ghosts – True Tarot Tales

Halloween, Tarot and a true ghost story

Scorpio Photo by Jo Kassis on Pexels.com

Halloween is designated the season of ghosts. Why is that? We can encounter a ghost any time of year.

But there is an especially potent natural reason for the ghostly season. Halloween or All Hallows Eve is celebrated 31 October each year, marking the cross- quarter of the year, half-way point between the autumn equinox in the northern hemisphere, and the winter solstice, which in 2023 will occur on Friday 22 December.

Halloween began as a pre-Christian Iron Age festival 2000 years ago among the various peoples of Britain and Northern Europe popularly known as the Celts.

In parts of Britain and the Republic of Ireland Halloween is still called Samhain (pronounced Sow-an, from Gaelic/Irish meaning ‘summer’s end.’)

This is a critical turning point of the year from an ancient survival point of view: food production, harvesting and storage as the days grow shorter, the nights longer, vegetation decays, temperatures drop – and more people get sick. We are now in the zodiac sign territory of Scorpio, and the Tarot card correlating with Scorpio is the Death card.

From Halloween in the Anglo-sphere to Alf-blot (Elf Blood) in Scandinavia, to The Day of the Dead in Spanish speaking countries, the period 31 October – 3 November is a festival marking the end of the harvest season.

Russia does not celebrate Halloween as such. It is not recognized by the Orthodox Church, though it has been gaining popularity among young people since the 1990’s.

In France, again, Halloween is not a traditional festival, though certain elements may be catching on nowadays, cultural imports in the twentieth century. But La Toussaint or All Saints Day, is a widely celebrated national holiday celebrated on the first of November.

Now we are preparing for the decay of vegetation, the coming darkness, the time of hibernation of many animals, and the hardships of winter. This is a natural time to be marking the remembrance of the Dead.

Do I believe in ghosts? I have had some deeply strange encounters, and met enough perfectly sensible people who have told me their stories, and had no reason to doubt their common sense, and the validity of their account.

What is a ghost? We have the dictionary definition:

“Now chiefly, an apparition of a dead person which is believed to appear or become manifest to the living, typically as a nebulous image and attempting to right a wrong done in life; this sense of the word is recorded from late Middle English.

The word is recorded from Old English (in form gāst) in the sense ‘spirit, soul’, and is of Germanic origin; the gh- spelling occurs first in Caxton, and was probably influenced by Flemish gheest”. – Source

But the question still remains, what is a ghost, really? Are they sentient? Do they know they are there? Do they have intent? Or are they some kind of an echo? Do they know who they are- or were? Do they know who we are? What do they want?

I recommend reading up about the Cambridge archaeologist and paranormal researcher Tom Lethbridge T.C. Lethbridge

The Moon card

The Tarot card that in a reading can suggest a vivid dream, a vision, a psychic or supernatural experience or even a ghost is The Moon card. And this Halloween, we have only just passed through a Full Moon lunar eclipse. Perhaps you have been experiencing unusually vivid dreams.

From The Gilded Tarot Royale, illustrator Ciro Marchetti

This time of year represents a ‘liminal’ space, a threshold – a doorway of some kind, an ‘in-between’ space between outside and inside, one room and another, or between summer and winter, night and dark, and therefore symbolically, between Life and Death.

Being half-awake or half-asleep is an ‘in-between’ state of mind or consciousness, when we are might have a powerful frightening or psychic dream experience or even experience sleep paralysis, traditionally known as a visit from The “Night Hag” aka The Mara, as portrayed in a famous painting in its several variants, The Nightmare by Henry Fuseli.

This is a not uncommon experience that can occur when the brain is in-between deep and lighter sleep stages. The person thinks they are awake when they are not. There is a strong sense of threat, a malevolent presence, and they cannot move a muscle to defend themselves. I have experienced it myself, very unpleasant. Read here for the scientific medical explanation.

The Death card bears the Rider of the Pale Horse who comes for one and all. But the white rose is a symbol of the sanctity of life, and is a promise of resurrection.

A True Ghost Story

Some years ago, my phone rang one Saturday night, about 8 PM, a lady calling from Preston, about ten miles away from where I live. She had found my number in the psychic pages of the online telephone directory, and she wanted a psychic medium.

