Spirits of my Ancestors, (Seeing is Believing!)


In the summer of 2004, simply on a spontaneous whim, I began working on a family history project.  The very first day, I got a match that seemed to me to be nothing short of miraculous. Instantly, I was hooked.

Little did I know, that first match would not be the only amazing thing to happen during this project.  By the time this family project was through with me, that first match would be so far down on the list of miraculous happenings it didn’t even register as such any more.  What ensued over the next four years was life changing, or altering, and that is putting it mildly. 

You see, although I did have some knowledge about this branch of my tree having a young man about the age of 14 being beaten to death around the close of the Civil War, I had absolutely no idea his death was just one of many tragedies experienced by this family.

I spent many a night burning the midnight oil researching and reading and studying. During the day, I visited with the old-timers around here and begged them for old-time stories.  I also made a point to try and find all the long-forgotten places which had at one time been hubs of activity important not only in my family’s history, but the history of the entire county.

I fully realize the things listed above sound like ordinary research activities and nothing about them would bring to mind the word ‘miraculous’.  How could these research basics be anything close to life altering?  Maybe it had something to do with the long-buried facts I discovered about my family?  While I must admit the truth about my family never ceased to surprise, shock, and fascinate me (many times on a daily basis), it did not rank high enough to be what I would term ‘truly miraculous’ or ‘truly life changing’. 

The miraculous, life-altering part came into play, or unfolded, as I tried to unravel the tangled web my ancestors left behind; yet it had nothing to do with their actions I had already discovered through the usual research means.  I had two unsolved murders, two mysterious disappearances, a grandmother who went through seven husbands, a traditional story about her hanging a man with his own bullwhip, and a deathbed confession stating she killed one of her husbands by pouring hot molten lead she was preparing to make bullets with into his ear as he lay passed out with drink on his side.

I had many specific items to work with, but life is not about fact number 1, then number 2, etc.  Life is about experiences and sort of a flow.  One thing lead to another, etc.  How did things lead up to fact number 1 and from there how did we get to fact number 2?  You see what I mean?  Things had to be taken into the context of the times and each of these ancestor’s ‘way’ or personality had to be considered; their feelings and their reactions to situations which they faced.

How in the world does one discover such intimate details about folks who died 130 years ago?  There is not a soul on earth left alive who ever actually knew them, talked with them.  There were just a few traditional old stories passed down through the generations of families that were neighbors of my family, and there were some very dry old court documents about one of the murders.

This is where the miraculous, life-altering part comes in.  The very first thing that happened was I began getting strange lights in my photos taken at the old locations important in my family  history.  Although the photos are definitely the most concrete, irrefutable proof I have about this wild journey my ancestral family took me on, many other things happened to me; things I would never have believed possible except they happened to me.

Perhaps I need to back track just a bit.  I went into this family history at the age of 42 with a very basic belief system which had served me well all my life.  Let me see if I can make you a list.

1.  When a person dies, they go to heaven. Whatever happened to them on Earth is over and done with and it doesn’t really matter any longer because there is nothing they can do about it now. In other words, no more worries for the deceased.

2.  When a loved one dies, the ones left on Earth have to learn to live without them until such time the ones left on Earth die also.  Only then can loved ones be reunited – up in heaven.  Only after a person dies, will he/she see and be with the ones who died before.

3.  There’s no such thing as ghosts or the supernatural.

4.  Dimensions?  What are dimensions?

5.  I had never experienced what I thought was anything close to something psychic in my life, and therefore since I had never experienced such a thing, I had my serious doubts about it. 

6.  Visions?  Impossible!

7.  The world consists only of what can be physically seen with our eyes.  In other words, if I could see it, of course it existed.  If something could not be seen, how could it exist?  If it could not be seen, there is no way one could even begin to know how to question an existence. 

8.  Pre-destined?  Bah-humbug!  Never heard of such a thing.

9.  Gray areas?  Yes, there are gray areas which have to do with an individual’s ethics, morals and how a situation they find themselves to be in might alter their choices.  After reaching adulthood, I always believed that there is room for sway in that area depending on the circumstances.  But as far as our surroundings, everything is in black and white.  Or maybe I should say, night and day, sunny or cloudy, hot or cold, woods or pasture, city or country, etc.

This is what I believed as I went through the first 42 years of my life; a pretty straight-forward, common-sense type belief system.  I was never religious and in truth, always felt a bit out of place and awkward any time I attended services, whether they be Baptist, Catholic, Methodist, Church of Christ, etc.  This is the one area of my belief system in which I can honestly say that it differed from almost everybody I had ever known.  I always felt much more at home talking with God in my head at any time of any day at whatever location I happened to be; maybe sitting on my back porch, or floating down the river.  It made no difference if it was Sunday morning or Wednesday evening or Saturday night.  I preferred to be alone for my private talks with God.  All those different types of churches housed parishioners who liked to think they were the only ones who ‘got it right’ and all the other congregations were wrong and therefore less. All of that was a total turn off for me.  Even as a young child, I thought those strong church-goers had a lot of nerve passing judgment like that.  To me, it seemed like passing judgment was something that ought to be left to God and I would even go so far as to say, I believed and still do believe, those passing judgment about those who do not sit within the same building as they do to worship will most likely come out the lesser ones and not the ones who ‘got it right’ at all.  The idea of having my private talks with God, surrounded by a crowd of judgmental people, was the most unnatural thing I could think of.  It seemed so fake and commercialized.  

No, I could never recite scriptures from the Bible, let alone understand them.  Oh, there were a few classics that I knew, like let he who cast the first stone, or judge not lest thee be judged, but these were ones none of my school girl friends cared to mention at slumber parties.  They could recite stuff that I just never had any thing to come back with.  I knew what I personally believed and I knew that I wasn’t wrong, yet I had nothing to back me up except a knowing feeling.  They always had the Bible.  So, at such times our conversations would turn to a religious theme, I just sat back and said nothing.    

I adopted a live and let live attitude in the religious department.  Do whatever feels right for you, and I’ll do whatever feels right for me.  Now I know without a doubt, the religious beliefs, or maybe the lack of religious beliefs might be a better description, that I have subscribed to for as long as I can remember, are exactly what works for me.  Before this project, I had knowing feeling which was strong enough I never strayed from it, even in my youth when peer pressure really meant something.   

Now that I have come out on the other side of this project, I have much more than a knowing feeling.  I know without a doubt, had I had some sort of specific church doctrine ingrained in me all my life, there is no way I would have been open-minded enough to allow myself to process, let alone acknowledge, that which was occurring around me.  I would still be walking around in that ‘see it or you don’t’ world, or ‘it’s there or it isn’t’ world where having a vision is impossible and dreams are simply dreams and nothing more.

Update:  Just a moment ago, I had a thought which torpedoed through my brain so bluntly and boldly that I knew it had to be true and should be added to this blog. 
What I wrote above about the various churches and many of the parishioners within their congregations feeling as if their way was the best way and all others were less was based on my frequent exposure to being in a room which contained members of several different denominations.   Until just this moment, I had never taken into account that all my exposure came in the form of slumber parties from about age 12 to 17.  Could it be my interpretation that each of the churches held a belief they were better was incorrect and it was only a competition between fellow slumber partiers in their teens trying to prove their church was the best?  It very well could have been adolescent immaturity ruling the religious conversations at these slumber parties rather than true church doctrine, but at the time and up until this very moment, I took to heart these young girls were a fair representation of their church and its practices.