Rule - Ghosts Among Us: True Stories of Spirit Encounters

Also by Leslie Rule

Coast to Coast Ghosts: True Stories of Hauntings Across America

When the Ghost Screams: True Stories of Victims Who Haunt

Ghost in the Mirror: Real Cases of Spirit Encounters

Where Angels Tread: Real Stories of Miracles and Angelic Intervention

Ghosts Among Us copyright 2004 by Leslie Rule. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of reprints in the context of reviews. For information, write Andrews McMeel Publishing, LLC, an Andrews McMeel Universal company, 1130 Walnut Street, Kansas City, Missouri 64106.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

www.andrewsmcmeel.com

Rule, Leslie, 1958

Ghosts among us : true stories of spirit encounters / Leslie Rule.

p. cm.

E-ISBN: 978-1-4494-1314-9

1. Ghosts. I. Title.

BF1461.R78 2004

133.1dc22

2004048058

Book design by Holly Camerlinck

Cover design by Van Crosby

Photography by Leslie Rule

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Andrews McMeel books are available at quantity discounts with bulk purchase for educational, business, or sales promotional use. For information, please write to: Special Sales Department, Andrews McMeel Publishing, LLC, 1130 Walnut Street, Kansas City, Missouri 64106.

This book is for Teresa Grandon-Garcia,
my friend for over three decades.
She has shown amazing strength and optimism
in her recent struggle with cancer.
Teresa, may you grow stronger every day!

Foreword by Ann Rule

I suspect that, if they would admit it, most people have a certain fascination with ghosts, spirits, angels, guideswhatever words they may use to describe otherworldly presences in their lives. Sometimes, it is a feeling of an unseen presence, a sound in the room with no rational explanation, a phone ringing when it is not connected to the wall, or even a thought washing through the brain, unbidden.

For over thirty years, I have researched and written about the lives of people I didnt knowthat I could never know. The subjects of the twenty-three books and over a thousand articles I have written are dead, and almost all of them died violently. I write about murder cases. If anything could make me believe in ghosts, it is the genre in which I write. It may sound bizarre, but I grow to know my subjects better than anyone who knew them in life. I have heard homicide investigators say the same thing.

As I work now on Green River, Running Red, the true story of a stalking killer who has admitted to taking forty-eight young womens lives, the dead girls seem to come and go in my office. I have learned their secrets, their fears, their hopes, all the things that ended prematurely at the whim of a person without conscience. I know their blood types and their DNA patterns. Ive seen broken pieces of their pathetically inexpensive jewelry, caked with mud. I have, quite literally, knelt next to their unmarked graves.

Their presence doesnt bother me. Instead, it helps me to put my hand on exactly the report Im looking for at a given time. Bear in mind that I have more than fifty thousand pages of interviews, evidence, and police follow-up pages. If I didnt have some help from the victims, I think I might be paralyzed with indecision as I try to access the information I need.

Although I always try to tell the whole story of a murder casefrom the police probe to the trial, and, sometimes, to the final moment of a death penalty, the most important thing I do is try to speak for the victims. A high-profile murder suspect is assured of becoming a pseudo-celebrity. He will have his chance to be on television screens across America and in the headlines of newspapers and tabloids. He can tell his story from the witness stand in a court of law. If hes really infamous, he will surely have producers anxious to film a miniseries or two about his life.

The victims dont have that. Because they are dead and gone, they appear in one-dimensional photographs, and they cannot tell what really happened during the last moments of their lives. Someone else must speak for them, whether its a district attorney or a witness for the prosecution. Or someone like me.

It is not at all unusual for homicide victims to come back with messages for the people they never got to say good-bye to. So many of their parents have told me of dreams that were much too real to be just dreams. Only yesterday, a mother spoke to me about how her daughter came to her at a time when her grief was so intense that she thought she herself would die of the pain.

It was in a dreama wonderful dream. She smiled her wonderful smile and touched my arm. She told me that everything was all right. That she was fine and that I must not cry. It was going to be okay, even though I might not believe her right away.

When the mourning mother woke up, she didnt know if her waking state was reality, or if the lovely dream was the real world. She would certainly have grief and pain for the rest of her life because her daughter was gone, but she was also left with the absolute belief that one day her lost child would come back for her and help her to cross over.

Because I spend my days thinking about how thin the dividers are between life and deathand not in a morbid way, at allI am probably more receptive to ghostly visitors than most people are. And I think it makes it easier for people to tell me their own ghost stories. They know I wont laugh at them or think they dont have both oars in the water.

Its been thirty years since a pretty blue-eyed thirteen-year-old girl named Janna left her mothers apartment to walk down a path to the grounds of a lodge and a golf course where her best friend lived in a mobile home. Janna had promised to water the plants and check to be sure the pipes wouldnt freeze while her friend and her family were away on a Christmas visit.

Detectives were able to determine that Janna did arrive at the trailer, but she never came home. She completely disappeared that morning. Although the investigators followed every lead they could glean, they couldnt find Janna. Some people said shed run away, but her mother knew she had no reason to do that. Theirs was a happy home and she and Janna had been planning to have lunch together on the day her daughter vanished. No arguments. No fights. No problems.

Desperate, Jannas mother agreed to consult a psychic who was related to a friend. The seer asked to have a sealed paper bag holding some of Jannas possessions. Her vision of where Janna was wasnt encouraging. Gently, she said that Janna was no longer alive. Her earthly body was quite some distance from home.

Shes in a place with trees, a pond, and fallen logs, the woman said.

There were so many places like that in the Northwest where their family lived. Jannas mother began to feel that her missing daughter was trying her best to tell her somethingmaybe where to find her. Too many times for it to be someone with the wrong apartment number, there were knocks on her door at night. But when she opened it, there was no one there.

Once, in the most chilling phenomenon, a friend of the family named Linda was combing her hair, looking into a mirror in Jannas mothers apartment. As she looked at her own image, there was the sound of the familiar knock on the door. But this time, Linda became aware of another face in the mirror; someone was standing behind her, looking over her shoulder.