| I research ghost stories - usually I look for
interesting stories, but this one looked for me ...
Jackie was a warm and
usually happy woman;
good-looking with chestnut hair, dancing eyes and almost glowing with vitality.
Most people know her as a respected realty lawyer, a workaholic and divorced.
She had helped me buy and sell a house, and we bumped into each other occasionally,
so I also knew that she had found a steady boyfriend, and about a month ago
he moved in with her.
I almost walked into Jackie in the shopping mall. She was
looking upset, and I asked her what was going on. "Nothing!"
she said, in a tone of voice that discouraged
further enquiry. I gently persisted and invited her for a coffee.
We small-talked - and then we big-talked. Jackie and her
boyfriend, Mark, were apparently madly in love. All seemed well, until Mark's
ex-wife phoned Jackie to inform her that unless Jackie kicked Mark out, that
Jackie would be cursed. That was two days ago.
Jackie quickly discovered that Mark was still married; and
that he had left his wife and two pre-adolescent sons to be with Jackie.
Mark also told Jackie that Sally, his ex-wife, was a
practitioner of black magic, and that he left her partly because he was scared of
her.
I knew that Jackie had dabbled with New Age ideas;
she was a Reiki master and she toyed with the idea of opening a New Age
shop. Jackie said that Sally's telephone call was upsetting, but Jackie
considered
herself to be strong enough both emotionally and esoterically to cope with
any unfriendly energies sent her way. Her main concern was to protect her
new partnership.
I tried to warn her about curses - I had met enough scary
situations with sad endings - but Jackie told me not to worry. She assured me that
she could handle it.
While researching ghost stories, I had met a number of
people at the fringes of black magic. I made a few telephone calls. One of
these people knew a member of Sally's black magic group (coven) in a nearby
town. Later, he phoned back and advised me to "forget about the whole
thing" and to "let matters run their course". He
repeated "Don't get caught in the middle!" a few times.
Sally was an authority in her coven, and had the sympathy
and backing of the group. Apparently Mark had told Sally that Jackie had
seduced him and persuaded him to leave his family. For a short time, at the
start of their marriage, Mark had been a member of this group; he was
charming and he was well liked by them. They suspected that Jackie had made
"love magic" to bind him.
"What year is this?" I asked myself.
"Will the Inquisition also return?"
Apparently, the group planned to undertake a "ritual of
destruction" on
the coming Friday night. I couldn't get any more details. Secret societies
tend to be secretive.
Jackie hadn't mentioned Mark's involvement with black magic
- but I doubt that she would have cared. However, seducing a man away
from his family - that was not the Jackie that I thought I knew. I called
her - and again she asked me not to worry. She said that she had
prepared herself - and that she was not going to give up her boyfriend so
easily. I told her about the planned Friday night ritual. She
reassured me that everything would be fine.
The following Thursday, Jackie phoned me and asked to meet
for lunch in a restaurant outside town. When I saw her, I was shocked. She seemed to have
aged ten years. Her face was lined and creased, with a grayish pallor.
She smelled badly too. Something seemed very wrong.
She told me that she had taken Wednesday and Thursday as
"sick days" so as not to be seen at work. She described horrific nightmares
and a "cold, grey cloud" that sometimes hovered over her left shoulder. In
those moments she described gooseflesh "to her toes" and would feel her
left shoulder tingle and become cold.
She knew that I had been a psychotherapist before I retired,
and she asked for help. I referred her to a Toronto psychiatrist whom I
respected. She knew that my hobby is "ghost stories" and asked what she
could do to keep ghosts away. I joked about garlic - and then realized that
THAT was the bad smell. She said that she had maybe eaten a kilo of the stuff.
On Monday morning we talked again by telephone. She seemed
to be in extreme stress but resisted the psychiatrist's recommendations
that she be hospitalized. She had hardly slept for a week, she said, and she was afraid
to take sedatives. She was beginning to hallucinate. The gray cloud had
taken the shape of an old man's head, whose mouth seemed to be kissing or sucking her
left shoulder. Worse, she said, she could absolutely feel a ghost-tongue
stretching under her left armpit, into her chest and licking her heart.
