The Dead are Watching Read online

  Photo By Rod L. Short

  About the Author

  Debra Robinson is a professional psychic and carries on a dual career in music as a performer and songwriter.

  She works with Haunted Heartland Tours (www.hauntedhistory.net) and as a floating member of several paranormal investigation groups. Debra does private readings and volunteers for various online metaphysical sites. She heads JSMS, an annual charity skating event, and lives in a haunted house in a small town in Ohio.

  For more information, visit www.DebraRobinson.net.

  Llewellyn Publications

  Woodbury, Minnesota

  Copyright Information

  The Dead are Watching: Ghost Stories from a Reluctant Psychic © 2014 by Debra Robinson.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any matter whatsoever, including Internet usage, without written permission from Llewellyn Publications, except in the form of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  As the purchaser of this e-book, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. The text may not be otherwise reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, or recorded on any other storage device in any form or by any means.

  Any unauthorized usage of the text without express written permission of the publisher is a violation of the author’s copyright and is illegal and punishable by law.

  First e-book edition © 2014

  E-book ISBN: 9780738741673

  Book design by Bob Gaul

  Cover design by Kevin R. Brown

  Cover image: iStockphoto.com/20950719/©Ivan Bliznetsov

  Editing by Ed Day

  Llewellyn Publications is an imprint of Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd.

  Llewellyn Publications does not participate in, endorse, or have any authority or responsibility concerning private business arrangements between our authors and the public.

  Any Internet references contained in this work are current at publication time, but the publisher cannot guarantee that a specific reference will continue or be maintained. Please refer to the publisher’s website for links to current author websites.

  Llewellyn Publications

  Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd.

  2143 Wooddale Drive

  Woodbury, MN 55125

  www.llewellyn.com

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Introduction

  Part One: Investigations and Evidence

  Chapter 1: The Witch

  Chapter 2: Beyond the Veil

  Chapter 3: School for Ghosts

  Chapter 4: They Don’t Mean to Stare

  Chapter 5: It’s Still 1782

  Chapter 6: Baloney

  Part Two: Returns from Beyond

  Chapter 7: Never Say Goodbye

  Chapter 8: Messages

  Chapter 9: Gifts from Beyond

  Chapter 10: Mourning Death (Your Own)

  Chapter 11: Colonial Ghosts

  Chapter 12: Till Death Do Us Part?

  Chapter 13: The Children of Death

  Chapter 14: Best Friends for Life—and After

  Chapter 15: Playing Hangman

  Chapter 16: Bumps in the Night

  Chapter 17: Déjà Vu

  Chapter 18: House-Ghosts

  Chapter 19: Shared Tragedy

  Chapter 20: Get the Baby

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  I’d like to thank all the friends and acquaintances who provided their stories for this book. Many of you opened your hearts to tell sad tales of loved ones who had passed away and then returned to say goodbye. I personally know how that feels. Special thanks to Michele and Tammy for their daily cheerleading; to Sandy for all the encouragement; to Brian and Lena, Sherri Brake, and Darrin and Danielle for their expertise and stories; to my editor Amy for all her guidance; and to Llewellyn Worldwide. This book is dedicated to my family and to Joyce Veece, James, Deebs, and last but certainly not least, God—with much thanks, for giving me “hope and a future.”

  Introduction

  In my last book, I laid my soul bare, wondering if embracing the paranormal world may have influenced the tragic outcomes of my father and son. I think I made a good case for myself and, if nothing else, hopefully I helped a few readers choose their paths a bit more carefully. That’s my greatest wish. But as in all true stories, as life unfolds, more happens. Our understanding changes and deepens, and mysteries unravel, leading to a core truth. I believe we must always work to find the truth, even though it may be buried deeply in the heart of a mystery wrapped in an enigma. For me, this truly describes ghosts, spirits, and the afterlife.

  I was born into a psychic though religious family. Many of the females in the maternal line, including both my mother and her mother, were psychic. My grandmother descended from Alice Nutter, one of the infamous Lancashire Witches executed by King James in 1612.

  But I’d fought against the very idea of these psychic abilities for most of my life, unable to reconcile them with my religious upbringing. Out of necessity, I finally began to embrace my psychic abilities. Shortly after doing so, my only child, my son James, was tragically killed at age twenty-four by a drunk driver, followed closely after by my father’s suicide. This seemed more than just a coincidence. Then my son’s returns from the other side began, and forced me on a difficult journey of despair, self-blame, and, ultimately, acceptance. My father returned only once—to snap his fingers in our faces the night we found his body. James still returns. But the premonitions James had of his own death and the actual events leading up to it were far stranger than mere coincidence. This true story was all recounted in my first book, a psychic memoir titled A Haunted Life: The True Ghost Story of a Reluctant Psychic. In my darker moments, when I missed Dad and James the most, my hard-won acceptance wavered. I still had doubts; I still had questions. I knew I still didn’t have all the answers. And I knew I had to dig deeper, for my own peace of mind.