Note. I have never advertised as a psychic medium, but there is no separate listing for Tarot readers who are frequently listed under that same heading, along with astrologers and clairvoyants.

This lady was calling to ask me to come over to her house. Right now, please! There was ‘something’ in the hallway and it was blocking the stairs. She, her partner and the children were huddled in the sitting room with the door shut, too terrified to leave the room.

I could not go in person, sadly. Nor do I advertise such a service. But there are others who do. I gave her the name and telephone number of a local lady who specialized in clearing ‘haunted houses,’ -I didn’t know her but she had positive reviews, and meantime I reached for my cards, asking the lady what exactly had happened?

Her youngest child had been upstairs, she told me, when an invisible lady started whispering in her ear. The child panicked. Then her siblings panicked. Then the mother panicked too, and so did her partner.

Now there was something outside the sitting room door; a cold spot, a moving shadow.

I asked, what had this invisible lady said to the little girl?

The caller said, the ghost told her youngest child, her hair was very pretty.

I was looking through my cards while we were talking. This figured. The cards confirmed a benign presence – or influence. A grandmother?

The cards also indicated the lady on the other end of the phone had been under a lot of strain. I asked about this, and she confirmed a prolonged period of acute financial and other worries. Her mother had died three years earlier, and she was still missing her, really quite badly. But, she said, the littlest child was too young to remember her grandmother. Why, the lady wondered, if the ghost was her mother, had her mother not talked to her, but instead to the child, she had never known in life?

It was because the little girl happened in that moment to be the one tuned in on the ‘right’ wavelength to receive such an incoming message. The little girl had ESP in other words, and was hyper sensitive to atmosphere. This was why she alone had heard it. If there was a ghost, if the grandmother was still around, then she was tuning in to the living, seeking to deliver comfort to the mother who was her child.

The little grand-daughter was the most receptive conduit.

First things first. The lady had called to ask for help. I had given her the number of a reputable medium but she needed support right now, and help to restore order in the household.

To do this she needed to assert herself and reclaim her territory, ‘psych it out’, and show the children it was safe to go anywhere in the house.

The living can talk to a ghost, or say boo, just as it can say boo to us.There was no nastiness in these cards. If there had been, then the living can use aggression too. And tell the presence to GET GONE.

photograph of person facing opposite in smoky spotlight — Photo by Mads Schmidt Rasmussen on Unsplash

This presence was not nasty. Or at least the original one was not. But it was not wanted. I suggested that she tell the family, ‘it’s all gone now’, open that sitting room door, put lots of lights on, go herself down that hallway, alone if need be, put the kettle on, serve up something for supper. Light, movement and noise will shatter such a spell, and fear is contagious and feeds upon itself.

I later heard directly from the medium whose number I had given the lady. The lady gave her my number. The medium and her team had gone to the lady’s house next day, taking with them an array of electronic equipment. The medium confirmed there was an old lady’s ghost in the house, that it was the grandmother, and that the mother’s state of stress had called the ghost forth. The ghost had behaved in character, affectionately, but since the child had been startled, and then the mother had reacted with fear, everyone became frightened, and the thing took on an unpleasant aspect. The medium said that now the mother was consciously aware of it, the house should stay quiet now.

No suggestion of judgement attaches to the lady’s handling of the situation by the way. None whatsoever. Fear was and is a natural reaction to such an inexplicable experience. But if it happened again, now that she had some kind of explanation, however questionable, and reassurance that it was not malevolent, she could choose a more controlled and matter of fact response, whilst not dismissing the child’s experience.

“The Mind has many corridors” – Emily Dickinson

Psychic author Cassandra Eason has written a book with advice for parents with psychic children available from a range of second hand book sellers online.

https://cassandraeason.com/https://cassandraeason.com/

From my point of view, since I had never spoken with this lady medium myself before her visit to the house, but had simply provided contact details, I was interested that my tarot and this lady, this psychic medium, had detected virtually identical stories.

The power of the physical, the element of Earth, is the power of the living moment, here and now. We are exalted in the Earth. We take in air. We take up space.

This time is ours. Our inheritance of Earth. Our ace card in otherworldly dealings, the Ace of Pentacles. A nice cup of tea? How about a biccie? Fed the cat. Take the dog a walk.

Take it a walk to the cemetery.

It’s nice in there.

