Death at My Door

“No one can confidently say that he will still be living tomorrow.”

Euripides (480 – 406 BC) Greek playwright

Death is something we can’t escape, it is the end result for all of us.  The 2014 horror novel title by Adam Nevill sums it up “No One Gets Out Alive”. No one will know when or how they will leave this earthly plane, they just know they will. 

When someone who is close to me or whom I have known dies, their death becomes a check-in point for my life.  It makes me take stock of where my life is going, to reevaluate my life and question “do I like where my life is going?”  If the answer is no, I think about how I can change the direction or path that I’m on, and step onto the one that has more meaning and more depth. 

That’s how I came to be where I am. When my “stepfather” died three years ago, his death made me question the path I was on. 

Henry and I were like oil and water, we didn’t get along very well, but when we did, it didn’t last for long.  Shortly after his passing, I was sitting on the guest bed at my Mom’s evaluating my life.  I was working for a company I didn’t like, with a handful of employees who I didn’t like (minus two of them), working six to fourteen hours a day, seven days a week. That place was a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. 

Henry’s death brought me into alignment of who I wanted to be and to do work that I found meaningful and natural, the work I do today. 

When people die, some come back for a brief moment to let their loved ones know that they are alive and well, on the other side. Being a Medium, I’m sure you can imagine all the activity I’ve dealt with throughout the years...all of which I enjoy. 

In the complex where I live, five people have passed away since July 2020, three of whom have created ghostly activity in my home.  Most people here know what I do for a living.  Two of my lovely neighbours, Connie and Sandy, love the fact that they live next to a Medium.  When I chat with them about the activity that has been going on in my home, especially as we have an adjoining wall, Connie always exclaims: “I tell everyone that I live next door to a Medium!”.  Her enthusiasm always makes me smile and laugh.

In March I had some paranormal activity occur: I was at my front door in the process of going out for the day, when I heard something crash to the floor.  I looked around, couldn’t see anything and proceeded to go out.  When I returned home later in the day, I went into the laundry room (probably to do laundry) and there on the floor was my 13 lb carpet cleaner, still in the upright position.

Although I find Spirit activity amazing, I also find it perplexing.  Why they choose certain objects to move or throw is beyond me. I just stared in amazement that this cleaner was laying perfectly on the floor, with the head of the cleaner in the locked position.   It’s times like this, I wish I had a camera set up to capture the activity.

As I righted the cleaner to the correct position, my brain tried to rationalize how it came to be as it was.  

Although I love spirits, communication with spirits and paranormal activity, anytime I have an object move or pictures lift off of the wall or the tv changes channels or anything out of the ordinary happens, I will always do my best to debunk it. 

I pulled the locked handle of the carpet cleaner towards me and let it go.  The cleaner moved forward back into standing position, so I pulled it further backwards towards me and let it go.  The same thing happened...it moved forward back into the standing position.

The third time I pulled it harder in my direction, to make it stand on its heel, did it start to fall backwards to the ground. You have to remember that this cleaner weighs 13 pounds, it’s not going to topple over easily...not without force or something pulling it down.  The tank of the cleaner is at the back, making it top heavy...and the tank was empty. 

The interesting thing is that there is also a steam cleaner and a vacuum cleaner next to the carpet cleaner, and neither of them fell over. 

A few weeks passed and I went into the laundry room to clean my cat’s litter box.  I clean it everyday, at no specific time.  When my cat starts endlessly meowing it’s my cue to clean his litter box. He’s my wireless indicator of a dirty litter box, whereas my dog is my wireless doorbell. 

I made the litter box presentable to my lovely boy and left the room.  A few minutes later I had to go back into the room for whatever reason.  As I returned, there was a Scotch Brite scrub brush sitting in the absolute middle of the cat litter box.  (it was previously sitting on a cupboard air drying four feet away.) My debunking proved nothing.  No matter what I did to the scrub brush, nothing caused it to end up four feet away from where it originally sat. Perplexed, I put it back to its original home on the cupboard. 

My laundry room has always had some funky energy to it and no matter what I do, the weird energy remains. It seems to be the hub for spirit activity. 

In June I learned of two people in my complex who had passed suddenly, both of whom I knew.  One died suddenly and without warning in her home and the other died in the hospital nearby. One lived twelve doors down and one lived two doors down.  I spoke to both of them by name, thanked them for coming by and the activity stopped. 

