More Mineola Ghosts

I love it when I get confirmation my psychic senses are spot-on. Yesterday, Friday April 26, 2013, Sarah, Angela and I went back to Mineola, the town where the Beckham Hotel is located. Angela wanted to visit some cemeteries and the museum to do some historical research. Sarah and I wanted to go along and see what Angela found. As usually happens, though, we discovered more ghosts along with the research.

We "chatted" with several ghosts in one of the cemeteries, but the other one was very quiet. I'll expand more on these in a longer post, or maybe when we do the e-book about the Beckham. The most fun for me, excluding the estate and garage sales we hit, was the visit to the Chamber of Commerce.

The lady at the Chamber, Pam, helped us contact Connie Meissner, who's restoring the Beckham Hotel. Since this resulted in our fantastic overnight investigation, I wanted to stop by and thank Pam. Angela and Sarah saw an interesting shop and decided to prowl in there while I visited with Pam in the Chamber building across the street.

Pam was there, and we only talked long enough to introduce ourselves before I felt someone. "You've got at least one ghost here," I told Pam.

"Doesn't surprise me," she said. "The building is very old. It used to be a bank. We've got three stories: this floor, a basement and a floor above us. The basement contained the original bank vault."

"Would it be possible for me to take some pictures and see if I catch the ghost on film?" I asked.

"Sure." She wasn't hesitant at all, and I recalled she had mentioned during our first conversation that she did believe in the paranormal.

"I'll have to go get my friends," I said. "They'll never forgive me if I go looking for ghosts without them."

I went back across the street and got the video camera out of the car, then went into the store Sarah and Angela indicated they were going go shop in.

"Hello!" I called.

A female answered, "Hello," and I thought it sounded like Sarah.

"We've got ghosts," I called. "Come on, let's go."

Oops. The lady who walked out wasn't Sarah. Neither she nor Angela were in the store. I apologized to the woman, who had a very puzzled look on her face, and hurried out the front door without explaining myself. Next door, I saw a Gourmet Popcorn Shop." Yep, that's where they were.

After they paid for their popcorn, we headed back to the Chamber building. We descended to the basement, with Pam telling us more about the history of the building and being a really good tour guide. We liked her immensely. In the basement, we examined the vault and took photos. We even walked into the vault, but the atmosphere was nothing at all like the one we found at the Beckham. We also didn't catch anything paranormal.

We traipsed back up the stair, two sets of them, to the third floor. There, we found the ghosts we were looking for.

Pam said the building had also once been used as a lawyer's office. Then I said, "I'm getting the name Harry. Is there a Harry associated with the building?"

Her eyes widened. I could tell I'd either shocked or flustered her. "Yes," she said at last. "Harry … uh … Harry … I can't recall his last name." She frowned, then went on, "Meredith! His name was Harry Meredith. I can't believe I couldn't think of his name. He had an office here for years, and when he died, he left a lot of his fortune to the City of Mineola. Part of those funds are responsible for us having the Civic Center in town."

I nodded, happy with the confirmation of my sixth sense. I didn't bother to tell Pam I'd seen others get flustered and forget well-known facts when I received names via my gift.

Sarah, Angela and I all felt Harry and chatted a bit with him. There was a chair Sarah felt was a secretary's chair, or, as she said later, "Maybe a woman who felt she had to do secretarial duties, although she really wasn't the secretary." We got the name Bonnie, but Pam didn't recognize that. She did say she would check her reference material. We also got quite a few interesting photos.

Here are four of mine: The page with the info on Harry Meredith from the centennial book done for Mineola's 100^th birthday; Harry's desk, and two cut-outs of interesting spots in the photo of the desk.

 All in all, it was a wonderful day. We missed finding Connie at the Beckham, but we'll be going back to this wonderful town many more times. Even during the daytime, the larger cemetery we walked through was extremely active. We believe we encountered Doyle, the gambler from the Beckham, whom Aunt Belle talked to. That's who he said he was, anyway, and he wanted to know why Aunt Belle wasn't with us. There are also two "hanging trees," both with areas on limbs that appear to be worn from ropes. I'm already yearning to do a nighttime investigation of this cemetery, so we'll see when we can work it into our plans.

Ghost Hunting Diary Volume V is going through its final edit. I'm fairly certain it should be up by May 1. Then it will depend on how soon the e-sites make it available for sale, but I'll be sure to shout it far and wide after it's up.

If you haven't seen the gorgeous cover on my Facebook page, which the extremely talented Angela did for me, here it is, also:

Take care, hunt safely and respectfully, and ….

Boo!

T. M.

Teddy the Bathroom Ghost

We call him Teddy. He lives in my Molly-Belle Suite guest bathroom. I've never actually seen him, but Aunt Belle has, and she described him to me. I have seen the hat Teddy wears, though, since she identified it clearly. It's similar to those worn by Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders.

