Contacting the Spirits

All Souls Day, Nov. 2

Today we honor those who have shown up at crucial times in our lives and helped us survive. The roots of the observance are thousands of years old in a time when people tried to ward off Death and the wandering, malevolent spirits that took family and friends away, often without warning. While modern medicine has subdued some of these spirits, we still fear the long-leggedy beasties and queasy, uneasy, things that go bump in the night. Too many people we love die unexpectedly, and too many die young for us to rest easy.

We are scared of death. We want to know where we go and what happens to us when we die. 

Religions bounce this discussion around the room like a red beach ball as they try to explain the whethers and whatevers of transworld destinations and communications. There are boatloads of beliefs about what happens to people when they die. 

Tibetan Buddhists believe the dead have forty-nine days to accept one of three openings to the next world and move on, or they are stuck here as ghosts. The Russian Orthodox Church allows forty days. The Lakota Sioux think that if we disrespect the dead, they will intentionally hang around and haunt us. Some African tribes believe the spirits of the dead can come back in descendants. While Christianity and Islam believe souls travel on to heaven, Judaism doesn’t dwell on the afterlife, preferring to focus on helping the living in the here and now. Some say nothing happens. That’s it. End of that person’s body, personality, and soul.

With all of the focus on death this week, with Halloween, the Mexican Day of the Dead, the Celtic Samhain, and All Saints Day, it’s the perfect time for us to talk to each other about matters of grief and death, and most of us just won’t. We won’t open the door on possibilities and speak to our dead or listen for their reply. We won’t ask the grieving if they’ve had any supernatural contacts with their dead.

Yet we want to know if it’s possible to communicate with our loved ones in the other world. Can they hear us? Are they watching over us, and guiding our decisions in some way?

I believe that the wisdom, compassion, and love of those who died continue to live in us. This isn’t looking at death with glitter in my eyes. I’m not denying the traumatic reality of death. My loved ones are dead and they’re not coming back. Yet the compassion of Evelyn continues to encourage and challenge me, as does the wisdom of father-in-law Stan, and the creativity of mother Martha. They are still alive to me in a real way. I think about them often enough that they could walk into the room and I wouldn’t be surprised.

Religions have rituals and observances that seek to preserve these bonds with those who died. The Japanese maintain altars in their homes to keep the lines of communication open with ancestors. They also gather in the summer for the Obon festival and honor all the dead. Some of us try to communicate with our dead through séances, tea leaves, tarot cards and Ouija boards.

Do you hear the voices of your dead?

Ghosts of my dead don’t dance around my bed at night. There’s no screaming, rattling of chains, or dancing with flaming swords, although that would be cool. Yet there have been enough events I can’t explain that make me think Evelyn has been trying to make contact—strange touches on my shoulder, sunsets changing colors, and a psychic calling out of the blue to deliver a message.

So, you know, this door is staying open.