ALL SOULS

The transient day dies silently, and at its edge,

four grey hounds hunt for signs among the graves,

snuffling in the leaves, they lift their legs

on dead bouquets and faded wreaths.

A wind sprite sneaks round urns and angels,

and whisks the skirt of a woman kneeling

with a basket beside a new earth mound.

Two small children crouch behind.

Lights come on as dusk draws in,

and the woman with her kids drifts away

with the mist, all grey, sky as one,

into the Hesperian town.

The hounds stay running among the stones,

backs bridged over their skittering bones.

Circling together they lift their heads

and howl for the souls of their ancestral dead;

hunters, and all the prey that gave up the ghost

dying together in the close embracing hills.

They know who they are calling; The Host,

All Souls, rising from the earth like smoke.

Torches have blazed with saxophone and drum.

Masked revellers with candles in the town

finally sleep. And, under the windy moon,

the graveyard walks.

-Margaret Whyte

RIP Mam who wrote this poem (23 December 1939- 27 February 2023)

I saw my darling mother’s ghost just once, the day after she died in her own bedroom at home, released from hospital on end of life care. A movement caught my eye and there it was, a faint cloud, a movement on the turn of the stairs.

But she did not linger long. She was out and through “the valley” by the tenth day, and smiling up at hills the other side, clouds chasing sunlight across the tops. A child of the Pennines always. I reckon she has found her way to her own perfect heaven.

Life is for living. But Time is not linear. There is much wisdom in superstition, and we give thanks this All Souls season and every day, for the time we have shared with all those we have loved, who have gone on before us.

Thank you for reading.

The Tarot, the Journey to the Valley and the day I met a dead man.

What is the valley of death? We know it as a poetic expression from the Bible, but what might it mean in reality? What is the limit of the definition of reality anyway, when it comes to the imponderables. In algebra, we have to rely on symbolic placeholders too, as in X and Y.

Is the valley of death a poetic description of the end of life experience, a final sensory experience, a vision explainable in terms of a firing-off of neurons by the dying brain, or could it be something more?

I do not advertise as a psychic or clairvoyant or a medium, but tarot readers may get listed as such because there is no separate listing for Tarot in the telephone directory.

But why don’t I advertise as such? Well, Tarot card reading for divination, strategy and support is the service I undertake to guarantee to deliver, as my professional promise, and this is the bottom line and this service depends on acquired skill underpinned by knowledge. OK. But am I psychic? Yes. So are you, most likely, but psychic insights and experiences happen when they happen. Like a wind that ‘bloweth as it listeth’ – psychic insights may be confidently expected, but cannot be guaranteed.

Learning how to read cards, or any other system of divination, although card reading can facilitate them however, as the reader goes down a rabbit-hole, descending into a sort of Hades, seeking to find the ‘right’ interpretation of the cards in any given context. A reader can be asked absolutely anything about anything, and can never prepare, but only prepare to respond.

Every reader has their own story to tell, about how and why they started to learn to do readings. It need not start with a history of psychic experiences. Not at all. But often, it does and in a way, it did with me

‘The Mind has many corridors’ wrote Emily Dickinson. The world is older and stranger, not only than we do imagine, but more than we can imagine.

All animals are pattern seekers, pattern makers or pattern breakers, whether in order to hunt or to hide. Man is hardwired for the power of pattern, and communicating pattern, and the meanings of pattern, and of breaks in pattern, is the eternal task of storytelling. Man – meaning all of Mankind- is a storytelling animal.

‘In the beginning was the Word’.

The Day I met a Dead Man

Many years before I ever so much as opened a pack of Tarot cards, to be grabbed by the art and story telling embedded in them, I met a dead man on the street, a stranger, though we didn’t so much meet. It was more of a case of receiving a summons.

Leicester, 1988. I had just had coffee with a friend I’d used to work with at the Costume Museum in Wygston’s House, now a restaurant. My friend had been the curator at that time and way, way back, the eponymous Roger Wygston had been a wealthy wool merchant and several times Mayor of Leicester.