She was trying everything, she told me. Surrounding
herself with light, going to church, drinking herbal
teas, and using crystals and aromas that she thought might help. Her
friends were praying for her and "sending her energy" she told
me, and she was further protected by sacred symbols. At night she would keep
every light in her house bright.
I phoned her psychiatrist, who talked about a rapid onset
of psychosis, no doubt resulting from overwork and fatigue. He would not
discuss any occult factors, except to call it "rubbish". He said
that he had prescribed chlorpromazine (Thorazine, an anti-psychotic drug) and
diazepam (Valium, a sedative).
More phone calls. Apparently, the coven had made some
ritual to enslave the spirit of a dead person, and promised the spirit freedom if it
completed a task. I generally enjoy following ghost stories, but I find this
dark side too toxic. I emailed someone who I felt had more experience - Martyn
Carruthers - who had founded "Soulwork" (a form of systemic coaching
involving relationships with both the living and the dead) and was teaching it
in Europe.
Martyn replied that he was currently in Prague,
Czech Republic. I envied him - Prague was a medieval center for alchemy and
had long wanted to visit the home of the golem.
As he would not return to Canada for some time, he
suggested that Jackie telephone him. I passed this on, and Jackie said
that she would phone him.
She later told me that she talked to Martyn for over
two hours (I didn't want to pay her phone bill.) Martyn offered no advice, she
said, but asked questions that helped her formulate her own advice for
herself. Even more strangely, she told me, he wanted to talk to the
ghost! She was vague about details. Jackie was not secretive, it was
more like she just didn't want to remember any details.
After the phone call to Prague, Jackie said that she slept
for over 24 hours - without drugs - rising only to visit the bathroom. The
grey cloud was still on her left, she admitted, but not as fierce as before,
and a bit further away. She said that it seemed to be waiting for something.
A few days later, we met again.
Jackie looked more like her old self. She was planning, she
told me, a much-needed holiday - perhaps in Europe - perhaps in Czech Republic.
She said had never visited Central Europe before. As Martyn was
teaching in Prague, she said, if she went, they would meet. I asked her to take
lots of photographs for me. She promised that she would.
I phoned her psychiatrist, who seemed content with the
efficacy of his medications. Jackie had obviously not told him about her
long phone calls - and I didn't tell him either. I praised his good
sense and thoughtfully hung up the phone.
A few weeks later, Jackie asked for another lunch meeting.
This time she was tanned and relaxed. She told me about walking in the Czech hills for
a week, and a beautiful village called Krumlov, where she stayed. She had even
learned a few words of Czech.
Of Jackie's meetings in
Prague, I know few details. She told me that she stayed in Prague for a few
days, at a small hotel on the edge of the old city. She showed me many
beautiful photographs of Prague and Krumlov. She had five or six "Soulwork"
sessions in Prague, in between exploring the old city center and Czech
cooking. The ghost faded away and did not return. Perhaps it found a
better girlfriend, she joked.
Even better, she felt that she
understood how her anger and guilt about her partnership with
Mark created a fertile ground for the toxic seeds planted by Sally, and how
her relationship with her father predisposed her to seek intense, short-term relationships with
immature men. (She didn't clarify but I could guess some of the dynamics.
See Little
Princess.) The story ends with me asking "What is real?"
Jackie's "psychotic interlude" seemed real enough. Her
disappearing health was real enough to concern an experienced psychiatrist.
The coven's ritual curse was also real, apparently, although I did not
observe it. As for the "ghost" - Jackie explained that it was a
spirit of a dead person
that was tortured to make it do something that it did not want to do,
and that she was able to say "Goodbye" to it in Prague. It was
over. Jackie said "Goodbye" to Mark,
who promptly returned to his wife. Jackie now had, she said,
a better concept of what qualities she wanted in a life-partner. She was satisfied - and I had to be satisfied too. Copyright ©
David Marsden 2003 All right reserved
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