Boomers - Write

November 2010
Vol. VII
Issue # I

(Disclaimer: This newsletter is not SPAM. You are receiving it because you personally requested it, you signed up to receive it through Boomers Write, one of my sites or links to my sites, or you are a member of Triple Your List, or other opt-in system or are simply a friend whom I felt might like to receive it. As always, you may opt out, but I sure hope you don’t!)

Hello Everyone!

Well, I’m just hours away from my 61st birthday and to be honest, I don’t want another one! The aging process can be quite frustrating at times, especially its affects on one’s personal abilities. For instance, I have found that my editing skills are now leaving much to be desired. As much as I try, I just don’t have the eagle eye that I used to use to review my work and end up with perfect copy. At some point, I guess we just have to concede to the fact that we’re just not as 'with it,' so I'm afraid you'll just have to accept me as I am!
This problem really stared me in the face when my 7th book, Totally Scared: The Complete Book On Haunted Houses was accepted by Saga Books last month. Fortunately, this work was co-written with a wonderful writer in the United States. Dawn Colclasure gave the manuscript a long and tedious going over before it was to be printed. I truly thank God for her because she spotted many things that I had overlooked. It is difficult enough for a writer to review, review and review his or her copy. After so many times, certain things just don’t pop out at you anymore. Thank you Dawn, for persevering and allowing us to finally present that ‘perfect’ book!
Totally Scared, which covers every conceivable topic on haunted houses from stories of folks who live in them, to why a home may be haunted, what ghost hunters do, how to clear a home and deal with the emotional aftermath of a haunting and much more. There is also an appendix that includes a listing of famous and not so famous haunted houses worldwide, as well as a listing of ghost hunters for easy reference.
Totally Scared is endorsed by Alexandra Holzer, daughter of the famed paranormal researcher, Han Holzer. This is one book that both amateur and professionals alike should have on their bookshelves. To learn more about it, please go HERE. To order your copy, please email Ruth at sagabooks@wildroseinternet.ca. This book will soon be available on Amazon.com and Barnes&Noble.com as well various other bookstores.

Boomers Write

My web site Boomers Write now receives nearly 5,000 visitors each month. Please take a moment and check it out. You can post all your fondest memories, stories, articles, poems, photos and even videos (use the video code) here, as well as learn more about the writing process and even how to get published!

Blood Vengeance

BloodVengeance

Check out the latest news on my column at the Hamilton Paranormal Examiner!

For dog lovers, you will find lots of info in my column at the Toronto Shih Tzu Examiner.
If you are an expert in some area and would like to write on your topic while making money, please contact me and I will tell you how to get started. There is no fee to do this and you get paid monthly.

BW Bookstore
The BW Bookstore is open for both readers and authors. You can have your book(s) included in the bookstore for $1 per month or $10 per year (per book). Just contact me at marthajette@gmail.com and I’ll set it up for you. Payment can be made through PayPal or AlertPay.
You can take a look at the bookstore HERE!

Now on to all the paranormal news I have ready to share with you this month.

In This Issue
FEATURE ARTICLE
IN THE NEWS
QUOTE OF THE MONTH
MY NEWS
LINKS FOR YOU
FINAL THOUGHTS
CONTACT THE AUTHOR
FOR ADVERTISERS


FEATURE ARTICLE

This month’s story comes from Linda Kraan-Benson who lives in my hometown of Hamilton, Ontario. Linda is a gifted holistic practitioner and one of the nicest people I’ve met in some time.