  This is a book about my ongoing experiences with hauntings, whether they involved the return of a loved one after their death or a spirit I ran across during a paranormal investigation. I gathered the stories from investigators, friends and family, even a few strangers. You’d be surprised at how many people these things happen to. Or maybe you wouldn’t be—I have a feeling anyone who picks up this book already knows that ghosts are real, that death isn’t the end, and that strange stories of similar instances abound.

  I grew up in a family who knew these things happen from personal experience. There were always spooky tales being told. Many may have sounded too crazy to be true, but they were told as gospel to us kids. I remember one family story that used to freak out my cousin Joyce. Our great-grandmother’s brother earned the nickname Peg-leg after he lost his lower limb in an accident. Right after it happened, he suffered from what are now known as phantom limb pains. That’s what the condition is called when you lose an arm or leg, but your brain hasn’t quite caught up with the information and thinks it’s still there. Sufferers swear they can still feel the limb attached, just as it always was. Often, the phantom limb is causing them some kind of pain or itching, that sort of thing.

  In Peg-leg’s case, he swore the toes on the missing leg were crossed. He begged anyone who came by his house to help him. The “leg” was excruciatingly painful for him.

  Peg-leg’s relatives had buried the appendage in the cemetery in a burial plot that had long been reserved for the old man. Finally, Peg-leg
talked one of his family members into digging up his amputated leg and checking the toes. The relative went on this macabre mission to the cemetery, spooked by the task. And sure enough, when he dug the leg up, the toes were crossed. The relative uncrossed them and reburied the leg.

  Yesterday upon the stair, I met a leg that wasn’t there. Of course, I’m being silly here, paraphrasing the old Antigonish poem, but this is what we grew up with in my family—haunted houses, psychic abilities, weird stories, and just the right mindset on a dark night to make it all even creepier. You may have grown up with the same thing. If not, welcome to my world! Settle back, turn on all the lights, and read this book. Whether you are a believer or not, the true stories contained within will make you think. And if you are a skeptic, they may just change your mind.

  [contents]

  Part One

  Investigations and Evidence

  All of us in the paranormal world have stories. Something happened to almost each and every one of us who hunt for ghosts, use psychic abilities, or chase after the holy grail of evidence. We each came to our beliefs in some personal way, and it usually involved contact with the other side whether we wanted it or not. Eventually, most of us began to search in earnest. We bought the equipment to capture the unseen voices or photograph forms invisible to the naked eye. We honed our psychic abilities or our technological expertise, and we went in search of hauntings. Most of us found them.

  1

  The Witch

  The stench in the room was tangible, like a living thing that clung to the throat, filling my nostrils and lungs, choking me. A thin shaft of moonlight snuck through a slit in the huge blocks high on the wall, illuminating a small dry spot on the cold stone floor. I stepped gingerly, barefoot, toward the pool of light, carefully avoiding the puddles of urine and piles of human excrement completely covering its surface, except for this one small spot. Needing to relieve myself badly, gagging, then stumbling and sliding in the filth, I was desperate to reach the only clean place to do so.

  “Please,” I whispered desperately. “Please, please.”

  The sound of my own voice whimpering woke me from the depressing dream. I was sick to my stomach with misery, and despair filled my soul. I’d had this dream at least twenty times throughout my life, ever since I was a teenager. It always left me with a sense of desolation that took days to shake off. One look at the clock told me that I hadn’t had near enough sleep, and it was doubtful that I would now. I sighed as I thought about the plans I’d made to help a family in a haunted house that afternoon.

  As I showered and went about my routine, I thought about the dream. At first, when I began to have the dream as a young woman, all I knew was that it felt real and that I was the woman trying to find the clean spot on the floor to go to the bathroom. Later, when I learned about my ancestress Alice Nutter, I put two and two together and began to wonder. Through some strange memory, or maybe even a past life, could I be experiencing Alice being chained to the floor of that dungeon with her fellow witches waiting to be hanged? Over the years, the dream was always the same; sometimes I got more of a glimpse of the surroundings and other times I got more of the feelings associated with it. Recently, through the help of modern technology—the internet—I’d seen inside Lancaster Castle, where Alice was taken. I stared at the dungeon steps leading to the darkness below and scrutinized the iron rings the prisoners were bolted to. After seeing it, I felt as if this was the place I’d always dreamed about.

  I dried my hair, shaking off the memories of the recent past, and perhaps the distant past as well, and focused on the upcoming investigation. For a believer in signs and omens, this is not a good way to start the day.

  I didn’t really want to go on this investigation. I hoped and prayed it would be canceled, as it had been twice before. Something about it just didn’t sit right with me, and it made me nervous. This did happen sometimes. The thought of facing the unknown—hauntings, spirits, even possibly the demonic—left me uneasy. Even after a lifetime of dealing with the paranormal, it was anything but routine. But the investigation wasn’t canceled, and it was pouring rain as well when our team of paranormal investigators gathered at the small one-and-a-half-story, brick house on the outskirts of a town forty minutes north of where I live.

