About Ghosts

Halloween – my favorite holiday. I love costume parties, trick or treat and late night contact with the dead. Halloween falls exactly between the Fall Equinox and the Winter Solstice. It is the time when the veil between the worlds is the thinnest and the best time to peek over and see what the dead people are up to.

I grew up seeing dead people. I had no idea that seeing spirits was unusual until I was older. In my experience there seem to be a couple different types of haunting.

Sometimes an aspect of the person does not go into the light and they avoid the other-side-welcoming committee that comes to pick them up. This can happen because they have unfinished business, died in a confused state or because they have a feeling that they are going to hell for stealing that eraser in 4th grade. Often they will stay connected to their house and think they are still the owners. Some are gracious hosts and some want you out.

The most common ghostly appearance is a repetitive image haunting. This is the kind of ghostly occurrence that repeats the same sequence over and over again. Watching one of these instant replay ghosts is like looking at a tape recording of a highly intense emotional experience. If the ghost story begins with something like “every night at midnight you can see the headless huntsmen…” you are dealing with an emotional repeat. This kind of ghost is intent on its course and will walk right through you if you are in the way. Ghosts like this do not interact and though scary, are predictable.

For many years we owned an old farm and like many old houses ours came with a previous tenant. The previous owner who came with our house was named Alta.

My neighbor had grown up on the same street and knew the story of the unusual woman who used to live in our house. She was the scandal of the neighborhood. She walked around in the house naked, planted many of the trees in the backyard and read Tarot cards. Apparently Alta liked the place very much and decided to stay.

In 80 plus years the farmhouse has been remodeled more than a few times. When the house was very quiet I could hear someone bustling around upstairs. I could hear the stairs creaking as Alta walked down the old non-existent stairway into the dining room and the non-existent cupboard door creak open as she places items inside. She did exactly the same thing pretty much every day. My children grew up in the house knowing that Alta was just doing her housework. I don’t know what Alta’s great emotion was that kept her there year after year, I think it was her intense joy.

In the backyard, which Alta probably planted herself, was a perfect circle of trees. We used this circle for many things - a children’s play area, drumming circles and candle lit spirals for the Winter Solstice. We would hang out in hammocks between the trees on warm summer nights and enjoy the stars. Falling asleep in the circle was a bit hard though. There was this constant little tickle, like someone was touching me, and just as I would start to fall asleep I could hear children laughing. Pictures taken in the circle often contained energy balls or if you were lucky, you could spot Alta walking across the yard.

Olympia is a great town for ghost hunting. If you want to experience some ghostly images try the little old lady ghost in The Olympia Hotel women’s bathroom, or the ghosts in the Capitol Theater complete with a strict usher, or the whole gang of ghosts all dressed up for a ball in the Capitol Rotunda.

Have a Happy Halloween. I think I will run around naked and read the Tarot and see if I can leave some imprints for a future generation of ghost hunters!