Angel’s Message and Child Spirit foretold a Life of Healing

When Linda Kraan-Benson of Hamilton, Ontario was just 6 years old, an angel “shrouded in light” appeared in her bedroom and smiled at her with what she called an “endearing look.”
What happened next both amazed and surprised her.
“He sat on the end of my bed and… he had wings,” she recalled still with a child-like wonder that an angel would actually visit her.
Now 59, Linda said she turned and called out to her grandma.
“I wanted my grandma to see him,” she said but added that she could not find her voice. “I sat up in bed and he was still there.”
The angel then put his fingers on Linda’s temple and said, “The time will come.”
The little girl simply replied, “Okay.”
Linda was mystified but was not frightened by her angel visitor.
“At that time, I didn’t understand it,” she said.
Then she lied down and pulled the blankets up around her. When she peaked out from them, the angel was still there and eventually, she fell asleep.
Linda called this experience a ‘vision’ but it certainly sounds like it was much more than that since the angel spoke and interacted with her. When I had a vision as a child, I saw it on what appeared to be a television screen high up in the corner of the room.
In both cases, however, a message of hope was related at a time when it was most needed. In my case, I was an orphan and the vision directly preceded meeting my future adoptive parents. In Linda’s case, the message came at a time when she suffered at the hands of abusers in her life.
It is amazing that God would send angels to comfort his little ones!
Linda would have many more “visions” during her childhood years, as well as the appearance of a guardian spirit named Marrisa Michelle. This little spirit came to her one day when she was 8 years old and having a tea party with her dolls.
“I looked up and there was this little girl,” Linda said.
She described her as a French girl about her age wearing a school blazer, pleated skirt and a beret.
“I asked if she could stay a while,” and she did. “She told me she was a child of God,” said Linda. “She told me God had sent her so I wouldn’t be lonely and wouldn’t be scared anymore.”
From that point on, Marissa Michelle became her loyal friend. Linda even set a place for her at the dinner table. As you can imagine, her mother was concerned and took her to a psychiatrist.
“Everyone used to ask me, ‘Who are you talking to?’ Marissa Michelle, cant you see her?” Linda would reply. “She’s right here beside me!”
She and Marissa Michelle spent much time together and if she were going out, “I had to ask her to come along.”
At the time, Linda was prone to sleep walking and one night when she ventured out of the house, the police were called. When they found her, she said she was fine because Marissa Michelle was with her. Then when they returned home, the car door was closed leaving the little spirit inside and Linda panicked.
“I was upset when we got home and they closed the door on her,” she said. “They thought I was crazy.”
It was not long before other spirits showed up to see Linda as well.
“People sat on the end of my bed,” she said adding that Marissa Michelle told her not to worry. “She told me they were looking after me, so I wasn’t scared anymore.”
When Linda was 11 years old, her family moved to Australia.
“Marissa Michelle told me she couldn’t go with me,” she said. “She had to go and help another child.”
It was a sad day for Linda but it was time to leave her ghostly friend behind. In Australia they lived on a huge sheep farm and were dirt poor. Linda found herself ostracized by other children her age because her parents could not even afford the right uniform for her to wear at school. The other children taunted her constantly by doing such things as flinging ink from their inkwells on her white blouse and pulling her hair. And whenever she’d come home in a mess, it gave her mother another opportunity to beat her.
But somehow she got through it and at 15 years old, she learned that she had been adopted. She ended up meeting her biological mother and also learned that she had siblings that she did not meet until she was 18.

Psychic Family

Meeting her mother opened her eyes as to where her innate psychic abilities may have come from. Some years later, the truth of her heritage was revealed.
In 1983, “my mom asked, ‘Are you doing readings yet?’ I never spoke to her about it so how did she know?”
To Linda’s utmost surprise her mom replied, “Your great grandmother was one of England’s leading psychic.”
She also learned that her father was somewhat psychic as well.
“It would have been nice to have grown up with them,” she said wistfully.
When Linda was in her teens, the family moved to England. She went on to study nursing at University Hospital in St. James, Leeds and eventually became an operating nurse in neurosurgery. As an attending nurse before this, however, she made use of her psychic abilities by teaching her patients how to heal themselves through the power of the mind. Because of her past experience communicating with a departed spirit, she was also better able to understand when one of her patients went into cardiac arrest.
She had often sat with the man, talk or played chess with him and over time became good friends. Unlike today, she said nurses in the ‘60s and ‘70s were assigned specific patients and they spent much time with them tending to their needs.
When he arrested, other medical personnel swooped in to help him while she stood in the background as what was called a ‘runner,’ someone who could run for whatever the attending doctors might need as they attempted to resuscitate him. The man did survive and about a month later, he asked Linda, “Why did you look so frightened. I was sitting on the curtain rail and I was waving at you! You looked so frightened and I was happy.”
He added that he had seen Linda run to get something as well. Startled by his words, Linda asked, “How did you get up on the curtain rail?” but the man had no idea. However, he did say that he saw the ‘light’ and was ready to go into it but his brother who had already died appeared and put his hand up.
“No, not yet,” he said.
“It was the first time I had heard about a near death experience,” Linda explained adding that such things were not discussed in medical circles back then. However, she already knew that people survive death because of her ability to see and communicate with spirits.
Linda later married, got into the habit of meditating daily and began teaching yoga.
“My ex-husband used to call me ‘Voodoo Mama,” she recalled with a laugh but on a more serious note, she added that she tended to hide her psychic abilities from the outside world.
“I tried to be someone else.”
By this she meant that she tried to fit into the ‘normal’ and ‘expected’ image of a wife and all round person but it just wasn’t enough to satisfy her soul.
“I lived as society dictated,” she said, because you want to fit in.”
She even attended various churches hoping to find one where she felt comfortable but that did not work either.
“I realized that I did not live as ‘authentically’ as I should.” What she really wanted was to feel “one with myself and be in a state of bliss knowing there is a higher purpose – a higher sense of love – a divinity.”
After coming to Canada, Linda enrolled at Sheridan College in Oakville, Ontario to study Wellness Education. She spent many years working in the field of oncology and palliative care. She then went on to take a number of certificate courses in various holistic modalities.
In 1990, she finally found her true calling when she founded the Touch of Energy center in Hamilton, Ontario where she began teaching mediation and yoga. She explained that the meditation is taught on the ‘spiritual/angelic side.
“There are classes just in silence, with music, with movement and with affirmations,” she said adding that people don’t need to worry about trying to sit in some uncomfortable yoga position. While in meditation, she can also work with the charkas – to use the energy to balance the body physically and spiritually.
Today, the center is located on Locke Street and her services have expanded to include such alternative holistic therapies as, aromatherapy, therapeutic touch, wellness education classes and laughter yoga. She is a also a Holistic Practitioner at the Hamilton Wellness Centre on Upper James Street in Hamilton where she provides such services as transformational hypnosis, Indian head massage, reflexology and Laughter Yoga. The grand opening of the center was just two weeks ago.
Reiki, she explained, is done over clothing. She touches the energy points on the body and can “feel blockages. She uses the “universal healing power” to manipulate the energy, to draw out negative energy and balance the body. She knows when she comes up against a blockage of energy because she will feel a “tingling vibration in my hands.”
Unlike some Reiki practitioners, Linda also “taps into the spirit world” and if a client is being sent a message, she will relate it to them. This is not something that can be forced she said. It just happens sometimes. It is so impromptu; she noted that she has had spirits come to her even while she’s been driving.
“They want to tell you right away,” she said adding that she sends them away.
After a car crash seven years ago, Linda decided to learn hypnosis and is now certified by the National Guild of Hypnosis, Inc as a Master Hypnotist. She explained that transformational hypnosis involves “learning your goals and purpose in life” in an effort to determine a person’s “authentic self” – something that she struggled so hard with herself. She will also regress a person but only if it serves a purpose such as going back to a specific point in one’s life where there may have been a life-changing event. Under hypnosis, Linda can also introduce people to their guides and angels.
“I use my own angels to direct me in my hypnosis work.”

