I’ve made no secret about the fact that I often hear, see, and feel things I can’t really explain.  My new senses opened the very day my eldest son passed away, and I’ve surrendered to them ever since.

Often, I feel wisps of air brush by me. Sometimes sparkles unexpectedly break through the air and I see rainbows radiate around white lights.  Often when I least expect it, a voice much wiser and more succinct than my own drops into my head and guides me forward.

Beyond a 6^th sense that has developed in ways I never imagined was possible, I’ve also encountered some inexplicable supernatural moments that are still difficult for me to comprehend.  One such moment was the evening I saw my eldest son’s profile on the ceiling across the room. I kept staring at it thinking I was hallucinating but then a coffee thermos suddenly flew off a mantle right below it. Luckily, I was not alone, so I know for sure I was not hallucinating.

“What the hell was that?” one of the witnesses asked.

“Don’t worry,” I responded. “That’s just my son.” He always did have an infectious spirit of play. 

Sometimes my human brain doubts my new senses, which is why I appreciate when others share their own mystical moments with me that challenge my belief system and stretch it to a whole new level.

This is one of those stories.  

It started when I called an hourly IT technician to come to my house last month to help me fix an issue with my email.  I have hired this technician a handful of times before. He’s a lovely man, slightly older than me, who is a geek about his craft – in a good way – and always super responsive and diligent.

When he walked through my front door that particular Tuesday morning, I asked him how he had been.

“I just got back from Arizona last night.”

“Perfect timing,” I said, given I really needed his help. “Why were you in Arizona?”

“I was visiting old friends and had a fundraising event to attend.”

“That sounds lovely,” I said.

“Ya, it was,” he responded, “but something strange happened while I was there.”

“What was that,” I asked, hoping his idea of strange was the same as mine.

“Well, I had a weird experience at my hotel.”

“Do tell,” I urged.

“Well,” he said, struggling to find his words, “when I arrived in Tucson after driving eight hours, I checked into my hotel and went straight up to my room to get settled. When I entered, I emptied my jean pockets and put three things down on the main table in front of me.”

“First, I put my room key card down,” he continued, gesturing with his hands how he did it.  “Then I put my wallet next to that key card,” he and his hands said.  “Finally, I put my car keys down in third pile.  So, I made three distinct piles, one right after the other.”

I nodded to show that I was following him.

“Well, when I looked back at the room key card I first put down, I noticed it was gone.  I didn’t understand where it went.  I hadn’t moved anywhere since putting the other two items down right next to it. It didn’t make any sense, but I had a second key card in my backpack, so I pulled it out of my bag and put it in my pocket.”

“That’s strange,” I said, figuring the original key card slid off the table somehow.

“I didn’t think more about it until later that evening while I was sleeping.  That’s when the closet light in the room came on by itself and woke me up.  I had closed the closet door before I went to sleep because it had one of those automatic lights that goes on and off when the closet door opens and closes.  When the light flashed on in the middle of the night, I thought to myself, “What in the world could be moving around in there to make the light turn on?”

“Right,” I responded, curious what he found.

“I got up, looked in the closet and saw nothing. So, I shut the closet door again and went back to sleep,” he said. “But when I woke up in the morning and went into the bathroom to get ready for the day, I looked up and saw the bathroom light and fan were on, even though I had turned them both off the night before and their switches were in the off position.”

“That’s crazy!” I exclaimed, remembering a time when something similar had happened to me and I brushed it off.

“But then, things got even stranger,” he said. “After I got out of the shower that same morning and went back into the bedroom to get dressed, all the drawers and cabinets in the room were wide open.”

My jaw dropped.

He scratched his head.

“So,” he continued, “I went down to reception and said to the man who was working at the front desk that day, ‘Forgive me, Sir…I know this is going to sound crazy… but is this hotel haunted?”

As if this was a typical question, the man looked up at him and asked, “What room are you in?”

“Room 229,” my IT guy said.

The man then reached into a drawer, pulled out a list and said, “Let’s see… room 229…oh yes, that room is on the haunted list.  In fact, most people check in and out of it within in an hour.”

“I see,” my incredibly amicable and patient IT guy said.  “Do you have any other rooms?”

“We are all booked,” the front desk guy responded.

“No way,” I whispered, feeling excitement practically burst through my chest.

“Well, so, the ghost or spirit or whatever you call it didn’t seem particularly scary or harmful, so I decided I would just make the room work,” my IT guy said.

Why that was incredibly open minded and brave, I thought to myself.

“What’s crazy is that when I got back up to the room,” he went on, “I looked at the table where I placed the original room key card that was lost, and it was back in the exact spot where I first put it!”

“Oh my gosh!” I exclaimed, “The spirit in that room was playing games with you!”

“I know,” he said, his eyes squinting, and eyebrows furrowed. “That’s not all.”

“Before leaving town, I went on a hike.  When I got to the bottom of the trail and started stretching, a guy I’ve never seen before jogged by me, waved, and shouted, “Oh hey Phil.”  Then he disappeared without another word. I did not know that guy.  If I did, he would have stopped and said hello.  It’s not like I live there. It felt like the ghost was playing one last trick on me.”

My mind was racing with possibilities when my husband walked in the door.  

“You gotta hear this story!” I told him, forcing him to sit down next to us.

“Okay,” my husband said, his eyes darting back and forth between me and Phil.

As Philip repeated the same story word for word, I watched with delight as my husband’s eyes widened and darted back and forth between us. 

“That’s wild!” my husband agreed before bluntly adding, “And you found the perfect audience in my wife.”

Phil proceeded to fix my email and get on with his day, while I spent the rest of mine with a new skip in my step.

I can’t explain how Phil knew I was the exact right person with whom to share his story. We had never talked about anything beyond my computer before.  Nor can I explain why I reached out on that particular day when he had just returned from his trip, even though my email had been glitching for weeks.  

All I know is that the possibilities of stories like this one are fun for people like me to ponder and explore. I also know that they provide some much-appreciated validation for those of us who sometimes see and hear things we can’t explain.

But perhaps my biggest takeaway is that a spirit that plays “in life” can become a spirit at play “after life.” 

PS: I had a such a great time talking to one of my favorite Energy Healers this past week on Instagram Live.  If you missed my discussion with Erika Alaura and want to know more about this alternative healing modality, you can see the entire conversation on my Facebook page, and highlights on Instagram. Links below.