Embracing the Spirits: True Stories of My Encounters With the Other Side by Barbara Parks (bill gates best books TXT) 📕

long-anticipated holiday, and was very excited at the prospect of a week spent in the country.

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204Marnie

The beautiful Marnie.

“Where are you off to?” I asked.

“Well …” said Marnie with a clap of her hands. “It’s some-

where really fun; an old school house that was built in the 1800’s!”

My interest was instantly piqued, and I wondered if Mar-

nie was going to stay at the Ellington School House. I immedi-

ately thought of the two gorgeous spirit boys I had met there

a month or so earlier. I’d been intending to go back ever since.

Marnie confirmed that it was indeed the same school

house. I was undecided as to whether I should share the details of my stay with her, so I approached the subject tentatively

without giving anything away.

“So Marnie …” I asked offhandedly. “Do you believe in

ghosts?”

Marnie leaned in towards me with a conspiratorial smile.

“I should think so,” she said. “It’d be hard not to after what I’ve been through!”

Marnie 205

Marnie needed little encouragement; a moment later she

was telling me about her first ghostly encounter. Despite hap-

pening over seventy years ago, the memory remained as vivid

as if it happened a few days ago. Marnie could still picture the tormented apparition whom she encountered in a hallway of

the Fremantle Arts Centre.

“I heard her first,” she told me. “As clear as a bell. The poor woman was crying her heart out …”

Marnie described how she was on her way to an art class

when she heard the plaintive sobbing echoing through the

stairwell. It seemed to Marnie that the crying was getting progressively louder, so she looked around to see if she could find the distraught woman and try to comfort her.

“I turned to look behind me; I couldn’t seem to pinpoint

where the sound was coming from. I called out but there was

no response, just the incessant crying …”

As Marnie reached the top of the stairs and headed down

the corridor, she saw the weeping woman approaching from

the other end. She called out to ask her if she was OK, but as before, the woman just kept crying.

“I could see her as plain as day,” said Marnie, who thought

it odd that the woman was dressed in Victorian-style cloth-

ing. “She was wearing a high-waisted brown skirt with a puff-

sleeved blouse … and one of those frilly white morning caps.”

Marnie wondered if perhaps the woman was an actress,

which would account for her old-fashioned dress. She was yet

to register that the woman was a ghost and kept calling out to her. Within seconds they were right in front of one another,

the woman’s tear-stained face just inches from her own.

“And then,” gasped Marnie, “She just seemed to pass right through me. I felt a cold rush of air and she was gone!”

206Marnie

Marnie knew that the Arts Centre had once been West-

ern Australia’s first mental asylum, and was convinced that

the weeping apparition was one of the building’s early occu-

pants. What Marnie didn’t realise was that the Fremantle Arts

Centre is thought to be one of the most haunted buildings in

the Southern Hemisphere, and the weeping lady sounds very

much like its most famous ghost.

Sightings of the weeping woman have often been reported

over the years, possibly as early as the 1860’s. Her story is one of the most heart-rending to come out of the asylum’s one

hundred and fifty year history.

It is believed that the woman’s daughter was kidnapped

and murdered; prompting her mental breakdown and subse-

quent confinement. The desperate woman habitually paced

the hallways of the asylum, all the while moaning with all-consuming anguish.

No longer able to bear the enormity of her grief, she

ended up hurling herself from an upstairs window. She was

killed instantly as her body crashed onto the limestone below.

It is thought that the tragic woman is still grieving the loss of her daughter, little realising that she too is dead. Hearing Marnie’s story reminded me of the importance of praying for

lost souls such as the weeping woman. How sad to think that

if only she could cross over, her suffering would finally cease.

I wondered if her beloved daughter was already in the light

waiting for her. I hoped that she too wasn’t trapped in earth-

bound misery, fruitlessly searching for her mother.

Of course there is a chance that the haunting is merely an

energetic replay of past events and that the woman’s spirit is not there at all. Given that her emotions were so intense, she may have merely left a psychic imprint on the ether whilst her Marnie 207

spirit moved on. I sincerely hope this to be the case, the alternative is just too heartbreaking to contemplate.

“Very sad …” said Marnie. “But I have a happy ghost story

too.”

It didn’t take much encouragement for Marnie to tell me

about another memorable spirit encounter; this one taking

place in the 1970’s.

“I remember waking up very early one morning. It was

still dark so I just lay there enjoying the view of the city sky-line. I was feeling quite contented and relaxed. Then without

warning, I felt myself lifting off the bed. It was as though my head lifted off first and the rest of my body followed. If I’d been watching myself side-on, I suppose it would’ve looked as

though my body was transcribing an arc.”

“In one smooth movement I found myself standing at the

foot of the bed, and who should be there waiting for me but

my husband!”

Marnie told me that despite it being three years since

her husband passed away, it felt perfectly normal to find him

standing there. The only thing she found unsettling was the

fact that she could still see her physical body lying inert on the bed. It was however her husband who commanded the focus

of her attention.

“He was as real as can be,” she told me. “He just stood

there smiling in his best navy suit. I could even smell him! He smelt of his favourite hair pomade.”

Marnie told me that she simply stood beside her husband

and gently rested her head on his shoulder.

“It felt perfectly