Spiritual Guidance from Angels

Linda has now come full circle with her life and abilities. As well as her other alternative healing modalities, she also offers spiritual guidance from her angels.
“Four or five primary angels” are still present in her life, she said but added there are many other angels as well who also communicate with her. They speak most often, she noted, by whispering in her ear but can also relate messages through automatic writing and dreams.
Linda also offers angel workshops called Angel Whispers using the name Lilyana to bring messages of love, hope and courage to others who may be struggling along their life path. She also teaches people how to hear and communicate with angels, and how to understand their messages. To learn more about Angel Whispers, email 4energy@sympatico.ca or call 905.389.3395.
Linda also utilizes her ability to hear the whispers of the angels when she volunteers at local hospitals. In this way, she can relate messages to patients who need it most, especially those that are palliative and/or in chronic care.As well, she has been a volunteer for over six years with the Wellwood Resource Center in Hamilton, where she uses her skills as a Reiki teacher to assist those in need.

On another note, Linda said she currently lives in a house that is over 100 years old. She used to have a resident spirit by the name of Norma, who was actually no trouble to her. However, as soon as Linda got a cat, Norma promptly left. She obviously did not like cats. Some time afterward, Linda took the cat to a vet for a check-up and learned that it had a microchip implanted. The owner was found, the cat returned and Norma still did not come back. Hopefully, this incident prompted her to find the light.

Stories: Children & Angels

Talking To My Angel
Angels & Children

If you would like to comments on this story, please
email me. Your comments just might be included
in the next newsletter!

IN THE NEWS

Black-Eyed People
Who are they and Where do they come from?

More and more, we’re hearing about folks who have run into what has become known as the black-eyed people. But just who they are or where they come from remains a mystery.
Those who have seen or had interactions with these beings most often feel they are not human and in fact, may be evil. Folks also speak of a feeling of dread and that these people seem like aliens or even demons.
Missy was sitting in a Starbucks when she first saw a black-eyed person. The first thing that struck her were the eyes “blacker than black, no white at all… As I looked in his eyes, I somehow knew that was not a human soul occupying that body… and I felt that he knew that I knew that he was not human."
An apartment manager in Portland, Oregon opened her door one day to find a teenager with black eyes staring back at her.
"I could not look him straight in the eyes," she said. "I felt like I was about to die.”
She slammed the door because she felt such an all-consuming dread and it is a good thing she did. It seems black eyed people cannot enter your home or even your car without your permission.
Another woman was at home and in bed reading one night when she heard knocking on her door. When she peeked out a window, she saw two children. Then when she opened the window and asked them why they were out so late at night, they simply replied, “Let us in,” claiming they needed to use the bathroom.
The woman was not only surprised that such young children would be out at that hour, but why did they want to enter a stranger’s house… and why were their eyes pitch black?
”I got the feeling of evil and unhappiness,” she said. “It surrounded me. It was horrible."
There are many, many similar stories from everyday folks who claim to have seen these black-eyed people. One was even with a man in an elevator. However, when he saw the security tape, he was completely alone!
Who or even what these being are still remains a mystery but thanks to our strong human instincts, folks have lived to tell their stories. For those who haven’t we may never know their fate.