“Roger Wygston was born about 1430. His father, William, made the family fortune from the wool trade in the first half of the 1400s. Roger was elected chamberlain in 1459 and mayor of Leicester in 1465, 1471 and 1487. He was Member of Parliament for Leicester in 1473 and 1488. He died at Whitsun 1507.” More HERE

I worked in a little room upstairs, putting the Museum’s collection records, index card system on to computers for the first time, and helped put together an exhibition telling the story of hosiery and featuring our star exhibit, a Coptic sock from about AD 400. It had a bifurcated foot and horizontal stripes in red, brown and green.

I had coffee and a catch up with my friend, and then we said goodbye. I had a legal appointment at the top end of New Walk at 2.00 PM.

There was a time I walked up and down New Walk almost every day, and I worked a short while in the Museum there too. The portico entrance seen here on the right. This one, Wygston’s House and others were all part of the Leicestershire Museums Service run by the County Council.

I was selling a house among other things, with a lot going on at this time, some of it stressful. Anyone reading this may dismiss the following account on those grounds if they feel so inclined. This would be a perfectly reasonable option, if personally somewhat uncomplimentary in relegating the writer to the role of unreliable narrator, but that would certainly be the easiest, least challenging take on it.

Hardly sooner had I set off walking heading off to this appointment than I began to feel peculiar. Not exactly unwell, but certainly not good. There was a crackling in my ears, white noise like an un-tuned radio. Spots started dancing in front of my eyes, fizzing red and black. My body felt weirdly heavy.

I had never fainted in my life to recognize what that felt like, but, thinking maybe I was about to faint, I decided to keep on walking, thinking it would clear my head. But I was unaccountably scrambled, disorientated.

I could not for the life of me, remember or think where I was supposed to be going. I was on autopilot.

My feet took charge, leading me as it were, one step in front of the other until only a few minutes later, I had crossed a busy street.

I followed a small pedestrianized back street round the curved back wall of what was still called Marks & Spencer then, now M & S and then I came to a standstill.

There was a man lying on his back in the narrow street, sprawled across the pavement. A paramedic was attempting resuscitation, another kneeling by them, a small crowd anxiously watching, an ambulance waiting, .

There he lay, defenseless against exposure; an older man, but not exactly elderly, his trousers unbuttoned and unzipped, showing purple underpants, while the paramedics worked on him. His purchases, a few oranges presumably just bought in the market, had rolled out of his striped canvas shopping bag, and into the gutter.

I kept a distance, standing alone, with a blindingly sudden feeling of certainty, a sensation of astonished comprehension, ‘oh, that’s why I came this way. He fetched me.’

The fog rolled back and now I remembered I was on my way to the New Walk. I was by no means far out of my way, but nor would I have naturally thought to come this way.

I knew it was no good them trying to resuscitate him. I remember thinking, ‘he’s not in there anymore’.

I had the feeling, not only was the man not in his body any more, he was standing close beside me, on my right.

I saw nothing, heard nothing and felt nothing in that moment except a pang on his account, but this, with a dissociated neutrality. I think perhaps I was a little shocked, but I wasn’t frightened, only sad, not so much at the suddenness of the man’s death, but that he was caught so unprepared, and was so very frightened, finding himself unable to get back in his body that he had sent an SOS and pulled me off my own path to bring me, a perfect stranger, to where he lay, so abruptly evicted from his own body in a city centre back street on a sunny day.

Photo by Merlin Lightpainting on Pexels.com

Maybe it works something like radio waves, and I happened to be in the right place at the right time, and I was tuned in on the right frequency, like the story of the haunted house in my previous post.

I talked to him, and told him he had done the hard bit, and not to try and get back in, that he’d had a most tremendous shock, but it was OK, it was all right, and there was somewhere else he needed to go now, but it was perfectly all right.

Had I thought of it I might have said a prayer. I’m not religious, but words have power across the boundaries of time and space, and who knows what other boundaries.

I reckon that the old Wakes, company, food, alcohol, song, were a wise tradition rooted in this ancient understanding. That the dead might need a bit of time to process what has happened. That they might need encouragement and reassurance before they set off on their lone but universal odyssey once more to greet the rising sun. Read Here about Wakes.

A friend of my mother’s once told her that she had not been close to her father. But after he died and she went to see the body and say goodbye, she thought his face did not look quite right. She felt he looked frightened. The mouth was twisted. She sang to him ‘The Lord Is My Shepherd’, and she thought he must have heard her, because his mouth relaxed, and all at once his face looked quite different.