  One by one we pulled our cars into the driveway, sheets of rain drumming on the roofs, the force of it splashing at the muddy puddles. Though my unease had started with the dream that day, it continued with the sensation apparently emanating from the large house on the hill to my right. I sat behind the wheel for a moment, glancing up at it. It loomed over the small house we were investigating that evening.

  Just to the right of that big house sat a squat, brown hodgepodge-looking building that resembled someone’s idea of a house. It had jutting additions that screamed afterthought and a general air of neglect. This smaller house had that bad feeling emanating from it as well. I stepped out of the car and stood there in the mud staring, with the rain running down my hood and into my eyes. The sudden slamming of the other car doors snapped me back to the present, and I followed the team into the small house that was supposed to be haunted.

  As soon as I walked in, I could feel it strongly: something was here. After meeting the family, my investigator friend Brian, who was also the founder of the Massillon Ghost Hunters Society, asked me to go back outside.

  “Debra, we’re going to walk through with the family to hear about the haunting and the hotspots,” he told me. “Can you please wait in the car until we do?” This is what usually happens with a psychic on an investigation. To be beyond reproach, a psychic shouldn’t have any preconceived notions about a house. I agree with this and never want to know anything in advance. This leaves me as close to a psychically clean slate as possible, open only to what comes in clairvoyantly.

  Back outside in the car, I sat staring through the windshield and the still-pouring rain as I waited. I was focused on the house on the hill. Watching, I’m watching, I hide, but I’m watching, said the voice inside my head. A cold chill ran through me, and my left side tingled, which is how I’ve always known when psychic information is coming in. But I couldn’t make any sense of it. Something else was here, continued the voice in my head, the layers of history all swirling and mashing together, confusing me and making my mind dart about for answers. The entire area of ground on both sides of this little house just felt bad. I could sense fear—old fear and chaos to the left of the little house, and newer fear to the right of it, toward the big house on the hill.

  My friend Brian soon leaned out the back door into the driving rain and beckoned me inside. After briefly explaining the group’s methods to the family, Brian led the way as the family settled in to wait quietly downstairs. We each announced our names for the digital recorders, and the four of us, the investigation team members that night, started up the creaky stairs.

  A small room with a center stairwell and slanted ceilings stretched out before me as Brian intoned the standard introductions used for taped sessions. The upstairs was bare of furniture, with just some boxes and an old bed mattress propped against one wall. While Brian was talking, I walked around to the far side of the room toward a small, dark doorway leading into the other upstairs section. I didn’t make it far. My breath came harder and harder, and it wasn’t from climbing the steps. I can’t breathe. Slightly panicked at the heaviness now seeming to sit squarely on my sternum, I tried not to make a scene, so I leaned down, hands on my knees, waiting for the feeling to pass. Suddenly pictures started flashing in my head. They showed a shadowy shape running back and forth from the window to the cubbyholes in the wall.

  “Are you okay?” asked another group member, catching sight of me.

  “No,” I gasped, trying to get air. “There’s something here. It’s telling me it watches and hides.” I was tearing up now, a searing pain in my stomach and chest that was almost unbearable. I kept waiting for it to peak so
I could make sense of what I was supposed to understand about this haunting.

  I could see a little boy with blond hair and pajamas on. I knew his name was Christian, so I told my team members this. I was also getting the name Randall; he was making me feel pain in the stomach and chest area. He was also saying a name, Lynn. I informed my fellow investigators, and they wrote it down.

  I straightened up a little, the pain from some past event I didn’t as yet understand lessening with the verbal validation of its presence.

  There were two small, square doors with latches at hip height in the room. The feelings were coming in strong here. I couldn’t see anything near them; it was more a knowing that came over me.

  “Something hides in these cubbyholes. It runs and changes positions, hiding in each of them. Something watches the house on the hill, through this window.” I walked to the window that faced the house on the hill. Yes, this window, the little voice in my head told me again. Even through the rain, the big house on the hill could be seen clearly, looming over us.

  “There’s a bad feeling, and it’s all coming from the direction of that house up there.” I inclined my head toward the big house. “Something here is afraid of something there. Or something here watches to keep tabs on things there.”

  My friend Brian nodded, and a team member duly recorded the psychic impressions. As we went through the house, whenever I sensed residual energy of the past, I was given confirmation when I hit upon an accurate name or feeling.

  “The little boy who lived here most recently was named Christian,” Brian informed me. “He was terrified to stay in the upstairs and said there was a man who came. The girls who grew up here slept in this back room, and every night, they shoved their dresser up against the cubbyhole. Then in the morning, the dresser would be shoved away, and the cubby door would be open. It terrified them.”