The most recent encounter I had was about a week ago during the heatwave.  I was staying home, keeping cool in my “cave” as my friend calls it. I had the windows and the patio door open to allow the gloriously warm air to cleanse my home, although it still stayed naturally cool, like a cave.  I was in my bedroom and came out into the living room when a foul smell hit me in the face.  My first thought was “what is that smell?” and my second thought was “it smells like something has died in the walls!” It smelled like death.

If you’ve never smelled death, consider yourself lucky. It has a distinctive odour to it...and not a pleasant one at that. 

When I was working at the job previously mentioned, the one that I didn’t like, something literally did die in the walls.  We all came into work one morning to find a putrid smell coming from, well from wherever it was coming from.  No one knew what it was, only that it had gone into the walls and never came out.  An exterminator was hired to suss out the unfortunate creature. He poked and prodded the area that smelled the worst, but they couldn’t find it either.  So we all had to work with the smell of death in the air...which is not a good marketing tool, let me tell you! 

One co-worker was air freshener happy.  She’d spray that shit everywhere. Let me say that no amount of Febreze covers that smell up. She’d soak the air with Febreze which would make it smell like “sea spray death” or “fresh-baked vanilla death” or “morning and dew and death”.  

Back in my home, with the scent of death thick in the air, I covered my shirt over my nose and questioned where the smell was coming from.  Luckily I had some recycling to do, so I grabbed it and went outside.  I noticed that the death smell was coming from outside, but it was only in the vicinity of my front door and not beyond.  As I walked to the recycling bins, my mind turned to other things and as I returned home, looking back, I completely forgot about the smell as it was gone.

On Thursday night leading into Friday,  I had the strangest dream.  I was in my actual home throwing a party with some people I didn’t recognize, except for one.  She was someone I had been best friends with over 20 years ago, but she left my life when I was diagnosed with cancer.  

During the party, (in my dream) a tall, slender man with blonde hair and vacant blue eyes came into my home. He looked familiar to me but I couldn’t place him.  He asked me if he could use my ensuite to have a bath. I told him he could. 

As the party progressed I realized this man hadn’t come out of the bath yet, so I went to check on him.  (The ensuite was my actual ensuite, in my actual bedroom, not a simulation like many dreams seem to be.) As I pulled back the curtain (my actual curtain) to expose the bath, I saw that the man had killed himself.  He had a white plastic bag over his face, which then later turned into white shrink wrap like you see on hay bales.  I was stunned and saddened. 

As the dream progressed, I remember this former best friend and I wandering around Europe.  She was showing me where she lived and I remember wanting to find someone to let them know about this man who had killed himself in my bathtub because he was still in it, water and all. I remember thinking that it had been a week since he died and no one knew about it and I couldn’t find the right person to tell them to collect his body.  I remember thinking that my apartment must be smelling like death and why wasn’t anybody noticing.  The “he’s-been-dead-for-a-week-and-no-one-knows” kept playing around in my head.

Eventually I woke up and went back to reality. It was Friday morning and the dream stayed with me.  I see a lot in my dreams, experience a lot, see vivid colours.  I have lucid dreams where I can change things, if the experiences become too much.  I’ve always had remarkable dreams. 

I went to talk to a good friend about the dream, as she knows my home and my experiences. She gave me her interpretation as did a client of hers. I kept telling my friend how the man had been dead for a week and no one knew, and how that was sticking to me like glue. 

On Fridays in the late afternoon, my complex has a “tailgate” gathering where a few to several people sit in the parking lot and drink a beverage or a couple of bottles and chat. It’s a nice gathering to reconnect with each other.  I haven’t been for weeks, but decided to go. 

I was sitting next to another favourite neighbour and asked her if anyone had died in my suite.  She’s lived here for 17 years and told me that no one had.  After she asked why, I told her about my dream and about the smell of death the week before. 

She told me about the recent people who had passed: the woman in February, the man in March and a man who had died a few weeks ago, whom I had never met. He has a little red Miata in the parking lot near the garbage and compost bins.  It never left the parking spot. No one drives it.  That Miata must have its own ecosystem by now with all sorts of things growing in it:  mushrooms, lichen, mould, bugs, etc. as the windows are kept open in every season. 

Are you ready for this???

My neighbour said…

“He died a few weeks ago, but wasn’t found for a week.  No one knew he had died. The smell was something awful.”

———
Rest with ease R. (Bob) L.