly aware of the cashier running my food along the conveyer, one item at a time, ringing in the prices.

I’m not exactly sure what I said but I know it was a question about what or how or something similar.

“He committed suicide.”

Oh, dear God. No. No! He used to threaten it when we were together. I don’t know how often he would say, “I just want to kill myself!” We talked and talked and talked about it on so many occasions when he was distraught about his life, his father, missing his mother, who had been so loving and kind.

He felt lost; it was part of what drew us together because I was at least as lost as he was.

“When?”

“Early morning hours of Father’s Day.”

My heart dropped to the pit of my stomach. “Father’s Day?”

Instantly, my mind flew back to that day. The day I would never forget. And before I could process any further, he continued.

“Yeah. Sure told our old man off in the biggest possible way by doing it that day. They figure he died about 1.00 a.m. on that Sunday morning but they didn’t find his body till about 6.00 on Monday.”

I was stunned.

That’s exactly the period of time that I experienced that miserable, disturbed, awfulness. From the moment he died until his body was found. There was no doubt in my mind that Brian had been trying to communicate with me.

And I think I know why.

He lived alone. A roommate had moved out not long before and just happened to return that evening to collect some mail. It was as though Brian needed to tell someone that he was gone; he didn’t want to be left in such a gruesome state indefinitely.

Stay tuned for more about my development as a psychic and medium.

Spiritual Arts Mentor and Master Teacher, Liberty Forrest, guides you in discovering who you are, why you’re here, and how to follow that path.

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