The Yuletide season is approaching; the nights are longer, darker, colder and folks like to gather round the hearth side and tell heart-warming tales of love, redemption and wonderment, like the Charles Dickens’ classic, “A Christmas Carol.” ‘Tis the season, as they say. Much like Ebeneezer Scrooge, my tale is of a haunting…

…by my Evangelical mother and with the help of a few mediums, she delivered to me messages from beyond the veil that helped me conquer my fears, and live authentically in the world as the Witch in the family. Truly, since my mother died, our relationship has greatly improved! <snicker>

A Witch’s Carol

In order for you to understand the miracle of redemption we shared through her death, you must first know who she was in life.

My mother quit her job so she could picket abortion clinics, and hoodwink pregnant women into the, “crises pregnancy center,” next door, compelling them to pray for Jesus to save them, while they missed their actual medical appointments.

She covered her van in large, pro-life propaganda images of mutilated fetuses and drove around town for all to see.

During the 2000 elections, she campaigned against Al Gore saying he was the actual Antichrist — as in the fulfillment of the book of Revelations. Meanwhile, George W. Bush was part of God’s own divine plan.

She tried to convince all the parents she knew that Harry Potter books were recruitment material for Satanic priests to lure fresh virgin sacrifices, though she hadn’t read a single word of any of them.

She once incinerated a neighbor’s original set of D&D books in hardback on our barbecue grill because they were a portal by which the devil himself came into your house.

She thought you could “pray away the gay” and swore that God had “saved” her formerly gay friends from their sins of homosexuality.

I’m sure you think I’m exaggerating, but I’d swear these things are true, so help me gods. She was what we call a “religious extremist.” Now that I have my own teen-aged daughter, I better understand the intensity of a mother’s love. She had many loving and generous qualities, but those were hard to appreciate since it was her sacred mission to convert everyone within her reach. Bottom line: people denied sovereignty of mind and spirit will revolt. Eventually, battle lines were drawn. That is the problem with black/white, with us/against us, thinking; in a war zone, everyone loses.

A Tale of Three Hauntings

As an adult, mom and I had a loving, but secretive and tenuous relationship where I tried very hard to avoid all the sensitive subjects; I regularly lied to her. When she came to visit, I loaded all hints of my witchery into a giant trunk and padlocked it.

Then she crossed over into Spirit, and I was suddenly exposed. I was also stunned that she did not rush directly into the arms of Jesus. In A Wish Upon Dying, I wrote:

“…after her sudden death she did NOT go into the light, she stuck around, and basically dragged me around by the third-eye chakra from the moment they cut life support, to the moment they lowered her into the grave–and then haunted me for another 4 years (that is a story for another day.) She kept me awake for days with a constant stream of memories, visions, and a rush of explanations about how she wanted to be remembered. There was a sense of urgent apology in there, too. Now that she was in Spirit, there could be no secrets between us.”

When she died, I’d only *just* self-initiated the previous Yule, and my understanding of mediumship, the Spirit realm and my own psychic abilities were barely beginning.

Click Continue for the tale of the First haunting: The Mabon Visitation