The Teddy saga started out when hub came into the house one day to show me what he'd found in the bottom of his tool box. It was a medal — a gold, tri-corner shaped hat with a feather on the back on top, a tiny chain with the medal dangling from it. Two marchers with walking sticks are on each side of a shield-shaped sign with the words Gut Fuss Humes surrounding a phoenix rising, then a pair of hiking shoes beneath that. The German means something like: good foot home, I believe; at least, Google indicates a translation close to that, although some of the results also include things like hiking enthusiasts foot hume  (foot home?). Any readers out there who speak German?

"I found this in the bottom of one of my tool boxes," hub said when he brought it in. "It was not in that tool box before."

"How can you be sure it just appeared there?" I asked.

"Because I've emptied out that box and reorganized it more than once. It was not in it. It just appeared there." Since we'd had similar incidents after we moved into our current haunted house, I believed him.

A few days later, Aunt Belle spoke to a new ghost she met in my house. His name was Teddy, and he told her to thank us for displaying the medal that hub had found. I had laid it on top of the supply dresser in my office, where I keep things with meaning to me. Teddy told Aunt Belle that he wanted his grandson to have the medal, but since he didn't know what had happened to his grandson, he was happy for us just to keep it out where others could see it.

Later, I called Sis and described the medal to her. She told me for the first time about the Volksmarch medals she used to receive when she was in the Army and stationed in Germany. To her, it sounded like one of those. They are non-competitive competitions called Volksmarches (volksmarsch in German), or "people's marches."  When she visited, she confirmed that's what it was. Thus the story of Teddy the Bathroom Ghost began.

We've had several incidents involving Teddy over the years, most of which occurred to men in that bathroom. I'll tell you all about them in a forthcoming set of diaries, but the latest one happened the other day.

My friends from Lonestar, James and Armando, came over to borrow my DVD recorder and burn the evidence they got on their camcorders at the Beckham Hotel onto disk. It was a lot of tape, so I left them to it and went to Wal-Mart, where my photos from the Beckham were waiting to be picked up. As I walked into the store, my cell phone rang.

"Hello?" At first, all I heard was hilarious laughter. I knew it was Armando from Caller ID, so I kept walking and waited until he could control himself and talk.

Finally, he said, "You missed it! You should have been here!"

"What?" I prodded.

"It was James. He came racing out of your bathroom, cursing a blue streak and scared spitless. He said, '(Blankety, blank) bathroom. I'm never going in there again!'"

"What happened?" I asked, although I already knew: Teddy had struck again.

"He saw a face," Armando said. "He was standing there just zipping back up, and he said this disembodied face floated around in front of him. It stared at him with a mean-ass glare, then floated back behind him. He fled! He came tearing out of there, scared as hell but also mad."

Yeah, that's a man for you, I thought to myself. Mad at himself because he allowed something to scare him.

"It was Teddy," I said to Armando. "I warned y'all my house is haunted. And Teddy loves to scare men in that bathroom."

"Well, he did it," Armando said. "James is still pretty shaken up."

"I'll be home in a bit," I said as I hung up, laughing so hard, I noticed several people staring at me. I grabbed a cart, then called Angela as I walked down the aisle. She and I shared a bout of more hilarity. We both agreed we wished we had been there to actually see it happen.

After I hung up from my call to Angela, I realized this had been the third paranormal incident involving my two friends. Previously, James had seen Howard, my Head Ghost, and Armando had witnessed a spirit ball of energy in the Molly Belle Suite.

When I got home, Armando had left to run an errand, and I was rather surprised to find James sitting in my living room with only his little girl for company. His face was still white, and he very obviously didn't appreciate the fact that I busted out laughing the moment I came in and looked at him.

"Darned ghost," he said, and made a few more uncomplimentary remarks about Teddy.

"I warned you the house is haunted," I repeated around my laughter.

"Yeah, but I've never, ever had anything like that happen to me!"

"Was Teddy wearing a hat?" I asked. "A tri-cornered one?"

"I don't know," he said in a disgruntled tone. "I didn't notice. He floated around and gave me this horrible glare." He screwed up his face like the Scream mask. "It was just his head floating around in front of me. I saw it from the corner of my eye first, then right in my face. Then it went back behind me really fast, and I got the heck out of there."

"Armando said you won't go back in there again," I said, trying to sober  up my hilarity. "I have another bathroom you can use, off the master bedroom. But … there's a ghost who hangs out in it, too."

"When a man's gotta pee, he's gotta pee," he said in a grumble.

"You know this incident is blog fodder for me," I said. "But I will ask for your permission to use your name."

He considered for a moment, then nodded. "Yeah, sure. It's a really weird experience."

"One day you'll look back on it and enjoy it," I assured him.