Some go swiftly and easily through the Valley. Others, not so.

The archangels Uriel and Michael are psychopomps; escorting the dead as they ascend back up to the heavens via the Gate of the Gods in the constellation of Capricorn.

In Greek and Roman mythology, the god Hermes or Mercury, would escort the souls to the banks of the River Acheron, or The Styx if you prefer, to wait for Charon the Ferryman and the crossing to the Isle of the Dead and the Fields of Asphodel.

Wiki: Psychopomps (from the Greek word ψυχοπομπός, psychopompós, literally meaning the ‘guide of souls’)^[1] are creatures, spirits, angels, or deities in many religions whose responsibility is to escort newly deceased souls from Earth to the afterlife. Their role is not to judge the deceased, but simply to guide them.

23 The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.²He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.³He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. ⁴Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.⁵Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.⁶Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

But I didn’t think of that. I was young, inexperienced in such things, too astonished and unprepared. So that was all I said to him, and then I went on my way and I put it out of my mind for a long time to come.

But I hope that he did hear me, however inadequate the response, if only to know that yes, he might have left his body, but he still existed and he stil lhad agency.

The living were still trying to help him, and though they could neither bring him back nor accompany him on his forward journey, whatever that might be, still, he had sent out a distress signal, and someone had received it and responded.

Photo by Joshua Woroniecki on Pexels.com

We send them. We receive them. Messages in bottles, sailing to shores near and far.

Some perhaps, farther than we can ever know.

Halloween, Hekate, witch-goddess of ghosts…and a true ghost story

Halloween is designated the season of ghosts. Why is that?

Halloween or All Hallows Eve is celebrated 31 October each year, marking the cross- quarter of the year, half-way point between the autumn equinox in the northern hemisphere, 22 September, and the winter solstice, which in 2023 will occur on 22 December.

Halloween began as a pre-Christian Iron Age festival 2000 years ago among the various peoples of Britain and Northern Europe popularly known as the Celts.

In parts of Britain and the Republic of Ireland Halloween is still called Samhain (pronounced Sow-an, from Gaelic/Irish) meaning ‘summer’s end.’

This is a critical turning point of the year from the ancient survival point of view of food production, harvesting and storage, as the days grow shorter, the nights longer, vegetation decays, temperatures drop – and possibly more people get sick. We are now in the zodiac sign territory of Scorpio, and the Tarot card correlating with Scorpio is the Death card.

From Halloween in the Anglosphere, to Alfblot in Scandinavia, to The Day of the Dead in Spanish speaking countries, the period 31 October – 3 November is a festival marking the end of the harvest season.

Russia does not celebrate Halloween as such. It is not recognized by the Orthodox Church, though it has been gaining popularity among young people since the 1990’s.

Now we are preparing for the decay of vegetation, the coming darkness, the time of hibernation of many animals, and the hardships of winter. This seems a natural time to be marking the remembrance of the Dead.

Liminal Spaces

The Tarot card that in a reading can suggest a vivid dream, a vision, a psychic or supernatural experience or even a ghost is The Moon card.

Being half-awake or half-asleep is an ‘in-between’ state of mind or consciousness, when we are might have a powerful frightening or psychic dream experience or even experience sleep paralysis, traditionally known as a visit from The Night Hag, as portrayed in his famous painting, The Nightmare by Henry Fuseli.

Any liminal ‘in-between space’ is understood as a sacred or magical space, a gateway through which ghostly or magical (magickal) things may manifest. A threshold, a doorway is a space to be protected. Crossroads are in-between spaces, representing a choice of directions or possibilities.

Do I believe in ghosts? I have met plenty of perfectly sensible people who have told me their stories, and had no reason to doubt their common sense and the validity of their account. We have the dictionary definition.

But the question still remains, what do we mean by a ghost? Are they sentient or some kind of an echo? Do they know they are there? Do they know we are there?

I recommend reading about the Cambridge archaeologist and paranormal researcher Tom Lethbridge T.C. Lethbridge

My phone rang one Saturday night, about 8 PM, a lady calling from Preston, about ten miles away from where I live. She had found my number in the psychic pages of the online telephone directory and she wanted a psychic medium.

Note. I do not advertise as a psychic medium but there is no separate listing for Tarot, and they put readers under that same heading.

