Echo Bodine - The Little Book of True Ghost Stories

Copyright 2011

by Echo Bodine

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from Hampton Roads Publishing. Reviewers may quote brief passages.

Cover design by Jim Warner

Cover image copyright Silent 47

Hampton Roads Publishing Company, Inc.

Charlottesville, VA 22906

www.hrpub.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on request.

ISBN: 978-1-57174-650-4

TCP

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Printed on acid-free paper in Canada

To Roman

I would like to thank JoAn Hall for putting all the work into the book that you did. You were a life saver.

Greg Brandenburgh for publishing the book and for always pushing me to make it better.

To my totally cool family, the Bodines.

To all the formerly stuck souls who taught me about ghosts.

To my brother, Michael, for always walking ahead of me on jobs and making this difficult work fun to do.

Many years ago I discovered one of the benefits I gained from developing my psychic abilities: I have the ability to see dead peoplesouls (spirits) living on the other side and souls (ghosts) still lingering on the earth plane.

The last forty years have been quite a journey. I discovered the world of ghosts; why they choose to remain earthbound; why some are afraid to go to heaven; what their day-to-day existence is like.

They're all such different characters: a hobo who didn't feel worthy of going to heaven. A group of mentally ill ghosts who remained on the property of the asylum they lived in, years after it had been torn down. Ghosts who prevent houses from selling because they like the family that's living there. Deceased teenage ghosts who roam the halls of high schools along with deceased teachers who miss their jobs.

I met a ghost who sings opera and a ghost named Sherrie who had been murdered and chose to stay here rather than face her killer who had committed suicide. I saw a ghost roaming the halls of St. Paul City Hall in her wedding dress, waiting for her boyfriend to arrive so they could get married.

I was once slapped on the back of the neck by a ghost who told me to get out of the warehouse he worked in; another ghost tried pushing me down the very stairs she had jumped to her death from over a hundred years before.

I've felt them walk through me, and I've seen them come right up to my face and try to take my breath away, hoping to gain power from my energy.

I've seen them in people's garages, attics, showers, bedrooms, basements, and kitchens. I've witnessed ghosts sitting in chairs, lying on beds, pretending to dine at dinner tables, staring out windows, riding elevators, sitting in classrooms, acting on stage, sitting in a television audience. I've seen ghosts in homes, churches, businesses, hospitals, school dorms, libraries, tanning parlors, farms, funeral homes, treatment centers, cabins, flower shops, and day care centers. Anywhere that people hang out, ghosts hang out too.

This book shares the world of ghosts as seen through the eyes of a real-life ghostbuster. Many of the stories also feature my psychic brother, Michael. (He has written a great book called Growing Up Psychic that you'll want to check out for more psychic adventures.)

Each story you read is as close to accurate as possible. Only the names have been changed.

Before we dive into the world of ghosts, I'd like to start at the beginning and tell you how this all got started.

It was a typical evening at our home in the fall of 1965. I was seventeen years old. Sitting around the table after dinner were my parents, my two brothers, my sister, and me. My brother said he was going downstairs to practice on his new drum set. He was just beginning to learn how to play the drums, so, needless to say, his playing still sounded a little rough. The rest of us were carrying on with our different after-dinner conversations, trying to avoid the dishes for as long as possible, when, all of a sudden, we all stopped talking and turned our attention to music coming from the den. It was really good, not the usual beginner stuff we were used to hearing from my brother. We all looked at Dad, expecting he would somehow know why my brother was playing like a pro. My father suggested that we must be hearing the new Sandy Nelson record he had just bought my brother, and even though that answer didn't feel accurate, we continued to listen for signs of what was really going on downstairs.

About a minute later, my brother came flying up the stairs, totally freaked out. Did you hear it, did you hear it? he said, and we all answered, Yes, what was it? My brother explained that he was sitting at his drum set, practicing his normal fare, when out of nowhere, a white figure floated through the door and over to him. He said that he closed his eyes, hoping it would disappear, but even with his eyes closed, he could still see this whitish male figure standing in front of the drum set. This guy took my brother's hands and basically played through him, making the really beautiful music that we heard from the dining table. He tried letting go of the drumsticks, but was not able to release them from his hands until this man floated back across the room and through the door. My brother was so upset that he said he was never going down to the den again.

We were all pretty blown away. My mom, who usually kept a cool head, called a friend of hers who had been to a medium in England and was living in St. Paul. Fortunately, she was able to reach the psychic medium, Mrs. Eve Olson. Mrs. Olson told my mother that she'd been expecting the call. After my mother related the story of what had happened with my brother and the drumming, Mrs. Olson told her that the spirit was my brother's guardian angel, Dr. Fitzgerald. When this doctor was living on earth he was also a drummer, and because he was my brother's angel, he was going to work with him and teach him many things. She also told Mom that she and each of her four children had some very unique gifts and that she wanted to see Mom and her oldest daughter (me) for a reading. We were all speechless.

What did all of this mean? Did we all have guardian angels? Why could my brother see his, when the rest of us couldn't? What did unique gifts mean? My siblings and I inundated our parents with questions that they had no clue how to answer. I was so frightened by the thought that my own guardian angel might appear to me that night that I began sleeping with the lights on.

Within a week my mom and I went to see Mrs. Olson.

On the drive from our south suburban home to her home in West St. Paul, Mom and I were full of anticipation. I wondered what this medium from England would be like. Did she read a crystal ball? Was her house filled with black cats? Did she wear big dangling earrings and tie long scarves around her head? I couldn't imagine what kind of unique gifts she was referring to and what she would tell me. At that point in my life, the only things I was interested in knowing were when I was going to meet Mr. Right and how many children I was going to have.

As we approached Mrs. Olson's front door, my stomach filled with butterflies. I was so nervous, and I just wanted to go away and pretend this wasn't happening.