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

death as a newborn. Perhaps I had lingered at the life/death

interface for just long enough for it to become familiar to me.

Maybe that’s why I found myself effortlessly floating up to the ceiling so frequently as a child.

As unsettling as these episodes were, I feel they were the

precursor to the paranormal experiences I am so grateful for

today. My early glimpses into otherworldly realms paved the

way for my clairvoyance; and as such they have enriched my

life beyond measure.

It’s always heartening to meet a fellow fringe-dweller; someone who has also travelled the subtle interface between the

living and the dead. I met Ginny whilst on a business trip to

Melbourne, our paths crossing randomly outside the interna-

tional airport. Like me, she is clairvoyant, seemingly the result of a protracted OBE whilst she was a child. Sadly for Ginny,

the precursor for her OBE was much more traumatic than my

own.

I met Ginny and her sister on an overcast Melbourne after-

noon; shortly after the arrival of my flight from Perth. As I stepped out of the airport terminal, I was approached by two

smiling American women, with the offer of sharing their cab

into the city. They had secured a small minibus, so we clam-

bered in amongst our jumble of suitcases and handbags.

They asked me where I had flown in from, and whether

the purpose of my trip was for business or pleasure.

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“I’m here for a writers’ conference,” I replied, to which the

more boisterous of the two produced a mammoth hulk of a

manuscript from the depths of her bag.

“Hey, you’re a writer,” she laughed. “Me too! We’re here

for the week to edit this thing …”

I enquired as to the size of the manuscript. It was the hefti-

est draft I had ever seen.

“This is what 165,000 words looks like,” she beamed

proudly, giving the pages a self-satisfied slap.

They both asked me whether I had any books published,

so I briefly told them about my first book which was in the

final stages of editing, and that it dealt with my paranormal experiences.

“No way! This is a spiritual book too!” laughed the manu-

script-wielding sister. “Are you a clairvoyant?”

“I’ve seen spirits for as long as I can remember,” I said. “My parents think it’s because I nearly died at birth.”

“Yeah well they do say trauma can heighten your paranor-

mal abilities,” said the more reserved of the two. “That’s what happened to us. That’s what Ginny’s book’s about.”

Ginny began telling me their story, and I sat spellbound for

the remainder of our journey.

The story which unfolded was shocking and confronting,

yet the two sisters who endured it sat smiling as they took turns relaying the tragedy of their childhood. They told me that given the opportunity to re-write their past they wouldn’t change a

thing. As painful as it was, it is through enduring their tragedies that they have evolved into the vibrant, strong women they are today.

Ginny told me that when she was ten and her sister was

six, their father shot their mother in their remote Kentucky

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farmhouse. The shooting was the climactic end of a pro-

tracted siege, as their father had held the family to ransom for an excruciating ten hours.

Being the eldest of six children, Ginny took it upon herself

to shield her mother, and physically placed herself between

her parents. She desperately pleaded with her father to put

down his gun. She ordered her cowering younger siblings out

of the room with as much authority as her quivering, ten year-

old self could muster, torn between physically protecting her mother and shielding the young ones from the drama unfold-ing before them.

Desperate to comfort her traumatised siblings (and per-

haps also for self-preservation) Ginny somehow found her

consciousness detaching from her body, until she was float-

ing up towards the ceiling of the room. From here she could

observe the scene beneath her, and was relieved to see her

physical form steadfastly maintaining a barrier between her

parents.

Ginny was drawn to the whimpering of her siblings, and

found she could will herself into the adjacent room, where her brothers and sisters were cowering together in a corner.

“It’s OK,” she soothed. “It’s all going to be alright. Trust

me!”

She wasn’t sure if they could hear her, but she felt that the

message was getting across. Their terrified sobbing began to

subside as soon as she reached them.

And this is how Ginny spent the next ten hours, detached

from her body, drifting between the rooms as she tried to

restore peace.

Eventually her father shoved Ginny out of the way and

there was a devastating crack of his rifle. Her mother was shot.

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Back in our minibus the sisters stared at me wide-eyed, as

though the piercing crack of the bullet had only just shattered the silence, rather than almost forty years ago. I really didn’t know what to say.

“She did live though,” said Ginny. “And as awful as it was, it was worth it. That day got us away from that horrible man. It

gave us a new beginning.”

I am sure it wouldn’t have been an easy journey, and that

the trauma had carved itself into their hearts for many years to come. But the reason there was a book written about it at all is because the positives which sprouted from the family’s ordeal

far outweighed their suffering; as evidenced by the two viva-

cious women before me.

As a result of a bleak and painful day in their family’s his-

tory, Ginny became aware of her extrasensory gifts, abilities which have continued to enrich her life almost forty years

later. The lesson for us all is that no matter how bleak and

unforgiving the world can sometimes appear, there is light and positivity hiding just below the surface, should we allow it to shine through.

By the time the cab pulled up in front of my hotel, I felt

as though I had deeply bonded with these women I had met a

mere half hour ago. We hurriedly exchanged email addresses,

hugs and kisses, and a moment later they were gone.

The sisters left a sense of awe in their wake,