The lady wanted me to come over to her house. Right away. There was ‘something’ out in the hallway and it was blocking the stairs. She, her partner and the children were huddled in the sitting room, too terrified to leave the room.

I could not go in person, sadly. Nor do I advertise such a service. There are others who do. I gave her the name and telephone number of a lady who specializes in ‘haunted houses’ and meantime reached for my cards while asking the lady what exactly had happened?

Her youngest child had been upstairs, she told me, when she heard a lady whispering in her ear. The child panicked. Then her siblings panicked. Then the mother panicked, and the partner. It had developed from there. Now there was something outside the sitting room door; a cold spot, a moving shadow.

What had this ghostly lady said to the little girl? That her hair was very pretty.

This figured. The cards confirmed a benign presence – or influence. A grandmother?

The cards also indicated the lady who was calling had been under a lot of strain. She confirmed a prolonged period of acute financial and other worries.

Her mother had died three years earlier, and she was still missing her, quite badly. But the littlest child was too young to remember her grandmother. Why, the lady wondered, if the ghost was her mother, had her mother not talked to her, but to the child?

The little grand-daughter was the most accessible conduit.

First things first. The lady had called to ask for help. How could I help? The lady needed to restore order in the household right away. She needed to assert herself and reclaim her territory, ‘psych it out’, and show the children it was safe to go anywhere in the house. The living can talk to a ghost, or say boo, just as it can say boo to us.There was no nastiness in these cards.

I suggested she announce, ‘it’s gone now’, put lights on, open that sitting room door, go down the hallway, put the kettle on, serve up supper. Light, movement and noise will shatter such a spell while fear is contagious.

I later heard from the medium. She and her team had gone to the lady’s house next day, taking with them an array of electronic equipment. The medium said there was an old lady’s ghost in the house, that it was the grandmother, and that the mother’s state of stress had called the ghost forth. The ghost had behaved in character, affectionately, but since the child had been startled, and the mother had reacted with fear, everyone got scared and the thing took on an unpleasant aspect. The medium said that now the mother was aware of it, the house should stay quiet now.

No suggestion of criticism attaches to the lady. None whatsoever. Fear was a natural reaction. But if it happened again, now that she had some kind of explanation, however questionable, and reassurance that it was not malevolent, she could choose a more matter of fact response, whilst not dismissing the child’s experience.

“The Mind has many corridors” – Emily Dickinson

Psychic author Cassandra Eason has written a book with advice for parents with psychic children available from a range of second hand book sellers online.

The power of the physical, the element of Earth, is the power of the living moment, here and now. We are exalted in the Earth. We take in air. We take up space.

This time is ours. Our inheritance of Earth. Our ace card in otherworldly dealings, the Ace of Pentacles. A nice cup of tea? How about a biccie? Feed the cat. Take the dog a walk.

Take it to the cemetery. It’s nice in there.

ALL SOULS

The transient day dies silently, and at its edge,

four grey hounds hunt for signs among the graves,

snuffling in the leaves, they lift their legs

on dead bouquets and faded wreaths.

A wind sprite sneaks round urns and angels,

and whisks the skirt of a woman kneeling

with a basket beside a new earth mound.

Two small children crouch behind.

Lights come on as dusk draws in,

and the woman with her kids drifts away

with the mist, all grey, sky as one,

into the Hesperian town.

The hounds stay running among the stones,

backs bridged over their skittering bones.

Circling together they lift their heads

and howl for the souls of their ancestral dead;

hunters, and all the prey that gave up the ghost

dying together in the close embracing hills.

They know who they are calling; The Host,

All Souls, rising from the earth like smoke.

Torches have blazed with saxophone and drum.

Masked revellers with candles in the town

finally sleep. And, under the windy moon,

the graveyard walks.

–Margaret Whyte (23 December 1939-27 February 2023)

The writer of this poem was my mother. I saw her ghost just once, the day after she died in her own home, just as she had always wished, sent home from the hospital on End of Life care. I was sitting at the dining table, caught a movement in the corner of my eye, turned, and a faint cloud, turning the corner of the stairs, came drifting down another two stairs before disappearing.

It would not be her way to hang about for long.

This All Souls, we give thanks for the precious time we shared with those we have loved who have gone on before us.

Thank you for reading.