"I SEE DEAD PEOPLE!"

Well I was able to until I reached the age of 21. Twenty-one - what a magical number! I can tell you I was super-glad to be rid of my horrifying 'ability'. Not only was it not fun, it was a downright BURDEN!

What did I actually see , you might ask? Simple answer - DEAD PEOPLE ! In this era of political-correctness, I call them the Spiritually-Challenged.

Evil spirits, ghosts, apparitions, Satan, Beelzebub, Lucifer, devils, demons, ghouls, the undead, the supernatural, the paranormal ... I've seen them all ... and then some!

Let me give you a few examples of my paranormal experiences.

There was a large and tall tree about a 1/4 mile from my house. Now, I had walked past this particular tree countless times and at all hours before and never had seen or experienced anything spooky or frightening. But one night when I was about 9 and walking home alone I heard a woman singing a rather sweet yet uncanny and sad song as I passed this tree. The words were of an unknown and strange language. Her soprano voice was exquisite and literally out-of-this-world, no pun intended! I stopped momentarily trying to figure out the source of the singing. Even though I was young, the song unnerved me for it was sounded so DEPRESSING! It was eerie, mourning music. Somehow I knew the singing was coming from the tree. As I strained my eyes looking, I saw a misty figure slowly taking form in the shape of a woman at the base of the tree. The figure was a swirling mass but I could clearly see the figure of a woman. At that instant I felt a cold freeze envelop me. I could feel the evil emanating from her! As the singing continued, the by now solid-looking spook put a leg on the trunk and proceeded to WALK horizontally up the tree! When she reached a branch she sat on it as she kept on belting out the mysterious song. Her skeletal face smiling eerily, she crooked a finger, gesturing for me to come to her! My heart palpitating, I remained rooted to the ground. Luckily, after a few moments, the ghoul and the singing faded away. Needless to say, I was left stunned!

Another time when I was about 12, I was walking along a main street in broad daylight when I heard a bang. Initially I though it was a misfire from a car engine or a tire puncture. Seconds later I saw a commotion. A large group of people were gathering and surrounding a scene. Curious, I pushed my way through to see what was happening. What I saw was a grisly murder. A man, shot in the temple, was lying on the ground in a pool of blood. The strange thing was that I was seeing the victim, or rather his apparition, standing beside his prone, physical body. The ghost was gesturing angrily at the body. It even kicked at it, as if trying to wake him up. Eerily, blood was spouting continuously out of the hole of the apparition's temple like a hole in a garden hose! I now saw that it was trying to pull the dead man's hands, trying to get him up or something. Unsuccessful as he was grabbing thin air, it kicked at the body again. Looking frustrated, the ghost walked up to the crowd and started talking frantically to someone but I could hear no sound from it. The police arrived soon after and started controlling the crowd. Forensics people were now taking evidence as some of the cops talked to witnesses. The medics finally put the dead man into a body bag. The apparition then started crying, probably because he wasn't able to wake up his physical body. After the body was put inside the ambulance, the ghost jumped inside and sat next to his body. But after the medics closed the rear doors and ambulance had left, there he was again. The only problem was he was now facing me, again talking without any sound, crying and gesturing wildly! I ran home!

This happened in my late teens. I went on a dirt-bike trip with some friends in a jungle. We were having the time of our lives, speeding the bikes and spewing mud, dirt and sand all over the place. After sometime, I decided to take off by myself to a waterfall nearby. As I neared the waterfall, I went over a small hole in the ground. I lost control and fell. The bike flew a short distance and hit a small boulder, knocking it out of its foundation. As I lay slightly injured, I looked at what remained of the damaged bike. It looks like a total loss, I thought. A couple of minutes later, I made a Herculean effort to get up. (A later hospital examination showed no major damage, just some cuts and bruises here and there.) After brushing off the dirt, I limped to where my bike was and had a good look at it. Total loss, I told myself again. It was then that I saw part of the mouth of a hole where the boulder had laid. Curious the I pushed the boulder further away, exposing the hole fully. I figured it was about 3 feet wide and very deep. Suddenly detecting an overpowering odor of decaying meat, I closed my nostrils with my hand and stepped back. It was then that I saw it! Two hands appeared at the mouth of the hole. I figured it was probably a female, what with the deadly pale slender fingers and long nails which incidentally were totally black. The hands anchored at the top soil and out climbed a woman! Her red hair was shoulder-length and she wore what looked like a white nightgown that was rotted to the core. She had the pallor of death that exuded an evil aura. But the thing that really blew me away was that she had a stake impaled in the heart area of her chest! Facing me with outstretched arms, she dropped onto her knees. "Help me...please" she pleaded as she pointed to the stake. "Pull it out..." First the accident, now this! It was too much for me to bear and I fainted. I woke up in a private hospital, brought there by my friends. And no, they hadn't seen anything!

Okay, now about my book BUTTERFLY DREAM. Basically I would classify the book under HORROR/SUSPENSE and though largely fictional, ALL the ghostly parts are based on TRUE personal experiences, such as the three above, which by the way are incorporated into the book. There are many other ghostly parts which I have not described here. If you want to read them all, well, there're all in the book.