He didn't look like he believed me!

~~~~

We're continuing to review scads of evidence from the overnight investigation of the haunted Beckham Hotel. It's going to be an awesome place to stay when Connie finishes the remodeling, both for paranormal investigators and for people who just want to experience a wonderful, relaxing weekend in a historical hotel in a delightful town like Mineola. We met with Connie this past week, and she was amazed at the evidence we already had. When we told her that we were still reviewing and would have more later, she was even more astounded.

I'm continuing to get reports of our findings from various SRT members who are reviewing our hours of tapes. I'll put as much as I can into the Beckham Hotel story in Ghost Hunting Diary Volume V, but I've already decided to do a separate novella-style book about this fascinating experience. Angela has scads of historical research, and we keep finding additional evidence. I'll have to cut the initial story off at some point, in order to get the book up for sale, but I'll continue working this one into an even longer version. Perhaps I'll brave the wilds of Create Space on Amazon for some paperbacks. Probably so, since I don't want any of what we found and experienced to be lost, and Connie would love to have books on the hotel to sell in her gift shop when the hotel re-opens.

In the meantime, there are four other diaries out there to read, plus the three Dead Man Mysteries. If you are in the mood for romance ;-),  Google me under Trana Mae Simmons. Enjoy, and….

Boo!

T. M.

Cleansing a Private Home

Sometimes I wonder if people who live in houses they eventually find out they're sharing with troublesome paranormal beings ever realize how many ghosts are hanging around. This is especially true if the home has never had an in-depth, thorough cleansing. It takes a lot out of me, and my SRT crew members, also, to go in a place like this and do a good job. Talk about being "dead-ass" tired!

This was the case last week. The homeowner was totally traumatized and extremely fearful of what was going on. She'd tried to cleanse herself with sage, etc., and it hadn't worked. There were knocks, footsteps, kitchen cabinets slamming and other kitchen items sounding like they were moving around or being tossed here and there. The worst was a ball of energy that kept coming back when she was in bed, paralyzing her.

The entities were feeding off her fear, which was growing daily until I could clear my schedule and get up there. By then, the place was totally inundated.

On a side note, another thing I ran across during this situation ticked me off. Some other "supposed" paranormal team more or less shoved their way in to "investigate" the house. From what I could find out, this was a fairly "newbie" group. They tried to make the homeowner sign a four-page contract assuring no other paranormal team would come in until they were done "investigating," and "mess up their investigation." The homeowner didn't fall for it and sent them packing. However, I just wonder how many other people this team has treated like this. If anyone else encounters this, my advice is to say: "Leave me a copy of the 'contract.' I'll have my attorney look it over and get back to you." Sheesh and double sheesh.

Anyway, back to our SRT trip, about an hour and a half from my own home.

My cleansings are different from an investigation. We usually have fun amidst the seriousness during an investigation. A cleansing is totally serious; there's nothing fun at all about it. We're there to send the troublesome ghosts either into The Light or banish them from the property, so they can't continue to upset and scare the homeowner. We're there to leave peace behind.

I met two of my SRT team members there: Sarah and Floyd. They made me very proud of them. But then, my entire team is turning into the best paranormal investigators I've ever worked with. They're caring and respectful, responsible and seriously compassionate about the lost souls we deal with. I couldn't ask for any better teammates.

We accomplished our goal of peace at this home, and I didn't even try to count the number of ghosts we crossed over until the house was ghost-free. There were a couple interesting ghosts who stood out, though.

The homeowner had found a large red teddy bear and brought it home. She had a feeling herself that something just wasn't "right" about the bear. Sarah found a child attached to the bear, a child who had died from a disease. Of all the crossovers we did that day, this one gave us the most satisfaction.

There was a bench against one window. It had drawn me on my initial walk-through, and I'd already used some holy water on it. When Sarah arrived, she looked at it and remarked: "That used to be a bed. The headboard is the back of the bench. Someone made the bench from the headboard."

I could see immediately she was right. Sarah also felt a woman had died in childbirth in that bed. I sat for a minute and got the information this had happened in the 1950's. With our help, the woman severed her attachment to that bed and crossed into The Light.

When we were nearly done with the cleansing, my Lonestar Paranormal friends, James and Armando, arrived with another one of their team members. They quietly observed the rest of the ceremony, and after we did some further work outside the house, SRT left. From what I understand, Lonestar confirmed the peacefulness of the home after our departure. I also called the homeowner a couple days later. She was like a different person: calm and happy and very grateful for what we had done.

I do so enjoy using my gifts to help others, people living their lives now or lost souls who are trapped here.

~~~

I've been watching Dead Man Talking climb the charts at Amazon this week. Thanks so much to everyone who went out and got the book, as well as my friends and fans who helped spread the word. I'm still on track to get the next volume of true ghost stories up by the first part of May, working hard. In the meantime, if you missed Dead Man Talking, I only set the price up to $.99 to introduce folks to my Dead Man Mystery Series. So you can still grab a copy for that price. I'll get it back on Nook and elsewhere as soon as my Amazon ninety days expires on May 24. However, you can still get Dead Man Haunt, my naked ghost story, and Dead Man Hand, the wild west shoot-em-up, for all e-book devices.

 

http://tiny.cc/q1n4uw  

Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005LKMNRM

Nook:  http://tiny.cc/cwsom

SW:     http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/85962

Kobo:  http://tiny.cc/cdh5bw

Kindle: http://tiny.cc/isf0jw

Nook: http://tiny.cc/fxapkw

SW: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/226253

Kobo: http://tiny.cc/bdp0lw

Enjoy! And….

Boo!

T. M.